Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “Do you intend to go right on going out with Jim in the afternoons then?” she asked finally, after she had gotten unabashed into her shorty nightie. She deliberately veiled her voice, so as not to make the question sound too important. Grant of course always slept nude.

  “Certainly,” he said from the table where he was pouring himself a last drink. “Why not?”

  “What I said to you about Jim the other night didn’t change the way you treat him much,” she said.

  “You think I intended to let Grointon know how he’s managed to fuck up my homelife?” he said. “You ought to know by now I’m far too proud for that. And anyway, it isn’t his problem. Even if he is madly stuck on you. It’s your problem. And maybe mine.”

  Lucky got into her side of the two big beds and under the sheet without answering this. “I guess that’s correct,” she said finally from the bed. “And anyway, it wasn’t Jim who ‘fucked up your homelife,’ as you so delicately put it.”

  If she expected this to be a hard parting shot, there was no visible evidence that it worked. If she expected an answer, she did not get one. True to his word, they went out the next day again, spearfishing from the catamaran. Ben and this time Irma too both went along. Lucky occupied herself once again with her binoculars, studying the naked native fishermen, more to make Ron angry than for any other reason. She did love him a little sometimes—or, at least, once in a while some small tendril of what she had once felt for him touched at her lightly somewhere inside. And that was why she wanted to hurt him.

  Bonham (and his sidekick Orloffski) did not show up at the hotel all that day, and they did not appear that night either. They had apparently disappeared into the interior of the schooner and intended to stay there. So they dined alone that night, with Jim Grointon naturally, and with Ben and Irma, who appeared almost visibly disturbed. Not so Jim. He apparently couldn’t have been happier. And he insisted on picking up the check. He spent most of the evening loudly extolling Ron’s increasing prowess as a free-diver and spearfisherman.

  It was after two more days and nights like this, days spent out on the catamaran, nights spent eating and drinking with Jim and the Spicehandlers, that Lucky, fuming and boiling inside with the tension and at the same time extreme boredom of it all, made her little proposition. She didn’t want this kind of life, hadn’t ever wanted it, with this kind of people, and she hadn’t expected to have this kind of life when she married Ron Grant. She had thought that eventually they would live in New York, maybe spend a year or two in Europe. She was sick of it and of all of them.

  She didn’t know what ‘devil’ in her made her do it. It was the same ‘devil’ Jim had in him. Grant had had it too. Ron. Ron had had it, the ‘devil’, in him when she first had met him. But now that had changed somehow. After the dinner and a couple of drinks at the bar, Ben and Irma had said they felt like going into town to the illegal “casino” for a little roulette and chemin de fer. Ron had said no. He wanted to get to bed early tonight, he was tired from the day’s spearfishing and diving, and he didn’t feel like going out gambling.

  It was then that Lucky heard herself, almost as if it were some totally different person, another voice, offering a counter proposition.

  “But it’s only twelve-thirty. Everybody else wants to go. Why don’t you just go on to bed, and I’ll go on in and gamble a while with Ben and Irma and Jim. Jim’ll look after me.” The voice she heard was a little giggly, and about half, or less than half, say thirty percent, teasing.

  Grant’s, Ron’s, voice was totally calm when he answered. But a tiny tickle of intense warning somewhere in her made her intensely aware that beneath the calm was a lot more of something entirely else.

  “No, I think I’d rather have you stay with me,” he said. “And you really do look pretty tired yourself, as a matter of fact.” He smiled at her friendlily, lovingly.

  “All right. If you say so,” Lucky said.

  “I don’t think I’ll go either,” Jim Grointon smiled. “If we want to get a full day’s diving in tomorrow, I better get some sleep myself.” But he hadn’t said that before.

  As she followed Grant, Ron, docilely to the suite she thought that at least she could now be reasonably sure he wasn’t pushing her at Jim, anyway.

  After they had undressed, he turned to her and spread his arms out slightly from his sides, palms toward her. “I want to make love to you tonight,” he said in a voice that seemed quietly full of despair. “Not just fuck. Make love to you.”

  “All right, Ron. I want to make love to you too,” she said. She moved toward him and toward the bed. “Tonight,” she heard herself add. Tonight I want it, but of course ‘it’ was him. He did not answer, as he lay down beside her. Then he moved over her. Next day the Finers arrived and everything changed again.

  The advent of the Finers changed quite a lot of things, but it did not change Lucky’s basic problem. She still didn’t know. She . just . did . not . know. If she loved him at all, a little bit, once in a while, as when he had put his arm around her and given her that grin in his excitement over the schooner, it was still not enough to overcome the deep cold anger in her for him, not enough to melt at all the thick layer of dry ice she felt herself encased in. She could not love him as she had before. She could not forget that he lied to her, and therefore would always be able to lie to her. She was not a whore! Distrust. And she had thought it was all pure. She had believed Carol Abernathy was important to his work, he had led her to believe that. Had told her that. The coming of the Finers could not change any of that.

  The Finers had hit Kingston Jamaica and the Grand Hotel Crount like one of the Caribbean’s proverbial hurricanes. There was no hotel jeep for Sam Finer. He had wired ahead from New York for a private limousine, even though the Crount was only three miles from the airport. And that was the way the Finers arrived.

  Grant, Ron, had briefed her on them long before they arrived, but she still did not expect what she saw when they came up the steps from the limousine, moved in, were introduced, and began making themselves at home. Ron had for instance told her how very much in love they were, and how good a thing it was for them, both of them, but the moment Lucky saw them together when they sat down on the veranda for their first drink while the houseboys carried up their bags, she knew instinctively and intuitively that they were not in love at all. Instead, they obviously hated each other’s guts. There was a sullen, long-suffering look on Cathie Finer’s face that made this plainly evident, at least to Lucky. And how anybody could be in love with Sam Finer anyway was more than she could figure. Grant, Ron, had also told her that she might in fact know, or at least have met, Cathie Finer around New York. Lucky found that she did indeed know her, and know her better than just a few casual meetings. Cathie Finer, or Cathie Chandler as her name had been then, was one of the bigger Writer-Fuckers of Manhattan Island. One of the biggest, though she had never been a member of “The Club.” The old Club. All of this brought back all sorts of old memories to Lucky—memories that, in her present situation, with Grant, with Ron, left her feeling terribly low and depressed: to remember that old life she had thought she was through with forever. And she knew intuitively and surely, though she could not have said just how, that at some point or other Cathie Finer—Cathie Chandler—had fucked Ron Grant, or Grant, Ron, had fucked her. Now that complicated matters now, didn’t it?

  Ron had also briefed her on the “self-made-man” “diamond-in-the rough” guy that was Sam Finer, who was putting up, who had put up, $10,000 to buy the Naiad and start the company, and who was very likely to put up $10,000 more, or so Bonham had said. Even so she was not prepared for the crude, loud, totally selfish, hard-eyed, sly-faced tough-nut of a little guy who deliberately squeezed her hand too hard when he shook hands with her and grinned hello. She couldn’t believe it. She had hoped that at least here, with the Finers, there would be somebody nice to be along with, if they had to go on this damned trip. Ron could seem to collect more creeps, oddballs,
and generally unpleasant people around him than anybody she had ever met, or maybe it was just that this sort of life, of diving and sailing and all that junk, abounded with those types. In much the same way that Orloffski had looked around the hotel to see if there was one man there he couldn’t whip, Sam Finer now looked all around the hotel to see if there might be one man there who might be richer than himself. He obviously found none. And this seemed to please him. After all, most clients of the Crount were artists or in the entertainment world in some form and while they all made good livings they were none of them millionaire financiers. Sam Finer, on the other hand, made no bones about his wealth. Sitting himself down very positively he ordered himself a double martini, and offered to buy drinks for everybody seated out on the long and fairly well-filled veranda. His wife Lucky noted took only a Campari-soda.

  He was not, Sam Finer said, after ordering his second double martini, going to eat, to hell with lunch he was going right down to the boat yard to see the ship, he had retained the limousine and chauffeur for that purpose, and when he had tossed off the second double, he got up to go. Ron went with him. So did Jim Grointon. So did Ben. That left Lucky with Irma and Cathie Finer. The three of them spent the afternoon at the pool.

  Almost immediately the three of them hit it off. Cathie Finer, once she was away from her husband, became kind, interested, full of fun, and charming. After their “boat-widows’” lunch together with a bottle of good Bordeaux and then three coupes of champagne each at the poolside, it did not take her long to unburden herself of her troubles to the other two, who were both so much the smart, wise and outspoken “imported-New-Yorkers” like herself. It was all simple enough. Her husband Sam had started stepping out on her with other women soon after they had met Grant, Ron, and that stepmother or foster mother of his with Bonham and Orloffski in Grand Bank Island. She did not know if he had already been doing it before. But she herself had only caught him and become aware of it after they returned to New York from Grand Bank. She herself had married him in all good faith, and had been true to him—at least until she had found out for sure he was stepping out, she added with a sour smile—and while they perhaps had not loved each other like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had, she had felt they had a serious and honorable marriage. But apparently they had not. As she talked about it that other look, which Lucky could only describe to herself as like a snail drawing in its horns and pulling back into its shell when it is scared and needs protection, came back over her sensitive and pretty face. But after a fourth coupe of champagne it passed on, went gradually away like a slow cloud moving along over someone’s particular plot of land on a bright day. She didn’t know what they were really going to do now, and she didn’t much care, she said bitterly. Then she laughed. Yes, she remembered Lucky. Once that she had seen her. Grant, Ron, had spoken a lot about her in Grand Bank, a lot. Once she had seen her, she remembered her very well from the old days, the old New York days. Well at least Lucky was one of them who had made out, one who had married and had it actually work. She was glad, Cathie Finer said, and it was good to know.

  “Yes, Lucky has,” Irma put in quickly, “and it is a good thing to know. I guess Ben and I have too. But then Ben and I hardly ever knew anybody else—except that he ran off and left me for a year about six months after we were married. But now we’re back together and happy. I’ve been lucky. And Lucky’s been lucky too.” Her fine sensitive face showed all the sensitivity and sympathy of which she was capable, and even her thin dark little body in its swimsuit seemed to lean forward on its own to express its and its owner’s understanding.

  Lucky had no choice but to follow Irma’s lead. “Yes, I’ve finally made it,” she said, and then looked at Irm. “I never really thought I would, I guess.”

  “I guess none of us did,” Cathie said sourly. “Not after all those years of wear on the old New York mart. Well, let’s talk about something else more pleasant, hey? So you and Ben are going along with all of us on this trip too, Irma?”

  Irma nodded. Lucky stopped listening. She had been struck by something Cathie Chandler had said, and this had been about meeting Grant, Ron, on Grand Bank with his foster-mother. She searched back through her memory, and while she could not actually remember in fact that he had ever told her this, she was sure he had because whenever she thought of him in Grand Bank she thought of Carol Abernathy being there too. But he had never told her that Hunt Abernathy had not been along. He had never said Hunt was along, but he had never admitted Hunt was not along either. Lucky had always assumed in her mental picture of his Grand Bank trip that Hunt Abernathy had been there too. So he had lied to her again, indirectly anyway. Oh, how could he have screwed that dirty old woman all those years? There had to be something very sick about him to do a thing like that. A large dark cloud seemed to hang all over her.

  When the other two girls got up to go and change, she tuned back in. “I just don’t know, Irma,” Cathie Chandler—Cathie Finer—was saying. “He’s really awfully wealthy, out there in Wisconsin. He’s a crude, loud man; but that didn’t seem to make much difference when we had our marriage going. Oh, sometimes I hate him!” she said viciously. “He’s a very violent man, too, you know. Sometimes. Sometimes when he’s really drunk.”

  Lucky decided instantly, intuitively, she preferred to not have heard any of that speech. She did not know why. “Well, girls!” she cried gaily, “off to the showers. The fucking boy scouts” (Irma’s now generic term for all of the sailors) “will be coming home soon!”

  It did not take very long for Sam Finer’s violence to erupt. It did not take long for his wealth to show itself either. When the men returned from their afternoon with the schooner Naiad and had showered and joined the women downstairs in the bar for drinks, everything was on Sam Finer. Drinks on Sam for everybody in the whole damn bar; nobody was allowed to pay for one single cocktail before dinner. Dinner was on Finer too, not for the entire clientele of course, but for everybody in their group, which now again included Bonham and Orloffski whom he had brought back with him, and of course the now-ever-present Jim—who smiled his slow evilly attractive ‘devil’s’ smile at Lucky and gave her one solemn wink behind Finer’s back. Not only that, Sam Finer announced in his loud duck’s voice to all and sundry, he had definitely decided after today to put another whole $10,000 into Bonham’s corporation and the schooner. The money would be coming along as soon as he got around to it. There was no doubt he meant it. René obviously didn’t like Sam Finer at all, and Lucky didn’t either. On the other hand, it was clear that Grant, that Ron, was no longer going to be the ‘big spender’ and the payer for everybody’s dinners and drinks. Sam Finer was taking over Grant’s, Ron’s, role unto himself; and Lucky didn’t mind at all. It was about time somebody did. And it was not, when the next day came around, just to stop there, either. For the next two days Sam and his wife and the entire group (minus Bonham and Orloffski, of course, who had to work on the ship) went out spearfishing with Jim Grointon in his catamaran, and Sam Finer paid for everything. Everything, and everybody, everybody’s boat fees, and even including the sandwiches and beer they took along from the hotel. He had flown down his Scott Hydro-Pak aqualung with its three sets of tanks, and he used this while the others free-dove. He was volubly impressed by Grant’s, by Ron’s, progress, but he had never done much free-diving himself, and he didn’t much like it, and besides he did not believe in being sporting to fish since fish were not sports themselves, and anyway Jim had a compressor to refill his tanks. It was on the evening of the third day that the violence erupted.

  Lucky never did find out what the initial cause of it all was. Neither did anybody else that she talked to. She had already talked to Grant, to Ron, about the Finers and about her intuition that they were not at all in love like he had said.— “Well, I don’t know anything about that,” he said defensively, “and I certainly didn’t notice it. I’m not saying you’re not right. All I know is that when I first met them in Grand Bank they were as
much in love as we—” and then he stopped. He had obviously meant to say “as we are.” Then, as the pause went on, he plainly thought of saying “as we were.” But he clearly didn’t want to say that either. And finally he left the sentence as it was. It was correct enough grammatically: “as much in love as we.” But it had not been his original intention, and the drop at sentence’s end had not been emphatic. Still he carried it off very well, she thought.—“That’s all I know,” he finished, not lamely at all. She had gone on then to tell him about the conversation they, she and Irma, had had with Cathie at the pool. She did not tell him her intuition that he, Grant, Ron, had screwed Cathie Chandler at some time or other himself. “So I guess it’s all because he started cheating on her,” she summed up finally.— “Well, at least that’s something you can’t accuse me of,” he had come back with, “by God.”— “Can’t I?” she said. “Oh, but I can.”— “Listen, if you’re going to start that again!” he said. “I explained all . . .” It was one of their more typical evenings alone before bed.

  In any case, Sam Finer had not gone out with them on the catamaran on that third day’s diving since his arrival and had gone in town to the schooner, though he had insisted that Cathie go along on the catamaran and had informed them all— and informed Jim—that even though he wasn’t going they were all his guests and he was paying anyway. He had returned that evening about six-thirty with Al Bonham, but not with Orloffski, both of them looking a good bit the worse for wear, René said later. They had obviously been touring the bars in town.—And why not to a couple of whorehouses too? Lucky thought to herself when she heard it later; there was, from what she already knew about Bonham, no reason to think not.