“That’s probably his nice side,” Thomas Hudson said. “They’re always married to some son of a bitch and he always has some tremendously nice side.”
“All right,” Roger said. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“You’re going to do the book, aren’t you?”
“Sure. That’s what she wants me to do.”
“Is that why you’re going to do it?”
“Shove it, Tom,” Roger told him.
“Do you want to use the Cuba House? It’s only a shack. But you’d be away from people.”
“No. I want to go West.”
“The Coast?”
“No. Not the Coast. Could I stay at the ranch for a while?”
“There’s only the one cabin that’s on the far beach. I rented the rest.”
“That would be fine.”
The girl and Roger took long walks on the beach and swam together and with the boys. The boys went bone-fishing and took Audrey bone-fishing and goggle-fishing on the reef. Thomas Hudson worked hard and all the time he was working and the boys were out on the flats he had the good feeling that they would be home soon and they would be having supper or dinner together. He was worried when they were goggle-fishing but he knew Roger and Eddy would make them be careful. One time they all went trolling for a full day up to the furthest light at the end of the bank and had a wonderful day with bonito and dolphin and three big wahoo. He painted a canvas of a wahoo with his strange flattened head and his stripes around his long speed-built body for Andy, who had caught the biggest one. He painted him against a background of the big spider-legged lighthouse with the summer clouds and the green of the banks.
Then one day the old Sikorsky amphibian circled the house once and then landed in the bay and they rowed the three boys out to her in the dinghy. Joseph sculled out in another dinghy with their bags. Young Tom said, “Goodbye, papa. It certainly was a swell summer.”
David said, “Goodbye, papa. It certainly was wonderful. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll be careful.”
Andrew said, “Goodbye, papa. Thanks for a wonderful, wonderful summer and for the trip to Paris.”
They climbed up into the cockpit door and all waved from the door to Audrey, who was standing on the dock, and called, “Goodbye! Goodbye, Audrey.”
Roger was helping them up and they said, “Goodbye, Mr. Davis. Goodbye, papa.” Then very loud and carrying over the water, “Goodbye, Audrey!”
Then the door closed and locked and they were faces through the small glass panes and then they were water-splashed faces as the old coffee mills revved up. Thomas Hudson pulled away from the rush of spray and the ancient, ugly plane taxied out and took off into the little breeze there was and then circled once and straightened course, steady, ugly, and slow across the Gulf.
Thomas Hudson knew Roger and Audrey would be leaving and as the run-boat was coming the next day he asked Roger when he was going.
“Tomorrow, old Tom,” Roger said.
“With Wilson?”
“Yes. I asked him to come back.”
“I just wanted to know about ordering on the run-boat.”
So the next day they left the same way. Thomas Hudson kissed the girl goodbye and she kissed him. She had cried when the boys left and she cried that day and held him close and hard.
“Take good care of him and take good care of you.”
“I’m going to try. You’ve been awful good to us, Tom.”
“Nonsense.”
“I’ll write,” Roger said. “Is there anything you want me to do out there?”
“Have fun. You might let me know how things are.”
“I will. This one will write, too.”
So they were gone, too, and Thomas Hudson stopped in at Bobby’s on the way home.
“Going to be goddam lonely,” Bobby said.
“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “It’s going to be goddam lonely.”
XIV
Thomas Hudson was unhappy as soon as the boys were gone. But he thought that was normal lonesomeness for them and he just kept on working. The end of a man’s own world does not come as it does in one of the great paintings Mr. Bobby had outlined. It comes with one of the island boys bringing a radio message up the road from the local post office and saying, “Please sign on the detachable part of the envelope. We’re sorry, Mr. Tom.”
He gave the boy a shilling. But the boy looked at it and put it down on the table.
“I don’t care for a tip, Mr. Tom,” the boy said and went out.
He read it. Then he put it in his pocket and went out the door and sat on the porch by the sea. He took the radio form out and read it again. YOUR SONS DAVID AND ANDREW KILLED WITH THEIR MOTHER IN MOTOR ACCIDENT NEAR BIARRITZ ATTENDING TO EVERYTHING PENDING YOUR ARRIVAL DEEPEST SYMPATHY. It was signed by the Paris branch of his New York bank.
Eddy came out. He had heard about it from Joseph who had heard about it from one of the boys at the radio shack.
Eddy sat down by him and said, “Shit, Tom, how can such things happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas Hudson. “I guess they hit something or something ran into them.”
“I’ll bet Davy wasn’t driving,” Eddy said.
“I’ll bet so too. But it doesn’t matter any more.”
Thomas Hudson looked out at the flatness of the blue sea and the darker blue of the Gulf. The sun was low and soon it would be behind the clouds.
“Do you think their mother was driving?”
“Probably. Maybe they had a chauffeur. What difference does it make?”
“Do you think it could have been Andy?”
“Could be. His mother might let him.”
“He’s conceited enough,” Eddy said.
“He was,” said Thomas Hudson. “I don’t think he’s conceited now.”
The sun was going down and there were clouds in front of it.
“We’ll get a wire to Wilkinson on their next radio schedule to come over early and for him to call up and save me space on a plane to New York.”
“What do you want me to do while you’re away?”
“Just look after things. I’ll leave you some checks for each month. If there are any blows, get plenty of good help with the boat and the house.”
“I’ll do everything,” Eddy said. “But I don’t give a shit about anything any more.”
“I don’t either,” said Thomas Hudson.
“We’ve got young Tom.”
“For the time being,” Thomas Hudson said and for the first time he looked straight down the long and perfect perspective of the blankness ahead.
“You’ll make it all right,” Eddy said.
“Sure. When didn’t I ever make it?”
“You can stay in Paris a while and then go to the Cuba house and young Tom can keep you company. You can paint good over there and it will be like a change.”
“Sure,” said Thomas Hudson.
“You can travel and that’ll be good. Go on those big boats like I always wanted to go on. Travel on all of them. Let them take you anywhere they go.”
“Sure.”
“Shit,” said Eddy. “What the fuck they kill that Davy for?”
“Let’s leave it alone, Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “It’s way past things we know about.”
“Fuck everything,” Eddy said and pushed his hat back on his head.
“We’ll play it out the way we can,” Thomas Hudson told him. But now he knew he did not have much interest in the game.
XV
On the eastward crossing on the Ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you toward a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egotist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he now knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened. He thought that on the ship he could come to some terms with his sorrow, not knowing, yet, that there are no terms to be made with sorrow. It can be cured by death and it can be blunted or anesthetized by various things. Time is supposed to cure it, too. But if it is cured by anything less than death, the chances are that it was not true sorrow.