Islands in the Stream Read online

  “I’d like to pick up that canvas,” the other told him. “If I can get it for a decent price.”

  “I’d like to get out of here,” the first man insisted. “Fun’s fun and all that. But watching children drink is a little too much.”

  “Are you really serving that little boy gin?” the nice-looking blonde girl at the end of the bar toward the door asked Bobby. She was a tall girl with very fair hair and pleasant freckles. They were not redhead freckles but were the sort blondes get when they have skins that tan instead of burn.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I think it’s shameful,” the girl said. “It’s disgusting and it’s shameful and it’s criminal.”

  Roger avoided looking at the girl and Thomas Hudson kept his eyes down.

  “What would you like him to drink, ma’am?” Bobby asked.

  “Nothing. He shouldn’t have anything to drink.”

  “Hardly seems fair,” Bobby said.

  “What do you mean fair? Do you think it’s fair to poison a child with alcohol?”

  “See, papa?” young Tom said. “I thought it was wrong for Andy to drink.”

  “He’s the only one of the three who drinks, ma’am. Since Sport here stopped it,” Bobby tried to reason with her. “Do you think it’s fair to deprive the only one in a family of three boys of what little pleasure he gets?”

  “Fair!” the girl said. “I think you’re a monster. And you’re another monster,” she said to Roger. “And you’re another monster, too,” she said to Thomas Hudson. “You’re all horrible and I hate you.”

  There were tears in her eyes and she turned her back on the boys and Mr. Bobby and said to the men with her, “Won’t any of you do anything about it?”

  “I think it’s a joke,” one of the men said to her. “Like that rude waiter they hire at a party. Or like double talk.”

  “No, it’s not a joke. That dreadful man gives him gin. It’s horrible and it’s tragic.”

  “Mr. Bobby?” Tom asked. “Is five my limit?”

  “For today,” Bobby said. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything to shock the lady.”

  “Oh get me out of here,” the girl said. “I won’t watch it.”

  She started to cry and two of the men went out with her and Thomas Hudson and Roger and the boys all felt quite bad.

  The other girl, the really lovely-looking one, came over. She had a beautiful face and clear brown skin and tawny hair. She wore slacks but she was built wonderfully as far as Thomas Hudson could see and her hair was silky and it swung when she walked. He knew he had seen her before.

  “It isn’t really gin, is it?” she said to Roger.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I’ll go out and tell her,” she said. “She really feels awfully badly.”

  She went out the door and she smiled at them as she went out. She was a wonderful-looking girl.

  “Now it’s over, papa,” Andy said. “Can we have Cokes?”

  “I’d like a beer, papa. If it wouldn’t make that lady feel bad,” young Tom said.

  “I don’t think she’d feel badly about a beer,” Thomas Hudson said. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked the man who wanted to buy the picture. “I’m sorry if we were too stupid.”

  “No. No,” the man said. “Very interesting. The whole thing was very interesting to me. Fascinating. I’ve always been interested in writers and artists. Were you all improvising?”

  “Yes,” said Thomas Hudson.

  “Now about that canvas—”

  “It belongs to Mr. Saunders,” Thomas Hudson explained to him. “I painted it for him as a present. I don’t think he wants to sell it. But it’s his and he can do whatever he likes with it.”

  “I want to keep her,” Bobby said. “Don’t offer me a lot of money for her because it would just make me feel bad.”

  “I would really like to have it.”

  “So would I, goddam it,” said Bobby. “And I’ve got it.”

  “But Mr. Saunders. That is a valuable canvas to have in a place like this.”

  Bobby was getting angry.

  “Leave me alone, will you?” he said to the man. “We were having a wonderful time. As good a time as I ever had and women have to cry and ball up everything. I know she meant right. But what the hell. Meant right gets you quicker than anything else. My old woman means right and does right and it beats the hell out of me every day. The hell with means right. Now you’re here and you think you can take my picture just because you want it.”

  “But Mr. Saunders, you said yourself you wanted the picture out of here and that it was for sale.”

  “That was all balls,” Bobby said. “That was when we were having fun.”

  “Then the picture is not for sale.”

  “No. The picture is not for sale, rent, nor charter.”

  “Well,” said the man. “Here is my card in case it ever is for sale.”

  “That’s fine,” said Bobby. “Tom may have some up at his place he wants to sell. What about it, Tom?”

  “I don’t think so,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “I’d like to come up and see them,” the man told him.

  “I’m not showing anything now,” Thomas Hudson answered. “I’ll give you the address of the gallery in New York if you’d like it.”

  “Thank you. Will you write it here?”

  The man had a fountain pen with him and he wrote the address on the back of one of his cards and gave another card to Thomas Hudson. Then the man thanked Thomas Hudson again and asked if he might offer him a drink.

  “Can you give me any idea about the prices of the larger canvases?”

  “No,” Thomas Hudson said. “But the dealer will be able to.”

  “I’ll see him as soon as I’m back in town. This canvas is extremely interesting.”

  “Thank you,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “You’re quite sure it can’t be sold.”

  “Jesus,” Bobby said. “Stop it, will you? That’s my picture. I had the idea for it and Tom painted it for me.”

  The man looked as though what he had thought of as “the charades” were beginning again so he smiled with much good fellowship.

  “I don’t like to be insistent—”

  “You’re just about as insistent as a goddam loggerhead,” Bobby told him. “Come on. Have a drink on me and forget it.”

  The boys were talking with Roger. “It was pretty good while it lasted, wasn’t it, Mr. Davis?” young Tom asked. “I didn’t overdo it too badly, did I?”

  “It was fine,” Roger said. “Dave didn’t have much though.”

  “I was just getting ready to be a monster,” David said.

  “You’d have killed her, I think,” young Tom said. “She was hurt pretty badly already. Were you going to come up as a monster?”

  “I had my eyelids inside out and all ready to come up,” David told them. “I was bent down fixing myself to come up when we stopped.”

  “It was bad luck she was such a nice woman,” Andy said. “I hadn’t started to let it have any effect on me yet. I guess now we won’t have any chance to do another one.”

  “Wasn’t Mr. Bobby wonderful?” young Tom asked. “Boy, you were swell, Mr. Bobby.”

  “Sure was a pity to stop,” Bobby said. “And Constable hadn’t even come in yet. I was just beginning to get worked up. I know just how those great actors must feel.”

  The girl came in through the door. As she came in, the wind blew her sweater against her and blew her hair as she turned to Roger.

  “She wouldn’t come back. But it’s all right. She’s fine now.”

  “Will you have a drink with us?” Roger asked her.

  “I’d love to.”

  Roger told her all of their names and she said that she was Audrey Bruce.

  “Can I come up and see your pictures?”

  “Of course,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “I’d like to come with Miss Bruce,” the man of persistence said.

>   “Are you her father?” Roger asked him.

  “No. But I’m a very old friend.”

  “You can’t come,” Roger said. “You have to wait for Very Old Friends Day. Or get a card from the committee.”

  “Please don’t be rude to him,” she said to Roger.

  “I’m afraid I have been.”

  “Don’t be anymore.”

  “Fine.”

  “Let’s be pleasant.”

  “Good.”

  “I liked Tom’s line about that same girl that is in all your books.”

  “Did you really like it?” young Tom asked her. “It isn’t really accurate. I was teasing Mr. Davis.”

  “I thought it was a little bit accurate.”

  “You come up to the house,” Roger told her.

  “Do I bring my friends?”

  “No.”

  “None of them?”

  “Do you want them very much?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Around what time of day do I come up to the house?”

  “Any time,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Do I stay for lunch?”

  “Naturally,” Roger said.

  “This sounds like a splendid island,” she said. “I’m so glad we’re all pleasant.”

  “David can show you how he was going to be a monster when we called it off,” Andy said to her.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “We’ll have absolutely everything.”

  “How long are you staying?” young Tom asked her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long is the yacht staying?” Roger asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?” Roger asked. “I mean it pleasantly.”

  “Not very much. What about you?”

  “I think you’re lovely,” Roger said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Will you stay for a while?”

  “I don’t know. I might.”

  “Will you come up to the house now and have a drink instead of having it here?” Roger asked her.

  “Let’s have one here,” she said. “It’s awfully nice here.”

  XII

  The next day the wind had dropped off and Roger and the boys were swimming on the beach and Thomas Hudson was on the upper porch working. Eddy had said he thought it would do David’s feet no harm to swim in the salt water if he put a new dressing on them afterwards. So they had all gone in and Thomas Hudson had looked down and watched them from time to time while he painted. He was wondering about Roger and the girl and that distracted him so he stopped thinking about it. He could not help thinking of how much the girl reminded him of young Tom’s mother when he had first met her. But so many girls had managed to look in such a way that they reminded him of her, and he went on working. He was sure that he would see this girl in time and he was quite sure they would see much of her. That had been clear enough. Well, she was decorative and she seemed very nice. If she reminded him of Tommy’s mother, that was too damn bad. But there was nothing to do about it. He had been through that one enough times before. He kept on working.

  This picture would be good he knew. The next one, with the fish in the water, was going to be the really difficult one. Maybe I should have tried it first, he thought. No, it’s better to get this one done. I can always work on the other one after they are gone.

  “Let me carry you up, Davy,” he heard Roger say. “So you won’t get dry sand in them.”

  “All right,” David said. “Let me get them both clean here in the ocean first.”

  Roger carried him up the beach and onto a chair by the doorway that faced the ocean. As they passed under the porch on the way to the chair Thomas Hudson heard David ask, “Do you think she’ll turn up, Mr. Davis?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger said. “I hope so.”

  “Don’t you think she’s beautiful, Mr. Davis?”

  “Lovely.”

  “She likes us I think. Mr. Davis, what does a girl like that do?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her.”

  “Tommy’s in love with her. So is Andy.”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t get in love with people like they do. Anyway I want to see her some more. Mr. Davis, she isn’t a bitch, is she?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t look like one. Why?”

  “Tommy said he was in love with her but that she was probably just a bitch. Andy said he didn’t care if she was a bitch.”

  “She doesn’t look like one,” Roger told him.

  “Mr. Davis, aren’t those men with her a strange quiet lot?”

  “They certainly are.”

  “What do men like that do?”

  “We’ll ask her when she comes.”

  “Do you think she’ll come?”

  “Yes,” Roger said. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

  “It’s Tommy and Andy that are worried. I’m in love with someone else. You know. I told you.”

  “I remember. This girl looks like her, too,” Roger told him.

  “Maybe she saw her in the cinema and tried to look like her,” David said.

  Thomas Hudson went on working.

  Roger was dressing David’s feet when she came in sight walking up the beach. She was barefooted and wore a bathing suit with a skirt of the same material over it and she carried a beach bag. Thomas Hudson was glad to see that her legs were as good as her face and as good as her breasts that he had seen under the sweater. Her arms were lovely and all of her was brown. She had no make-up on except for her lips and she had a lovely mouth that he wanted to see with no lipstick on it.

  “Hello,” she said. “Am I very late?”

  “No,” Roger told her. “We’ve been in but I’m going in again.”

  Roger had moved David’s chair out to the edge of the beach and Thomas Hudson watched her as she bent over David’s feet and saw the small upturning curls at the nape of her neck as the weight of her hair fell forward. The small curls were silvery in the sun against her brown skin.

  “What happened to them?” she asked. “The poor feet.”

  “I wore them off pulling on a fish,” David told her.

  “How big was he?”

  “We don’t know. He pulled out.”

  “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” David said. “Nobody minds about him anymore.”

  “Is it all right to swim with them?”

  Roger was touching the worn places with Mercurochrome. They looked good and clean but the flesh was a little puckered from the salt water.

  “Eddy says it’s good for them.”

  “Who is Eddy?”

  “He’s our cook.”

  “And is your cook your doctor, too?”

  “He knows about things like that,” David explained. “Mr. Davis said it was all right, too.”

  “Does Mr. Davis say anything else?” she asked Roger.

  “He’s glad to see you.”

  “That’s nice. Did you boys have a wild night?”

  “Not very,” Roger said. “We had a poker game and afterwards I read and went to sleep.”

  “Who won in the poker game?”

  “Andy and Eddy,” David said. “What did you do?”

  “We played backgammon.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Roger asked.

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “Wonderfully,” he said.

  “Tommy is the only one of us who plays backgammon,” David told the girl. “It was taught him by a worthless man who turned out to be a fairy.”

  “Really? What a sad story.”

  “The way Tommy tells it, it isn’t so sad,” David said. “There wasn’t anything bad happened.”

  “I think fairies are all awfully sad,” she said. “Poor fairies.”

  “This was sort of funny though,” David said. “Because this worthless man that taught Tommy backgammon was explaining to T
ommy what it meant to be a fairy and all about the Greeks and Damon and Pythias and David and Jonathan. You know, sort of like when they tell you about the fish and the roe and the milt and the bees fertilizing the pollen and all that at school and Tommy asked him if he’d ever read a book by Gide. What was it called, Mr. Davis? Not Corydon. That other one? With Oscar Wilde in it.”

  “Si le grain ne meurt,” Roger said.

  “It’s a pretty dreadful book that Tommy took to read the boys in school. They couldn’t understand it in French, of course, but Tommy used to translate it. Lots of it is awfully dull but it gets pretty dreadful when Mr. Gide gets to Africa.”

  “I’ve read it,” the girl said.

  “Oh fine,” David said. “Then you know the sort of thing I mean. Well this man who’d taught Tommy backgammon and turned out to be a fairy was awfully surprised when Tommy spoke about this book but he was sort of pleased because now he didn’t have to go through all the part about the bees and flowers of that business and he said, ‘I’m so glad you know,’ or something like that and then Tommy said this to him exactly; I memorized it: ‘Mr. Edwards, I take only an academic interest in homosexuality. I thank you very much for teaching me backgammon and I must bid you good day.’ ”

  “Tommy had wonderful manners then,” David told her. “He’d just come from living in France with papa and he had wonderful manners.”

  “Did you live in France, too?”

  “We all did at different times. But Tommy’s the only one who remembers it properly. Tommy has the best memory anyway. He remembers truly, too. Did you ever live in France?”

  “For a long time.”

  “Did you go to school there?”

  “Yes. Outside of Paris.”

  “Wait till you get with Tommy,” David said. “He knows Paris and outside of Paris the way I know the reef here or the flats. Probably I don’t know them even as well as Tommy knows Paris.”

  She was sitting down now in the shade of the porch and she was sifting the white sand through her toes.

  “Tell me about the reef and the flats,” she said.

  “It’s better if I show them to you,” David said. “I’ll take you out in a skiff on the flats and we can go goggle-fishing if you like it. That’s the only way to know the reef.”

  “I’d love to go.”