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“Well,” Thomas said, “the party we’re picking up tomorrow at St. Tropez, two French couples, are only taking the boat for three weeks and with any break in the weather, we can go down the coast of Spain, the Costa Brava, Cadaques, Rosas, Barcelona, then across to the Balearics. And after them, we come back here and there’s an English family who want to go south—that’s another three week cruise—the Ligurian coast, Portofino, Porto Venere, Elba, Porto Ercole, Corsica, Sardinia, Ischia, Capri …”
Mr. Goodhart chuckled. “You’re making Newport sound like Coney Island, Captain. Have you been to all those places?”
“Uhuh.”
“And people pay you for it?”
“A lot of them make you earn your money, and more,” Thomas said. “Not everybody’s like you and Mrs. Goodhart.”
“Old age has sweetened us, perhaps,” Mr. Goodhart said slowly. “In some ways. Do you think I might have another drink, Captain?”
“If you don’t plan to do any more swimming tonight,” Thomas said, rising and taking Mr. Goodhart’s glass.
Mr. Goodhart chuckled. “That was a horse’s ass thing to do today, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it was.” Thomas was surprised at Mr. Good-hart’s using an expression like that. He went below and mixed two more drinks. When he came back on deck, Mr. Goodhart was stretched out in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his head back, looking up at the stars. He took the glass from Thomas’s hand without changing his position.
“Captain,” he said, “I’ve decided to pamper myself. And my wife. I’ll make a firm commitment with you right now. Starting June first next year we’ll take the Clothilde for six weeks and go south to all those pretty names you were reeling off. I’ll give you a deposit tonight. And when you say no swimming, nobody will swim. How does that strike you?”
“It would be fine for me, but …” Thomas hesitated.
“But what?”
“The Clothilde’s all right for you using it during the day the way you do, going to the islands … but for six weeks, living aboard … I don’t know. For some people it’s fine, but for others, who are used to luxury …”
“You mean for spoiled old crocks like my wife and myself,” Mr. Goodhart said, “it’s not grand enough, is that it?”
“Well,” Thomas said uncomfortably, “I wouldn’t like you not to enjoy yourselves. The Clothilde rolls quite a bit in rough weather and it’s pretty stuffy down below when we’re under way, because we have to close all the portholes, and there’s no proper bath, just showers, and …”
“It’ll do us good. We’ve had it too easy all our lives. Oh, it’s ridiculous, Captain.” Mr. Goodhart sat up. “You make me ashamed of myself. To have you feel as though going around the Mediterranean on a boat as nice as this one is roughing it for me and my wife. God, it sends cold shivers down my spine to think of the opinion people must have of us.”
“People get used to living in different ways,” Thomas said.
“You’ve lived yours the hard way, haven’t you?” Mr. Goodhart said.
“No worse than a lot of others.”
“You don’t seem any the worse for it,” Mr. Goodhart said. “In fact, if I may say so, if my son had turned out like you, I’d be more pleased with him than I am now. Considerably more pleased.”
“It’s hard to know,” Thomas said neutrally. If he knew about Port Philip, he thought, burning the cross on VE day, and hitting my father, and taking money for screwing married ladies in Elysium, Ohio, if he knew about blackmailing Sinclair in Boston, and throwing fights, and about Quayles and Quayles’s wife in Las Vegas, and about Pappy and Teresa and Falconetti, maybe he wouldn’t be sitting there being friendly, with a glass in his hand, wishing his son was more like me. “There’s a lot of things I’ve done I’m not so goddamn proud of,” he said.
“That doesn’t make you any different from the rest of us, Captain,” Goodhart said quietly. “And while we’re on the subject—forgive me for this afternoon. I was drunk and I had had two weeks of watching three splendid young people happily working together, moving around like graceful animals, and I felt old and I didn’t want to feel old and I wanted to prove that I wasn’t all that old and I risked all our lives. Knowingly, Captain, knowingly. Because I was sure you weren’t going to let us make that swim alone.”
“It’s better not to talk about it, sir,” Thomas said. “Anyway, no harm was done.”
“Old age is an aberration, Tom,” Mr. Goodhart said bitterly. “A terrible, perverted aberration.” He stood up and put his glass down carefully. “I’d better be getting back to the hotel and see how my wife is doing,” he said. He extended his hand and Thomas shook it. “Until next June first,” he said and strode off the ship, carrying the two baskets with him.
When Kate and Dwyer came back, with the freshly laundered linen, all Thomas said was that Mr. Goodhart had been and gone and that they had their first charter, six weeks, for the following year.
Dwyer had a letter from his girl. She had been down to the Aegean Hotel, but she had no information for Tom, she said, because Pappy was dead. He had been found, knifed and with a gag in his mouth, in his room, the new man at the desk had told her. Three months ago.
Thomas listened to the news without surprise. That was the kind of business Pappy had run and he had finally paid his dues.
There was something else in the letter that was obviously bothering Dwyer, but he didn’t tell the others what it was, although Thomas could guess. Dwyer’s girl didn’t want to wait any more and she wouldn’t leave Boston and if Dwyer wanted to marry her he’d have to go back to America. He hadn’t asked Thomas’s advice yet, but if he had, Thomas would have told him that no dame was worth it.
They went to bed early, because they were going to set out for St. Tropez at four in the morning, before the wind sprang up.
Kate had made up the big bed in the master cabin for herself and Thomas for the night, because there were no clients on board. It was the first time they had a chance to make love in comfort and Kate said she wasn’t going to miss it. In the cabin they shared forward, they had two narrow bunks, one above the other.
Kate’s stocky, solid, full-breasted body was not made for showing off clothes, but her skin was wonderfully soft and she made love with gentle avidity and as Thomas lay later, with her in his arms in the big bed, he was grateful that he was not old, that his girl was not in Boston, that he had allowed himself to be persuaded by Pinky to have a woman on board.
Before she went to sleep, Kate said, “Dwyer told me tonight that when you bought the boat you changed the name. Who was Clothilde?”
“She was a queen of France,” Thomas said. He pulled her closer to him. “She was somebody I knew as a boy. And she smelled like you.”
The cruise to Spain wasn’t bad, although they hit some weather off Cap Cruz and had to stay in port for five days at a stretch. The French couples consisted of two paunchy Parisian businessmen and two young women who were definitely not their wives. There was some trading going on between the couples in the after cabins, but Thomas hadn’t come to the Mediterranean to teach French businessmen how to behave. As long as they paid their bills and kept the two ladies from walking around in high heels and poking holes in the deck, he wasn’t going to interfere with their fun. The ladies also lay on deck with the tops of their bikinis off. Kate took a poor view of that, but one of the ladies had really sensational tits and it didn’t interfere with the navigation too much, although if there had been any reefs on the course while Dwyer was at the wheel, Dwyer would have most likely run them aground. That particular lady also made it clear to Thomas that she wouldn’t mind sneaking up on deck in the middle of the night to have a go with him while her Jules was snoring away below. But Thomas told her he didn’t come with the charter. You got into enough complications with clients without any of that.