Irwin Shaw: Nightwork

It had been overcast in New York, but when we passed Peek-skill, flying north, the skies cleared. The snow glistened in the sunshine on the rolling hills below. I had flown the little Cessna down to Teterboro Airport early to pick up the New Jersey charter, and I could hear my passengers behind me congratulating each other on the blue skies and the fresh powder. We were flying low, only six thousand feet, and the fields made clearly defined checkerboard patterns, with stands of trees black against the clean white of the snow. It was a flight I always liked to make. Recognizing individual farmhouses and road intersections and the course of a small stream here and there made the short voyage cozy and familiar. Upstate New York is beautiful at ground level, but on a fine day in early winter, from the air, it is one of the loveliest sights a man can hope to see. Once again, I was grateful that I had never been tempted to take a job on one of the big airlines, where you spent the best part of your life at an altitude of over thirty thousand feet, with the world below you just a vast sea of cloud or a remote and impersonal map unrolling slowly beneath you.

There were only three passengers, the Wales family, mother and father and a plump girl with buck-teeth of about twelve or thirteen called Didi. They were enthusiastic skiers and I had flown them up and back four or five times. There was a regular airline to Burlington, but Mr. Wales was a busy man, he said, and took off when he could find the time and didn’t like being tied down to a schedule. He had an advertising firm of his own in New York and he didn’t seem to mind throwing his money around. Flatteringly, when he called for a charter, he always asked for me. Part of the reason, or maybe the whole reason for this, was that I skied with them from time to time at Stowe and Sugarbush and Mad River and led them down the trails, which I knew better than they did, and occasionally threw in a little tactful instruction about how they could improve their performance. Wales and his wife, a hard-looking, athletic New York woman, were fiercely competitive with each other and went too fast, out of control a good deal of the time. I predicted to myself that there would be a broken leg in the family one of these days. I could tell when they were furious with each other by the different tones in which they called each other “Darling” at various moments.

Didi was a serious and unsmiling child, always with a book in her hands. According to her parents, she started reading as soon as she was strapped into her seat and only stopped when the plane rolled to a halt. On this flight she was engrossed in Wuthering Heights. I had been an omnivorous reader, too, as a boy – when my mother was displeased with me she would say, “Oh, Douglas, stop acting like a character in a book” – and it amused me to keep track of what Didi was reading from one winter to another.

She was by far the best skier in the family, but her parents made her bring up the rear on all descents. I had skied alone with her one morning, in a snowstorm, when the older Waleses were hung over from a cocktail party, and she had been a changed girl, smiling blissfully and fleeing joyfully down the mountain with me, like a small wild animal suddenly let loose from a cage.

Wales was a generous man and made a point of giving me a gift after each flight – a sweater, a new pair of fancy poles, a wallet, things like that. I certainly made enough money to be able to buy anything I needed, and I didn’t like the idea of being tipped, but I knew he would have been insulted if I bad ever refused to take his offerings. He was not an unpleasant man, I had decided. Just too successful.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it, Doug?” Wales said behind me. He was a restless man and even in the small plane seemed always on the prowl. He would have made a terrible pilot. He brought a smell of alcohol into the cockpit. He always traveled with a small, leather-bound flask.

“N … not bad,” I said. I had stuttered ever since I was a boy and as a result tried to talk as little as possible. Sometimes I couldn’t help but speculate about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t suffered from this small affliction, but I didn’t allow myself to sink into gloom because of it.

“The skiing ought to be marvelous,” Wales said.

“Marvelous,” I agreed. I didn’t like to talk while I was at the controls, but I couldn’t tell Wales that.

“We’re going up to Sugarbush,” Wales said. “You going to be there this weekend?”

“I… I… b … believe so,” I said. “It… told a girl I’d ski with her up … up there.” The girl was Pat Minot. Her brother worked in the airline office and I had met her through him. She taught history at the high school, and I had arranged to pick her up at three o’clock, when school let out. She was a good skier and very pretty besides, small and dark and intense. I had known her for more than two years and we had had what was a rather desultory affair for fifteen months now. At least it was desultory as far as she was concerned, since for weeks on end she would put me off with one excuse or another and hardly notice me when we met by accident. Then suddenly she would relent and suggest we go off together somewhere. I could tell by the particular kind of smile on her face when, for whatever reason, she was entering into a non-desultory phase.

She was a popular girl, stubbornly unmarried; at one time or another, according to her brother, almost every friend of his had made a pass at her. With what success I never did find out. I have always been shy and uneasy with girls and I could not say that I pursued her. I couldn’t say, either, that she had pursued me. It had just, well, happened, when we found each other skiing together on a long weekend at Sugarbush. After the first night, I had said, “This is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

All she had said was, “Hush.”

I never made up my mind whether or not I was in love with her. If she hadn’t badgered me continually about curing my stutter, I think I would have asked her to marry me. The coming weekend, I felt, was going to rise – or fall – to some sort of climax. I had decided to be cautious, leaving all options open.

“Great,” Wales was saying. “Let’s all have dinner together tonight.”

“Thanks, G … George,” I said. He had insisted from the first time I met him that I call him and his wife by their first names. “Th … that w … would be very nice.” Dinner with another couple would postpone decisions, give me time to sound out Pat’s mood and re-assess my own feelings.

“We’re driving up as soon as we land,” Wales said. “We can get in a few runs this afternoon. How about you? Should we wait for you at the inn?”

“I … I’m afraid n … not. I have my six-m … month physical checkup at the doc’s and … and I don’t know when I c … can split.”

“Dinner, then?” Wales said. “D … dinner.”

“Doug,” Wales said. “Do you ever get three weeks off at a time? In the winter, I mean?”

“N … not really,” I said. “It’s a busy season. Wh … Why?” “Beryl and I’re going over on a charter flight to Zurich the first of February.” Beryl was his wife. “We always try to manage three weeks in the Alps… You ever ski in the Alps?”

“I’ve never b … been out of the country. Except Canada for a f … few days.”

“You’d flip,” he said. “The slopes of Heaven. We’ve been talking it over and we’d love to have you with us. There’s this club I belong to. It’s surprisingly cheap. Under three hundred dollars round trip. The Christie Ski Club. It’s not just the money, of course. It’s the people. The nicest bunch of people you could ever travel with and all the free booze you can drink. And no worrying about a baggage allowance or Swiss customs. They just wave you through with a smile. You’re supposed to belong at least six months in advance, but they’re not sticky about it. There’s a girl in the office I know, her name’s Mansfield, and she fixes everything. Just tell her you’re a friend of mine. They have nights just about every week in the winter. We made St Moritz last year and we’re doing St Anton this year. You’ll dazzle the Austrians.” I smiled. “I b … bet,” I said.