Kate came in lightly and she and Thomas climbed the ladder together.
They got towels from the locker room attendant and dried themselves off, although there was nothing to do about their wet suits.
Mr. Goodhart called the hotel for his car and chauffeur and merely said, “That was very well done, Captain,” when the car came down for Thomas and Kate. He had borrowed terrycloth robes for himself and Mrs. Goodhart and had ordered them all drinks at the bar while Kate and Thomas were drying themselves off. As he stood there, in the long robe, like a toga, you’d never think that he had been drinking all afternoon and had nearly got them all drowned just fifteen minutes before.
He held the door of the car open for Kate and Thomas. As Thomas got in, Mr. Goodhart said, “We have to settle up, Captain. Will you be in the harbor after dinner?”
Thomas had planned to set out for St. Tropez before sunset, but he said, “Yes, sir. We’ll be there all evening.”
“Very good, Captain. We’ll have a farewell drink aboard.” Mr. Goodhart closed the car door and they drove up the driveway, with the pines along its borders thrashing their branches about in the increasing wind.
When Thomas and Kate got out of the car on the quay they left two wet spots on the upholstery where they had been sitting in their bathing suits. The Clothilde hadn’t come into the harbor yet and they sat with towels wrapped around their shoulders on an overturned dinghy on the quay and shivered.
Fifteen minutes later the Clothilde came into port. They grabbed the lines from Dwyer, made her fast, jumped on board, and rushed to put on dry clothes. Kate made a pot of coffee and as they drank it in the pilot house, with the wind whistling through the rigging, Dwyer said, “The rich. They always find a way of making you pay.” Then he got out the hose, attached it to a water line on the quay and they all three of them began to scrub down the ship. There was salt crusted everywhere.
After dinner, which Kate prepared from the food left over from the Goodharts’ lunch, she and Dwyer went into Antibes with the week’s sheets, pillowcases, and towels. Kate did all the personal laundry, but the heavy items had to be done ashore. The wind had died down as suddenly as it had risen, and while the sea was still thundering at the harbor walls outside, the port itself was calm and the Clothilde’s buffers were merely nudging gently at the boats on either side from time to time.
It was a clear, warm night, and Thomas sat on the afterdeck, smoking a pipe, admiring the stars, waiting for Mr. Goodhart. He had made up the bill and it was in an envelope in the pilot house. It didn’t amount to very much—just fuel, laundry, a few bottles of whiskey and vodka, ice and the twelve hundred francs a day for food for himself and the two others. Mr. Goodhart had given him a check for the charter itself the first day he had come aboard. Before going ashore, Kate had packed the Goodharts’ belongings, extra bathing suits, clothes, shoes, and books, in two of the hotel baskets. The baskets were on deck, near the after rail.
Thomas saw the lights of Mr. Goodhart’s car coming up to the quay. He stood up as the car stopped and Mr. Goodhart got out and came up the gangplank. He was dressed for the evening, in a gray suit and white shirt and dark silk tie. Somehow he looked older and frailer in his city clothes.
“May I offer you something to drink?” Thomas asked.
“A whiskey would be nice, Captain,” Mr. Goodhart said. He was absolutely sober now. “If you’ll join me.” He sat down in one of the folding canvas-and-wood chairs while Thomas went to the saloon for the drinks. On his way up, he went into the pilot house and got the envelope with the bill.
“Mrs. Goodhart has a slight chill,” Mr. Goodhart said, as Thomas gave him the glass. “She’s gone to bed for the night. She especially commanded me to tell you how much she enjoyed these two weeks.”
“That’s very kind of her,” Thomas said. “It was a pleasure having her with us.” If Mr. Goodhart wasn’t going to mention the afternoon’s adventure, he wasn’t going to say a word about it, either. “I made up the bill, sir,” he said. He gave the envelope to Mr. Goodhart. “If you want to go over it and …”
Mr. Goodhart waved the envelope negligently. “I’m sure it’s in order,” he said. He took the bill out, squinted at it briefly in the light of the quay lamp post. He had a checkbook with him and he wrote out a check and handed it to Thomas. “There’s a little something extra there for you and the crew, Captain,” he said.
Thomas glanced at the check. Five-hundred-dollar bonus. Like last year. “It’s most generous of you, sir.” Oh, for summers of Goodharts!
Mr. Goodhart waved off gratitude. “Next year,” he said, “perhaps we can make it a full month. There’s no law that says that we have to spend the whole summer in the house in Newport, is there?” He had explained that ever since he was a boy he had spent July and August in the family house in Newport and now his married son and two daughters and their children spent their holidays there with Mrs. Goodhart and himself. “We could give the house over to the younger generation,” Mr. Goodhart went on, as though trying to convince himself. “They could have orgies or whatever the younger generation has these days when we’re not around. Maybe we could steal a grandchild or two and go on a real cruise with you.” He settled comfortably back in his chair, sipping at his drink, playing with this new idea. “If we had a month, where could we go?”
“Well,” Thomas said, “the party we’re picking up tomorrow at St. Tropez, two French couples, are only taking the boat for three weeks and with any break in the weather, we can go down the coast of Spain, the Costa Brava, Cadaques, Rosas, Barcelona, then across to the Balearics. And after them, we come back here and there’s an English family who want to go south—that’s another three week cruise—the Ligurian coast, Portofino, Porto Venere, Elba, Porto Ercole, Corsica, Sardinia, Ischia, Capri …”
Mr. Goodhart chuckled. “You’re making Newport sound like Coney Island, Captain. Have you been to all those places?”
“Uhuh.”
“And people pay you for it?”
“A lot of them make you earn your money, and more,” Thomas said. “Not everybody’s like you and Mrs. Goodhart.”
“Old age has sweetened us, perhaps,” Mr. Goodhart said slowly. “In some ways. Do you think I might have another drink, Captain?”
“If you don’t plan to do any more swimming tonight,” Thomas said, rising and taking Mr. Goodhart’s glass.
Mr. Goodhart chuckled. “That was a horse’s ass thing to do today, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it was.” Thomas was surprised at Mr. Good-hart’s using an expression like that. He went below and mixed two more drinks. When he came back on deck, Mr. Goodhart was stretched out in his chair, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his head back, looking up at the stars. He took the glass from Thomas’s hand without changing his position.
“Captain,” he said, “I’ve decided to pamper myself. And my wife. I’ll make a firm commitment with you right now. Starting June first next year we’ll take the Clothilde for six weeks and go south to all those pretty names you were reeling off. I’ll give you a deposit tonight. And when you say no swimming, nobody will swim. How does that strike you?”
“It would be fine for me, but …” Thomas hesitated.
“But what?”