Maiden Voyage

FIFTEEN

They had been shown the kitchens, where the chefs were noisily preparing tonight's banquet of filet de boeuf Robespierre, crabs maitre d'hotel, and Pigeonneaux royaux au sauce paradis, amid a pandemonium of steam and whisks and copper saucepans and the relentless bellowing of the black-bearded Monsieur Vincent, chef extraordinary, who had once astounded London society by serving Edward VII and his mistress Lily Langtry with cuisses de grenouilles in pink-tinted aspic, a dish which in those days had been considered suggestive to the point of culinary pornography.

Now Rudyard Philips led them with all the informative courtesy of a well-bred ship's officer to the brightly-lit shopping gallery; where he pointed out the boutiques of Van Cleef & Arpels, sparkling with diamonds and rubies; of Zoroastra, where lizard and alligator pocketbooks gleamed alongside jewel-encrusted evening purses; and of Alciatore, in which absurd and insanely expensive objets d'art and adult jouets were offered for the amusement of anyone whose tastes one to onyx rocking horses with sapphires for eyes, or hip-flasks which played "The Sheik of Araby" when you unscrewed them, and whose bank balance was near enough bottomless.

Rudyard said, "This shopping gallery is two hundred and ten feet long, and houses thirty different boutiques and agencies. You can buy anything here from a tube of toothpaste to a ranch in Montana."

"Thank you," said Mark Beeney, "I already have a ranch in Montana. a a tube of toothpaste."

Rudyard Philips managed the suggestion of a smile, but that was all. After his jostle with Mademoiselle Narron outside the dining lounge , he hadn't been feeling at all like himself. His thoughts were aa jagged and mixed-up as the bits and pieces in a child's kaleidoscope.

He still missed Toy, he knew that much. But the powerful Valkyrie image of Mademoiselle Narron had swelled almost overwhelmingly in his mind, until she blotted out all rational thought. She alarmed him enormously; but at the same time she had a fierce elemental sexuality which disturbed him like nothing had ever disturbed him before. Perhaps he had discovered a sexual quirk in himself that up until now had remained repressed. Perhaps he really preferred his women to be frightening.

Catriona had felt rather sulky. She had tinkered with the spatulas and spoons while Monsieur Vincent had been effusively explaining the delights of Dover sole Montgolfier (a Channel sole, smothered in a sauce of champagne, crab meat, diced shrimp, egg yolks, onions, thyme, butter, and fish stock, cooked in a bag of oiled paper like one of the celebrated air balloons of the Montgolfier brothers). She had felt tired, after last night's party, and after today's considerable luncheon; and she had also felt the hour of her father's burial approaching, like the impending visit of an unpleasant relative, with nobody around her to understand her sense of loss.

Mark Beeney had been disappointing, too. He was very tall, and solidly built, and even under his blazer she could tell that he was well-muscled and physically fit. But during Rudyard Philip's tour of the ship he had seemed far more interested in the Arcadia's catering supplies, and stocks of wine, and how many miles of steampipes wound their way around the various decks, than he had been in Catriona.

He had asked question after question about the Arcadia's construction, her handling, her budget; where her furniture and fittings had come from; how much the carpets cost per square yard; how Lalique had been persuaded to supply all the glassware at two per cent above cost. He was still asking questions as Catriona stopped by the window of Van Cleef & Arpels, and looked over the displays of diamond necklaces. She yawned, half out of tiredness and half out of nerves. The clock at the end of the shopping galley said three minutes of three. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

She was looking with her eyes only half-focused at a necklace of diamonds and rubies when she became aware that Mark was standing right beside her. He had left Rudyard Philips a few feet away, tactfully inspecting the toes of his shoes, and had approached her so quietly that she hadn't heard him.

"It's three o'clock," he said, gently.

She looked up at him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes moist. "Well?" she said.

"I'm not such a dumb ox that I don't know what's happening at three o'clock today," he told her. "And you're not so tough that you're going to be able to walk around this ship pretending that nothing is wrong."

Catriona said, "I'm not going to cry, if that's what you're thinking."

"Why not? I cried when my father was buried."

"Perhaps I've cried enough already." She was lying, of course, flagrantly, for as the minute hand shuddered to XII the tears were already running down her cheeks.

"Miss Catriona Keys," said Mark Beeney, and held out his arms for her.

She stayed where she was for a moment, trying to be strong. But she couldn't hold the sobs back, couldn't stop the tears, and she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and dung on to him and wept. Mark said nothing, but held her close to him, one hand around her waist, the other stroking the back of her short-bobbed hair.

"I should have been there," she said, miserably. "I should have been there."

"He wouldn't have wanted it," said Mark. "If it was a choice between him doing what you're doing now, and attending his funeral, then you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn't have wanted it."

Catriona raised her head. Her eyes were smudged with tears. "I was so mean to him, I can't even tell you."

"I was mean to my daddy, too. But that didn't mean that I didn't love him. He always knew I loved him, just like your daddy always knew the same about you. You don't seriously think he was so stupid he didn't realise how deeply you felt about him? You—a passionate person like you?"

Rudyard Philips took one or two steps nearer, and asked politely, "Are you all right, Miss Keys?"

"I'm all right, thank you," said Catriona. "I just felt a little giddy, that's all."

"We could finish the tour tomorrow, if you'd prefer."

Unselfconsciously, she took Mark Beeney's hand. "No, thank you, Mr. Philips. I think I'd prefer to carry on. I know Mr Beeney would."

"Why don't you take a couple of minutes to fix your eyes," Mark suggested. "There's a powder room right there. We'll wait for you."

Catriona went through the swing door into the pink-lit, scented ladies" room. An attendant in a lace-edged apron ran water into the marble basin for her, and set out a soft white towel. The shelves were crowded with bottles of French colognes, pots of rouge and foundation and moisturiser, and there was a set of silver-backed hairbrushes and hand-mirrors. Catriona sat down on the pink velvet-seated stool and looked at herself in the gold-framed looking-glass. The shadows under her high cheekbones made her look beautiful but haunted, the sad Queen of the Atlantic.

"Oh, father," she whispered. The powder room attendant looked up sharply and said, "Did you want something, Miss Keys?"

Two girls came bustling into the powder room, spiffily dressed in Dior day suits and smoking with impossibly long cigarette holders. One of them went into one of the cubicles, while the other sat down beside Catriona and began to lavish purple and silver eye-shadow on her half-closed eyelids.

"I really haven't made up my mind yet," called the girl from the cubicle, in a marked North Shore accent. "It's either the dark one with the pencil moustache or the ginger-haired one with the muscles."

"Well, I know which one I'm stuck on the most," replied the girl next to Catriona. "The young one who stutters. Don't you think that stutter's just the bee's knees?"

There was a short silence, and then the girl from the cubicle said, "Do you think that Wilma was right, about getting pregnant on board ship?"

"Of course she was, silly," replied the other girl, puckering up her lips to apply her vivid red lipstick. "Wilma's had more boys than anyone in the whole class. Including Miss Lipschitz."

They both giggled loudly. But then the girl in the cubicle said, "The trouble is, I can't remember which way you have to do it."

"Wilma was quite clear about it," said the other girl. "If the ship's pitching, you make sure you do it with your head to port and your feet to starboard. If the ship's rolling, you do it with your head to the pointed end and your feet to the blunt end. That way, the man's—"

The girl hesitated, suddenly aware that Catriona was listening. Catriona blushed, and stood up, and said, "I'm sorry, I wasn't eavesdropping."

"Well, I don't mind if you do," said the girl with the purple eyelids. "You might learn something."

"That's funny," said Catriona, "I always thought that if you wore a silk scarf around your neck and sneezed four times when it was over, you wouldn't have to worry about anything else."

The girl from the cubicle thought about that for a moment, and then called out, "Are you trying to be cute?"

Outside, Mark Beeney was waiting for her with his hands in his pockets and a self-satisfied look on his face. Rudyard Philips, a few yards away, appeared to be slightly ill. "Is he all right?" Catriona asked Mark, as she came across the shopping gallery.

"Search me," said Mark. "I asked him if he felt okay, and he told me yes. Maybe he's sick because he's been told to take you and me on a tour of the ship, instead of fixing himself up with a sheba. The way most of these officers work, the best girls are all cornered by the time they dock at Dublin. Well, with some notable exceptions, of course."

Catriona took his arm. "How do you know I'm not cornered already?"

"I read in the paper you were sweet on some actor. But I don't see the actor on board."

"No, he stayed behind. His name's Nigel Myers. He's in Daydreams of 1924."

"I've seen it. It's pretty good. Didn't he want to come with you?"

"He couldn't," said Catriona. "He was working."

"That's too bad. You miss him?"

Catriona looked up at Mark and realised he was teasing her. "Yes,"—she nodded—a little."

Mark said, "Do you think this would cheer you up? I mean, after your daddy and Nigel and everything?"

Out of his blazer pocket he produced the dazzling diamond necklace that Catriona had been admiring only a few minutes earlier in the window of the Van Cleef & Arpels boutique. It flashed so brilliantly in his hand that she could hardly believe it was real. There were four strands of one-carat diamonds set in twenty-four-carat gold, suspending a centrepiece of twelve three-carat diamonds and a huge cushion-cut ruby.

"You just bought that?" Catriona asked him incredulously.

"I didn't steal it. It's for you. A token of appreciation from the head of one shipping line to another. And also a token of my respect and esteem, and the fact that you're a very beautiful young woman."

"You're insane," said Catriona, hotly. For some reason, she felt insulted as well as flattered. Did Mark Beeney really think that all he had to do was wave a $35,000 necklace under her nose for her to swoon at his feet? The next thing she knew, he'd be buying her a Rolls-Royce, simply so that he could make love to her in the back seat.

"You don't like it?" asked Mark, in exaggerated surprise.

"It's absolutely stunning. But what do you expect in return?"

Mark stared at her in disbelief for a second or two, and then burst out laughing. "You think I'm trying to seduce you?" He grinned. "You think I'm so unsubtle that I'd buy you a diamond necklace and then expect you to hop into bed with me? And anyway, it only cost thirty-five thousand."

"I suppose that makes a difference," snapped Catriona, walking quickly along, her arm still linked with Mark's, but jiggling her hips as furiously and uncomfortably as she possibly could.

Mark tugged her to a full stop. A few paces ahead of them, Rudyard Philips kept on striding purposefully forwards, until he realised that he was alone. He stopped, turned, and waited for them, trying to appear interested in a window display of Holeproof Hosiery in beige, Airedale orchid, and sunburn.

"I don't know why you're so mad at me," Mark told Catriona. "I'm giving you a gift, that's all. No strings attached, nothing. No corny seduction. It can't do anything to bring your daddy back to you, or give you any kind of comfort at all. But it's the best that I can do."

Catriona looked up at him, and his expression was so earnest that she felt both foolish and unfair. He was, after all, a fabulously rich young man, and a $35,000 necklace could probably be written off as business expenses—especially since it was a gift to the lady figurehead of the Keys Shipping Line. Perhaps, after all, he wasn't trying to get her into bed. But then that made her feel more irritated than ever, because he ought to have been. He may have been the high-and-mighty Mark Beeney, the Sheik of the Seas, but she was the Queen of the Atlantic, and he had no right at all to ignore her. She said, in exasperation, "I feel like a cigarette."

"Here," said Mark, and offered her a handmade Turkish oval out of a gold case. He lit it for her with a lacquered lighter, and watched her with faint amusement as she testily puffed out smoke.

"Will you take the necklace?" he asked her softly. "It would please me a whole lot if you did."

"I think you're very much more devious than you look," said Catriona.

"Devious? I'm the straightest guy in the world. You ask my accountant."

"You've got everything against you. You're too young and you're too good-looking and you're too rich."

"So what? You're in the same boat. Just look at you. You own a quarter-share in a shipping line that's even bigger than mine. You make Clara Bow look like a pouting walrus. And you're twenty-one years old. You've got it made."

Catriona, without warning, snatched the diamond necklace out of his hand. "You're so rude that I think I'll take it," she said. But then, much more meltingly, because she was amused and pleased and comforted by Mark and his gift, she said, "And thank you. You've him really kind."

"Do I get a kiss?" asked Mark, smiling, and adjusting his necktie in anticipation.

Catriona, standing on tippy-toes, lifted her lips to him, and brushed his mouth so lightly that he scarcely knew that he had been kissed at all. It was enough, though. The closeness of her cheek, the warmth of her flowery perfume, and the way her breast had pressed against his arm. He held her wrist as she backed away from him, and said quietly, "Do I get to fasten the necklace, too?"

She held the necklace up to her throat, and then turned her back to him. Mark took the clasp out of her hands, and fastened it. He held her shoulders firmly, longer than he needed to. Then he bent forward and kissed the nape of her neck, with that kind of lingering bruised-roses kiss that Hollywood thrived on. Catriona stayed where she was, she didn't want Mark to think that she was either repelled by his kiss, or overexcited.

"Do you think we might get on?" asked Rudyard Philips, plaintively. "We're getting a little pushed for time, and we still have the bridge to visit."

"Sure," said Mark, in a breathy voice. "We can get on."

Catriona touched the cold glittering necklace and glanced at Mark with mischievous warmth.

"Did you read that article in the Illustrated London News about flying people across the Atlantic in giant aeroplanes?" asked Mark, as they followed Rudyard Philips up the companionway towards the Arcadia's bridge.

"Do you really believe that's possible?" Rudyard replied.

"Sure it's possible," Mark asserted. "All you have to do is build an aeroplane that carries enough fuel to fly from coast to coast, and you're in business. They carry the mail by air, don't they, and from what I've heard they regularly bring bootleg liquor in from Canada by aeroplane. Then there's that fellow who flies people from Los Angeles to Reno, for quick divorces. If they can do all that, why can't they carry a few dozen people from London to New York?"

At last they reached the bridge, and Rudyard ushered them in. "Do you think anybody would be foolhardy enough to put money into such an enterprise?"

Mark grinned.""I wouldn't. You're never going to be able to persuade your cabin-class traveller that people can actually cross the Atlantic without passing out from the lack of roast canvasback duck and marble bathtubs with gold-plated taps."

Sir Peregrine Arrowsmith was on the bridge this afternoon, incongruously but majestically seated in a large Victorian library chair which he had asked Keys Shipping to install for the occasional relief of his sciatica. On the chart table beside him was spread a small cold snack of hare pate and assorted sandwiches, with a conspicuously large and effervescent glass of mineral-water. He rose stiffly as Rudyard Philips brought Catriona and Mark on to the bridge and saluted. He looked rather grey and drawn, but he managed to kiss Catriona's hand, and bow with old-fashioned courtesy to Mark.

"I trust you are finding your tour of my little ship entertaining?" he smiled, with a crusty effort at humour. "She's quite a stylish young lady, isn't she?"

"She's very fine, Sir Peregrine," said Mark. "My daddy would have given his only son to take the bridge of a ship like this."

"The very latest equipment," said Sir Peregrine, indicating the rows of softly-shining dials, the gyroscopic compass, the electric telegraph, and the streamlined art-deco wheel. Through the forward windows, Catriona could see the narrow elegant bows of the Arcadia cleaving their way through the dappled green Irish Sea, sending up spasmodic plumes of white spray; and far ahead of her, in the distance, a darker line on the horizon that looked like land.

"That's Ireland," nodded Sir Peregrine. "We anchor in Dublin Bay at five and stay until eight o'clock tonight. Taking on mail, you see, and a few more dignitaries. Not my choice, but there you are. When you're only a sea captain, you have to do what your company tells you to do, what?"

Dick Charles was standing by the wheel, and he turned around to frown at Sir Peregrine with such an expression of mock-despair that it was all Catriona could do not to laugh.

"Ireland, very odd place," muttered Sir Peregrine. "You can't trust them, you see, the Irish. I played chess once with Andrew Bonar Law, and do you know what he said? "Peregrine," he said, "when the Irish can prove to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that the ten per cent of the population who aren't insane aren't murderously malicious, then they can have their home rule by return of post"."

Catriona peered into two or three of the Arcadia's softly effulgent dials. "What's this one for?" she asked Dick Charles. She noticed the crewman at the wheel give her that kind of sideways squint with which private soldiers and naval ratings and automobile mechanics always appraise the tastier-looking wives and daughters of what Trimmer would have called "haristocrats and hofficers."

Dick Charles went very pink, and said, "That's our wind-speed indicator. Our anemometer. It t-tells us our p-p-p—"

There was a very long pause. Sir Peregrine offered his fourth officer no assistance, but stood lean and dried-up and emaciated, like a Bombay duck in full uniform, while Dick Charles opened and closed his mouth, and stared at Catriona as if he were about to blow up.

"Precise wind velocity," he said, quite suddenly. "At the moment it's eleven point four. You see there? Quite average for the t-time of—"

He tried hard, but he couldn't find the strength to utter the first "y' of "year', and he withdrew flustered.

"How fast are we going now?" Catriona asked cheerfully, to cover Dick Charles" embarrassment.

"Thirteen and a half knots," said Sir Peregrine. "But we're beginning to slow down. We don't want to cut Ireland in half. At least, some of us don't."

"How fast will we have to sail to win the Blue Riband?" Catriona asked. Sir Peregrine, rather crossly, cleared his throat, and turned away. It was not protocol for a liner captain to admit that he was trying for a record crossing. On the instructions of his company, he would simply sail his vessel at maximum speed, and if by good fortune he happened to outrun every other express liner on the Atlantic, and if by chance the purser happened to have on board a supply of celebratory Blue Ribands which could be tied around the stems of the passengers" champagne glasses when they reached New York, then that, naturally, was a bonus. But a captain never tried for a record, and especially not a British captain. That kind of behaviour would rank him as a show-off.

Mark Beeney put Sir Peregrine out of his discomfiture. "The Mauretania has been the fastest liner on the Atlantic since 1907," he told Catriona quietly. "She can hit twenty-seven knots when she's really running, which means anything up to 650 miles a day. All the Arcadia has to do is beat that. It would be quite a bonus for you if she did, of course. Your bookings would go up, and so would the market value of your ship. So you can see that I wouldn't exactly crack open a bottle of champagne to help you celebrate."

"We should be able to manage it," put in Rudyard Philips, stiffly. "We have the very latest steam turbines, capable of more than 85,000 horsepower. God and the weather willing, we should be the toast of the Atlantic by the time we reach New York harbour."

"I'd rather you tempted neither the Almighty nor the elements, Mr Philips," said Sir Peregrine. "I have enough difficulties as it is, what with Mr. Douglas Fairbanks aboard, and my sciatica."

He settled back hi his chair, and morosely began to chew at his hare pate, while Rudyard Philips with tedious efficiency set out to explain to Catriona how the ship's steering system worked, and how she could be handled in rough seas, and how every major function of the massive marine engines could be monitored at a glance. Catriona yawned. Mark, however, was interested in absolutely everything, though his ceaseless technical questions obviously grated on Sir Peregrine's nerves, for the old commodore shifted hi his seat and chewed his toast with the steady ferocity of a skua, and didn't stop muttering to himself until they were ready to leave.

But Catriona said sweetly, "Thank you, Sir Peregrine. I'm sorry about your sciatica. It must be dreadful. Thank you for being so kind." And she bent over his chair before the old man could summon up the energy to stand up, and kissed him on the forehead. He sat back again, speechless.

"Now the lower decks, and the engine-room," said Rudyard Philips. He peered surreptitiously down at his wrist-watch and wished this tour were over, so that he could quickly go round to Mademoiselle Narron's stateroom and confront her. Well, it wasn't so much Mademoiselle Narron he needed to confront. It was himself, and all those geysering emotions that Mademoiselle Narron had released in him. He had to talk to her again, talk to her face-to-face, and find out what the hell was happening to him.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" he asked Catriona, as they stepped into the electric lift which would take them down to lower deck G on the Arcadia's waterline.

"You can burst into flames if you want to," said Catriona. Corny humour was one of the youthful enthusiasms of 1924. Even a respectable sporting magazine had suggested that mixed foursomes should take care how they played on the "petting green'.

"By the way," said Rudyard Philips, pinching out his used match and funnelling smoke from his nostrils, "this is only one of ten electric lifts aboard the Arcadia. Each lift is designed in a different motif, according to where it goes. The library lift is lined with bronze and steel bas-reliefs of books, with all their pages flying out. This one, as you can see, has ship's wheels and compasses all over it. And the lift that goes to the swimming pool has mermaids and waves."

"I haven't even seen the swimming pool yet," said Catriona.

Rudyard Philips checked his watch, more for his own benefit than for hers. "There's a ladies-only swim session at five o'clock, if you're interested." Then, unexpectedly, he looked up and said, "That's a pretty wonderful necklace, if you don't mind my saying so."

"All women appreciate diamonds," grinned Mark Beeney. "If there's a woman in your life, give her diamonds. She'll love you for ever."

Rudyard gave a dismissive shrug, half-bitter, half-joking. Even if I could afford diamonds, who would I give them to? To Toy, who right at this minute is probably lying in my marriage bed with "Uncle Laurence', relieved that I've gone? Or to Mademoiselle Narron, whose hot and powerful thigh has started such an upsurge of unwelcome and uncontrollable sensations? First officers on Keys Shipping Line were only paid 1 pound a day, and on 1 pound a day you couldn't afford anything from Van Cleef & Arpels.

"Are you all right, Mr Philips?" Catriona asked him. "You look pale."

The lift hummed to a stop, and the doors slid open. The noise of the Arcadia's engines was much louder down here, and there was a penetrating odour of grease and paint and hot steam. "I'm fine, thank you," he said, in a dullish sort of voice, as if he were answering a question in a merchant marine examination; and then, nipping out his Gold Flake cigarette and tucking it back into the yellow-and-gold box, "shall I lead on?"

He stepped out of the lift, and began to walk along the cream-painted corridor. Catriona and Mark both started to follow him, but they collided with each other as they reached the lift doors.

They probably collided on purpose. It was one of those romantic little accidents that are so eye-poppingly obvious that even the people involved in it can't really believe that it actually happened by mistake. Catriona stepped forward, but then Mark stepped forward and collided with her again; and then, at the third collision, they got it right. Mark held her very quickly and strongly in his arms, and lowered his face towards hers, his lips slightly parted and his eyes as intent as a baseball player who knows that his last pitch has just got to be his best-ever.

Catriona said, "This is mad. This is just like the pictures." But she gripped the sleeve of his blazer as he held her tighter, and when he kissed her, gently at first, but then harder, and more greedily, she did nothing to resist him. The lift doors closed just as Rudyard Philips was turning around to see why they weren't following him; and then they were borne upwards again with a warm electric hum, alone in their compass-decorated cubicle. Middle deck F, upper deck E, saloon deck D.

Once she was actually in his arms, Catriona found Mark's masculinity to be overwhelming. His body, through the softness of his beautifully-cut wool blazer, felt uncompromisingly hard and athletic. His chin was shaved perfectly smooth, and was aromatic with some lemony, grassy, cologne. He kissed with a controlled fierceness which she thought, in the first few seconds,1 would be resistible; but then she found that the inside of her head was echoing with vibrant and unexpected desire, and that the seam of her camisole was adhering damply between her thighs, like the wings of a butterfly caught in a summer storm.

"My God," she said, wrestling his arm away. "Mark."

He stood straight, grinning, a smudge of her Red Neon lipstick on the side of his mouth, quite unabashed by her struggling.

"You know something?" he asked her. "You are the softest, most fragrant, most feminine thing afloat. Do you know what you've done to me?"

She held her arm protectively across her breasts. She could feel her own nipples through the thin blue silk, as tight as buttons. "I don't care what I've done to you.*

The doors of the electric lift hummed apart, and there stood two first-class passengers in wide white ducks, smiling at them inanely. Mark said smoothly, "Excuse us," and piloted Catriona out onto the saloon deck. It was tea-time now, and the passengers were gravitating towards the Grand Lounge for cucumber sandwiches and Belgian gateaux and hot scones with strawberry preserve and clotted cream. The Arcadia's jazz band was playing "Ain't We Got Fun" among the frondy palms.

"Will you join me for tea?" asked Mark.

Catriona shook her head. "You go and rescue your girlfriend from the beauty parlour. I feel like a cold swim."

Mark lifted his straw boater. "It's been a pleasure."

Catriona couldn't help smiling. "It usually is," she said. "And thank you for the necklace. It's perfect."

"Do you want me to comment on that?" said Mark.

"No," said Catriona, and pressed the lift button to take her back to promenade deck A.