Pinky Kimball spoke a kind of French and Thomas couldn’t understand him, but he could tell from the tone of Kimball’s voice and the grim looks on the faces of the other patrons of the bar that Kimball was insulting them. Kimball had a low opinion of the French when he was drunk. When he was drunk in Italy, he had a low opinion of Italians. When he was drunk in Spain, he had a low opinion of the Spanish. Also, when he was drunk, he seemed to forget how to count and the fact that he was alone and outnumbered at least five to one only spurred him on to greater feats of scornful oratory.
“He’s going to get himself killed here tonight,” Dwyer whispered, understanding most of what Kimball was shouting. “And us, too, if they find out we’re his friends.”
Thomas grasped Dwyer’s arm firmly and took him with him to Kimball’s side, at the bar.
“Hi, Pinky,” he said cheerfully.
Pinky swung around, ready for new enemies. “Ah,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m telling these maquereaux a few home truths for their own good.”
“Knock it off, Pinky,” Thomas said. Then, to Dwyer. “I’m going to say a few words to these gentlemen. I want you to translate. Clearly and politely.” He smiled cordially at the other men in the bar, arranged now in an ominous semicircle. “As you see, gentlemen,” he said, “this Englishman is my friend.” He waited while Dwyer nervously translated. There was no change in the expression of the faces lined up around him. “He is also drunk,” Thomas said. “Naturally, a man does not like to see a friend damaged, drunk or sober. I will try to prevent him from making any more speeches here, but no matter what he says or has said, there will be no trouble here tonight. I am the policeman tonight in this bar and I am keeping the peace. Please translate,” he said to Dwyer.
As Dwyer was translating, haltingly, Pinky said, disgustedly, “Shit, mate, you’re lowering the flag.”
“What is further,” Thomas went on, “the next round of drinks is on me. Barman.” He was smiling as he spoke, but he could feel the muscles tightening in his arms and he was ready to spring on the biggest one of the lot, a heavy-jawed Corsican in a black leather jacket.
The men looked at each other uncertainly. But they hadn’t come into the bar to fight and while they grumbled a little among themselves they each came up to the bar and accepted the drinks that Thomas had bought for them.
“Some fighter,” Pinky sneered. “Every day is Armistice day with you, Yank.” But he allowed himself to be led safely out of the bar ten minutes later. When he came over to the Clothilde the next day, he brought a bottle of pastis with him and said, “Thanks, Tommy. They’d have kicked in my skull in the next two minutes if you hadn’t come along. I don’t know what it is comes over me when I have a few. And it’s not as though I ever win. I’ve got scars from head to toe in tribute to my courage.” He laughed.
“If you’ve got to fight,” Thomas said, remembering the days when he felt he had to fight, no matter whom and for no matter what reason, “fight sober. And pick on one man at a time. And don’t take me along. I’ve given all that up.”
“What would you have done, Tommy, boy,” Pinky said, “if they’d jumped me?”
“I’d have created a diversion,” Thomas said, “just long enough for Dwyer to get you out of the saloon, and then I’d have run for my life.”
“A diversion,” Pinky said. “I’d pay a couple of bob to have seen that diversion.”
Thomas didn’t know what it was in Pinky Kimball’s life that changed him from a friendly, amiable, if profane man, into a suicidal, fighting animal when he got a few drinks in him. Sometime, perhaps, he’d have it out with him.
Pinky came into the pilot house, looked at the gauges, listened critically to the throb of the Diesels. “You’re ready for the summer, lad,” he said. “On your own craft. And I envy you.”
“Not quite ready,” Thomas said. “We’re missing one in crew.”
“What?” Pinky asked. “Where’s that Spaniard you hired last week?”
The Spaniard had come well recommended as a cook and steward and he hadn’t asked for too much money. But one night, when he was leaving the ship to go ashore, Thomas had seen him putting a knife into his shoe, alongside his ankle, hidden by his pants.
“What’s that for?” Thomas had asked.
“To make respect,” the Spaniard said.
Thomas had fired him the next day. He didn’t want anybody aboard who had to keep a knife in his shoe to make respect. Now he was short-handed.
“I put him ashore,” Thomas said to Pinky, as they crossed outside the bay of La Garoupe. He explained why. “I still need a cook-steward. It doesn’t make much difference the next two weeks. My charter just wants the boat during the day and they bring their own food aboard. But I’ll need somebody for the summer.”
“Have you ever thought about hiring a woman?” Pinky asked.
Thomas grimaced. “There’s a lot of heavy work beside the cooking and stuff like that,” he said. “A strong woman,” Pinky said.
“Most of the trouble in my life,” Thomas said, “came because of women. Weak and strong.”
“How many days a summer do you lose,” Pinky asked, “with your charters grousing that they’re wasting their valuable time, waiting in some godforsaken port just to get their washing and ironing done?”
“It is a nuisance,” Thomas agreed. “You got somebody in mind?”
“Righto,” Pinky said. “She works as a stewardess on the Vega and she’s pissed off with her job. She’s crazy about the sea and all she sees all summer long is the inside of the laundry.”
“Okay,” Thomas said, reluctantly.
“I’ll talk to her. And tell her to leave her knives at home.”
He didn’t need a woman aboard as a woman. There were plenty of girls to be picked up around the ports. You had your fun with them, spent a few bucks on them for a dinner and maybe a night club and a couple of drinks and then you moved on to the next port, without complications. He didn’t know what Dwyer did for sex and thought it better not to ask.
He turned the Clothilde around, to go back to the harbor. She was ready. There was no sense in using up fuel. He was paying for his own fuel until tomorrow, when the first charter began.
At six o’clock he saw Pinky coming down the quay with a woman. The woman was short and a little thick in the body and wore her hair in two plaits on either side of her head. She had on a pair of denim pants, a blue sweater, and espadrilles. She kicked off her espadrilles before she came up the gangplank in the stern of the ship. In the Mediterranean harbors most of the time you tied up stern to the quay, unless there was room to come alongside, which there rarely was.
“This is Kate,” Pinky said. “I told her about you.”
“Hello, Kate.” Thomas put out his hand and she shook it. She had soft hands for a girl who worked in the laundry room and could do heavy work on deck. She was English, too, and came from Southampton and looked about twenty-five. She spoke in a low voice when she talked about herself. She could cook, as well as do laundry, she said, and she could make herself useful on deck, and she spoke French and Italian, “not mightily,” she said, with a smile, but she could understand the météo on the radio in both languages and could follow a charted course and stand watches, and drive a car if ever that was necessary. She would work for the same salary as the Spaniard with the knife. She wasn’t really pretty, but healthy and buxom in a small, brown way, with a direct manner of looking at the person she was talking to. In the winter, if she was laid off, she went back to London and got a job as a waitress. She wasn’t married, and she wasn’t engaged and she wanted to be treated like any member of the crew, no better and no worse.