An electric murmur generated through the crowd. Mavis couldn't see the crew any longer, but it took little imagination to picture the bowed heads, the inevitable sadness.
"I know that my superb crew, despite their deep sympathy for my situation, could nonetheless rally and turn in the flawless performance that has characterized their effort during the last fourteen months of constant, grueling practice. I know they can, but I am sorry to say, I simply ... cannot. And—at the risk of sounding arrogant—I'm the one who must steer the boat. It would be counterproductive, not only for me but for my crew, to continue on with a dispirited performance."
He was arrogant, Mavis thought, damned arrogant. But he was certainly right.
"The distractions," Seton explained, "are constant. There is the ongoing investigation into my wife's death, questions about her victimization in a recent jewel theft—"
Mavis winced and pulled the visor down further over her face. Did he have to be so blessed forthcoming? That was no one else's business.
"—and of course, questions about the terrible accident in which she has been proved to be involved. None of these questions will end soon," he said wearily, "and of course they should not, since the issues involved are great. In my own life there had been, up until last week, only one issue: whether the Shadow campaign would be successful in its attempt to win the right to defend the world's most sought-after trophy. But my life is not my own any longer," he added, and Mavis thought she saw pained surprise in his face, as though, seeing the avidly curious crowd before him, he was realizing it for the first time.
"I will now entertain questions from the press, and then, after today, I shall have no further comment."
Mavis was impressed. Questions from the press! They'd tear him apart. How naive, she wondered, can one man be?
There was a wild scramble among the reporters to be recognized. With a look of grim determination Seton acknowledged a short, slightly built reporter who was notorious for his aggressive questions.
"Alan," the reporter began, "isn't it true that your campaign was on its last legs financially? And that now would be an opportune time to withdraw in any event?"
For a moment Seton looked blank; if he had been warned to expect the question, he showed no sign of it. "It never occurred to me," he answered, "to withdraw for financial reasons. If I'd run completely out of money—which I did not—I'd simply expand the syndicate—which I saw no need to." He shifted his attention to another hand. "Yes?"
"What will happen to Shadow? Will you sell it?"
"I honestly haven't got that far," Seton admitted. "Obviously Shadow will be withdrawn from the competition. But whether she'll be stored until the next time, or be sold ... I don't know," he said tiredly.
"Mr. Seton," a girl reporter whose pretty face was bursting with teeth asked, "the talk is that your wife resisted your all-out effort to defend the Cup. Do you see an irony in the fact that now, at least, she's got her way?"
"No."
"Sir," came a twangy New England voice, "I write for the Marblehead Sentinel. I'm not a sportswriter, but I am keen on the sport. Now it seems t' me that comin' from English gentry as I understand you do, you can't have the same spirit behind your effort, the same sense of patriotism, if you don't mind my sayin' so, that might carry you over the rough spots such as now. Or do you see it different?" he asked amiably.
It would be hard to take offense at the New Englander, so typical in his distrust of things English. No doubt his ancestors had helped dump the tea into Boston Harbor. Seton smiled and said, "I think my credentials are pretty good, as a matter of fact. My grandfather, right off the boat from England, fell in love with a beautiful American and a beautiful country. He married her, ran a shipyard on the Connecticut shore, took over another one here in Newport for a while, had children, and put down roots. For decades he supported the America's Cup Races—and he didn't root for Sir Thomas Lipton and England even when a lot of Americans were doing it," Seton added with a grin. "Good enough?"
"Well, sir, it'll have to do." Clearly the New Englander thought the jury was still out on Alan's patriotism.
"Alan, Alan ... thank you. Around the waterfront, naturally, people are saying that you're afraid to continue taking on the formidable Dennis Conner head to head in the July Trials. Would you care to comment?"
A slow, ironic smile flickered over Seton's handsome face, and he answered blandly, "Dennis, Tom, John—they all scare the hell out of me." He let the laughter linger and then he said, "The Preliminary Trials in June are traditionally a period of shaking down between contenders. They're not only inconclusive, but maybe, well, just maybe all the cards aren't on the table yet. New sails, shifting the ballast around, possibly just getting braver and going for the throat at the starting line—any one of those can be a factor. It's early days yet; everyone has a chance to look formidable come August."
Mavis thought he was looking more relaxed, more comfortable. But it didn't last.
"Mr. Seton, getting back to the question of finances," a reporter began in a friendly, confidential voice, "it's no secret, of course, that your wife came from a wealthy family—"
"My wife's money is held in trust and has nothing to do with me," Seton answered abruptly, anticipating the rest of the question.
Mavis recognized the slimy little worm who posed the next query; he wrote for the yellowest journal of all. Iggy, as he was appropriately named, had pursued Mavis relentlessly through the first years of her marriage, reasoning that when a twenty-six-year-old heiress of great wealth marries a fifty-nine-year-old entrepreneur of even greater wealth, there must be lewd play somewhere. Unfortunately for him, Mavis never wandered—never even thought of straying—from her obstinate but interesting husband, and contented marriages make dull copy.
Iggy, who knew absolutely nothing about sailing but everything about Cindy's set, said in an insinuating, district attorney voice, "Isn't it a fact that in the handbag Mrs. Seton left behind there were found an impressive variety of uppers—just about every imaginable amphetamine, in fact? Wasn't there also a vial of white powder? Is there any reason for us to believe that these drugs were available exclusively to Mrs. Seton?"
Don't answer him, Mavis pleaded silently. It was a variation of the old, "Do you beat your wife every day?" question. There was no safe answer.
"What are you getting at?" Seton asked bluntly, as a dark, angry look settled on his brow.
"Well, just this: Where there's smoke there's usually fire. Virtually every sport—the venerable Olympics included—has been tainted by otherwise proud athletes stooping to drugs to win the game."
Iggy had the floor. No one had ever asked about drugs at an America's Cup press conference before, but he didn't know that, and so probably he was chalking up the stunned silence to his bold eloquence. "My question, Captain, is: can you guarantee that your crew—who, after all, lived under the same roof as your wife in the usual communal arrangement—can you guarantee that your crew does not use drugs of any kind?" His voice was filled with sudden, righteous indignation.
Alan Seton stared at Iggy for a long, long moment. People exchanged glances. Iggy looked defiant but increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, in a low voice Seton said, "I want to be scrupulously correct in answering your question. One of my crew, the bow man, gouged his shin jibing the spinnaker last week. A row of stitches was necessary, and he was prescribed a mild painkiller. We've had our share of injuries in the last year; we've had our share of prescriptions. As for your implication—"
Seton's tanned, handsome face flushed an even darker shade and he made a move to stand up, but his navigator Mat Belisma gave a little lurch of his own, obviously preparing to restrain Seton if necessary.
"Right," Seton muttered, and aloud he said, "As for your implication, I think it stinks, mister. You'd like to know where those kids get their energy and stamina? On Shadow the sandwiches are an inch thick with meat and the coolers are loaded with apples, Milky Ways, and cookies. Our diet is a
bsolutely American, a combination of protein and junk food. The only difference is, since the crewmen are built like brick shi—built so solidly," he corrected himself, "they eat three times as much as the average American. They work three times as hard as most, including me, and they're three times more disciplined than most. Including me. Why do they do it? Ask them. Just don't insult them asking how they do it. They're motivated in ways you could never understand."
Applause. The room rippled, then swelled with it. It wasn't for the put-down of Iggy, although there was some of that; and it wasn't for the all-American crew, although there was some of that too. It was for Alan Seton, who symbolized to many in the room the finest kind of America's Cup skipper: a man of integrity who cared intensely about his crew and—it was corny to say so out loud, and that was why they were applauding—cared about the tradition of the America's Cup itself. There was absolutely nothing to be gained financially from his quest. He was not a sail maker or a yacht designer who could look forward to a flood of new business if he succeeded. Nor was he even an exceedingly wealthy and thrill-seeking elitist. He had added to the very respectable but not blinding fortune he'd inherited by speculating in California real estate, and he'd been spending it hand over fist in an effort to defend the America's Cup for the United States. Lots of people in the audience thought that he was crazy, but the dreamers, the eternally questing, they understood. And applauded.
Grudgingly, Mavis was applauding too, because his effort really had been heroic. Her personal feeling about Alan Seton was that he had a mountainous ego and the inevitable fatal flaw: he lacked the necessary cynicism to rise above the pressures of the media, the hangers-on, the social scene. Out on the water he was a marvel. He had the sure, quick instincts and inspired brilliance necessary to fight and win what is essentially a punishing duel between two yachts. But ashore ... a fish out of water.
The next question was the obvious one. "What will you do now?"
Seton, a little shaken by the demonstration, looked even younger than his thirty years. He smiled a slightly lopsided smile and said, "Gee, I dunno. Become an astronaut?"
There was general laughter and he said, "One last question."
It came from a widely known and respected television journalist who was himself a keen sailor. "Alan, do you think the Americans have a snowball's chance in hell against the Australian winged keel?" he asked somberly.
"Yes," Seton answered with an ambiguous smile. Then he stood up, said, "Thank you very much," turned, and walked quickly away from the podium toward a rear exit. For a few seconds the press, caught off guard, remained where it was. Then it split as if by design into two groups: the first took off for Seton, hounds after the hare. The second raced to report their stories, convinced there was nothing more to be had from Seton.
Chapter 5
So that's that, Mavis thought as she slipped out with the second wave. Really, it was drearily like a presidential primary campaign. One misstep and you were out, never mind how good you were. Destiny had stuck her foot out in front of Alan Seton, and he had tripped and fallen on his aristocratic nose. The great-grandson of a British peer. Well, well.
A hulking bulldozer of a reporter was elbowing his way furiously through the crowd, and his upper arm shoved into Mavis's left breast.
"Watch where you're going, you fool!" she snapped, enraged.
His eyes widened. "Lady, lady—take it easy. I'm sorry," he exclaimed, and kept moving, with a fellow reporter bringing up the rear. "I'm not, really," he said in a stage whisper to his buddy. "She had great tits."
Mavis Moran didn't believe in blushing, but that was exactly what she was doing now. Not because of the uncouth remark; but because in one of those well-formed breasts she had discovered, a week earlier, a lump. Not a big lump; no need to panic; it was most likely only a cyst. She'd had them before. But it was still ... a lump. She would wait until after her period and then if it hadn't gone away, she'd see about ... the lump. Part of her wanted to race immediately to her gynecologist. The other part of her despised her fearfulness.
Her fear at that moment was not of death or of pain, because she was only thirty-two, and she was stoic. No, her dread was much more irrational than that: she feared mutilation. The thought that some future bulldozer might bump into a prosthesis instead of her warm, real flesh filled Mavis Moran, an heiress who could probably pay for a new wing on Sloan-Kettering, with horror. And fury. It seemed impossible to her that despite her intelligence and wealth, there were situations which she could not control. Mavis was scrupulous about diet and nutrition, exercised religiously, kept abreast of trends in life extension. So why the lump?
Heredity, she supposed. That was where the cyst, if it was a cyst, came from, and where her Irish fatalism came from. She had a sudden, vivid memory of her grandmother, Tess Moran, a woman who was a great beauty in her day, a woman of indomitable will and daunting intelligence—and a woman felled with a limp that Mavis knew was from a gunshot wound. Was her grandmother bothered by the fact that she could not carry herself with the same poise as other great beauties of her era? Not that anyone could see.
Mavis was thrown back to a beautiful summer evening at Beau Rêve, her grandmother's estate. She was six or seven, playing on a big granite boulder on the edge of the lawn that legend had it was hurled from the sea in the great storm of 1815. Mavis slipped and fell, scraping her leg and hitting her knee hard enough that she limped, crying, to her grandmother, who was seated on the veranda with Doctor Whitman, her oldest friend, having tea. Doctor Whitman looked Mavis over and pronounced her well enough to have ice cream for dessert. The two grownups exchanged sudden, sad smiles, Mavis remembered, and her grandmother said, "It's been nearly ten years, and still I miss her, Henry. Beau Rêve seems so empty without her."
Mavis knew that they were speaking of her Great-Aunt Maggie, but she herself did not know Great-Aunt Maggie, and, furthermore, she was worried about her knee after falling down the boulder.
"Will I walk funny, like Grandmother does?" she asked the physician in self-absorbed innocence.
Doctor Henry Whitman had frowned at her and said, "If you are very, very good, you will someday follow in your grandmother's footsteps."
Which didn't really answer the question for Mavis. It wasn't until after she had her scrape bandaged and the ice cream for dessert that she knew she would walk and run the way she always had. As for following in her grandmother's footsteps—that, she doubted. No one could. Tess Moran was bigger than life, a self-made woman who rose above circumstances. Mavis had inherited wealth and had more luck in marrying well. Her grandmother had had neither advantage. Tess Moran was a hard act to follow.
Mavis and the rest of the Armory audience had exited into a stream of pedestrian traffic that flowed endlessly up and down Thames Street nowadays. The afternoon sea breeze had died away, leaving yet another balmy summer evening, perfect for yet another dinner party aboard yet another yacht. Tonight Mavis's host would be the vice-president of AER Industries, a major sponsor of the syndicate that Mavis's husband had been supporting. The list of corporations throwing their money behind the various American syndicates was growing daily. The races had become far too prohibitively expensive for something like Alan Seton's one-man band. The America's Cup Races had gone commercial, and major individual contributors like Mavis and her husband were sharing center stage with cans of coffee and bottles of shampoo.
If this were an average evening, Mavis might first stop by the crew house for cocktails and an update on waterfront scuttlebutt. She would be filled in and fawned on, with the hope that she'd follow through on her deceased husband's commitment to the syndicate. But today she was feeling tense and dissatisfied for more than one reason; it was best to avoid the crew house altogether in her present foul mood. Still in disguise, she chose to saunter instead through Bannister's Wharf. Besides being the site of boutiques, bistros, and an immensely popular cookie store, the Wharf was the location of the Black Pearl, the Candy Store, and the Raw
Bar, watering holes where hundreds of yachties, groupies, and tourists gravitated each day to mill inside and out, sipping sundowners.
The evening was hopelessly fine, which meant that the Wharf was hopelessly mobbed. Mavis wandered incognito through the crowds on the pier, taking in the still-bustling harbor that lay before her. Launches and water taxis were zipping back and forth, coolly dodging sailboats from eight to eighty feet that were tacking up or running down the channel. Family powerboats chugged along while corporate yachts trundled slowly and windsurfers darted like dragonflies in and out of all of them.
Idly, Mavis tried to estimate the total worth of the yachts gathered there, but the same image kept drifting in and out of her thoughts—Alan Seton, with his lopsided, rueful smile, withdrawing from the America's Cup competition. All in all, it had been a graceful exit, although there wasn't any doubt in Mavis's mind that he'd be back to race another year. She should be happy that he was out of the running; it made it that much more likely that her own syndicate would be chosen to defend. Good news, yes ….
With a sigh, Mavis decided, after all, to go back to Beau Rêve—when a voice, very loud and very drunk, hailed her.
"Miss Ma-vis ... yooo-hooo ... oh Miss May-y-vis." Mavis swung around, annoyed by the assault on her anonymity. She was surprised to see a certain America's Cup skipper, retired from the competition less than an hour earlier, more or less hanging out of one of the low, double-hung windows of the Black Pearl Restaurant. His elbows were propped on the sill, which undoubtedly was the only thing keeping him from tumbling head first into the milling crowd on the wharf, and a large tumbler was hanging empty from one hand. Whether he'd drunk its contents or spilled them on the ground was anybody's guess, although Mavis thought she could guess. He crooked his index finger, motioning her toward the window.
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Page 6