Go to the Widow-Maker (82 page)

Slowly, he swam up. By the time he reached twenty feet his diaphragm was heaving uncontrollably every three or four seconds, but he had not let out any air and he knew he had it made. He even slowed down his kick the last twenty feet because he hated for it to end. Then he reached the surface and blew his snorkel so he could breathe again.

Not far away, after watching him, Jim himself took off down on a dive. It was an eerie and beautiful sight to watch the stocky diver leisurely kick his way down, down, down. It was as if Grant was seeing himself make his own dive from the viewpoint of Jim and Ben. Ben was grinning at him and shaking his head admiringly. Breathing on the surface, Grant watched Jim spear his fish and start back up. On the bottom, naturally, he looked as tiny as he had on the top from the bottom.

“You know what you did?” Jim shouted laughing after he was back up. “You did eighty, eighty-five feet there, man! That’s easily eighty or eighty-five feet down. And you stopped to push the spear through him! That was cool! Hell, you could do a hundred feet, man, any time you want! You’re a real pro!” He stopped his hysterically happy laughing. “Come on, let’s get on back to the boat. It’s late.”

Back in the boat Grant showed Lucky his big fish, and sat quietly, smoking, while Jim lauded his eighty-five-foot dive.

“I’ll have a lot of things to tell and show to Doug tomorrow when he gets here tomorrow, won’t I?” he asked Lucky.

“You sure will,” Lucky said thinly. “I’m very proud of you.”

Grant threw his cigarette end over the side, thin-lipped, and felt his eyes flatten in his face like the real tough man he seemed to have become. “Thanks,” he said.

D
OUG’S ARRIVAL DID
nothing to heal the split between them. Rather it worked just in the reverse, since he brought with him, not the new girlfriend he had talked so excitedly about over the phone, but Al Bonham. It was almost exactly like the first time they two had appeared here at the Crount, enough so that Grant had that eerie feeling of having done something before and that something was happening in time for the second time. The two got out of what could have been the same taxi, and came up the same steep set of steps, in what was almost exactly the same way and order. Only the late lunchtime cast on the veranda was different. Ben and Irma were still there, but the lady musical comedy writer and her husband who had become such good friends were missing. Instead, the male movie star and his actress wife were there. And Jim Grointon. Jim Grointon was always with them now, whenever, and just about wherever they were, excepting only at night when they actually went to bed.

Lucky conducted herself with complete decorum toward Doug and Bonham—as she had with Jim, Ben and Irma, the star and his wife, and the others. Whenever any other people were around, she was the perfect wife and companion, even pal; it was only when they were alone together that she wasn’t. It was beginning to look like Grant was going to pass the entire rest of his married life like this, just like almost every other son of a bitch he knew, and he was beginning to get damned tired of it. But there seemed to be no way to approach her, at all, to talk about it.

Bonham, it turned out, had considerable news for them— once Doug finished telling them about his new girl and why she was not with him. The first thing Doug said when he had arrived up the steps and been introduced to the star and wife was, “Say, did you guys
know
that that Les Wright was a lez?” He washboarded his forehead at them and wiggled his eyebrows above his grin.

Lucky’s eyes got brilliant and she made a small knowing grin at Grant. “Well, let’s say that we
suspected
that she might be,” she said.

“
She
was havin a goddam
affair
with
Evelyn,
for Christ’s sake!” Doug said. “I almost got my head in a real noose there!

“How are you?” he said with his most charming smile, which was a considerably charming one, and went around the table to shake hands with the star. “I’ve admired your work for a very long time.”

Les Wright, however, had nothing to do with his new girl, or why she had not come. The new girl was a wealthy married girl from Connecticut whose father was a bigwheel Supreme Court lawyer in Washington, and who was traveling with another married girl without any husbands along. Neither one was planning to get divorced, they just wanted to get away from their husbands for a while, and had come down to spend a few weeks in GaBay at the West Moon Over. She and Doug had made out from the very first moment they had met. The reason that, in the end, she had backed out and decided not to come down with him was that she did not want to—was sort of scared to—leave her married girl friend she was traveling with. “It’s a shame,” Doug said, grinning at the star and his wife, “because she was a great lay, a great—and very sophisticated—lay.” He turned to Lucky. “However . . .” He shrugged.

Bonham’s news, which he had politely remained silent about until Doug had finished, was—of course; naturally—about the schooner
Naiad.
She was going to be finished much sooner than expected, was in fact almost finished now. That was one of the reasons he was down here: to look at her. The other reason was to see Grant. About the cruise. Because of the early date of finishing her, plus the fact that Grant was in Kingston, he had been in touch with Sam Finer in New York about the maiden cruise. Both Grant and Sam were invited guests, with their ladies, on the maiden cruise of
Naiad.
And because of this it was Bonham’s idea, if it suited everybody, to just commence the cruise right here—in Kingston—once the ship was in the water, rather than sailing her up to GaBay first.

It had been, they should understand, his intention all along, for this maiden cruise, to take
Naiad
to the Nelson Islands, a small British-controlled group not quite halfway between the Pedro Bank and the Rosalind Bank over toward the Honduras mainland. This was about 92 nautical miles from Ganado Bay, and about 165 nautical miles from Kingston, via the Pedro Cays. Why sail the ship all the way to GaBay and then have to come back that extra distance? The Nelsons, where Bonham had been once several years ago, were great spearfishing—and great living, because a number of wealthy Bahamians (as well as rich Americans) had winter houses there—and would be the perfect place for their initial cruise. He had spoken about all this to Sam Finer in New York yesterday by phone and Finer was in agreement with all of it. Assuming Grant had no complaints about it (Bonham had told Sam about Grant’s loan to the corporation), Finer and Cathie would fly down to Kingston, stay a couple of days at the Crount, and they would all start their voyage from Kingston Harbor. They would then be six: Bonham and Orloffski as crew, Finer, Cathie, Grant and Lucky.

Now,
Naiad
would sleep eight comfortably, if they used the saloon as a double cabin, and Bonham and Orloffski bunked in the crew quarters forward. Bonham had therefore taken the liberty of asking along two paying guests. What the hell, why waste the space when you could pick up some money on it? Finer had agreed. These paying guests were a Baltimore brain surgeon and his girlfriend, both of whom Bonham had taught to dive two years ago and who had happened to be in Ganado Bay on a vacation. The brain surgeon had to be back in Baltimore for a big operation on the twelfth of next month; they could therefore leave here in around two weeks, cruise to the Nelsons, spend a week or even ten days spearfishing and exploring the little island group, be back in GaBay on the tenth or eleventh for the surgeon to catch the plane. Assuming always, of course, that all this fitted in with Grant’s own plans. Grant and Lucky could then stay on here at the Crount and save themselves all that plane fare to New York and back. If that was okay with Grant. It would even fit in with this Morant Cays trip, Bonham carefully pointed out with a look at Jim. But any way they did it, Bonham intended to see that Grant, as well as Sam Finer, was on that maiden cruise—to the Nelson Islands. It would be one hell of a great trip.

“Boy, you’re
right
it would be one hell of a great trip!” Ben Spicehandler said enthusiastically. “I just wish me and Irma could go along on that trip! I’ve read about the Nelsons.”

There slowly descended over Bonham’s eyes his normal and customary ‘commercial film’ which Grant had seen so many times before. It was exactly like watching a veil being drawn across a window. “As a matter of fact,” Bonham said, “we could actually take along another couple. Only trouble is, you would have to sleep forward in the crew’s quarters, which is a little bit more cramped than the other berths. Would that bother you?” He grinned with his stormcloud eyes and inflated his great chest and gut slowly: “On the other hand,
I
can sleep there and get rest.”

Ben’s eyes were already bright. Now they got brighter. He looked over at Irma. Irma grinned, ducked, shrugged, and cackled. “How about it, Irm?” Ben said. “Okay? Okay, we’ll go!

“But what about you and uh what’s his name? Orloffski,” Ben added.

“We’ll sleep on deck,” Bonham said, the commercial film across his eyes once more.

“What if it rains?”

“We’ll sleep on deck.”

“Okay, then!” Ben said in a warning voice. “We’ll sure go!”

“Done,” Bonham said. “It’s a deal.” The really best news, though, he had to give, he said, was that Sam Finer had said he was willing to
think
about maybe putting another $10,000 into the corporation.

“But that’s really
great
news!” Grant put in excitedly. “I mean
really
great! That means you’ll be all set up! You’ll have working capital and everything!”

Bonham nodded. “We’ll be able to pay you back your loan. We’ll even be able to insure the ship. And I think a lot of his willingness is due to the fact that you made us that loan.”

“You mean the ship isn’t insured?” Lucky asked.

“They looked her over in the yard,” Bonham said. “She’s not a young ship, you know. The premiums they’re asking are too high. I wouldn’t pay them. I
couldn’t
pay them! Not now. Not then. Not yet.”

“You mean we’ll be sailing two hundred miles and back for a week on a ship that can’t get insured?” Lucky asked.

“They’ll insure her,” Bonham corrected her. “They just want too much. Anyway, don’t worry about that.”

“But what’s wrong with her, if they want such high premiums?” Lucky said.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Bonham said evenly, and patiently. “It’s just that she’s not a new ship, like I told you. But she’s as sound as any ship of her size anywhere in the whole damned world. Take my word for it.”

“I’ll take your word for it!” Ben said enthusiastically.

Lucky said nothing. And she did not bring the subject up again, then. But later on in the suite she talked to Grant about it. “You expect me to go off with you on a beatup old ship that can’t even get insured?” she said when they were alone in the suite.— “I do,” Grant said. “Hell, even Ben and Irma are going, for Christ’s sake.”— “Well, they’re crazy to do it,” Lucky said. “And I’m not going. I’ll stay here at the Crount and wait for you.”

Grant waited a few moments before he went on. “Look, you’re willing to go off on a crapped-up, camping-out, stuck-together-with-chewing-gum cruise with Jim and Doug to the Morant Cays. With a captain we don’t even know.”

“I am; but I’d rather not,” Lucky said. Her face took on that veiled look Grant had not yet been able to read.

“I just don’t understand. Bonham is a man we know. We know he’s reputable. If he says the ship’s all right, it is.”

“I don’t trust him,” Lucky said, with a sudden strange irritability. “I never did. He’s accident-prone.”

“You trusted me to do serious diving on those cannon with him.”

“That was diving. This is something else. I’m just not going.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Grant said, and stretched out, without being kissed, without offering to kiss.

It did not take Doug long to catch on to how things were between them. Grant could tell by the closed look on his face. But Doug said absolutely nothing about this, this time, as if their being married changed everything, including his right and/or his ability to give advice. But if he said nothing about them, he was enormously enthusiastic, and talkative, about the Morant Cays trip. So was Grant, and strangely enough, apparently, so was Lucky. They all talked about it with everybody for the two days it took Jim to set it up.

In the end, though, after they had gone and come back and seen and done it all, it was not really all that different from any of the other diving trips they had made.

In the end it was difficult, after a while, to see a reef or a beach or a coco palm that did not resemble generally the remembered aggregate of all the other reefs and beaches and coco palms one had seen. It was difficult, after a while, to see one mangrove snapper that looked any different from all the other mangrove snapper. The word about the Morant Cays was that there were lots of sharks of all varieties large and small in the waters around them, but then that was the “Word” about just about everyplace where someone else was going and oneself was not. It was said about the Cayman’s, the Nelsons, the Pedro Cays, it was even said by Montego Bay about Ganado Bay, and vice versa. Actually they saw only a few more sharks in their six-day trip than they would have seen in six days’ fishing at the place near Morant Bay, say twenty-five or thirty, and almost always out at the outer edge of visibility where they sort of just cruised around. There was only one potentially dangerous shark incident on the whole trip, although no one was seriously hurt by it. It would, of course, have to happen to Grant.

There were all sorts and varieties of reefs available, all charged with fish, from six and ten-foot reefs even Doug could fish easily, on down to eighty-foot ones that Grant now fished fairly easily with Jim. After the pleasant, short, fifty-five-mile sail, all sail was taken in and the captain moved them about from island to island and spot to spot by motor. The weather stayed fine, and the sea was flat and tranquil. Even Lucky was finally persuaded, under Jim’s expert tutelage, to go over the side and snorkel around exploring the very shallow reefs while Grant and Doug with spearguns ‘guarded’ her from nearby like the outriders of a cavalry column, as Jim would take her by the hand and dive her down four feet or six feet to look closely at staghorn, elkhorn, brain or fire coral. She had to admit to them it was beautiful.