Islands in the Stream (33 page)

“He’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“That’s all right,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I’m so very sorry. Please know how terribly sorry I am. How was he killed?”

“I don’t know yet,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll let you know when I know.”

“Where was it?”

“I don’t know that. I know where he was flying but I don’t know anything else.”

“Did he get into London and see any of our friends?”

“Oh yes. He’d been in town several times and to White’s each time and he’d seen whoever was around.”

“Well, that’s a comfort in a way.”

“A what?”

“I mean it’s nice to know he saw our friends.”

“Certainly. I’m sure he had a good time. He always had an awfully good time.”

“Should we drink to him?”

“Shit, no,” Thomas Hudson said. He could feel it all coming up; everything he had not thought about; all the grief he had put away and walled out and never even thought of on the trip nor all this morning. “Let’s not.”

“I think it is the thing to do,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “I think it is eminently proper and the thing to do. But I must buy the drink.”

“All right. We’ll drink to him.”

“What was his rank?”

“Flight lieutenant.”

“He’d probably have been a wing commander by now or at least squadron leader.”

“Let’s skip his rank.”

“Just as you wish,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “To my dear friend and your son Tom Hudson.
Dulce es moriré pro patria
.”

“In the pig’s asshole,” Thomas Hudson said.

“What’s the matter. Was my Latin faulty?”

“I wouldn’t know, Ignacio.”

“But your Latin was excellent. I know from people who were at school with you.”

“My Latin is very beat up,” Thomas Hudson said. “Along with my Greek, my English, my head, and my heart. All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri.
¿Tú hablas frozen daiquiri tú?”

“I think we might show a little more respect to Tom.”

“Tom was a pretty good joker.”

“He certainly was. He had one of the finest and most delicate senses of humor I’ve ever known. And he was one of the best-looking boys and with the most beautiful manners. And a damned fine athlete. He was tops as an athlete.”

“That’s right. He threw the discus 142 feet. He played fullback on offense and left tackle on defense. He played a good game of tennis and he was a first-rate wing shot and a good fly fisherman.”

“He was a splendid athlete and a fine sportsman. I think of him as one of the very finest.”

“There’s only one thing really wrong with him.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s dead.”

“Now don’t be morbid, Tommy. You must think of Tom as he was. Of his gaiety and his radiance and his wonderful promise. There’s no sense being morbid.”

“None at all,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s not be morbid.”

“I’m glad you agree. It’s been splendid to have a chance to talk about him. It’s been terrible to have the news. But I know you will bear up just as I will, even though it is a thousand times worse for you being his father. What was he flying?”

“Spitfires.”

“Spitties. I shall think of him then in a Spitty.”

“That’s a lot of bother to go to.”

“No, no it isn’t. I’ve seen them in the cinema. I’ve several books on the RAF and we get the publications of the British Information Bureau. They have excellent stuff, you know. I know exactly how he would have looked. Probably wearing one of those Mae Wests and with his chute and his flying togs and his big boots. I can picture him exactly. Now I have to be getting home to lunch. Will you come with me? I know Lutecia would love to have you.”

“No. I have to meet a man here. Thanks very much.”

“Goodbye, old boy,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “I know you’ll take this thing the way you should.”

“You were kind to help me.”

“No, I wasn’t kind at all. I loved Tom. As you did. As we all did.”

“Thanks for all the drinks.”

“I’ll get them back from you another day.”

He went out. From beyond him, down the bar, one of the men from the boat moved up to Hudson. He was a dark boy, with short, clipped, curly black hair, and a left eye that had a slightly droopy lid; the eye was artificial but this did not show since the government had presented him with four different eyes, bloodshot, slightly bloodshot, almost clear, and clear. He was wearing slightly bloodshot, and he was already a little drunk.

“Hi, Tom. When did you get in town?”

“Yesterday,” then speaking slowly and almost without moving his lips, “Take it easy. Don’t be a fucking comedian.”

“I’m not. I’m just getting drunk. They cut me open they find security written on my liver. I’m the security king. You know that. Listen, Tom, I was standing up next to the phony Englishman and I couldn’t help but hear. Did your boy Tommy get killed?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh shit,” the boy said. “Oh shit.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course not. But when did you hear?”

“Before the last trip.”

“Oh shit.”

“What are you doing today?”

“I’m going to eat over at the Basque Bar with a couple of characters and then we’re all going to get laid.”

“Where are you going to have lunch tomorrow?”

“At the Basque Bar.”

“Ask Paco to call me up from lunch tomorrow, will you?”

“Sure. Out at the house?”

“Yes. At the house.”

“Do you want to come around with us and get laid? We’re going up to Henry’s Sin House?”

“I might come around.”

“Henry’s hunting girls now. He’s been hunting girls ever since breakfast. He’s been laid a couple of times already. But he’s trying to beat the two tomatoes we had. We got them at the Kursaal and they look pretty bad in the daylight. We couldn’t find a goddam thing. This town’s really gone to hell. He’s got the two tomatoes up at the sin house just in case and he’s out hunting girls with Honest Lil. They’ve got a car.”

“Were they doing any good?”

“I don’t think so. Henry wants that little girl. The little one he sees all the time at the Fronton. Honest Lil can’t get her because she’s afraid of him because he’s so big. She said she could get her for me. But she can’t get her for Henry because she’s spooked of his size and his weight and things she’s heard. But Henry doesn’t want anything else now because the two tomatoes topped him off. So now it’s this little girl and he’s in love with her. Just like that. In love with her. He’s probably forgotten about it now and is banging the tomatoes again right now. He’s got to eat, though, and we’re going to meet at the Basque Bar.”

“Make him eat,” Thomas Hudson said.

“You can’t make him do anything.
You
can. But I can’t. But I’ll beg him to eat. I’ll plead with him to eat. I’ll set him an example by eating.”

“Get Paco to make him eat.”

“Wouldn’t you think he would be hungry after that?”

“Wouldn’t you?’

Just then the biggest man that Thomas Hudson knew, and the most cheerful and with the widest shoulders and the best manners came in through the door of the bar with a smile on his face, which was beading with sweat even on the cold day. His hand was out in greeting. He was so big he made everyone at the bar look stunted and he had a lovely smile. He was dressed in old blue trousers, a Cuban countryman’s shirt, and rope-soled shoes. “Tom,” he said. “You bastard. We’ve been in search of the lovelies.”

His handsome face, as soon as he was out of the wind, sweated even more.

“Pedrico. I’ll have one of those, too. The double size. Or larger if you make them. Imagine seeing you here, Tom. And I’ve forgotten. Here’s Honest Lil. Come over here, my beauty.”

Honest Lil had come in the other door. She looked her best when sitting at the far end of the bar when you saw only her lovely dark face and the grossness that had come over her body was hidden by the polished wood of the bar. Now, coming toward the bar from the door, there was no hiding her body, so she propelled it, swaying, to the bar as rapidly as she could without visibly hurrying and got up onto the stool Thomas Hudson had occupied. This moved him one stool to the right and gave her the covered left flank.

“Hello, Tom,” she said and kissed Thomas Hudson. “Henry is terrible.”

“I’m not at all terrible, my beauty,” Henry told her.

“You’re terrible,” she told him. “Every time I see you, you are more terrible. Thomas, you protect me from him.”

“What’s he being terrible about?”

“He wants a little tiny girl that he is crazy for and the little tiny girl can’t go with him. But she wouldn’t go anyway because she is frightened of him because he is so big and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds.”

Henry Wood blushed, sweat visibly, and took a big sip of his drink.

“Two hundred and twenty-five,” he said.

“What did I tell you?” the dark boy said. “Isn’t that exactly what I told you?”

“Just what business is it of yours to be telling anyone anything?” Henry asked him.

“Two tramps. Two tomatoes. Two broken-down waterfront broads. Two cunts with but a single thought: the rent. We lay them. We trade cunts and re-lay them. It’s strictly from wet decks. I say one friendly understanding word now and I am not a gentleman.”

“They weren’t really awfully good, were they?” Henry said, blushing again.

“Awfully good? We ought to have poured gasoline on them and set them on fire.”

“How horrible,” Honest Lil said.

“Listen, lady,” the dark boy said. “I
am
horrible.”

“Willie,” Henry said. “Do you want the key to Sin House and go over and see if everything is all right?”

“I do not,” the dark boy said. “I have a key to Sin House as you have evidently forgotten and I do not want to go over there and see if everything is all right. The only way everything is all right there is whenever you or I kick those cunts into the street.”

“But suppose we can’t get anything else?”

“We have got to get something else. Lillian, why don’t you get off that stool and onto that telephone. Forget that little dwarf. Get that gnome out of your mind, Henry. You keep on with things like that and you’ll be psycho. I know. I’ve been psycho.”

“You’re psycho now,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Maybe I am, Tom. You should know. But I don’t fuck gnomes.” (He pronounced the word
Guhnomays
.) “If Henry has to have a guhnomay that’s his business. But I don’t believe he has to have one any more than he has to have one-armed women or one-legged women. Let him forget the goddam guhnomay and get Lillian there onto the telephone.”

“I’ll take any good girls we can get,” Henry said. “I hope you’re not mixed up, Willie?”

“We don’t want good girls,” Willie said. “You start on that, right away you’ll get psycho in a different way. Am I right, Tommy? Good girls is the most dangerous thing of all. Besides they will get you either on a contributing to delinquency or on a rape or attempted rape. Out with that good girls stuff. We want whores. Nice, clean, attractive, interesting, inexpensive whores. That can fuck. Lillian, what is keeping you away from that telephone?”

“One thing is that a man is using it and another is waiting by the cigar counter for him to finish,” Honest Lil said. “You’re a bad boy, Willie.”

“I’m a horrible boy,” Willie said. “I’m the worst goddam boy you’ll ever know. But I’d like us to get better organized than we are now.”

“We’re going to have a drink or so,” Henry said. “Then I’m sure Lillian will find someone that she knows. Won’t you, my beauty?”

“Of course,” Honest Lil said in Spanish. “Why couldn’t I? But I want to telephone from a telephone in a booth. Not from here. It isn’t proper to call from here and it isn’t fitting.”

“A delay,” Willie said. “All right. I accept it. Just another delay. Let’s drink then.”

“What the hell have you been doing?” Thomas Hudson asked.

“Tommy, I love you,” Willie said. “What the hell have you been doing yourself?”

“I had a few with Ignacio Natera Revello.”

“That sounds like an Italian cruiser,” Willie said. “Wasn’t there an Italian cruiser named that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It sounds like it, anyway.”

“Let me see the tabs,” Henry said. “How many were there, Tom?”

“Ignacio took them. I won them from him rolling.”

“How many were there really?” Henry asked.

“I think four.”

“What did you drink before that?”

“A Tom Collins coming in.”

“And at home?”

“Plenty.”

“You’re just a damned rummy,” Willie said. “Pedrico, three more double frozen daiquiris and whatever the lady wants.”

“
Un highbalito con agua mineral
,” Honest Lil said. “Tommy, come and sit with me at the other end of the bar. They don’t like me to sit at this end of the bar.”

“The hell with them,” Willie said. “Great friends like us that never see each other and then we can’t have a drink with you at this end of the bar. The hell with that.”

“I’m sure you’re all right here, beauty,” Henry said. Then he saw two planter friends of his farther down the bar and went to speak to them without waiting for his drink.

“He’s off now,” Willie said. “He’ll forget about the guhnomay now.”

“He’s very distrait,” Honest Lil said. “He’s awfully distrait.”

“It’s the life we lead,” Willie said. “Just the ceaseless pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Goddammit, we ought to pursue pleasure seriously.”

“Tom’s not distrait,” Honest Lil said. “Tom is sad.”

“Cut out that shit,” Willie said to her. “What are you pissed off about? First somebody is distrait. Then somebody is sad. Before that I’m horrible. So what? Where does a cunt like you get off criticizing people all the time? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be gay?”

Honest Lil began to cry, real tears, bigger and wetter than any in the movies. She could always cry real tears any time she wanted to or needed to or was hurt.

“That cunt cries bigger tears than mother used to make,” Willie said.

“Willie, you shouldn’t call me that.”

“Cut it out, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Willie, you are a cruel wicked boy and I hate you,” Honest Lil said. “I don’t know why men like Thomas Hudson and Henry go around with you. You are wicked and you talk vile.”