Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “Well, I don’t know him very well,” she said with a gravelly wryness. “But I can look him up. I don’t see how he can take you for much, anyway, though. Some diving equipment. Some trips. Surely you can afford that.”

  “How about a share in a schooner?” Carol said.

  “Ah!” Evelyn smiled. “That’s different! I would certainly look at the schooner first. And at the corporate structure.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Carol said, nodding.

  Grant was still flabbergasted into speechless fury. “I’m not in love with him,” he was finally able to say. He could feel how sullen his face was, but he couldn’t change it. “But I do think he is a superb diver, and I trust him. At least in diving.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Evelyn said. “I know he’s pretty well liked by the local businessmen and their goddam fucking Chamber of Commerce.” Quite suddenly, she yawned. “Darling, do come back down,” she then said to Carol. “Do you feel better now? I want you to tell the Rawsons about your Little Theatre Group in Indianapolis.”

  “Not me,” Grant said quickly. “I’ve got a lot of reading and studying to do if I’m going to make this trip.”

  Evelyn smiled slowly at him, in silence. She hadn’t asked him. “Carol?” she said in her raspy voice.

  “I think I will come down,” Carol said. She stood up, drawing herself up with brave but weary gallantry, and threw her head back. “My headache’s better. Maybe I’ll even have a drink!” she said with flirtatious gaiety.

  “Good!” Evelyn growled. “I’ll even make it for you. With my own little lilywhite hands.” She looked at Ron once, a hooded, enigmatic glance.

  Grant had followed them down the hall to where they turned off down the grand staircase. Neither of them had looked back, and he was supremely glad.

  “You poor darling,” he heard Evelyn say as they descended. “You really do overwork yourself, you know. With all your correspondence to those Theatre Group kids of yours.”

  “I know,” Carol had answered, and her voice was suddenly full of tears. “But I don’t know what else to do. They all depend on me so.”

  But after he got over his fury and irritated disgust, he thought it really would be a good thing to take her. Whether she believed in her ‘last trip, parting gift’ conditions or not, he did. And taking her over there would be a good way to show her that. That he was quitting, that he was free. Whether he ever married Lucky Videndi or not. The final payoff, so to speak. The final kindness.

  But how did you explain any of all of that to a man like Bonham? Grant looked over at him again at the little spoke-handled helmsman’s wheel under the cockpit cabin roof. Bonham would kick them both in the cunt and just up and walk out. Grant coughed and lit another cigarette. The big man was not whistling any more, and setfaced and flateyed was conscientiously occupying himself with the steering. They were back in the main channel now, coming up on the looming Navy tender which was still in port. Then, as Grant was looking at him, he turned his head toward Grant and smiled. Something had suddenly perked him up a little, and when he spoke Grant realized with consternation what it was.

  “I just had an idea. I think I’ll dock her at the Yacht Club again tonight and then we can have a few gins at the bar to celebrate.”

  Coldbloodedly and implacably, he was going to get every bit of good and valuable publicity out of his playwright and his playwright’s ray that he could get. And before Grant could say anything, or protest, he had swung the little boat in that way, cutting back the throttle.

  Why, then, didn’t he protest? Bonham would have, if he felt anything that strongly. They could still have come back out, and gone on to the small-boats, fisherman’s dock. But Grant didn’t. Why? Well, for one thing he knew that Bonham needed the publicity, or anyway could use it. Who knew, it might get him another customer or two? But he had not anticipated that Bonham would actually go through with the whole Big Deal production routine of it.

  Bonham did, however. The Yacht Club veranda was quite crowded, with both members and tourists. And when they saw the big ray, they all began to pour down onto the dock. Bonham made sure that they did. After docking, he got a gaffhook lashed to a quarter-inch manila line into the ray’s chin, and carried it all the way up the dock on his back to the hanging rack where they hung the marlin during the marlin fishing tournaments. He said not a word, didn’t grin, and—at least to Grant’s eye—appeared to stoop under the weight of the fish a little more than was absolutely necessary. And when the crowd began to mill around them, he answered their questions matter-of-factly and laconically. In the end Grant posed for about twenty photographs with it.

  “Yes,” he could hear Bonham say over and over. “Yeah. Speared it, killed it, and brought it in. All by himself. What? Three days. Three days’ diving, with me. Yeah. That’s right.”

  Once he managed to get in a flat-eyed, conspiratorial wink at Grant when nobody was looking. Grant could have killed him. While enjoying a certain small fame and notoriety as a wellknown and successful playwright, he had never had the opportunity to complain about the kind of fame that goes with being a movie star, say, or a politician, and he did not have the professional knowhow, nor was he used to posing for photos. Some were tourists who knew his name and were also somewhat skittishly interested in skindiving. Others were Club Members who wanted him and the ray to add to their albums that they kept of the marlin tournaments each year. You couldn’t really be angry about it. But it embarrassed him.

  As the spectators continued to mill around, Bonham got out the official Club scales, had the results witnessed, got the thing down flat on the wood jetty, and began fileting out the wings. The meat was beautiful. And there was more than enough for all three of them. Ali who hated rays unfileted turned out to love their meat. Bonham gave him ten pounds to take home to his family of six. Grant got eight pounds and refused more, and there was still more than ten pounds for Bonham himself. And with Grant’s permission he gave five pounds to the Club Secretary.

  In the end there were many gins consumed at the bar, and for once Grant could not pay. It seemed everyone in the place wanted to buy them a drink. So he was a little loaded when Ali in the old station wagon dropped him off at the grand porte-cochère of the villa.

  He went straight to the kitchen. Bonham had thoughtfully, with no more communication between them than a wry knowing look, sliced up Grant’s chunks, utilizing the grain of the meat, to look like snapper filets. In the kitchen, where the French chef (“Lucky Pierre,” he was called by Evelyn and Paul) was waiting for him, he formally and dramatically turned over the fish with a somewhat malicious pleasure in the coup he and Bonham were putting over on the silly females—and silly males—of this ritzy household. Lucky Pierre assured him they would have it for dinner this night.

  Hunt and Carol were out on the big side veranda which overlooked the bay and harbor on the left of the point where Evelyn’s private beach lay below the smaller front veranda.

  Hunt, in a wicker chair, was holding a drink, a large highball glass, and staring pensively and rather sadly out over the harbor toward the big black hill in the west behind which the sun had by this time disappeared in a golden haze. What was he thinking about? Grant wondered suddenly, was he wondering, or worrying about, all this trouble that was going on? His square-topped grizzled head with its thinning hair turned in the chair as Grant came out, and he looked up with a warm smile. Carol was reading and did not look up.

  “Was that your boat we saw? The little white one that came in a while ago?” Hunt asked.

  “Yeah. We put in to the Yacht Club,” Grant said.

  “That’s the one! We saw it come in. It looks pretty seaworthy.” A ridiculous phrase, but the crowsfeet around his eyes were wrinkled with affection and interest. Hunt knew nothing about boats.

  Grant shrugged. “It’s a good little boat.”

  “So? How did it go?”

  Grant shrugged again. “Pretty good. I speared a sting ray. A
nd some snapper for dinner.” He gave him an affectionate little slap on the shoulder. “But I’m still scared.” He turned away.

  “Shit, I’d be terrified!” Hunt Abernathy called after him, pride in Grant in his voice.

  Carol hadn’t moved or looked up, and from over his shoulder Grant said shortly, “Oh, by the way, Bonham says it’s all right about the trip to Grand Bank,” and went to wash up for dinner.

  10

  IT WAS A TRIP marked for disaster from the start, and Bonham was right. But it did not seem so the morning of its beginning, as the little eight-passenger seaplane whirred in from Kingston in the joyous sub-tropic sunshine and bright blue sky, landed on the sparkling waters of the bay, and taxied over toward the Yacht Club where the four passengers were waiting for it on the veranda. It was such a beautiful day to be going anywhere. And the barometer was up and still rising Bonham said, which would mean good sun and quiet water in Grand Bank for spearfishing.

  It was nine-thirty when the plane arrived. Bonham had arranged for a Club dinghy to row them and their gear out to the plane, and the four of them stepped into it lightly, happy and laughing in the manner of carefree people anywhere going on vacation, waving gaily to Hunt up on the veranda who had come to see them off, as the Club’s peon rowed them out.

  Grant and the Abernathys had risen early and breakfasted on Evelyn’s terrace in the fresh early-morning sun. When Hunt had gone to get the car, Carol in her gentlest and saddest mood had made Grant a secret little speech. She understood that of course he had a right to marry; anybody of his choosing. She had always expected it would happen someday, had anticipated it, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. It was only fair to Grant. And now she meant to make this last trip together, even though they weren’t lovers anymore, something they would both remember with fondness and lasting friendship. What she hoped to accomplish by this, Grant didn’t know. But the result of it though he hid it was to irritate and nettle him exceedingly, especially since Hunt reappeared just then with the car so that he was unable to make any satisfactory reply. But she appeared to mean just exactly what she said. At the Club, where they met Bonham and William, the five of them had played the European-type pool game awhile, laughing and roaring over Carol’s inadequacy at it, then had sat on the veranda in the sun, Grant, Hunt, Bonham and William the underwater-casemaker drinking Bloody Marys on Grant’s tab, Carol a British bitter lemon. She could be witty and great fun when she chose to exert herself at it, which had been less and less over the past years, and she made quite a thing over her awkwardness at the pool game. Too much, perhaps. But she was being a top sport, and thus Grant’s legitimate pity for her and his guilts over her both increased. He needn’t have worried himself, though, because on the plane, once they were aboard, everything changed.

  Even before they were strapped in, she appeared to have suddenly taken a peculiar and personal dislike to Bonham, which she manifested by seating herself as far away from the big man as she could get, and then just sitting there with an air of tacit disapproval for Bonham which made itself felt all over the plane. After they were airborne, racing and bumping over the quiet bay to get the lift, and had unstrapped themselves so they could move around, she ostentatiously hauled out two of her mystical books from her big catchall purse, and stayed in her rearmost corner seat studying them. Grant, who had felt it was only polite to sit with her during the takeoff, now felt obscurely irritated and moved forward with the two men. There was no rational explanation for her to change so suddenly. Irritably, Grant stayed forward with the men and left her alone.

  Bonham, who with his animal sensitivity felt the change too, countered in his own way, which was to pull out a bottle of gin, laughing and roaring in a deliberately vulgar way.

  The tiny plane (actually it wasn’t so tiny; it only seemed so after the big jets everybody was so used to seeing and riding) of course had no stewardess. But Bonham was prepared for that too, and when he hauled forth his gin—a bottle for which, surprisingly, Grant had not paid—he also brought out of his faded duffel bag several bottles of Schweppes. “We aint got any ice!” he shouted ebulliently. “But what the hell! We can all pretend we’re British!”

  Carol Abernathy of course didn’t drink; but when Bonham politely offered it to her, she primly refused even the plain tonic water. This did not bother Bonham, or William, one bit; nor did it much bother Grant, though he was embarrassed for her. They had all had three Bloody Marys apiece at the Yacht Club, and they settled down to the warm gin and tonic and the exchange of diving stories to see them through the boring trip.

  And that was the tone the whole flight took, the rest of them drinking and talking, and trying to ignore the unpleasant presence of Carol Abernathy who continued to sit screaming silent disapproval forward at everyone from the rearmost seat.

  By the time Grand Bank Island hove into view off their starboard wing and the little seaplane sat down in the bright sun and sparkling water near the shore to taxi toward the hotel dock, they were all well on their way to being crocked. With William it didn’t matter so much, William wasn’t going to go diving for the rest of the afternoon. They were. Or so Bonham said.

  Grand Bank Island was just about exactly 365 British statute miles from Ganado Bay as the crow flies. However, for safety’s sake and because of the ban on flying over Cuba, the pilot had routed them via Cape Dame Marie and Cap à Foux in Haiti. This added a hundred miles to the trip, but it kept them near to land in case of trouble. Cruising at 90 miles an hour, allowing for wind drift, it was a five-and-a-half-hour flight.

  Normally the little plane was handled solely by its captain/pilot. But this time he had brought along a friend of his, a professional diver from Kingston whom Bonham knew, who also flew and had come along as co-pilot just for the ride to Grand Bank and some free spearfishing. The pilot, a South American who ran this flying-boat service for a big Venezuelan airline while waiting for assignment to jets, was also an ardent spearfisherman; and both men had brought their masks, flippers and guns with the intention of staying the full four or five days and spearfishing, rather than wasting the gas to return to Kingston and then come back.

  Once they were up and cruising, the ‘co-pilot’ had come back to sit with them. He was a stocky, small, sandy-haired American with pale eyes and blond lashes named Jim Grointon. There was clearly no love lost between him and Bonham. They were competitors. But both men carefully kept their mutual antagonism within strictly limited civilized bounds, as if by some previously agreed-upon armed truce, and each pointedly made a point of not competing in telling bigger and better diving stories. Just the opposite, both leaned over backward in their modesties.

  When Bonham went up to sit with the pilot Raoul, who had said he would let him fly a little in level flight, Grant talked to Grointon.

  Jim Grointon, it came out slowly from both Grointon and William—like pulling teeth from Grointon; more effusively from the praise-filled William—was about as famous in The Trade as Villalonga, della Valle or the Pindar brothers. He owned his own boat in Kingston, which he had designed himself and had built there, a sort of sleek long catamaran which he could convert into a diving platform with a huge retractable waterglass for diving parties, and powered by two huge outboards. He specialized in free-diving and hardly ever used the lung anymore, though he kept them for clients, and could do a hundred to a hundred and ten or twenty feet free-diving.

  “Just holdin his breath!” William added unnecessarily. “Just think of what that means! A hundred and twenty feet below the waves! You know how far down that is? With no aqualung nor nothing!”

  Grointon smiled shyly, but not really shyly. He was obviously a hero of William’s. He did very well in Kingston, had a lot of diving clients who came back to him year after year, and was content to stay like that for the present.

  “But it gets pretty boring, you know, after a while,” he smiled at Grant. He had a strange smile with his pale eyes and blond lashes, a totally self-centered, non-caring, self
absorbed one, but with a strange secretiveness tucked away in it somewhere. There was almost an Irish cop quality about him. “Most of my clients just want to piddle around on the shallow reefs, spear a few parrotfish. There’s two or three wrecks for them to explore with aqualungs. After a while I get to feeling like a bus driver taking people over the same old route day after day.—

  “And that’s not why I got into this stuff in the beginning.” He paused again. “And it’s why I came along on this trip.”

  “Why did you get into it in the first place?” Grant asked.

  “Oh, adventure. Excitement. Danger. Taking chances. There’s no frontiers anymore. The Caribbean, and maybe the Pacific, they’re the only frontiers left. It makes you feel you’re alive.” Grointon raised his pale eyebrows. “Like it was in the war. Have you ever felt as alive since the war as you felt during it?”

  “No, I suppose not.” Grant said.

  “Well, that’s it, you see. Course, I’m lucky, I guess. Because I seem to have a natural talent for freediving for which I don’t really deserve any credit.”

  “What were you in the war?” Grant asked.

  “Merchant Marine; and then Coast Guard. I made the Murmansk run a couple of times.” He grinned. “Course, if diving was as dangerous as the war, I wouldn’t be doing it, either. Not voluntarily.”

  “Still, people get hurt.”

  “Not very many.”

  “I’d love a chance to get to see you make one of those deep dives,” Grant said. But he didn’t really care. Instead, he was strangely resentful.

  Grointon smiled his strange pale smile and shook his head. “You won’t. You probably won’t even see me and Raoul. There’s a big ethical question involved, and this is rather a ticklish situation. You’re Bonham’s client, and he’s coming to meet other clients. I can’t do anything that might make it look like I was trying to horn in on his customers.” Suddenly he shrugged, very muscular shoulders rippling under his clean white T-shirt. Again he smiled that smile. “So you won’t see much of us. I shouldn’t have come at all. But when Raoul asked me, I couldn’t resist. I’ve dived off Grand Bank and Mouchoir Reef. There’s some good stuff around there, if you know the spots.”