Splinter on the Tide

by Phillip Parotti

  “Just continue to look entirely natural,” she whispered, suddenly putting a hand on his shoulder while reaching up to give him a buss on the cheek. “That’s for the two ensigns back there, to keep them at a distance. They’re nice boys, I’m sure, but they’ve each been into the library twice this week to ask me for a date, and I’m afraid that they’re both a little young for my taste. So, if you won’t mind me using you in this way, I’m hoping that the sight of us together might finally blunt their interest.”

  “The poor lambs,” Ash grinned, as the two of them sat down across from one another.

  Immediately, the bartender came over.

  “What will you have?” Ash asked.

  “A brandy, I think,” Claire said.

  “Have you, by any chance, a Calvados?” Ash asked the bartender.

  “I do,” said the bartender, indicating that he was impressed. “Not much call for it around here, but I’ve a good bottle which I will be delighted to open.”

  “I’ll have one,” Ash smiled.

  “What is Calvados?” Claire asked at once.

  “Apple brandy, from Normandy,” Ash said. “I’d never heard of it until I got to France, and then I learned to like it in a hurry.”

  “I’ll have the same,” Claire said, speaking to the bartender.

  “You didn’t have to change,” Ash said, after the bartender departed to pour their drinks. “I thought you looked lovely this afternoon, and I’m sure you’ve had a long day.”

  “A girl likes to put her best foot forward,” Claire said.

  “And a fetching foot it is,” Ash said. “I rather regret that I can’t respond in kind, but I’m afraid it’s going to be khaki or navy blues for the duration.”

  “Nothing better,” Claire said, looking him right in the eye. “I’ve thought about you a good deal while you’ve been gone,” she went on, “enough so that I don’t want to beat about the bush, fritter away the time, or waste a moment if you think we can make something of this—of us. Do you?”

  Even in his wildest imagination, Ash had not anticipated anything so unexpected and abrupt.

  “Yes,” he said, after studying her face for a moment and finding it sincere, “I’ve been thinking about you since the moment that we met.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, suddenly taking his hand and squeezing it as Ash squeezed back.

  The bartender returned, set the two Calvados in front of them, and then discreetly retreated.

  “Let’s drink to it,” Ash said, lifting his glass.

  “Let’s,” Claire said flooding him with a warm smile.

  It was done, the agreement between them sealed with a clink.

  “Oh,” she said, taking a sip, “this is lovely.”

  “I assume you’re talking about the brandy,” Ash quipped.

  “Only tangentially,” she said, “but it, too, reaches perfection.”

  “I suspect,” Ash said, “that there have to be ground rules.”

  “That’s generous,” she said, “but some are necessary. I have to go on living here. For what it amounts to, I have a position to maintain, jobs to hold down, and I can’t have people talking, or worse yet, submitting complaints to the schoolboard. You do understand that?”

  “I do,” Ash said.

  “Aside from drinks like this and occasional meals, this hotel and The Jarvis House have to be off limits,” she continued.

  “Same for me,” Ash said.

  “Aside from walks, or meals, or coffee, or movies, nothing public around Yarmouth then.”

  “Also agreed,” Ash said.

  “I have a friend,” she went on, “who owns a cabin—a sort of vacation beach house—up on the Kennebec River south of Bath. It’s not far, and there’s a bus that runs up to Bath. She’s offered the place to me for the weekend, so if you think you can get away ...? ”

  “I can get away,” Ash said without hesitation.

  “I’ll pick you up at the bus station in Bath at ten o’clock on Friday evening,” she said. “My friend’s also lending me her car.”

  “It’s a date,” Ash said.

  They talked on, nursing one Calvados and then another, until ten o’clock. Claire declined a third, saying that she had to be at work the following morning and needed her sleep. Ash then walked with her toward the elevator, but as they passed two closed doors in the hallway, Claire reached for one of the handles and said, “You need to see this room; it’s a beauty.”

  As she quickly opened the door and stepped through, Ash followed her, and then, Claire turned, closed the door behind him, put her arms around Ash, and kissed him long and passionately.

  “That’s an appetizer,” she said, “for what I hope will seem like a feast this weekend.”

  “What a delicious promise,” Ash said.

  “Here,” she said, taking a tissue from her purse, “let me clean you up before I send you back to your people.”

  “I’m doubtful that any of them will be sober enough to notice,” Ash said. “My guess is that most of them will come weaving down from The Jolly Roger much later tonight. This is their first liberty in weeks, if not months.”

  “Still,” Claire said.

  “Yes,” Ash said.

  When Ash finally returned to The Jarvis House half an hour later, Hamp and Solly were still sitting in the lobby, reading The New York Times.

  “There’s a hell of a battle on at a place called El Alamein in Egypt,” Solly said.

  “Paper say anything about Guadalcanal?” Ash asked concealing any hint of the weekend he planned with Claire.

  “Yes,” Solly said, “the Marines are having a hell of a fight around Henderson Field, and from what I can glean from the paper, there have been some naval battles out in Iron Bottom Sound that don’t bear thinking about, but the details are awfully sketchy.”

  “And the Germans have taken Sebastopol,” Hamp added. “What’s that at the corner of your mouth, Boss? Looks like blood.”

  “Catsup,” Ash said, instinctively reaching to wipe the incriminating evidence away. “I just treated myself to a burger.”

  “I’ll hope the spinster enjoyed it,” Hamp said. “Was that before or after the tea-sipping?”

  “About tea-sipping,” Ash added, “I’m sure that Chana will know best,”

  “Oh, don’t I hope,” Hamp said.

  “Try to restrain yourself,” Solly jibed. “These effusions of yours are becoming revolting.”

  “I can only suppose,” Hamp said, “that the person of interest settles for a hearty handshake after a date. Pity, Solly, you seem to be missing out on so much.”

  “Clearly,” Ash said, “this lad needs a good night’s sleep with a good laxative as a bed partner. He’s obviously loaded with beans.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Solly laughed. “Big day tomorrow, let’s go up.” And they did.

  Ash registered more than mild surprise over the amount of trash Chaser 3 had acquired across her bottom during their months in southern seas, but he found himself equally gratified by the energy which Anson’s workmen applied in scraping her down, removing barnacles, and sanding her smooth. Elsewhere aboard, the work went forward with the same degree of attention, the factory technicians, Solly, and the snipes tearing into the engine overhauls with gusto, efficiency, and genuine concern. In the little office inside Anson’s warehouse, Ash worked with Hamp to bring the required paperwork under control and to sift through the bales of official Navy correspondence and publications that arrived for him to filter. One, an intelligence document marked Secret, gave Ash a surprise because it anticipated that the Nazi admiral, Dönitz—commander of Hitler’s U-boat fleet—seemed to be gradually withdrawing his marauders from the Atlantic coast to concentrate them in packs for mid-Atlantic attacks on the major convoys. The reason given was that America’s coastal convoys were becoming nigh on impenetrable. Ash let out a grunt of disbelief when he read that; he had seen no evidence of the numerous escorts that the message seemed to imply. From Ash
’s point of view, the available escorts had been stretched thin, or even thinner, since the day he had first taken Chaser 3 to sea, and with regard to sinking allied merchantmen along the coast, the Germans seemed as proficient and ubiquitous as ever.

  In the evenings, after taking his dinner at The Jarvis House, Ash allowed himself to bask in the aura that Claire seemed to radiate every time he went to pick her up. One night, as the two of them topped off their dinner with an espresso and a piece of pie at Queen Bee’s Tea and Coffee, the English woman who owned the place joined them for an hour’s banter before other customers arrived. Another night, the two of them went to see That Hamilton Woman with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

  “Handsome devil, Olivier,” Ash said.

  “Beautiful woman, Leigh,” Claire said.

  “And apparently,” Ash said, “a sight more beautiful than the real Lady Hamilton, if the accounts I’ve read prove anything. I think she was supposed to have been a little more than plump and rather homely.”

  “The illusion almost always improves upon the reality,” Claire said, “when switching from life to film, I mean.”

  Another night, while the air remained still and the cicadas put up a clatter, the two of them walked, well up Main and all the way out to Yarmouth Junction and back, twice crossing the river over a picturesque little bridge, talking and simply enjoying being together without, momentarily, anything to distract them. Th en, on Th ursday evening, the two of them once more sat over Calvados in Th e Eiseley’s lounge, Claire again setting Ash mildly afi re with the help of her little black dress.

  “Tomorrow night, then, at the station in Bath?” she said, after once more kissing him inside the ballroom.

  “I’ll be there,” Ash said.

  On Friday afternoon, and because he already knew the way, Ash guided Solly and Hamp to the station, whereupon Solly turned to Ash and said with a broad grin, “We’d best counsel the lad, here, not to behave like a schoolboy in heat, don’t you think?”

  “Christ,” Hamp snapped back, “and this, from the guy who just spent over an hour picking the dust from his uniform with a pair of tweezers!”

  “Anticipation,” Ash said augustly, “is the enemy of calm. Take an example from me—a sound military bearing and quiet self-assurance is what these arriving beauties of yours will be looking for, so I’ll expect you both to rise to the occasion and uphold the honor of the service.”

  “And that’s how you’ve been conducting yourself with all of this tea-sipping that you’ve been doing?” Hamp said.

  “You can count on it,” Ash said.

  The train arrived, and the two girls, carrying their bags, were the first to step lightly from the coach. Immediately, Hamp and Solly stepped forward to relieve the girls of their luggage, and then introductions were made, Ash enjoying the music of the girls’ Nu Yark accents. Chana, a trim creature with light brown hair, was not the toad of Solly’s imagination; in fact, she was as lovely as Hamp had advertised, equipped with a perky personality, and, like Hamp, something of a tease. The “person of interest,” the girl named Keren, came with much darker hair, an inch or two more height than her friend, and a more restrained manner of speech. But in the minutes they spent together, Ash noticed that the girl seemed also to possess a wry sense of irony that he thought might suit Solly perfectly.

  “I’m surprised, Captain,” Chana said with a smile, “to find that you are actually flesh and blood. We were given to understand you to be a man of granite.”

  “Only when dealing with ensigns,” Ash said. “The rest of the time, I am as tame as a lamb.”

  “And when might we meet the tea-sipping spinster who apparently has the lamb in tow?” Keren asked, showing Ash a sly smile.

  “Sunday night?” Ash said, without skipping a beat. “Over drinks at The Eiseley?”

  “At last,” Hamp said.

  “Sounds good,” Solly said.

  “Sure,” both girls said at once.

  Ash saw them all into a cab, and then, making his way to the appropriate station, Ash boarded an early bus for Bath.

  In Bath, Ash stowed his bag in a station locker, walked out onto the street, found himself a coffee shop, and nursed a cup of so-so coffee for an hour while he waited for the clock to click off the minutes. Then, at 2145, he returned to the bus station, retrieved his bag, and once more stepped out to the street to wait for Claire, who pulled to the curb at precisely 2200 in a black 1935 Ford coupe.

  “Want a ride, sailor?” Claire called through the open window.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Ash replied.

  They weren’t 20 minutes driving down to the cabin, a two-bedroom bungalow really, and once they arrived, Ash could see that Claire had been there earlier; both a bottle of hard to obtain Scotch and a bottle of Calvados were already arranged on the kitchen counter.

  “You came up early,” Ash said.

  “I wanted to buy groceries and a few other little things,” Claire said, “so that we don’t have to go out, unless, of course, you want to. Like a drink?”

  “What about you?” Ash said.

  “I’ll take a Scotch,” Claire said.

  “I’ll join you,” Ash said. “Where under the sun did you find it?”

  “There’s a place in Bath that still apparently gets some down from Canada,” Claire said. “How the Canadians are getting it is anyone’s guess.”

  “Perhaps some of those enterprising officers running corvettes guarding the convoys between Halifax and Glasgow are bringing it back with them in cases,” Ash laughed.

  “You may be right,” Claire said, “because from what I know, it has virtually disappeared everywhere else.”

  After Ash poured their drinks, they sat down, the two of them, on the sofa and looked at each other.

  “Here’s to us,” Claire said, raising her glass.

  “You’re on,” Ash said, clicking his glass against Claire’s and taking a sip. “Which reminds me, Solly and Hamp seem to have lured their own young lovelies up from Brooklyn for the weekend. I met them at the station before I came up. Nice girls, really, the both of them, and they’re anxious, the four of them, to meet the ‘tea-sipping spinster’ with whom I’m supposed to be keeping company. I suggested The Eiseley’s lounge on Sunday night for drinks. Think we might be able to oblige? I’d think that little black number you’ve used on me would just about make their eyes pop out.”

  “Oh, you sly rascal,” Claire said. “But of course. I’d love to meet them. We elderly spinsters have to do our best to encourage budding romance among the young.”

  “Actually,” Ash laughed, “those romances seem to be moving pretty well under their own steam. Hamp came back utterly besotted from his very first introduction to Chana, and while Solly is considerably more circumspect, I gather that whatever he has going with Keren—the woman Hamp likes to refer to as the ‘person of interest’—seems to be something of long standing.”

  “Your boys, then, have not been slow off the mark.”

  “Not at all,” Ash said. “Chana is Jewish, of course, so if Hamp is as serious about her as he seems to be, I would imagine that the WASP grandmother up in Newport or wherever—the one who tried to put Hamp under her thumb and who controls all the money in her family—will just about blow a gasket when she hears about it, and that ought to make Hamp as happy as a clam. As far as I can see, he is utterly without prejudice, something I admire about him, and with Solly as an example, I’d imagine that his family couldn’t be better people if they worked at it.”

  “What about the religious complications?”

  “I don’t think Hamp has a religious bone in his body,” Ash said. “I don’t think it would matter, and from what I can tell, Solly and his family only go to synagogue once or twice a year, if that often.”

  “Which raises a question—what about you?” Claire said.

  “Protestant. I was raised to believe in the Almighty,” Ash said after a moment, “but I don’t wear it on my sleeve. You?”


  “Lapsed Catholic,” Claire said. “I still believe that children should be given religious training, but I’ve learned to make my own decisions. From what you’re telling me, we seem to move along the same lines.”

  “So we’re on then, for Sunday night?” Ash said.

  “Oh yes,” she smiled. “I look forward to meeting all of them. It will be a treat.”

  About the time they’d finished half of their drinks, Claire rose, told Ash that she had something to see to in the next room, and disappeared for a few minutes, leaving Ash to savor his Scotch. Then, not ten minutes later, Claire suddenly reappeared wearing nothing but a tight black slip that seemed to cling to her like a silk glove.

  “The shops in Yarmouth offer nothing that approaches Hollywood splendor,” she said, “and I didn’t imagine that you’d appreciate summer flannel, so I’m afraid that this is the best that I could find. I hope I don’t disappoint.”

  Ash felt like he’d been hit with a hammer. Claire Morris seemed to him more beautiful, more seductive, and more alluring than anything he had ever imagined.

  “You don’t disappoint,” he said. “You look ravishing.”

  “Then let’s adjourn to the bedroom,” she said. “I think I’d like to try to besot you in the wildest possible way.”

  “I’m totally at your disposal,” Ash said, stepping forward and enfolding her in his arms.

  Later, lying side by side with her soft breasts pressed to his chest, she put her head up against Ash’s ear and whispered. “I love you. That was better than I could have imagined.”

  Ash pressed her to him. “I love you too,” he said. “And regarding something you said earlier, the reality of you, my dear, outstrips the illusion by more than I can measure.”

  18

  Late on Sunday afternoon, Claire drove Ash back to the bus station in Bath.

  “I hope you enjoyed the weekend,” Claire said as they drove into town.

  “Nothing ever finer,” Ash said, “and I mean that, love.”

  “It was utter bliss,” Claire said, “and now that you’ve seen what I have to offer, I hope you’re so thoroughly besotted that you will want to do exactly the same thing next weekend as well.”