Islands in the Stream (40 page)

“No. Truly.”

“I don’t either really. Do you think we could take each other back?”

“I don’t know whether it would work. We could try it.”

“How long will the war be?”

“Ask the man who owns one.”

“Will it be years?”

“A couple, anyway.”

“Are you liable to be killed too?”

“Very.”

“That’s not good.”

“And if I’m not?”

“I don’t know. Now Tom’s gone we wouldn’t start being bitter and bad again?”

“I could try not to. I’m not bitter and I’ve learned how to handle the bad. Really.”

“What? With whores?”

“I guess so. But I wouldn’t need them if we were together.”

“You always did put things so prettily.”

“See? Let’s not start it.”

“No. Not in the house of the dead.”

“You said that once.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t know how to put it any other way and mean the same thing. It’s started to get numb already.”

“It will get number,” he said. “Numb is as bad as at the start. But it will get number.”

“Will you tell me every bad thing you know about it so mine will get numb quicker?”

“Sure,” he said. “Christ, I love you.”

“You always did,” she said. “Now tell me.”

He was sitting at her feet and he did not look at her. He looked at Boise the cat, who was lying in a patch of sunlight on the matting. “He was shot down by a flak ship in a routine sweep off Abbeville.”

“Did he bail out?”

“No. The kite burned. He must have been hit.”

“I hope he was,” she said. “I hope so much he was.”

“It’s almost sure he was. He had time to bail out.”

“You’re telling me the truth? His chute didn’t burn?”

“No,” he lied, thinking that was enough for today.

“Who did you hear it from?”

He told her the name of the man. “Then it’s true,” she said. “I don’t have a son any more and neither do you. I suppose we can learn about that. Do you know anything else?”

“No,” he told her, as truly as possible.

“And we just go on?”

“That’s it.”

“With what?”

“With nothing,” he said.

“Couldn’t I stay here and be with you?”

“I don’t think it would be any good because I have to go out as soon as the weather is possible. You never talk and you bury anything I tell you. So bury that.”

“But I could be with you until then and I could wait until you’re back.”

“That’s no good,” he said. “I never know when we’ll be back and it would be worse for you not working. Stay if you want until we go.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll stay until you go and we’ll think of Tom all we want. And we’ll make love as soon as you think it’s right.”

“Tommy never had anything to do with that room.”

“No. And I’ll exorcise anyone who ever did.”

“Now we really should eat something and drink a glass of wine.”

“A bottle,” she said. “Wasn’t Tom a lovely boy? And so funny and good.”

“What are you made of?”

“What you love,” she said. “And steel added.”

“I don’t know what’s become of the house boys,” Thomas Hudson told her. “They didn’t expect me back today. But one boy is supposed to be on the telephone. I’ll get the wine. It’s cold now.”

He opened the bottle and poured two glasses. It was the good wine he saved for coming-homes, after he had cooled out, and it bubbled small and neat and faithfully.

“Here’s to us and all our mistakes and all our losses and the gains we’ll make.”

“Made,” he said.

“Made,” she said. Then she said, “The one thing you were always faithful to was good wine.”

“Admirable of me, wasn’t it?”

“I’m sorry I said it about the drinking this morning.”

“Those things are good for me. It’s funny, but they are.”

“You mean what you were drinking? Or the criticism?”

“What I was drinking. The tall frozen ones.”

“Maybe they are. And I don’t make any criticism now except that it is awfully hard to get something to eat in this house.”

“Be patient. You’ve told me that enough times.”

“I’m patient,” she said. “I’m just hungry. I know now why people eat at wakes and before funerals.”

“Be as rough with it as is good for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be. Are we going to go on saying we’re sorry for everything? I said it once.”

“Listen, you,” he said. “I’ve had this thing three weeks longer than you and maybe I’m in a different phase.”

“You’d have a different and more interesting phase,” she said. “I know you. Why don’t you just get back to your whores?”

“Wouldn’t you like to stop it?”

“No. It makes me feel better.”

“Who was it said, ‘Mary, pity women’?”

“Some man,” she said. “Some bastard of a man.”

“Do you want to hear the whole poem?”

“No. And I’m tired of you already and you knowing it three weeks earlier and all that. Just because I’m a non-combatant and you’re in something so secret you have to sleep with a cat so you won’t talk—”

“And you still don’t see why we broke up?”

“We broke up because I got tired of you. You’ve always loved me and you couldn’t help it and you can’t help it now.”

“That’s true.”

The house boy was standing in the dining room. He had unavoidably seen and heard quarrels in the living room before and they made his brown face perspire with unhappiness. He loved his master and the cats and dogs and he admired the beautiful women respectfully and it made him feel terrible when there were quarrels. He thought that he had never seen such a beautiful woman and the caballero was quarreling with her and she was saying angry things to the caballero.

“Señor,” he said. “Pardon me. May I speak to you in the kitchen?”

“Excuse me please, darling.”

“I suppose it’s something mysterious,” she said and poured her glass full of wine.

“Señor,” the boy said. “The Lieutenant spoke in
castellano
and he said for to come in immediately repeat immediately. He said you would know where and that it was a business matter. I did not wish to call on our phone and I called from the village. Then they told me you were here.”

“Good,” said Thomas Hudson. “Thank you very much. Please fry some eggs for the señorita and me and tell the chauffeur to have the car ready.”

“Yes sir,” the boy said.

“What was it, Tom?” she asked. “Is it bad?”

“I have to go to work.”

“But you said you wouldn’t have to with this wind.”

“I know it. But it’s out of my hands.”

“Do you want me to stay here?”

“You can stay and read Tom’s letters if you like and the chauffeur will take you to your plane.”

“All right.”

“You can take the letters with you, too, if you want and any pictures or anything you see. Go through my desk.”

“You
are
changed.”

“Maybe a little,” he said.

“Go out to the studio and look at any of the stuff,” he said. “There are some good ones from before we started this project. Take anything you like. There’s a good one of you.”

“I’ll take it,” she said. “You’re awfully good when you’re good.”

“Read the letters from her if you like. Some of them are museum pieces. Take any along that are comic enough.”

“You sound as though I travelled with a trunk.”

“You can read them and then drop them out of the John in the plane.”

“All right.”

“I’ll try to get back before you go. But don’t count on it. If I have to use the chauffeur I’ll send a taxi to take you to the hotel or the airport.”

“Good.”

“The boy will look after you. He can do any pressing for you and you can use any clothes of mine or anything you find around.”

“Good. Will you try to love me, Tom, and not let anything like that last one ruin it?”

“Sure. They don’t mean anything and you pointed out I couldn’t help it.”

“Try and not be able to help it.”

“It’s out of my hands. Take any books you want or anything you find around the joint and give my eggs or one anyway to Boise. He likes them cut up small. I better shove. There’s been a time lag on this already.”

“Goodbye, Tom,” she said.

“Goodbye, devil, and take good care. This is probably nothing anyway.”

He was gone out the door. But the cat had slipped through it with him and was looking up at him.

“It’s all right, Boise,” he said. “I’ll be back before we shove.”

“Where do we go?” the driver asked him.

“Town.”

I can’t believe there’s any business with this heavy sea. But maybe they found something. Maybe one is in trouble somewhere. Christ, I hope we make it this time. I want to remember to make out one of those pocket wills and leave her the joint. Must remember to get it witnessed at the Embassy and leave it in the safe. She certainly took it awfully well. But then it hasn’t really hit her yet. I wish I could help her when it hits her. I wish I could be some real good to her. Maybe I can if we get by this one and the next one and the next one.

Let’s get by this one first. I wonder if she’ll take the stuff. I hope she will and that she’ll remember to give Boise the egg. He gets hungry when the weather’s cold.

The boys won’t be hard to find and she can take another beating before we haul her out. One more anyway. One for sure. We’ll gamble on it. There are spares for nearly everything. What’s one more beating if we get to close? It would have been nice to have stayed in. Maybe it would have been. The hell it would have been.

Get it straight. Your boy you lose. Love you lose. Honor has been gone for a long time. Duty you do.

Sure and what’s your duty? What I said I’d do. And all the other things you said you’d do?

In the bedroom of the farmhouse, now, the room that looked like the
Normandie
, she was lying on the bed with the cat named Boise beside her. She had not been able to eat the eggs and the champagne had no taste. She had cut up all the eggs for Boise and pulled open one desk drawer and seen the boy’s handwriting on the blue envelopes and the censor stamp and then she had gone over and lain face down on the bed.

“Both of them,” she said to the cat, who was happy from the eggs and from the smell of the woman who lay beside him.

“Both of them,” she said. “Boise, tell me. What are we going to do about it?”

The cat purred imperceptibly.

“You don’t know either,” she said. “And neither does anyone else.”

There was a long white beach
with coconut palms behind it. The reef lay across the entrance to the harbor and the heavy east wind made the sea break on it so that the entrance was easy to see once you had opened it up. There was no one on the beach and the sand was so white that it hurt his eyes to look at it.

The man on the flying bridge studied the shore. There were no shacks where the shacks should have been and there were no boats anchored in the lagoon that he could see.

“You’ve been in here before,” he said to his mate.

“Yes.”

“Weren’t the shacks over there?”

“They were over there and it shows a village on the chart.”

“They sure as hell aren’t here now,” the man said. “Can you make out any boats up in the mangroves?”

“There’s nothing that I can see.”

“I’m going to take her in and anchor,” the man said. “I know this cut. It’s about eight times as deep as it looks.”

He looked down into the green water and saw the size of the shadow of his ship on the bottom.

“There’s good holding ground east from where the village used to be,” his mate said.

“I know. Break out the starboard anchor and stand by. I’m going to lay off there. With this wind blowing day and night there will be no insects.”

“No sir.”

They anchored and the boat, not big enough to be called a ship except in the mind of the man who was her master, lay with her bow into the wind with the waves breaking white and green on the reef.

The man on the bridge watched that she swung well and held solidly. Then he looked ashore and cut his motors. He continued to look at the shore and he could not figure it out at all.

“Take three men in and have a look,” he said. “I’m going to he down a while. Remember you’re scientists.”

When they were scientists no weapons showed and they wore machetes and wide straw hats such as Bahaman spongers wear. These the crew referred to as “
sombreros científicos
.”
The larger they were the more scientific they were considered.

“Someone has stolen my scientific hat,” a heavy-shouldered Basque with thick eyebrows that came together over his nose said. “Give me a bag of frags for science’s sake.”

“Take my scientific hat,” another Basque said. “It’s twice as scientific as yours.”

“What a scientific hat,” the widest of the Basques said. “I feel like Einstein in this one. Thomas, can we take specimens?”

“No,” the man said. “Antonio knows what I want him to do. You keep your damned scientific eyes open.”

“I’ll look for water.”

“It’s behind where the village was,” the man said. “See how it is. We had probably better fill.”

“H
₂
O,” the Basque said. “That scientific stuff. Hey, you worthless scientist. You hat stealer. Give us four five-gallon jugs so we won’t waste the trip.”

The other Basque put four wicker-covered jugs in the dinghy.

The man heard them talking. “Don’t hit me in the back with that damned scientific oar.”

“I do it only for science.”

“Fornicate science and his brother.”

“Science’s sister.”

“
Penicilina
is her name.”

The man watched them rowing toward the too white beach. I should have gone in, he thought. But I was up all night and I’ve steered twelve hours. Antonio can size it up as well as I can. But I wonder what the hell has happened.

He looked once at the reef and then at the shore and at the current of clean water running against the side and making little eddies in the lee. Then he shut his eyes and turned on his side and went to sleep.

He woke as the dinghy came alongside and he knew it was something bad when he saw their faces. His mate was sweating as he always did with trouble or bad news. He was a dry man and he did not sweat easily.