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 marinés 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.
“You have been a very naughty boy,” the Baron had said. “Very naughty indeed.”
“Do you want some more moules?”
“No. I want something solid.”
“Shouldn’t we have a bouillabaisse, too?”
“Two soups?”
“I’m hungry. And we won’t be here again for a long time.”
“I should think you might be hungry. Good. We’ll have a bouillabaisse and then a good Châteaubriand very rare. I’ll build you up, you bastard.’”
“What are you going to do?”
“The question is what are you going to do. Do you love her?”
“No.”
“That’s much better. It is better for you to leave now. Much better.”
“I promised to spend some time with them for the fishing.”
“If it were the shooting it might be worthwhile,” the Baron had said. “The fishing is very cold and very unpleasant and she has no business to make a fool of her husband.”
“He must know about it.”
“He does not. He knows she is in love with you. That is all. You are a gentleman so whatever you do is all right. But she has no business to make a fool of her husband. You wouldn’t marry her, would you?”
“No.”
“She couldn’t marry you anyway and there is no need that he should be made unhappy unless you are in love with her.”
“I’m not. I know that now.”
“Then I think you should get out.”
“I’m quite sure that I should.”
“I’m so glad that you agree. Now tell me truly, how is she?”
“She’s very well.”
“Don’t be silly. I knew her mother. You should have known her mother.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“You should be. I don’t know how you got yourself mixed up with such good dull people. You don’t need her for your painting or anything like that, do you?”
“No. That’s not the way it’s done. I like her very much. I still like her. But I’m not in love with her and it’s getting very complicated.”
“I’m so glad that you agree. Now where do you think that you will go?”
“We’ve just come from Africa.”
“Exactly. Why don’t you go to Cuba for a while or the Bahamas? I could join you if I get hold of any money at home.”
“Do you think you will get any money at home?”
“No.”
“I think I will stay in Paris for a while. I’ve been away from town for a long time.”
“Paris isn’t town. London is town.”
“I’d like to see what’s going on in Paris.”
“I can tell you what’s going on.”
“No. I mean I want to see the pictures and some people and go to the Six-Day and Auteuil and Enghien and Le Tremblay. Why don’t you stay?”
“I don’t like racing and I can’t afford to gamble.”
And why go on with that? he thought now. The Baron was dead and the Krauts had Paris and the Princess did not have a baby. There would be no blood of his in any royal house, he thought, unless he had a nosebleed sometime in Buckingham Palace, which seemed extremely unlikely. If one of those boys did not come in twenty minutes, he decided, he would go down into the village and get some eggs and some bread. It is a hell of a thing to be hungry in your own house, he thought. But I’m too damned tired to go down there.
Just then he heard someone in the kitchen and he pushed the buzzer that was set in the underside of the big table and heard it burr twice in the kitchen.
The second houseboy came in with his faintly fairy, half Saint Sebastian, sly, crafty, and long-suffering look and said, “You rang?”
“What the hell do you think I did? Where is Mario?”
“He went for the mail.”
“How are all the cats?”
“Very well. Without news. Big Goats fought with El Gordo. But we treated the wounds.”
“Boise looks thin.”
“He goes out much at night.”
“How is Princessa?”
“She was a little sad. But she eats well now.”
“Did you have difficulty getting meat?”
“We got it from Cotorro.”
“How are the dogs?”
“All of them are well. Negrita is with puppies again.”
“Couldn’t you keep her shut up?”
“We tried but she escaped.”
“Has anything else happened?”
“Nothing. How was the voyage?”
“Without incident.”
As he talked, irritated and short as always with this boy who he had let go twice but had taken back each time when his father had come and pled for him, Mario, the first houseboy, came in carrying the papers and the mail. He was smiling and his brown face was gay and kind and loving.
“How was the voyage?”