Rocks, The (16 page)

W
hen twilight was quite gone,
the sea and the sky became fathomlessly dark. There was no moon, the stars were faint, the air opaque with humidity. Mallorca lay below the horizon to the north beneath patches of sulfurous loom. Closer, at indeterminate distances, hovered the lights of fishing boats hung with incandescent lamps to attract fish, each surrounded by a diffuse glow on the black vinyl sea. Low on the water, the fishing boats disappeared and reappeared like fireflies.

The guests aboard
Dolphin
were stunned into quiescence. Fergus and Sarah sat in the intimate light of the electric brass lanterns that the young crewmen, Tim and Ian, had fixed above them in the cockpit. Sarah had been mumbling to herself for some time, and Fergus—after a few polite, unanswered assays of “I’m sorry?” and “What did you say?”—ignored her. Inside the saloon, Dominick sprawled on a settee, leafing through copies of
Paris Match
,
Vogue
,
L’Express
, his eyes following whoever was moving through the yacht. Now and then Véronique thudded barefoot quickly back and forth across the saloon carpet, between the galley and the master suite aft where Szabó had retired and remained cloistered since shortly after the engine had conked out and the first mutterings of dismay and complaint had arisen.

Véronique was resolutely disinterested in the situation and condition of the luncheon guests who had—she didn’t care whose fault it was—long overstayed their welcome. She shot resentful glances at Dominick as she passed, and he smiled imperturbably back at her. When the mood on deck had become too unpleasant and boring, Mireille too had vanished below somewhere.

In Szabó’s absence and Véronique’s dismissal of the tedious passengers, Luc had felt obliged, for a time, to play host to the Rocks contingent—his mother’s friends, after all, and he the connection that had resulted in Szabó’s invitation. He’d brought them more drinks, olives, tried chatting encouragingly with amusing stories of the boats full of Rocks guests that had been late or presumed missing or even sunk, over the years, but all of which had eventually reappeared with no more harm than excessive sunburn and the odd pregnancy—

“Are these stories of yours supposed to
help
?” Sarah snapped at him.

“I dunno,” said Luc. “I thought they might. I mean, it could be worse. There are certainly less comfortable boats—”

“Are you saying this happens all the time?”

“Well, not all the time, but it happens. People are always getting into trouble on boats—”

“As Lulu
bloody well
knew
! She might have
told us
!”

“You can’t say she didn’t give us a hint,” said Dominick with a malicious grin.

“Oh shut up!” Sarah threw an olive across the cockpit table at Dominick. That was when he went into the saloon and started reading magazines.

•   •   •

A
t nine o’clock,
Szabó appeared at the door of the engine room. He had bathed and appeared fresh in billowing white linen shirt and trousers, at some counterpoint to the greasy disassembled chunks of engine and the oil-smeared hands and features of Tony and Roger, who were laughing.

“You are having fun, Tony, yes?” said Szabó.

“Oh, yes. Happy in my work, always.”

“Good. We are about to have dinner, so get the other boys to bring you in something if you want to eat.”

“Thank you, sir, we’ll do that,” said Tony.

“And how is it coming, the engine?”

“Splendidly. I’ve got the heat exchanger off and the lines—”

“No, no, no.” Szabó waved a fat hand. “Means nothing to me, engines. Just tell me how long you think it takes.”

“We’ll have you all back ashore by breakfast, Mr. Szabó.”

“Very good.”

Szabó climbed the few steps to the saloon, where Dominick smiled cheerfully at him from the settee.

“How are you?” asked Szabó.

“Marvelous, thank you so much. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world,” said Dominick.

“Good. We are eating dinner soon. You’ll join us?”

“Oh absolutely. Very good of you to look after us so well.”

“Of course. You are my guest.”

Szabó went out on deck.

Mireille had reappeared, wearing an oversized faded blue T-shirt with the white words
GO
HIKE THE CANYON
across the back. She and Fergus were helping Tim and Ian set the cockpit table. Luc was saying something to Sarah, who was staring dully at the table.

“Good evening,” said Szabó. “How is everyone?”

“All right, thank you,” said Fergus. “Any news on the engine?”

“It’s coming along,” said Szabó. “Luc, let’s have a little chat.”

Szabó walked forward along the deck with legs splayed sturdily against the slight motion of the boat. Luc followed. He’d heard everything in that “let’s have a little chat.”

Szabó stopped on the foredeck where they usually worked. Their deck chairs were gone. He held on to the bar-taut forestay and looked out across the dark sea at the few bobbing lights. Then he turned to Luc.

“We’ve done wonderful work together, Luc.”

As bad as that.

“You have integrity, Luc,” Szabó went on. He put a hand on Luc’s shoulder. “You have taught me something about that. All the time I am seeing this Roy Scheider movie. Roy does this, Roy does that. Until I realize”—his face beaming with sincere epiphany—“you didn’t write a Roy Scheider movie!”

“Well, I mean, it could—”

“No, no. It’s true. Perhaps an Albert Finney movie, I don’t know—but a work of
art
. Of psychology, deep meanings. What I loved—immediately, when I first read it—was your story—
your
story—of this man, this nothing man—
a guy who takes a bus!
My God, when do you ever see this? And then he enters this crazy world, and he finds in himself, this nothing little guy, character! It’s fantastic. He’s
not
Roy Scheider. I see him now—”

“Well, he could be—”

“No, no, no—you are right. Albert Finney, Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay. An
actor
. Someone we forget he’s a movie star and we see this man that you write. And the world he discovers for himself. It’s a character piece, not a thriller.”

“Well, a sort of noirish—”

“I can’t make that movie, Luc. I want to
see
it, go to the cinema and
see it
,
very much
, that film with those kind of actors, but I never get the money from my distributors to make it. Meanwhile, we are ruining the beautiful story that you write.”

“So . . . you’re giving up the option?”

“No, no, no. I still own the option until expiration of option period. This is a good thing for both of us. I put it into turnaround. When I get back to Paris, I find someone who will make this film—
your
story. I know some English producers, in particular I am thinking of one from Scotland. The right kind of independent producers. They make the little English films. I sell it to them. I become executive producer. They make the movie. It’s quality. Everybody is happy. You get a BAFTA award. Then everyone wants you to write their screenplay. It’s very good for you.”

“You mean, you’re going to sell the option to someone else?”

“Exactly. Much better for you.”

“What if they want to do something else? Like make it a romantic comedy and bring in another writer.”

“No, no, no. I sell it only to the right people. Good people. The people who want to make this sort of film, who will respect you. Perhaps they ask you to direct. Like Bill Forsyth. This is auteur sort of film. This will be perfect for you.”

“It’s nice of you to be so concerned for me, Gábor,” said Luc.

Szabó clapped his arm across Luc’s shoulder. “You are my friend, Luc. Come, we eat dinner. We drink some good wine and talk of the fun we have had together,” he said, reminding Luc of Paul Scofield as the dissembling KGB officer in
Scorpio
, saying to rogue CIA operative Burt Lancaster, shortly before Scofield tries to assassinate Lancaster: Come, we will drink vodka together and talk of old times, and cry.

The others were already seated around the cockpit table. Gaspard was holding a wide dish of purple-black pasta.
“Alors. Le tagliatelle à l’encre de seiche,”
he said,
“avec,”
nodding at the dishes Tim and Ian were placing on the table,
“une ratatouille, une omelette aux fines herbes, une salade.”
He shrugged. “It’s what we ’ave. It’s the best I can do.”

“Parfait!”
said Véronique, with a loud clap.
“Parfait, parfait.”

“Merci,”
Gaspard said mournfully, and he withdrew.

In a discernably resentful tone, Véronique said, “Gaspard has been trying to make something from very little what we have on the boat. We were not prepared, you know.”

“It’s
very
kind of you to look after us so well,” said Dominick. He was sitting next to Sarah, who was partially slumped against him.

“Well, we can’t put you off the yacht,” Véronique said seriously, shrugging, apparently having considered it.

“Looks jolly good!” said Fergus. “The black, um, thingy, what’s that?”

“Pasta,” said Véronique.

“Squid ink?” asked Dominick.

“Yes.”

“Wonderful.”

Véronique served her husband and then herself and passed the dish to her sister. Mireille, sitting beside Fergus, heaped the black pasta onto his plate.

“Oh, thank you,” he said. As she brought her arms forward, Fergus gazed down the wide drooping neck of her
GO HIKE THE CANYON
T-shirt.

Szabó filled the meal with campaign stories, and reminiscences of his great friend, the late actor Stephen Boyd, and their adventures making movies in Yugoslavia. “Stephen! Such a funny man. Loves the practical jokes. A beautiful man.”

As they ate and Szabó talked, a breeze came across the water, unnoticed by the diners. Fitful at first, rattling the slack mainsail overhead, it steadied into a serviceable wind, putting the restless canvas to sleep. Roger appeared on deck. Wordlessly directing Tim and Ian, they adjusted the mainsheet, allowing the sail to belly out, and raised the staysail. The diners heard the whispering rustle of rope through blocks, the fast clicking of winch pawls. The yacht ceased rolling; it leaned and steadied and became quieter than it had been for hours, the only sound the rhythmic whooshing of small waves moving alongside the hull like a gentle but powerful respiration.

“We’re moving,” said Dominick.

Roger went aft to the wheel and set a new course on the autopilot. The yacht was now pointing closer to the loom of Mallorca on the horizon.

After dinner Szabó excused himself saying he had much work to do.

Luc helped Véronique, Tim, and Ian to clear the table, taking plates and dishes below to the galley.

At the table, Sarah whimpered to Dominick about her dreadful sunburn. He applied lotion soothingly and ever so lightly across her enflamed breasts, while Sarah exhaled small cries of pain and relief and despair.

Fergus lit the cigar Szabó had given him and stood at the rail at the edge of the deck. Mireille joined him, and barked and convulsed at his comments.

Back in his cabin, Luc tried reading, but he could only think about who might pick up the option on his screenplay. He tried to decide if this was a good or bad development. It might go to someone with taste. Or Szabó might refuse to sell it unless he got some deal he was looking for that no one would want to give him.

Or nothing might happen.

All this time wasted thinking about Roy Scheider. Getting into Roy Scheider’s skin, imbuing him with a sensitivity and empathy that would mesh with survival driving, a simmering brutality, and not too much talking.

Luc couldn’t read. He couldn’t possibly sleep. He got out of his bunk and left his cabin barefoot.

On deck, the yacht was moving slowly but steadily. The sea surface was still flat but now stippled with breeze. The wind was southerly and warm—from Morocco maybe. Luc walked forward, on the windward side of the taut staysail, the deck beneath him so stable that he didn’t need to hold on to anything.

He stopped at the very apex of the bow beside the long bowsprit that projected twelve feet over the water forward of the hull. It was an exposed position: the wire handrail that ran along the edge of the deck stopped six feet behind him for ease of sail handling at this concentrated spot; for security he held onto the staysail’s wire forestay that rose from the deck to the mast crosstrees. This was his favorite place on the boat. Here, on a small triangle of teak planking, the water below rushing past him on both sides, he seemed to be flying at bird height and speed over the sea. He was almost off the boat; Szabó and all his crappy ideas and his rude wife and sister-in-law were all behind him, in another world, encapsulated in their solipsistic bickering and holidaymaking, while he rode ahead of them, in the clear breeze, as detached as a ship’s figurehead.

Against the many small noises made by a yacht at sea—the tumbling, hissing, or burbling of water; the high- or low-pitched whistle or moan of the wind through the almost countless ropes and wires that make up the complicated architecture of a sailing rig; the creak, stretch, hum of the warp and weft of so much mechanical gear; waves of vibration at the upper and lower range of human aural sensitivity, all of which becomes the quotidian ambient voice of the world afloat, in a very short time ignored and unheard by those used to it—against that, Luc now heard something else.

It was rhythmic, irregular, escalating, not boat or sea—human . . . grunting. Luc leaned forward and craned his head around the forestay and saw, in the dim shadowless shade beneath the staysail, the message
GO HIKE
THE CANYON
swaying astride a pair of long, pale, twitching legs—

Luc recoiled. Twisting awkwardly in an effort at noiseless retreat, his toe caught beneath the bowsprit. He exhaled sharply through a wide-open mouth to make no sound, his knee buckling and he squatted, spatial orientation thrown for a second, falling back until he knew they’d hear him when he hit the rail or the deck, but he hit nothing. He dropped with great surprise through the air into the gently curling bow wave.