Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “I will not!” Lucky said. “Nobody talks to me like that.” And in the suite she dragged a suitcase out of the closet and threw it on the bed and began dumping clothes in it. Grant lay down on the other bed.— “Cut it out, Lucky,” he said tiredly. “Nobody means it. Tomorrow it’ll all be a joke to laugh over.”— “I certainly will not,” she said, and went on packing. “Nobody talks to my husband like that. Whether I love him or not.” And she did not desist until there was a tap on the door and René sneaked in quietly, all apologies.

  “You know, she is, ’ow they use to say, a lettel zigzag, hein?” he said. “It mean nossing.”

  “Are you apologizing?” Lucky said, still packing.

  “I am,” René said with great Gallic dignity. “I am apologize for Lisa, and for me, and for zee Grand ’Otel Crount, and for zee en-tire staff of zee Grand ’Otel Crount I beg you. Please to not to leave.”

  “All right,” Lucky said as evenly as she had been talking just before. “I’ll stay.” She began unpacking.

  “I see you in zee morning,” René said mournfully. “If all zee ’ead are not too large to get s’rough zee door.”

  “You leave me alone now,” Lucky said after René left. “I mean it. You stay away from me. I mean it seriously. It’s not that I’m mad at you. I’m not mad at you. But I’m not in love with you. It’s something else. I mean it. I don’t want you and you just leave me alone.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” Grant said.

  And on that note they went to bed on the extreme opposite sides of the pushed-together double beds.

  30

  SO EVERYTHING WAS just the same. And appeared that it would go right on being just the same. If Grant had expected some sort of reconciliation to be effected by Lucky’s sudden and fierce upholding of the family unit “Grant,” he was mistaken. As a matter of fact, Grant wasn’t even thinking that. He was thinking something entirely different, and the next day when he had sobered up and they had come down to be greeted by a smiling Lisa who did not even bother to apologize, he went on thinking about it. It was something that had come up midway in the argument between René and Lisa over how well or badly Grant had treated Lucky. It had to do with the word ‘whore’.

  Lisa had said something about that if Grant had treated her like he had Lucky, she would feel like a whore. René had countered with Gallic passion saying that she in fact was, that all women were, that this was nature, and what of it? A succinct and reasonable Gallic attitude. But Lisa’s use of that word had struck some particular thought chord in Grant, as if it were something that he ought to recognize and remember but could not quite. He had stuck it away, though, and held onto it, and the next day—next morning—when he was sober, while Ben and Irma and Lucky cavorted in the pool with Jim Grointon and some other guests, had tried with it again.

  Last night when Lisa made her comment about “feeling like a whore” Lucky had simply sat, in her bright-eyed drunkenness, and had not reacted. But at least several of their biggest and most desperate fights had had something to do with the word ‘whore’. He remembered that it was that word—‘whore’— uttered by Lucky, and only by Lucky—that had been the key to the scene the night of the nude swimming party at Sir John Brace’s villa, when Lucky had run weeping and crying: “I’m not a whore! I’m not a whore!” into the big stand-up closet and hidden herself. He remembered that it was that same word ‘whore’ another time which had caused a terrible fight one night late in bed when, drunk, he had been jealous over her ex-“Jamaican-lover,” Jacques. He had said it was like being married to a whore, to have all her ex-lovers running around. She had been furious. More, she had frozen—absolutely frozen. He remembered she had said in a strained, frozen voice: “But I never took money,” except from Raoul, she had added, who was rich and whom she intended to marry. It was all so ridiculous. And he remembered too the worst fight: the night she socked him in the nose with her purse and walked out of the hotel. He had been seriously wrong that time. But had the word ‘whore’ come up then too? No? He couldn’t remember. Anyway the reference was there, when he told about waking up stuck in up to his shoulders between the beds, and wondering what he had married. And he remembered now, too, that that was the first time he had noted, and been struck by, the total lack of proportion in her reaction, response. And now of course, since telling her about Carol, it was she who was constantly making the reference: “whore”; “hooker”; “New York lay”; “party girl”; “easy lay.” Guilt-complex? Self-hatred? Was it something about his having been Carol’s lover when he met her that made her feel he had thought of her as a whore? But it didn’t make sense. And he hadn’t. Christ, he’d loved her. It didn’t make sense. And it was about to wreck their marriage before it even got started, even got off the ground.

  Grant knew himself well enough, had studied himself well enough over the years, though he had never gone in for ‘Analysis’, to know that he himself had a sort of “rejection syndrome” built into his psyche that could be triggered by the slightest and often most inoffensive thing. Knowing it, he had gradually trained himself to control it but once in a while, usually when he was drunk and therefore less in control, some real or imagined “rejection” could turn him into a snarling, near-murderous animal. That was what had happened to him that night he had turned on Lucky over Jacques Edgar. (He had remembered how smug and self-congratulatory he had felt about fucking—about having fucked—Cathie Finer when he met Sam Finer; and he could reasonably assume Jacques Edgar felt equally as smug.) And at such times—if drunk— he was powerless to do anything about himself. Did Lucky have some uncontrollable thing like that about whores or being thought of as a ‘whore’? But nobody, but no-body, even possibly, ever thought of her as a whore.

  Grant cogitated, while watching Lucky have a laughing swimming-race with Grointon. If he didn’t trust her so much, the way she flirted with Jim—with damn near everybody— would rankle him. Had rankled him, in fact, a couple of times when he was half-loaded and less in control. Then suddenly the lightbulb in his head lit up and the bell rang. She was ashamed! She was ashamed of the life she’d led in New York. She was really ashamed! Ashamed like any little hick from anywhere who had been brought up on all the old bullshit morals. She was ashamed of “her past,” and all her lighthearted comments about all the men she’d had was a defense. She laughed to avoid admitting she was ashamed. She thought of herself as a whore secretly, apparently, but could not face or bear admitting that about herself to herself. So she turned it around and made it look as though Grant (or someone) thought of her that way—and then hated him (them) for it. What was more natural? And it was probably all as automatic and uncontrollable as Grant’s own “rejection syndrome.”

  Well. Well, but now that he knew it, what could he do about it? Not a damned thing, as far as he could see. He certainly couldn’t talk to her about it. Christ, it would take her at least two years of goddamned ‘Analysis’ to reach that point. Christ, a wife in analysis, like half the sons of bitches he knew. For Grant analysis, like religion, was simply self-indulgence for over seventy per cent of the people who engaged in it. And he found he absolutely hated the thought of any wife of his lying on some damned couch telling some ape of a shrink all of the sexual things about herself that she couldn’t tell him. Then there would be the damned Transference. Maybe he ought to talk to Ben about it? On the other hand, if she was so damned sure she was a ‘whore’, maybe she was one! And if she was, what could he do about that? The other half of the sons of bitches he knew were in that position. And now (one way or the other) he would be like all the other damned married novelists and playwrights and poets that he knew! The very damned thing he had been trying so hard all his life to avoid!

  Grant quit thinking about it and got up and ran across and dove in the pool. When he had swum the length of it underwater, he came up in the deep end and hung on the edge. Jim Grointon immediately came swimming over to him.

  “I got some good news for you!” the diver grinned.<
br />
  “What the hell kind of good news could you possibly have for me?” Grant said irritably.

  “Hey, hey! Does it bite?” Jim smiled softly.

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” Grant said, and grinned. “I’ve got a lot of heavy weights on my mind right now.”

  “Anything I could possibly help you with?”

  Grant stared at him. “Ha!” he exploded with a vicious snort. “I wouldn’t hardly think so! What’s your good news?”

  “Well, my client and our mutual friend the star quit me today,” Jim smiled. “So the boat’ll be free afternoons now.”

  “What happened?”

  Jim smiled his slow smile that sometimes could seem to be very superior. “Well, I took him to a new place yesterday, place I know down toward Morant Bay. And we saw some sharks.”

  “You did! How many?”

  “Only two or three. And they stayed out at the edge of visibility. You had to look sideways to be sure you saw them. There’s always a few hanging around that spot. Anyway, our friend pointed them out to me after a dive. I guess he thought I hadn’t seen them. I thought he wanted to shoot one, so I asked him if he’d like to try for one, though I couldn’t promise we’d be able to get close enough. He said absolutely not. Then after a couple more dives he said he was tired. Today he told me he’d decided not to go out again for a while, his wife was complaining because she wanted to do some touring. This morning they took a car and drove to Ocho Rios.” Jim opened his mouth and laughed silently behind narrowed blond lashes, and Grant suddenly liked him less for a moment or two. “I think I’ve lost him, what do you think?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Grant said. “Were they big ones?” He turned himself so his back was against the pool wall and let his feet float up and hung onto the pool edge above his head with both hands.

  “I couldn’t tell. They were always too far away to see them clearly. Usually down around there they’ll run from five to ten feet.”

  “Was that the place where you took us?” Grant asked.

  “No, not as far. And shallower. Bottom’s forty to maybe fifty-five in the corals. So that he could make it if he stretched himself.” He laughed silently again. “So old Jim and his catamaran is free again.”

  “Let me think about it.” Grant said. “Come have a drink with us before lunch and we’ll talk about it with Lucky.”

  “Okay,” Jim said affably.

  Grant continued to hang onto the pool edge for several silent moments, and Jim did not swim away. “I don’t understand you,” Grant said finally.

  “What?” Jim said. “Why?”

  “Surely you must have known beforehand that he would do just what he did. Given his personality, and his rather mediocre diving ability, used mostly ‘for show’ as you yourself said, he couldn’t very well have reacted about sharks in any other way. And yet you took him to a place where you knew sharks hang out.”

  Jim grinned. “You’re pretty damned smart, aint you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I just don’t understand. Not only all of that, when he pointed them out to you you asked him if he wanted to try and shoot one. You must have known that that was not the case, not the truth. So—you cost yourself about two weeks’ work, and two weeks’ income, at about twice the prices you were charging me you said, and for what? What did you gain?”

  Jim’s grin seemed to have stiffened, but only the tiniest bit. He looked more like an Irish cop than ever. “You are smart,” he grinned.

  “No, I just don’t understand what you gained. You’re also supposed to be a professional. That means taking care of your clients—any clients—and not letting anything happen to them, not letting them get into dangerous situations.”

  “He wasn’t in a dangerous situation. I knew those sharks wouldn’t come in.”

  “But he didn’t. Part of your code as a pro is also to make your clients feel safe and at ease. You’re supposed to teach them when they don’t know, not scare them off. I don’t understand what you gained that was so important to you that it was worth both losing the income and going back on what should be your ‘code.’”

  “I didn’t like him,” Jim said.

  “Then why didn’t you tell him so? And stop all that pussyfooting around and that bullshit?”

  “You can’t tell a customer you don’t like him. It’s bad for business. What if it got told around?”

  “It wouldn’t do you any more harm than what you did. You think he’s going to go around recommending you? Now? He’ll hate your guts from now.”

  “I’m a brave man,” Jim Grointon said.

  “I guess you are,” Grant said thoughtfully. He kicked his feet a little against the surface. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

  “And he’s a fink.”

  “I don’t like him, either,” Grant said. “But that’s not the point. He’s a male movie star. You’re a professional diver. He isn’t. I think you did it because he’s such a famous star. It pissed you off. You wanted what he had and knew you’d never get it.”

  Jim laughed again, this time out loud. “You’re probably right. I’ve got one customer who doesn’t want to do anything but shoot sharks. Now. He comes down every year just for that. That’s where I take him. He loves it now since I’ve taught him. He’s got a shark’s mouth twice as big as your head that he keeps on his office desk in New York.”

  “Good for him,” Grant said. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with our friend.”

  “It made a man out of him,” Jim said.

  “Our friend?”

  “No, my New York executive.”

  “Okay. Like I said, good for him.”

  “Did you ever shoot a shark?” Jim asked softly.

  Grant thought this over, and kicked his feet against the water surface. “No,” he said finally. “I played tag with a little one once that tried to steal my fish.” After a moment he added, “But I’ve always wanted to. Ever since I saw that one you took up in Grand Bank.”

  “Would you like to try for one?” Jim asked, in the same soft tone. He was grinning again now. “We could go down to that same place. There’s a coral bridge there, that they like to lay up under.”

  “Bonham told me that same thing,” Grant said. He kicked his feet a little more in the safe pool. “Why is that, anyway?”

  “Sharks can’t float,” Grointon said promptly. “They got no airbladder like an ordinary fish. They have to keep swimmin or they sink. So if they want to rest they have to lie on the bottom. I think they prefer coral overhangs and bridges because it makes them feel safer.

  “Listen, it’s not all that difficult or dangerous. That’s all in your head, and you can overcome it. The truth is, it’s hard to get close enough to one to get a spear in him. Sharks are cowards. And if they’re hit and not killed, they always run. The only thing in the sea that will attack you after it’s hit that I know of is a moray eel. Of course, there’s always the off chance of one coming after you—usually after you’ve speared a fish. But it’s really damned rare. And even if one does come after you, it doesn’t mean that you can’t handle it if you keep your head. It doesn’t mean you’re dead.”

  “It’s the word,” Grant said. “Shark. ‘The truth is’, as you said— The truth is, I’m scared shitless of the idea.”

  “Then don’t go,” Jim said softly.

  “Let me think about it,” Grant said. “We’ll talk to Lucky about it.— But for God’s sake don’t mention the shark-shooting to her!”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jim grinned.

  “Let me think about it,” Grant said.

  There was a strange, obscure, sexual (sexual in the sense that one’s manhood, balls, were involved) challenge in it somehow the way Jim had handled it, but Grant was not about to let himself be influenced by that. Childish dares (“I dare you! I dare you!”) had gone out of his life as far back as the war. But he found, when he did think about it, after Jim had swum away in the quiet, agitated pool,
that he didn’t have to think about it at all. He wanted to go, was going to go, and at least half of the reason was because he was pissed off at, and out of love with, his wife Lucky. Besides, as far back as Grand Bank and Jim’s shark there he had promised himself that someday he was going to have to at least try for one, before he quit. The opportunity was here. So why not now? It made nervous trickles of excitement and anticipation run up and down his legs and his back. He wasn’t even afraid. Apparently his anger and perpetual furious outrage over Lucky was every day pumping a great deal of aggressive adrenalin into his blood.

  So, he was back to the diving. Over lunch, which Jim took with them along with Ben and Irma, Lucky said she didn’t mind. And when Jim, laughing, said he had finally secured for her his English lord friend’s pair of big British Navy binoculars, she came out positively in favor of resuming the daily diving trips. Jim promised there should be a great many native fishermen where they were going. Lucky giggled, grinned, and flirted outrageously with every male present, then stared coldly at her husband. When Ben said he would like to go too, Grant stared significantly at Jim. Jim blinked to acknowledge he had caught the look, but only nodded affirmatively to Ben. It was perfectly all right with him if Ben came along as long as he paid the regular (non-star!) price. Later, he told Grant privately that there was absolutely no danger involved for Ben, he would guarantee it. Irma on the other hand cackled her crazy witch’s laugh and said she was not about to spend all her afternoons out on some damned boat since she couldn’t even swim. She would stay at the hotel by the shallow end of the pool and read, where she could dip when she got hot.

  Grant went over to the inside anchorage to help Jim bring the boat around that first afternoon, and it was on the way back around Port Royal that he asked about Ben. “Are you absolutely sure it’s okay for Ben to go? I wouldn’t want to put anybody else in a dangerous spot simply because of my own silly bullshit stunts.”— “I absolutely guarantee it,” Jim said. “Look. The very worst that could happen would be that one shark down there might come in to try and steal somebody’s fish. As for attacking a person, all you have to do is charge at them as if you were going to bite them and they’ll run. And we’ll all three be together, with guns. A spear in the gills will turn any damned shark away from Ben. Don’t worry. Ben’s a pretty cool cat. And you’re cool.”— “I’m not so sure I’m cool,” Grant said.— “Well, we’ll find out if you are, won’t we?” Jim grinned. —“But don’t you think we ought to tell Ben all this, too? Brief him?” Grant persisted.— “No. Don’t tell Ben anything,” Jim said. “He’s liable to tell his wife. And she would tell your wife. Ben’s going to be perfectly safe. I promise you.” Ahead of them the white beach loomed up, with the white bulk of the hotel behind it in the sun.