Promptly at one-thirty every day, they were ready for the first drink, invariably a Bloody Mary, which Thomas made for them. After that, Dwyer unrolled the awning, and in its shade they ate the food they had brought with them from the hotel. On the table there would be cold langouste, cold roast beef, fish salad or cold loup de mer with a green sauce, melon with prosciutto, cheese, and fruit. They always brought along so much food, even when they had friends with them, that there was plenty left over for the crew, not only for lunch, but for dinner, too. With their meal they each had a bottle of white wine apiece.
The only thing Thomas had to worry about was the coffee and now with Kate aboard that was no problem. The first day of the charter she came up from the galley with the coffee pot, dressed in white shorts and white T-shirt with the legend Clothilde stretched tightly across her plump bosom and when Thomas introduced her, Mr. Goodhart nodded approvingly and said, “Captain, this ship is improving every year.”
After lunch, Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart went below for their siesta. Quite often, Thomas heard muffled sounds that could only come from lovemaking. Mr. and Mrs. Goodhart had told Thomas they had been married more than thirty-five years and Thomas marveled that they still did it and still so obviously enjoyed it. The Goodharts shook his entire conception of marriage.
Around about four o’clock, the Goodharts would reappear on deck, grave and ceremonious, as usual, in their bathing suits, and would swim for another half hour, with either Dwyer or Thomas accompanying them. Dwyer swam poorly and there were one or two times when Mrs. Goodhart was more than a hundred yards away from the Clothilde that Thomas thought there was a good chance she’d have to tow Dwyer back to the boat.
At five o’clock promptly, showered, combed, and dressed in cotton slacks, white shirt, and a blue blazer, Goodhart would come up on deck from below and say, “Don’t you think it’s time for a drink, Captain?” and, if there were no guests aboard, “I’d be honored if you’d join me.”
Thomas would prepare two Scotch and sodas and give the signal to Dwyer, who would start the engines and take the wheel. With Kate handling the anchor up forward, they would start back toward the Hotel du Cap. Seated on the aft deck Mr. Goodhart and Thomas would sip at their drinks as they pulled out of the straits and went around the island, with the pink-and-white towers of Cannes across the water on their port side.
On one such afternoon, Mr. Goodhart said, “Captain, are there many Jordaches in this part of the world?”
“Not that I know of,” Thomas said. “Why?”
“I happened to mention your name to the assistant manager of the hotel yesterday,” Mr. Goodhart said, “and he said that a Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Jordache were sometimes guests at the hotel.”
Thomas sipped at his whiskey, “That’s my brother,” he said. He could feel Mr. Goodhart glancing at him curiously, and could guess what he was thinking. “We’ve gone our different ways,” he said shortly. “He was the smart one of the family.”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Goodhart waved his glass to take in the boat, the sunlight, the water churning away from the bows, the green and ochre hills of the coast. “Maybe you were the smart one. I worked all my life and it was only when I became an old man and retired that I had the time to do something like this two weeks a year.” He chuckled ruefully. “And I was considered the smart one of my family.”
Mrs. Goodhart came up then, youthful in slacks and a loose sweater and Thomas finished his drink and went and got a whiskey for her. She matched her husband drink for drink, day in and day out.
Mr. Goodhart paid two hundred and fifty dollars a day for the charter, plus fuel, and twelve hundred old francs a day for food for each of the crew. After the charter the year before he had given Thomas five hundred dollars as a bonus. Thomas and Dwyer had tried to figure out how rich a man had to be to afford two weeks at that price, while still paying for a suite at what was probably one of the most expensive hotels in the world. They had given up trying. “Rich, that’s all, rich,” Dwyer had said. “Christ, can you imagine how many hours thousands of poor bastards in those mills of his in North Carolina have to put in at the machines, coughing their lungs out, so that he can have a swim every day?” Dwyer’s attitude toward capitalists had been formed young by a Socialist father who worked in a factory. All workers, in Dwyer’s view of labor, coughed their lungs out.
Until the Goodharts, Thomas’s feeling about people with a great deal of money, while not quite as formally rigid as Dwyer’s, had been composed of a mixture of envy, distrust, and the suspicion that whenever possible a rich man would do whatever harm he could to anyone within his power. His uneasiness with his brother, which had begun when they were boys, for other reasons, had been compounded by Rudolph’s rise to wealth. But the Goodharts had shaken old tenets of faith. They had not only made him reflect anew on the subject of marriage, but about old people as well, and the rich, and even about Americans in general. It was too bad that the Goodharts came so early in the season, because after them, it was likely to be downhill until October. Some of the other charter parties they took on more than justified Dwyer’s darkest strictures on the ruling classes.
On the last day of the charter, they started back toward the hotel earlier than usual because the wind had sprung up and the sea beyond the islands was full of whitecaps. Even between the islands the Clothilde was rolling and pulling at her chain. Mr. Goodhart had drunk more than usual, too, and neither he nor his wife had gone below for their siesta. When Dwyer upped anchor they were still in their bathing suits, with sweaters, against the spray. But they stayed out on deck, like children at a party that was soon to end, hungry for the last drop of joy from the declining festival. Mr. Goodhart was even a little curt with Thomas when Thomas didn’t automatically produce the afternoon whiskeys.
Once they were out of the lee of the islands it was too rough to use the deck chairs and the Goodharts and Thomas had to hold onto the after rail while they drank their Scotch and sodas.
“I think it’s going to be impossible to get the dinghy into the hotel landing,” Thomas said. “I’d better tell Dwyer to go around the point and into Antibes.”
Mr. Goodhart put out his hand and held Thomas’s arm as Thomas started toward the pilot house. “Let’s just take a look,” Mr. Goodhart said. His eyes were a little bloodshot. “I like a little rough weather from time to time.”
“Whatever you say, sir,” Thomas said. “I’ll go tell Dwyer.”
In the pilot house, Dwyer was already fighting the wheel. Kate was seated on the bench that ran along the rear of the structure, munching a roast beef sandwich. She had a hearty appetite and was a good sailor in all seas.
“We’re in for a blow,” Dwyer said. “I’m going around the point.”
“Go to the hotel,” Thomas said.
Kate looked over her sandwich at him in surprise.
“Are you crazy?” Dwyer said. “All the speedboats must have gone back to the harbor hours ago, with this wind. And we’ll never get the dinghy in.”
“I know,” Thomas said. “But they want to take a look.”
“It’s a pure waste of time,” Dwyer grumbled. They had a new charter beginning the next morning at St. Tropez and they had planned to start immediately after discharging the Goodharts. Even with a calm sea and no wind, it would have been a long day, and they would have had to prepare the ship for the new clients en route. The wind was from the north, the mistral, and they would have to hug the coast for protection, which made the voyage much longer. They would also have to reduce speed to keep the hull from pounding too badly. And there would be no question, in this weather, of doing any work below while they were moving.