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He closed his eyes, but he heard her dressing swiftly. By the time she was out of the room he was asleep.
He was up early, awakened by the sound of hissing water, as Dwyer and Wesley hosed off the deck. They had come into port too late the night before to do it then. He had a big bandage around his knee and every time he moved his right shoulder he winced with pain. But it could have been worse. The doctor said there were no broken bones, but that the knee had been badly mauled and perhaps some cartilage had been torn away. Kate was already in the galley preparing breakfast and he lay alone in the bunk, his body remembering all the other times in his life he had awakened bruised and aching. His memory bank.
He pushed himself out of the bunk with his good arm and stood in front of the little cabinet mirror on his good leg. His face was a mess. He hadn’t felt it at the time, but when he had toppled Danovic his face had crashed against the rough concrete floor and his nose was swollen and his lip puffed out and there were gashes on his forehead and cheekbones. The doctor had cleaned out the cuts with alcohol and compared to the rest of him his face felt in good shape, but he hoped Enid wouldn’t go screaming to her mother when she got a glimpse of him.
He was naked and there were black-and-blue welts blooming all over his chest and arms. Schultzy should see me now, he thought, as he pulled on a pair of pants. It took him five minutes to get the pants on and he couldn’t manage a shirt at all. He took the shirt with him and clumped, hopping mostly, into the galley. The coffee was on and Kate was squeezing oranges. Once the doctor had assured her that nothing serious was wrong, she had become calm and businesslike. Before he had gone to sleep, after the doctor had left, he had told her the whole story.
“You want to kiss the bridegroom’s beautiful face?” he said.
She kissed him gently, smiling, and helped him on with his shirt. He didn’t tell her how much it hurt when he moved his shoulder.
“Does anybody know anything yet?” he asked.
“I haven’t told Wesley or Bu
“As far as anybody is concerned, I was in a fight with a drunk outside Le Cameo,” Thomas said. “That will be an object lesson to anybody who goes out drinking on his wedding night.”
Kate nodded. “Wesley’s been down with the mask already,” she said. “There’s a big chunk out of the port screw and as far as he can tell the shaft is twisted, too.”
“If we get out of here in a week,” Thomas said, “we’ll be lucky. Well, I might as well go up on deck and start lying.”
He followed Kate as she went up the ladder carrying the orange juice and the coffee pot on a tray. When Wesley and Dwyer saw him, Dwyer said, “For Christ’s sake what did you do to yourself?” and Wesley said, “Pa!”
“I’ll tell everybody about it when we’re all together,” Thomas said. “I’m only going to tell the story once.”
Rudolph came up with Enid and Thomas could tell from the look on his face that Jean had probably told him the true story or most of the true story. All Enid said was, “Uncle Thomas, you look fu
“I bet I do, darling,” Thomas said.
Rudolph didn’t say anything, except that Jean had a headache and was staying in bed and that he’d take her some orange juice after they’d all had their breakfast. They had just sat down around the table when Gretchen came up. “Good God, Tom,” she said, “what in the world happened to you?”
“I was waiting for someone to ask just that question,” Thomas said. Then he told the story about the fight with the drunk in front of Le Cameo. Only, he said, laughing, the drunk hadn’t been as drunk as he had been.
“Oh, Tom,” Gretchen said, distractedly, “I thought you’d given up fighting.”
“I thought so, too,” Thomas said. “Only that drunk didn’t.”
“Were you there, Kate?” Gretchen asked accusingly.
“I was in bed asleep,” Kate said placidly. “He sneaked out. You know how men are.”
“I think it’s disgraceful,” Gretchen said. “Big, grown men fighting.”
“So do I,” Thomas said. “Especially when you lose. Now let’s eat breakfast.”
V
Later that morning Thomas and Rudolph were up in the bow alone. Kate and Gretchen had gone to do the marketing, taking Enid along with them, and Wesley and Dwyer were down looking at the screws again with the masks.
“Jean told me the whole story,” Rudolph said. “I don’t know how to thank you, Tom.”
“Forget it. It wasn’t all that much. It probably looked a lot worse than it was to a nicely brought up girl like Jean.”
“All that drinking going on all day,” Rudolph said bitterly, “and then the final straw—Gretchen and me drinking here on board before di
“Of course not, Rudy.”
“She told me, she told me,” Rudolph said. “This polite-looking, well-spoken young man came up to her and said he had a car outside and he knew a very nice bar in Ca
“Polite-looking, well-spoken young man,” Thomas said, thinking of Danovic lying on the floor of the cellar with the handle of the ball-peen hammer sticking up from his broken teeth. He chuckled. “He’s not so polite looking or well spoken this morning, I can tell you that.”
“And then when they got to that bar, a strip-tease joint—God, I can’t even imagine Jean in a place like that—he said it was too noisy for him at the bar, there was a little cosy club downstairs …” Rudolph shook his head despairingly. “Well, you know the rest.”
“Don’t think about it, Rudy, please,” Thomas said.
“Why didn’t you wake me up and take me along with you?” Rudolph’s voice was harsh.
“You’re not the sort of man for a trip like that, Rudy.”
“I’m her husband, for Christ’s sake.”
“That was another reason for not waking you up,” said Thomas.
“He could have killed you.”
“For a little while there,” Thomas admitted, “the chances looked pretty good.”
“And you could have killed him.”
“That’s the one good thing about the night,” Thomas said. “I found out I couldn’t. Now, let’s go back and see what the divers’re up to.” He hobbled down the deck from the bow, leaving his brother and his brother’s guilts and gratitudes behind him.
VI
He was sitting alone on the deck, enjoying the calm late evening air. Kate was down below and the others had all gone on a two-day automobile trip to the hill towns and into Italy. It had been five days since the Clothilde had come back into the harbor and they were still waiting for the new propeller and shaft to be delivered from Holland. Rudolph had said that a little sightseeing was in order. Jean had been dangerously quiet since her night of drunke