Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

“You haven’t had one too many, have you my boy?” asked Hew. “I’m talking about the Bay Street crew. My father was one of them, of course. My God. They ran Nassau like a private plantation. A rather inefficient one, I should add. And great bores, one and all.”

  “You said that Hiram Senior was brilliant.”

  “Did I?” Hew poured the last of the bottle into their snifters, then tossed it over the terrace. After what seemed like ten or fifteen seconds, they heard a faint crash. “Low tide,” said Hew. “High tide—splash; low tide—smash.” He sipped his Armagnac. “Hiram Standish. A very conventional sort, in taste, attitude, conversation, perceptions. His brilliance, perhaps that’s too strong a word, expressed itself in a narrow field.”

  “What field was that?”

  “Science. Biology, I believe, to be specific. He studied in Europe before the war and worked with various brainy fellows over there.”

  “I thought the Bay Street Boys were all merchants and shippers, that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, his father was. And his father before that. The Standishes were rich, much richer than we ever were, even at the peak of my father’s plundering. They owned half of New Providence at one time, I mean that quite literally. And that included the entire north side of Bay Street, from the British Colonial to Rawson Square. They also had big investments in Miami and other places. Plus this and that. I’ve forgotten the details, if I ever knew them. The getting of money bores me. Only the spending is remotely amusing, and the Standish habits in that regard were hopelessly dull. They never did anything interesting with their money.”

  “What about sending Hiram to Europe for his education?”

  “Is that considered interesting?” asked Hew. “I was educated—if that’s the word—in Europe myself. So was most everyone.”

  “Not me.”

  “I meant then. Now is different. Goes without saying. There is no education any longer, and no one knows anything.”

  “Why don’t you sell the Gauguin?” Matthias asked, not knowing why: the question seemed to pop out on its own.

  Hew’s eyes misted over. “I’d rather die,” he said. He got up and went into the house, returning with another bottle. He tapped the wax seal lightly against the balustrade, chipping it away, and drew the cork. “Well, maybe not die,” he said, filling the glasses. “But I’d be upset for a day or two, and who wants that? ‘Not I, said the pig.’” Hew slipped a little as he sat down, sitting heavily on his chaise longue. Amber liquid slopped over the rim of his snifter and stained the crotch of his pleated white trousers. “Damnation,” said Hew. He rose and went back into the house. Matthias remained on the terrace, drinking Armagnac, listening to Edith Piaf and her lachrymose string section, and watching the moon, which had risen as high as it was going to, start sliding back down to the horizon.

  Hew came back on the terrace, wearing a fresh pair of pleated white trousers, but now barefoot. He sat down, swinging his legs carefully onto the chaise like a woman in a tight skirt. His toes were long and gnarled and the nails needed cutting. Picking up his glass, he said: “Where was I?”

  “Hiram Standish, Senior, in Europe.”

  “Right you are. Hiram studied in Europe. Medicine, and so on.”

  “Where in Europe?”

  “Heidelberg, I believe. Berlin, perhaps. Not my kind of city at all, Berlin. One knew Isherwood in those days. Before the war, that is. I read his book. Rather overflavored the pot, I thought. Still, that’s the right of the artist. The duty, I daresay.” Hew swished his drink around until he had a whirlpool going in his snifter. Staring into the vortex, he said: “Hiram came back before the war. Well before, if I remember. I was still in Paris. When I got back he had already established his practice in Nassau.”

  “What kind of practice?”

  Hew looked up. The turbulence in his glass subsided. “Obstetrics? Does that sound right? He had a clinic on Shirley Street, and a little laboratory behind the Princess Margaret, if I’m not mistaken. For his research. Although he closed all that up after the war.”

  “Closed what up?”

  “His practice. I have the sense you’re not paying attention. Perhaps it’s all that diving. Holding your breath, and what not. It can’t be good for the brain cells.”

  “You’re right about that,” Matthias said. “Better take it one step at a time.”

  “Take what one step at a time?”

  “Hiram Standish’s story.”

  “Hiram. But I thought it was Happy you were interested in.”

  “Both.”

  “Both.” Hew glanced up at the moon. Its white light illuminated his fine bones, slightly hooked nose, Cupid’s bow mouth. “A beautiful night, I suppose. That’s the trick of night. By day it’s so obvious that the world is one vast slum.” Hew’s eyes closed. Edith Piaf sang on: Hew must have pushed the RESET button. After a song about a hood on a motorcycle and a mournful one about village bells, Matthias finished his drink and rose to leave. Without opening his eyes, Hew said: “The boy was afraid of the water, you know.”

  “What boy?”

  “Happy Standish.” Hew’s eyes opened. “Where are you going?”

  “It’s late.”

  “But don’t you want to hear the story?”

  “You’re tired.”

  “Rubbish. Here. Have some more. It’s not bad brandy, although I’ve tasted better.”

  “You have?”

  “Once. In the dressing room of Mistinguett, if memory serves. Cognac, it was. A fine champagne, must have dated from the middle of the last century, or even before. It was like drinking the sweetest breeze that ever blew.”

  Matthias sat down. “How do you know Happy was afraid of the water?”

  “I saw his nanny with him at the beach once. Trying to get him to swim. He was quite wretched. This must have been after his father drowned, now that I think of it. So it’s hardly surprising.”

  “What beach are you talking about?”

  “Their beach.”

  “At Lyford Cay?”

  “No, no. I already told you. Hiram closed up his practice. Gracious. It was only a few minutes ago. They sold the Lyford Cay place and moved here.”

  “Here?”

  “There,” said Hew, gesturing to the darkness.

  “Two-Head Cay?”

  “Precisely. You really don’t hold up your end of the conversation very well, do you? Never mind. I’ve had a lifetime of that.”

  “So you saw Happy on the beach at Two-Head Cay?”

  “Isn’t that just what I said? A lovely beach, as beaches go. But I’m sure you’ve seen it.”

  “I’ve never been on the island.”

  “No? Well, it’s unoccupied now. Except for old Albury and his wife.” Hew paused, his eyes hooding in anticipation of another stupid question.

  “The caretaker?”

  Hew sighed, a sigh that would have carried to the back row of any theater Mistinguett ever played. “Just so,” he said. “The house was quite magnificent, actually. She had it redone entirely by some Italian. All boarded up now, I expect.”

  “Are you talking about Mrs. Albury?”

  “Mrs. Albury? She was a servant. The boy’s nanny, now that I think of it. I meant Inge. Didn’t I just get through telling you about Inge? Hiram went to Europe. He brought back Inge. Man and wife. Till death do them part. Do you know why you have such trouble following a simple narrative? Television.”

  “I don’t have a television.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Television beams are in the air.” Hew waved at the night sky. “They’ve contaminated your brain.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Hew winced. “I detest that expression.” He knocked back his glass. “Do you know what you need?”

  “What?”

  “Visual aids. I have some, in fact.” He went into the house and stayed there for a long time. When he came back he brought a large leather-bound volume and a flashlight. “My filing system isn’t what it could be, I’m afraid
. This is all I could find. But there should be something here.”

  Hew laid the book on the table and opened it to the first page. It was a plain sheet of thick black paper with a photograph pasted on. Hew shone the flashlight on it. In the photograph two young men, one fair, one dark, both dressed in dinner jackets, sat at a banquette, raising champagne flutes to the camera. It took a while for Matthias to realize that the fair-haired man was Hew.

  “Hew. You keep scrapbooks.”

  Hew’s eyes hooded again. “You’re a snob, Matthias, d’you know that?”

  “It’s the basis of our friendship.”

  Hew laughed, a little trill that sounded quite joyful. Then the photograph won his attention, and he leaned forward to study it. “That must have been Ledoyen,” he said. “Overrated, even then.”

  He was starting to turn the page when Matthias asked: “Who’s the other guy?”

  Hew looked shocked. “Why, Nijinsky, of course.”

  Matthias examined the picture more closely. He noticed that Hew was looking right into the lens, while Nijinsky’s gaze seemed to be focused on something off-camera.

  “Quite insufferable, actually,” Hew said, moving on through the book.

  Matthias saw photographs of fair-haired Hew in a bathing suit, brandishing a lobster at two other men also in bathing suits, who shrank back laughing; in Venice, with his arm around a gondolier; sitting beside a picnic basket, with his eyes on a man in a beret; holding hands in a garden with a man who wore an Ascot. Hew began turning the pages faster: the fair-haired man flashed by like an animated cartoon character in a film that was doubly gay. Hew always had a nice smile for the camera; his teeth had been much better in those days.

  “Here we go,” said Hew, stopping at the end of the scrapbook. “Nassau society news of the day.” Yellowed newspaper clippings covered every inch of the final two black pages: stories and pictures of engagements, weddings, charity balls, parties and important visitors to the islands, long ago. Hew aimed the flashlight beam at a clipping on the bottom of the last page. Taken from the Nassau Tribune, 27 March, 1934, it showed an imperfectly focused photograph of three men standing over a microscope. The man on the left was young, with a high forehead, intelligent face and slightly weak chin. The man in the middle was perhaps ten years older. He was tall, with an aristocratic face, and dominated the picture. The man on the right looked about the same age and was almost as tall, but much heavier, with a jowly face and a barrel chest. The caption read: “Dr. Hiram Standish of Lyford Cay (left) at the University of Heidelberg where he was recently awarded a doctorate in cellular biology, with colleagues Dr. W. von Trautschke (center) and Dr. G. Müller (right).”

  Matthias found himself bending forward to look more closely at Dr. G. Müller. But the closer he looked the more the man’s face disintegrated into monotonic dots on the cracked newsprint.

  Hew laid his finger on the tall man in the middle. “This worthy became Hiram’s father-in-law. Von Trautschke. He was Inge’s father.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. He didn’t survive the war, if I recall. Rather a bad egg, in fact.”

  “What sort of bad egg?”

  “I’m not sure I ever knew.”

  Matthias examined von Trautschke’s face. It too disintegrated into dots. “He was Happy Standish’s grandfather, then.”

  “You do function better with visual aids,” said Hew.

  “Have you got any more?”

  “More what?”

  “Articles or pictures about the Standishes.”

  “Possibly,” said Hew. “Probably. I’ve got loads of scrapbooks around somewhere. But I’d have to dig them out. What exactly are you looking for?”

  “Hiram Standish’s obituary, for one thing.”

  “I told you. He died in that blue hole of yours.”

  “When?”

  Hew thought. “Before I had to sell the Lyford Cay house. I was still in Nassau. So it must have been the early fifties. They didn’t stay on Two-Head Cay very long after that.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “Inge. Happy. The household.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Moved to the States. There really wasn’t much here for a woman like Inge. A beauty, of course, and rather accomplished at this and that—a crack shot if I recall. They were always going after boar, right here in the interior. Plenty of it in those days.”

  Matthias put down his glass. “Have I got this right? The Standishes left Lyford Cay after the war and moved to Two-Head Cay. In the early fifties, Hiram drowned in the blue hole. Then you sold your place in Nassau and came here. You went to Two-Head Cay and saw Happy, already afraid of the water, which fits with his father being dead by that time. Then they moved to the States. Is that it?”

  “My, my,” said Hew. “You have been listening.” He reached under the table and put his hand on Matthias’s knee.

  “Knock it off, Hew,” Matthias said.

  “Aren’t I wicked?” said Hew, trilling again. But he removed his hand.

  Matthias thought of some of the men he’d known on the Isle of Pines and said: “No.”

  “No?” said Hew, sounding disappointed.

  Matthias studied the picture of the three doctors. “I don’t understand why the owners of half of Bay Street would move out here.”

  “No one did,” said Hew. “Though the Standishes didn’t own so much by then. In fact, there were rumors.”

  “Rumors?”

  “That they had made bad investments, were deeply in debt, the whole dreary tale. But there couldn’t have been much to it. People who saw them after the war—in Connecticut or some such dreadful place—said they were richer than ever.”

  Matthias closed the scrapbook and laid it on the table between them. “I’d like to see the others.”

  “Others?”

  “Scrapbooks.”

  “Tonight?” All at once Hew sounded very tired. The skin sagged on the fine bones of his face.

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow night. That will give me time to search. But I can’t quite see what it is you’re looking for.”

  Matthias had no reply. He swallowed the rest of his Armagnac.

  “They both drowned, or in Happy’s case, nearly so,” said Hew. “Is that it?”

  “Sort of,” Matthias said. “About a quarter of a mile apart.”

  “But Happy’s accident was at sea.”

  “Right.”

  “And the blue hole is on land.”

  “Right.”

  “Ergo?”

  “I don’t know,” Matthias said. “When was the last time you saw Happy?”

  “As a boy. Perhaps that time on Two-Head Cay. I don’t believe I saw him or Inge after that. Certainly not much after.”

  “He didn’t visit you when he came to the club?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last September. The day before the accident.”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “I don’t know,” Matthias said. “What was Hiram Senior doing in the blue hole?”

  “Swimming, I suppose.”

  “Alone?”

  “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask Gene Albury?”

  Inside Hew’s house, Edith Piaf went to work on “La Vie en Rose.” Hew’s eyes dampened. He got lost in the music. “Thanks for the booze,” Matthias said, rising.

  For a moment, he thought Hew hadn’t heard him. Then Hew said: “I’ll miss your company.”

  “It’s not over yet. Eleven days left to file an appeal.”

  Hew gave him a look that said: “On what grounds?”

  That was the question. “Good night,” Matthias said. He climbed down the steps from Hew’s terrace, found the path and walked toward home. Something rustled in the palms that grew between the path and the beach. A dog started barking, somewhere in the bushes, then another dog, and another. The moon had set and it would be an hour or so before the sun rose. Matthias couldn’t se
e a thing; because of that, or what he’d drunk, he stumbled and almost fell. He reached down and felt something big and soft.

  “Who it is?” said a deep voice. Nottage.

  “For Christ’s sake, Nottage, get up.”

  “Sea on fire, boss, sea on fire.”

  “Get up, Nottage. Don’t sleep here. You can sleep on the deck.”

  But Nottage wouldn’t get up. He would just say, “Sea on fire, boss, sea on fire.” Matthias left him on the path and went to bed.

  23

  “Matt?”

  Matthias felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  “Wake up.”

  Matthias didn’t want to wake up; he wanted to stay where he was, in his sandy sheets, and the way he was, unconscious, but he opened his eyes anyway. Brock was looking down at him. “What is it?” Matthias asked.

  “Better come with me.”

  Matthias got up, pulled on shorts and a sweater and followed Brock outside. The wintry sun, low in the sky, shone with a white, glaring light that made his eyes water. His head ached too, and his mouth felt dry: overnight, his body had deconstructed the 1909 Armagnac, leveling it down to the status of the meanest hangover-inducer on the shelves.

  Brock led him along the crushed-shell path to the beach. They walked north, with the Bluff rising on their left. The wind, stronger than the day before, blew in stereo: on one side hissing over the wave tops, on the other whining in the sea-grapes. The sand ended abruptly at an outcrop of dead coral, covered in slippery moss. They climbed over and continued along the coral, a spiky and uneven beach that ran all the way to the tip of the island. Matthias had seen Blufftown children playing barefoot on sharp coral beaches, but his own feet, callused though they were, hurt with every step, and he was about to go back for shoes when he saw a dark buzzard circling the top of the Bluff. Below, on the rocks by the edge of the sea, stood Moxie, looking down at something twisted and white. It could have been an object tossed up by the waves, but it wasn’t. Matthias knew that even before he started running.

  It was Hew.

  He lay on his side, one arm thrown up in a way that made Matthias think of the Nijinsky photograph, as did his long hair, swept back off his face, and his clean white trousers: he might have been posing for an avant-garde fashion photographer, except that his legs were in an impossible position and half a dozen red land crabs were scuttling back and forth in the shadow of the Bluff, biding their time. All around lay shards of dark green glass, 1909 Armagnac glass, not yet dulled by the sea.