Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “My my! Don’t get angry!” Heath smiled.

  “I’m not angry, Heath,” Grant said and started on.

  “And I just wanted also to tell you,” Heath called after him, “that I just learned that Mrs Abernathy is staying with the Countess de Blystein in Ganado Bay.”

  Grant stopped and swung around.

  “In case you didn’t know,” Heath smiled.

  “So?”

  “Naturally, it made me wonder why you didn’t invite her and her husband down for the wedding?” the Contributing Editor said softly, still smiling.

  “You figure it out,” Grant said. “You’re so fucking smart, you figure it out for your fucking self. And now for Christ’s sake, leave me alone!” He turned on his heel.

  Shit on them, he thought as he followed Lucky’s deliciously swinging bottom and long straight back into the candlelit bar where everybody was getting up from the set-up dining tables to applaud the newlyweds, fuck them all. All of them.

  When the phonecall came in from Ganado Bay three days later, he was not so surprised and it was as if he had been anticipating it. And when Doug came up the steps and across the porch the day after, he was reasonably sure what he had come for. He was glad Lucia Angelina Elena Vivendi Grant knew all about the phonecall.

  Then, as he charged across the porch to say hello to Doug, he saw the big lumbering bearlike figure of Al Bonham, who had been discussing something with the cabdriver, start up the steep angled steps a few yards behind Doug.

  24

  BECAUSE OF THE FLATTENING of the angle of sight across the porch from where she was sitting back against the house wall with their new friends, Lucky did not see Bonham until she had already waved and smiled and yelled at Doug. She was always glad to see Doug, for some reason that she could never quite define, but she remembered she was always just as glad to see him go away. This was not the case with Bonham. When his huge head appeared over the edge of the porch, and then was followed on up by his great Kodiak-bearlike body (that was the only way you could really describe him), she thought Oh no! and the intermittent kind of half-despair she had been feeling off and on since the day of the wedding came back over her, more strongly. Now they would have that big oaf hanging around, drinking up Ron’s money, trying to sell Ron something, taking him out diving or some damned thing, like that Goddamned yacht of his, sporting his only too open dislike of her, which she returned. She and Ron had little enough time together now as it was.

  Grant, she noted, was shaking Bonham’s hand just as happily and with just as much pleasure as he had shaken Doug’s.

  Lucky could not say what it was that caused her to feel this half-despair and depression every now and then. Usually there wasn’t even a reason, such as the presence of Bonham now gave her. It would just come over her, perhaps out on the boat, or at dinner, or at the pool, anywhere, anytime, and while she continued to laugh, or pretend to do whatever it was she had been doing, some other part of her would go on wondering with a gritty taste for minutes if it all wasn’t some huge ghastly joke of a terrible mistake. Christ, how long had they known each other, after all? Two months? Six weeks? What could she possibly know about him in that length of time? Or he her? All of this would taper off, down into a pungent melancholy in her that would last a long time, and wherever she was she would look for him quickly, and go and take his hand, or perhaps just touch him, the Hansel-and-Gretel babes-in-the-woods feeling coming over her again. The melancholy would linger on, like an echo.

  It all had to do, of course, with whether she had misplaced her love. By placing it all on him. And how could she be sure she hadn’t? Only when she read, or reread, the work he had done. But he hadn’t done any new work now since they had met. And didn’t show any signs of being about to do any. Maybe she should have waited, damn him.

  It was essentially this feeling of terrible double-mindedness that had caused her to get so kooky hysterical the day of the wedding. She had at the eleventh hour—eleventh hour? twelfth hour!—suddenly discovered that she did not want to get married, not married at all. And if it had been anybody but Ron, she by God wouldn’t have. And yet she did. Did want to. The condemned girl ate a hearty lover. And when Lisa, who when she egged her on in her rebellious kid’s play also taught her conclusively that she had not been all that happy all these years either, got her to giggling and sniggering, she couldn’t stop, or help herself, even though she knew what she was doing. And that was why she loved him so for his serious, pompous, Boy Scout’s lecture.

  The strange thing was, and they had both discussed it—both before and after—they were fooling the whole world by getting married. Because getting married could not—and did not—legalize their sex life. That would—and it did—remain just as dirty and good as before. Neither did getting married give them any more social responsibility. They would pretend all that—and they did—when they went demurely before the US consul, and why not? If anybody found out, they might very well be fined and imprisoned. And they laughed a lot over their hoax. But at the same time she was terrified of and resented marrying any goddamned man. Of course, she was no spring chicken at twenty-seven-nearly-twenty-eight either, and she had to remember that.

  And it was these same incongruous unmatchable feelings that had been in her that afternoon after the ceremony when she had told him that someday she was going to cuckold him. She was angry at him for his having let her marry him so easily. It was right and proper for men not to want to get married, and for women to want to marry them, that was life, women were nest-builders, men were rovers, and Ron hadn’t wanted to get married; but he hadn’t done enough about it, damn him. After the ceremony, she had been appalled by the enormity, the irrevocability, of what she had done to herself. Putting herself in some man’s hands forever, in some man’s power. And lying there in the bed with her eyes shut but aware of him leaning over her, after they had made love, their first married one, and looking ahead down the long long stretch of years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years, crystal anniversary, silver anniversary, golden anniversary, how could any two people stay faithful to each other all that time, she had never seen it. So it just slipped out. She knew the minute she said it she shouldn’t have. And she didn’t even mean it. But she was so angry.

  The unexpectedness of his answers interested and amused her. She understood that he didn’t mean it, that it was fantasy. She understood about fantasy, she had played fantasy games before, and would again—and had—with Ron: the cold princess ordering her slave to go down on her, the slave girl being ordered to go down on the prince, the audience game. There was nothing wrong with playing fantasy. The only thing wrong with fantasy was when you actually tried to indulge your fantasies and really do them, make them real. But then coming down the stairs he had acted as though he thought she didn’t understand. The poor dear was suddenly angry because he was ashamed of what he’d said. That was when she had reached back to take his hand. She just as suddenly wasn’t angry any more.

  The whole thing was over before it started anyway, with that goddamned Time-man standing there at the foot of the stairs. As she walked on ahead of them, she could hear Ron’s voice telling him off loudly. He told her about the whole thing at dinner. So neither was she surprised when the phonecall came from Carol Abernathy three days later. And she, like Grant, was pretty sure, when she saw Doug, of what at least part of his mission was going to be. But not with Bonham.

  The phonecall itself was a strange and pathetic thing, really. It had come directly in to the suite, and she had been in the room with Ron when he took it. Here was this poor woman, ousted from his life, and after throwing that terrible fit they had all of them laughed about so at Bonham’s, calling up to ask for help. Ron had been very noncommittal.—“Yes, a Time-guy? A local?” He listened. “Well, there’s nothing to worry about. . . . No, I don’t know him. But I know the guy who started it. Yes. Bradford Heath. No, you don’t know him. I met him in New York.. . . I’m not sure we can come up there. And I don�
�t think it’s necessary. . . . All right. I’ll think about it. But I don’t think it’s necessary. What? . . . Yes, I know Evelyn is inviting us. You must remember that my main responsibility right now is my wife, Carol. And what’s good for her. . . . Well, that’s just the way it is. You what?” He had taken the phone down from his ear and looked at her, Lucky. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “All right,” she’d said calmly. “I’ll talk to her.” But she noticed as she took the phone that her stomach was suddenly fluttering. “Hello?”

  The sweet, utterly charming voice came back with its distinctive Middlewestern nasal twang, urging her to come back up to GaBay and make the visit. “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Of course, it’s all up to Ron really. I’ll do whatever he says.”

  “Well, you talk to him,” Carol Abernathy said charmingly. There was a smile in her voice as if they two, being women, understood. “He’s peculiar sometimes.” . . . “No, I have nothing more to say to him. Goodby, dear.”

  Lucky hung up. She stood silent for several moments. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t go up there, really,” she said finally.

  “I don’t know,” Ron had said, with a hollow look. “I just don’t know. I’ll think about it. Maybe we could. But she’s a nut, you know.”

  “She sounded perfectly charming.”

  “Oh, sure. She could charm a wood dog.”

  “What can she do to hurt us?”

  “Nothing,” he exploded. “Not a fucking damn thing!” He took her in his arms. That was the way it stayed.

  Lucky got up. “Please excuse me,” she said now to the musical comedy writer and her husband, and the young analyst and his designer wife. “Surely you know Doug Ismaileh? Or know of him? I’ll introduce him to you. The other one, the big one, is Ron’s first diving teacher and Ron has a special soft spot for him which I for one think entirely undeserved.” My God, she thought. She was beginning to act like a real wife and hostess. With good grammar even, yet.

  At the table, after the introductions and after the two newcomers had sat down, it came out soon enough what Bonham was doing down in Kingston, but Doug hung back and apparently didn’t want to talk in front of the others—which was perfectly correct, Lucky thought. He had just wanted to come down and spend a few days with them, see how they were doing, he said, before going on back to Coral Gables.

  But later, after all the others including Bonham had gone off, Doug still hung back. He continued to hang back until Ron told him forcefully that she, Lucky, his wife, knew all about the goddamned phonecall. That puzzled her.

  But in the meantime, while they were all still there, Bonham had taken over the floor, rather expertly, and he held it expertly, with a persuasive wit and charm Lucky had never seen in him before, once he had been introduced to the famous musical comedy writer and her husband and to the analyst and his wife. When he first came up, he had looked at her with those strange stormcloud eyes of his and that knowing grin, and had said, expansively, “Well, Mrs Grant! Please accept all of my very best wishes.” You couldn’t fault that. But behind that it seemed to Lucky he was saying to her privately with the eyes and the grin Well, baby, you finally made it, hunh? and I just wish to hell you weren’t here. But Ron of course did not notice that.

  The upshot of all that Bonham had to say, and he seemed to assume that the four new acquaintances would be as interested in it all as Ron, Lucky and Doug, was that he had already been in Kingston two days finalizing the purchase of the schooner, that he had arranged to meet Doug at the airport and come to see them when he learned from Doug in GaBay that they were married and Doug was coming down to see them, and that he would like for them all to come down to the yard and have a look at the ship. He had managed to make them come down a thousand dollars on the price after he had seen her (He very carefully did not say “Jew them down” since it was clear the four new acquaintances were all Jewish). This was largely because the extent of the dryrot damage in the bow was worse than had been anticipated.

  “So-o-o, it looks like instead of two thousand or fifteen hundred,” he said with a wry smile, “our yard bill is gonna run five thousand or six. Anyway, I’d like for all of you to come down and look her over up on the cradle if you’d like to. You folks too,” he added politely to the four New Yorkers.

  It didn’t take much for Lucky to see through that. It was Ron he wanted to get down to the harbor to look that boat over, and he didn’t give a good goddamn if anybody else went or not.

  “Well, I’d love to go,” she smiled. “I’d love to see it.” Doug and Ron, of course, were both enthusiastic. The other four wanted to go too, but it turned out they had made an appointment to drive up into the hills and have lunch at the Blue Mountain Inn today, a beautiful hidden-away retreat-like place where she and Ron had had dinner once. It was decided to do it tomorrow, tomorrow during the morning, but it seemed to Lucky that Bonham’s nose seemed a little out of joint. She was glad.

  “What are you doin this afternoon?” he asked Ron.

  “Well, we’ll probably go out again with old Jim Grointon,” Ron said. “We’ve been out with him every day except our wedding day. Whyn’t you come and go along?”

  Bonham grinned a wolfish grin. “I’m not so sure it’s the proper thing to do. Since we’re sort of competitors, you know.”

  “You’re not competitors in Kingston. What the hell, I’m payin for the goddam boat. I can ask anybody I like along as a guest.”

  “Okay, I’ll go. If it’s okay with Grointon. Look, I’ve got a few things to do over at that yard on the other side of the spit. I’ll go there and do that and meet you back here—when?”

  “Oh, twelve-thirty?”

  “Fine.”

  Then just the three of them, herself, Doug and Ron, were alone together. And still Doug went on with his holding back and hedging, which surprised her.

  He talked about nothing for fifteen minutes, until Ron insisted he get to his point “Look, we know who sent you down here. Come on.”

  “Well, I—” He stopped and looked at Ron.

  “Well, come on,” Ron urged fiercely, his eyes squinting. “What is it? Lucky knows all about that phonecall. She even talked to her. Didn’t you know that? Shit, you must have been standing right there.”

  Doug seemed to blink without blinking. “Oh, it wasn’t that I just wasn’t going to tell you I’d ‘been sent’, as you say. Because I wasn’t really. I was going to come around to it gradual-like, and tell you what I thought.

  “Anyway, all of them up there including Carol think you and Lucky ought to come back and stay there a week or two. Just to show there’s no hard feelings between you and them. And I sort of think so too. This local Time-guy’s been bugging Carol every day for a statement about your marriage, and he’s getting very pushy. She gave him a statement saying she thought it was a fine thing, but that’s not what he wants, says he could have anticipated that. He’s convinced there is hard feelings, and he wants to get a statement out of her to that effect, which would make more interesting news than what she said. Meantime, he spends his spare time marlin-fishing. He’s havin a ball.”

  “Well, there were hard feelings,” Lucky put in. “My God!”

  “Yes, but there’s no point in lettin these people publicize it in their fucking rag,” Doug said.

  “He’s right there,” Ron said, “damn it.” But he looked doubtful. “I know who’s behind all this,” he said to Doug. “I’ll point him out to you. Name is Heath. He’s a Contributing Editor or some damn thing. He’s the one who sent that local guy up there.”

  “Well, I think you ought to do it,” Doug said. “If Lucky doesn’t mind.” He swung his strange, enigmatic, Turk’s eyes onto herself.

  “I told him I was willing to go,” Lucky said. “It probably won’t be pleasant. But it can’t do anybody any harm for a week or so.”

  “Oh I don’t know,” Ron said thoughtfully. “But I spose we ought to do it.” He looked at Doug.

  Lucky fou
nd herself angry at Doug. “Well, I said I’d go!” she said hotly. Then she straightened up and smiled. Jim Grointon was coming up the steps. “Oh, hello, Jim! Here we are.” Then when she saw he was empty-handed, she made a face. She had been teasing him for two days to borrow an even larger pair of Navy binoculars from some English lord friend of his who ran the anchorage on the other side of the spit, and which he had inadvertently told her about. She loved to tease his prudery. “You didn’t bring my Navy binoculars?”

  Grointon reddened, and grinned. Ron laughed and told Doug about her anatomical study of chocolate penises. When the two were introduced, Lucky watched them shake hands somberly, taking each other in, studying each other. Men always did that. Like two strange dogs in the street. It both irritated her and made her want to laugh.

  There was something very physically attractive about Jim Grointon that Lucky couldn’t quite put her finger on. And in spite of all his prudery there was a cold, bitchy quality, an egocentric indifference about him that back in the old days with Raoul—or, back anytime before Ron Grant—would have made her want to take him and deliberately coldbloodedly fuck him once or twice, make real love to him a couple of times, then cast him aside like a tattered used old flour sack just to see how he would react. It was pretty clear he was the one who was used to doing the casting aside. And she was completely confident he had never laid a woman as goodlooking and beautiful as herself, or who was as accomplished in bed as she was. How would that affect his cold bitchiness? In the old days she might have done it. Once driving in Jersey on a summer Sunday with some musician friends, professional classical musicians—violinists, harpists, cellists, who all made a good living for themselves in New York playing all the concerts and classical record dates, and with whom she had run around for a year or so—she had been standing in front of a rag-tag motordrome a cocky, dirty, arrogant young fellow wearing sideburns and Levis, black jacket and boots, clearly a lowclass cat of some totally uneducated kind, who obviously thought he was a ladies’ man, and maybe was even hung well (certainly he was muscular enough), and she had had somewhat the same feeling about him as she had about Jim Grointon. He had obviously never screwed any kind of a lady before, and she had wanted to coldbloodedly take him on as a one-or-two-night-stand stud and then gently but firmly throw him away. She had told her musician friends her fantasy. Her friends had urged her to do it, saying they would all go back to the motordrome and, while pretending to watch the motorcycle performance, really watch her. But she had not done it that time, either. Sticking to her theory that fantasy indulged is not only fantasy lost but might also be actively dangerous, she had declined. But Jim Grointon made her feel somewhat that same way, and so she didn’t really like Jim that much better than Bonham after all. Except that she did.