“The alternative, Nick, is much much worse.”
“What alternative?”
The senator was again not looking at me but at the sea, and his voice was immensely sad. “A drug addict will do anything to feed his habit. He’ll steal, beg, pawn or sell his family treasures, anything. I let the twins use their money on drugs because I don’t want to turn them into thieves—” he paused, “or hookers. Getting laid has never been so cheap in all history. Go to a crack house, Nick, and you can buy anything you want in the way of human flesh. Do you think I want to see my kids turning tricks for a smear of white powder?”
I felt his sadness and hopelessness, but I was still reluctant to embroil myself. There had to be agencies and clinics that were competent to deal with drug abuse, while the best I could be was an enthusiastic amateur, and that was rarely good enough. “So tell me about the twins,” I said, not because I was interested, but because I wanted the senator to talk while I dreamed up a strategy to turn down his request.
“You’ll like Robin-Anne,” the senator said too quickly, thus betraying that I would probably not like Rickie. “She’s always been the quiet one in the family. She was a Liberal Arts major at college, and has never really been any trouble.” He must have read my thoughts, for he hurried on to explain how such a paragon could end up addicted to cocaine. “A boyfriend hooked her on drugs, and that boyfriend was a room-mate of Rickie’s.”
“And Rickie,” I said sardonically, “is not the quiet one?”
“True.” The senator did not seem to want to say much more.
“What was his major?”
“Girls? Sun-tanning? Skiing?” The senator found it hard to hide the rancour his own son provoked in him. “Cocaine? Actually he majored in Phys Ed, but to tell you the truth, Rickie was always a slow learner. He’s not truly backward, but he suffers from some kind of learning dysfunctionalism.”
I wondered why Americans always called a spade a manually powered entrenching instrument. The senator meant that his son was dumb, but psycho-babble made stupidity sound respectable. I walked to the water’s edge where a coconut husk trembled in the backwash of the lagoon’s tiny waves. “Are you sure you don’t just want Rickie out of the way?” I felt nervous of challenging a man as important as Crowninshield with the truth, but I did it anyway. “I mean it can’t help your Presidential prospects if the voters discover that your kids are drug addicts.”
The senator responded with a practised smile. “What Presidential prospects? I haven’t declared.”
“Rickie’s still an embarrassment,” I accused him.
“Indeed,” he accepted the charge, “and more of an embarrassment than you know. He was arrested two months ago on a charge of trafficking in drugs. Provisionally his trial is set for December, and till then he’s released on bail.” He hesitated for a few seconds. “Nick,” he continued with a tone of wry honesty in his voice, “there are some mighty clever people who say I could be President of the United States three years from now, but what no one seems to realise is that I don’t care about that. I just care about getting my kids off drugs.”
He said it with such heartfelt force that I believed him. I felt guilty for challenging his motives and, even though a tiny corner of my mind was hearing an imaginary Ellen scoff at my naivety, I believed the senator’s sudden and passionate sincerity. Ellen would doubtless tell me that the senator was trying to turn an electoral liability into an advantage, meaning that if he could parade his cured children in front of the electorate he could then pose as both a noble parent and as an expert on drugs, but I preferred to ignore that imagined cynicism, choosing a different reservation. “You could spend a small fortune this summer,” I told the senator, “and if Rickie doesn’t want to stop killing himself, then he won’t. I could take him to sea and keep him clean for three months, but how do you know that the moment the court case is done he won’t just stuff his nose full of crap again?”
“I don’t know that,” the senator said simply. Above us the fronds of the palm trees clattered in the warm wind, while out to sea Bonefish’s ragged and patched sail dipped in the steep waves beyond the reef. “But Rickie knows he’s in trouble, big trouble, which is why he suggested this idea of isolating himself at sea.”
“Rickie suggested it?” I could not hide my surprise. The senator had just told me how difficult it was to extract any sense from his son, yet apparently Rickie was not so far gone as the senator had suggested.
“It surprised me too,” the senator confessed wryly. “Rickie calls it his ‘cruise-cure’. I’m not sure he understands all that it involves. I think he’s expecting a glorified vacation with a lot of scuba diving and board-sailing, but he does understand that a cruise-cure means giving up drugs. I guess he heard Barbara and me discussing the good time we had with you, and he kind of picked up on it, and he wondered why he couldn’t come down to the Bahamas and isolate himself from drugs. Our lawyer took the idea to the court, and the judge altered the terms of Rickie’s bail to let him come here for a therapeutic cruise. Even the judge thought it was a great idea, Nick, because on a boat Rickie will be far away from temptation.”
I gave the senator a cynical glance. “Plenty of temptation in the Bahamas. The islands are awash with drugs.”
“So take the twins for a proper voyage,” the senator said with what he hoped was a contagious enthusiasm. “You can teach them navigation? Robin-Anne has always liked sailing, and I kind of think Rickie could take to it as well. You could go home! You could drink some of that warm English beer you were always telling me was so good.”
“It isn’t warm, and it isn’t as easy as that, senator.” I paused to marshal all my heartfelt arguments against the cruise-cure, but at the same time I felt a sudden and oceanic surge of homesickness. I imagined conning Wavebreaker into Dartmouth, and taking the power skiff upriver to one of my old and favourite pubs where the ale had real taste instead of the limp-wristed chill of North American beers. I suddenly wanted to see the green-leafed Devon river banks and to feel the grey sharp waves of the Channel buffeting my hull.
“It can’t take too long to prepare Wavebreaker for a long voyage, can it?” The senator had sensed my vacillation and now pressed me.
“It can be done,” I allowed, “but not by next week.”
“But surely you can do some of that preparatory work at sea?”
“Some,” I yielded the point, “but at this time of year I won’t go far from land while I do it.” This early in the summer most of the hurricane tracks lay well to the south of the Bahamas, but the islands could still be racked by ship-killing tropical storms and, till I was sure of Wavebreaker’s rigging, I would not go too far from safe harbours. Then I realised that I was actually contemplating accepting the senator’s offer, and I told myself that the last thing I needed this summer was to babysit two spoilt rich-kid junkies. “And if Wavebreaker does sail across the Atlantic”—I was carefully not including myself in that statement, and I was also piling on the practical difficulties attendant on the cruise-cure—”she’ll need a proper crew. She’ll want at least another three watch-keepers, and preferably two of them must understand celestial navigation. I know Wavebreaker’s got more electronic toys than a battleship, but if the electricity fails then you’re back to the sextant and the sharp pencil.”
“You can have whatever and whoever you want,” Crowninshield promised flatly.
“What I want”—I turned and pointed towards Masquerade—”is to have my boat mended and re-equipped, and then to sail her away.”
“I’ll have her repaired and re-equipped.” Crowninshield sliced through my objections with all the brute force of his family’s fortune. “You write the specifications for her repairs, and I’ll guarantee to have them done at the best boatyard in America.”
“But I don’t know how to cope with drug addicts!” I returned to my first and most potent objection. “And I’m sure Ellen doesn’t either, and I know Thessy can’t cope. We’re not medical peop
le!”
“I wouldn’t expect you to cope.” The senator was seemingly prepared for every difficulty I raised. “I’ve hired a medical specialist from the Rinkfels Clinic to sail with you. He’s a para-medic rather than a doctor, but his presence means you won’t have to worry about the twins’ health.”
The senator had trapped me. I could have given him a straight rejection, but I suppose that was not in my nature. I wanted to overwhelm the senator with so many difficulties that he would abandon the idea, but instead I was the one who was weakening. I tried one last desperate objection. “We can’t sail next week. It’s impossible. There isn’t another ferry off Straker’s Cay till Saturday night and it’s no good expecting me to get any preparatory work done on Wavebreaker till Monday at the earliest, and then it’ll be two or three days before—”
“I’ll have you flown back to the Grand Bahama today,” Crowninshield said patiently, “and the twins can join you on Sunday morning.”
“But I’ve only just got here,” I said weakly.
“Listen, Nick.” The senator had beaten down my last defences, and now offered me a compromise that might make my surrender to his wishes more acceptable. “Take my kids to sea for two weeks, just two weeks, and if at the end of those two weeks you really believe that the cruise-cure won’t work, or if you’re convinced that you’re the wrong guy for the job, then send the twins home. Does that sound OK? You return the twins to me and I won’t blame you one bit for failing, because all I’m asking you to do is to try. I’m not demanding that you succeed, only that you try. That’s all we can ever ask of anyone, isn’t it?” His voice was almost plaintive. “To try?”
I looked into his eyes. For all the senator’s affability he was a proud man and I knew he had humbled himself to ask for my help and I also knew I could not refuse him. Which was exactly why, of course, he had taken the trouble to come all this way to look into my eyes as he asked for my help. “Shee-it,” I said, and felt guilty that I was leaving the island without sharing the chicken dinner that Sarah Straker was doubtless cooking for me at that very moment. “I shouldn’t be doing this!” I said to the senator. “I really should not.”
He smiled. “But I’m glad you are, Nick, and thank you.” He held out his hand.
I thought of all the extra equipment his money would buy for Masquerade, and that’s how I tried to justify my acceptance of the senator’s proposal, but in reality it was because Crowninshield had invited me to play Galahad and I never could resist the lure of the dragon’s breath even if it did mean charging into idiocy like a fool. So I reached for the senator’s hand, and thereby couched my lance to face the dragon’s fire. I should have thought more deeply before I agreed, but that’s not how fools charge in. I didn’t think before I went into the recruiting office and became a marine, and I didn’t think now. Instead I consoled myself that Ellen would be pleased, and a pleased Ellen might become my shipmate all the way around the world, so really, I told myself, I was not doing this for the senator’s happiness, and not even for the twins, but for my own, and so I shook the senator’s hand.
The Maggot was waiting at the airstrip. He gave me a welcoming grin and an ironic bow to acknowledge the exalted company I was keeping, then he ushered the senator on to the starboard wing and so into the aeroplane.
It always seemed miraculous that the Maggot could fit himself into a small aircraft, for John Maggovertski was a huge man: six foot five and well over two hundred pounds, and none of those pounds was fat. I sometimes tried to imagine blocking the Maggot during a game of American football and simply could not. It would be like trying to stop a buffalo, because he was nothing but muscle, weight and bone. For exterior decoration he had a thick black beard, dark eyes, a shock of tousled hair, and weight-lifter’s arms that were tattooed with snakes, naked ladies and the twin flags of the USA and the Maggot’s home state of Arkansas.
He put the senator into one of the back seats, first shoving aside a tangle of camera equipment. Another of John Maggovertski’s failing businesses was taking aerial photographs of rich folk’s houses. He also refilled air-bottles for scuba divers, ran sports-fishing excursions and, despite his slow left knee, was a good enough tennis player to have been hired as a coach at some of the Lucaya hotels, though the Maggot’s career as a tennis coach had been somewhat jeopardised by his insistence on helping only the prettier guests to improve their game. He sporadically published a newsletter about rare firearms, collected guns himself, and was the proud owner of a decrepit fishing boat that was called Bronco-Buster in honour of the Giants’ Superbowl victory, though the Maggot himself never referred to the beaten team as the Denver Broncos, but always and ever as the Denver Fairies.
The Maggot referred to himself as a ‘good old country boy’, which description provoked Ellen, who could not stand the sight of him, to comment that John Maggovertski was to country what the serpent was to Eden. The Maggot, Ellen insisted, was an un-toilet-trained redneck jerk whose only expertise was as a player of the most brutal and mindless sport to be devised since the lions took on the Christians. The Maggot, faced with these scathing judgments, countered by asserting that Ellen’s education had ruined what might otherwise have been a useful bimbo, and loudly proclaimed that her extreme aversion to himself was positive psychological proof that she was secretly enamoured of him. On the whole I found it less tiring to keep the two of them apart.
The Maggot now ordered me into the right-hand pilot’s seat and told me to keep my thieving hands off his knobs. As he fired up the twin engines I wondered just what instruments had once occupied the vacant holes in the dashboard, from which empty holes there now trailed forlorn scraps of wiring. It was best not to wonder, for I faced a long journey in what remained of the Maggot’s plane. We were flying first to Nassau where the senator was to be guest of honour at an American Embassy reception for senior officers of the naval units taking part in Exercise Stingray, and after Nassau the Maggot and I would fly on to Grand Bahama where he lived and where Wavebreaker was docked. “Are you sure you don’t want us boys to keep you company at the reception, senator?” John asked.
“I’d be surely delighted to have your company.” The senator, ever affable, seemed unworried at the thought of taking the Maggot into polite society.
“Do I have to wear a tie?”
“I guess so. I’ll be wearing one.”
“Reckon I’ll leave the embassy girls to you then, senator,” the Maggot had to shout over the sound of the engines, “and me and Nick will just have to play with each other on account of forgetting to bring our ties.” He laughed, then frowned at the aircraft’s controls as if he was not entirely certain what most of them did. One reason why John’s air-taxi service was less than successful was his habit of pretending not to know how to fly the plane or, worse, pretending to have forgotten how to land it once he had succeeded in becoming airborne. The performances made his customers understandably nervous, and nervous customers do not pass on glowing recommendations to their friends. “I suppose we should try and get this hot heap of shit off the ground,” the Maggot growled now. It was indeed as hot as hell inside the aircraft.
We taxied away from the palm-thatched hut that was proudly styled as Straker’s Cay Airport Terminal Number One. The hut was home to some lizards and to the island’s one taxi driver who had sequestered it as his office and gasoline store. The airstrip itself had been built to serve a golf and diving resort that a consortium of Dutch and American businessmen had planned to build on Straker’s Cay, but the money had run out before the hotel or marina had been built and all that was left of their grandiose plans was this pinkish runway made of compacted coral and a few abandoned cement mixers which rusted forlornly where the hotel’s swimming pool was to have been built.
The Maggot, who refused to wear a seat belt, shoved his throttles forward, and I felt the sweat trickling down my belly as the brakes were released and the small plane thundered down the rough surface. “It plays hell with the tyres, senator!” T
he Maggot yelled over the howling engine noise.
“What does?” The senator shouted back.
“Runways made of crushed coral! As likely as not we’ll blow a tyre, slew off, and become three small puddles of melted fat in a blackened and twisted plane wreck!”
The senator blanched and leaned back. I had heard it all before and so was a little more sanguine. The Maggot, pleased to have spoilt someone’s day, pulled back the stick and we lifted safely off the runway and there was suddenly a wonderful rush of cool air coming from an overhead vent. We banked over Bonefish’s house and I waved at Thessy who was standing beside Masquerade. Thessy would follow on the weekend ferry, arriving at Grand Bahama on the same day as the senator’s twins.
The Maggot’s Beechcraft clawed higher, its progress punctuated by the alarm sirens that the Maggot ignored and which the senator had learned not to worry about. Once, when an alarm became peculiarly insistent, the Maggot thumped the instrument panel until it stopped. “I think that goddamn racket means we should all be dead,” he announced cheerfully, then carried on with an involved story of how he had once won undying glory by intercepting a pass against the Philadelphia Faggots. In the senator the Maggot had found a listener who was only too eager to hear his tales of goal-line stands and blocked punts, concussed running backs and sacked quarterbacks.
The one subject we did not talk about was why the senator had flown to Straker’s Cay to meet me. I knew the Maggot was dying to hear the senator’s business, but even the Maggot had enough delicacy to wait until we had safely delivered the senator to Nassau before asking. But once Crowninshield was gone, and when we had refuelled the Beechcraft and put a crate of beer on to one of her back seats, the Maggot demanded to know everything.
I suspected that he was hoping to hear that the senator had been arranging for an illicit love affair on board Wavebreaker. We had embarked two such affairs in the last year; the most memorable being an English lawyer who had arrived with his French mistress, but only after telling his wife that he was attending a legal conference in Brussels and, to preserve the lie, he had been forced to hide every inch of his pallid skin in case a sun-tan betrayed him. The French girl, to Thessy’s infinite embarrassment, had strolled stark naked about Wavebreaker’s deck while the lawyer had cowered in the stateroom cloaked like an Ayatollah with impetigo. The Maggot, disappointed that the senator’s business offered no such rich pickings of gossip, scowled at me. “You mean you’re just babysitting two rich junkies?”