“You mean from Spanish Cay?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got to go back to New York. I’ll be leaving next week, right after I win that race.”
“It’s too bad you can’t stay on. The really fine sailing weather will be coming along in a few weeks.”
“My dad is seriously ill and since I’m an only child and my mother died several years ago I don’t like to stay away from him too long. Oh I don’t suppose a few weeks either way really matters too much but my plans are made and I think I might as well stay with them.”
“Perhaps it’s just as well that you’re leaving Spanish Cay.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m not sure but somehow you just don’t seem to be the type.”
“What type do you have to be?”
They were standing close together and the atmosphere between them was suddenly charged with tension. He found himself very much aware of the smoothness of her skin and of the rise and fall of her firm young breasts. Gwen’s smile had faded. She looked long and seriously into his eyes. She started to say, “Gus, dear…” but then broke it off to add, “it’s getting late. I’ll drive you back.”
Robinson shook his head. “I think I’ll walk.”
“It’s an awfully long walk.”
“It will do me good. I’ve been sitting around on boats for too many years.”
“Are you angry about something, Gus?”
“Of course not. What made you ask that?”
“Well, I don’t know you very well but I have the impression that you’ve suddenly gotten very reserved.”
“Because I want to walk? Forget it. I assure you it’s nothing like that.”
A car on the road hooted at them. They looked up to see Clare Loomis at the wheel. Her beautifully done blonde hair was piled high on her head and she wore pink gloves and a frilly pink dress. She sat very straight in the little car and she waved at them as she went by and called out, “Hello, you two.”
They both waved back.
“Do you know her?” Gwen asked.
Robinson nodded. “I met her yesterday when she was visiting Stanley.”
“Don’t you think she’s extraordinarily beautiful?”
Robinson answered with a slight shrug.
“That’s not a very convincing answer,” Gwen said.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“I’m glad.”
“Why?”
“Most men who meet Clare for the first time fall violently in love with her. It makes me jealous. I guess when you come right down to it I’ve been a little jealous of Clare all my life. She’s my cousin and, of course, she’s always been older and more beautiful and more exciting. We never saw too much of her but we used to hear all about the way she moved in the most glamorous circles in Rome and London and Cannes. Lately we’ve been spending more time with Clare though, and it was at her insistence that I came down here this winter. I suppose I really shouldn’t sound so ungrateful. She’s introduced me to some very exciting people.”
“Like Dino di Whatsisname?”
“Di Buonaventura. Yes, Clare introduced me to Dino. He’s more or less her protégé. Don’t you like him?”
“He’s hardly my dish of tea but what does it matter? The thing is, you like him.”
She nodded, smiling.
“Well he’s a pretty boy, all right.”
“He’s more than that, Gus. He’s a very aware and very sensitive person.”
“Stanley told me he was an artist. Is he any good?”
“I’m not sure. Right now he makes his living doing portraits and that’s pretty much a job of making the subject look impossibly beautiful.”
“And he gives them what they want.”
“Well, he tries.”
They had run out of words. The charge of sexual excitement was rising between them again. She looked uneasily at her watch and said, “I’d better go. Are you sure you want to walk, Gus?”
“Yes, but thanks anyway. And maybe we’ll sail again before the race.”
“That would be wonderful.”
When he left her he felt curiously let down. She had gotten under his skin, managed somehow, even in those few hours on the water, to crack the carefully constructed armor that had served him so well during all the years of loneliness. He was, he knew, in a vulnerable position right now. When Charee went down his sense of independence went with her. No matter what had ever happened to him ashore there was always the ketch waiting at her mooring to take him out of it. His attachments were as transient as a raised anchor and an outgoing tide could make them. The singlehander… the one-night-stander. Leave ’em laughing or weeping, but always leave ’em.
It was daydreaming, of course, but what a combination Gwen and Charee would have made. Walking along the crushed coral path he let his mind play with it. Out through the canal to the Galapagos and then on to Papeete. The island of Mangareva mouldering under the weight of the past, almost all its people gone now, sacrificed to the mad ambitions of the French priest Laval who had built the great stone convents with slave labor. What crazy dreams had ravaged the Frenchman’s mind? The immense stone privies overgrown by the jungle…
They would be heading out to sea in the cool dawn and she would be clinging to the jibstay with her dark hair loose in the wind.
Knock it off, Robinson. The party is over. The music has stopped and they’ve turned off the lights and you change back into a pumpkin on the stroke of midnight. And it’s nobody’s bloody fault but your own. If you had only taken the trouble to check that filthy clamp. Who was the bastard who first put a toilet on a boat anyway? In the old days they used a cedar bucket and the damned boats didn’t sink. On his next one…
What next one? You haven’t got a pot and you know it and you probably never will have. Well, there’s always the gorgeous Mrs. Loomis. Twenty thousand bucks per murder. C.O.D. Not a bad price for a beginner. And there’s plenty of room for advancement. With a little push you could work your way to the top. Give it some thought, Augustus. It’s beginning to sound a little more palatable all the time, eh? And that’s what she’s counting on. When you didn’t get up and walk away the first time she mentioned it she figured you were half hooked right there. And maybe she’s right. Maybe she saw something in you you never saw in yourself, old dear. She had put it so neatly too, flashing that fine pair at him and sizing him up with those lovely ice-blue eyes and asking softly, “Who would pay you twenty thousand dollars for something legal?”
It’s all a matter of degree, she had said. Degrees of illegality. Maybe she was right. Why be so squeamish? Maybe it was just a question of how badly you needed something. When the bombardier looks through his bomb sight what does he see? The faces of ten thousand poor devils who will be incinerated? Hell no. If he is a good workman all he sees is a table of calculations and a set of cross hairs. Look at it that way, Gus. You just drop the bomb, is all.
He kicked savagely at a bit of rock in his path and then stood hesitating. He was in no mood to go back to the house. Instead he turned off onto the side path that led to town.
The town of Spanish Cay sits on the southeast tip of the island. There is not much to it. A tailor, a barber, the commissioner’s office, the straw market, the big game fishing club and half a dozen bars. There are always plenty of bars, a hangover probably from the old days when they ran booze from the Bahamas across the Florida Straits.
He became aware of the mutter of calypso drums and a shaft of yellow light streaming through an open doorway. From inside came the sound of laughter and a ripple of applause. The sign outside, hand-lettered on cardboard, told him that the name of the place was the Flame Club. In his present mood it was probably as good a place as any. He turned in through the open doorway and entered a world of smoke and chatter, of drums and sweat and the musky odor of sex. Some of the men wore soiled captain’s hats and long-billed mate’s caps. White teeth gleamed in dark faces, bodies pressed together on the tiny dance fl
oor. “That line came out of the outrigger like the stroke of doom and when he jumped he looked as big as a house. Two hundred and fifty pounds if he was an ounce”… “She says to me, ‘Why don’t you take me fishing tomorrow? My husband is leaving for New York and I won’t have a thing to do.’ I told her the port engine was overheating and I didn’t think we ought to run her. She gives me that long look and asks me what the hell do we need an engine for…”
At about ten o’clock the better element began arriving. Among them were several people Robinson knew—Gwen, Dino, Clare, Jocko Lacey and half a dozen others who had been at Stanley’s party. They sat apart, the arrogant rich. He kept his back to them. If they recognized him they might invite him for a drink. He could not afford to return the courtesy.
Suddenly, except for a single spotlight on the dance floor, the lights went out. There was a rattle of drums and a fanfare. Faces glinting with sweat turned in anticipation. The black figure, her muscles beautifully outlined as if carved of ebony, came leaping soundless as a panther toward the center of the floor. She wore only an orange-colored bud over each nipple and a paper flower clutched between muscular thighs. She came with naked buttocks gleaming and breasts swinging and head thrown back in silent orgasm. She swept full circle around the floor, her belly muscles seeming to writhe with a life of their own like a nest of snakes. A drunk at a ringside table reached a flabby paw toward her breast. She snatched him out of his seat and danced wildly with him for a moment, holding him helpless and slack-jawed, before flexing her hips and hitting him square in the belly with her pelvis and sending him crashing backward among the tables.
There was a great burst of applause and laughter as the drunk lay under a table with spilled whiskey dripping onto his red, insensible face. The drums rolled on. The dancer’s hands roamed lovingly over her own body, kneading and titillating. Masturbation as an art form. The girl was good in her primitive fashion but Robinson had seen better in Cairo and Port Said. He let his eyes swing away from the dancer toward the audience. Clare looked faintly bored. Gwen’s cheeks were paler than usual. Dino had the elegant, disinterested air of a thoroughbred stud watching the clumsy coupling of plowhorses.
The black girl coiled her steely legs one last time and swung her orange-tipped breasts in a defiant gesture and went leaping back out of the light. For a moment there was no sound but the exhalation of many breaths. They had seen the naked face of the jungle and their blood had been stirred by something they did not quite understand.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dino looked down at the tips of his beautifully polished loafers and said, “I will tell you something, Mr. Robinson. We are really very much alike, we two.”
Here it comes again, Gus thought. Walker said that and Clare said it and now Dino. Why do they use me as a mirror for their faults? Augustus Robinson, the flexible man. Step up. Step up. Are you long, short, fat or thin? See yourself in that new marvel of the mechanical age—the flexible man. He adjusts to each and every situation. Put one in your pocket and take it home with you, ladies and gentlemen. Take two for the price of one.
“You say we’re alike,” Robinson said. “Just how do you figure that?”
“We are both adventurers. In different fields perhaps—I happen to hate the sea—but we both have the same attitude toward life.”
“What attitude is that?”
“We understand how unpredictable it all is. We wait for a fair wind and then we sail before it and we never quite know where we will wind up. Isn’t that so?”
I wonder what he wants, Gus thought. You can see that he hates my guts and that he somehow senses that I’m a threat to him, but why did he come all the way out here to have breakfast with me?
Robinson had been sitting on the terrace in the cool of the morning when Dino drove up and got out of the car and strode jauntily up the path.
“Good morning, Mr. Robinson,” Dino had said. “Is Stanley still asleep?”
“I guess so; he tied on a beauty last night.”
“It is just as well; it will give me an opportunity to have a chat with you.”
“Care for some breakfast?”
“Splendid.”
During the meal Dino said, “I try to understand how a man like yourself can sail alone in a little boat for days or even weeks at a time but it confuses me. I wish you would explain it.”
“What is it that you don’t understand?”
“You must get some pleasure from it or you wouldn’t do it, but I should think the boredom would kill you.”
“There’s always a job to be done on a boat and there are still a couple of thousand good books I haven’t read.”
“But how do you go so long without a woman? At our age this is the only thing in life that really matters.”
“I manage. The same way I manage without television, ice cream and the morning paper.”
“To me it would be unthinkable. I would kill myself.” Dino had finished his coffee and now he leaned back and lit a cigarette and said, “By the way, what do you think of our little Gwen?”
“I like her.”
“Of course. We all like her. She is a wonderfully charming child. It was kind of you to be so helpful about her little boat. Perhaps now she will win the race, eh?”
“She has a natural talent for sailing. The only thing I could contribute was a little technical advice.”
Dino leaned back and put his long legs up on a chair and said, “She has a natural talent for many things. It is amazing with these shy little American girls. So carefully brought up. So proper. So unexposed. And then when you turn them loose—bang! It is like when you take an underprivileged child to the candy store. They can’t seem to get enough.”
Well blast his pretty eyes anyway, Robinson thought. The sonofabitch has a sure knack for getting under my skin. We’re like a pair of dogs around a bitch in heat. So the bitch is his. Well, then let him keep her at home where she belongs and out of sailboats.
Dino smiled and said, “Perhaps I have shocked you a little or destroyed some of your illusions. I hope not. You are, after all, a man of the world and why should not such men discuss women as freely as they discuss golf scores or fish they have caught or animals they have shot? If we mount the head of a deer so that our friends can admire our prowess why should we not—in spirit that is—mount the virgins we have deflowered. It is perhaps more of an accomplishment than bagging a defenseless deer, eh? If a man is honest he will admit that he takes pride in bedding a virgin. Some men have a talent for sailing boats or making money, others for painting pictures or making love. Why should we be so hypocritical as to pretend that this is something we don’t talk about?”
“I can give you one reason for keeping your mouth shut.”
“And what is that?”
“If you open it someone is liable to knock your teeth down your throat.”
“But my dear Robinson, forgive me. Have I touched a nerve? Are you perhaps in love with little Gwen? In that case, I am so sorry.”
Steady on, old boy, Robinson told himself. A swat in the nose seldom accomplished much. And if she wants to be a blasted international whore for this type of Via Sistina gigolo, what business is it of yours? “Somehow I would have thought Mrs. Loomis was more your style,” he said.
“Forgive me if I have offended you,” Dino went on. “It is all lies and foolish boasting anyway. Like the golf score or the size of the fish. No one really tells the truth in these matters. I just came to have a visit, a chat as you say, about unimportant things. As I have said, we are much alike. Adventurers. Men not bound by all the accepted and overworked conventions. And I was right; we are attracted by the same girl. Our tastes are similar. But Mrs. Loomis, that is something else again. There is a real woman for you, a regular man-eater. That woman could write an encyclopedia of the bed. If you will forgive a little friendly advice, you should cultivate her. You would find it, even for a man so widely traveled as yourself, quite a remarkable experience. Ah, but I forget. It will b
e difficult. She does not like you.”
“No?”
“We saw you last night at the bar in the Flame Club. And by the way, that savage was something, eh? Anyway, Clare seemed to take a poor view of you. She said you were a bit of a phony. Are you a phony, old boy?”
“Who isn’t?”
“You see, we understand each other. Of course we are all phonies.”
Dino looked at his wafer-thin gold watch on its black suede band and said, “Damn! Eight o’clock already. I must run for I have promised to breakfast with our little Gwen. Now I will have to conceal the fact that I have already breakfasted with you. You see how we all have to lead double lives. But then I am lucky; I have a big appetite. Well so long, Gus.”
“Good-bye,” Robinson said.
Dino climbed into the car and shot off with a spurt of gravel. Robinson lingered over his second cup of coffee. If Dino had come there solely for the purpose of bedeviling him, he had succeeded. Despite a strong effort to control his imagination, visions of Dino and Gwen together, naked on a bed, the painter’s hands caressing her small firm breasts, swam through his mind. He was not usually susceptible to jealousy—it was a passion that a sailor away at sea for months at a time could ill afford—but now he found that he was certainly jealous of the handsome Italian.
And it was doubly foolish because he had no claim of any kind on her. If he had permitted himself to indulge in daydreams about the voyages they might someday make together he should be realistic enough now to accept the fact that she was Dino’s girl and that there would never be any voyages. At least not for the two of them. He was to be, it appeared, forever the singlehander. And unless he found the money for a ship he would not even be that any more.
Well, he would find the money, he told himself. The only things hamstringing him at the moment were some tired old scruples. Dino had no scruples and was getting along just fine. God knows, Clare Loomis had few enough scruples and she would almost certainly have her way in the end too. Artificially bright and deadly cruel they were, like barracudas let loose in shoals of school fish. He knew them from way back and he had been bruised by them often enough so that by rights he should no longer be vulnerable. It was time he learned to cheat them at their own nasty games. Dino and Clare cheated mostly with their bodies, but for an enterprising, thirty-two-year-old, six-foot two-inch, shipwrecked sailor of poor but honest family, there must be other ways to cheat. You could cheat, for example, with a simple statement of intentions. A sort of moral I.O.U. Dear Devil: I, Gus Robinson, being reasonably sound in mind and limb, do herewith commit my soul to you in exchange for one thirty-eight-foot Alden-designed yawl. Pending survey, of course. Well, it was an idea all right and chances were a lot of good men had sold their immortal souls for less. Why had it always been assumed throughout the ages that the Devil was male? The Devil in this case was blonde and blue-eyed and the purveyor of a fine bag of tricks in bed. But there was a way to skin every cat and if you could cheat the Devil at her own game, why so much the better for you.
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