Authors: Sloan Wilson
In the summertime she often went as cook on short cruises aboard the yawl, and in the fall when no more paying passengers could be found, they often spent their evenings alone together on the boat. Paul did not find it easy to seduce her, but impossible not to. When he first took her to bed he felt he was claiming her for himself forever. No matter what precautions they took, she was terrified of getting pregnant, and she admitted that it was that continuing terror more than anything else which finally made her want to get married.
Everyone Paul knew tried to talk him out of marrying Sylvia. He himself realized that they were of course too young, and that maybe they were almost as crazy as Bill said they both were, but his obsession with her continued and was strengthened by other feelings. He was afraid he would lose her. Now that she had graduated from high school and had more or less dropped out of the round of parties which had sustained her so long, Sylvia had begun to think of marriage as a salvation. He suspected that if he didn't marry her, she would soon take up with somebody else, almost anyone who would marry her. There was something pathetically vulnerable about her. Bill said it looked as though she was having a nervous breakdown, and maybe she was coming close to that. Paul wanted to protect her. He realized that a desire to protect a pretty girl must be regarded somewhat sardonically, but it was true that she obviously needed someone to take care of her.
Paul was aware that the circumstances of his wedding were not auspicious. Her family was almost as much against it as his own, except that they possibly understood her better, and were glad to see her get settled, even though they didn't approve of her penniless choice. Almost all their friends assumed that she was pregnant. The whole little ceremony in her father's living room was subdued, almost shame-faced, with nothing like the excitement which followed the news of Pearl Harbor.
Yet Paul was happy and Sylvia seemed happy for about six months, before she was overtaken by a terrible restlessness. She couldn't get used to the fact that Paul had to work much of the time. Once more she wanted to go to partiesâas a young matron, the wife of a man who came from an old Boston family, even if he had no money, she regained some of her self-confidence. Her brothers, who had seen her moping about the house, encouraged her. She just went out with old friends and relatives, or that's the way it started.
Where it was ending, Paul was not at all sure. The truth was that his entire past became more and more confusing the more he thought about it, and until now his future had been even more bewildering. But this new thing, war, made at least the immediate future clear. He would be a Coast Guard officer. Whatever else the war did to him, it would get him away from home for a few years and give both him and Sylvia a chance to grow up, almost as though their marriage had never taken place. When he came home, maybe a hero, for heaven's sake, they might have changed enough to work out a way of life they both wanted.
“There's a war on,” he said to Sylvia when she questioned his haste. “I might as well go and try to get it over with. College just doesn't seem to make much sense to me anymore.”
Late in March Paul felt elated when he got a letter from the Coast Guard which formally commissioned him and told him to buy his uniforms. A long list of required equipment, including a dress sword, was enclosed, but no money for the purchases. Officers were expected to buy their own uniforms, and the Coast Guard had not yet got around to deciding that swords were unnecessary for World War II.
After a moment of thought, Paul called his mother in the nearby town of Milton, explained the situation and asked if he could borrow five hundred dollars. Because he almost never asked her for money, she was surprised, but after a short pause, said, “For that purpose we can always find a few dollars. We're so proud of you, Paul! Come out and see us as soon as you get one of those uniforms on. It's been ages since we've seen you.”
He was ashamed of himself for visiting his parents as seldom as possible. That was one of the bad things about him, along with getting married before he graduated from college, dreaming about sailing around the world instead of getting a good job, and not wanting to live a respectable life in the suburbs. Still, the image of himself which looked at him from the mirror of the military tailor did not seem like such a disreputable young man. This Coast Guard ensign with the close-cropped blond hair appeared much too young for the broad gold stripe on his blue sleeves, but he didn't look like a villain either. When Paul put on his new cap with the gold strap and the big gold eagle, tilting it to the proper angle, the young officer in the mirror looked as though he might actually belong aboard a ship.
The tailor agreed to turn up the cuffs of one pair of pants immediately. The dress whites and the sword which his list called for would take a few days to get. Soon Paul was driving to see his parents.
The small, brown-shingled cottage would have appeared shabby if it had stood on a suburban street, but in its country setting surrounded by a grove of pines it had a certain charm. His mother, Rachel, a big blocky woman dressed in shaggy tweeds, had been watching from the window and opened the front door before he touched it.
“Paul!” she said. “How beautiful you are! I feel I should salute!”
Never before had he received such approval from his mother and he did not quite know how to handle it. When he hugged her, her tweeds felt as rough as a burlap sack, and she pulled away before he could kiss her big broad cheek.
“Come see your father,” she said. “He's in his studio. His work has been going very well lately and he's been hard at it all week.”
His father, or the father she presented to him, was almost entirely a work of fiction, he realized with the strange new ability to face facts which his commission had apparently given him. Charles Schuman actually did no work, had not done any for at least ten years. After going broke and losing his job in a brokerage house in 1929, he had retired on the slender income his wife had inherited, and had taken up painting. At this he was a genius, according to Rachel, but he was so ahead of his time that galleries and art museums didn't understand him. For about two years Charles had experimented with cubism and many kinds of abstractions. When his work brought him neither money nor praise, he busied himself with woodcarving, furniture repair, fishing and hunting. As a mild-mannered man who at least had weathered failure in a family where that was the worst of all crimes without going crazy or taking seriously to drink, he was worthy of respect, and Paul wished that his mother could let his sons love him for what he was instead of pretending that he was a hardworking artist whose genius would undoubtedly be recognized after his death.
Charles's studio consisted of a back porch which had been glassed in, and which was heated by a pot-bellied coal stove on which an aluminum coffee pot steamed. Near the door stood an easel with a half-finished abstract painting, black and red lines leading to a huge sphere which had only been sketched in. The painting had not been touched since Paul's last visit a month ago. This large canvas acted as a screen, behind which Charles was sitting in an armchair near the stove. He was carving a long chain from a pine two-by-four. This was something which he did very well. The part of the chain which he had finished and which lay coiled at his feet, was as flexible and perfectly formed as its iron counterpart.
“Paul!” he said, getting to his feet. “Or should I call you captain?”
His father was a stout man as tall as himself, almost six feet, and Paul couldn't understand why he persisted in thinking of him as small. He was wearing a tweed sports coat, a black turtleneck sweater and baggy gray flannel trousers. His long silvery hair and his craggy long-nosed face with heavy dark eyebrows enabled him to play his assigned role as a distinguished artist convincingly, whether he really wanted to or not.
Paul shook his father's hand heartilyâthey never hugged. Rather embarrassedly Charles took a pipe from his pocket and began to stuff it.
“Your grandfather would be proud of you,” he said. “He always wanted me to go in the navy. I tried, but my bum ticker ruled me out. How long will it be before they send you overseas?”
“I expect my orders anytime now. I don't actually know where I'll be stationed.”
“He's in the Coast Guard, not the navy,” Rachel said. “They may keep him right in Boston.”
“During wartime we're part of the navy,” Paul said. “I've already put in for sea duty.”
“Well, you're better qualified for it than most,” Charles said. “It's nice to think that the old
Valkyrie
did you some good. Bill thinks we should junk her now. Did he tell you that?”
“He's talked of it.”
“He's even got a buyer. Three thousand dollars we're offered. Jesus Christ!”
“Now, Charles, you mustn't take on about that,” Rachel said. “The
Valkyrie
has served her purpose. She's given us all a great deal of pleasure for years and she's an old lady. Everyone has to die sometime.”
“Three thousand dollars for a sixty-foot Lawley yawl,” Charles said. “The buyer is the Katstein Metal Works.
Sic Transit Gloria.
”
“I say we're lucky to get the three thousand,” Rachel said. “Who'd look after her after Paul goes? Who knows how long this war will last?”
“I guess I have to vote for selling,” Paul said. “She's got some rot in her, Dad. There won't be much left of her in two or three years.”
“Let's talk about something cheerful,” Rachel said. “How about some tea, and I've just baked an apple cake.”
“While you're getting that together, I'd like to show Paul the model I'm making in the basement,” Charles said and led the way down a steep, rickety stairway.
This cellar was far different from that in the orderly house of his father-in-law. One corner was filled with a jumble of unstacked firewood, another with coal. They had to pick their way through broken chairs and tables to get to the workbench, where tools lay everywhere but in their racks. The half-model of the
Valkyrie
which Charles had carved from a piece of mahogany was as smooth as flesh. Paul was touched by the fact that both his father and father-in-law had spent hours making models of the old yawl.
While Paul was running his fingers over the graceful model, Charles produced a half-empty pint bottle of scotch from a tool drawer.
“Your mother doesn't think that this stuff is good for my ticker, but a snort now and then never hurt anyone. Here's to your new career. I bet you're good at it.”
Passing the bottle back and forth with curious urgency, they finished it. Then Charles took two big cigars from the tool drawer.
“Your mother can't stand the smell of these, but I like one now and then,” his father said. “We have to be careful, though. The smoke can go right up through cracks in the floor and make her sick.”
An armchair with a broken arm already stood in front of the furnace. Charles pulled a diningroom chair with a split back up beside it. Sitting down, he opened the furnace door, lit his cigar and blew the smoke into it.
“Sit down, son,” he said. “This way we won't bother anyone. Sometimes it's good just to sit and smoke a fine cigar.”
Ten minutes later his mother called them for tea. She had set out her best Spode china and a variety of cookies, as well as apple cake. An alcohol flame burned under the silver teapot in gimbals which she had inherited from her grandmother. On that winter day not much light came through the pine trees and the gray curtains at the windows. The armchairs and tables in the room had been designed for a much larger house and made this cottage feel cramped. Silver frames showed pictures of Bill in academic dress as he graduated from Milton Academy, Harvard, and the business school. There were no pictures of Paul, but then he had never graduated from anything except the local high school. On the walls were photographs of both his grandfathers, both successful businessmen, and both looking the part. A scrapbook containing newspaper clippings and photographs which Rachel had garnered from her career as president of the Federated Garden Clubs of America was on a coffee table in front of the couch. Over the fireplace was a large painting of the
Valkyrie
under full sail on an improbable blue and waveless sea, one of his father's first efforts. Silver loving cups which Bill had won at tennis, golf, and swimming lined the back of a sideboard. They, like the silver tea set, had all been recently polished. This was really a trophy room, not a livingroom, Paul thought. The sideboard with its candles looked like an altar to success, every little success the family had ever known to make up for the big ones which had been for so long lacking. Paul was sure that soon a photograph of himself in uniform would be added to the collection.
“How's Sylvia?” his mother asked suddenly and dutifully.
“She's fine,” Paul said.
“It must be hard for her to have you going away,” Rachel added.
“I'm sure she's very brave,” Charles said.
“I think I better go to her now,” Paul said. “She hasn't seen my new uniform.”
“There's just one more thing,” Charles said. “This man Katstein will want you to sign some papers and show him over the boat if he's really going to buy it. When can you meet him?”
“Better make it as soon as possible. Like I said, I expect my orders any day now.”
As Paul hurried toward his car, his mother said, “Wait just a minute. I want to take your picture. I'll have it enlarged and send a copy to Sylvia.”
He stood almost at attention while she fussed with her box camera. Brushing aside a nasty premonition that this was probably the photograph which would appear in the newspapers when he got killed, he forced himself to smile at his mother's command. When the shutter had finally been snapped, he gave both his parents a hasty kiss, climbed into his car, and with supreme self-discipline did not allow himself to speed out of their driveway as though pursued by demons.