Maiden Voyage

THIRTEEN

Catriona couldn't think why, but Edgar Deacon seemed almost reluctant for her to meet Mark Beeney. Of course—since Mark and Catriona were sitting opposite each other at Sir Peregrine's table for the first luncheon of the Arcadia's maiden voyage—they could scarcely have remained strangers. But Edgar seemed to go very tight-lipped and testy when he introduced them, and for most of the luncheon he tormented his food as if he bore a personal grudge against it, and scarcely spoke a word to the vivacious young movie actress who sat next to him and gushed on and on about Rudie Valentino and D.W. Griffith, and how D.W. had promised her that if he ever decided to remake Broken Blossoms, he would definitely, but definitely, find a part for her.

Catriona and Mark Beeney sat and watched each other at first like two people who know they have always been destined to meet, and who scarcely need to say anything. All around them, the first-class dining-lounge glittered with electric chandeliers, rows and rows of them, and each row was reflected a dozen times in the tall gilt-frame mirrors which were hung the whole 270-foot length of the room. It was like the dining-room of an 18th century French palace, with tall palms and canaries in cages and the ten-piece orchestra playing Mozart. The tables were laid with heavy silver plate provided by the same company who had furnished the cutlery for the Titanic, the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company of Regent Street, in London. Each table was decorated with a massive solid-silver centrepiece of mermaids and fish plunging through an engraved ocean.

For this first luncheon, Catriona wore a simple sleeveless dress of Chinese blue, and a brooch of pearls and diamonds. Her bobbed hair was circled by a blue headband. Her shoes were pale blue satin, and even her stockings were the colour of sea, and sky, and short-circuits. Mark Beeney, in his beautifully-tailored grey suit from Wetzel of New York, and his silk necktie from Henry Poole of London, sat and looked at her and thought she was perfectly stunning.

Marcia Conroy had been separated from Mark and was sitting further along Sir Peregrine's table next to Douglas Fairbanks.

Although Mr. Fairbanks was waving his arms around and being his usual witty and anecdotal self, telling everybody a very long story about the time he had knocked himself unconscious while leaping off a balcony, without insurance, of course, Marcia was looking decidedly uncomfortable and irritated, and she kept glaring at Mark to catch his attention.

"I saw your press," Mark told Catriona, as the stewards came around with steaming tureens of real turtle soup.

Catriona blushed. "The Flapper Queen of the Seas?" she asked him.

"That's right. You're not embarrassed, are you? I thought it was cute. But I did expect a genuine flapper. Instead, there's you."

"You don't think I'm a flapper?"

Of course not. How could the daughter of Stanley Keys ever be a flapper? Besides, you don't even look like a flapper, or act like a flapper. You're not even a jazz baby. You're just what they say you are, Queen of the Atlantic."

Catriona said, "I think you're flattering me on purpose."

"Of course I am. I never flatter anybody by accident."

"I think you have something in mind, is what I meant."

"An ulterior motive?" asked Mark. He declined the amontillado sherry that the steward offered him for his turtle soup.

"That's right," said Catriona. "Yes, sherry for me, please."

Mark sipped his soup. "It's not up to Savoy standard, but it's okay."

"Do you want me to send it back?" asked Catriona. "I can, you know."

"Listen, he told her, "I can take care of myself. You may own this shipping line, but I have a shipping line too."

"Does that make us enemies, or associates?"

Mark tore off a piece of fresh-baked bread, and chewed it. "It makes us equal, that's all. Whether you want to be friendly or not, that's up to you."

"What makes you think I shouldn't be friendly? Don't I look friendly?"

Mark shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't got as far as that yet. Right now, I'm still bowled over by how pretty you look."

"You're being very American, you know," said Catriona. "A bit too snappy for your own good."

"You can give as sharp as you get," said Mark, without looking up. "You're a rare girl. You know that?"

"Rare?" asked Catriona, more cautiously this time.

Mark raised his eyes. "Yes," he said. "Rare. To be strong, and beautiful, and understanding all at once, that's rare."

Catriona paused, silent for a long time. The dining lounge was clattering with the Castanet sound of soup spoons. Then she said, "You don't know if I'm understanding or not."

Mark grinned. "You must be to have answered that way."

Catriona glanced along the table at Marcia. "Your friend has been trying to catch your attention ever since you sat down. Don't you think you ought to wave at her, at least?"

"Oh, sure," said Mark, and leaned over to give Marcia a little finger wave down the rows of empty soup plates. Marcia mouthed something, but Mark cupped his hand around his ear, and mouthed back, Cant hear you. Talk to you later. Marcia huffed in irritation and gave up.

"Is she your secretary?" asked Catriona.

"Marcia? Oh, no. Marcia's my nemesis."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that one day, whether I like it or not, Marcia will hold the key to my entire fate."

"Do you really believe that?" smiled Catriona.

Mark made a moue. "Maybe. I don't know. I think everyone has a nemesis. Sometimes, it's a person. Other times, it's a thing. The Titanic had a nemesis in the shape of an iceberg."

"You shouldn't say that," said Catriona. The idea of it made her feel cold, and she glanced across at Sir Peregrine for reassurance. If the captain was calmly finishing his soup, then everything must be all right.

"You're not scared, are you?" asked Mark, amused. "You think it could happen again? You think it could happen just because I happened to mention it? You're nor superstitious, are you?"

"Yes," said Catriona. "Have you ever met a girl who isn't?"

Mark pressed his ringers to his forehead and pretended to spend a long time thinking. Then he said, "No, you're right. I haven't."

"Did it take that long to remember all the girls you've been out with?" Catriona asked him. "Were there really that many girls?"

"Of course," Mark told her. "I'm rich, I'm good-looking. You think I sit home all evening, listening to Barney Google?"

"I'm glad to discover you're self-effacing as well," said Catriona.

Mark laughed out loud, leaning back in his chair, but as he leaned back, Marcia caught his eye again, caustically, and his face remoulded itself instantly to serious. "You see what I mean by nemesis?" he asked Catriona, under his breath. He finished his turtle soup in silence.

Edgar Deacon said dourly, "I hope you're enjoying yourself so far, Mr. Beeney."

"Oh, sure," said Mark. "The Arcadia's a beautiful vessel, and no doubt about it. As a matter of fact, Miss Keys, I very much envy you. I wish she were mine."

"I don't think she's for sale," said Catriona; but she wasn't so slow that didn't catch the displeased exchange of glances between Mark and Edgar Deacon. But she smiled, in the kind of Queen of the Atlantic way which she knew would please Edgar Deacon, and held her tongue.

Now the ship's orchestra played Viennese waltzes, and the soup plates were gathered up with a systematic clattering. Fresh plates and fresh cutlery were laid, and the stewards brought round transparently thin slices of Prague ham. Sir Peregrine began to tell a "guests, in tedious and impeccable accents, like someone in the MCC clubroom describing an entire cricket match, over by over, about the time when the Aurora had been hired for a round trip to Florida, for the birthday party of a Chicago beef-baron's daughter, and how five guests had fallen overboard and been swept away by the currents. The beef-baron had asked for a discount of $250 for each swept-away passenger, plus a refund for two dozen bottles of Mumm's Cordon Rouge which had been shattered in the storm.

Douglas Fairbanks, far too loudly, explained how he had been accidentally swept up in the rigging of a pirate ship during a rehearsal, and become inextricably entangled there. He had missed lunch with him agent, but "that didn't matter—I would rather have spent the rest of the week stuck up that mast than five minutes with that miserable cuss."

Mark Beeney said to Catriona, "My hobbies are horseback riding, hunting, sailing, chess, skiing, and beautiful girls. What are yours?"

Catriona said, "Mystic experiences."

"What do you call a mystic experience?" asked Mark.

"Falling in love. Having a revelation. Watching the sun rise."

"When was the last time you did any of those things?"

"I watched the sun rise this morning. I had a revelation when my father died."

"What was the revelation? What did you see?"

Catriona laid down her knife. "I saw myself. My real self, I mean. The self I'd been hiding. Once my father had gone, you see, I realised that I wasn't so very different from him, after all. That's why I'm here, instead of back in London."

"You're really going to take an active interest in Keys Shipping?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Shipping is such a hell of a risky business these days."

"Shipping always was."

"Well, sure," said Mark, "but you're a pretty young girl of twenty-one with the whole of your life ahead of you. Why the hell should you want to spend your life in stuffy offices, running a shipping line?"

"I'm different. I'm a man. Besides, I'm ten years older than you. I've sown all the wild oats I'm ever going to sow."

"You mean to tell me you're a has-been already? You disappoint me."

Mark held his wine glass while the steward poured him more Perrier-Jouet champagne. "I disappoint myself. I own one of the fastest and most efficient fleets of passenger liners in the world, and yet I don't own anything like the Arcadia. I have dozens of pretty girlfriends, and yet I don't have anyone like you."

Edgar Deacon heard that last remark, and stared at Catriona from under his beetling eyebrows like an irascible bishop. Catriona gave him an uncertain and not wholly reassuring smile in return. She couldn't be wholly reassuring because she wasn't wholly reassured. Mark Beeney was too handsome and too confident and too ebullient to be resisted for very long. She couldn't dislike him if she tried. His hair was curly and his teeth were white, and even his arrogance about girls was strangely innocent and disarming.

"I'm being taken on a tour of the Arcadia after lunch," said Catriona. "Perhaps you and your nemesis would like to come."

"I'll come for sure," smiled Mark Beeney. "But I believe my nemesis has an appointment in the beauty salon."

After the ham, the stewards served chicken Kiev with wild rice and fresh asparagus, and followed up with raspberries and cream, button mushrooms on toast, cheese, and crackers. Mr. Willowby came over to the captain's table during the dessert to kiss Catriona's hand and bow to several of the passengers he already knew. Douglas Fairbanks insisted on slapping Mr. Willowby on the back, which Mr. Willowby clearly found unpleasant in the extreme.

"Your luncheon met up to your expectations?" Monty Willowby asked Catriona.

"It was marvellous, thank you, Mr Willowby."

"Thank you, Miss Keys. There's even better to come."

Mark admitted, "This was excellent, Mr Willowby. If I can persuade my staff to do half as well, then I think I'll be well on my way."

"Mr. Beeney is too kind," said Mr Willowby. He gave the impression that he didn't care in the slightest if anybody was kind to him or not.

"You have to buy so much food," said Catriona.

Mr. Willowby nodded, with considerable pleasure. "On this maiden voyage alone, we have 195 pounds of truffled pate-de-foie-gras on board, 500 pounds of Scotch smoked salmon, half a long ton of fresh asparagus, 250 pounds of fresh-picked strawberries, as well as 250 pounds of the very best grey Malossol caviar. We also stock eighteen different French champagnes, sixty-one vintage wines from Chateau Branaire-Ducru in the Medoc to Chateau Haut-Bailly in Graves, thirty different varieties of cigar, and sixteen different ales and lager beers. In case of particular demands we are also carrying frozen stocks of venison, woodcock, quail, duck, and hare."

"I shan't starve, then," said Mark, his eyes on Catriona.

"I doubt it, sir," said Monty Willowby, with self-satisfaction, "and I must say that those American gentlemen who have been inhibited in their home country by the Volstead Act, and by dietary fanaticism, have all found the abundance of our larders to be most reassuring."

"They are," said Mark, "most reassuring."

"Tea is at four, sir," Monty Willowby reminded him. "Dinner is at eight. Supper will be set out in the first-class smoking-room at eleven. Early breakfast is available from five-thirty. But if at any time you feel peckish, sir, don't hesitate to let my stewards know. A plate of deviled beef-bones and cottage fried potatoes never goes amiss, sir, does it?"

Mark looked pointedly at Monty Willowby's protuberant belly, straining at his beige hunting-vest and the gold chain of his Albert watch. "No," he remarked, "apparently not."

For a half-hour after lunch, Catriona went out on to the first-class promenade deck in a white summer coat and a white peekaboo hat to take the breeze. Mark Beeney was strolling arm-in-arm with Marcia Conroy, and he raised his straw boater to her as she passed. Once they had gone by, Catriona could hear them furiously arguing. "Well, what did you want me to do, high-hat her?" Mark protested. Catriona smiled to herself, and went to the varnished rail, where she gazed seventy feet down the sheer wall of the Arcadia's side to the frothing green Irish Sea below.

It was almost two o'clock. In an hour, they would be lowering her father into his grave at the church of St Christopher, in Formby. The sadness and the regret she felt were almost bottomless, like the deepest reaches of the ocean. But none of her anguish could bring him back, not even to the moment when he had let out his last breath, nor to the second when he had paused at the foot of the stairs and asked Dottie for his Food of Life. The breath he had breathed and the words he had spoken had been heard, and faded, and gone. She hoped desperately that her father was happy, if it was still possible for him to be happy; and for her own sake she hoped that he understood how much she loved him.

Edgar Deacon came up in white ducks and a navy-blue yachting blazer with red stripes. He rested his bony, dark-haired wrists on the rail beside her, and pretended to stare at the dazzling sea for a while.

"You and Mark Beeney got on well together, then?" he asked.

"We shouldn't have done?"

"Of course you should. I'm glad that you did. You shouldn't forget that he's the competition, though. Nor how much he covets this ship."

"Is that so terrible?"

"My dear, he cares for nothing but his own interests. He would happily see Keys go bankrupt, if it meant that he could have the Arcadia for himself. He's quite unscrupulous."

"He's nice. I like him."

"Of course you like him. But he's far harder than he looks. He's not just an oceangoing cake-eater. He's one of the brightest young businessmen in America."

"I can't really believe that he wants to see us go out of business."

Edgar turned and leaned his back against the rail. He watched Mark Beeney and Marcia Conroy as they briefly appeared on the far side of the promenade deck, and then as they disappeared again behind the raised glass roof that covered the first-class lounge.

"If it meant that he could acquire the Arcadia cheaply, he wouldn't give twopence if our whole workforce had to go on the dole. He's a young sheik, Miss Keys, that's all; and the Arcadia would be a fine jewel for him to set in his puggaree."

Catriona stared down at the foam as it endlessly unravelled from the ship's glossy black hull and spread out across the surface of the ocean. Only a few feet away from the rail, silent gulls kept pace with the Arcadia's progress, occasionally fluttering and diving for small fish that had been churned up by the liner's giant screws. The ship had passed the shelter of the north Welsh coast now, and the southwest wind had freshened up. Catriona wound her scarf around her hat and turned up the collar of her coat, so that all anyone could see of her was her pretty nose.

"The way Mark Beeney looks at it," went on Edgar, "American TransAtlantic ranks fourth, both in carrying capacity, and the prestige of his fleet. His fleet makes money, certainly, but it lacks glamour; and these days glamour is what the cabin-class business is all about. if he could buy the Arcadia, he would easily rank third, and he would also have all the swank he's been looking for."

"He's been talking to you about it?" asked Catriona.

Edgar stood straight, and self-consciously adjusted his yachting cap. He's been dropping hints about the Arcadia for months: both to me and to your father."

"I mean recently. You were exchanging intimate looks at the luncheon table as if you were secret lovers."

"He did call me before we left Liverpool, yes."

"He made an offer?"

Edgar shook his head. "He just wanted to know if we were interested in selling, that's all. A tentative inquiry. But I doubt if he could go above 3 pounds million."

"So what do you think about it?"

"I don't think anything about it, other than what I told you last week. We're technically bankrupt, and any offer that might pay off our debts has to be considered. It grieves me considerably to think of having to sell the Keys fleet out of the family, but so far it strikes me as the only reasonable alternative. Three million might keep us going for a little while longer, but then we would have lost the Arcadia for ever."

"And that's why I shouldn't allow myself to be sweet-talked by Mark Beeney?" asked Catriona, a little irked.

"Let me just say this," said Edgar, "Mark Beeney is very attractive to women, and he has a way with him. For your own sake, for all of our sakes, for the sake of those families in Liverpool, you'd be better to keep a relatively cool distance."

Catriona turned to Edgar and peered at him from under the shadow of her peekaboo hat. "You're not just the tiniest bit jealous, are you?" she asked. "I mean, as well as being so businesslike and concerned for those families in Liverpool?"

Edgar gave her a complicated little smile. "I am simply trying to discharge my duty to your late father's company in the way that he would have wished me to," he said. He cleared his throat, and then turned away.

Just then, Mark Beeney came across the deck. He grinned, and lifted his hat, and took Catriona's hand.

"Miss Keys," he said, cheerfully. "I thought it was you under that hat. You have the most attractive smeller on the whole deck. Mr. Deacon, how are you?"

Edgar gave a non-committal nod. "Bearing up, thank you, Mr. Beeney."

"It's almost two-thirty," said Mark Beeney. "The lovely Marcia has gone to the beauty salon to get herself dolled up for tonight's festivities. Didn't we have a date for a tour of the ship?"

"Of course," said Catriona, taking Mark Beeney's arm. "Look, here's Mr. Philips now. Our guide. You'll excuse us, Mr. Deacon?"

"Please," said Edgar, overpolitely. "It's your ship."

Rudyard Philips came up looking surprisingly pink, as if something had just shocked or embarrassed him. In fact Mademoiselle Narron had taken his arm only ten minutes ago as he left the first-class dining-lounge and jostled him into a corner, deliberately or accidentally thrusting one of her mighty thighs between his. He hadn't quite been sure what she had been trying to do, and perhaps she hadn't been, either, because nothing had ensued but an awkward tussle and a salvo of "excuse-mes" and "I beg-your-pardons." Blushing, she said that the sway of the ship had made her lose her balance. Could she see him later? With other passengers watching, he had tipped his cap and said, "Assuredly'. It had sounded rather old-fashioned but it had been the first word he could think of. The slight cuts on Mademoiselle Narron's wrists had been concealed by three or four large diamond bracelets, and a long-sleeved purple dress by Dior.

"Mr. Beeney is coming with us," announced Catriona, as Rudyard came up and saluted her.

"How nice," said Rudyard, and shook hands. Further along the deck, in the Palm Lounge, the band was playing "There's Yes Yes In Your Eyes." In Edgar Deacon's eyes, as he watched Catriona and Mark and Rudyard make their way along to the first-class stairway, there was nothing but disturbance. A thunderstorm in the making.