Maiden Voyage

TWENTY-NINE

It was against the rules of their contest that either of them should make way for more food by deliberately inducing vomiting; although, after a testy argument, it was agreed that seasickness, being involuntary, was allowable. And so it was that at ten minutes past eleven, after a breakfast of Wiltshire bacon rashers, scrambled eggs, cold pheasant, a brace of kippers, smoked ham, toast, deviled beef-bones, smoked chipped beef in cream, and roast Norfolk gosling, Mr. Joe Kretchmer and Mr. Duncan Wilkes were already sitting in the first-class smoking room, each with a large whisky and soda, while the stewards brought them ham sandwiches, cheese, giant black olives, and platefuls of mushrooms on toast.

They had started their eating marathon as mild friends. But it had taken last night's dinner and this morning's breakfast, by an unpleasantly tilting deck, to reduce their relationship to determined grumpiness. They had said good morning to each other, but very little else. Most of the communication that was necessary between them was carried on by their self-appointed seconds: Henrietta Chibnall, for Mr. Kretchmer, because she believed that he was going to be most wonderfully sick; and Grace Bunyon, the actress, for Mr. Wilkes, because she thought that he had the look of a classical hero about him, like Hercules. She was particularly taken by the blond hair which grew out of his ears.

The rest of the passengers watched with guarded amusement as the bald-headed Mr. Kretchmer picked up a large ham sandwich and established his first crescent-shaped bite in it. Mr. Wilkes ate an olive first, fastidiously spitting the pip into his hand.

"That's just the stone, I hope, Mr. Wilkes?" asked Henrietta Chibnall. "You're not palming anything you shouldn't?"

Mr Wilkes opened his hand to reveal the well-chewed olive pip. His face was a picture of testy misogyny. "That's all right, Mr. Wilkes," said Henrietta brightly. "One olive down and nine to go."

With his natural instinct for a contest, Maurice Peace sidled into the smoking room and stood by the door with his hands in his pockets watching the two men stuffing their mouths with food. "Not another eating competition?" he remarked, to nobody in particular.

"I'm afraid so," said the tall man standing next to him. "On every voyage some American tries to get more than his money's worth by choking down absolutely everything on the menu. It wouldn't surprise me if one of them kills himself."

"You're a doctor?" asked Maurice Peace.

"I'm the Arcadia's doctor, Dr Cumberland Fields," the tall man replied.

"Oh, how do you do. Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Maurice Peace. "My great-uncle used to be a doctor, in the Civil War. He says he sawed seven legs off at Chancellorsville. Confederates, of course."

Dr. Fields, in his grey suit and his old-fashioned upright collar, gave Maurice Peace a distant smile. Being British, he didn't have the slightest idea why Maurice had said "Confederates', or even why he had said "of course', but it was company policy to humour passengers in all things, and so he automatically smiled.

"You don't think there's really any danger, do you?" Maurice asked him.

Dr. Fields blinked. "I beg your pardon. Any danger of what?"

"Any danger of what you said. Of one of those fellows killing himself."

"Well, the human body is an extraordinary machine," said Dr. Fields. "It will tolerate all kinds of reckless abuse, including the sudden ingestion of large quantities of rich food. But that tall fellow, Mr. Wilkes I believe his name is, I'm not so sure about his constitutional ability to be able to survive such eating."

"You're not?" asked Maurice, interested.

"He has the florid appearance of a man who suffers from high blood pressure, and possibly heart disease. He could be committing suicide—albeit by the most luxurious means available."

"Hmm," said Maurice.

"I really think the captain ought to persuade them to give this contest up," said Dr. Fields. "It's really frightfully offensive, if nothing else. I mean, one can hardly describe the sight of a ham sandwich being forcibly crammed into a fellow's mouth as aesthetic, can one?"

"Noo," Maurice agreed. But his mind was already working on the possibilities of opening a book on the two marathon eaters, and in the light of Dr. Fields" expert assessment of Mr Duncan Wilkes" state of health, there was a very reasonable chance of cleaning up quite a few thousand pounds. Very reasonable indeed.

It didn't occur to Maurice that there could be anything ghoulish in betting on the likelihood of Mr Duncan Wilkes" sudden demise from over-eating. It wasn't as if he himself had incited either contestant to test his intestinal tract so challengingly. Maurice was simply a better on odds, a gambler on likely outcomes. He never saw himself as a participant in everyday life, only as an interested outsider. After all, he was the only first-class passenger on board who didn't have a ticket. "I feel like a ghost," he had once told an almost insensible wino as they sat side by side on the painted horses of a deserted steam carousel in Paragould, Arkansas, while dawn appeared behind the tulip trees.

He elbowed his way through the small circle of passengers, and laid his hand with a flourish on Mr. Kretchmer's shoulder. Then he turned his head this way and that, to make sure that his gesture had caught everybody's attention, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, not forgetting any peers of the British realm, if there are any present, I protest at the way this contest is being carried on! Protest most vigorously!"

Mr. Kretchmer looked at him, his cheeks bulging with ham sandwich. "What's wrong?" he wanted to know. He blew out a few crumbs of bread, and Grace Bunyon snapped out loudly, "No cheating, Mr. Kretchmer!"

Maurice ignored Mr. Kretchmer's question and said in the staccato style of a fairground barker, "No contest between two such sporting gentlemen as these should be carried on without the rest of the passengers being given the opportunity to back their favourite! A sporting bet is part of the great tradition of Anglo-Saxon life, and deplore the fact that a tournament as unusual and as exciting as a is being allowed to take place without an official book being opened! I expect that several of you have already made private bets. But I propose to open the official Arcadia eating contest book, and I invite you to place your wagers with me and support your own particular fancy."

There was laughter and applause. Somebody called out, "I bet they're both as sick as parrots before tomorrow lunchtime!" But Maurice raised his hands for silence and said, "I'll be opening the book in five minutes, by the bar. Those of an adventurous disposition are welcome to join me. I might even permit them to stand me a drink."

There was more laughter, but Maurice was quite serious as he withdrew towards the bar and rummaged through his pockets for pencil and paper and stray dollar bills. As he went, he beckoned to a young steward called Minchin, a Newcastle boy with a shiny black cowlick and the build of an undernourished jockey. "Yes, sir?" asked Minchin.

"Here's twenty-five dollars," he said, pushing a crumpled-up ball of greenbacks into Minchin's uniform pocket. He glanced over Minchin's narrow epauletted shoulder to make sure that nobody was watching. "I want you to spread the intelligence that Mr. Kretchmer is suffering from the worst duodenal ulcers since Napoleon, and that the only reason he's travelling to New York is to see an ulcer expert. Pass it around that he's only supposed to drink milk, and that if he touches anything stronger than barley water he's probably going to pop off before we're in sight of the Statue of Liberty."

"Is that true, sir?" asked Minchin, worriedly. "I was going to bet on him myself."

"True?" asked Maurice. "What does it matter to you if it's true? You've just earned yourself twenty-five dollars, and there's more where that came from, if you do a good job."

Minchin stared at Maurice for a long time, like an anxious ferret.

Maurice said, "Well? What's the matter?"

"My father said I was never to tell lies, sir."

"Did he now? Did he say anything about advantageous exaggeration?"

"I don't know, sir. He didn't mention it by name."

"I suppose you wouldn't like to send him a telegraph, and ask his opinion?"

"He's deceased, sir."

"Ah," said Maurice. "There's the proof of it. Telling the truth gets you nowhere at all but the crypt. Edgar Allen Poe said that. Or was it Ambrose Bierce? Who knows? Well, who cares? But run along now and earn your money, and we'll discuss the moral philosophy of it later."

Maurice went to the bar, and ordered himself a drink. Then he turned around and watched in satisfaction as young Minchin went from passenger to passenger, politely enquiring if they wanted another cocktail, oh, and by the way, did they know that Mr. Kretchmer was suffering from chronic duodenal ulcers? By the time the first betters approached Maurice with their big white fluttering five-pound notes, the favourite was already a foregone conclusion, although Maurice took a particular pleasure in remarking that Mr. Kretchmer looked in very good health, didn't they think? and relishing the twitchy, sidelong answers he received in reply. Oh yes, excellent health.

When all the passengers had laid their bets, he had gathered in 725 pounds for Mr. Wilkes and 35 pounds for Mr. Kretchmer. If Mr. Wilkes collapsed in mid-marathon, as Dr. Fields had suggested he might, then Maurice would be better off by 550 pounds. And so far he had only taken bets in the smoking room. There were still plenty of suckers in the Palm Lounge and the Orchid Lounge and around the swimming pool.

But there was one more errand that Maurice had to run before he could gather in any more stake money. Last night, when Princess Xenia of Russia had graciously consented to auction off the ship's pool, Mark Beeney had successfully bid for ticket number 627. Although the weather was getting up, and it was unlikely that the Arcadia would be able to exceed the official estimated mileage of 623, Maurice still didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. Gambling was gambling, but folly was folly. And in Maurice's opinion, it was folly not to do everything within one's power to make sure that the right cards came up, and that the right horses came in, and that the right ball stopped in the right slot. Besides, he was still low on ready money, and he needed very much more if he was going to stake himself for another night's heavy stud.

Whistling to himself, Maurice went up in the electric lift to the boat deck, and made his way along to the purser's office. The varnished door was half-ajar, but all the same he knocked politely before he stuck his head around to see if anyone was in.

He caught Monty Willowby in the extraordinary act of trying to conceal a lavatory seat under his mess-jacket. The problem was, the mess jacket was cut very tight, and Monty Willowby was very portly, and the seat was one of the larger mahogany variety, complete with gilt-embossed cover.

"Oh," said Maurice, in perplexity. "I hope I'm not intruding."

Monty Willowby looked down at the lavatory seat as if he had never see it before, and then tossed it noisily down in a corner of his office. "Just testing it," he said with a loud attempt at nonchalance. "Had some complaints about them. You know, sharp edges cutting into tender legs. Yours all right, is it, sir?"

Maurice frowned at Monty Willowby, and then at the lavatory seat, and then back at Monty Willowby. "All right?" he enquired.

"No sharp edges, is what I was getting at."

"Oh, no. Nothing like that. No sharp edges. Smooth as a baby's bottom.

Maurice was about to say something else but then he changed his mind. Monty Willowby wasn't listening anyway. He sat down at his desk like a slowly deflating observation balloon, fold by fold, billow by billow, and stared at the heaps of paper in front of him in baffled resignation. Usually he kept a neatly regimented desk, but now he was half-buried in bills of lading, wireless messages, timetables, schedules, and passenger rosters.

"It's too much, you know," he said, mostly to himself. "It's more than a body can cope with."

Ever since Mr Fribourg had approached him last night with his preposterous blackmailing demand to collect as many celebrity toilet seats as he could, Monty Willowby's carefully organised existence had gone utterly haywire. Twenty minutes in a first-class bathroom, unscrewing the seat, was twenty minutes wasted out of an already hectic day. He'd already had complaints from Mr. Peel that he hadn't made himself conspicuous enough to the passengers at breakfast. "Big chap like you, Monty, don't know how you manage to make yourself so scarce."

The trouble was, Mr. Fribourg had badly frightened him. Those medical supplies which he had spirited off the Callipygic in 1912 had netted him more than 14,500, pounds and that was at 1912 prices. They would probably be worth twice as much today. He had arranged the fraud, he had seriously believed, for the finest of all possible motives. His mother, Mrs Enid Willowby, a gentle and tender soul who had ruined her health bringing up eight sons and two daughters in a damp villa in Penge, in South London, bad been advised by her family doctor to seek a drier climate, or die. With the proceeds from the Callipygic cargo, Monty had bought her a house in Tangier, and arranged for the services of a European physician and a Moorish maid, and even for a Daimler motor-car. Monty's reward had been that his mother had flourished and become one of Tangier's most notable English eccentrics, sending her servants every evening to feed all the stray cats in the Medina with fish-heads and horsemeat. She hadn't been particularly grateful to Monty. In fact, she made a point of visiting friends in Fes whenever he was able to get shore leave in Tangier. But Monty supposed that children, like parents, should never expect any thanks. He just sometimes wished that his mother would pop off and leave him her house. She was eighty-six, after all, and enough was enough.

The Callipygic had been a very sizeable theft, however: even bigger than Monty had expected, and it was still remembered in marine Insurance circles with considerable wrath. If it ever got out that Monty has been responsible for it, he would probably end up in Pentonville. No— not probably. Certainly. Ten years and no remission, and nothing to look forward to on his release but poverty and doss houses.

That was why—absurd as Mr. Fribourg's scheme appeared to be—Monty was still industriously unscrewing toilet seats.

Maurice said in his blandest voice, "I don't know whether I ought to report this or not, but I've just seen a boat."

Monty raised his head. "A boat? I beg your pardon? A boat?"

"That's right," said Maurice, trying to sound like an enthusiastic but hopelessly naive amateur. "About five minutes ago, off the left side. At least, it looked like a boat."

"What kind of a boat? A fishing boat? Something like that?"

"Well, no. Not really. More of a lifeboat."

"A lifeboat? Was there anyone in it?"

"I don't know," shrugged Maurice. "I really couldn't see. It's pretty wild out there, after all. It was just a lifeboat, with a couple of oars sticking out of it."

Monty stood up and scrabbled through the papers on his desk to find his telephone. He cranked the dial, and then said, "Bridge? Is that you, Mr. Peel?" To Maurice, he said, "Don't go away."

"I won't," smiled Maurice.

"Mr. Peel?" said Monty. "It's Mr. Willowby. I have a passenger here who says he saw a lifeboat adrift off the port bow. About five minutes ago, he says. That's right. No, he couldn't see; but he says there were oars visible. That's it. Yes. I'll bring him up to the bridge."

The chances of locating a single drifting lifeboat in a sea that was rising all around them now like the black slate roofs of Victorian churches were almost nil. But the code of the seaways was quite clear: survivors were to be sought for, no matter how remote the chances of finding them might be. And that was why Sir Peregrine testily ordered the Arcadia to be turned off to port in a wide circular sweep that'll would take her back on her course by five or six nautical miles. The lookouts aloft were told to keep an extra-sharp watch; and the promenade decks were crowded with passengers in raincoats and yellow oilskins, all glad of a little ocean drama to help them forget their seasickness.

Maurice Peace, of course, didn't bother to look. Instead, he went to the first-class cocktail bar and began gathering in more bets for the Wilkes-Kretchmer eating contest. He had already assured the outcome of the ship's pool for today, and won himself $500 from Mark Beeney, and so he was feeling quite pleased with himself—pleased enough to order a mimosa for his elevenses, and to put it on Mark Beeney's tab.

Beeney, he was sure, would be good for quite a few thousand dollars more.