By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "The more you learn and the faster you learn it, the better," said Fain a little later. "For the moment you'll steer clear of the military end; there's plenty to do with the merchant vessels. You'll have access to all our records—quotes, receivables, wages. Study 'em. You'll learn a lot that way. I'll take you around to the yard foremen later. But for now let's knock off a couple of these inquiries. Here's what I want to say; you'll sort of translate it for me."

  They put their heads together after that, and when Geoff was set free two hours later to grab a quick lunch, he was as bleary-brained as a young secretary on her first day of work. He'd scribbled his way through two notebooks as best as he could, leaving a trail of half-complete notes and marginalia which looked like Greek to him as he pored over them while he wolfed down a sandwich.

  My God, I'll have to learn shorthand for this bloody job, he thought. He was seized with panic: everything had seemed straightforward while Fain was running through his replies—but now!

  He wanted tea. He wanted his bloody tea.

  ****

  When the shipyard whistle signaled the day's end, Geoff was still rubbing his chin over one especially cryptic batch of notes. He knew he had to stay until he cracked it; tomorrow the trail would be cold. On his desk were spread out cross-referenced files which held clues to the mystery: the necessary gauge of steel was in there somewhere, and the number of man-hours required to bend and weld it into a shape suitable for carrying cargo for a fruit company. When the phone rang he reached for it automatically, like any weary, preoccupied executive.

  "Hello," he said.

  "Listen, asshole, where's the ship? We need it now."

  "I beg your pardon," Geoff answered, stunned. "Who is this?"

  The caller hung up.

  Frowning, Geoff returned the receiver to its cradle. Fains Ironworks did business with some pretty ornery people, it seemed. It wasn't even the hostility in the man's voice that bothered Geoff; it was the desperation.

  Geoff wondered how Jim Fain, who prided himself on running a crackerjack shipbuilding company, could have let one of his customers get so far out on a limb. And then he remembered that he'd picked up the call on David's private line. The caller was one of David's responsibilities, and that explained a lot. David may have begun putting his nose to the grindstone, as his father so proudly pointed out, but it had only been there a few weeks. Who knows how many promises had been broken before then?

  Geoff thought no more about it and returned to his hieroglyphics. An hour later he allowed himself to lean back and light up one of the fine cigars that had been pressed on him by Fain: he'd earned it. He had his feet up on his desk and was gazing absent-mindedly out at the yard, vaguely regretful that he had not taken up naval architecture at Eton instead of literature, when he saw David slip out from the shed that contained the wooden freighter whose garboard plank might or might not be rotten.

  He wondered whether David had given the go-ahead to have the plank replaced, or if he'd hung tough with the yard foreman. Although Geoff had no great admiration for Fain's son, he appreciated his dilemma. A wooden ship was more wanton in her demands than the most pampered mistress. You could give her everything—your money, your time, your marriage—and still she'd want more. From you, from anyone, from everyone.

  Suddenly it came to him: it was the wooden freighter that the caller needed at once. Oh, yes, now it made sense. The caller wanted his ship, but there was a long line of men the ship wanted to be with first: the carpenter, the caulker, the painter, the rigger, the engineer. She would see them all, all in good time. And when each man was done, when each man had given her everything he had, she'd only smile sweetly and say, "More." And meanwhile someone with a load of bananas rotting in a Caribbean port was tearing out his hair for wanting her.

  Better to build in steel. Steel ships were men-ships, not women-ships. Steel ships had stubbly beards and strong backs and didn't care how they looked or smelled, so long as they got the job done. Steel ships would rather be worked over by ordinary laborers; they never lusted for hard-to-get craftsmen. A steel ship never tore out a man's heart and left him writhing in agony just for the fun of it, but a wooden ship might.

  Geoff blew a pensive smoke ring into the air. He missed his father's wood yacht—the jezebel.

  ****

  The next day was as satisfying as the previous day had been frustrating. Fain was right: there was a trick to seducing a buyer, and Geoff had the inbred diplomacy, natural intelligence, and enthusiasm to do just that. When he showed a draft of his first response to Fain, his employer was tickled to death.

  "That's it! That's just the look I want. We've got the product, and Sir Tom was right: we need to advertise, and you're just the man for it. By God, Sir Tom was right."

  Geoff found himself blushing like a schoolboy in his first term. "I'm glad you approve, sir."

  "Oh, absolutely. I can see that you're the man to put together a cost proposal for us. And of course, if there's an oral presentation to be made—well, this is all right! Do you like to travel?"

  It seemed to Geoff that Fain was setting the cart before the oxen, but he grinned and said, "It depends on the mode."

  "Had it with the automobile, hey?" Fain remarked, alluding to Geoff's marathon driving on the night of Amanda's arrest. "And speaking of boats," he said suddenly and illogically, "tomorrow is a race day, ain't it? Don't forget Amanda."

  "How could I?" asked Geoff, with only a tinge of irony.

  That evening he rang her up. He found himself dialing her number with reluctance; he had no wish to be shot down twice. To his surprise, Amanda was not only civil but enthusiastic.

  "Perry was beside himself with joy. It turns out he's a great fan of Sir Tom's," she explained. "It was really very nice of you to offer to bring him along," she said, in a new and meltingly soft voice.

  Instantly he was on his guard. This was not the Amanda he knew. "Yes. Well. I'm surprised you didn't pounce on Sir Tom yourself."

  "It seemed pushy."

  "I suppose it was, a little." So. Amanda was teaching him good manners? He was liking the conversation less and less.

  "Just don't tell Perry that he's gate-crashing," she cautioned. "He'd die of embarrassment. He's very sensitive."

  "You're very protective of the little blighter, aren't you?"

  "So what?"

  "So nothing much. How shall we arrange to meet?"

  "He's coming here after work and staying over. Pick us up as early as you like. We'll be ready," she said in her mistress-of-the-manor voice.

  Geoff held the phone away from him and bowed stiffly to it. Then he brought it back to his ear, said, "Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Miss Fain," and hung up scowling. He was becoming an accomplished scowler—particularly around Amanda.

  Chapter 8

  The morning sun slanted across the cobblestones of the Greenwich Village alley in which Amanda's studio was tucked away. An imposing iron gate opened onto a stone courtyard cluttered with scrap metal, marking the place better than any nameplate could have done as belonging to Amanda Fain. A young boy, his back to Geoff, was pouring sunflower seed into a bird feeder.

  "Good morning," Geoff said cheerfully. "You must be Perry."

  The boy, engrossed in his task, did not answer, and after a second or two of waiting Geoff continued on across the courtyard to a heavy oak door bound in iron. He lifted the knocker and signaled loudly, glancing back at the youth and wondering. Amanda answered, looking fresh and young and as wholesome as he'd ever seen her, and Geoff followed her in, remarking, "I seem to have got off on the wrong foot with your cousin. He's roundly ignoring me."

  "I don't think so," she said, fetching her bag. "It's just that he can't hear you."

  "I should think he could," Geoff began. "I've been blasting away at your doorknocker—"

  "He's deaf. He truly can't hear you," she repeated, speaking as she would to a child.

  "Oh, I say, that was dumb of me," Geoff muttered, emba
rrassed. "I'm sorry—"

  "Why apologize? You didn't make him deaf. Anyway, he doesn't like people to make a thing of it. It happened when he was nine, so he can speak pretty well. He reads lips expertly."

  "But of course he doesn't have eyes in the back of his head," Geoff said, reproaching himself despite Amanda's advice not to.

  She laughed—a genuine, musical, infinitely fetching laugh that lit up her face. "Don't be too sure of that. Perry misses very little."

  She lingered there, all in white and washed in early morning light, and he said, "That's a pretty dress," in a voice as thoughtful as his mood.

  She took one look at his compliment and tossed it away. "I looked high and low for a sailor dress, but this is as close to frigidly proper as I can get." She dropped into a mocking curtsy, and when she rose from it he noticed that her face was a shade darker.

  Somehow it didn't surprise him that Amanda would spurn a compliment. He turned his attention to her studio—also a converted carriage house, although much larger than the one in Westport. Its soaring height, twenty-five feet or so, was capped in skylights angled to the north. A huge mantelpiece and chimney flanked one wall, bizarrely decorated in painted plaster molded in the shapes of fantastic dragons and gargoyles serpentining in and out among thick vines and trees. The colors were vivid, almost lurid; the entire relief stood out in horrendous contrast to the simple, workaday look of the rest of the studio.

  Amanda blushed even more deeply and said, "That was done as a birthday present from my father. He'd heard that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney"—she pronounced the name with lofty indifference—"had Robert Chanler design a mantelpiece for her MacDougal Alley studio, though God only knows which of Dad's friends could have known such a fact. When I came back from a sojourn in France, that is what I saw."

  Geoff mumbled something about art running in fashion, but she cut him short.

  "That's not art; it's nonsense. Anyway, I have no use for derivative work!" she said scathingly.

  "Ah, well. All art is ultimately that, isn't it?" he asked. Immediately he regretted it. What the hell did he know about all art?

  A similar question seemed to have occurred to Amanda, because she breezed past him with a "Shall we go?" and waited for him at the door. The tour was over.

  With an almost comfortable sigh—things seemed to have returned to normal between them—Geoff allowed himself to be seen out. Ironically, on the whole his sympathies were with Amanda for once: Who could feel inspired to create profound statements on the meaning of life with a bunch of gnomes and elves looking over her shoulder?

  In the yard young Perry had taken up a watching post behind an enormous hunk of rusted metal which was either a free-standing sculpture or raw material for one. The boy was totally immersed in the lilting, darting flight of two small chickadees who'd been waiting impatiently for their breakfast. He caught his cousin's approach out of the corner of his eye and swung around to her with a wide grin which turned quickly to shy caution when he saw Geoff.

  "Perry, this is Sir Tom's good friend, Geoffrey Seton," said Amanda.

  Geoff thought he detected sarcasm, but he smiled and said, "I hear you're a great fan of Sir Tom." He pronounced his words carefully, but the boy had no trouble reading his British accent.

  "I sure am. I've followed all his races and all his Shamrocks."

  "For all those years?" asked Geoff with a gentle smile. "And here I thought you didn't look a day over sixteen."

  Perry colored and pressed his lips together self-consciously. Geoff could see he was pleased. He was an attractive young boy, with sparkling eyes and a touching vulnerability. Maybe it was the handicap, or maybe Geoff had been programmed by Amanda to see a "sensitive" young soul. Whatever the case, Perry was the kind of boy that tugged dangerously at the heart. Geoff found himself resisting the wide blue eyes that were trained on his face, literally hanging on every word. He was uncomfortable under such scrutiny; he did not want his heart tugged at.

  And Perry, perhaps used to reading such reactions in people's faces, immediately withdrew his look and fastened it on his cousin, whom he clearly idolized.

  Amanda had none of Geoffrey's reservations. She put her hands on Perry's shoulders, brought her face within a foot of his and said, "I am absolutely, positively certain that Sir Tom is going to win because he's tried so hard and deserves to win, and the Americans don't."

  Amanda had that idealistic lift to her chin again, Geoff thought. He knew her type so well. She was the kind of girl who threw bread bits to the smallest, weakest ducks on the pond and who ran off the more assertive ones for good measure. She'd consider the bigger ducks mean and unfair, the exact same opinion she had of the New York Yacht Club.

  "Maybe we should saw the Cup in half," Geoff said lightly to Amanda. "Then everyone would have part."

  Wouldn't you know, the boy caught every word. Even when he wasn't looking, he was looking. "That wouldn't make sense! Perry cried. "The Cup is a trophy, not a loaf of bread. It's a contest to see who's best. If you don't think you're the best you shouldn't go in it!"

  Twelve years old and he understood not only the virtues of self-fulfillment but also that life couldn't be divided evenly between little ducks and big ducks. Geoff was impressed. "I'm one hundred percent on your side, Perry. I was just teasing Amanda," he said. It occurred to him too late that Perry would have trouble picking up irony in one's voice. All he saw were the words. Geoff would have to mug it up a bit when he wasn't being serious; give the boy more clues.

  They were at the car. Amanda scrambled into the back, forcing Perry into the front seat, where he'd be able to turn easily and read her lips. Geoff was surprised by her thoughtfulness. He himself said little during the drive to Brooklyn, where Lipton's yacht was berthed; mostly it was Perry who did the talking, filling them in on Lipton's twenty-year quest for the Cup.

  Geoff assumed that Perry was a Cup fanatic, until he began to rattle off every baseball pennant winner since 1902, and the batting averages of their top players. After that Geoff assumed the boy was a sports fanatic in general, until Perry happened to quote the closing market prices on U.S. Steel, Anaconda, and Montgomery Ward. After that Geoff assumed he was a garden variety prodigy.

  "Do you happen to be a concert violinist as well?" Geoff teased, turning to Perry so that he might read the words, but the boy looked puzzled.

  "No, no," Amanda interrupted. "His great talent is in art. He'd be a wonderful artist if he spent more time at an easel."

  "Oh, I like painting pretty well," her cousin said cheerfully. "But my father says you don't get rich becoming an artist. That's why he's put me in as a runner on Wall Street, to learn finance from the bottom up. That's pretty exciting, too."

  Ah, to be twelve, Geoff thought. The age of enthusiasm. The age of immortality. You're never as smart again as you are when you're twelve.

  They were at the docks. Geoff parked the sedan and everyone got out. Perry walked between them as they made their way to the Victoria. Whenever the boy was speaking, he looked ahead or down at the ground like anyone else, but when he listened, he got out a little ahead of them and glanced nonchalantly back at their faces.

  What hell he goes through to show how normal he is, thought Geoff. He remembered his own devastating sense of loss when he awoke on an army bed in excruciating pain and without his hearing. The loss had made his pain even worse, his despair more profound. He remembered clutching at the intern who was signaling that the loss was temporary, noise-induced. He remembered demanding reassurance, not hearing his own demands. That night he had become possessed by memories of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, and when he thought he might never hear it played again, he wept.

  The boy was watching Geoff's face, trying to read it. Geoff forced a smile. "I have a feeling you're going to bring Sir Tom good luck. How about that?"

  The boy smiled shyly, and then ran out ahead of Geoff and Amanda toward the dock at which the magnificent Victoria was berthed.

  "How did h
e lose his hearing?" Geoff asked Amanda.

  "A virus. It was terrifying. His face was paralyzed and he had vertigo for weeks. He was in horrible pain. It broke my heart to see him. It was so unfair, so cruel."

  "He seems not to have let it affect him," Geoff said quietly.

  "Because he was young. I often think, if he had to lose his hearing, was it better that he was young and resilient, or would it have been better if he had grown to hear a sweetheart say, 'I love you,' just once?"

  Geoff shook his head. "I think both roads are equally torturous."

  They caught up to Perry and together they boarded the Victoria. Shortly after, Lipton emerged from a cabin below. Geoff saw him through Perry's face first: wide-eyed, utterly thrilled, awed by being so close to a great celebrity. Geoff turned and saw Lipton in a new light: not as a charming, affable grocer who'd been clever enough to earn himself a knighthood, but as an internationally successful figure, the toast not only of the working class but of royalty as well. So what if he'd been snubbed repeatedly by the lesser highbrows in New York and Newport. What did they know?

  Introductions were made all around. Geoff, standing behind Perry, signaled to Lipton that the boy had a hearing impairment. It was done to spare him embarrassment. Instead, Perry suddenly turned around and gave Geoff a reproachful look; he did have eyes in the back of his head. Amanda caught the exchange and gave Geoff a wry, sympathetic smile. Obviously she had been there herself. For once they were on the same side—of well-meaning adults doomed periodically to look like fools.

  Lipton treated Perry with the same sassy affection Geoff had seen him use with other children, and by the time the old man left them a few minutes later, Perry was ready to sign on as cabin boy on the Victoria. As the yacht steamed toward the Sandy Hook Light Vessel, Perry managed to find things to see or do near Sir Tom. He kept carefully out of eavesdropping range, of course. What did it matter? He could read Sir Tom's lips.

  "That boy could easily pose a threat to England's national security," Geoff remarked as he and Amanda leaned against the rail, watching the spectator fleet head out around them.