The Last One Left

Chapter Thirteen

On Tuesday afternoon Staniker was awakened from his nap by the muted clacking of the slats of the blinds as his day nurse opened them. Just outside the window was a vivid bough of bougainvillaea, the sun lighting the petals from behind, turning them to hot flame.

He lay with lids half closed, idly watching her do other small housekeeping chores around the room. With a remoteness and objectivity alien to him he noted that she moved well, with a hightailed, saucy, frisky, promising look. It was a flavor he had always appreciated in a young woman, and over the years he had come to learn that more often than not, it indicated a considerable amount of sexual energy.

Nurse Chappie stopped and made a frowning inventory of the room, to see, apparently, if anything had been overlooked, and as she did so, she fingered her slender, tea-tan throat...

Throat! He closed his eyes. He had a new image of what the inside of his head was like. It was a smaller place than ever before. It had dwindled because he had been forced to erect a square framework inside it from which he suspended a heavy fabric hanging from ceiling to floor on all four sides. He had dragged all harmless things into the lighted area, that cube wherein he sat. But things stirred in the darkness beyond the fabric. They could be summoned by a certain kind of thought, and then the shape of them would begin to bulge inward against the fabric, and you knew that if it kept up, they would come crawling under the fabric from out of the unspeakable blackness. So you gave your thoughts a quick twist and aimed them in a safe direction, and the things would quiet down and the fabric would once again hang quite motionless. When danger was over you could take deep breaths, unclench your belly muscles, and let your eyes open.

He had escaped them this time by aiming his thoughts at the motor sailer he was going to buy. It would be like the one he had seen last year in Miami, up for sale because the owner was ill. Teak and mahogany hull built in Hong Kong, and then glassed and finished and rigged in Sweden. The diesels and electronics and navigation aids had been mounted aboard in Germany. A blue water sailer, with power winches, enormous fuel and water tanks, big generators, freezers, air conditioning.

He walked her decks and, young again, he stood at the wheel balanced against the easy movement of her, outward bound from Wellington to the Loyalty Islands, and sprawled atop the trunk cabin, bikinied and sun-drowsy, but smiling at him with a happy and grateful warmth, was one of those superb and vital New Zealand girls, a truly great one, greater than the very best of all the ones he could remember. A great vessel and a great grinding girl, and all the money packed into the barrel safe so carefully hidden down below it was no worry at all to him.

When Mary Jane got a look at that money, she’d...

It took a violent twist to turn swiftly enough into a new direction because that had made a great stir behind the fabric.

“You slept well, Captain?” the nurse said, not knowing how helpful it was to have her speak at that moment.

“All I seem to do is sleep,” he said.

“Ah, you speak much better now,” she said, leaning to slip the thermometer under his swollen tongue. She laid the pads of her fingers against his big wrist, and, frowning, watched the sweep second hand of the gold watch pinned to her white nylon bodice as she counted.

After she had put the thermometer back in alcohol and was marking his chart he said, “I’m expected to live?”

Her smile was quick and bright. “You are not actually in a dying condition, mon. Now you must have water again.”

“How many gallons will that make?”

“Dr. McGregory says we can stop keeping track of the fluid balance now. He’s satisfied there’s no kidney damage. Here. Drink this now, and then you may go on a journey. With some help. All the way to the water closet.”

When he was seated on the edge of the bed, in the short gown, she worked his left arm into the sleeve of the robe, then hung it lightly over the shoulder on the burned side. She helped him up with a considerable wiry strength, and, from his left side, her right arm around his waist, his left arm heavy across her narrow shoulders, she walked him in small steps to the private bathroom about eight feet from the bed. She left the door ajar, saying, “If there is any faintness or dizziness, Captain, call out. And do not forget the specimen. The bottle is there on the shelf over the lavatory.”

He was again astonished at how weak and how frail he felt. Better than yesterday, at least. So better than this tomorrow. When he came out, she helped him to the armchair and, after she had finished making his bed up, helped him into bed and took away his robe and hung it in the shallow closet. She went off with the sample to deliver it to the lab, and when she returned, young Dr. Angus McGregory was with her. He was sunburned and portly, with a ginger-gold moustache of RAF impressiveness.

He nodded at Staniker, studied the chart, jotted some new instructions on it. “Confirms what Nurse Chappie here tells me. Grotesquely healthy, Captain. An affront to my profession. So let’s have a look at the arm first. Nurse?”

They had him straighten his right arm. She held it in one hand by the unburned fingers and helped McGregory unwind the overlapping gauze. Staniker looked at the outside of his right arm as it was exposed and felt his stomach dip. The whole arm had a strange blue-gray sheen. It looked dead. He expected a grunt of alarm from the doctor.

Instead McGregory said, “Marvelously ugly, what? New spray technique. Porous enough to let air in, but it won’t let fluid out. Sulfa derivative in it. Otherwise inert. And one can see through the bloody thing to see how you’re mending. It’ll dissolve as new skin forms, hopefully at about the same rate. Leaves less of the typical burn scar, that shiny puckery look.”

He leaned closer to study it inch by inch. “Very, very good! Oh, you’ll have scar enough, dear fellow. We had to snip away quite a bit of bad meat, but very little muscle tissue. No functional impairment. What you must do, Captain, is keep working and flexing the arm. Not vigorously. Same with the leg. It will slow the healing at the joints somewhat, and hurt a bit, but you’ll maintain a better muscle tone and the skin won’t draw tight on you at the joints. Now let’s have a look at that right thigh and calf, Nurse.”

After they were through, McGregory said, “Those types tire you this morning?”

“Not too bad.”

“They should be the last of the official lot. The insurance wallahs wanted a go at you this afternoon, but I said absolutely no. Tomorrow morning should be better. Then by Thursday it will be up to you who you care to see, if there’s no hitch in the way you’re coming along, Staniker. Press people. Magazine people. And a very odd little telly batch from Miami with monstrous lights and cables and such. But I could give you a word of advice on all that.”

“I would appreciate it, Doctor.”

McGregory gave the nurse a meaningful glance. She nodded and left the room. McGregory lighted a cigar little larger than a cigarette and sat in the armchair. “None of my affair, I suppose. But were I you, I would give a bit of thought to number one, eh? Work in your line might be hard to come by for a time. Reason I know of the situation, a chum of mine got innocently involved in the Profumo mess. Buggered his income for a time. But he had the wits to sell his exclusive story. Chain of newspapers. They put a writer fellow on him to shine it up. Made a handsome package out of it. Eight hundred pounds if I remember. Actually, poor Harold didn’t have much to tell. Been pronging one of those wenches and had the bad luck to get bashed about by her dark-hued chum. But the bits he did know, he kept to himself so as to have something to peddle to the papers. Painful to you, perhaps, but all the little clerks and shop girls would want to read the Captain’s personal story of the last cruise of the Muñeca. And you are, you know, under no obligation to give your story away to those clots who are so anxious to get in here to see you. Oh, they’ll tell you one must speak to the press. That one has to. Lot of bloody nonsense. More you tell them, the less you can sell the rest for. So among the rabble are a few chaps with contracts in their pockets. Were I you, Captain, I’d make every one of those people send up a note about what they want of you. I’d weed out the ones with an idea of paying for an exclusive story, and see them one at a time, get their names and addresses, sign nothing, and when you get back to Florida find some nimble chap to represent you. There is no hurry. My word! Texas millionaire, beauty queen, yacht, tropical islands, castaway — the story should intrigue the masses for years and years. And I fancy your picture would not hurt the female readership level one bit. As I said, none of my business. To give you an idea. One bloody fool offered me fifty pounds to give an exclusive story about you. And Nurse Chappie has been under pressure also. But she is a sound one. Very sound indeed.”

“I’m grateful to you, Doctor. I really am.”

“We can protect you long as you’re here. But of course the moment you’re released, they’ll swarm upon you like May flies.”

“When do you plan to release me?”

“To decide, I must know if there is someone to look after you for a bit. Your wife is gone, I know. Would there be a relative, a close friend, someone to take you back to Florida?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I won’t be held to it, understand. But if you have to do for yourself, I should guess I might let you go a week today. A good thing your Mr. Kayd carried such splendid insurance. I see no reason also why we cannot keep your day nurse on until we let you go. She’ll keep the pests away from you. I’ve canceled the midnight to eight one, and after today I see no need for the four to midnight lassie.”

“I haven’t even got clothes I can wear out of here.”

“The marine insurance fellow could give you a bit for that I should think. And Nurse Chappie could do a spot of shopping. If they are paying for your flight back, they can’t expect you to board a BOAC affiliate naked as an egg, now can they?”

“You’re very helpful, Doctor.”

“Nervous twitch. Typical of the trade, I expect. Probably why we get into it in the first place. I might get carried away if you can’t work something out with the assurance company, and advance you a few pounds myself. You could send it back when they’ve arranged for the pay you have coming.”

“There’s money in a savings account in Miami but it’s in my wife’s name. And there’s a small policy on her life. So if I have to ask you, I can send it back as soon as I... arrange everything.”

McGregory stood up, rubbed his cigar out on the sole of his shoe and dropped it into the white wastebasket. “You’re a hardy one, Staniker. Good thing. Few men could have survived the effects of that week on the island, much less come out of it with no complications. I’ll stop by and have another look in the morning.”

After he had been gone ten minutes, the slender nurse came back in and told him the choices for the evening meal and helped him decide. She was past her usual time of leaving. She said the other special nurse was in the hospital and would be along shortly. She rolled the night stand around and tidied it, adding to the stack of face towels. With her purse clamped under her arm she stood by him, ran the backs of her fingers along the line of his jaw.

“Tomorrow, Captain, you will have to shave yourself. A blessing, I suppose. I am not very good at it.”

“Nobody is very good with a dull razor, Nurse.”

“I shall even buy a blade for it.”

She was standing at the left side of his bed. He reached and put his left hand on her waist, thumb and first finger clasping the narrowest part of it, hip socket fitting the palm of his hand, the other three fingers splayed against the swell of roundness of her hip.

For an instant she stood absolutely motionless. He felt a faint tremor and then she jumped back far too violently, something oddly like terror on her face.

“Come on, now,” he said. “It isn’t that serious, is it?”

“It — startled me. That is all.” She moistened her lips. Her smile was quick and unconvincing. “It proves you are recovering, Captain.”

In the evening, after he had eaten, he thought again of how she had reacted. As if brought suddenly face to face with a monster. But it could not mean anything. She was of a certain type. That’s all it meant. They look knowing. They have saucy little hips, sharp little breasts. Their eyes are incurably flirtatious. But the slightest touch panics them. Her reaction was far less distressing to him than his own. He had touched her deliberately, coldly, experimentally, hoping that the girl-feel of her, the flesh-warmth under nylon, the rounded meaning of the young waist and hip would awaken him. In all his life, ever since puberty, except during those brief times when he had achieved total sexual exhaustion, he had not been able to look upon a woman who had even the slightest trace of physical desirability without being aware, in an absent-minded way, of his own physiological changes, a sense of heaviness, a slight swelling of the neck and hardening of the shoulder muscles, an impulse to yawn, the very slight beginnings of tumidity. Yet even when she had walked him, her arm around his waist, his arm across her shoulders, in spite of her warmth, scents, desirability, there was no reaction at all to her. He could have been made of cold bread dough. He had hoped the deliberate caress would restir the familiar heats. But he could have as well been resting his hand against a palm bole or a traffic sign.

It’s something about the burns, perhaps the medication. Or having so much fever. It had been the same as always during those long days aboard the Muñeca, and at the anchorages. Nothing wrong then. Carolyn Kayd had known just what she could do to him, passing him in the narrow areas of the boat, swaying that muscular butt just enough to give him a solid thud with her hip when they were opposite each other, then excusing herself with such a laughing innocence.

... but then slack and loose as a bag of butter, moving with the roll of the dead boat as he looped the length of quarter inch nylon line around her and threaded it through the lift ring of the hatch cover, snugged her down there so tight, made her so fast that the line dug into the softness of her waist and...

“Nurse!”

“Captain, what is wrong? What is wrong?”

“Could — I have a drink of water, please?”

“Of course, sir.”

And he realized that he had just gone through the worst of it. It could not happen again, not that dangerously. The dark movements beyond the four walls of fabric had been unbearable because of the weakness. He felt thankful. It reminded him of a time when, in Key West, with a hurricane coming, a drunken hand off a shrimper which had put in for shelter backed him slowly into a corner of a bar, holding the knife blade low, with that slight professional upward tilt which seeks the belly. All sound in the bar had stopped, and then he had seen in the man’s eyes an inability to use a knife on living flesh. It was the same kind of relief and gratitude, awareness of the narrowness of the escape. He had sidestepped, chopped down at the wrist as he hammered at the face. He had kicked the knife into a corner, snapped the wrist bone, and had been with the shrimper’s woman through the twenty-hour scream of the wind of the hurricane which had missed the town by a narrow margin, the eye passing twenty miles south, heading for Texas.

Now, in the center of his mind, he was able to bestir himself, stand up and stretch, walk about, anticipate the task of taking down the frame and the fabric. He knew the names of the black things out there, and he could let them in, one at a time, and tame them. They were called Throat, and Fan Motor, and Head Nodding. Once tamed they would begin to blur, and some day they would be difficult to recall.

He closed his eyes and once again he examined one of the objects he had dragged into the safe area. Suitcase of medium size, aluminum in a dull finish, ribbed for greater strength. Trade name — Haliburton. Good gear for the heat and damp of tropic cruising. The catches were designed to exert enough leverage on the double rubber seal inside the lip to make the suitcase airtight. The fourth key he had tried had fit the stowage locker. The second little brass key fit the suitcase. It all rested in there in such orderliness, such dignity. Official paper belts around the middle of each packet. There were two rows of stacks of the packets, six in each row, arranged vertically, across the long dimension of the case. To fill the additional width there were three stacks of packets placed end to end. Fifteen stacks of banded money, to a depth that filled the case to about two thirds of its depth.

The amount in each packet was imprinted on some of the bands, rubber-stamped upon others. The top layer of packets was made up of packets of fifties and packets of hundreds only. On the hundreds the band said $10,000. The other bands were marked $5,000.

In the dim yellow-orange of the stateroom light, it had a look of remoteness, impartiality, indifferent dignity. It was like cathedrals, like long gleaming conference tables, like the crackling, hissing recordings of the voices of famous men long dead. Until he had opened the lid, he was not entirely convinced she had been right about it. The top layer was level, indicating the same number of packets in each stack. He pulled a stack free. Seven packets. He pressed it back into place, closed the case, fastened the pressure latches, carried it topside, lurching, banging it against the bulkhead as the dead vessel rocked in the trough.

In memory he jumped ahead to that moment when, in the shadows of rusty iron, he had finished burying it deep in the dryness of the drifted sand, and with great care had smoothed and swept and patted the surface until he could see no trace of his efforts.

Only much later, two days or three, he had fought the pain of the burns and the illusions of the fever by trying to estimate if there was as much there as she had said there would be. The fact of two denominations made it difficult to figure it out. Finally, scratching on the dirt with a twig, he figured out what would be in the case if every wrapped bundle contained only fifties. No matter how carefully he worked the arithmetic out, it came to $525,000.00. But at least half the top layer had been bundles of hundreds.

Finally his fever-dazed brain found a possible answer. On the bottoms of the other stacks there would be bundles of twenties and tens. And it had been merely accident that the stack he had examined had been made up of all fifties and hundreds. He decided the sensible thing to do was go up, dig it up, count it all — when the sun was lower, and when the pain wasn’t so bad.

The nurse told him it was time to go to sleep. She tried to help him to the bathroom. He said he could manage. She hovered close to him. When he came out she had cranked the bed down, plumped the pillow, tidied the bedding and turned it back into that cool and exact triangle shape of hospital welcome. She reminded him that after midnight, until eight when Nurse Chappie would be back on duty, he would have no special nurse. She pinned the call button to the sheet near the pillow. She took pulse and temperature, gave him the mild nightly barbiturate. She said goodby to him, saying that she had been taken off the case beginning tomorrow. He thanked her. When she settled herself into the armchair, the only light in the room was the cone of her reading lamp shining down on her knitting. The wool was pale gray. The needles ticked as steadily as a clock, and he heard from afar the long hollow mournful whonk of a large vessel signaling as it left Nassau harbor.