by Irwin Shaw
“Okay,” Thomas said. He went down to the galley and told Dwyer to get out of there, they had a cook from the Cordon Bleu, at least for a night. The girl looked around the galley, nodded approvingly, opened the icebox, opened drawers and cupboards to see where everything was, looked at the fish that Dwyer had bought and said he didn’t know how to buy fish, but that they’d do in a pinch. Then she told them both to get out of there, she’d call them when dinner was ready. All she wanted was to have somebody to go into Antibes to get some fresh bread and two ripe Camembert cheeses.
They ate on the after deck, behind the pilot house, instead of in the little dining alcove forward of the saloon that they would have used if there had been clients aboard. Kate had set the table and somehow it looked better than when Dwyer did it. She had put two bottles of wine in an icebucket, uncorked them, and put the bucket on a chair.
She had made a stew of the fish, with potatoes, garlic, onions, tomatoes, thyme, a lot of rock salt and pepper, and a little white wine and diced bacon. It was still light when they sat down at the table, with the sun setting in the cloudless, greenish-blue sky. The three men had washed, shaved, and put on fresh clothes and had had two pastis apiece while sitting on deck, sniffing the aromas coming from the galley. The harbor itself was quiet, with just the sound of little ripples lapping at hulls to be heard.
Kate brought up a big tureen with the stew in it. Bread and butter were already on the table, next to a big bowl of salad. After she served them all, she, sat down with them, unhurried and calm. Thomas, as captain, poured the wine.
Thomas took a first bite, chewed it thoughtfully. Kate, her head down, also began to eat. “Pinky,” Thomas said, “you’re a true friend. You’re plotting to make me a fat man. Kate, you’re hired.”
She looked up and smiled. They raised their glasses to the new member of the crew.
Even the coffee tasted like coffee.
After dinner, while Kate was doing the dishes, the three men sat out in the silent evening, smoking cigars that Pinky had produced, watching the moon rise over the mauve hills of the Alpes Maritimes.
“Bunny,” Thomas said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs in front of him, “this is what it’s all about.”
Dwyer did not contradict him.
Later, Thomas went with Kate and Pinky to where the Vega was berthed. It was late and the ship was almost dark, with very few lights showing, but Thomas waited some distance away while Kate went on board to collect her things. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the skipper, if he happened to be awake and angry about losing a hand on five minutes’ notice.
A quarter of an hour later Thomas saw Kate coming noiselessly down the gangplank, carrying a valise. They walked together, along the fortress wall, past the boats moored one next to another to where the Clothilde was tied up. Kate stopped for a moment, looked gravely at the white-and-blue boat, groaning a little with the pull of the water against the two lines that made it fast to the quay. “I’m going to remember this evening,” she said, then kicked off her espadrilles and, holding them in her hand, went barefooted up the gangplank.
Dwyer was waiting up for them. He had made up the extra bunk in Thomas’s cabin for himself and put clean sheets for Kate on the bunk in the other cabin that he had been living in alone. Thomas snored, because of his broken nose, but Dwyer was going to have to get used to it. At least for awhile.
A week later, Dwyer moved back to his own cabin, because Kate moved into Thomas’s. She said she didn’t mind Thomas’s snoring.
The Goodharts were an old couple who stayed at the Hotel du Cap every June. He owned cotton mills in North Carolina, but had handed over the business to a son. He was a tall, erect, slow-moving heavy man with a shock of iron-gray hair and looked like a retired colonel in the Regular Army. Mrs. Goodhart was a little younger than her husband, with soft white hair. Her figure was good enough so that she could get away with wearing slacks. The Goodharts had chartered the Clothilde for two weeks the year before and had liked it so much that they had arranged a similar charter with Thomas for this year by mail early in the winter.
They were the least demanding of clients. Each morning at ten, Thomas anchored as close inshore as he could manage opposite the row of the hotel’s cabanas and the Goodharts came out in a speedboat. They came with full hampers of food, prepared, in the hotel kitchen, and baskets of wine bottles wrapped in napkins. They were both over sixty and if the water was at all rough the transfer could be tricky. On those days, their chauffeur would drive them down to the Clothilde in Antibes harbor. Sometimes there would be other couples, always old, with them, or they would tell Thomas that they were to pick up some friends in Cannes. Then they’d chug out to the straits between the Isles de Lérins, lying about four thousand yards off the coast, and anchor there for the day. It was almost always calm there and the water was only about twelve feet deep and brilliantly clear so that you could see the seagrass waving on the bottom. The Goodharts would put on bathing suits and lie on mattresses in the sun, reading or dozing, and occasionally dive in for a swim.
Mr. Goodhart said that he felt safer about Mrs. Good-hart’s swimming when Thomas or Dwyer swam beside her. Mrs. Goodhart, who was a robust woman with full shoulders and young, strong legs, swam perfectly well, but Thomas knew that it was Mr. Goodhart’s way of telling him that he wanted Thomas and anybody else on the boat to feel free to enjoy the clear, cool water between the islands whenever they felt like taking a dip.
Sometimes, if they had guests, Thomas would spread a blanket for them on the after deck and they would play a few rubbers of bridge. Both Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart were soft-spoken and enormously polite with each other and everybody else.
Promptly at one-thirty every day, they were ready for the first drink, invariably a Bloody Mary, which Thomas made for them. After that, Dwyer unrolled the awning, and in its shade they ate the food they had brought with them from the hotel. On the table there would be cold langouste, cold roast beef, fish salad or cold loup de mer with a green sauce, melon with prosciutto, cheese, and fruit. They always brought along so much food, even when they had friends with them, that there was plenty left over for the crew, not only for lunch, but for dinner, too. With their meal they each had a bottle of white wine apiece.
The only thing Thomas had to worry about was the coffee and now with Kate aboard that was no problem. The first day of the charter she came up from the galley with the coffee pot, dressed in white shorts and white T-shirt with the legend Clothilde stretched tightly across her plump bosom and when Thomas introduced her, Mr. Goodhart nodded approvingly and said, “Captain, this ship is improving every year.”
After lunch, Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart went below for their siesta. Quite often, Thomas heard muffled sounds that could only come from lovemaking. Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart had told Thomas they had been married more than thirty-five years and Thomas marveled that they still did it and still so obviously enjoyed it. The Goodharts shook his entire conception of marriage.
Around about four o’clock, the Goodharts would reappear on deck, grave and ceremonious, as usual, in their bathing suits, and would swim for another half hour, with either Dwyer or Thomas accompanying them. Dwyer swam poorly and there were one or two times when Mrs. Goodhart was more than a hundred yards away from the Clothilde that Thomas thought there was a good chance she’d have to tow Dwyer back to the boat.
At five o’clock promptly, showered, combed, and dressed in cotton slacks, white shirt, and a blue blazer, Goodhart would come up on deck from below and say, “Don’t you think it’s time for a drink, Captain?” and, if there were no guests aboard, “I’d be honored if you’d join me.”
Thomas would prepare two Scotch and sodas and give the signal to Dwyer, who would start the engines and take the wheel. With Kate handling the anchor up forward, they would start back toward the Hotel du Cap. Seated on the aft deck Mr. Goodhart and Thomas would sip at their drinks as they pulled out of the straits and went around the island,
with the pink-and-white towers of Cannes across the water on their port side.
On one such afternoon, Mr. Goodhart said, “Captain, are there many Jordaches in this part of the world?”
“Not that I know of,” Thomas said. “Why?”
“I happened to mention your name to the assistant manager of the hotel yesterday,” Mr. Goodhart said, “and he said that a Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Jordache were sometimes guests at the hotel.”
Thomas sipped at his whiskey, “That’s my brother,” he said. He could feel Mr. Goodhart glancing at him curiously, and could guess what he was thinking. “We’ve gone our different ways,” he said shortly. “He was the smart one of the family.”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Goodhart waved his glass to take in the boat, the sunlight, the water churning away from the bows, the green and ochre hills of the coast. “Maybe you were the smart one. I worked all my life and it was only when I became an old man and retired that I had the time to do something like this two weeks a year.” He chuckled ruefully. “And I was considered the smart one of my family.”
Mrs. Goodhart came up then, youthful in slacks and a loose sweater and Thomas finished his drink and went and got a whiskey for her. She matched her husband drink for drink, day in and day out.
Mr. Goodhart paid two hundred and fifty dollars a day for the charter, plus fuel, and twelve hundred old francs a day for food for each of the crew. After the charter the year before he had given Thomas five hundred dollars as a bonus. Thomas and Dwyer had tried to figure out how rich a man had to be to afford two weeks at that price, while still paying for a suite at what was probably one of the most expensive hotels in the world. They had given up trying. “Rich, that’s all, rich,” Dwyer had said. “Christ, can you imagine how many hours thousands of poor bastards in those mills of his in North Carolina have to put in at the machines, coughing their lungs out, so that he can have a swim every day?” Dwyer’s attitude toward capitalists had been formed young by a Socialist father who worked in a factory. All workers, in Dwyer’s view of labor, coughed their lungs out.
Until the Goodharts, Thomas’s feeling about people with a great deal of money, while not quite as formally rigid as Dwyer’s, had been composed of a mixture of envy, distrust, and the suspicion that whenever possible a rich man would do whatever harm he could to anyone within his power. His uneasiness with his brother, which had begun when they were boys, for other reasons, had been compounded by Rudolph’s rise to wealth. But the Goodharts had shaken old tenets of faith. They had not only made him reflect anew on the subject of marriage, but about old people as well, and the rich, and even about Americans in general. It was too bad that the Goodharts came so early in the season, because after them, it was likely to be downhill until October. Some of the other charter parties they took on more than justified Dwyer’s darkest strictures on the ruling classes.
On the last day of the charter, they started back toward the hotel earlier than usual because the wind had sprung up and the sea beyond the islands was full of whitecaps. Even between the islands the Clothilde was rolling and pulling at her chain. Mr. Goodhart had drunk more than usual, too, and neither he nor his wife had gone below for their siesta. When Dwyer upped anchor they were still in their bathing suits, with sweaters, against the spray. But they stayed out on deck, like children at a party that was soon to end, hungry for the last drop of joy from the declining festival. Mr. Goodhart was even a little curt with Thomas when Thomas didn’t automatically produce the afternoon whiskeys.
Once they were out of the lee of the islands it was too rough to use the deck chairs and the Goodharts and Thomas had to hold onto the after rail while they drank their Scotch and sodas.
“I think it’s going to be impossible to get the dinghy into the hotel landing,” Thomas said. “I’d better tell Dwyer to go around the point and into Antibes.”
Mr. Goodhart put out his hand and held Thomas’s arm as Thomas started toward the pilot house. “Let’s just take a look,” Mr. Goodhart said. His eyes were a little bloodshot. “I like a little rough weather from time to time.”
“Whatever you say, sir,” Thomas said. “I’ll go tell Dwyer.”
In the pilot house, Dwyer was already fighting the wheel. Kate was seated on the bench that ran along the rear of the structure, munching a roast beef sandwich. She had a hearty appetite and was a good sailor in all seas.
“We’re in for a blow,” Dwyer said. “I’m going around the point.”
“Go to the hotel,” Thomas said.
Kate looked over her sandwich at him in surprise.
“Are you crazy?” Dwyer said. “All the speedboats must have gone back to the harbor hours ago, with this wind. And we’ll never get the dinghy in.”
“I know,” Thomas said. “But they want to take a look.”
“It’s a pure waste of time,” Dwyer grumbled. They had a new charter beginning the next morning at St. Tropez and they had planned to start immediately after discharging the Goodharts. Even with a calm sea and no wind, it would have been a long day, and they would have had to prepare the ship for the new clients en route. The wind was from the north, the mistral, and they would have to hug the coast for protection, which made the voyage much longer. They would also have to reduce speed to keep the hull from pounding too badly. And there would be no question, in this weather, of doing any work below while they were moving.
“It’s only a few more minutes,” Thomas said soothingly. “They’ll see it’s impossible and we’ll make for Antibes.”
“You’re the captain,” Dwyer said. He pulled viciously at the wheel as a wave quartered against their port side and the Clothilde yawed.
Thomas stayed in the pilot house, keeping dry. The Goodharts remained out on deck, soaked by spray, but seeming to enjoy it. There were no clouds and the high afternoon sun shone brightly and when the spray swept over the deck, the two old people shimmered in brief rainbows.
As they passed Golfe Juan, far off to port, with the boats at anchor in the little harbor already bobbing, Mr. Goodhart signaled to Thomas that he and Mrs. Goodhart wanted another drink.
When they got within five hundred yards of the palisade on which the cabanas stood, they saw that the waves were breaking over the little concrete dock to which the speedboats were usually tied. The speedboats, as Dwyer had predicted, were all gone. At the regular swimming place farther along the cliff, the red flag was up and the chain was across the swimming ladder below the restaurant of Eden Roc. The waves went crashing in high over the steps, then pulled back, frothing and green-white, leaving the ladder uncovered down to the last rung before the next wave roared in.
Thomas left the shelter of the pilot house and went out on deck. “I’m afraid I was right, sir,” he said to Mr. Goodhart. “There’s no getting a boat in with this sea. We’ll have to go into port.”
“You go into port,” Mr. Goodhart said calmly. “My wife and I have decided we’ll swim in. Just get the ship in as close as you can without endangering her.”
“The red flag’s up,” Thomas said. “Nobody’s in the water.”
“The French,” Mr. Goodhart said. “My wife and I have swum in surf twice as bad as this at Newport, haven’t we, dear?”
“We’ll send the car around to the harbor to pick up our things later, Captain,” Mr. Goodhart said.
“This isn’t Newport, sir,” Thomas said, making one last attempt. “It’s not a sandy beach. You’ll get thrown against the rocks if you …”
“Like everything in France,” Mr. Goodhart said, “it looks worse than it is. Just pull in as close to shore as you think is wise and we’ll do the rest. We both feel like a swim.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said. He went back into the pilot house, where Dwyer was spinning the wheel, first revving up one engine, then another, to make tight circles that brought the ship at its closest about three hundred yards from the ladder. “Bring her in another hundred yards,” Thomas said. “They’re going to swim for it.”
“What do
they want to do,” Dwyer asked, “commit suicide?”
“It’s their bones,” Thomas said. Then, to Kate, “Put on your bathing suit.” He himself was wearing swimming trunks and a sweater.
Without a word, Kate went below for her bathing suit.
“As soon as we’re off,” Thomas said to Dwyer, “pull away. Get well off the rocks. When you see we’ve made it, head for port. We’ll get a ride in a car and join you. One trip in this stuff is enough. I don’t want to swim back.”
Kate came up in two minutes, in an old, bleached, blue suit. She was a strong swimmer. Thomas took off his sweater and they both went out on deck. The Goodharts had taken off their sweaters and were waiting for them. In his long, flowered swimming trunks, Mr. Goodhart was massive and tanned by his holiday. His muscles were old muscles, but he must have been powerful in his prime. The little wrinkles of age showed in the skin of Mrs. Goodhart’s still shapely legs.
The swimming raft, anchored midway between, the Clothilde and the steps, was dancing in the waves. When a particularly large one hit it it would go up on end and stand almost perpendicularly for a moment.
“I suggest we make for the raft first,” Thomas said, “so we can take a breather before we go in the rest of the way.”
“We?” Mr. Goodhart said. “What do you mean, we?” He was definitely drunk. And so was Mrs. Goodhart.
“Kate and I decided we’d like a swim this afternoon, too,” Thomas said.
“As you wish, Captain,” Mr. Goodhart said. He climbed over the rail and dove in. Mrs. Goodhart followed. Their heads, gray and white, bobbed up and down in the dark green, frothing water.
“You stick with her,” Thomas said to Kate. “I’ll go with the old man.”
He dove overboard and heard Kate splash in just after him.
Getting to the raft wasn’t too difficult. Mr. Goodhart swam an old-fashioned trudgeon stroke and kept his head out of the water most of the time. Mrs. Goodhart swam an orthodox crawl and when Thomas turned to look at her she seemed to be swallowing water and breathing hard. But Kate was close beside her at all times. Mr. Goodhart and Thomas climbed onto the raft, but it was too rough to stand up on and they stayed on their knees as they helped pull Mrs. Goodhart up. She was gasping a little and she looked as though she was going to be sick.