“She’s a wild English rose,” Pinky said. “Aren’t you, Kate?”
“None of your jokes, Pinky,” the girl said. “I want this job. I’m tired of going from one end of the Med to the other all dressed up in a starched uniform with white cotton stockings, like a nurse, and being called Miss or Mademoiselle. I’ve been taking a glance at your ship, Tom, from time to time, as I’ve passed by, and it’s pleased me. Not so big to be hoity-toity and British Royal Yacht Club. It’s nice and clean and friendly looking. And it’s a dead sure thing there won’t be many ladies coming aboard that need to have their ballgowns pressed all one hot steaming afternoon in Monte Carlo harbor for a ball at the Palace that night.”
“Well,” Thomas said, defending the elegance of his clientele, “we don’t exactly cater to paupers.”
“You know what I mean,” the girl said. “I’ll tell you what. I don’t want you to take a pig in a poke. Have you had your dinner yet?”
“No.” Dwyer was down in the galley messing around desolately with some fish he’d bought that morning, but Thomas could tell by the sounds coming from the galley that nothing of any importance had as yet been done.
“I’ll cook you a dinner,” the girl said. “Right now. If you like it, you take me on, I’ll go back to the Vega and clear out my things tonight and come aboard. If you don’t like it, what have you lost? If you’re hungry the restaurants in town keep open late. And Pinky, you can stay and eat with us.”
“Okay,” Thomas said. He went down to the galley and told Dwyer to get out of there, they had a cook from the Cordon Bleu, at least for a night. The girl looked around the galley, nodded approvingly, opened the icebox, opened drawers and cupboards to see where everything was, looked at the fish that Dwyer had bought and said he didn’t know how to buy fish, but that they’d do in a pinch. Then she told them both to get out of there, she’d call them when dinner was ready. All she wanted was to have somebody to go into Antibes to get some fresh bread and two ripe Camembert cheeses.
They ate on the after deck, behind the pilot house, instead of in the little dining alcove forward of the saloon that they would have used if there had been clients aboard. Kate had set the table and somehow it looked better than when Dwyer did it. She had put two bottles of wine in an icebucket, uncorked them, and put the bucket on a chair.
She had made a stew of the fish, with potatoes, garlic, onions, tomatoes, thyme, a lot of rock salt and pepper, and a little white wine and diced bacon. It was still light when they sat down at the table, with the sun setting in the cloudless, greenish-blue sky. The three men had washed, shaved, and put on fresh clothes and had had two pastis apiece while sitting on deck, sniffing the aromas coming from the galley. The harbor itself was quiet, with just the sound of little ripples lapping at hulls to be heard.
Kate brought up a big tureen with the stew in it. Bread and butter were already on the table, next to a big bowl of salad. After she served them all, she, sat down with them, unhurried and calm. Thomas, as captain, poured the wine.
Thomas took a first bite, chewed it thoughtfully. Kate, her head down, also began to eat. “Pinky,” Thomas said, “you’re a true friend. You’re plotting to make me a fat man. Kate, you’re hired.”
She looked up and smiled. They raised their glasses to the new member of the crew.
Even the coffee tasted like coffee.
After dinner, while Kate was doing the dishes, the three men sat out in the silent evening, smoking cigars that Pinky had produced, watching the moon rise over the mauve hills of the Alpes Maritimes.
“Bunny,” Thomas said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs in front of him, “this is what it’s all about.”
Dwyer did not contradict him.
Later, Thomas went with Kate and Pinky to where the Vega was berthed. It was late and the ship was almost dark, with very few lights showing, but Thomas waited some distance away while Kate went on board to collect her things. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the skipper, if he happened to be awake and angry about losing a hand on five minutes’ notice.
A quarter of an hour later Thomas saw Kate coming noiselessly down the gangplank, carrying a valise. They walked together, along the fortress wall, past the boats moored one next to another to where the Clothilde was tied up. Kate stopped for a moment, looked gravely at the white-and-blue boat, groaning a little with the pull of the water against the two lines that made it fast to the quay. “I’m going to remember this evening,” she said, then kicked off her espadrilles and, holding them in her hand, went barefooted up the gangplank.
Dwyer was waiting up for them. He had made up the extra bunk in Thomas’s cabin for himself and put clean sheets for Kate on the bunk in the other cabin that he had been living in alone. Thomas snored, because of his broken nose, but Dwyer was going to have to get used to it. At least for awhile.
A week later, Dwyer moved back to his own cabin, because Kate moved into Thomas’s. She said she didn’t mind Thomas’s snoring.
The Goodharts were an old couple who stayed at the Hotel du Cap every June. He owned cotton mills in North Carolina, but had handed over the business to a son. He was a tall, erect, slow-moving heavy man with a shock of iron-gray hair and looked like a retired colonel in the Regular Army. Mrs. Goodhart was a little younger than her husband, with soft white hair. Her figure was good enough so that she could get away with wearing slacks. The Goodharts had chartered the Clothilde for two weeks the year before and had liked it so much that they had arranged a similar charter with Thomas for this year by mail early in the winter.
They were the least demanding of clients. Each morning at ten, Thomas anchored as close inshore as he could manage opposite the row of the hotel’s cabanas and the Goodharts came out in a speedboat. They came with full hampers of food, prepared, in the hotel kitchen, and baskets of wine bottles wrapped in napkins. They were both over sixty and if the water was at all rough the transfer could be tricky. On those days, their chauffeur would drive them down to the Clothilde in Antibes harbor. Sometimes there would be other couples, always old, with them, or they would tell Thomas that they were to pick up some friends in Cannes. Then they’d chug out to the straits between the Isles de Lérins, lying about four thousand yards off the coast, and anchor there for the day. It was almost always calm there and the water was only about twelve feet deep and brilliantly clear so that you could see the seagrass waving on the bottom. The Goodharts would put on bathing suits and lie on mattresses in the sun, reading or dozing, and occasionally dive in for a swim.
Mr. Goodhart said that he felt safer about Mrs. Good-hart’s swimming when Thomas or Dwyer swam beside her. Mrs. Goodhart, who was a robust woman with full shoulders and young, strong legs, swam perfectly well, but Thomas knew that it was Mr. Goodhart’s way of telling him that he wanted Thomas and anybody else on the boat to feel free to enjoy the clear, cool water between the islands whenever they felt like taking a dip.
Sometimes, if they had guests, Thomas would spread a blanket for them on the after deck and they would play a few rubbers of bridge. Both Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart were soft-spoken and enormously polite with each other and everybody else.