Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  Anyway, he wanted it. Whatever reasons. He wanted it and he was having it, and he meant to keep on having it. It had brought out things in him he had never even suspected were there. And he liked those things. Sometimes a man just didn’t give a damn, like he had told Grant that first night out, just didn’t give a damn. And Christ, it could go on for years, off and on, if they were careful—with Sam partly in the business, and coming down for cruises, maybe even buying a place in GaBay. It could go on for years. Maybe. He had not tried to feel her out about telling Sam, as Grant had suggested he do, but he was reasonably sure she wouldn’t. Well— He stopped thinking about it and looked at his watch. It was just past noon, and that meant they had another hour’s sail or so to Dog Cay. If they stopped now and spearfished up their lunch and ate, they could be there by two-thirty or three in plenty of time to see all the island. Calling forward to Orloffski to handle the jib if necessary, he brought her slowly around, jibing slowly, until the wind was on his starboard quarter and headed in toward one of the little islets where he had fished before and knew there was plenty of stuff to catch.

  It was while he was cooking the lunch from the fish they’d caught after going around the islet and anchoring in the lee, that he—standing in the galley sweating and working— overheard the conversation between Lucky and Irma, who happened to be sitting alone together on the coachroof just above the galley’s long rectangular port.

  He had not listened much to what they were saying until he heard first the seaplane and then his own name mentioned. Then he looked up and started to listen. Right in front of him, touching distance, less than touching distance, through the rectangular port, hung these two lovely pairs of female legs, easy enough to recognize even without the voices, Irma’s slighter and of course much the darker, being Jewish, and the others —Lucky’s—nervously and continuously crossing and uncrossing their ankles. What he heard so infuriated him that he very nearly burned the lunch.

  “Well, I know I can get one from North Nelson,” Lucky was saying. “So I don’t see why, if they have a resident manager and all that, they won’t also have radio equipment at Dog Cay too.”

  “I’m not saying they don’t have it,” Irma answered. “I’m only saying you better think twice, think several times, before you really decide to do it.”

  “I told you I’ve had it,” Grant’s wife answered quickly. “Up to here.”

  “And I’m saying you’re very seriously endangering your marriage if you do it,” Irma said, just as hotly. “Think about that. If you ruin this cruise for Ron—”

  “It’s already ruined,” Lucky Grant said. “And as for the marriage . . .” She added, “I sometimes wonder if I even care.”

  “You care. And I don’t think the cruise is all that terrible. I’m enjoying myself. And if it’s that one drunken night with those horrible Texans, and that drunken diving contest, I can’t understand it,” Irma said. “That’s not worth going home over—especially if it means your marriage maybe goes too?”

  It ended on a sort of plaintive question. Lucky Grant did not answer.

  “And I know it isn’t still over that old thing about that old Mrs. Abernathy ex-girlfriend of his,” Irma said. “You forgave him for that. I heard you say so. And you acted it. You acted, showed that you’d forgiven him. I can’t understand, Lucky, I really can’t.”

  There then came a long, curiously long, sort of suspicious (Bonham felt), almost guilty, pause which he could not make out the meaning of.

  “So what is it?” Irma said, finally.

  “Well, for one thing it’s that goddamned Bonham,” Lucky Grant said, but in a changed, rather strange voice. “He’s horrible. That gross fat huge ugly creature. And he’s not safe. I know he isn’t.”

  “Well, he’s done everything well so far,” Irma said. “And everything he’s said has come right out on the dot.”

  “And he’s cheap,” Lucky Grant said. “A big cheap lardass bastard. Not wanting to pay docking charges. Not wanting to allow dinners ashore and only eating the fish we catch. What kind of cheap cruise is that? With all the money he’s charging you people.”

  “He never actually quoted us any prices, really,” Irma Spicehandler said. “Ben figured maybe twenty, twenty-five dollars a day per person.”

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Lucky Grant said. “I think he’s fucking Cathie Finer.”

  “Oh, hell, I’ve known that since the night Sam Finer left Kingston,” Irma said. “But that’s not any of our business.”

  “It is if your husband had happened to have loaned him four thousand five hundred dollars to get this schooner out of hock! Even if he does fix up the insides, which are really truly horrible now, he’s so damn low-class he’s never going to make it with this yacht and company. Not with any high-class clients. And if he loses Sam Finer’s support . . .”

  It trailed off significantly. Bonham suddenly remembered to look at his fish, and turned them with a spatula that was trembling with fury in his hand.

  “But I still don’t see what all of that has to do with you deciding to order a seaplane over here to take you home,” Irma insisted.

  “He hates my guts,” Lucky Grant said. Which was true enough, Bonham thought from down below. “He hates me because I’ve got Ron. And he wants Ron. I’ve taken his beloved Ron away from him. I think he’s some kind of a half-fag. Latent fag. Or something.”

  “Still,” Irma insisted stubbornly, “Ron—”

  “Oh, Ron!” Lucky said furiously. “He’s at least as bad as them! He loves all these guys as much as they love him! As much as Bonham loves him. That’s another thing that makes me—And I’ll tell you something else,” Lucky said in a much lowered voice, and her pair of legs leaned away from Irma’s, as her invisible upper body leaned toward her. And Bonham knew, surely, with a kind of transfixing horror, what she was just about to say. And if she did say that—to Irma—to Irma Spicehandler—or anybody—everything would be over. It would tear the whole damned cruise, the whole damned thing. He himself wouldn’t be able to go on with it. Letta had told her. “He—”

  “Ladies!” Bonham boomed, in his best and loudest ‘Sea Captain’s’ voice. “Ladies! Luncheon is now being served in the saloon and on the afterdeck and cockpit! Lunch is served!”

  The two pairs of legs jerked. Then they disappeared sideways and two upside-down faces replaced them. “Oh, hello!” Bonham said. He gave them his very best smile (though he feared it wasn’t much good, the way he felt), and at the same time tried to put into his eyes the total and extreme contempt he felt for the both of them. Women! “Lunch is served,” he said softly. The faces disappeared, then the legs disappeared, too, walking aft.

  While they ate the fish, Lucky Grant came over to him where he was perched alone on the lifeline with his plate.— “I suppose you heard what I said about you,” she said in a subdued, but strangely stubbornly proud enough voice to indicate she would repeat every word of it to his face if he asked her to.

  “Heard?” he said pleasantly. “Were you saying something about me? I wish I had heard. I was far too busy cooking. I thought all of you were over on the starboard foredeck. That’s why I yelled so loud.” He smiled at her pleasantly, while at the same time putting back into his eyes all he really felt about her. The long look he got in return was enigmatic in the extreme, then she took her plate and walked away.

  An hour later, after the plates and pots had been dropped overboard and thoroughly washed in sand and sea water by Orloffski in an aqualung, they were under way for Dog Cay, and an hour after that they were docked there.

  Now Dog Cay really was ritzy. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor had often stayed there a few weeks during the season, that was how ritzy it was, and Bonham knew how unshipshape, how un-ritzy-shipshape, and gypsylike poor old Naiad looked pulling in there, with all her diving gear and stuff strewn all over. But the British were great sticklers for all forms of sea-hospitality, being an old race of sailors. And fortunately (he had inquire
d about this at North Nelson) Dog Cay still had the same resident manager they’d had when Bonham had sailed here two years ago. Bonham had sailed in here as assistant Master (though actually acting as Master) two years before on a very-ritzy-shipshape private yacht, and the resident manager recognized him instantly and happily. What the hell, it was lonely for him, living here as the only white Britisher during the off season. He came out onto the dock in very white, very starched ducks and wearing a very handsome white yachting cap with its own big gold Mgr insignia on it, and welcomed them practically with open arms. First off, they must come to the office where he would break out a new bottle of scotch in their honor, have a drink, and then he would give them all a tour of the island in the ‘house’ Land Rover. “Long time no see!” he said to Bonham. “Long time no see! And how is Commodore Inspane?” The ‘Commodore’ Inspane had been the rich owner and ‘Master’ of the ritzy yacht Bonham had sailed for him. He was fine, Bonham said—though he had not seen him since, since then. And they all trooped to the office for the new scotch bottle.

  Bonham however had a swimming lesson to give. To Irma. So while the others made the tour of the island with the so hospitable resident manager, he himself took Irma into the shallow water off the lovely sand beach right beside the wharf where the schooner was docked. He himself had already seen the island anyway, with its big lovely well-made homes, handsome walled-in gardens, groves of tall royal and coco palms all over. If anywhere was a true ‘island paradise’, it was here at Dog Cay, but Bonham didn’t give a damn if he saw it again. None of it was his. And Irma would much rather have her swimming lesson than tour the island, she said happily.

  Bonham believed in the oldfashioned method of teaching swimming to rank neophytes. Give them the old frogkick and breaststroke with the head entirely out of water first. Then teach them a good solid sidestroke. The crawl was no damn good for anything really, except somebody who wanted to be a speed swimmer, or wanted to do it for exercise. He had already given Irma one lesson for an hour or so yesterday, and had got her so she could do the frogkick-breaststroke for fifty yards or so without putting her feet down. Today he concentrated on the sidestroke, and before very long had her so she was swimming two hundred yards out and two hundred yards back. Irma was a good, and eager, pupil. But then he was a damn good teacher. After she could do around four hundred yards sidestroke in water over her head without panicking, he decided to put her through the mask and snorkel routines—which she picked up quickly, using his method—and then took her out with the mask, snorkel and flippers since the tour party wasn’t back. The flippers of course delighted—and surprised—her with how easy they made everything, as they always did everyone. So did the mask, naturally, when she realized she could actually see underwater. It always delighted every pupil. Unfortunately here there was nothing but pure white sand for as far out as you could swim, so there was no shallow reef or small fish for her to look at, but he took her alongside the hull of the schooner to look at it and at the few barnacles that had already attached to it. Then, finally, holding their breath together and him holding her by the hand, they swam under the schooner together—but belly up—for her to look at it— and came up on the other side under the dock. After that he let her explore along the dock, where there were a few— a very few—sergeant-majors for her too look at, and let her swim down along the wooden dock posts to the twelve-foot bottom to look at the sea growths which had attached to them. Of course she was delighted. And by the time the others returned from their tour of the lovely tropical island, full of praise for it and for the resident manager, who was beaming, he had Irma ready to try her first little aqualung dive.

  “This would cost you twenty-five or thirty bucks back in Kingston, or in my place at Ganado Bay,” he told her with a sour grin, “at the very least. But just to show you how cheap I’m really not, I’m not even going to charge you a nickel for any of it.”

  Grant and Ben went with them, starting off the sand beach so that she could wade out and go under first in water that wasn’t over her head. Then, when she was used to that, they all four of them swam along the bottom and under the schooner and back and forth along the bottom under the wharf, he himself holding her hand (something he had learned always gave a lady beginner confidence), Grant and Ben swimming along on both sides, both of them gesticulating their pleasure to her. When he brought her up finally, he grinned and said, “So now you’re a diver!” Little Irma was delighted. It was partially a lie, of course, because he hadn’t shown her any of the lung techniques except the essential one of clearing the mask underwater. It was too shallow here to teach her ear-clearing, but he could show her that tomorrow, and it was true that she could then probably dive on the shallow reefs they were likely to be seeing on the rest of the cruise, as long as she had himself or Grant—or Orloffski—with her. But when Lucky Grant was asked if she wouldn’t like to go through the same routine, she steadfastly and stubbornly refused.

  There was enough fish and lobster tails left from the noontime spearfishing to make plenty of food for dinner, but the resident manager (hungry, as he must always be this time of year, for company) invited them ashore for dinner, where he broke out excellent deepfreeze steaks that had been flown in by seaplane from the States, and even went so far as to bring out several bottles of good Bordeaux wine. Everybody was a little tight when they finally said good night to him and went back to the wharf and the ship by flashlight.

  “Any of you damned landlubbers who want to sleep on the dock can,” Bonham told them when they were back on board. “I spoke to the manager about it and explained that we were just on our shakedown cruise and were also a little overcrowded. And he’s so damned glad to see some people he’d agree to damn near anything! But I just want you to know that it embarrasses me to do it, to have had to do it. The private houses here are all closed up, of course.

  “So you can sleep up here if you want, but I’m damned if I’m goin to carry any mattresses off for anybody. You’ll just have to sleep in your blankets.”

  “Well, I’m going to sleep on the dock,” Lucky Grant said immediately.—“Then so will I, of course,” Ron said. Ben and Irma also both elected to sleep out on the dock. The Surgeon and his girl said they might as well keep their same old place on the forward deck, and naturally later on the same scramblings and thumpings were heard by all.

  “Well, I’m gonna sleep below,” Bonham said. “Like a proper cruising yachtsman ought to.”

  “I think I’ll sleep below too,” Cathie Finer said coolly.

  “Then you can have the master cabin,” Bonham said blank-faced. “And I’ll take the portside bunk. That way you’ll have more privacy.”

  “That’s fine,” Cathie said coolly.

  “I can even sleep up in crew’s quarters in the forepeak, if you want more privacy,” Bonham said.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You won’t bother me there.”

  “I guess I’ll sleep on the dock too,” Orloffski said with a cynical grin at the both of them. “I’m gettin a little tired of the curve of the damned coachroof.”

  And that was the way it was settled, and arranged.

  Of course Bonham did not sleep in the portside bunk at all. And when they were in the not-large master cabin bed together he found he could not help but ask Cathie if she didn’t think her so open decision to sleep below was not maybe a bit uncautious.

  “What the hell?” she said calmly. “I don’t care if they know. I don’t care if anybody knows. Excepting Sam, of course.”

  He told her what—or part of what—he had overheard between Lucky Grant and Irma today.

  “I’m sure they all know,” Cathie said calmly.

  “But don’t you think it might get back to Sam from somebody?” Bonham half-whispered.

  “From some of them? Why?” she said. “What difference does it make to any of them? Why would any of them want to tell Sam?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “No reason that I know. But gossip travels. And
it still seems to me that that—what you did tonight—might be just the slightest bit uncautious.”

  Cathie didn’t answer him—“Aren’t we going to play?” she asked after a moment or two.

  “We sure as hell are,” he said huskily.

  They had an invitational breakfast ashore the next morning with the resident manager, a superb breakfast at which even kippered herring was served in typical British style, and after a late start spearfished most of the day in the waters near Dog Cay and during which little Irma actually managed to spear a small grouper while diving in a lung with Bonham and Grant beside her. She was quite a kiddie, that Irma. Then they set sail once again for North Nelson. North Nelson, and the Greens. Lucky Grant had apparently decided to do nothing about radioing for a seaplane to come and pick her up. They pulled in just at dusk. The Greens treated them just as if nothing had ever happened. The Texans were gone. Only the young Green who had been the judge of ‘The Great Diving Contest’, the one who ran the restaurant, seemed a little bit surly. They ate there anyway.

  After all the rooms had been arranged, and all the others had retired to them, Bonham hung around the ship a while and had a few drinks with Orloffski. Then he said he was going to take himself a walk and went off down the beach. After he was out of sight of the port he circled back and sneaked up to Cathie Finer’s room, where of course she was waiting for him. She had become like dope to him. Real dope. Real dirty, selfabandoned dope. God, was she dirty. He was glad she wasn’t his wife. Poor old Sam. Poor old idiot Sam. It made him even hotter.

  36

  FINAL CALAMITY CAME the next day. Or rather, in the evening, the night, of the next day. They had all of them, or just about all, suffered minor or major calamities, minor or near-major (even major) catastrophies, Grant mused, since the beginning of this adventure way back in November or December of last year when he had first gotten this crazy (or peculiar, strange) idea to learn skindiving, and when he had not yet even met Lucky Videndi. Lucia Angelina Videndi. All of them, all of them except maybe Ben and Irma (who were not really involved and who anyway had apparently gone through theirs a long time back that time when Ben had run off for a year, before finally returning), all of them had suffered some misery or other. But this calamity was real, true catastrophe. Terminal catastrophe. Like ‘Terminal Cancer’, as the euphemists of stage, screen, radio, and Pravda were so fond of saying now. Terminal catastrophe. End of cruise catastrophy. Five nights out of Kingston, on what could only be a seven or possibly eight-day cruise now anyway, because of inordinate (and perhaps unnecessary?) delays in getting the ship outfitted and ready to leave, catastrophe happened. So that, with only two days to go, at the very best two and a half, it came before the final sail back to Ganado Bay could even be begun and save it from the total, the bad-taste-in-the-mouth, feel-of-ruin catastrophe with which it ended.