The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  Bareheaded in the blazing sunlight, he strode down the street wondering what he should say to Danielle André when he found her. Perhaps he oughtn't to talk-to Dannie at all, but go straight to the nun in charge of the school. That one was a fiercely intimidating woman, however. Always seemed to feel that because the Church had put her in charge of its experimental girls' school here, people should stand at attention in her presence.

  Well, he'd see. He had to talk to someone.

  "Dr. Clermont!" His name was being called. "Have you got a minute?"

  He halted. Across the road, toward him, strode the fisheries fellow, George Benson, apparently anxious to talk.

  4

  George Benson had bitten his tongue again that morning. "The fourth time this week," he muttered, leaning toward the bathroom cabinet to glower at his wide-open mouth in the glass.

  From the doorway behind him his wife, Alice, said, "What, George?"

  "I chewed a chunk out of my tongue again, damn it! Will you kindly tell me what the hell's going on?"

  "Let me look."

  Turning, George gingerly put his tongue out. Even that much movement caused a sharp stab of pain.

  "It does look sore," Alice said. "Didn't you wake up when you did it?"

  "I only just did it and, yes, I woke up." Actually, the pain had jerked him upright in bed out of a sound sleep, leaving him gasping for breath while his eyes filled with tears. Alice couldn't have known about that, however. They slept in separate rooms now.

  "Look," George said. "What's making me do this? Will you for God's sake tell me? I've never done anything like it before."

  "It's nerves, George. Stress. You're working too hard."

  "I haven't been working that hard." He hadn't, either—and, anyway, he enjoyed his work. Most of the time, at least.

  "Well—the frustrations, maybe," Alice said with a shrug of her pretty shoulders. "Struggling to get your ideas across in this stupid St. Joe Creole. The government should at least have given you time to learn the language before expecting you to perform miracles here." George knew she hated having to live here now, though in the beginning she had thought of it as a great new adventure. The capital might be okay, but Dame Marie to her was the absolute end of the earth.

  "I hope that's all it is," George said.

  "Are you still having the headaches, too?"

  "Not so often." He had been taking aspirin each night before turning in. The headaches were less severe now.

  "Well, try to relax." Rising on tiptoe, Alice put her small brown hands on his bare brown shoulders and lightly kissed his face on the side away from the injury. In her shortie nightgown she looked pretty and sexy, but George knew the gesture was no invitation. Nothing like that ever happened spontaneously with Alice. You had to make arrangements in advance, like phoning for a reservation in a restaurant, for Christ's sake.

  Dressed, he made coffee and boiled an egg for himself while Alice showered. They had stopped eating breakfast together because on the days she taught English at the school she could get coffee there. Today was a school holiday and she wouldn't be going out, but the habit was now solidly established.

  Ready to leave, he called good-bye through the bathroom door before leaving the house. Government people had rented the house for them—one of the few in Dame Marie that Alice would consent to live in. The same people had also provided a Jeep for him to get around in, because his work with the fishermen took him all over this part of the island.

  The government might have been considerate enough to provide transportation for her, too, Alice was fond of saying. It had been their idea that she help out at the school, as an exercise in public relations, so why, damn it, should she have to walk to her job?

  Unlike his wife, George Benson was happy to be in St. Joseph. Born on the Mississippi Delta, he had been a commercial fisherman with his own boat before answering an ad for someone to help St. Joe's natives provide more fish for the island's people. He had played college football in his home state and wed the prettiest girl his hometown had to offer. Except for his recent headaches, and now the agonizing business of biting his tongue while he slept, he had for thirty-one years enjoyed remarkably good health.

  Here in St. Joe his job had boiled down to persuading the local fishermen to give up their primitive ways and teaching them ways that were more productive. Item: talk their tight-fisted government into providing them with outboard motors at cost, for a few pennies a month, then teaching them how to keep the motors in working order. Item two—well, skip the résumé. The job was full of booby traps, but he loved it.

  Anyway, it was a damned sight more rewarding than his marriage. Even though, with the headaches and the tongue-biting, he was now running scared.

  Today the bitten tongue really tormented him. The gashed side of it had swollen, and the whole thing felt like something alive and throbbing that he was trying to swallow but couldn't. He had difficulty talking—not only the Creole that he found so hard to master, but even English on the few occasions when he had a chance to use it.

  At the Pointe Pierre pier a white-haired old-timer mending a fish trap wagged a finger at him and said it wasn't natural for a healthy young fellow to bite his tongue that way, and George ought to see a doctor.

  Throughout the morning George worked with his fishermen, showing them how to construct nets with a mesh board and a hanging needle. At noon he gave up and headed for home, reaching his house just in time to exchange greetings with the fellow from the alcoholics place, Paul Henninger, who was passing at the time. Alice had a lunch of canned pork and beans on the table.

  He was afraid to try eating. "I think I'll go over to Clermont's," he said.

  Alice nodded her approval. "Yes. I think you should."

  On stepping out of the house, George saw Clermont across the street and called his name, then hurried over to him. The doctor looked at his tongue and scowled at him like Lincoln pondering a presidential crisis.

  "Hmm. You are having a rough time of it, aren't you? Nerves, I suspect. Now what's causing the nerves?"

  "I don't have any reason for jitters." Except a few I can't tell you about, George silently added.

  "No problems with your fishermen?"

  "Nothing I can't handle."

  "What about those politicians commandeering your boat for pleasure trips?"

  "Well, that used to bug me, but I've learned to live with it. I mean, after all, it's their boat."

  "Is something wrong at home, then?"

  George hesitated before answering. There had been a time, back in the States, when he had considered seeing a doctor or a marriage counselor about his worsening relationship with Alice. There could be something wrong with him, he had thought. Now, though, he knew the fault was not his, and he was reluctant to discuss it.

  Not that a discussion of his problems would embarrass him. Nothing like that. Clermont, after all, was at least sixty and must have talked to a lot of folks about sex problems. He'd be understanding, anyway—he was that kind of guy. But there was Danielle André to think of.

  He would have to mention Dannie if he got into any discussion of his sex life, and, of course, Clermont knew her. Everyone in Dame Marie knew everyone else. Certainly everyone knew the teachers at the school.

  No, he'd better skip the home-life bit.

  Changing the subject when he failed to get an answer, the Dame Marie doctor said, "Do you dream much, George?"

  "Dream?"

  "Some of us get pretty violent, you know. Throw ourselves out of bed, that sort of thing. I had a patient once who broke his wrist against the wall, flailing out against an imaginary attacker."

  "I don't have any dreams like that."

  "Hmm. Well, there's got to be something behind your tongue-biting. Your digestion okay?"

  "Nothing wrong there."

  "You complained of headaches once. Still having those, are you?"

  "Well, yes. But I'm taking aspirin at bedtime now, and they're not so bad."
>
  Clermont scowled again. "George, how about coming in for some tests?"

  "What kind of tests? What do you think is wrong?"

  "I'd rather not guess. Let's try to find out."

  "You don't have an idea, even?" George was beginning to feel desperate again. Lately he had felt that way often. "I can't go on like this, getting no decent sleep. And if I keep on biting my tongue like this, I could get cancer, couldn't I?"

  "Come and see me for some tests."

  "When?"

  "How about Monday morning? And come alone this time, eh? Not that we'll be doing anything we don't want your wife to know about, but I believe you'll feel more free to talk if she isn't with you."

  George nodded in agreement.

  Feeling a little sorry for George Benson, Dr. Clermont continued on his way. It must be rough, being married to a woman like Alice Benson. George was an all-right fellow, an easygoing man whose friendship you felt was genuine, but those very qualities probably made him vulnerable to a creature like her. She'd been making him miserable ever since their arrival in Dame Marie nearly a year ago, Clermont was positive. But she was so clever at it, and so damned attractive physically, that most of their friends felt sorry for her.

  Ah, well, one couldn't solve all the world's problems in a day, and he had Ginny Jourdan to think about. She was a problem he had to solve quickly, and right now he should be talking to her teacher.

  Ginny's teacher, Danielle André, had come to Dame Marie from Cap Matelot. In the beginning she had lived at the school. But not for long. Too much a free spirit to be comfortable with such an arrangement, she had sought a place of her own and found a small, vacant house on one of the town's little side roads. Dr. Louis Clermont owned it. Might she rent it?

  She might, he told her, and let her have it for next to nothing because he admired her for coming to help "his people" in what she probably felt was the end of the earth.

  The woman who responded now when Clermont climbed the veranda steps and lightly tapped the door was twenty-six years old and shapely, with the most expressive dark brown eyes he had ever looked into. In her simple, sleeveless dress of pale yellow cotton she looked almost indecently cool. "Hello, Dannie," he said in French. "You busy?"

  "Never too busy for you," she replied with a smile of welcome. "Come on in."

  He walked into the living room, sat down unbidden, and looked around as she followed his example. "You know, you've done wonders with this place. I should come here more often."

  "Don't get ideas. I mean, don't hike the rent on me, because I love it here. My heart would break if I had to move."

  "Wouldn't dream," Clermont said, then leaned toward her and let a frown displace his smile. "Dannie, I'm here about Ginny Jourdan. Can we talk about her a little? I guess you know she's a patient of mine."

  "Of course, Doctor:"

  "Her folks didn't ask me to do this. I'm here on my own."

  "I understand."

  "But they're patients of mine, too, of course. You might say I'm here as a family friend."

  She nodded.

  "So tell me," Clermont said, "have they cause to be so worried, Dannie? Has the girl suddenly changed all that much?"

  "There's been a change. I'm not sure I would call it a sudden one."

  Clermont looked at her and waited.

  "I'd say it began about a month ago," Dannie said. "Yes, at least that far back. You have to take into account that Ginny has always been a very special girl, extra pretty, extra bright, extra—well, just outstanding. But as a friend of the family you know that. I'm forgetting."

  "I wish all seventeen-year-olds were as nice."

  "Then about a month ago she began—I guess you'd have to say she began to lose interest. Not only in her studies, but in all the other activities at school, too. I noticed it but didn't think too much about it because she'd acquired a boyfriend."

  Clermont's bushy brows went up. "Oh? Who?"

  "A boy named Eddie Forbin. A nice boy, really nice. So I thought she was probably just daydreaming."

  "That's what her folks thought."

  "When her grades began to fall off, though, I had a talk with her and realized it was serious. Her attitude had changed. Even her attitude toward me."

  "You've always been her favorite teacher, her folks tell me."

  "She liked me, I'm sure. But little by little she became—what shall I call it?—indifferent? Worse than that, really. Disdainful. Even hostile."

  Clermont rubbed his Abe Lincoln beard. Could this whole business of Ginny Jourdan's personality change be an exaggeration? Leonie, the girl's mother, was inclined to be a worrier, and Maurice Jourdan had always gone along with his wife's every whim.

  Yet, damn it, the child had changed. He himself had noticed it, the two or three times he had run into her of late. Last time, for instance. They had bumped shopping baskets in the marketplace, and normally she would have said something like, "What's up, Doc? When are you going to break down and get married, so you can send your wife to do the shopping?" But all she'd wanted was to get away from him as fast as possible, it seemed. She'd left him standing there with his mouth open.

  "I'm not helping much, am I?" Dannie André said.

  "Maybe we're just looking for trouble."

  "I don't know what to believe, really. Would you like me to have a talk with her boyfriend and see what he thinks? I know him well enough to approach him." Her lovely face took on a frown. "He's already told me one thing about Ginny that I didn't know. I guess you're aware that some of the kids hang out at a certain Pointe Pierre shop in the evenings."

  "The place with the blaring radio. Yes."

  "Well, Ginny goes there quite often with the others. But according to Eddie Forbin, she frequently slips away by herself and disappears for a time."

  "What?"

  "Once he followed her. She walked all the way down to Arise Douce—that cove with the big rocks, you know? Which, of course, is always deserted at night. When he caught up with her there, she was furious."

  Clermont thought for a moment. "It sounds to me as though that girl has things on her mind that are troubling her. You don't suppose—it couldn't be possible that—is this Forbin lad her first boyfriend?"

  "Her first steady, I'm sure."

  "But you say he's a good kid."

  "I can't believe it's anything like that," Dannie protested.

  "It's possible, though. Sometimes a nice quiet boy is just the kind a girl can't handle. If she is pregnant, it would explain quite a lot about her behavior, wouldn't it?"

  "I suppose it would. But that's your department, Doctor—isn't it?"

  Clermont looked at his watch and reluctantly stood up. By now he was sure to have patients waiting. "Maybe we've made a little progress. I'll talk to her folks again, first chance I get. Thanks, Dannie."

  "Thank you, Dr. Clermont."

  Wish I were thirty years younger, damn it, Clermont thought as he departed.

  5

  After talking to Dr. Louis Clermont and going without lunch because of his bitten tongue, George Benson had spent the afternoon back at the Pointe Pierre pier. To his simple peasant fishermen, most of whom made their own boats or ceiba-tree dugouts, the outboard motors grudgingly provided by the island government were a major mystery.

  He had spent the afternoon showing his men how to take one apart and put it together again without having half a dozen pieces left over. "No, I don't think you guys are stupid," he had said in answer to a solemn question. "Can I dance the Rada the way you do?" It had seemed to please them that he knew the name of one of their voodoo dances.

  The day was over now as he arrived on foot at Danielle André's cottage. Night had come down on Dame Marie like a warm, sticky-wet blanket that smelled of the sea. Before climbing the steps, he looked at his watch and frowned. He was twenty minutes later than he had expected to be, and losing that much time annoyed him. Every moment with Dannie was precious.

  It was his wife's fault he was
late. Scheduled to attend a meeting of the church ladies, she had deliberately, or so it seemed to George, postponed her departure until the very last moment.

  She couldn't get out of going, of course. This was a country town in a West Indian island, and the church ladies were wives of fishermen, farmers, shopkeepers. As the wife of an outsider employed by the island government she had obligations, just as she had been obliged to acquiesce when asked to donate some time to teaching English at the school. But she hated it.

  The cottage door opened to George's quiet knock, and when it closed again he was inside with Dannie in his arms. Everything was suddenly all right again then—except, of course, that his bitten tongue was still giving him fits.

  All his other worries fell away, the tensions brought on by his home life fled, and he felt like a man again.

  There was an almost magical sensation of peace at moments like this, when this woman freely and happily stepped into his embrace. Sex was not incidental, of course. It would come later. But it was not essential to the first warm glow.

  "I'm late," he said when their mouths came apart. "And if that was only half a kiss, it's because I bit my tongue again. What did you do with yourself all day?"

  "You bit your tongue again?" Genuinely concerned, she stepped back to look at him. "George, we've got to do something about this." Dannie spoke English as fluently as she spoke French and St. Joe Creole.

  "We are, pal. I talked to Dr. Clermont and he's going to run some tests on me Monday morning. What about your day?"

  "Well, Dr. Clermont was here for a while."

  "Oh? For what?" George's frown showed real concern, too. "Is something wrong?"

  "He came about a girl at school."

  "Oh." George actually voiced a "whew!" of relief. If anything were to happen to this woman, he wouldn't want to go on, he was certain. She had come into his life only a few months ago, just when he was free of his last illusions and ready to admit that his marriage to Alice was a disaster. In those few months Dannie had given his existence a whole new meaning.