Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘Yes, sir,’ Thomas said. He went back into the pilot house, where Dwyer was spinning the wheel, first revving up one engine, then another, to make tight circles that brought the ship at its closest about three hundred yards from the ladder

‘Bring her in another hundred yards,’ Thomas said. ‘They’re going to swim for it.’

‘What do they want to do,’ Dwyer asked, ‘commit suicide?’

‘It’s their bones,’ Thomas said. Then, to Kate, ‘Put on your bathing suit.’ He himself was wearing trunks and a sweater.

Without a word, Kate went below for her bathing suit.

‘As soon as we’re off,’ Thomas said to Dwyer, ‘pull away. Get well off the rocks. When you see we’ve made it, head for port. We’ll get a ride in a car and join you. One trip in this stuff is enough. I don’t want to swim back.’

Kate came up in two minutes, in an old, bleached, blue suit She was a strong swimmer. Thomas took off his sweatei and they both went out on deck. The Goodharts had taken off their sweaters and were waiting for them. In his long, flowered swimming trunks, Mr Goodhart was massive and tanned by his holiday. His muscles were old muscles, but he must have been powerful in his prime. The little wrinkles of age showed in the skin of Mrs Goodhart’s still shapely legs.

The swimming raft, anchored midway between the Clothilde and the steps, was dancing in the waves. When a particularly large one hit it it would go up on end and stand almost perpendicularly for a moment.

‘I suggest we make for the raft first,’ Thomas said, ‘so we can take a breather before we go on in the rest of the way.’

‘We?’ Mr Goodhart said. ‘What do you mean, we?’ He was definitely drunk. And so was Mrs Goodhart.

‘Kate and I decided we’d like a swim this, afternoon, too,’ Thomas said.

‘As you wish. Captain,’ Mr Goodhart said. He climbed over the rail and dived in. Mrs Goodhart followed. Their heads, grey and white, bobbed up and down in the dark green, frothing water.

‘You stick with her,’ Thomas said to Kate. ‘I’ll go with the old man.’

He dived overboard and heard Kate splash in just after him.

Getting to the raft wasn’t too difficult. Mr Goodhart swam an old-fashioned trudgeon stroke and kept his head out of the water most of the time. Mrs Goodhart swam an orthodox crawl and when Thomas turned to look at her she seemed to be swallowing water and breathing hard. But Kate was close beside her at all times. Mr Goodhart and Thomas climbed on to the raft, but it was too rough to stand up on and they stayed on their knees as they helped pull Mrs Goodhart up. She was

gasping a little and she looked as though she was going to be sick.

‘I think we ought to stay here for a while,’ Mrs Goodhart said, trying to keep her balance on the wet cord surface of the heaving raft. ‘Until it calms down a little.’

‘It’s going to get worse, Mrs Goodhart,’ Thomas said. ‘In a few minutes you won’t have a chance of getting in.’

Dwyer, worried about being too close to shore, had gone out another five hundred yards and was circling there. Anyway, there was no chance of getting Mrs Goodhart up on the rolling boat in that sea without hurting her badly.

‘You’ll just have to come in with us right now,’ Thomas said to Mrs Goodhart.

Mr Goodhart didn’t say anything. He was sober now.

‘Nathaniel,’ Mrs Goodhart said to her husband, ‘will you tell him I’m going to stay here until the sea calms a bit.’

‘You heard what he said,’ Mr Goodhart said. ‘You wanted to swim in. Swim in.’ He toppled into the water.

By now there were at least twenty people clustered on the rocks, safely out of reach of the spume, watching the group on the raft.

Thomas took Mrs Goodhart’s hand and said, ‘In we go. Together.’ He stood up shakily and brought her to her feet and they jumped in, holding hands. Once in the sea, Mrs Goodhart was less frightened and they swam side by side towards the ladder. As they came closer to the rocks, they felt themselves being swept forward by a wave, then sucked back as it broke against the rocks and receded. Thomas trod water and shouted, to be heard above the noise of the sea. ‘I’ll go in first. Then Mrs Goodhart. Watch how I do it. I’ll go in on a wave and catch on to the railing and hold on. Then, I’ll give you the signal when to start. lust hold on to me. You’ll be all right.’ He wasn’t sure that anybody would be all right, but he had to say something.

He waited, looking over his shoulder at the oncoming waves. He saw a big one, thrashed hard with his arms, rode it in, smashed against the steel of the ladder, grabbed the railing, hung on against the pull away. Then he stood up, faced sea-; ward. ‘Now!’ he shouted at Mrs Goodhart, and she came in fast, high above him for an instant, then breaking down. He grabbed her, held her tight, just managing to keep her from sliding back. Hurriedly, he pushed her up the ladder. She stumbled, but got to the safety of the rock platform before the next wave crashed in.

Mr Goodhart, when he came in, was so heavy that for a moment, Thomas lost his grip and he thought they were both going to be washed back. But the old man was strong. He swung in the water and grabbed the other pipe, holding on to Thomas at the same time. He didn’t need any help up the ladder, but climbed it decorously, looking coldly at the silent group of spectators above him, as though he had caught them prying into some intensely private affair of his own.

Kate came in lightly and she and Thomas climbed the ladder together.

They got towels from the locker room attendant and dried themselves off, although there was nothing to do about their wet suits.

Mr Goodhart called the hotel for his car and chauffeur and merely said, ‘That was very well done, Captain,’ when the car came down for Thomas and Kate. He had borrowed terrycloth robes for himself and Mrs Goodhart and had ordered them all drinks at the bar while Kate and Thomas were drying themselves off. As he stood there, in the long robe, like a toga, you’d never think that he had been drinking all afternoon and had nearly got them all drowned just fifteen minutes before.

He held the door of the car open for Kate and Thomas. As Thomas got in, Mr Goodhart said, ‘We have to settle up, Captain. Will you be in the harbour after dinner?’

Thomas had planned to set out for St Tropez before sunset, but he said, ‘Yes, sir. We’ll be there all evening.’

‘Very good, Captain. Well have a farewell drink aboard.’ Mr Goodhart closed the car door and they drove up the driveway, with the pines along its borders thrashing their branches about in.the increasing wind.

When Thomas and Kate got out of the car on the quay they left two wet spots on the upholstery where they had been sitting in their bathing suits. The Clothilde hadn’t come into the harbour yet and they sat with towels wrapped around their shoulders on an overturned dinghy on the quay and shivered.

Fifteen minutes later the Clothilde came into port. They grabbed the lines from Dwyer, made her fast, jumped on board, and rushed to put on dry clothes. Kate made a pot of coffee and as they drank it in the pilot house, with the wind whistling through the rigging, Dwyer said, ‘The rich. They always find a way of making you pay.’ Then he got out the hose, attached it to a water line on the quay and they all, three of them, began to scrub down the ship. There was salt crusted everywhere.

After dinner, which Kate prepared from the food left over

from the Goodhart’s lunch, she and Dwyer went into Antibes with the week’s sheets, pillowcases, and towels. Kate did aE the personal laundry, but the heavy items had to be done ashore. The wind had died down as suddenly as it had risen, and while the sea was still thundering at the harbour walls outside, the port itself was calm and the Clothilde’s buffers were merely nudging gently at the boats on either side from time to time.