A Summer Place Page 17

  “Now I want to tell you, sonny,” Captain Shay said. “You sit here long enough, and you can see almost anything come down the Inland Waterway.”

  John, who looked as lonely as he was, sat with his feet swinging off the edge of the wharf. Captain Shay sat at the wheel of the big auxiliary yawl he was paid to command for an owner too busy to use the boat. The captain had plenty of time on his hands, and loved to tell stories.

  “The things I’ve seen!” he said. “Just this last trip, in Norfolk, a homemade cruiser, just a motorboat really, came alongside with two retired firemen aboard her. Bound for Florida and never sailed before. They asked if they could follow me down, and I said there was no law against it.

  “Well, these firemen—I never did learn their names—had grown about a hundred bushels of potatoes in their back yards before they left home, and had stored them all aboard, and they had filled five-gallon oil cans with corn whisky they made themselves.

  “That’s all they had: potatoes and whisky, and the fish they could catch. Their pension money went for gas and oil. Well, you never saw a happier pair—in their seventies at least. They followed me along down the canals, drinking that corn whisky and throwing those five-gallon tins overboard. By the end of the day they weren’t steering a very straight course, but all they had to do was stay in my wake. One of them had a banjo, and they’d sing and drink and eat those potatoes. Hell! You never saw a happier pair! They got to Miami without ever running aground, and I don’t think they were sober a mile of the journey.”

  John laughed. “They sound nice,” he said.

  “Lots of nice people,” Captain Shay said. “A good many of the amateurs follow me down every fall, because they know I’m a pro at the game. Sometimes I feel I’m driving the engine of a long train. If I ever ran aground, a good many people would be stuck.” He lit his pipe.

  “I’d be proud to be followed,” John said.

  “Hell! It’s my profession and their play. I’ll tell you a funny one, though. A fellow came aboard in Atlantic City once and asked to follow me down, and I couldn’t figure it. He had a motor cruiser almost fifty feet long, looked like one of the old rumrunners. Fast. And he was a guy, you could tell, who knew the water. A little man sixty years old, who looked to have been to sea all his life. Why did he want to follow me at eight knots, I thought, why the hell?”

  “Why?” John asked.

  Captain Shay spat over the gleaming mahogany rail of the yacht. “I didn’t find out for a few days,” he said. “The guy followed me along, and anchored a few hundred yards from me every night. Then one night we were anchored in the Dismal Swamp with a full moon overhead and I heard it.”

  “Heard what?” John asked.

  “Ever heard a madwoman laugh?”

  “No!”

  “It ain’t pretty. It went on half the night, and I had a good mind to up anchor and get out of there, but I didn’t. The next morning he rowed over and told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “His wife. She was nuts, and he didn’t want to put her away. Wherever they lived ashore, the neighbors started to object. So this guy was a commander in the Navy, and he retired and bought a boat and kept her there, on the move most of the time. But he liked the company of another vessel. Sailed in convoy, so to speak. That’s what he told me once.”

  “Did you ever see her?” John asked.

  “Sure. Little old woman sat on the fantail knitting most of the time, looked like anybody. Only sometimes, usually at night, she started to laugh. You’ve never heard a sound like that.”

  “I guess not,” John said.

  “You sit here long enough and you can see almost anything come down the Inland Waterway,” Captain Shay concluded.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WAS OBVIOUS that the divorces would take many months to negotiate because there was agreement on so few issues. Barton came out of the Naval Hospital shaken, but he was still determined to maintain legal custody of his son. Sylvia told Ken she wouldn’t be able to sleep on any night she knew John was on the island alone with Bart and Hasper.

  “Hell,” Ken said, “I think the court would rather give a child to an adulteress than an alcoholic, if it comes to that, and your position will be much better when we can get married.”

  But of course they couldn’t get married until the divorce took place, and Sylvia had to be judged as a woman who had left her husband to become another man’s mistress. And Bart was careful to get a long technical report on his condition from the Navy doctors. On paper, he had an excellent record, marred only by one episode of acute alcoholism which had as a contributing factor the strains a man undergoes when he is abandoned by his wife. He was on the wagon now and as long as he didn’t drink he had a pretty good case, the lawyers said. His position was, of course, much improved by the fact that the boy apparently did not want to stay with his mother, and displayed a fierce loyalty toward his father.

  Ken was in a hopelessly weak position when negotiating with Helen. She had all the top cards in her hand, her lawyer said with satisfaction. There was no way to dispute her custody of Molly, but she was going a little far, her lawyer admitted, in trying to deny Ken the privilege of having his daughter visit him for at least a few weeks a year.

  It was lucky, everyone acknowledged, that Molly was at boarding school. The newspapers got hold of the story, and there was nothing pretty about it. Bart was described as a “Socialite War Hero”; Ken appeared in the tabloids as the “Marfab Man,” and the editors ran old photographs of Sylvia which had reposed in their files since her days as a “community leader.” One difficulty was that Helen could not be convinced that it was wrong for her to talk to newspaper reporters. She loved sympathy, and publicity brought her that in quantity. She had nothing to hide, she said, and if the papers wanted, the truth, why let them have it, and Margaret agreed. It gave them both a sense of importance to have the reporters and photographers visit their new house in Buffalo. They were nice young men, really, and were never impolite. The world might as well know what a beast Ken Jorgenson was, Margaret said bitterly to one nice young man and a New York tabloid carried a lighthearted wrap-up story on the whole thing, with several pictures of Sylvia, a take-out on the Marvelous Sale of Marfab, and even a resume of Ken’s football record.

  When Sylvia took John to her room to explain that she was going to marry Ken as soon as the divorce became final, John said he hoped she’d be very happy. “This is a hard thing for a boy,” Sylvia said. “Some day you’ll understand.”

  “I understand now,” John said without raising his voice; and although his muscles were tense, he did not pull away when she kissed him. He just stood there.

  The day before they took John to the airport in Palm River, where he was to start his journey to Colchester Academy, Sylvia arranged for Ken to take him fishing. While the divorce was being negotiated, it was, the lawyer had said, desirable for Sylvia and Ken to stay apart, so she did not go, but she told Ken it might be easier on the boy if the two of them got to know each other better. Ken agreed, and chartered a fishing cruiser to take them offshore, where the bluefish were running. John said he didn’t want to go, but Sylvia begged him. “Look,” she told him, “Ken Jorgenson is a good man, and some day you’ve got to learn that. We have to face realities in life, and there’s no point in building up a lot of horrors in your mind. He’s a good man who loves both of us, and you’re going to hurt his feelings terribly if you refuse to go.”

  “I’ll go if you want,” John replied quietly. “It’s just that I don’t really like fishing.” He was beginning to acquire the preternaturally wise look of the children of the divorced; he was developing a poise she could not break through, a courtesy of the sort his father could show strangers when he wished. John always stood when she entered the room now, coming to attention, almost, the way Bart did; and with that same touch of elegance which his father had even when he was quite drunk, John now was lighting her cigarettes
for her and opening doors for her, until she wanted to cry.

  The day of fishing was not a success. John said, “Thank you, sir,” when Ken handed him a rod, and “No thank you, sir,” when Ken offered to show him how to bait a hook for blue-fish. With a touch of arrogance he added, “Sir, I’ve been fishing all my life.”

  With sad eyes Ken watched John move around the boat, admiring the easy grace, the flair for doing small things well which he had always admired in Bart as a young man, even when Bart was beating him at tennis. He liked the easy way the boy handled the fishing equipment, never getting anything snarled, and the quiet assurance with which he braced himself against the roll as the cruiser lunged through the inlet and the going got rough. After they had fished with a good deal of success for a few hours, the captain of the boat asked John to take the helm while he went below to get lunch. The boy stood balanced on his toes, turning the wheel hardly at all, knowing instinctively, apparently, how to meet the boat’s yawing before it started.

  “You’re quite a sailor, aren’t you?” Ken said admiringly.

  “Thank you, sir,” John replied. “My father taught me, sir. He was the captain of a ship in the war. Did you know that, sir?”

  “Yes,” Ken said gravely. “He was a fine Naval officer. That is something of which you ought to be proud.”

  “Were you in the war, sir?” John’s voice was polite.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Ken replied, and felt obliged to add, “They seemed to think us research men should stay home.”

  “Yes, sir,” John said.

  At the end of the day Ken put his big hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Johnny, could we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  They sat alone on the flying bridge, while the boat ploughed placidly up the Inland Waterway returning home. Ken’s voice was deep and soft. “I just want you to know that we’ll all come through this time of trouble,” he said. “Your father and your mother and I are all decent people, and we’ll solve our difficulties. We all want to help you in any way we can.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Some day next year maybe we can all get together on Pine Island, or down here. You and Molly and your mother and I. I hope you can spend some of your vacations with us.”

  “Maybe, sir.”

  Ken wanted to grab the boy and say, Don’t be like that; don’t think that you have to stand alone; come here and put your head down and cry if you want to, or hit me, or shout, but get it out, damn it; say it and let’s have it over with; you’ve got to get it out before you can learn it’s not as bad as you think. But that hadn’t worked with Molly, and he knew it wouldn’t work with John.

  That night Sylvia disregarded for the first time the advice of her lawyers, who told her she shouldn’t even telephone Ken until the divorce was final. From the hotel to which she had moved she called him to ask how the day had gone.

  “I couldn’t reach him,” Ken said sadly. “It will take time.”

  Sylvia sighed. “Yes,” she said, and after a brief pause she added, “I love you, Ken. I love you for trying.”

  “I love you. Don’t worry about the kids. They’re going to be all right.”

  “I hope so!”

  “We just need time,” Ken said.

  Part Three

  Do You Ever Get Lonely?

  Chapter Eighteen

  COLCHESTER ACADEMY, which stood in an isolated section of the countryside about fifty miles from Hartford, Connecticut, was, as such things are counted, a good school. It catered not only to the children of the divorced, the widowed and the sick, but to those with intellectual or social ambitions unattainable at home. It was an old school, started in 1803, and many famous men had gone there. Barton Hunter himself was an alumnus of Colchester Academy, and it was his influence which enabled John to enter midterm, in March of 1954.

  The morning John arrived, Mr. Nealy, one of the teachers, met him at the station. Mr. Nealy was a mournful-appearing man of middle age and size who had wanted to be a professor of the classics at Harvard, but he had failed to get his doctor’s degree, and for twenty-one years had been an instructor at Colchester Academy. He had foolishly bought a secondhand car in which to escape to Hartford for weekends, and the payments on it were more than his slender budget could maintain. His wife had told him that morning that the ache in her shoulder was persisting and that she might have to go to the hospital. Mr. Nealy was preoccupied when he met John, and there wasn’t much warmth in his handshake. The two of them rode silently to the office of Mr. Caulfield, the headmaster, who explained to John that he would have to work hard to make good at Colchester Academy.

  “I’ll try, sir,” John said.

  Mr. Nealy then took John to his dormitory and introduced him to his roommate, a thin boy named Bill Norris, who was also fifteen years old, and who had a slight stutter. “I’ma, I’ma, it’s good to meet you,” Bill said, smiling pleasantly. “I didn’t like rooming alone.”

  “Could you tell me where the post office is?” John asked after shaking hands.

  Before unpacking his bag, John crossed the muddy quadrangle of the school without even glancing at the handsome brick buildings which distinguished alumni had given to Colchester Academy because it had done so much for them. Following Bill’s directions, he entered a small room beside the dining hall which was used as a post office. There was a strange smell, a compound of paste, ink and the cheap perfume used by the janitor’s wife, who served as postmistress. No one was in sight. John knocked softly on a sliding panel beneath a sign reading STAMPS, and a female voice said, “Yes?”

  “My name is John Hunter. Is there any mail for me?”

  “No,” the voice said without any hesitation. “You new?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Wait a minute and I’ll give you a box.” There was a pause before a withered hand with a large artificial diamond ring placed a small slip of paper at the window. “Box 135,” the voice said. “There’s your combination.”

  John read the figures: 18-25-02. Going to his box, he twirled the dials and opened it once or twice, just for practice.

  Going back to his room, he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter. “Dear Molly,” he said. “I’m at a place called Colchester Academy. My roommate’s name is Bill Norris, and he seems like a nice guy. I flew here from Palm River, and some of the people on the plane were sick, but I wasn’t. I like flying, don’t you?”

  It was hard to know what to put in letters. John nibbled the end of his pen, and after staring around his room, decided to describe that for her. “The walls are green,” he said, “and from the window there’s quite a nice view.” He put an airmail stamp on this communication and walked across the quadrangle to put it in the post-office slot.

  Molly’s answer came four days later. “Dear Johnny,” she wrote. “Your school sounds like mine; my walls are exactly the same color. I think that’s marvelous, don’t you? I hope the food you get is better than ours, though. Frankly, I couldn’t exist here if we weren’t allowed to go to the drugstore to eat.”

  This was the beginning of a steady interchange of letters.

  Neither John nor Molly ever mentioned their parents. They talked about food and movies they had seen and books they were reading. The meaning of the letters lay in their existence, not in what they said.

  Quite often during that first period at school, John heard from his mother. Sylvia wrote short, cheerful letters about the fishing in Florida, and about the shells she was beginning to collect on the beach. “It looks as though Ken and I will be able to get married next summer,” she said in one letter, mentioning it casually, along with plans for a trip abroad. John didn’t answer that letter. Every month he sent his mother a dutiful postcard, but that was all.

  Bart wrote irregularly, often enclosing small checks. His letters were rarely more than three or four sentences long. “Dear Son,” he said once, “Hope you’re well; we’re all we
ll here.” Bart always used the word “we” when he wrote from Pine Island, even when he was living in the big house alone. His letters were always signed, “Hastily yours,” as though he lived an incredibly busy life.

  As the weeks wore on, Ken, Sylvia and Bart seemed to fade from John’s life; he didn’t think about them much any more. Molly was more real, especially when she sent him a copy of a school photograph she had had taken. It showed a serious-faced young girl sitting very erect on a straight-backed chair with her hands folded on her lap. “Don’t I look like a gump?” Molly wrote in her letter, and John replied, “I like your picture very much.” He wanted to add that he thought she looked beautiful, but of course he couldn’t say that; he blushed at the very thought of writing such a thing in a letter. A few days later he sent her a picture of himself, feeling embarrassed because he thought it seemed so much better than he really was, yet grateful to the photographer for making it look as though he weren’t beginning to get spots on his face.

  At night when the lights were out, John and Bill Norris talked for hours. Bill’s father had recently died from shrapnel wounds suffered in the war; he had been bedridden for many years. Bill had a theory, almost a conviction, that another war was coming soon, and that he too would be killed by it.

  “They’ll be using hydrogen bombs and we’re all going to get it,” he said casually. “We’re just the right age.”

  “I guess so,” John said without alarm, simply trying to be agreeable. It was a matter on which he had no opinion.

  Bill Norris had a harder time at school than John did, and sometimes he cried at night. There was something about him which made the larger boys pick on him. They were forever jostling him in hallways, flicking him with towels in the shower baths, and making him the butt of jokes. He detested athletics, which amounted to heresy at Colchester Academy, for the great rivalry with Hampshire Academy thirty miles away demanded the earnest efforts of all the boys, even the little ones who could only carry buckets of water. Because he spent most of his unsupervised study hours lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, Bill also had trouble with his studies. Goaded to exasperation, Mr. Nealy sometimes picked up the edge of the big table around which the class sat and let it slam to the floor. “You’ve got to study, Bill!” he said. “What do you think you’re here for?”