by Irwin Shaw
“You know how to handle boats. Am I right in supposing that or ain’t I right?”
“Sure, I can handle small boats,” Dwyer admitted. “I still don’t see …”
“On the beach at Cannes,” Thomas said, “they got sailboats you can rent by the hour. I want to see with my own eyes how you rate. You’re big on theory, with charts and books. All right, I want to see you actually get a boat in and out of some place. Or do I have to take that on faith, too, like your not being a fag?”
“Tommy!” Dwyer said, hurt.
“You can teach me,” Thomas said. “I want to learn from an expert. Ah—the hell with it—if you’re too yellow to come with me, I’ll do it myself. Go on back to the boat, like a nice little boy.”
“Okay,” Dwyer said. “I never did anything like this before. But I’ll do it. The hell with the ship.” He drained his beer.
“The grand tour,” Thomas said.
It wasn’t as good as he’d remembered it, because he had Dwyer with him, not that wild English girl. But it was good enough. And it certainly was a lot better than standing watches on the Elga Andersen and eating that slop and sleeping in the same stinking hole with two snoring Moroccans.
They found a cheap little hotel that wasn’t too bad behind the rue d’Antibes and went swimming off the beach, although it was only springtime and the water was so cold you could only stay in a little while. But the white buildings were the same, the pink wine was the same, the blue sky was the same, the great yachts lying in the harbor were the same. And he didn’t have to worry about his weight or fighting some murderous Frenchman when the holiday was over.
They rented a little sailboat by the hour and Dwyer hadn’t been lying, he really knew how to handle small boats. In two days he had taught Thomas a great deal and Thomas could slip a mooring and come up to it dead, with the sail rattling down, nine times out of ten.
But most of the time they spent around the harbor, walking slowly around the quays, silently admiring the sloops, the schooners, the big yachts, the motor cruisers, all still in the harbor and being sanded down and varnished and polished up for the season ahead.
“Christ,” Thomas said, “would you believe there’s so much money in the world and we don’t have any of it.”
They found a bar on the Quai St. Pierre frequented by the sailors and captains working on pleasure craft. Some of them were English and many of the others could speak a little and they got into conversations with them whenever they could. None of the men seemed to work very hard and the bar was almost always at least half full at all hours of the day. They learned to drink pastis because that was what everybody else drank and because it was cheap. They hadn’t found any girls and the ones who accosted them from cars on the Croisette or back behind the port asked too much money. But for once in his life Thomas didn’t mind going without a woman. The harbor was enough for him, the vision of the life based on it, of grown men living year in and year out on beautiful ships was enough for him. No boss to bother about nine months of the year, and then in the summer being a big shot at the wheel of a hundred-thousand-dollar craft, going to places like St. Tropez and Monte Carlo and Capri, coming into harbor with girls in bathing suits draped all over the decks. And they all seemed to have money. What they didn’t earn in salary they got in kickbacks from ship chandlers and boatyards and rigged expense accountts. They ate and drank like kings and some of the older ones weren’t sober from one day to the next.
“These guys,” Thomas said, after they had been in town for four days, “have solved the problems of the universe.”
He even thought of skipping the Elga Andersen for good and trying to get a job on one of the yachts for the summer, but it turned out that unless you were a skipper you most likely only got hired for three or four months, at lousy pay, and you were let go for the rest of the year. Much as he liked Cannes, he couldn’t see himself starving eight months a year just to be there.
Dwyer was just as dazzled as he was. Maybe even more so. He hadn’t even been in Cannes before but had admired and had been around boats all his life. What was an adult discovery for Thomas was a reminder for Dwyer of the deepest pleasures of his boyhood.
There was one Englishman in the bar, a dark-brown colored little man with white hair, named Jennings, who had been in the British navy during the war and who owned, actually owned, his boat, a sixty-footer with five cabins. It was old and cranky, the Englishman told them, but he knew it like his own mother, and he coaxed her all around the Med, Malta, Greece, Sicily, everywhere, as a charter captain during the summer. He had an agent in Cannes who booked his charters for him, for ten per cent. He had been lucky, he said. The man who had owned the boat and for whom he had worked, had hated his wife. When he died, out of spite, he had left the boat to Jennings. Well, you couldn’t bank on things like that.
Jennings sipped complacently at his pastis. His motor yacht, the Gertrude II, stubby, but clean and comfortable looking, was moored for the winter across the street, just in front of the bar, and as he drank Jennings could look fondly at it, all good things close at hand. “It’s a lovely life,” he said. “I fair have to admit it, Yanks. Instead of fighting for a couple of bob a day, hauling cargo on the docks of Liverpool or sweating blood oiling engines in some tub in the North Sea in a winter’s gale. To say nothing of the climate and taxes.” He waved largely toward the view of the harbor outside the bar where the mild sun tipped the gently bobbing masts of the boats moored side by side at the quay. “Rich man’s weather,” Jennings said. “Rich man’s weather.”
“Let me ask you a question, Jennings,” Thomas said. He was paying for the Englishman’s drinks and he was entitled to a few questions. “How much would it cost to get a fair-sized boat, say one like yours, and get into business?”
Jennings lit a pipe and pulled at it reflectively. He never did anything quickly, Jennings. He was no longer in the British navy, or on the docks, there was no foreman or mate to snarl at him, he had time for everything. “Ah, that’s a hard question to answer, Yank,” he said. “Ships are like women—some come high and some come cheap, but the price you pay has little to do with the satisfaction you get from them.” He laughed appreciatively at his own worldliness.
“The minimum,” Thomas persisted. “The absolute minimum?”
Jennings scratched his head, finished his pastis. Thomas ordered another round.
“It’s a matter of luck,” Jennings said. “I know men put down a hundred thousand pounds, cash on the barrelhead, ships designed by the fanciest naval architects, built in the best shipyards in Holland or Britain, steel hulls, teak decks, every last little doodad on board, radar, electric toilets, air conditioning, automatic pilot, and they cursed the day the bloody thing was put in the water and they would have been glad to get rid of it for the price of a case of whiskey, and no takers.”
“We don’t have any hundred thousand pounds,” Thomas said shortly.
“We?” Dwyer said bewilderedly. “What do you mean, we?”
“Shut up,” Thomas said. “Your boat never cost any hundred thousand pounds,” he said to Jennings.
“No,” Jennings said. “I don’t pretend it ever did.”
“I mean something reasonable,” Thomas said.
“Reasonable aren’t a word you use about boats,” Jennings said. He was beginning to get on Thomas’s nerves. “What’s reasonable for one man is pure lunacy for another, if you get my meaning. It’s a matter of luck, like I was saying. For example, a man has a nice snug little ship, cost him maybe twenty, thirty thousand pounds, but maybe his wife gets seasick all the time, or he’s had a bad year in business and his creditors are panting on his traces and it’s been a stormy season for cruising and maybe the market’s been down and it looks as though the Communists’re going to take over in Italy or France or there’s going to be a war or the tax people’re after him for some hanky-panky, maybe he didn’t tell them he paid for the ship with money he had stowed away quiet-like in some bank in Switzer
land, so he’s pressed, he’s got to get out and get out fast and suddenly nobody wants to buy boats that week … You get my drift, Yank?”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “You don’t have to draw a map.”
“So he’s desperate,” Jennings went on. “Maybe he needs five thousand guineas before Monday or the house falls in on his head. If you’re there and you have the five thousand guineas …”
“What’s a guinea?” Dwyer asked.
“Five thousand guineas is fifteen thousand bucks,” Thomas said. “Isn’t it?”
“Give or take a few bob,” Jennings said. “Or you hear about a naval vessel that’s up for auction or a vessel that’s been confiscated by the Customs for smuggling. Of course, it needs refitting, but if you’re clever with your hands and don’t pay these pirates in the shipyards around here to do your work for you—never trust a Frenchman on the Côte, especially along the waterfront, he’ll steal the eyes right out of your head—why, maybe, playing everything close and counting your money every night, maybe with luck, and getting some people to trust you till the end of the season for gear and provisions, you’re in the water and ready for your first charter for as little as eight, ten thousand pounds.”
“Eight, ten thousand pounds,” Dwyer said. “It might as well be eight, ten million dollars.”
“Shut up,” Thomas said. “There’re ways of making money.”
“Yeah?” Dwyer said. “How?”
“There’re ways. I once made three thousand bucks in one night.”
Dwyer took in a deep breath. “How?”
It was the first time Thomas had given anybody a clue to his past since he had left the Hotel Aegean, and he was sorry he had spoken. “Never mind how,” he said sharply. He turned to Jennings. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything within my power,” Jennings said. “As long as it don’t cost me no money.” He chuckled softly, boat owner, sitting on top of the system, canny graduate of the Royal Navy, survivor of war and poverty, pastis drinker, wise old salt, nobody’s fool.
“If you hear of anything,” Thomas said. “Something good, but cheap, get in touch with us, will you.”
“Happy to oblige, Yank,” Jennings said. “Just write the address down.”
Thomas hesitated. The only address he had was the Hotel Aegean and the only person he had given it to was his mother. Before the fight with Quayles, he had visited her fairly regularly, when he was sure he wouldn’t run into his brother Rudolph. Since then he had written her from the ports he had touched at, sending her folders of postcards and pretending he was doing better than he was doing. When he had come back from his first voyage there had been a bundle of letters from her waiting for him at the Aegean. The only trouble with her letters was that she kept asking to see her grandson and he didn’t dare get in touch with Teresa even to see the boy. It was the one thing he missed about America.
“Just write the address down, lad,” Jennings repeated.
“Give him your address,” Thomas said to Dwyer. Dwyer got his mail at the headquarters of the National Maritime Union in New York. Nobody was looking for him.
“Why don’t you stop dreaming?” Dwyer said.
“Do like I say.”
Dwyer shrugged, wrote out his address, and gave it to Jennings. His handwriting was clear and straight. He would keep a neat log, Third Mate Dwyer. If he ever got the chance.
The old man put the slip of paper into an old, cracked, leather wallet. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled and my ears open,” he promised.
Thomas paid the bill and he and Dwyer started along the quay, examining all the boats tied up there, as usual. They walked slowly and silently. Thomas could feel Dwyer glancing at him uneasily from time to time.
“How much money you got?” Thomas asked, as they reached the foot of the harbor, where the fishing boats, with their acetylene lamps, were tied up, with the nets laid out along the pavement, drying.
“How much money I got?” Dwyer said querulously. “Not even a hundred bucks. Just enough to buy one-millionth of an ocean liner.”
“I don’t mean how much money you got on you. I mean altogether. You keep telling me you save your dough.”
“If you think I’ve got enough for a crazy scheme like …”
“I asked you how much money you got. In the bank?”
“Twenty-two hundred dollars,” Dwyer said reluctantly. “In the bank. Listen, Tommy, stop jerking off, we’ll never …”
“Between us,” Thomas said, “you and me, one day, we’re going to have our own boat. Right here. In this port. Rich man’s weather, like the Englishman said. We’ll get the money somehow.”
“I’m not going to do anything criminal.” Dwyer sounded scared. “I never committed a crime in my life and I’m not going to start now.”
“Who said anything about committing a crime?” Thomas said. Although the thought had crossed his mind. There had been plenty of what Dwyer would call criminals hanging around during his years in the ring, in two-hundred-dollar suits and big cars, with fancy broads hanging on their arms, and everybody being polite and glad to see them, cops, politicians, businessmen, movie stars. They were just about like everybody else. There was nothing so special about them. Crime was just another way of earning a buck. Maybe an easier way. But he didn’t want to scare Dwyer off. Not yet. If it ever came off, he’d need Dwyer to handle the boat. He couldn’t do it alone. Yet. He wasn’t that much of an idiot.
Somehow, he told himself, as they passed the old men playing boules on the quay-side, with the harbor behind them, the protected sheet of water crowded with millions of dollars worth of pleasure craft, shining in the sun. The one time he had been here before, he had sworn he’d come back. Well, he had come back. And he was going to come back again. SOMEHOW.
The next morning, early, they caught the train on the way to Genoa. They gave themselves an extra day, because they wanted to stop off and see Monte Carlo. Maybe they’d have some luck at the Casino.
If he had been at the other end of the platform he’d have seen his brother Rudolph getting out of one of the sleeping cars from Paris, with a slender, pretty, young girl and a lot of new luggage.
Chapter 6
When they walked through the exit gate of the station, they saw the Hertz sign and Rudolph said, “There’s the man with our car.” The concierge at the hotel in Paris had taken care of everything. As Jean had said, after the concierge had arranged for tickets to the theater, for a limousine to tour the chateaux of the Loire, for tables at ten restaurants, for places at the Opera and Longchamps, “Every marriage should have its own private Paris concierge.”
The porter trundled their luggage over to the car, said merci for the tip and smiled, although they were plainly American. According to the newspapers back home Frenchmen were not smiling at Americans this year. The man from the Hertz agency started to talk in English but Rudolph showed off with his French, mostly to amuse Jean, and the remaining formalities for renting the Peugeot convertible were concluded in the language of Racine. Rudolph had bought a Michelin map of the Alpes-Maritimes in Paris, and after consulting it, with the car top down, and the soft Mediterranean morning sun shining on their bare heads, they drove through the white town and then along the edge of the sea, through Golfe Juan, where Napoleon had landed, through Juan-les-Pins, its big hotels still in their pre-season sleep, to the Hotel du Cap, shapely, cream colored and splendid on its gentle hill among the pines.
As the manager showed them up to their suite, with a balcony overlooking the calm, blue sea below the hotel park, Rudolph said, coolly, “It’s very nice, thank you.” But it was only with the greatest difficulty that he kept from grinning idiotically at how perfectly the manager, himself, and Jean were playing their roles in his ancient dream. Only it was better than the dream. The suite was larger and more luxuriously furnished; the air was sweeter; the manager was more of a manager than anyone could imagine; he himself was richer and cooler and better dressed than he had been in his poor-boy reve
rie; Jean, in her slim Paris suit, was more beautiful than the imaginary girl who had walked out onto the balcony overlooking the sea and kissed him in his fantasy.
The manager bowed himself out, the porters finished placing the bags on folding stools around the gigantic bed-room. Solid, real, with a solid, real wife, he said, “Let’s go out on the balcony.”
They went out on the balcony and kissed in the sunlight.
They nearly hadn’t married at all. Jean had hesitated and hesitated, refusing to say yes or no and for awhile he was on the brink of delivering an ultimatum to her every time he saw her, which was tantalizingly seldom. He was kept in Whitby and Port Philip a great deal of the time by work and then, when he did get to New York it was often only to find a message with his answering service from Jean telling him that she was out of town on a job. One night, he had seen her in a restaurant after the theater with a small, beady-eyed young man with matted long hair and a week-old growth of dark stubble on his jaws. The next time he saw her he asked her who the young man was and she admitted it still was the same one, the one she was overlapping with. When he asked her if she was still sleeping with him, she answered that it was none of his business.
He had felt humiliated that he was in competition with anyone that unsavory looking and it didn’t make him feel any better to be told by Jean that the man was one of the most famous fashion photographers in the country. He had walked out on her that time and waited for her to get in touch with him, but she never called him and finally he couldn’t bear it any longer and called her, swearing to himself that he would screw her but he’d be damned if he ever would marry her.
His whole conception of himself was damaged by her treatment of him and it was only in bed, where she delighted him and seemed to be delighted by him that he found any relief from his brooding feeling that he was being debased by the entire affair. All the men he knew assured him that all the girls they knew did nothing but plot constantly to get married. What sensational lack was there in his character or his lovemaking or general desirability that had made the only two girls he had asked to marry reject him?
