Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “Well, I think the two are basically incompatible. Intrinsically,” Lucky said flatly.

  “Maybe you’re right. Of course that could be called a typical woman’s viewpoint.” It was a sort of a polite sop, with a backhanded slap tacked on. He plucked at the towel edge again for a little while. “Anyway, I know that knowing him the few short years I have has completely and totally changed my whole life.”

  Something about the way he said that, that last, sounded stilted and false and irritated Lucky. “What about this weird woman? This Mrs Abernathy?” she said thinly. “I thought it was her who changed your life.”

  Doug plucked at the towel. “Well, she’s helped me some of course.” He paused. “But she’s not really very intelligent, you know. And Ron says she’s gotten worse and worse over the years. I’ve seen it myself, a little. She uh she sort of makes me think of all those old cunts. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton, old Mary Walker, Lucy Stone.”

  “All the old lesbians.”

  “Well if you want to put it that way yes I guess. She certainly hasn’t got much sex in her, I don’t think. And she doesn’t much like men.”

  “And yet all you fellows buzz around her like flies around some goddamned honeypot.”

  “No, and that’s what I wanted to tell you,” Doug said. “Don’t think that about Ron. Because it won’t be true. He’s his own man, believe me.”

  “I hope so. I hope I wouldn’t fall in love with anybody who wasn’t,” Lucky said.

  Doug was staring at her, and suddenly he gave a twisted lopsided grin. “You’re quite a gal.

  “Look. The old gal—Carol—‘Mom’—is hipped on all this mystical and metaphysical stuff. That’s been going on for eight years. She stumbled onto some book called Hermes Trismegatus in some New York occult bookshop and that started her off. And now she’s developed this theory, which is not original, that any artist or creative genius diminishes his vital energy, his force, his genius whenever he marries and takes on a wife and family.”

  “It’s not hard to see why she chose to believe that,” Lucky said.

  “Sure. She even goes so far as to say that every time you get laid, have an orgasm, and use your sexuality, don’t sublimate entirely, you’re diminishing your creative power. And maybe there’s some truth in it. I don’t know. How do I know? Hell, Gandhi believed it. But Ron’s not like that. And neither am I.”

  “My God!” Lucky said. “I should hope not.”

  Doug grinned a crooked grin. “Just the reverse, we’re probably the two most oversexed guys anybody’ll ever meet. Anyway, Ron’s at the stage of his career and life right now where he needs to get away from her, break her influence. He’s broken her influence; but he’s very loyal. The only thing that can break his loyalty to Carol and Hunt is a greater loyalty. And only love can give him that.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what I’d like to give him.”

  Doug nodded crisply. “Right. And between us, you and me, we can probably make him the greatest playwright America’s ever seen.”

  Lucky was first astonished, then shocked. “Yes? What would you do?” she said faintly.

  “Oh, be there when he needed me.”

  She felt this to be incredibly presumptuous. For several moments she didn’t answer. The white-hot sun beat down on both of them pulsatingly. She felt completely at sea, caught and pulled by currents and countercurrents she couldn’t understand.

  “Well look, Doug,” she said finally, and somewhat faintly, she noted. “I don’t give a good goddamn about any of all this stuff. All I know is I’m in love with Ron. I like him. I respect him. I admire him and what he wants to do. And what’s more, I trust him. And so, I’m going to fight for him. Any goddam way at all that I can. I’ll fight Mrs Abernathy, and her husband, and you too, and anybody else that’ll try to keep me from marrying him, if they do try. Anybody. If you’re on my side in that, okay. If you’re not, that’s okay too.”

  Doug was grinning at her with his twisted lopsided grin. It made his eyes appear smaller than usual. “You’re the kind of a girl any man in his right mind would give his right arm for,” he said huskily.

  “I don’t want any right arms. And I don’t want to make a ball collection. I’ve only been in love twice in my life before now. And both times I was so young and so green, and so cocky, that I couldn’t be in love. So in effect this is the first time I’ve ever really been in love. Nobody’s going to make me give that up if I can possibly help it.”

  Doug got up. “Anything I can do to help. And now I better be getting back aft. They’ll be coming up pretty quick. And I don’t want Ron to see me up here talking to you.”

  “Why not?”

  He paused at the edge of the cockpit roof and windshield, which came up just to his chest, and looked back at her over it. He was grinning again his lopsided strangely twisted grin that made his eyes look smaller. “Didn’t you know? Ron’s a very jealous man.”

  For several seconds in a kind of continuing silence which she could not bring herself up out of to speak, like a sudden lull after a heavy wind, Lucky watched him walk away from her without her answering his parting shot, though she was trying to. Then it was too late and he was gone. What did he mean? And what was he trying to imply? Her mind was an utter blank and she realized her mouth had fallen open.

  Later on she watched Doug go up to Grant after he had handed up his aqualung and climbed in over the side. Doug began to talk to him smiling and laughing, patting him on the back. There was this strange feeling that in some odd way Doug was trying to usurp, or had usurped, her man. Then she looked at Ron. Jealous? Could he really mean he believed Ron could be that jealous? To suspect something between his girl and his best friend, if he just saw them talking alone together? And if he didn’t mean that, what the fuck did he mean? She was suddenly angry.

  She would have been more angry if she had known the import of the so laughing and smiling conversation Doug was having with Grant. The gist of this was that he, Doug, had just spent a long time up forward talking to Lucky and that as a result he had fallen in love with her all over again.

  Grant, on the other hand, didn’t think anything about it one way or the other, and merely grinned and went on with whatever he was doing, which at the moment was getting himself a cold beer out of the icechest. He was now so much in love with Lucky himself that he actively expected all his friends to fall madly in love with her, except possibly, perhaps, the two Abernathys! So when he brought the subject of Doug up to her later in the afternoon when they were shopping for hamburger meat, it was because of something entirely different Doug had said.

  Standing beside him at the icechest, getting a beer for himself, Doug said, grinning: “And I don’t think she tumbled to our little routine about Carol at all. Not even a little bit.”

  That angered Grant. He didn’t want a conspiracy between himself and Doug against Lucky. He wanted help, and needed it, temporarily. But that wasn’t anything you talked about. Straightening up, putting on his face a narrow-eyed squinting stare as if against the sun, he fixed Doug with it. “I’m glad. But I don’t think you and me ought to talk about it.”

  “Of course, you’ll have to tell her eventually, sometime.”

  “I intend to tell her about it eventually, sometime. But I intend to tell her in my own time. When I’m ready,” he said flatly.

  Doug had ducked his head and nodded. “Of course.”

  “And whether you go over with me to see Carol or not, that part of it isn’t any of your business I don’t think.”

  Doug said: “Of course it’s not.”

  “Then just don’t forget it.”

  Throwing his head back, he had taken a long-swallowing, silent, pregnant-with-meaning drink from the neck of his open beer bottle. Curiously, almost ludicrously, Doug had done exactly the same. And it was this little exchange which later prompted him to say to Lucky what he said about Doug, later when they were shopping for hamburger meat.

  They were
shopping for hamburger meat because, partly to avoid spending money sillily, partly because she had come to dislike intensely Bonham’s hangout The Neptune Bar, Lucky had suggested she make her spaghetti bolognese for them all tonight at Bonham’s house. The New Yorkers were leaving too soon to take part, but the suggestion was met with enthusiastic approval on board on the run back in, approval almost bordering on the wild and in the case of the almost-idiot Orloffski who whooped joyfully and almost jumped overboard to show his pleasure. Bonham was pleased too, but pointed out that almost certainly none of the ingredients including the canned Italian tomatoes Lucky wanted would be available at his house, and this was not one of his wife’s days off. So Grant and Lucky were shopping.

  Grant could not have not gone with her. She didn’t know her way around, she was not used to driving on the left side, a whole bunch of things. But the thought of going made him exceedingly nervous as he drove them down. It was, in fact, the first time they had been into the town together, except for The Neptune Bar at night, which was on the other, inland side of town and on the outskirts, anyway. And sure enough, after he had parked, and just as they were approaching the “New” Chinese Supermarket, “New” meaning it had been started six years ago, the first in Ganado Bay, they ran head-on into Evelyn de Blystein and her fat Jamaican maid coming out of it, shopping also.

  Grant introduced them.

  “Well,” the Countess Evelyn said in her gravel voice, studying Lucky with her sharp, perpetually squinted eyes and all of the great, dedicated gossip’s relish, “So this is Ron’s new Girl Friend I’ve been hearing so much about. Hello, my dear.”

  Insanely for a moment Lucky felt like curtsying. Instead she stuck out her hand. Evelyn took it and then patted it with her other seamed, veined, immaculately turned-out hand. “My dear, you are Lucky, you’ve picked yourself a guy who obviously has great taste in girls.”

  Grant could almost hear her smacking her lips. But in spite of that he somehow knew she was on his side. Something dirty in her eyes made him know he had an ally here. He took the bull by the horns and told her they were leaving tonight for Kingston for two weeks.

  The Countess smiled narrowly and with pleasure with her eyes. “I suggest you stay at the Sheraton,” she said. “All the bedrooms there are air-conditioned. And please think once or twice of dear old Auntie Evelyn while you’re having uh fun.

  “Bye-bye, children.”

  “That’s the Countess where your Mrs Abernathy’s staying?” Lucky said, unable to resist looking back at her. Evelyn was looking back at them. She waved. Lucky waved back.

  “Yes,” Grant mumbled.

  “I would certainly say that you have an ally there,” Lucky said. Then she laughed. “Or rather, I would say that certainly I have an ally there!”

  “If you mean,” Grant grinned, “that she would recommend to you that you marry me, I’m not so sure.”

  “I think she would,” Lucky said and impulsively took his arm, at which gesture he was unable to glance nervously around. In spite of that he was proud, idiotically, insanely proud, at having had the chance to show her off to Evelyn.

  Evelyn had mentioned Doug, how was he, and it was this, as they walked on toward the “New” Chinese Supermarket, that reminded him to tell her about Doug what the little incident at the icechest had made him decide he wanted to tell her about him.

  “Incidentally, since she mentioned Doug, it reminded me there was something I wanted to tell you, straighten you out on about him.”

  Lucky’s ears got alert. She was remembering Doug’s jealousy speech. Was this it, now? “Yes?” she said.

  “It’s true he’s a friend of mine. A good friend. But he’s very strange in a lot of ways. He loves to put his nose in everybody’s everything. He likes to manipulate people, be a Svengali. He thinks he’s a great behind-the-scenes manager. There’s a lot of things about him I don’t trust, and I don’t want you to trust him completely. Don’t think that I do.”

  Lucky waited. And as she did she felt anger growing in her head making her ears hot. What kind of a cheap cowardly beating-around-the-bush was this? “Yes?” she said again finally when he didn’t go on, but this time with more tension.

  “That’s all. I wanted to warn you. There’s a lot of things about him that just aren’t straight.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t go into it all right here, now. But for one thing, he’s got a real thing about me, fixation, in some strange way.”

  “Are you trying to tell me—in some roundabout way—that he might try to make me?” Lucky said flatly.

  “What?” Grant said. “No.” He paused. “Well, yes. Maybe he might, at that.” He paused again. “No. No, I don’t think he’d do that. But he—”

  “Because you certainly picked a hell of a fine time to tell me after leaving me around in his company so much for the past five days.”

  “What?” Grant said. “What do you mean?”

  “Also, I find it somewhat peculiar, this way you have of picking for your ‘best’ friends people whom you can’t trust not to try to make your girl the moment you turn your back.” She was furious and her ears were burning.

  “Hey, now just wait a minute! That wasn’t what I was—”

  “In addition,” she went on, interrupting again, “I must tell you I find myself considerably insulted that you feel you need to explain this to me and warn me, that you do not trust me enough to know beforehand I would take care of such a thing automatically.”

  Grant stopped in the middle of the street, for all the world like some goddamned mule. “Aw, come on! I don’t need that kind of shit about that! I didn’t say one damn thing about—”

  “Whether you know it or not,” she said, but feeling foolish now, which only made her more furious, “and whatever you may think you know about me, I am not the kind of girl who generally makes a practice of going out with more than one man at a time.” This was not strictly the entire truth, she reflected, but it was near enough to it to be truthful.

  Grant was still standing in the middle of the street. “Now just shut up a minute!” he commanded, and he didn’t say it quietly. Several incurious Jamaican folk glanced at them briefly. “I don’t know what got you off on this. But you misunderstood me. Anyway, this is not the time or place for this kind of a discussion. If you want, I’ll take that up with you later. Right now we’re supposed to be shopping. There are people all around looking at us.”

  “Largely because you don’t know how to talk quietly!” Lucky said furiously. He had planted himself solidly in the street, and his irises were blazing behind narrowed lids. “Just shut up!” he hissed, and grabbed her arm and hustled her inside the supermarket. God, he was really beautiful when he was angry! she thought as he pulled on her arm.

  The icy cold stiffness between them that resulted from this last move, his dragging of her into the supermarket, lasted all through the rest of the shopping expedition; and it continued in the car all the way home to Bonham’s house. Grant could not understand what had gotten into her, and obviously in her present state of anger she was not about to tell him. God, one really knew so little about anyone else, he thought glancing at her. She had really gotten really mad, over something. At the house he helped her carry all the groceries into the kitchen, where she set about beginning to make her spaghetti sauce without another single word to him. Doug was waiting for him in the livingroom with Bonham and Orloffski.

  “Well, what do you say we get this fucking show on the road?” he growled as he came up to them, and selected one of the several full, open bottles of beer on the table. He drained off two-thirds of it without a breath. He felt better.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Doug said easily. Bonham, Grant noted, was grinning at him—at himself, at Grant—a grin marked by a great deal of relish, and by much more of the voyeur’s simply “scientific” interest than of sympathy. Well, normal enough, he thought sourly, but could not be just sure whether it was over his fight with Lu
cky or over his proposed visit to Carol Abernathy. Clearly, they had been talking about him. Orloffski, of course, was as usual not aware of anything but his own beery self.

  “We should be back in an hour,” Grant said to Bonham, and grinned himself. A look of something passed between them. He turned on his heel. Then he went back to the kitchen doorway. “I’ll see you in a while,” he said to Lucky. He did not get an answer.

  They took Grant’s car. On the way across the bright, sun-hot, dusty, always insufficiently shaded town he thought about that strange look that had passed between him and Bonham, a look which Bonham had flashed him and which he had unconsciously, automatically reciprocated. What did it mean? As he crossed the little viaduct (it could hardly be called a bridge) across the broad flat bed of the town’s river, only a trickle now but which could become a torrent whenever a tropical rainstorm hit the hills behind, he felt he was moving into enemy territory.

  “I’m going to tell Carol I’m going down to Kingston alone,” he said finally as they started up the hill. “She doesn’t know Lucky’s here. We ran into Evelyn in town this afternoon. But I’m sure, somehow, she’s not going to mention it to Carol.”

  “She’s going to mention it to everybody else though,” Doug said. “Eventually.”

  “I don’t care about that. I’ll be long gone. That I can take care of later. But I think it’s better all around to say I’m going by myself. It’ll cause less misery and unhappiness.”

  Doug said: “Okay by me. It’s your play.” Then suddenly he turned and smiled at Grant warmly. Underneath his smile there was a giggly look in his eyes of excitement over the prospect of the “Action” before them. “I’ll back your play, Ron. Whatever way you want to carry it.”

  Grant could feel the adrenaline working in himself now, too. The excitement itself was actually pleasant. “Well, I think that’s the way to do it,” he concluded. They were almost at the villa.

  That was not the way it worked out, however. The way it worked out could hardly have been worse.

  They found almost nobody in evidence at the villa, and wandered in and through the great salon and then out onto the terrace, then back in and up the grand staircase toward the bedrooms. They could have been robbers or kidnappers. Evelyn was not around, Hunt and the Count Paul were out, none of the hired help appeared to ask who they were. The place appeared deserted. Carol they found in her bedroom working. She was editing a play by some member of the Hunt Hills Little Theatre Group which had been mailed on to her, using a red pencil with huge bold strokes which stood out from the page like a series of slaps in the face. She was cutting and slashing and scribbling all over it, as had increasingly become her way since Grant had built the theater for her. The table where she was working was set against the double French windows, so that all they could really see of her was a silhouette in which the whites of her two large dark eyes showed dimly.