Beggarman, Thief (5 page)

“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”

“He’s a fine man, like I said,” Dwyer went on, uncomfortable, his mouth fidgeting, “but he’s not like Tom.”

“No, he’s not,” Gretchen said.

“Wesley’s talked to me. He don’t want to have nothing to do with Rudy. Or with his wife. That’s just natural human nature, wouldn’t you say, considering what’s happened?”

“I’d say,” Gretchen said. “Considering what’s happened.”

“If Rudy moves in on the kid—with the best intentions in the world, which I’m sure Rudy has—there’s going to be trouble. Awful trouble. There’s no telling what the kid will do.”

“I agree with you,” Gretchen said. She hadn’t thought about it before but the moment the words had passed Dwyer’s lips she had seen the truth of it. “But what’s to be done? Kate’s not his mother and she has her own problems. You?”

Dwyer laughed sadly. “Me? I don’t know where I’ll be twenty-four hours from now. The only thing I know is ships. Next week I may be sailing to Singapore. A month later to Valparaiso. Anyway, I ain’t made to be anybody’s father.”

“So?”

“I been watching you real careful,” Dwyer said. “Even though you didn’t take no more notice of me than a piece of furniture …”

“Oh, come on now, Bunny,” Gretchen said, guilty because almost the same thought had passed through her mind just a few minutes ago.

“I’m not sore about it and I’m not making any judgments, ma’am …”

“Gretchen,” she said automatically.

“Gretchen,” he repeated dutifully. “But since it happened—and now, staying here with me and letting me gab on—I see a real human being. I’m not saying Rudy ain’t a human being,” Dwyer added hastily, “only he’s not Wesley’s kind of human being. And his wife—” Dwyer stopped.

“Let’s not talk about his wife.”

“If
you
went up to Wesley and said, fair and square, right out in the open, ‘You come along with me …’ he’d recognize it. He’d see you’re the kind of woman he could take as a mother.”

A new idea in the process of natural conception, Gretchen thought, sons choosing mothers. Would evolution never cease? “I’m not what you might call a model mother,” she said dryly. The thought of being responsible in any way for the lanky, sullen-faced, silent boy with Tom’s wild genes in him frightened her. “No, Bunny, I’m afraid it wouldn’t work out.”

“I thought I’d give it a try,” Dwyer said listlessly. “I just don’t want to see Wesley left on his own. He’s not old enough to be left on his own, no matter what he thinks. There’s an awful lot of commotion ahead for Wesley Jordache.”

She couldn’t help smiling a little at the word “commotion.”

“Pinky Kimball, that’s the engineer on the
Vega,”
Bunny went on, “he’s the one who saw Mrs. Jordache in the nightclub with the Yugoslav, he tells me Wesley’s been pestering him. He wants Pinky to help find the guy, point him out to him.… I may be wrong, but what I believe, what Pinky thinks, too, is that Wesley wants to get revenge for his father.”

“Oh, God,” Gretchen said.

“You look around you here”—Dwyer made a gesture to take in the quiet harbor, the green hills, the useless fort and the picturesque, obsolete military walls—“and you think, what a nice, peaceful place this is. But the truth is, from Nice to Marseilles you got just about as many thugs as anyplace in the world. What with whores and drugs and smuggling and gambling there’s an awful lot of gun and knife toting in this neighborhood and plenty of guys who’d kill their mother for ten thousand francs, or for nothing, if it came to that. And from what Pinky Kimball’s told me, the fella Tom had the fight with is right in with them. If Wesley goes looking for the fella and finds him there’s no telling what’ll happen to him. At that military school Wesley was at, they had to tear him off other kids in fights, it wasn’t just sparring in a gym, he would’ve killed them if there’d been nobody else around. If he wants Pinky Kimball to point out somebody it’s because there’s a good chance he wants to kill him.”

“Oh, Christ,” Gretchen said. “What’re you trying to say, Bunny?”

“I’m trying to say that no matter what happens you got to get the kid out of here, out of the country. And Rudolph Jordache ain’t the man to do it. Now,” he said, “I’m drunk. I wouldn’t’ve talked like this if I wasn’t drunk. But I mean it. Drunk or sober. I mean every word of it.”

“Bunny,” Gretchen said, “thank you for telling me all this.” But she was sorry she had decided to stay on with him when the others had gone. The problem was not hers, she thought resentfully, and the solution was beyond her grasp. “I’ll talk to my brother,” she said; “see what we can figure out. Do you think it would be a good idea if I waited until Wesley came back and we all three had dinner together?”

“You want me to be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I believe Wesley likes you. In fact I know he does, he’s told me as much,” Dwyer said. “But tonight I don’t think he wants to see any Jordache for dinner. I’ll take him out myself. We got some things to talk about together, private, him and me.”

“Thanks for the drinks,” Gretchen said.

“On the house.”

“Drop me a postcard. From Singapore or Valparaiso or wherever.”

“Sure.” Dwyer laughed, a dry little laugh.

She nursed her drink. She had the feeling that if she left Dwyer alone, he would break down, sit on the deck and weep. She didn’t want Wesley to find him like that when he got back. “I’ll just finish my drink and …”

“You want another one? I’ll go get you one.”

“This’ll do, thanks.”

“I’ve become a whiskey drinker,” Dwyer said. “What do you know about that?” He shook his head. “Do you believe in dreams?” he asked abruptly.

“Sometimes.” She wondered if Dwyer had ever heard of Freud.

“I had a dream last night,” Dwyer said. “I dreamed Tom was laying on a floor—I don’t know where it was—he was just laying on the floor looking dead. I picked him up and I knew I had to carry him someplace. I wasn’t big enough in the dream to carry him in my arms so I laid him across my back. He’s a lot taller than me, so his legs were dragging on the floor, and I put his arms around my neck so I could get a strong hold on him and I began to walk, I don’t know where, someplace I just knew I had to take him. You know how it is in a dream, I was sweating, he was heavy, he was a deadweight around my neck, on my back. Then, all of a sudden, I felt he was getting a hard-on against my ass. I kept on walking. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn’t know what to say to a dead man with a hard-on. The hard-on kept getting bigger and bigger. And I felt warm all over. And even in my dream I was ashamed. You know why I was ashamed? Because I
wanted
it.” He shook his head. He had been talking dreamily, compulsively. He shook his head angrily. “I had to tell someone,” he said harshly. “Excuse me.”

“That’s all right, Bunny,” Gretchen said softly. “We’re not responsible for our dreams.”

“You
can say that, Mrs. Burke,” he said.

This time she did not correct him and tell him to call her Gretchen. She could not bear to look at Dwyer, because she was afraid she could not control what her face would tell him. The best she might manage would be pity and she feared what her pity might do to the man.

She reached out and touched his hand. He gripped it hard, in his tough seaman’s fingers, then in a swift, instinctive movement, brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. He let her hand go and turned away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said brokenly. “It was just … I don’t know … I …”

“You don’t have to say anything, Bunny,” she said gently. Silence now would heal wounds, staunch blood. She felt confused, helpless. What if she said, Take me down to your cabin, make love to me? Womanly thought, the central act. Would her body be a consolation or a rebuke? What would it mean to her? An act of charity, a confirmation of continuing life or a last, unworthy cry of despair? She looked at the neat, muscular back of the small man who had kissed her hand and turned away from her. She almost took a step toward him, then pulled back, a psychic retreat rather than a physical one.

The hand with which she still held the whiskey glass was cold from the melting ice. She put the glass down. “I’ve got to be getting on,” she said. “There are so many things to decide. Tell Wesley to call me if he needs anything.”

“I’ll tell him,” Dwyer said. He wasn’t looking at her, was staring, his mouth quivering, toward the entrance to the port. “Do you want me to go to the café and call a taxi?”

“No, thank you. I think I’ll walk; I could stand a little walk.”

She left him there in the bow of the
Clothilde,
barefooted and neat in his white jersey, with the two empty glasses.

She walked slowly away from the ships, into the town, up the narrow street, the night looming threateningly ahead of her. She looked into the window of an antique shop. There was a brass ship’s lamp there that attracted her. She would have liked to buy it, take it home with her; it would brighten the corner of a room. Then she remembered she had no real home, had come from an apartment rented for six months in New York; there was no room of hers for a lamp to brighten.

She went deeper into the town, thronged with people buying and selling, reading newspapers at café tables, scolding children, offering them ice-cream sandwiches, no one concerned with death. She saw the advertisement for a movie house, saw that an American picture, dubbed into French, was playing that night, resolved to have dinner in town alone and see it.

She passed in front of the cathedral, stopped for a moment to look at it, almost went in. If she had, she would have found Wesley on a bench, far back in the empty nave, his lips moving in a prayer he had never learned.

CHAPTER 3

F
ROM
B
ILLY
A
BBOTT’S
N
OTEBOOK—

MY FATHER WAS IN PARIS ONCE, WHEN THEY LET HIM OUT OF THE HOSPITAL JUST AFTER THE WAR. HE HAD NOT YET MET MY MOTHER. HE SAID HE WAS TOO DRUNK FOR THE THREE DAYS HE WAS THERE TO REMEMBER ANYTHING ABOUT IT. HE SAID HE WOULDN’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PARIS AND DAYTON, OHIO. HE DIDN’T TALK MUCH ABOUT THE WAR, WHICH MADE HIM A LOT BETTER COMPANY THAN SOME OF THE OTHER VETERANS I’VE BEEN EXPOSED TO. BUT ON SOME OF THE WEEKENDS THAT I SPENT WITH HIM UNDER THE TERMS OF THE DIVORCE, WHEN HE HAD HAD ENOUGH TO DRINK, WHICH USUALLY WAS EARLY ON, HE’D MAKE FUN OF WHAT HE DID AS A SOLDIER. I WAS MOSTLY CONCERNED WITH RED CROSS GIRLS AND MY PERSONAL SAFETY, HE’D SAY; I WAS IN THE AIR FORCE AND FLEW A TIGHT DESK, TAPPING OUT STORIES FOR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPERS ABOUT THE BRAVE BOYS WHO FLEW THE MISSIONS.

STILL, HE “DID” ENLIST, HE “DID” GET WOUNDED, OR ANYWAY, HURT, ON THE WAY BACK FROM A MISSION. I WONDER IF I WOULD HAVE DONE AS MUCH. THE ARMY, AS I SEE IT FROM HERE AND FROM WHAT I READ IN THE PAPERS ABOUT VIETNAM, IS A MACABRE PRACTICAL JOKE. OF COURSE, AS EVERYONE SAYS, THAT WAS A DIFFERENT WAR. WITH THE COLONEL I ASSUME AN EXTREME MILITARY POSE, BUT IF WAR IN EUROPE DID BREAK OUT, I’D PROBABLY DESERT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD A SHOT FIRED.

NATO IS FULL OF GERMANS, ALL VERY PALSEY AND COMRADES-INARMS, AND THEY’RE NOT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER ANIMALS. MONIKA, WHO IS GERMAN, IS ANOTHER STORY.

«  »

It was almost dark when Rudolph left the consulate. The consul had been an agreeable man, had listened thoughtfully, made notes, called in an aide, promised he would do everything he could to help, but it would take time, he would have to call Paris, get legal advice, he was not convinced that the lawyer in Antibes had been on sure ground when he had told Rudolph to ignore the French, there would have to be a determination from higher authorities as to what documents would be needed to transfer the ownership of the
Clothilde
and free the bank accounts. The death of an American in a foreign country always presented knotty problems, the consul had said, his tone hinting that it bordered on treason to commit an act of such importance on alien soil. That day, Rudolph thought, hundreds of Americans had died in Vietnam, which might be considered a foreign country, but the deaths had not produced knotty problems for consuls anywhere.