The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  He had almost given up hoping for Sarah when he caught sight of her and waved.

  “You look almost cool,” he remarked admiringly as she joined him.

  “The sea helped.”

  “Mike’ll probably want to go later.”

  “Yes, you should take him down after lunch. You can sit in the sea and talk your heads off. It’s too hot for naps anyway.”

  “I hope to God we all recognize each other,” he said with a chuckle. “Twelve years is a long time, except that suddenly it doesn’t seem like anything at all.”

  She looked up at him in quick scrutiny and smiled. “You haven’t changed much. More distinguished. Of course, we’re both black as niggers which may confuse him.”

  He took her arm and led her out into the crushing sun and over to a place at the barricade. A dark hungry-eyed boy darted up to them, roughly shoving a smaller boy out of his way as he came.

  “Will you need me?” he demanded, looking as if he would attack anybody who refused his aid.

  “Yes, my child,” George said with a slight smile. “You have your animal? Wait for us. There will probably be baggage.”

  This was the way he hoped Mike’s visit would go—people springing eagerly to serve them, everything working smoothly, all the flaws and fissures with which they had to contend in daily living neatly covered over for this occasion. “I told Chloë to plan for lunch at one-thirty. Does that check with you? I didn’t think we’d want to prolong the drinking hour.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “That means I’ll—I mean, that means you’ll probably be ready to take Mike for a swim by about three.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. She was really determined to get him into the water. Did she think he was going to need sobering up? He wiped sweat from his forehead and out of his eyes. He felt as if the sun were beating him into the ground.

  “Here she comes,” Sarah announced to the empty sea in what appeared to be a moment of claivoyance. She had scarcely spoken before there was a blast of ship’s whistle and the boat came surging around the steep rocky promontory, pushing its way through the lifeless sea, stirring it to a heavy leaden swell. There was the rumble of reversed engines, lines were thrown, whistles piped, the ship’s telegraph clanged urgent messages below. The boat bumped broadside against the quai and came to rest in a swirl of slapping water. Everybody began to shout. The longshoremen jockeyed the gangplank into position and there was an explosion of humanity. In an instant, the enclosure was packed with pushing, shouting people, baggage, parcels, packing cases, baskets, odd lengths of pipe, toilet bowls, and a baby carriage.

  There was no sign of Mike. People were streaming down the gangplank, but the first flood spent itself quickly. Leighton turned to Sarah. Her eyes were scanning the open upper deck, the wide windows of the first-class lounge.

  “Do you see him?”

  She shook her head and he turned back to the scene of confusion around the gangplank. A final trickle of passengers emerged from somewhere in the depths, an ungainly crate was trundled ashore, there was a flurry of white jackets in the shade of the covered deck and two stewards teetered down the gangplank under a load of handsome matched suitcases. Leighton’s attention quickened. These were worthy of Michael Cochran. Why so many? Was he planning to stay a month?

  Then he was there, framed in the gangway, like the star entrance in a musical comedy, shaking hands with the captain. George burst into laughter of recognition and welcome. He looked so exactly like old Mike, except that he had a completely unfamiliar elegance now and the lock of hair had been suppressed by expert barbering. He was apparently in no hurry although it was obvious that the boat was being held for him. All his movements were deliberate and looked rehearsed, the mark of celebrity. The captain bowed before him profusely and then he turned and strolled down the gangplank. He was expensively dressed in a crisp summer suit. It won’t stay crisp long, George thought with malicious satisfaction. The two stewards were waiting by the baggage and Mike distributed tips with experienced graciousness.

  George leaned over the barrier and shouted, “Mike, you son of a bitch, aren’t you going to greet the natives?”

  Cochran turned and smiled. “I’ll sign autographs in the lobby of the hotel in an hour,” he called back. Then he laughed and the self-consciousness dropped from him as he hurried to them. He clapped Leighton on both shoulders and shook him affectionately. He took Sarah in his arms across the railing and kissed her on both cheeks. There was a slight hook in his nose and the skin was stretched taut over wide cheekbones, as if he might have Indian blood. He had always had great success with women.

  “God, this is wonderful,” he exclaimed. “Let me look at you. You look divine. How did you find this incredible place? I don’t believe it for a moment. It’s all painted on a backdrop. The very Cosmo, himself. Why aren’t you wearing your beachcomber costume? I was particularly looking forward to it. Oh, lord, how are you both? You look superb.”

  They laughed a lot and exchanged rather incoherent and repetitive pleasantries.

  “Well, let’s get organized and get out of this sun,” George suggested finally. “I take it you haven’t brought any of your wives.”

  “I’ve run out of wives at the moment. A wife in this heat. What a hideous thought. Sorry, Sarah, old dear.”

  The ragged child approached George and he pointed out the baggage, astonished once more at its quantity. “Listen, you bastard,” he said. “You haven’t brought all that stuff just for the day. How long are you staying?”

  “Till tomorrow. But not to worry. I’m not going to be a nuisance. I understand the hotel here is fairly civilized.”

  “So is our house. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to stay with us.”

  “No, I’ll be better at the hotel. Not that I’d have the slightest hesitation about turning your house upside down. I just like having my own hole to crawl into. Somebody was supposed to arrange it.”

  George threw his arm around his friend’s shoulder and gave him a hug. George was the bigger of the two which bolstered his confidence. “It’s too hot to argue. This kid will take care of your things. I’ll see that the manager gives you the best room.”

  “You’re joking,” Mike exclaimed as he caught sight of the small boy struggling to attach the luggage to his donkey. “Don’t you have child labor laws here?”

  “No. Everybody’s free at birth to share in the blessings of private enterprise.”

  “No, but seriously. Is that sort of thing usual here?”

  “A lot of kids work, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Oh, come off it, Mike,” Sarah interjected. Reasons for wanting this reunion to be a success were beginning to preoccupy her. She was impatient of the least sign of discord. “Don’t start theorizing until you know something about the place.”

  Memories of college days drifted through Leighton’s mind. He and Mike organizing meetings, drawing up petitions. What had they been about? Antiwar? Pro-war? Definitely socialistic. Mike had had firm and dogmatic opinions about everything and George had welcomed them as revelation. Life had taught him to be more pragmatic and tolerant. Should he be shocked that a ten-year-old be allowed to earn his living? He took a sidelong glance at Mike, dark, slim, stylish—frivolous was a word that came easily to mind—and wondered if he really cared. He wondered, too, with a wrench of regret and misgiving, if it were possible to recapture the old easy intimacy.

  They left the controversial child still struggling with the luggage and strolled down around the quai toward the new hotel.

  “What happened to the twentieth century?” Mike inquired. “Look at all these quaint beasts of burden. Don’t you have any cars or trucks?”

  “Dear God, no,” Sarah exclaimed.

  “But how do you go anywhere?”

  “Go anywhere? We walk—or take a boat.”

  “Farewell, mechanized world. Not that I’m not tempted to get out at times myself. If only I
could afford to.”

  “Afford to!” George protested. “You must make in a month what we spend in a year.”

  “That is a secret between me and my tax man. But don’t forget my precious wives. They must be provided for in a manner to which I never intended to accustom them.”

  George laughed. “I suppose there’s something to be said for sticking it out with only one.”

  “Definitely. But not everyone is lucky enough to find Sarah.” He and Sarah bowed to each other with mock formality.

  Sarah was struggling toward a decision. The invitation was explicit at last. He had come out with it just before George had found them together on the rocks. He would be at home alone all afternoon. The risk had seemed too great for her to accept even though she felt incapable of refusing when she was close to him. Mike’s arrival changed everything. George would be safely occupied; she might not get another such opportunity for weeks or months. She couldn’t go on living with this obsession. Just once with him would free her of it. He was only a body.

  They chatted as they strolled, hugging the sides of buildings for whatever shade they could find. Mike’s voice was lighter than George remembered and made everything he said sound rather trivial and superficial. Was there something slightly effeminate about him? No, that was probably the effect of his new elegance. He worked in the theater; some of its artificiality was bound to rub off.

  They turned into an interior street on the level that formed the floor of the great amphitheater of the town. Houses rose all around them, but the sun almost obliterated them, flattening them out and destroying perspective so that the effect was of a glaring white wall from which the eye shrank.

  “Is your house near here?” Mike asked.

  George pointed up and to the left. “Up in there. You can see part of it from here, but I wouldn’t be able to pick it out for you.”

  “Good God. You have to walk up there?”

  George laughed. “I remember when we were in New York we used to walk all over the whole damn city. There was a question of carfare.”

  “I suppose we did. We must’ve been younger in those days.”

  George looked at him and smiled. Perhaps they would strike the right note yet. The few casual words had sent memories crowding through his mind of that brief period before Sarah, just after they had escaped from the army and were discovering New York together, memories of the tiny apartment they shared over a drugstore, memories of girls, some of them shared too, memories of Mike still with a New England rawness on him, gawky in badly cut clothes, but with the flippantly abrasive humor that had made him seem older and more experienced than himself. Mike had been the leader. A residue of that element in their relationship colored George’s response now, strengthening and reassuring him, as if his friend’s presence might resolve the conflicts—yes, it was not too strong a word—that were destroying him.

  They crossed the walled patio of the hotel and came to a halt at the desk. Mike looked around him. “My God. This is Greece? It looks like something out of Santa Monica.”

  George took in the familiar lobby with astonishment. They had all been rather proud of the new hotel. It had a private bath with every room, flush toilets, box springs on the beds, and all sorts of unfamiliar luxuries. For the first time, he wondered what Mike would think of their house. He counted on the house to offer irrefutable proof of the felicity of their life here. He slapped the desk and called impatiently for the manager who shuffled out from some nether region. The deference with which he was greeted mollified him.

  “I told the donkey boy to arrange everything. Your bags are in your room,” he explained to Mike. “You better go get out of some of that finery before you melt.”

  “Good. I’ll pop into my island drag and be right with you.”

  A maid appeared and led him away and the Leightons stood with the manager while George impressed upon him the importance of this guest. He invented vast sums purporting to be Mike’s income from Broadway and Hollywood. This might result in his bill being padded, but at least he would get whatever service the hotel was capable of providing. Even as he did it, it struck him as absurd that even he should feel the need of pampering the celebrated Michael Cochran. What difference did it make if he was slightly uncomfortable for one night? It was absurd, too, that he should be pleased by the luster his friend’s celebrity would add to his status on the island, but there was no denying that it counted.

  In a few minutes, Mike returned resplendent and immaculately white in fine linen slacks and a sports shirt of some rich loosely woven stuff. He wore sandals on his carefully tended feet. He looked as clipped, trimmed, pruned and polished as a fashion model. There was no real reason why a writer shouldn’t look like that, George conceded to himself, but generally they didn’t. Mike wasn’t a writer, anyway, but a specialist in popular entertainment.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “I’ll survive. You might tell your friend here that there’s no hot water.”

  “I’m afraid he knows. They only turn it on in the morning.”

  A frown crossed Mike’s face. “Ah, well, the Greeks doubtless invented plumbing so I suppose we must be grateful to them.”

  “I told you you should’ve stayed with us. You could’ve had hot water morning, noon, and night.” He was glad to establish this fact for the record, although they never turned the water heater on during the hot months.

  “Would you tell them to have a thermos of ice left in the room?”

  “You go too far, Cochran.”

  “You don’t have ice here?”

  “Certainly. But you don’t put it in your drinks. Not if you want to survive.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ice is made with water,” George explained. “The only water we have is rainwater. The icehouse uses any liquid they can get their hands on. There are ugly rumors that they pee in it.”

  “You mean if it doesn’t rain, you do without water?”

  “That’s about it. We’re closely geared to nature here. It’s quite interesting, nature, but I suppose you’ve eliminated it from your scheme of things.”

  “In the United States, which you seem to have eliminated from your scheme of things, we’ve learned to control nature. That’s interesting too.”

  “Air conditioning!” Sarah exclaimed distractedly, aware of a sharp edge in the exchange. “It must be so strange not to know what it’s like outside.”

  “Strangely wonderful. What I wouldn’t give for a little air conditioning right now.”

  They set out once more under the blazing sun. George led the way through narrow streets which rose gently, broken by occasional steps. They moved through a dazzle of white, white walls, white streets. Even the boulders which thrust up here and there, forcing the street to detour around them, were washed with white. As they approached the house, he felt the excitement building up in him irrationally. Why should he care whether Mike liked the house? They reached the dark-green door in the high wall and he had an odd sensation of intense exhilaration mingled with dread, like a child opening a Christmas present, as he pushed the door back and stood aside to let Mike enter the paved oasis of trellised vines and citrus trees and glowing bougainvillaea which obscured the outlines of the whitewashed house.

  “Well, this is more like it,” Mike said as he stood and looked around him.

  Leighton exhaled a long breath of relief and felt the thrill of pride he always experienced when he showed a newcomer the house. Six years ago this court had been a weed-choked yard, the house a weather-stained ruin. He had done much of the heavy labor himself, which probably added to its value in his eyes. The place was the one element in his life about which he could feel total confidence. “I’ll fix us a drink and then show you around if you’d like.”

  A bottle of ouzo had been set out on the table under the vines, and a thermos of ice-water. He poured them drinks, allowing himself a stiff one—he had had nothing but beer so far—and lifted his glass to Mike.
/>   “Well, here you are,” he said, feeling that now at last they could really get through to each other. “Welcome.”

  “If the rest of it’s anything like this, it’s gorgeous,” Mike said, raising his glass in turn. “I do hope I don’t start envying you.”

  “Come along. As a matter of fact, the tour is compulsory.”

  They went through the lower rooms, rich with polished woods and gleaming brasses, the walls lined with books and pictures, the floors of stone or tile, the ceilings of intricately patterned wood characteristic of the island. They went upstairs to the wide, awninged terrace which commanded a sweeping view of the town above and the port below and the encircling sea. They completed the tour in Leighton’s big workroom on the top floor.

  “Well, you’ve certainly done yourself proud,” Mike admitted. The house had completed his discomfiture. He had come to perform a rescue operation, to pick up the pieces of George Leighton and send them home. The drunken derelict he had been told to expect was in aggressive good spirits and apparent good health, emanating self-confidence and prosperity. He had been prepared to offer a substantial loan if necessary, but George was living like a king. In Hollywood or around New York, a comparable house would cost over a hundred thousand dollars. It diminished his own achievements, threw into question the validity of the course he had followed, stirred unfamiliar guilt about the sacrifices and compromises he had been obliged to make. It was disconcerting. He was determined now to find the flaw beneath this apparently untroubled surface—the flaw that lay buried in every life—and expose it so that even George would be forced to acknowledge it. He wouldn’t want to leave until he had done so. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how you afford it. I’ve never been able to hold on to any loot.”