CHAPTER 5

FROM BILLY ABBOTT’S NOTEBOOK—

I HAVE A WEAKNESS FOR MY FATHER, WHO IS A WEAK MAN. I FORGAVE HIM. I HAVE NO WEAKNESS FOR MY MOTHER, WHO IS A STRONG WOMAN, AND WHOM I DO NOT FORGIVE. LET THE SCHOLAR WHO SIFTS THROUGH THE RUINS OF BRUSSELS IN THE NEXT CENTURY FIGURE THIS OUT. WE ARE ALL HAUNTED BY OUR PARENTS, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. I AM HAUNTED BY TWO FATHERS. WILLIAM ABBOTT, WHO SIRED ME, WAS, AND I SUPPOSE STILL IS, SMALL AND DELIGHTFUL, CHARMING AND USELESS.

COLIN BURKE, SECOND HUSBAND OF MY MOTHER, WAS A GLITTERING, SELFISH, TALENTED MAN, WHO COULD MAKE ACTORS PERFORM LIKE ANGELS AND THE SCREEN LIGHT UP LIKE A BONFIRE. I LOVED HIM AND ADMIRED HIM AND WISHED I COULD GROW UP TO BE LIKE HIM. I DID NOT. I GREW UP, I’M AFRAID, LIKE WILLIE ABBOTT, ALTHOUGH WITHOUT SOME OF HIS ESSENTIAL ATTRACTIVE QUALITIES. I LOVED HIM, TOO.

I HAVE PUT HIM TO BED, DRUNK, FIFTY TIMES.

I PLAYED FIVE SETS OF TENNIS TODAY FOR SIDE BETS, AND WON THEM ALL.

«  »

He had been to the consulate in Nice again, to the jail in Grasse, to which Wesley had been moved, twice during the week and three times to the lawyer’s office. The consul had been vague and apologetic about being vague, the lawyer had been helpful, up to a point, Wesley not helpful, just silent, unrepentant, physically no worse for wear and less interested in his own fate than that of the men imprisoned along with him, among them a jewel thief, a passer of stolen checks and an art forger. He hadn’t shaved since his arrest and the blondish thick stubble gave him an unkempt and wolfish look, at home among criminals. When he came into the small room in which Rudolph was permitted to speak to him, there was a rank, feral smell, a hunting beast caged in an unsanitary zoo. The smell transported Rudolph uncomfortably back to the room above the family bakery, the bed he shared with his brother Tom when they were in their teens, when Tom would come back late at night after a night of brawling in the town. He took out his handkerchief and pretended to be blowing his nose as Wesley sat down, grinning a little, opposite him across the small, unpainted, scarred table, guaranteed Provençal antique, provided by courtesy of the police of the floral city of Grasse.

Rudolph put on a solemn face, to indicate that this was no laughing matter. The police, through the lawyer, had let Rudolph know that the case was grave—a beer bottle might be construed to be a dangerous weapon—and that Wesley was not going to be let out of jail for some weeks, if then.

Rudolph had also spoken several times to his lawyer, Johnny Heath, in New York, who had told him that if he could extricate himself from the French, in all probability the estate would have to be settled in New York, as the last known residence in the United States of the murdered man, and that it would take time.

We will all be drowned in paper, Rudolph thought. He could see the Clothilde going down with all aboard in a sea of writs, court orders and legal foolscap, as he listened to Johnny Heath saying he guessed that the judge would almost certainly appoint Kate Jordache, the wife, even though she was a British subject, as executrix of the estate, which would probably be divided one-third to her and two-thirds to the son, although the child she was bearing was a complicating factor. The son, being a minor, would have to have a guardian until he reached the age of eighteen, and he didn’t see any reason why Rudolph, as the oldest and nearest male relative, couldn’t have the job. The estate would most probably have to be liquidated and taxes paid, which would mean selling the Clothilde within the year. But, Heath warned, he could not say definitely as yet—he would have to get other opinions.

He said nothing to Wesley of the problems that Heath had discussed. He merely asked if he were being treated well, if there was anything he wanted. Carelessly, the boy said that he was being treated like everybody else, wanted nothing. Baffling, unrewarding young man, Rudolph thought resentfully, immutably hostile. He cut the visits as short as possible.

When he returned wearily to the hotel, it was no better. Worse, in fact. The scenes with Jean were becoming more violent. She wanted to go home, get out of her prison, as she called it, probably the only time in its history that the Hotel du Cap had been so described. Somehow, she had gotten it into her head that it was Rudolph’s fault that she couldn’t leave and his telling her that it was the policeman who was holding her passport and not himself could not stem the flood of her hysteria. “God damn it,” she had said, during their latest argument, “your idiotic brother should have minded his own business. So I’d’ve been fucked. Big deal. It wouldn’t’ve been the first time an American lady got fucked in France and I’d’ve been on my way home by now.”

As the shrill voice battered at his ears, he had a quick vision of Jean as she had been when they had first married, a quick, lovely girl, passionate in the warm, afternoon lovemaking in the room overlooking the sea (was it the same room in which she slept now?—he couldn’t remember), offering to buy him a yacht on that surprising afternoon when she confessed that she, who he had believed before their marriage was a poor working girl, was wealthier by far than he was. Better not think of those days.…

The fact that Wesley had nearly killed a man Jean took as proof that it was the Jordaches’ inherent lust for violence, not her drunkenness or emotional instability, that had been at the root of the tragedy. “One way or another,” she had screamed at her husband, “with or without me, with their characters, those two men, that man and that boy, were doomed from the beginning. It’s in the blood.” Gretchen, he remembered, had said much the same thing and he damned her for it. He had seen Wesley in jail. It was not only Jordache blood in Wesley’s veins. He remembered the pouting, hard-eyed, curvaceous mother—Teresa. Who knew what Sicilian bandits had contributed to that rank smell, that wolfish grin? Guilt, if it was guilt, had to be fairly apportioned.

“I know about your crazy father,” Jean ranted on, accusing him, his crime-stained German ancestors. “I don’t know how you and your holy sister escaped it this long. And look at your sister—how did her husband die? Killed, killed, killed.…”

“In an automobile accident.” Rudolph tried to break through her high-pitched, intoning chant. “Fifty thousand people a year …”

“Killed,” Jean repeated stubbornly. “I’m frightened to think of what kind of life our child is going to have with you as the father.…”

Rudolph felt helpless before her attacks. He felt confident of himself, able to solve rational problems, but irrationality frightened him, confused him, left him unarmed. When he left the room Jean had thrown herself facedown on a couch, beating her hands against the pillows like a child, sobbing, “I want to go home, I want to go home.…”

Gretchen, too, although she didn’t say anything, was growing restive. She had work to go back to, a man kept telephoning her from New York, the attractions of the Côte d’Azur had long since lost their charm for her, and Rudolph realized that she was only staying on out of loyalty to him. Another debt.

Once, during the week, when they were alone together, she asked quietly, “Rudy, has it ever occurred to you to just pull out?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean quit. It isn’t your mess after all. Just pick up and leave. One way or another, they’ll all survive.”

“No,” he said shortly, “it’s never occurred to me.”

“I admire you, Brother,” Gretchen said, although there was no admiration in the manner in which she said it. “I admire you and I wonder at you.”

“You don’t have to stay, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “And I don’t intend to stay forever. I suppose you will, if necessary.”

“If necessary.” He had no job to go back to, nobody was calling him from New York.

“Add pity to what I just said, Brother,” Gretchen said. “I am now going to go down to the sea and bask in the sunshine.”

Kate had not yet called from her hotel and he was thankful to her for that. But he dreaded the moment when he would have to go to her and tell her what had to be done and what it would mean for her.

Poor Bunny Dwyer, he thought, as he walked slowly once again through the narrow streets of the old city toward the lawyer’s office—old companion, old partner, unprovided for by law or custom, friendship and the work of years not bearing the weight of a feather in any legal balance.

The only thing that had kept him sane was the two afternoons in a hotel in Nice with Jeanne. No complications, no iron cables of love or duty to consider, only the unthinking satisfactions of the flesh to make forgetfulness possible for an hour or two in a darkened room rented in a strange town.

Was that really the reason he was willing to stay, for those precious afternoons in Nice? For the selfish sport of double adultery? Was he being admired and pitied for a lie?

His steps were heavy as he approached the lawyer’s office and the bright sunlight made him sweat uncomfortably.

The lawyer had his office in his own house along the ramparts, in two of the old humble stone buildings now turned into a single exquisite mansion, where once the fishermen who sailed out of Antibes had lived, but which, converted and modernized, now were owned by people who had never cast a net, had never pulled an oar or survived a squall. Contrary to established economic doctrine, Rudolph thought, the rich follow the poor, not the other way around. At least to the good spots the poor have accidentally found, where they in times past had been the first citizens of the town exposed to pirates, enemy fire and the erosion of storms.

The lawyer’s office was impressive, the walls lined with calf-bound legal books, the furniture elegant, dark, eighteenth-century pieces, gleaming with wax, the wide window opening on a view of the sea that lapped at the rampart walls. The lawyer was an old man, but straight and as impressive as his surroundings, beautifully dressed, with large, well-kept hands, sprinkled with liver spots. He had a shining bald pate over a large-nosed, sharp face, and sad eyes. Why shouldn’t he be sad, Rudolph thought, as he shook the old man’s hand, think of what he must have been through to arrive in this room.

“I have considerable news for you,” the lawyer said when Rudolph had seated himself across the great polished desk from him. He spoke English slowly but with care. He had let Rudolph know from the beginning that he had spent the war years in England. His voice was juicy. “First, about your wife. I have her passport here.” He opened a drawer, bent a little, produced the passport and pushed it gently across the desk toward Rudolph. “The police have found Danovic, the man they wished to question further. They assure me their interrogation was—er—vigorous. Unfortunately, while he has a police record of previous arrests for various crimes, he has been discharged each time without going to trial. Besides, his alibi has stood up. He was in Lyon all day, having his teeth fixed. The dentist’s records are irrefutable.”

“That means what?”

The lawyer shrugged. “That means that unless the police can prove that the dentist lied or that Danovic had accomplices whom he directed or ordered or conspired with to commit the murder they cannot arrest him. So far, there is no evidence that he knew anything about it. The police would like to continue to question him, of course, but there is no way at the present time that they can hold him. Unless …” He paused.

“Unless what?”

“Unless your wife wishes to place a charge of attempted rape against him.”

Rudolph groaned. He knew that it would be impossible to get Jean to do anything of the kind. “All my wife wants,” he said, “is to go home.”

The lawyer nodded. “I quite understand that. And of course, there are no witnesses.”

“The only witness was my brother,” Rudolph said, “and he’s dead.”

“In that case, I think the best thing your wife could do would be to leave for home as soon as possible. I can imagine the ordeal …”

No, you can’t, old man, Rudolph thought, not for a minute. He was thinking of himself more than of his wife.

“In any case, rape cases are most difficult to sustain,” the old man said. “Especially in France.”

“They’re not so easy in America, either,” Rudolph said.

“It’s a crime in which the law finds itself in an uncomfortable position,” the lawyer said. He smiled, aged and used to injustice.

“She’ll be on the plane tomorrow,” Rudolph said.

“Now—” The lawyer smoothed the shining surface of his desk with a loving gesture, his white hand reflecting palely off the wood, one problem neatly disposed of. “About your nephew.” He looked obliquely, pale eyes in yellowing pouches of wrinkled skin, at Rudolph. “He is not a communicative boy. At least to me. Or to the police, either, for that matter. Under questioning, he refuses to divulge his motive for attacking the man in the bar. Perhaps he has said something to you?” Again the oblique, old, shrewd glance.

“Not to me,” Rudolph said. “I have some notions, but …” He shrugged. “Of course they wouldn’t mean anything in a court of law.”

“So—there is no defense. No extenuating circumstances. Physical attacks are regarded seriously under French law.” The lawyer breathed heavily. A touch of asthma, Rudolph thought, or a sign of approval, an unspoken pride in the civilized nature of France where hitting a man with a beer bottle was considered a matter of utmost gravity, as compared with the frontier attitude of America, where everybody struck everybody else with unpunishable lightness of heart. “Luckily,” the lawyer went on, regaining his breath, “the Englishman is well out of danger. He will be discharged in a few days from the hospital. He, himself, has had several brushes with the local police regulations and is not disposed to bring charges. Also, the juge d’instruction has taken into consideration the age of the boy and the loss he has recently suffered and in a spirit of mercy has merely indicated that the boy will be taken to the nearest border or to the airport in the next eight days. Forgive me—that is one week in French.” He smiled again, doting on his native language. “Don’t ask me why.” He smoothed the desk again, making a small, papery noise. “If the boy wishes to come back to France, to continue his education, perhaps—” With a little genteel snuffle into a handkerchief, the old man implied, with perfect politeness, that education was a rare commodity in America. “I am sure that after a year or so, when it has all been forgotten, I could arrange for him to be allowed back.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Rudolph said. “From what his father and Mr. Dwyer have told me, he likes it here and has done very well in school.”

“He should continue on at the lycée, at least until he gets his baccalauréat. If he ever wants to get anyplace in the world that, I would say, in our day and age, is the minimum requirement.”

“I’ll think about it. And, of course, talk it over with the boy.”

“Good,” the old man said. “I trust, my dear friend, that you consider that I have served you well and faithfully and, if I may say so, have used what small influence I have in this—this—” For once he hesitated over the English word “—in this pays—this section of the coast—to good effect.”

“I thank you very much, Maître,” Rudolph said. At least he had learned how to address a lawyer in France. “How will it all be arranged?” he asked. “I mean—taken to the nearest border?” He frowned. “I mean, nobody I’ve ever known has been taken to the nearest border before.”

“Oh, that,” the old man said airily. It was an old, commonplace story for him. “If you will be at the Nice airport with a ticket for the boy one week from today, he will arrive accompanied by a detective who will make certain that he boards a plane for some other country. The United States, if you wish. Since the man will not be in uniform, it will arouse no curiosity: he will seem like an uncle, a friend of the family, wishing the boy bon voyage.”

“Has the boy been told?” Rudolph asked.

“I informed him myself this morning,” the lawyer said.

“What did he say?”

“As usual, nothing.”

“Did he seem happy, sad?” Rudolph persisted.

“He seemed neither happy nor sad.”

“I see.”

“I took the liberty of looking at the schedules of the American airlines that serve Nice. The most convenient would be the plane that will leave at eleven-thirty in the morning.”

“I’ll be there,” Rudolph said. He reached out for Jean’s passport and put it in his pocket.

“I must compliment you, Monsieur Jordache,” the old man said, “on the calm, the gentlemanly equilibrium with which you have endured this painful episode.”

“Thank you.” The moment I leave this beautiful office, Rudolph thought, I will not be calm or demonstrate equilibrium of any kind, gentlemanly or otherwise. As he started to get up, he felt dizzy, almost as if he were going to faint, and had to steady himself by putting a hand against the desk. The old man looked at him quizzically. “A bit too much lunch?” he asked.

“No lunch at all.” He had skipped lunch for seven days.

“It is important to guard one’s health,” the old man said, “especially when one is in a foreign country.”

“Would you like my address in the United States,” Rudolph asked, “so that you can mail me your bill?”

“That will not be necessary, monsieur,” the old man said smoothly. “My clerk has it prepared for you in the outer office. You do not have to bother with francs. A check in dollars will do, if you will be kind enough to send it to the bank in Geneva whose address you will find on the bill.”

Impressive, able, surrounded by gleaming eighteenth-century furniture, with a view of the blue sea and an untaxed account in Switzerland, the old man stood up, slowly, careful of his advanced years, and shook Rudolph’s hand, then accompanied him to the door, saying, “Enfin, I must extend my sympathies to you and your family and I hope that what has happened will not prevent you from visiting this lovely part of the world in the future.”

First things first, he thought as he walked away from the lawyer’s house along the ramparts toward the port, past the Musée Grimaldi, with all the Picassos in it. The bad news to begin with. That meant Dwyer and Kate. He would have to tell them of his conversation with Heath yesterday. Together, preferably, so that there would be no misunderstanding, no suspicion of secret dealing. After that, the good news for Jean and Gretchen, that they were free now to go back home. He relished the thought of neither meeting. Then there would have to be the jail again, some decision made about where and how and with whom Wesley would stay in America. Maybe that would be the worst conversation of all. He hoped the boy had shaved by now. And taken a shower.

He stopped and looked out to sea, across the Baie des Anges toward Nice. The Bay of Angels. The French didn’t care what they named things. Antibes, for example. Antipolis, the Greek settlers had called it-Opposite the City. What city? Athens, a thousand miles away by oared galley? Homesick Greeks? He himself was homesick for no place. Lucky Greeks. What were the laws then, what had those exemplary politicians judged a fair punishment for a boy who had hit someone in a tavern with a beer bottle? What civic spirit or lust for fame or profit had driven the lawmakers among the statutes and the measured rhetoric to leave their academies and festivals to seek election, take on the burden of ruling that intelligent and warlike race? He himself had made speeches on the hustings, had cajoled, promised, heard the cheers of crowds, won and accepted office. Why? He couldn’t remember now.

There was a bustle of traffic around him, even on the narrow stone road along the top of the ramparts. Antibes had once been a sleepy, forgotten town, but it was crowded now by the beneficiaries or the victims of the twentieth century, leaving winter behind them in the rush to the climate of the south, to work and live there, not only to play. Flowers and light industry. He himself was a northern man but he could use a few years of the south himself. If what had happened here had not happened, he might have settled cosily here, anonymous, unknown, retired gratefully, as some men did, in his thirties. He had the rudiments of French—think of Jeanne—he could have worked at it, learned to read Victor Hugo, Gide, Cocteau, whatever new men were worth reading, visited Paris for the theater. Dreams. Impossible now.

He breathed deeply of the salt balmy air off the sea. Almost every place was open for him, but not this particular, haunted, beautiful place.

He started walking again, down from the ramparts toward the port. He would get Dwyer to find Kate and they could have their discussion in a café, because Kate had said she never wanted to see the Clothilde again. She might have changed her mind by now, with the first shock over, she was not a sentimental woman, but he was not the one who was going to force her.

Just at the entrance to the port there was a small seamen’s café. At a tiny table in front of it Dwyer was sitting with a woman, her back to Rudolph. When he called out to Dwyer the woman turned and he saw that it was Kate. She was thinner now, or was it the black dress she wore that made her look so? The nut brown of her complexion had faded and her hair was careless around her face. He felt a twinge of anger or something akin to anger. Knowing everything that he was trying to do for her, she had not even bothered to call to tell him where she was staying, and here she was sitting with Dwyer, the two of them looking like an old married couple, sharing secrets in the sunshine. She stood up to say hello to him and he was embarrassed.

“May I join you for a moment?” he asked. There were moments and moments.

Without a word, Dwyer drew up a chair from the next table. He was dressed as usual, tanned, muscular, his bantamweight arms ridged below the short sleeves of the white jersey with the printing on it. What mourning he carried was not on public display. “What will you have to drink?” Dwyer asked.

“What are you two drinking?”

“Pastis.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Rudolph said. He didn’t like its sweet, licorice taste. It reminded him of the long, black, pliant sticks of candy, like miniature snakes, that his father had bought for him when he was a boy. He was in no mood to be reminded of his father. “If I could have a brandy?”

Dwyer went into the café to fetch the brandy. Rudolph looked across the table at Kate. She was sitting there stolidly, no emotion showing on her face. She could be a Mexican peasant woman, Rudolph thought, all work done for the moment, sitting in front of an adobe wall in the sunlight, waiting for her husband to come home from the fields. She lowered her eyes, refusing to look at him, a baked mud wall around her primitive thoughts. He sensed hostility. Had the parting kiss when she left the Clothilde been a sardonic salute? Or had it been real, meant then and later regretted?

“How is Wesley?” she asked, her eyes still averted. “Bunny told me all about it.”

“He’s all right. They’re letting him leave France a week from today. Most probably for the States.”

She nodded. “I thought they might,” she said. Her voice was low and flat. “It’s better that way. He shouldn’t hang around this part of the world.”

“That was a foolish thing he did,” Rudolph said, “getting into a fight like that. I don’t know what could’ve come over him.”

“Maybe,” Kate said, “he was saying good-bye to his father.”

Rudolph was silent for a moment, ashamed of what he had said. He felt the way he had the day he had left the consulate for the first time, weeping in the streets. He wondered if his cheeks were wet with tears now. “You know him better than I do,” he said. He had to change the subject. “And how are you, Kate?” he said, trying to sound tender.

She made a curious, deprecating, blowing sound. “As well as might be expected,” she said. “Bunny’s been company.”

Maybe they ought to get married, Rudolph thought. Two of a breed. From the same graduating class, from the same hard school. Keep each other company, as she put it. “I had hoped you would call,” he said, lying.

She raised her eyes, looking at him. “I knew where I could find you,” she said levelly, “if I had piss-all to say to you.”

Bunny came back with the brandy and two fresh glasses of pastis. Rudolph watched as they poured the water into the glasses and the pastis turned milky yellow. Rudolph raised his glass mechanically. “To …” He stopped, laughed uncertainly. “To nothing, I guess.”

Dwyer raised his glass, but Kate just slowly twirled her glass on the table.

The brandy was raw and Rudolph gasped a little as it struck his throat. “There have been certain developments that I think you ought to know about …” I must stop sounding as though I’m addressing a board meeting, he thought. “I’m glad I found you both together …” Then, as clearly as he knew how, he explained the meaning of what Heath had told him about the estate. They listened politely, but without interest. Don’t you care what happens to your lives? he wanted to shout at them.

“I don’t want to be, what’s the word …?” Kate said slowly.

“Executrix.” Heath had told him that was probably what the judge would do.

“Executrix. I don’t know tuppence about executrix,” Kate said. “Anyway, I plan to go back to England. Bath. My ma’s there and I can go on the National Health for the baby and my ma can watch after it when I go out to work.”

“What sort of work?” Rudolph asked.

“I was waitress in a restaurant,” Kate said, “before I listened to the call of the sea.” She laughed sardonically. “A waitress can always find work.”

“There’ll be some money left,” Rudolph said, “when the estate’s settled. You won’t have to work.”

“What’ll I do all day, sit around and look at the telly?” Kate said. “I’m not an idler, you know.” Her tone was challenging, the implication clear that he and his women were idlers all. “Whatever money there is, and I don’t imagine there’ll be much after the lawyers and them others, I’ll put aside for the kid’s education. Educated, if it’s a girl, maybe she won’t have to wait on table and iron ladies’ dresses in a steaming ship’s laundry, like her ma.”

There was no arguing with her. “If you ever need anything—money, anything,” he said, without hope, “please let me know.”

“There won’t be any need,” she said, lowering her eyes again, still twirling her glass on the table.

“Just in case,” Rudolph said. “Maybe, for example, one day you’d like to visit America.”

“America’s no attraction for me,” she said. “They’d laugh at me in America.”

“Wouldn’t you want to see Wesley again?”

“Wouldn’t mind,” she said. “If he wants to see me, there’re planes every day from America to London.”

“In the meantime,” Rudolph went on, trying to keep the note of pleading out of his voice, “while the estate’s being held up, you’ll need some money.”

“Not me,” she said. “I have my savings. And I made Tom pay me my wages, just like before, even when we were sleeping in the same bed and fixing to marry. Love is one thing, I told him,” she said, a proud declaration of categories, “and work is another.” She finally lifted her glass and sipped some of the pastis.

“I give up.” Rudolph couldn’t help sounding exasperated. “You sound as if I’m your enemy.”

She stared at him, blank pueblo eyes. “I don’t rightly remember saying anything that could be construed like enemy. Did I, Bunny?”

“I wasn’t really paying much heed,” Dwyer said uneasily, “I couldn’t pass judgment.”

“How about you?” Rudolph turned to Dwyer. “Don’t you need money?”

“I’ve always been a saving type of man,” Dwyer said. “Tom used to tease me, saying I was mean and miserly. I’m well set, thank you.”

Defeated, Rudolph finished his brandy. “At least,” he said, “leave me your addresses. Both of you. So I can keep in touch.”

“Leave Wesley’s address with the shipyard here,” Kate said. “I’ll drop them a line from time to time and they’ll pass on a card. I’d like to let him know whether he’s got a sister or brother when the time comes.”

“I’m not sure where Wesley will be,” Rudolph said. He was beginning to feel hoarse, his throat rasped by the brandy and the effort of talking to these two evasive, stubborn human beings. “If you write to him care of me, I’ll make sure he gets the letter.”

Kate stared at him for a long moment, then lifted the glass to her lips again. She drank. “I wouldn’t want your wife to be reading any mail of mine,” she said, putting down her glass.

“My wife doesn’t open my mail,” Rudolph said. He couldn’t help sounding angry now.

“I’m glad to see she’s a woman of some character,” Kate said. There was just the hint of a malicious glint in her eye, or was he imagining it?

“I’m only trying to be of help,” Rudolph said wearily. “I feel an obligation …” He stopped, but it was too late.

“I thank you for your intentions,” Kate said, “but you’re under no obligation to me.”

“I say we just would do better not to talk about it, Mr.… Rudy,” Dwyer said.

“All right, let’s not talk about it. I’m going to be in Antibes for at least a week. When do you plan to leave for England, Kate?”

Kate smoothed the wrinkles in the lap of her dress with her two hands. “As soon as I get my things together.”

Rudolph remembered the single, scuffed, imitation-leather suitcase Wesley had carried off the Clothilde for her. It probably couldn’t take her more than fifteen minutes to get her things together. “How long do you think that will take?” Rudolph asked patiently.

“Hard to tell,” Kate said. “A week. A fortnight. I have some goodbyes to make.”

“I’ll have to have your address here, at least,” Rudolph said. “Something may come up, may have to be signed in front of a notary …”

“Bunny knows where I am,” she said.

“Kate,” Rudolph said softly, “I want to be your friend.”

She nodded slowly. “Give it a little time, mate,” she said harshly. The kiss of parting in the saloon of the Clothilde had been one of numbness. A week’s reflection had embittered her. Rudolph couldn’t blame her. He turned to Dwyer. “How about you,” he asked, “how long do you expect to stay?”

“You’ll know that better than I do, Rudy,” Dwyer said. “I mean to stay until they throw me off. They’ll be arriving any day now with the new shaft and the new screw and that’ll mean hauling her up on dock for at least three days, that is if the insurance comes in.… You could do me a favor—get after the insurance. They’re slow as shit if you don’t get after them. And you’d know how to talk to them better than me. So if …”

“Goddamn the insurance,” Rudolph said, letting go. “You handle the insurance yourself.”

“No need to yell at poor old Bunny,” Kate said placidly. “He’s just trying to keep the ship in shape so that when you sell it you won’t have a rotten hulk on your hands.”

“I’m sorry,” Rudolph said. “I’ve been going through a lot …”

“To be sure, you have,” Kate said. If it was ironic, there was no telling it from her tone.

Rudolph stood up. “I have to go back to the hotel now. What do I owe here?”

“The drinks’re on me,” Dwyer said. “My pleasure.”

“I’ll keep you posted about what’s going on,” Rudolph said.

“That’s kind of you,” said Dwyer. “I’d like to see Wesley before he leaves for America.”

“You’ll have to see him at the airport,” Rudolph said. “He’s going right there from the jail. With a policeman.”

“French cops,” Dwyer said. “It don’t pay to let them get their hands on you, does it? Tell Wesley I’ll be at the airport.”

“Take care of yourselves,” Rudolph said. “Both of you.”

They didn’t answer, but sat there in silence with their glasses in front of them, in shadow now, because the sun was going down and the building across the street was blocking it out. Rudolph made a little gesture and walked back toward the Agence de Voyages near the square where he could buy the three plane tickets for tomorrow’s flight.

Husband and wife, he thought bitterly, as he passed the antique shops and the cheese shops and the shops that sold newspapers, they’d make a good pair. What’s wrong with me? What makes me so goddamn sure I can take care of anybody? Everybody? I’m like those idiotic dogs at the greyhound races. Show me a responsibility, mine, not mine, anybody’s, and I’m off after it, like the dogs after the mechanical rabbit, even if they never catch it, know they never can catch it. What disease infected me when I was young? Vanity? Fear of not being liked? A substitute for denied religion? It’s a lucky thing I never had to fight a war—I’d be dead the first day, shot by my own men, stopping a retreat or volunteering to go for the ammunition for a lost and surrounded gun. My project for the next year, he told himself, is to learn how to say, Fuck you, to one and all.