Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  The new change in Lucky manifested itself on the boat equally as much as it had back at the hotel, when they had come down into and amongst the others. On the catamaran with just the three of them alone she was just as loving, just as solicitous, kept touching him just as much, even clung to him a little bit, like kissing him on the shoulder once or twice, whenever they moved the boat about to try slightly different places. When he would come back on board from a dive, she always had a towel ready for him, even lovingly dried his back for him. She got him beer whenever he wanted it, or poured him coffee from the thermos if he preferred that. This time he drank more coffee than he did beer, for some reason. But Lucky’s ministrations knew no limit. A couple of times he wanted to slap her; and a couple of times he wanted to kiss her. But he did neither. He accepted all her attentions in silence and with a loving smile, into which he tried to put a faint overtone of amusement, male amusement, of cynicism even. If there was any interior effect upon Jim Grointon, either pro or con, by these actions of Lucky’s, it was certainly not at all visible anywhere on his normally amiable and workmanlike exterior.

  But her attentions did not stop there, with the boat, or with the bar where they had a couple of celebratory drinks with the others to libate their final trip on the catamaran. It did not, in other words, stop when the presence of others was removed. Because when they went up to rest, bathe and dress for The Dinner, she lay down nude on the two big beds and stretched her arms deliciously as far as she could reach above her head and those delicious breasts and smiled, “Wouldn’t you like to make love to me?”— “I would,” he said; and did. Her way. First. He did not mention whether she had fucked Jim Grointon, and she did not mention whether she had fucked Jim Grointon. She just had changed. She had just changed, that was all. But once again, Why? was what he could not help thinking. And the faceless spectre, with the somewhat short, somewhat Irish-cop’s build—the image of the spectre and her together—rose up again. Christ, he was getting so he almost couldn’t tell which one he was, himself Grant, or the spectre. How did you kill a spectre? He knew how to fight men, fairly well. But how did you beat up, left hook and cross the right on, a spectre?

  The Dinner was magnificent. It would be their last dinner at the Grand Hotel Crount, since Naiad would be pulling out at evening, although they’d have the whole day and lunch there tomorrow, and René actively and frenetically outdid himself. He planned it, supervised it, stood over his chefs with it, even cooked part of it himself. And it was all on him. Everything was on René, and the entire gang was there—all of them as René’s guests. All because of Lucky, mainly, their Lucky, and her husband Ron, who had been married in his place and who now had the Ron Grant Honeymoon Suite named after them, and of course for Ben and Irma too, who had stayed with him so long. But mainly it was Lucky, their old Lucky, and the marriage. “We nevair forget him zat, my Ronnie.” he said as he clapped him on the back and tears came into his expressive Gallic eyes. “Nev-air!” Bonham and Orloffski were there from the ship, and Bonham’s surgeon and his girl, Cathie Finer, Jim Grointon (and a handsome lovely Jamaican girl he had brought for the occasion), Paule Gordon the black swan, the Spicehandlers, the Grants, the Halders and all three of the kids. He even threw in the movie star and his wife and a couple of other of his more special couples. All on him, all on René. The long table extended from one end of the long room of the bar fully to the other end. René’s celebrated fish soufflé first (that was the part he actually cooked himself), then huge platters of golden fried fish served with frenchfries, fish of the most superior type in a place where good fish was commonplace, and after that duck à l’orange that actually physically melted apart in your mouth before you could begin to chew it, then cheeses, all his best imported reblochon, pont l’éveque, camembert, brie, all exactly perfectly aged, and finally ices, ices made on the premises, mirabelle and cassis, made from syrups especially imported to him from La Belle France. The long table groaned with it all, and so, finally, did the guests. Lucky sat on his left at the head end and Ron on his right, and René led off each apéritif, wine and liqueur served by a huge standing toast to the pair of them, to the Mariage, pronounced the French way. And after this, after The Dinner, the drinks at the bar were also on the house, on René, for the evening. And it was a long evening.— “Eet eez al-most im-poss-ible, Ronnie, almost im-poss-ible to see you go, toi et elle,” René told him with his arm around him at the bar later on, much much later on. Tears ran unashamedly down the sides of his sharp Gallic nose on his round face. “But you come back. Eez certain you come back, hein? We always ’ave ze Ron Grant Honeymoon Suite ready for you, h’any time. H’any h’any time.”— “Sure,” Grant said. “Of course we’ll come back, René. How could we not come back?” Like hell, he thought, brutally. Like hell we will. As long as you got that fucking skindiver hanging around your place to catch his customers. Like hell. And then suddenly like a small silent explosion in his drunken mind, he thought of Raoul, Raoul-the-South-American, and that—whatever his name was —he couldn’t even remember his name now—that Jacques Edgar. And how Raoul-the-South-American had whisked Lucky out of here and back to New York so fast. The thing, the very thing that he Ron Grant had said he would never permit himself to do, never permit his pride to allow him to do.

  When they finally got to their room, their suite, at what hour nobody even knew, Lucky stretched out lazily, sleepily, on the two big beds for him again. “I couldn’t come,” she whispered. “I couldn’t possibly. I’m far too drunk. But maybe you could?”— “I can sure as hell give it a try,” Grant heard himself say. He did not ask. She did not offer. Ask any questions, offer any answers.

  After the packing, most of the next day—by just about everybody—was spent lying around the pool trying to get over the night before. Then at around three-thirty Bonham came to collect them—in Cathie Finer’s rented car—and the exodus began. The great party of René had to a large extent removed the onus feeling about the cruise for Grant, but when he saw Cathie Finer installing her gear and herself in the little rented car with Big Al Bonham, the bad feeling came back.

  They made quite a caravan. There was Cathie’s car with herself and Bonham, Jim Grointon’s jeep, the hotel jeep, and because Lisa and Ti-René and the littler kids wanted to go down too the hotel’s big car, and finally two more cars of hotel guests who wanted to see the ship off just for a lark. One of these included (with his wife) the movie star, who had taken a great shine to Grant since the serious commencement of the shark-shooting. Grant had asked René that he and Lucky ride in the hotel’s jeep (“I think we ought to ride with old René, don’t you?” was the way he explained it to Lucky), so Irma and Ben rode with Jim. Lisa and Ti-René and the other kids came, with a good deal of the luggage, in the big car with a driver, since Lisa couldn’t drive and Ti-René was still too young to. Bonham led off, and at the rear came the two extra cars of the hotel guests. They had to go all the way in on the spit and around the Windward Road to the anchorage, in convoy. From both of the open jeeps, and from the windows of the two guests’ cars, bottles were occasionally brandished at passersby and at the traffic.

  In the very end, after all the goodbys and farewells and handshakes and quick little personal toasts, Jim Grointon came forward grinning and brought from behind his back where he’d been hiding it the big shark’s mouth of the twelve-foot tiger they had caught together. He had had it cut out when he removed the carcass at the hotel and it had been drying, and now he presented it to Grant.

  “I thought you might like to have it,” he smiled with that slow, so slow smile of his. “This one you can nearly for damn sure get your head through. It’s true you didn’t take it entirely by yourself, but you did do at least half the work of taking it. And I’ll have plenty chances to take others. And since we did take it together, I also thought you might like to have it to remember me—us—” he gestured at the crowd “—by. It aint quite dry yet but you put it up on deck where the spray won’t hit it, it’ll be
bone-dry in a couple more days.”

  Grant took the still-leathery cartilage in his hand and felt along the sharp teeth with a fingertip. It meant absolutely nothing to him. He had been trying to avoid Grointon since they had arrived at the dock—without making it at all obvious —so that he would not have to shake hands goodby with him. And now here he was apparently going to be forced to. And yet he couldn’t. He remembered Jacques Edgar and the touch of his hand. He simply couldn’t.

  Then he remembered something. It was how on the trip home from the Morants, after Jim had made his so generous and so flattering eulogy of himself (the same because of which he had had to sit down quickly because he was afraid of showing wet eyes! ha!)—how after that eulogy Jim had clapped him hard across the shoulders, for all the world like one Roman soldier saying hello or goodby to another Roman soldier. The resemblance to Romans had to have been deliberate? And even if he were wrong about them, the two of them, Jim and Lucky, he still simply could not shake his hand.

  He looked up from the shark mouth. Jim, grinning, was just sticking out his hand. Taking a quick step forward, Grant reached quickly inside, and clasped Jim by his forearm muscle through the long-sleeve shirt.—” This is how we shake hands!” he grinned. Jim got the analogy, the reference, and clasped him, Grant by his own forearm in the Roman greeting. Then, grinning, he clapped Grant on the back with his other arm. Grant clapped him on the back. Then they broke apart, and Grant turned away.

  All the gear and luggage had already been stowed away aboard, and Orloffski stood on the dock by the big mooring cleat forward, ready to lift off the big eye splice of the bow line. Almost all of the people were already aboard. All except Lucky who, he noted from an eye-corner, was shaking hands goodby with a smiling Jim Grointon. Well, what the hell? Why shouldn’t he be smiling? at a goodby, at an ordinary goodby? Grant turned and ran for the stern line. René, Papa René handed Lucky aboard. When Bonham bellowed, they two, he and Orloffski, lifted off the big eye splices pushed off with a foot each fore and aft, and then leaped on board. They were away.

  “Hurry back to the hotel!” Bonham bellowed in his loudest voice. “Hurry back! We’ll signal you!”

  They went out of the harbor under motor, hotels and cranes and tanks and buildings wheeling around them and changing their relative positions as they moved. It was much easier to go out under motor, if you had one, especially in a big boat, Bonham said, and especially in a long narrow harbor as crowded with shipping as this one was. Ben and Grant hung onto the shrouds watching everything in the harbor move and change. The girls all sat in the cockpit, where Bonham behind the wheel looked as solid and indestructible as one of those ages-old ninety-ton Indian Buddhas.

  As soon as he rounded the Port Royal Point, he cut the motor—why waste expensive fuel, girls, ’ey?—and yelled forward for Orloffski to hoist the mainsail, then when it was up to hoist the jib. The surgeon helped Orloffski to heave on the halyards. Ben and Grant stood around watching excitedly, but afraid to try to help for fear they’d do more harm than good. Now they were under sail alone, and Bonham headed east-southeast down the Main East Channel. When he had passed between Rackham’s Cay and Gun Cay—where they had all dived so many times now, before moving on to better spots—he turned inshore a little. Soon the bulk of the hotel appeared to all of them, standing only slightly above the spit itself.

  “Dip the mainsail!” Bonham yelled forward. Orloffski and the surgeon let go the halyard, and the big sail sank down slowly, edge flapping in the breeze until her head was halfway down the mast. They ran on like that on the jib alone past the hotel for a full minute. It was impossible to see any signals, waves, or people on the shore. “Hoist her!” Bonham called. Orloffski and the surgeon hauled on the halyard till the mainsail was full up. It had been a beautiful gesture, and although there was no answering signal visible from the hotel Grant for one was sure they had all seen it and appreciated it, and suddenly his heart came up into his throat. Goodby, Kingston! he wanted to yell foolishly. Goodby, Jamaica! He looked over at Ben with a sheepish grin, and saw that Ben felt exactly the same way. It was all going to be all right, he felt suddenly. It was going to be a fine trip, now. It was all going to have been worth it!

  Naiad, Bonham guiding her, came offshore a little and then ran on down the East Channel east-southeast until they had passed Plumb Point Light. It was almost dark by now. A little farther on Bonham swung her around to southwest by south.

  Then the long night sail began, and with it the first of the trouble. It was just seven o’clock.

  34

  IN TEN OR TWELVE minutes the tiny white breakers of East Middle Ground showed up to starboard, then the low bushes of South East Cay beyond. First reference, Bonham grinned. When he had passed these, he swung her over half a point to the west and settled back.

  Bonham was a different man on board ship. On board his ship, because there was no doubt that it was his ship. He had his Master’s papers to prove it, and he actually seemed to sink into the ship and become a wood or rope or metal part of it. At the same time, his Authority with a capital A increased several hundred percent. Although he made no overt effort to display this. Rather the reverse. But you could not help but feel it. He had been distant and much more reserved with Grant since Grant’s ‘bearding’ of him that day in the hotel, but this on board ship had nothing to do with that. He had always been authoritative with anything having to do with the diving or his pupils and his charges, but this new ‘Ship’s Master’s’ Authority was different totally in kind and texture.

  For the first hour, two hours after their departure the excitement of leaving and of actually being at sea kept them all up high, and they all clustered around Bonham in the cockpit where he sat like that granite Buddha moving the wheel almost not at all, steering a course a few degrees west of southwest by south, taking advantage of the evening land breeze, the wind on his starboard quarter. He would, he explained to them all, sail that course for around eight hours or so to the Pedro Cays. They would hit these at around three A.M. in the morning. Then he would bring her around almost due west to pass inside the Pedros, crossing the end of the Pedro Bank, and then just sail her on a few degrees north of west to the Nelsons. They should sight the Nelsons around 2:15 tomorrow afternoon, anchor around 2:40. In the morning the trades would come up again. He was sailing by dead reckoning, but he would get a fix when he sighted Pedros Light. The currents here were all northwesterly, and he could guess the drift. He didn’t feel like sleeping, he loved to sail at night, but if he got tired Orloffski could spell him. Grant listened to all this fascinated, and it was then that he made up his mind that he would stay up all night, learning, listening.

  He would learn, of course, later, that there really wasn’t all that much to learn. It was mainly just staying awake and sitting behind that binnacle and wheel.

  The breeze was good. It was amazing how quiet, how seemingly silent, it could be without the sound of motors forever present on a ship. The breeze was good, and so were the drinks that they had lounging around the cockpit which despite its size wasn’t really big enough to hold all of them. Orloffski therefore stood in the saloon hatchway, its slide pushed all the way back, his feet on the little companionway, grinning and holding his bottle of Seven-Up laced with gin. The surgeon and his girl lay side by side—or rather, belly to belly—on the little side deck beside the cockpit, about as close together as two bodies could get, and murmuring. Yes, the breeze was good, the drinks were good; but the food was lousy. It consisted solely of cans of tunafish and cans of Spam— take your choice or have both—with a couple of loaves of bread that had been fairly seriously squashed. And a jar of mustard. Grant didn’t mind it too much, and in fact enjoyed it. More than enjoyed it. He was an old camper, an old Navy man (though he knew next to nothing about sailing and navigation), he was ravenous, the sea air was great, and he ate like a pig. But the ladies didn’t take to it too much. Except for Cathie Finer who didn’t seem to mind what she ate as long as she
drank, and stayed near Bonham. A couple of murmured complaints like “Jesus, is this it?” from Lucky, Irma and the surgeon’s girlfriend, brought from Bonham the comment that Orloffski notoriously could not cook, and that he himself did not feel at this stage of the trip like turning the sailing over to Orloffski and going below to cook up a hot meal. He could do it, under way like this, though it was difficult a little bit, but he didn’t want to and tomorrow when they made landfall they would be eating their own catches incomparably cooked by himself. This statement, given in his new Authoritative manner, ended all complaints.

  But it wasn’t the food which started the trouble part, everybody could stomach (if the word applied) that. It was the accommodations. After a couple of hours or so the excitement of departure wore off for most of them, though not for Grant. Orloffski and the surgeon had long ago hoisted the staysail and foresail, and there was little to do but sit in the cockpit, watch the dimly lighted binnacle, listen to the sea slip by, listen to the cordage slapping and the wind move past the sails, and look at the stars. This sufficed for Grant, but not for any of the others, even including Ben. And when finally the excitement of leavetaking and being at sea left them, and they decided to bed down, this was when the execrable conditions of the accommodations belowdecks become only too openly apparent. This terrible condition of the accommodations was compounded by several factors.

  When there was trouble, when trouble finally came, and it always did come, it was never the ship, never the weather, never the sea—it was always the people who brought it on, and carried it through, and kept it going. Always the people. On this voyage at any rate it was never the elements that were at fault; it was the people.