Islands in the Stream (28 page)

She must be as grave and as delicate and as beautiful as Princessa before they were in love and made the love and then be as shameless and as wanton in their bed as Princessa was. He dreamed about this princess sometimes in the nights and nothing that could ever happen could be any better than the dreams were but he wanted it actually and truly and he was quite sure he would have it if there were any such princess.

The trouble was that the only princess that he had ever made love to outside of Italian princesses, who did not count, was quite a plain girl with thickish ankles and not very good legs. She had a lovely northern skin, though, and shining well-brushed hair and he liked her face and her eyes and he liked her and her hand felt good in his hand when they stood by the rail going through the Canal coming up onto the lights of Ismailia. They liked each other very much and they were already close to being in love; close enough so that she had to be careful about the tone of their voices when they were with other people; and close enough so that, now, when they were holding each other’s hands in the dark against the rail he could feel what there was between them with no doubt about it at all. Feeling this and being sure, he had spoken to her about it and had asked her something since they made a great thing about being completely frank with each other about everything.

“I would like to very much,” she said. “As you know. But I cannot. As you know.”

“But there is some way,” Thomas Hudson had said. “There’s always some way.”

“You mean in a lifeboat?” she said. “I wouldn’t want it in a lifeboat.”

“Look,” he said and he put his hand on her breast and felt it rise, alive, against his fingers.

“That is nice,” she interrupted. “There are two of them you know.”

“I know.”

“That’s very nice,” she said. “You know I love you, Hudson. I just found out today.”

“How?”

“Oh I just found out. It wasn’t terribly difficult. Didn’t you find out anything?”

“I didn’t have to find out anything,” he lied.

“That’s good,” she said. “But the lifeboat is no good. Your cabin is no good. My cabin is no good.”

“We could go to the Baron’s cabin.”

“There’s someone always in the Baron’s cabin. The wicked Baron. Isn’t it nice to have a wicked Baron just as in olden times?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I could make sure there would be no one there.”

“No. That’s no good. Just love me very hard now just the way you are. Feel that you love me all you can and do what you are doing.”

He did and then he did something else.

“No,” she said. “Don’t do that. I couldn’t stand that?”

She did something then and said, “Can you stand that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll hold there very good. No. Don’t kiss me. If you kiss me here on deck then we might as well have done everything else.”

“Why don’t we do everything else?”

“Where, Hudson? Where? Tell me in this life about where?”

“I’ll tell you about why.”

“I know all about why. Where is the problem.”

“I love you very much.”

“Oh yes. I love you, too. And no good will come of it, except we love each other which is good.”

He did something then and she said, “Please. If you do that I have to go.”

“Let’s sit down.”

“No. Let’s stand up just as we are here.”

“Do you like what you are doing?”

“Yes. I love it. Do you mind?”

“No. But it doesn’t go on forever.”

“All right,” she said and she turned her head and kissed him quickly and then looked out again across the desert they were sliding by in the night. It was winter and the night was cool and they stood close together looking straight out. “You can do it, then. A mink coat is good for something finally in the tropics. You won’t before me?”

“No.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

“Oh Hudson. Please. Please now.”

“You?”

“Oh yes. Any time with you. Now. Now. Oh yes. Now.”

“Really now?”

“Oh yes. Believe me now.”

Afterwards they stood there and the lights were much closer and the bank of the canal and the distance beyond was still sliding by.

“Now are you ashamed of me?” she asked.

“No. I love you very much.”

“But it’s bad for you and I was selfish.”

“No. I don’t think it is bad for me. And you’re not selfish.”

“Don’t think it was a waste. It wasn’t a waste. Truly not for me.”

“Then it wasn’t a waste. Kiss me, will you?”

“No. I can’t. Just hold your hand against me tight.”

Later she said, “You don’t mind how fond I am of him?”

“No. He’s very proud.”

“Let me tell you a secret.”

She told him a secret that did not come to him as a great surprise.

“Is that very wicked?”

“No,” he said. “That’s jolly.”

“Oh Hudson,” she said. “I love you very much. Please go and make yourself comfortable in every way and then come back to me here. Should we have a bottle of champagne at the Ritz?”

“That would be lovely. What about your husband?”

“He’s still playing bridge. I can see him through the window. After he finishes he will look for us and join us.”

So they had gone to the Ritz which was at the stern of the ship and had a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Brut 1915 and then another one and after a while the Prince had joined them. The Prince was very nice and Hudson liked him. They had been hunting in East Africa, as he had been, and he had met them at the Muthaiga Club and at Torr’s in Nairobi and they had taken the same boat from Mombasa. The ship was a round-the-world cruise ship which made a stop at Mombasa en route for Suez, the Mediterranean, and eventually Southampton. It was a super luxury ship where all the cabins were private suites. It had been sold out for the world cruise as ships were in those years but some of the passengers had left the ship in India and one of those men who know about everything had told Thomas Hudson in the Muthaiga Club that the ship was coming in with several vacancies and that passage on her might be had quite reasonably. He had told the Prince and Princess, who had not enjoyed flying out to Kenya in those times when the Handley Pages were so slow and the flight so long and tiresome, and they had been delighted with the idea of the trip and the rates.

“We’ll have such a jolly trip and you’re a wonderful chap to have found out about it,” the Prince had said. “I’ll ring them up about it in the morning.”

It had been a jolly trip, too, with the Indian Ocean blue and the ship coming out slowly from the new harbor and then Africa was behind them, and the old white town with the great trees and all the green behind it, then the sea breaking on the long reef as they passed and then the ship gained speed and was in the open ocean and flying fish were splitting out of the water and ahead of the ship. Africa dropped to a long blue line behind them and a steward was beating on a gong and he and the Prince and the Princess and the Baron, who was an old friend and lived out there and was really wicked, were having a dry martini in the bar.

“Pay no attention to that gong and we’ll lunch in the Ritz,” the Baron said. “Do you agree?”

He had not slept with the princess on the ship although by the time they had reached Haifa they had done so many other things that they had both reached a sort of ecstasy of desperation that was so intense that they should have been required by law to sleep with each other until they could not stand it another time simply for the relief of their nerves, if for no other reason. Instead, from Haifa they made a motor trip to Damascus. On the way up, Thomas Hudson sat in the front seat with the chauffeur and the two of them sat in back. Thomas Hudson saw a small part of the Holy Land and a small part of the T. E. Lawrence country and many cold hills and much desert on the way up, and on the way back they sat in the back and the Prince sat in front with the chauffeur. Thomas Hudson saw the back of the Prince’s head and the back of the chauffeur’s head on the return trip and he remembered now that the road from Damascus to Haifa, where the ship was anchored in the harbor, runs down a river. There is a steep gorge in the river but it is very small as it would be on a small-scale relief map and in the gorge there is an island. He remembered the island better than anything on the trip.

The trip to Damascus did not help much and when they had left Haifa and the ship was headed out across the Mediterranean and they were up on the boat deck, that was cold now with a northeast wind, that was making a sea that the ship was beginning to buck slowly, she said to him, “We have to do something.”

“Do you like understatement?”

“No. I want to go to bed and stay in it for a week.”

“A week doesn’t sound very long.”

“A month then. But we have to do it right away and right away we can’t.”

“We can go down to the Baron’s cabin.”

“No. I do not want to do it until we can do it really without worrying.”

“How do you feel now?”

“As though I were going crazy and were already quite a way there ...”

“In Paris we can make love in a bed.”

“But how do I get away? I have no experience of how to get away.”

“You go shopping.”

“But I have to go shopping with someone.”

“You can go shopping with someone. Have you no one you can trust?”

“Oh yes. But I so much did not want to ever have to do that.”

“Don’t do it then.”

“No. I must. I know I must. But that does not make it better.”

“Were you never unfaithful to him before?”

“No. And I thought I never would be. But now it is all that I want to do. But it hurts me that anyone should know.”

“We’ll figure out something.”

“Please put your arm around me and hold me very close against you,” she said. “Please let us not talk, nor think, nor worry. Please just hold your arm tight and love me very much because I ache now everywhere.”

After a while he said to her, “Look, whenever you do this it is going to be as bad for you as now. You don’t want to be unfaithful and you don’t want anyone to know. But it will be like that whenever it happens.”

“I want to do it. But I don’t want to hurt him. I have to do it. It’s not in my hands any more.”

“Then do it. Now.”

“But it’s terribly dangerous now.”

“Do you think there is anyone on this ship that sees us and hears us and knows us that thinks we have not slept together? Do you think the things we have done are any different from that?”

“Oh, of course they are different. There is all the difference. We couldn’t have a baby from what we have done.”

“You’re wonderful,” he had said. “You really are.”

“But if we have a baby I’ll be glad. He wants a baby very much and we never have one. I’ll sleep with him right away and he’ll never know it is ours.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with him
right
away.”

“No I suppose not. But the next night.”

“How long since you slept with him?”

“Oh I sleep with him every night. I have to, Hudson. I get so excited I have to. I think that’s one reason he plays bridge until so late now. He’d like me to be asleep when he comes in. I think he is getting a little tired since we have been in love.”

“Is this the first time you have ever been in love since you married him?”

“No. I am sorry. But it is not. I have been in love several times. But I have never been unfaithful to him or even considered it. He is so good and nice and such a good husband and I like him so much and he loves me and is always kind to me.”

“I think we had better go down to the Ritz and have some champagne,” Thomas Hudson had said. His feelings were becoming very mixed.

The Ritz was deserted and a waiter brought them the wine at one of the tables against the wall. They kept the Perrier-Jouet Brut (1915) on ice all of the time now and simply asked, “The same wine, Mr. Hudson?”

They raised their glasses to each other and the Princess said, “I love this wine. Don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“Naturally. All I think about is you. But what about me?”

“I was thinking we should go down to my cabin now. We talk too much and fool around too much and do nothing. What time have you?”

“Ten after eleven.”

“What time have you?” he called to the wine steward.

“Eleven-fifteen, sir.” The steward looked at the clock inside the bar.

When the steward was out of earshot, he asked, “How late will he play bridge?”

“He said he would play late and for me not to stay awake for him.”

“We’ll finish the wine and go to the cabin. I have some there.”

“But Hudson, it is very dangerous.”

“It will always be dangerous,” Thomas Hudson had said. “But not doing it is getting to be a damned sight more dangerous.”

That night he made love to her three times and when he took her to her cabin, she had said that he shouldn’t and he had said it would look much sounder if he did, the Prince was still playing bridge. Thomas Hudson had gone back to the Ritz, where the bar was still open, and ordered another bottle of the same wine and read the papers that had come aboard at Haifa. He realized that it was the first time he had had time to read the papers in a long time and he felt very relaxed and very happy to be reading the papers. When the bridge game broke up and the Prince came by and looked into the Ritz, Thomas Hudson asked him to have a glass of wine before he went to bed and he liked the Prince more than ever and felt a strong kinship with him.

He and the Baron had got off the ship at Marseilles. Most of the others were going on for the rest of the cruise, which finished at Southampton. In Marseilles he and the Baron were sitting at a sidewalk restaurant in the Vieux Port eating
moules marin
é
s
and drinking a carafe of
vin rosé.
Thomas Hudson was very hungry and he remembered that he had been hungry most of the time ever since they had left Haifa.

He was damned hungry now, too, he thought. Where the hell were those servants? At least one should have shown up. It was blowing colder than ever outside. It reminded him of the cold day there on the steep street in Marseilles that ran down to the port, sitting at the café table with their coat collars up eating the
moules
out of the thin black shells you lifted from the hot, peppery milk broth with hot melted butter floating in it, drinking the wine from Tavel that tasted the way Provence looked, and watching the wind blow the skirts of the fisherwomen, the cruise passengers and the ill-dressed whores of the port as they climbed the steep cobbled street with the mistral lashing at them.