The Incredible Charlie Carewe

by Mary Astor

  “It is about Charlie then? I thought so. Oh, Zoë, you shouldn’t have waited so long—my poor dear!”

  And then the luncheon bell dingdonged its silver voice, and they went downstairs.

  Walter smiled at Beatrice, seeing the pleasure in her face at having most of her family around her. He saw that she was exercising considerable control over being too pleased, too excited by Charlie’s rare presence in their midst. She avoided all recriminations that might have been her privilege; even the most oblique complaint at not even having been informed that they were coming so that she could make some preparation. Her back was straightened in a long-ago dignity and sweet authority as she coordinated the activities for them for the rest of the afternoon.

  “Alma, are you sure Gregg has let you off your study hour, or are you just taking advantage of his good nature——”

  “Both, Beatrice,” Gregg replied as Alma gave him a doll-face look. “I declare an unconditional holiday, in honor of our guests—I mean——” He stumbled, and Charlie picked him up.

  “Most recent guests, you mean?”

  There was a shade of sarcasm in his words, but he did not go on to say that he felt that Gregg was a usurper in the affections of his parents because it had only just occurred to him, and the feeling was not formed.

  Virginia quickly intervened. “Charlie, the varnish is a little sticky on the port side forward—don’t lean on it, will you!”

  Charlie turned to her quickly at the warning tone in her voice. “What?” he said. “Oh, okay. How’s the old girl running these days, up to your usual perfectionist demands?”

  Virginia laughed. It was true; she had always kept the Vee Cee up to local regatta standards. Through the years it had been remodeled, rerigged, until it was almost a completely new boat; her hull was regularly scraped and varnished from stem to stern by a local craftsman. Each summer Virginia’s greatest pleasure was to spend long, lovely hours sailing down the coast.

  “You just treat her right, that’s all, Brother darling!” She had full respect for Charlie’s skill as a sailor, since neither could remember when they first handled the tiller.

  Alma did not question the change in plans as Virginia had made no excuses—rather it seemed as though she were deferring to Charlie the privilege of taking her and her father for the promised sail.

  Jeff said, “Now you’re sure I won’t be in the way, Charlie? You know, once aboard, I’m just so much ballast—have to stay put.”

  Charlie waved his objections away. “No problem, no problem at all—let’s get going, what do you say—soon as I change?”

  Beatrice rose from the table. “Well, darlings, I shall have to take a rest. Zoë, would you and Virginia like a swim, or what?”

  Virginia said, “Perhaps later, Mum—I’m going to put Zoë in my room—she needs a rest too, after the trip—I’ve asked Doreen to freshen up their room.”

  “That would be wonderful, Virginia,” said Zoë quickly. “I really am bushed.”

  Beatrice spoke to Walter. “You going in to town, dear? I think it would be nice to get some broilers and barbecue them—would you like that?” She turned to the others, and Alma replied for them all: “That would be super, Grandmum!”

  “Fine! Then we’ll all have cocktails around six, and Charlie—please come up if you get back early.” She put her hand on his arm as he passed. “I’d love to have a chat with you——”

  “Right, Mum darling,” he said and, leaning, brushed her forehead with his lips. As he caught up with Zoë at the door to the hall he whispered to her, “Do be careful, darling—no nipping now, promise?”

  A flood of resentment swept over Zoë, at his lack of faith in her, when what she needed was encouragement of her discipline. Her need to unburden herself to Virginia had weakened a little during lunch. Perhaps it was wrong, dangerous. Perhaps she could keep it to herself. Perhaps it was a kind of disloyalty to Charlie, whom she loved. Although she had no intention of mitigating her own faults to Virginia when she talked to her, suddenly, with his whispered words, she wanted to shout his cruelties to the world, to hit out, to hurt. The pressure built within her, unbearably. And she needed a drink.

  Even though she had promised herself when she left New York that she was going to be extremely careful, she had brought some insurance with her, in case it should prove too difficult to be careful. She had firmly resolved that she would drink only when the others drank. A glass of sherry or one martini before dinner. A bit of brandy after dinner. But sometimes her sleeping pills didn’t work, so in her toilet case were opaque, half-pint flasks for traveling marked “Hand Lotion,” “Shampoo,” “Skin Tonic,” all carefully washed and filled with bourbon. She had been angry when Charlie had kiddingly gone through her suitcase, after she had told him, “Thank God, I don’t have to carry a bottle with me, this time.” At the last minute, while Charlie was phoning for their car, she had pulled a fifth out from under the bar, so casually and quickly that Charlie never even noticed, and, opening her suitcase in the hall, removed a pair of shoes and stuffed the bottle inside. Carrying them back, she waved the shoes, saying, “Don’t need these,” and Charlie nodded absently, talking into the phone.

  By the time Virginia joined her in her own room Zoë had hurriedly changed into a housecoat and had downed, choking almost in relief, half of the bottle labeled “Skin Tonic.” Like Alice’s bottle, she mused, labeled “Drink me.” Virginia’s door was open and she glanced in, and then down the hall, but Virginia had not come up yet. With relief she noted that her anger against Charlie had diminished somewhat, and that her breathing was slower and not so shallow. Now she could cope with the situation. Where to begin? “I don’t know why I’m telling you this . . .” No. She knew. It was finally more than she could handle alone. No one should have to feel this alone. The self-pity rose to smother her, and as Virginia came in, saying, “There now, everyone’s disposed of! We’ve got the rest of the afternoon to ourselves,” tears welled into her eyes, and all pretense fell away, and she sank to the bed crying, “I’m a complete idiot, Virginia!”

  On the third floor, Gregg occupied what had once been the children’s playroom and nurse’s quarters. It overlooked the veranda and the sea on the east, and the lawn into the woods on the south. Books lined the walls so that it had the soundproofed feeling of a library—in which somebody incidentally slept. With a towel over his arm, Gregg bent over a book on the desk. He was dressed to swim, trunks and a broad-striped robe covered his spare frame, but, as often, he had been caught up in an idea and was reading a portion of Moby Dick, the chapter about the whiteness of the whale:

  Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colour; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink?

  He turned the page back to read:

  What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The albino is as well made as other men—has no substantive deformity—and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so?

  It was in this sense that the word “white” had come into his mind in thinking of Charlie. Gregg had tried to trace down the unreasonable sense of recoil when he was around him. Charlie was as “well made as other men,” yet in his personality there was a kind of loathsome “whiteness” that contained all colors that one expects. This was no “phony.” He did have a pretty good mind, though not a profound one—but then neither did he pretend to be profound. But there was nothing in him that reflected color—nothing warm and rich, nor, for that matter, cold and hard. No reds, no blues, no sunny yellows. There was something horrible about the fact that he was not horrible—that he was not a
monster with shaking horns—this could be dealt with and defeated. But not this guiltless non-existence which, by existing, by echoing passion, seemed more evil, more threatening than evil itself. It was like fighting Melville’s “shrouded phantom of the whitened waters,” filling the heart with a “superstitious dread.”

  Out on the raft after his swim, his body tingling, Gregg stretched, relieved from his morbid thoughts. The raft was no longer just an anchored bit of planking, it had become a platform the size of a small room, covered with padded canvas; a ladder dipped over the side, and beneath a trap door was a compartment like a lobster trap, that held beverage bottles chilled by the sea itself. Alma, being in the throes of the current disc-jockey fad, had laboriously towed a small battery radio in a waterproof container and lashed it to one of the uprights at the top of the ladder. He turned on the radio and opened himself a frosty can of beer. The sun was bright and warm, the sea rose and fell, lifting and dipping the raft in a soothing rhythm. Rather far out, the lovely curves of the Vee Cee’s sails tipped and rose against the horizon. Lying on his back, Gregg watched its progress from under his half-closed eyelids. Without any sense of treachery, he permitted himself to think of his love for Virginia—the deep abiding emotion that he knew nothing would ever change. And because he loved her, he loved Jeff too. How odd the world had become in calling sex “love”—nowadays the words seemed interchangeable. What had become of the concept of love as a desire for the loved one’s good? The good for Virginia was Alma and Jeff, and therefore he loved them too. He supposed, if anyone knew, they would be astonished that he felt no jealousy of Jeff. There was no room for jealousy in love. He could not possess, but he could guard her and guard the beings she loved. Including Charlie? He swore and grunted, turning over. Falling asleep.

  Waking, he felt stiff and chilly. The sun was still warm but the wind had risen. Automatically he looked at his wrist; he had left his watch in his room, so he tuned the radio for a possible time signal. There were little thunder squalls hanging in streaks along the horizon to the northeast; large patches of the water had become the color of dark bruises. The few smaller boats farther south had come in, apparently; but the Vee Cee was still out; he could see the bluish whiteness of her mainsail, leaning, bent like an archer’s bow. “Damned uncomfortable, I should think.” Gregg had never been an enthusiast of the hardier aspects of sailing; a nice, lazy, calm day was fine, but when it got like this, both his nerves and stomach complained. He wondered if Charlie were giving a thought to Jeff’s comfort. Well, Jeff himself was capable of telling Charlie when he’d had enough—he was probably thoroughly enjoying himself.

  Coming down the beach from the house, Gregg could see, was Virginia with Zoë a few paces behind her. Virginia had a sailor’s ear for the weather; often he’d seen her tilt her head at the sound of the wind changing up to a minor key; she was barometer-minded as some people are clock-minded. He looked back at the sloop, trying to see it with her eyes, to understand the cause of her concern, for she was waving in its direction, frantically. The raft under his feet rose and fell, thumping and slurping. He could see that Charlie was racing in, down-wind of a squall that was wrinkling the water behind him, tufting it with white, hissing at his heels.

  Gregg muttered, “Damn fool! I hope to hell he knows what he’s doing!”

  He probably did of course, Virginia herself had said that Charlie was the more skilled of the two; but even so, it angered Gregg that Charlie would take any chances with the others along. He dropped over the side of the raft to swim in. They’d need him at the dock to help Jeff ashore—Charlie would be too busy boasting. He kicked himself away from the raft irritably. After a few hard strokes he could still hear the radio playing, loudly. He must have flipped it further up instead of off. “The hell with it,” he thought, and kept on swimming.

  As he clambered up out of the surf, beating the water out of his ears, he saw Virginia, quite close, so close that the foam had caught around her ankles. Her face was a sickly green above the hand that was pressed to her mouth.

  Zoë, frightened, was shaking Virginia’s arm, her voice pitched high. “Virginia! What’s wrong! Why are you scared!”

  Virginia looked to Gregg, shaking her head, a little laugh of hysteria coming through her words. “Why, he’s just never going to make it, that’s all—he should have hauled in the sheet or come about into the wind. Look—there she goes——”

  From the raft came the sound of a Benny Goodman record, swinging with a solid beat, as the wind shifted to another quarter and brought the music to the watchers, loud and clear. The boat slewed around to starboard, too late, and the wind like a giant hand flattened the sail into the water and the boat turned on her side quickly.

  Instinctively, Gregg started to go out to aid them, but Virginia held him firmly. “No, Gregg—you’d never make it—it’s too far. Better call the Coast Guard—they can hang on—but they’ll need help.”

  He hesitated. “Go! go, Gregg, please!” And he was off.

  The squall dissolved itself into a short deluge of a hissing shower around them, making it difficult to see what was happening.

  The two wives clung to each other, straining to pierce the distance, as a flash of orange scarf emerged. It was Alma’s head, and then her arm against the keel. In a second Charlie’s figure scrambled up over the side, squatting on the bottom of the hull.

  Running toward the two women were Beatrice and Walter, and behind them on the veranda Gregg appeared, sprinting out to them. He reached Virginia’s side and, breathless, said, “There’s a cutter on the way—and they’re phoning the Hendersons—if they’re home, they can get their launch out to them sooner than the Coast Guard can be here.”

  Virginia nodded, her eyes still glued to the scene. “I can’t—see Jeff—unless he’s on the other side,” she said. “Oh, dear God—he must be tangled in the rigging——” as the orange-scarfed head disappeared. Bobbed up alone. Disappeared again. Suddenly, Charlie made a flat dive, and with a few pounding strokes cleared the boat and headed for shore. The group was stunned into silence, as Charlie could soon be seen clearly, taking in strong breaths through his open mouth, his arms rhythmically pulling, approaching the first break of the surf. Beyond him the Vee Cee’s hull rose and fell and once in a while the tip of the mast emerged, from which a bit of torn white sail limply fluttered. It raised deceptive hope, but only briefly. The last possible time limit of survival had passed.

  There was a long moment when the sea was still. The moment before the “big wave” gathers its forces to spring like a panther onto the sand. Everyone was motionless, frozen, unbelieving. The music from the raft was insistent, sensual in its beat, and the brass took up the theme. Charlie rode the big wave in and flopped, panting, on the sand beside them. “Boy, that was close!” he gasped. Beatrice alone moved toward him, sank to her knees, and held his head tight to her breast, but saying nothing.

  “Watch it, Mum, I’ll get you all wet——” Charlie pulled himself free from her arms. “I’ve got to get these clothes off, you know you don’t realize how tough it is to swim when you’re dressed——” He realized no one was paying attention to him and he looked at the figures standing apart from him in a frozen group. Zoë had her face in her hands; Walter had helped Beatrice to her feet and stood with his arms clasped tight around her. Virginia’s body seemed to have grown thinner, awkward, as she stood with her feet planted widely in the sand. Her arms were lifted slightly from her sides, motionless; the bones on her face stood out in relief and she seemed all staring eyes. She was literally out on her feet, and Gregg moved in time as she collapsed. The sand gave as he picked her up in his arms and he staggered a little; taking a few steps brought him nearer to Charlie. Growling, speaking from clenched teeth, he said, “Help me carry her, you stupid son of a bitch, don’t just stand there——”

  Charlie said, “Oh, sure, sure. What’s wrong with her?”

  Gregg ignored his question and said, “Get her under the knees—just
help a little till we get out of this sand——”

  Beatrice left Walter and went ahead of them, saying, “I’ll get Dr. Hagedorn,” biting her lips for strength.

  It was nightfall before ebb tide. Search lamps had been set up on the fiat surface of Berry Pie, poking white fingers at the rocks and the mingled waters of the river and the sea. The currents had pushed and pulled at the fragile shell of the sloop, battering her to bits against the black sentinels of the Point. It would take time, time to extricate the forms held wrapped by ropes and sail, tangled among the rocks and seaweed. The rescue crew had asked the family to stay inside, there was nothing they could do, it was best not to watch.

  Beatrice and Zoë were in Virginia’s room, sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to her, as she said, “talking silly!” Dr. Hagedorn had given her something, advised the women to keep her warm and quiet, and had left some sedation for later.

  Down in the hall, he grumbled to Walter, “Nothing else to do—bring her to, knock her out. She’s got the biggest job, has to do it herself—heal her own mind and heart.” Gruffly he stated that he would attend to the grimmer matters, that Walter was to “stay home—I’ll take over when the rescue people are finished.”

  Zoë had one fleeting thought while she changed into a simple dress and cleaned up her face. “How odd, I don’t need a drink! There’s too much to be done! I must think about this more thoroughly—later, later.” Jeff’s mother and father were on their way over, and she had told Walter she would be with him to help him tell about their loss. Beatrice wanted to stay with Virginia, but Virginia was talkative from the restorative the doctor had given her, and Beatrice had desperately asked Gregg to help. “She wants every single detail, Gregg—I just can’t bear it—I can’t go over and over it.”

  Virginia was sitting up in the bed and talking intensely, while Gregg gripped her hands. “What was he trying to prove! Why did he want to stay out, why did he want to play games with the wind!” Her eyes were wide and tearless. “And then—leaving them—to save his own skin. I’ll kill him, Gregg—I’ll kill him!”