Dwyer was just as dazzled as he was. Maybe even more so. He hadn’t even been in Cannes before but had admired and had been around boats all his life. What was an adult discovery for Thomas was a reminder for Dwyer of the deepest pleasures of his boyhood.
There was one Englishman in the bar, a dark-brown colored little man with white hair, named Jennings, who had been in the British navy during the war and who owned, actually owned, his boat, a sixty-footer with five cabins. It was old and cranky, the Englishman told them, but he knew it like his own mother, and he coaxed her all around the Med, Malta, Greece, Sicily, everywhere, as a charter captain during the summer. He had an agent in Cannes who booked his charters for him, for ten per cent. He had been lucky, he said. The man who had owned the boat and for whom he had worked, had hated his wife. When he died, out of spite, he had left the boat to Jennings. Well, you couldn’t bank on things like that.
Jennings sipped complacently at his pastis. His motor yacht, the Gertrude II, stubby, but clean and comfortable looking, was moored for the winter across the street, just in front of the bar, and as he drank Jennings could look fondly at it, all good things close at hand. “It’s a lovely life,” he said. “I fair have to admit it, Yanks. Instead of fighting for a couple of bob a day, hauling cargo on the docks of Liverpool or sweating blood oiling engines in some tub in the North Sea in a winter’s gale. To say nothing of the climate and taxes.” He waved largely toward the view of the harbor outside the bar where the mild sun tipped the gently bobbing masts of the boats moored side by side at the quay. “Rich man’s weather,” Jennings said. “Rich man’s weather.”
“Let me ask you a question, Jennings,” Thomas said. He was paying for the Englishman’s drinks and he was entitled to a few questions. “How much would it cost to get a fair-sized boat, say one like yours, and get into business?”
Jennings lit a pipe and pulled at it reflectively. He never did anything quickly, Jennings. He was no longer in the British navy, or on the docks, there was no foreman or mate to snarl at him, he had time for everything. “Ah, that’s a hard question to answer, Yank,” he said. “Ships are like women—some come high and some come cheap, but the price you pay has little to do with the satisfaction you get from them.” He laughed appreciatively at his own worldliness.
“The minimum,” Thomas persisted. “The absolute minimum?”
Jennings scratched his head, finished his pastis. Thomas ordered another round.
“It’s a matter of luck,” Jennings said. “I know men put down a hundred thousand pounds, cash on the barrelhead, ships designed by the fanciest naval architects, built in the best shipyards in Holland or Britain, steel hulls, teak decks, every last little doodad on board, radar, electric toilets, air conditioning, automatic pilot, and they cursed the day the bloody thing was put in the water and they would have been glad to get rid of it for the price of a case of whiskey, and no takers.”
“We don’t have any hundred thousand pounds,” Thomas said shortly.
“We?” Dwyer said bewilderedly. “What do you mean, we?”
“Shut up,” Thomas said. “Your boat never cost any hundred thousand pounds,” he said to Jennings.
“No,” Jennings said. “I don’t pretend it ever did.”
“I mean something reasonable,” Thomas said.
“Reasonable aren’t a word you use about boats,” Jennings said. He was beginning to get on Thomas’s nerves. “What’s reasonable for one man is pure lunacy for another, if you get my meaning. It’s a matter of luck, like I was saying. For example, a man has a nice snug little ship, cost him maybe twenty, thirty thousand pounds, but maybe his wife gets seasick all the time, or he’s had a bad year in business and his creditors are panting on his traces and it’s been a stormy season for cruising and maybe the market’s been down and it looks as though the Communists’re going to take over in Italy or France or there’s going to be a war or the tax people’re after him for some hanky-panky, maybe he didn’t tell them he paid for the ship with money he had stowed away quiet-like in some bank in Switzerland, so he’s pressed, he’s got to get out and get out fast and suddenly nobody wants to buy boats that week … You get my drift, Yank?”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “You don’t have to draw a map.”
“So he’s desperate,” Jennings went on. “Maybe he needs five thousand guineas before Monday or the house falls in on his head. If you’re there and you have the five thousand guineas …”
“What’s a guinea?” Dwyer asked.
“Five thousand guineas is fifteen thousand bucks,” Thomas said. “Isn’t it?”
“Give or take a few bob,” Jennings said. “Or you hear about a naval vessel that’s up for auction or a vessel that’s been confiscated by the Customs for smuggling. Of course, it needs refitting, but if you’re clever with your hands and don’t pay these pirates in the shipyards around here to do your work for you—never trust a Frenchman on the Côte, especially along the waterfront, he’ll steal the eyes right out of your head—why, maybe, playing everything close and counting your money every night, maybe with luck, and getting some people to trust you till the end of the season for gear and provisions, you’re in the water and ready for your first charter for as little as eight, ten thousand pounds.”
“Eight, ten thousand pounds,” Dwyer said. “It might as well be eight, ten million dollars.”
“Shut up,” Thomas said. “There’re ways of making money.”
“Yeah?” Dwyer said. “How?”
“There’re ways. I once made three thousand bucks in one night.”
Dwyer took in a deep breath. “How?”
It was the first time Thomas had given anybody a clue to his past since he had left the Hotel Aegean, and he was sorry he had spoken. “Never mind how,” he said sharply. He turned to Jennings. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything within my power,” Jennings said. “As long as it don’t cost me no money.” He chuckled softly, boat owner, sitting on top of the system, canny graduate of the Royal Navy, survivor of war and poverty, pastis drinker, wise old salt, nobody’s fool.
“If you hear of anything,” Thomas said. “Something good, but cheap, get in touch with us, will you.”
“Happy to oblige, Yank,” Jennings said. “Just write the address down.”
Thomas hesitated. The only address he had was the Hotel Aegean and the only person he had given it to was his mother. Before the fight with Quayles, he had visited her fairly regularly, when he was sure he wouldn’t run into his brother Rudolph. Since then he had written her from the ports he had touched at, sending her folders of postcards and pretending he was doing better than he was doing. When he had come back from his first voyage there had been a bundle of letters from her waiting for him at the Aegean. The only trouble with her letters was that she kept asking to see her grandson and he didn’t dare get in touch with Teresa even to see the boy. It was the one thing he missed about America.
“Just write the address down, lad,” Jennings repeated.
“Give him your address,” Thomas said to Dwyer. Dwyer got his mail at the headquarters of the National Maritime Union in New York. Nobody was looking for him.
“Why don’t you stop dreaming?” Dwyer said.
“Do like I say.”
Dwyer shrugged, wrote out his address, and gave it to Jennings. His handwriting was clear and straight. He would keep a neat log, Third Mate Dwyer. If he ever got the chance.
The old man put the slip of paper into an old, cracked, leather wallet. “I’ll keep my eyes peeled and my ears open,” he promised.
Thomas paid the bill and he and Dwyer started along the quay, examining all the boats tied up there, as usual. They walked slowly and silently. Thomas could feel Dwyer glancing at him uneasily from time to time.