“You want to kiss the bridegroom’s beautiful face?” he said.
She kissed him gently, smiling, and helped him on with his shirt. He didn’t tell her how much it hurt when he moved his shoulder.
“Does anybody know anything yet?” he asked.
“I haven’t told Wesley or Bunny,” she said. “And none of the others have come up yet.”
“As far as anybody is concerned, I was in a fight with a drunk outside Le Cameo,” Thomas said. “That will be an object lesson to anybody who goes out drinking on his wedding night.”
Kate nodded. “Wesley’s been down with the mask already,” she said. “There’s a big chunk out of the port screw and as far as he can tell the shaft is twisted, too.”
“If we get out of here in a week,” Thomas said, “we’ll be lucky. Well, I might as well go up on deck and start lying.”
He followed Kate as she went up the ladder carrying the orange juice and the coffee pot on a tray. When Wesley and Dwyer saw him, Dwyer said, “For Christ’s sake what did you do to yourself?” and Wesley said, “Pa!”
“I’ll tell everybody about it when we’re all together,” Thomas said. “I’m only going to tell the story once.”
Rudolph came up with Enid and Thomas could tell from the look on his face that Jean had probably told him the true story or most of the true story. All Enid said was, “Uncle Thomas, you look funny this morning.”
“I bet I do, darling,” Thomas said.
Rudolph didn’t say anything, except that Jean had a headache and was staying in bed and that he’d take her some orange juice after they’d all had their breakfast. They had just sat down around the table when Gretchen came up. “Good God, Tom,” she said, “what in the world happened to you?”
“I was waiting for someone to ask just that question,” Thomas said. Then he told the story about the fight with the drunk in front of Le Cameo. Only, he said, laughing, the drunk hadn’t been as drunk as he had been.
“Oh, Tom,” Gretchen said, distractedly, “I thought you’d given up fighting.”
“I thought so, too,” Thomas said. “Only that drunk didn’t.”
“Were you there, Kate?” Gretchen asked accusingly.
“I was in bed asleep,” Kate said placidly. “He sneaked out. You know how men are.”
“I think it’s disgraceful,” Gretchen said. “Big, grown men fighting.”
“So do I,” Thomas said. “Especially when you lose. Now let’s eat breakfast.”
V
Later that morning Thomas and Rudolph were up in the bow alone. Kate and Gretchen had gone to do the marketing, taking Enid along with them, and Wesley and Dwyer were down looking at the screws again with the masks.
“Jean told me the whole story,” Rudolph said. “I don’t know how to thank you, Tom.”
“Forget it. It wasn’t all that much. It probably looked a lot worse than it was to a nicely brought up girl like Jean.”
“All that drinking going on all day,” Rudolph said bitterly, “and then the final straw—Gretchen and me drinking here on board before dinner. She just couldn’t stand it. And alcoholics can be so sly. How she could have gotten out of bed and dressed and off the ship without my waking up …” He shook his head. “She’s behaved so well, I guess I thought there was nothing to worry about. And when she has a couple, she’s not responsible. She’s not the same girl at all. You don’t think that when she’s sober she goes around picking men up in bars in the middle of the night?”
“Of course not, Rudy.”
“She told me, she told me,” Rudolph said. “This polite-looking, well-spoken young man came up to her and said he had a car outside and he knew a very nice bar in Cannes that stayed open until dawn and would she like to come with him, he’d bring her back whenever she wanted …”
“Polite-looking, well-spoken young man,” Thomas said, thinking of Danovic lying on the floor of the cellar with the handle of the ball-peen hammer sticking up from his broken teeth. He chuckled. “He’s not so polite looking or well spoken this morning, I can tell you that.”
“And then when they got to that bar, a strip-tease joint—God, I can’t even imagine Jean in a place like that—he said it was too noisy for him at the bar, there was a little cosy club downstairs …” Rudolph shook his head despairingly. “Well, you know the rest.”
“Don’t think about it, Rudy, please,” Thomas said.
“Why didn’t you wake me up and take me along with you?” Rudolph’s voice was harsh.
“You’re not the sort of man for a trip like that, Rudy.”
“I’m her husband, for Christ’s sake.”
“That was another reason for not waking you up,” said Thomas.
“He could have killed you.”
“For a little while there,” Thomas admitted, “the chances looked pretty good.”
“And you could have killed him.”
“That’s the one good thing about the night,” Thomas said. “I found out I couldn’t. Now, let’s go back and see what the divers’re up to.” He hobbled down the deck from the bow, leaving his brother and his brother’s guilts and gratitudes behind him.
VI
He was sitting alone on the deck, enjoying the calm late evening air. Kate was down below and the others had all gone on a two-day automobile trip to the hill towns and into Italy. It had been five days since the Clothilde had come back into the harbor and they were still waiting for the new propeller and shaft to be delivered from Holland. Rudolph had said that a little sightseeing was in order. Jean had been dangerously quiet since her night of drunkenness and Rudolph kept doing his best to distract her. He had asked Kate and Thomas to come along with them, but Thomas had said the newlyweds wanted to be alone. He had even privately told Rudolph to invite Dwyer along with the party. Dwyer had been pestering him to point out the drunk who had beaten him up outside Le Cameo and he was sure Dwyer was thinking of cooking up some crazy scheme of retaliation with Wesley. Also, Jean kept following him around without saying anything, but with a peculiar, haunted look in her eyes. Lying for five days had been something of a strain and it was a relief to have the ship to himself and Kate for a little while.
The harbor was silent, the lights out in most of the ships. He yawned, stretched, stood up. His body had gotten over feeling bruised and while he still limped, his leg had stopped feeling as though it was broken in half somewhere along the middle when he walked. He hadn’t made love to his wife since the fight and he was thinking that this might be a good night to start in again, when he saw the car without lights driving swiftly along the quay. The car stopped. It was a black DS 19. The two doors on his side opened and two men got out, then two more. The last man was Danovic, one arm in a sling.
If Kate hadn’t been aboard, he would have dived over the side and let them try to get him. But there was nothing for him to do but stand there. There was nobody on the boats on either side of him. Danovic remained on the quay, as the other three men came aboard.
“Well, gentlemen,” Thomas said, “what can I do for you?”
Then something hit him.
He came out of the coma only once. Wesley and Kate were in the hospital room with him. “No more …” he said, and then slipped back into the coma again.
Rudolph had called a brain specialist in New York and the specialist was on his way to Nice when Thomas died. The skull had been fractured, the surgeon had explained to Rudolph and there had been catastrophic bleeding.
Rudolph had moved Gretchen and Jean and Enid to a hotel. Gretchen had strict orders not to leave Jean alone for a minute.