Maiden Voyage

TWENTY

The orchestra played "Somebody Loves Me', from George White's Scandals of 1924, as Catriona came down the staircase into the Grand Lounge, one upraised hand resting lightly on Edgar's white evening glove. Every one of the first-class passengers turned and applauded (even, with exaggerated fierceness, Marcia Conroy) and Sir Peregrine stepped forward to bow to his glittering new mistress.

"You're looking marvellous, Sir Peregrine," she told him, with exaggerated imperiousness, "They should have displayed you at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley."

Sir Peregrine cleared his throat with a coarse little bark. There wasn't any answer to a compliment like that, especially when it came from the heiress of the shipping company which employed him. Stiffly, and with many more sharp tugs at his cuffs than were necessary, he escorted her along an informal receiving line to be introduced to Princess Xenia, to Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, to Baroness Zawisza ("We've met," she smiled, and Sabran, who was glowering in the background, bared his teeth at her), to Claude Graham-White, and Jack Dempsey (who appeared to have shaken off his sulks and took her hand as gently as if he were picking up a porcelain ornament), to Dame Clara Butt, to Senora Zelmira Paz de Gainza (who smelled powerfully of gardenias, and displayed as many diamonds as Tiffany's engagement-ring counter), to Charles Schwab of Bethlehem Steel, and to Mr. O'Hara from the Irish bank.

Then, last of all, Mark Beeney stepped forward. Only a few yards away, Catriona could see Marcia Conroy, in a shimmering black evening-gown by Jeanne Lanvin, willowy and blonde and holding her champagne glass as if she could cheerfully crush it.

"I never saw anyone, ever, look as ravishing as you do tonight," said Mark, and kissed her hand.

"Thank you for your orchid," she told him.

"It was a pleasure. I chose it myself."

"Aren't you wondering why I'm not wearing it?"

"No. I didn't think for one moment that you would."

"I see," said Catriona, taking a few steps away from him across the floor of the Grand Lounge, and smiling brightly to a very tall woman with ginger hair and a long-sleeved dress in an uncompromising shade of brick-red.

Mark, who was following her at a wary distance, said, "You were flattered that I thought of you, but you didn't want to show that you owed me anything. "Who does this cowboy think he is, sending me flowers?" That's what you thought. So what did you do? Stick it in a glass of water? Press it in the pages of your diary?"

"I asked my maid to flush it down the loo, actually," Catriona smiled.

"Forgive me, Miss Keys," interrupted Rudyard Philips, stepping forward. Catriona couldn't help noticing how sweaty he was and how agitated, as if he were running a high fever. "I would like you to meet Mademoiselle Louise Narron, the celebrated operatic soprano."

"I'm charmed," said Catriona, touching hands with the tall woman in the brick-red dress. "And what a startling dress."

"I must tell you the truth, Miss Keys," said Mademoiselle Narron in a gush of unexpected familiarity, touching her forehead as if she were singing the part of Sieglinde in the Valkyries, and still maundering around the wooden hut in Act 1. "It is not what I chose to wear, but circumstances did not allow me to wear anything else. You are right. It is startling. I wish it were not."

Rudyard Philips pulled a tight face that Catriona didn't understand at all. "I'm sorry," she said, quite baffled.

Rudyard said, in a congested voice, "Mademoiselle Narron... had an accident."

"I cut my wrists," explained Mademoiselle Narron. She raised her hands as if they were still bleeding. "An unhappy association. A stupid moment of despair. But your gallant Mr. Philips here rescued me from myself, and from my own stupidity." She linked arms decisively with Rudyard Philips, who looked as if he were about to pass out from heat stroke. "Everything they say about British officers is true."

Now the orchestra played "I'll See You In My Dreams', and Mark Beeney reached out his hand to Catriona and said, "Dance?"

Edgar, watching Catriona from the side of one of the reflecting pillars, gave her a one-shouldered shrug that seemed to mean, "Go ahead, if you really have to."

Mark danced athletically, but with the noticeably self-conscious precision of someone who has never been a natural dancer, and who has had to spend hour after tedious hour being manhandled around the flour of his dance class by his exasperated instructor. In fact, whenever he took the dance floor, no matter what music was playing, and no matter who his partner was, he could still hear Miss CZestochowski screaming at him, "You haff niece, Mr Beeney! Bend them!"

Catriona was quiet for the first few minutes, enjoying the closeness of Mark, the silkiness of his shirt, and the smell of his cologne. He was so tall, compared to her, that if she looked straight ahead of her, she could see nothing but his white bow tie and his suntanned Adam's apple.

"Your friend Miss Conroy isn't smiling much," she said, as lightly as she could manage.

"Oh, Miss Conroy," said Mark. "Why, yes. She does look glum. She had some bad news over the ship's telegraph. Her great-great-great-grandfather is dead. And has been for some time."

"You shouldn't make fun of her," said Catriona.

"Who's making fun?"

They danced past Edgar, and Catriona glimpsed for the first time the man called George Welterman. He looked bulky and stiff in his evening clothes, and he held his arms a little way out from his body as if his sleeves were stuffed with handkerchiefs. Catriona smiled momentarily, but closed off the smile as soon as Mark had twirled her out of range.

"I hope that wasn't George Welterman," said Mark, his face expressionless.

"You know him?"

"Of course I know him. He's the chief chiseller at IMM. If they want to acquire something—whatever it is, equipment or stock or securities—out goes George Welterman. In the business, they call him Firesale Welterman, on account of the prices he pays for just about everything. You should be careful. From what I hear, he's got his beady little vulture eyes on Keys."

"What if he has?" said Catriona. "We haven't decided to sell up yet."

"You may not have a choice."

"What's that supposed to mean? I own a quarter of the voting stock, and my mother owns twenty-six per cent. Or at least we will do, when every thing's been transferred."

"There are plenty of ways of forcing you to sell," said Mark, "and you can believe me that George Welterman knows them all. In fact, he probably invented most of them. I don't know whether you're aware of it or not, but IMM already own something like twelve per cent of Keys stock, and if they start offering your shareholders better prices, and if they promise them a more profitable fleet, and higher dividends—well, your bankers and your shareholders may ultimately prefer dividends to glamour."

"Edgar seems to believe that if we do have to sell, then selling to IMM would be the most practical thing to do. And the most humane."

"The most humane? How does he work that out?"

"Well,"—Catriona blushed—"because at least IMM would keep Keys running as a company, and not sell it off bit by bit and put all of our employees out of work."

"You believe that?"

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"

"Only that George Welterman is the most unscrupulous character since George Remus. I mean, look at it from his point of view. IMM already operate White Star through a British holding company. What on earth would be the point of duplicating that administration and setting up a separate holding company to run Keys? If I were IMM, I'd simply take the best Keys boats into the White Star fleet, and sell off the clunkers to the Greeks, or the Chinese, or maybe the Russians."

Catriona danced a quick and complicated little fox-trot step, partly to show off, and partly because Mark made her feel immature and embarrassed. Mark had to double-shuffle to keep up with her.

"How do you know I haven't thought of that already?" she demanded.

"Because if you had, you wouldn't have mentioned the names of humanity and George Welterman in the same breath."

"I think I'm quite capable of handling my own business affairs, thank you."

"I'm sure you are. I'm just giving a word to the wise. Keep your eye on George Welterman, that's all."

"Don't think I won't be. And don't think that I won't be keeping my eye on you, too, Mr. Mark Beeney."

Mark steered Catriona around a couple of small-time Hollywood stars, who were dancing in place with their faces stretched into impossible smiles for the benefit of the official Keys photographer and his brightly popping flash gun.

"Miss Catriona Keys," said Mark, "I have no designs on you whatsoever. Except that I'd love another dance, when you're free. And maybe the last dance of the evening."

"What about Marcia Conroy?"

"Marcia? I told you. She's only a stenographer. Well, maybe not a stenographer. But a friend, and nothing else. You're worried how cross she's looking? Don't worry. It's only because she forgot to wash in Woodbury's Facial Soap this morning, and she doesn't have the "skin you love to touch". Or maybe it was Listerine she forgot. I don't know. I don't think I care. Do you?"

Catriona didn't answer. The orchestra brought "I'll See You In My Dreams" to a flourishing ending, and the dance was over.

"You'll dance with me again?" asked Mark.

"I don't know," she replied, turning away.

"You don't know?" he said hi surprise, "Who else is there to dance with? Schwab? Well, all right, Schwab. I suppose that's okay if you want to spend the rest of the evening talking about steel and money and steel and money. Catriona—" he caught her sleeve, tried to hold her back—"Catriona, listen to me. Listen! I think I have a crush on you. In fact, I think I'm smitten. You know what smitten means? It means I've been thinking about you all afternoon. I shouldn't have been. I should have thought about shipping. I should have thought about Marcia. But I didn't. I thought about you. Isn't that crazy?"

Catriona allowed him to pull her back. "Catriona?" he asked her gently.

She still wouldn't look at him. But she said, "All right. The last dance, if you really mean what you say."

He held on to her arm a moment longer. "Jesus," he said, with a voice that seemed to be choked up with frustration and affection, the same way a gutter chokes up with leaves. "Why didn't I meet you when you were sixteen? I could have trained you from the very second it was legal. Do you think that's outrageous of me?"

Catriona gave him a quick, vivid grin. "I don't take training," she said and walked off on her own with almost scandalous independence to rejoin Edgar.

Dick Charles had just handed over control of the Arcadia to the fifth officer, and had hurriedly changed for the evening into his full-dress uniform, the one with the button missing. As Catriona walked across the Grand Lounge to be introduced to George Welterman, Dick came clattering down the gilded staircase with his head bent downwards, hoping with a kind of panicky hopelessness that Lady Diana FitzPerry wouldn't notice him arriving.

Sir Peregrine, with all the skill of a man who has spent the better pan of his life piloting large ships into small harbours (albeit with occasional lapses of accuracy), came across the floor at full steam and intercepted him as he was making for the bar.

"Mr Charles," he said, dryly. "I have someone here who's been dying to meet you, although God alone knows why."

"Y-yes, sir. Of c-course, sir," Dick stuttered. "I was just getting myself a g-glass of champagne, sir."

"The stewards will bring you your champagne, Mr Charles," said Sir Peregrine. "Just come along with me."

Dick Charles followed in the wake of his captain with the obedient innocence of a young man who has not yet discovered that life features very few fated encounters, but that when it does, they are almost invariably vicious. It was only when Sir Peregrine stood aside, and tugged Dick around as if he were a ballroom dancer, that Dick understood how neatly and quickly he had been ambushed. Of course, the lady had asked for him by name; and, of course, Sir Peregrine had obliged by bringing him over. Sir Peregrine took a pride in giving his passengers everything they desired, especially when everything they desired was as easy to provide and as dispensable as a junior officer who couldn't even pronounce the word "pepper'. He had provided far more complicated pleasures in the past.

"Mr Charles, how lovely to meet you," smiled Lady Diana FitzPerry, and Dick Charles gave a rigid bow, as if the ship's laundry had left the ironing-board in the back of his shirt. He couldn't think what to do or what to say: he couldn't even think what to think. His mind felt as empty as a ship's funnel.

"Lady FitzPerry is on her way to the Great Plains," grinned Sir Peregrine, baring his teeth. "She tells me that she was much taken with that magazine advertisement for motor-cars, the one that describes how wonderful it is "Somewhere West of Laramie". Is that the one, Lady FitzPerry?"

"You must have seen it," gushed Lady FitzPerry, still holding on to Dick Charles" fingers. "They call it word-magic, the way it's written. It's all about driving into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight, with the wind blowing your hair, and a lean rangy cowboy riding beside you."

"It s-sounds p-" began Dick Charles and then found himself unable to say any more. He stood to attention, his brain as devoid of intelligence as that of a freshly-born infant, trapped into silence by his merciless stutter, and with one of London's most notorious femmes fatale pinching his fingers as possessively as a fiddler crab.

Lady FitzPerry glanced at Sir Peregrine uneasily, but Sir Peregrine was beaming as patiently and as affably at Dick Charles as if his fourth officer were carrying on the wittiest of cocktail conversations. In fact, the commodore was enjoying the spectacle of Dick Charles" total social paralysis almost as much as he enjoyed his Elgar records when he was alone in his sitting-room.

"Perfectly stunning," said Dick Charles, in quite a different sort of voice.

"Well," put in Sir Peregrine, "I really must circulate. Have you talked to Miss Pickford yet? Charming lady."

Dick Charles and Lady FitzPerry found themselves alone together. Dick Charles hesitantly raised his hand, as if to say "cheers, then', but when he looked down he realised he didn't yet have a drink. Instead, he turned the gesture into an abrupt tug at the end of his nose, and then he immediately wished he hadn't.

Lady FitzPerry, close up, had all the style of an upper-class English whore. She was wearing a slim evening gown of gold lace, through which Dick had no trouble at all in seeing the pinky-brown ovals of her nipples, and the curve of her small flattish breasts. Her hips were narrow, but more from dieting than from natural trimness, and her ankles were thicker than they should have been. But she had a devastatingly elegant eroticism about her, and Dick felt that if she hadn't been wearing a silver beaded apron around her waist, her gown would have shown just about everything she had on offer. She was smothered in diamonds — they clustered around her fingers, and clung to her ears, and sparkled around her wrists. Dick found himself staring at her full pale-pink lips and wondering how many noble penises she had taken between them to earn herself so much fabulous jewellery.

"You stutter," said Lady FitzPerry. "I didn't realise."

"It's hard to t-tell from f-far away," Dick told her.

"But it's awful," she said. "Have you always had it?"

"As long as I c-can remember."

" "Couldn't you be cured? I mean, surely hypnosis is good for stutters? Or acupuncture? Or even mah-jong? I don't know. It seems so awful."

Dick shrugged. "My mother once t-took me to a pee — to a pee — to a pee — '

"Oh, my God," said Lady FitzPerry. "Is it always like this?"

"Almost always," Dick told her. Then added, "Paediatrician'.

"Well," said Lady FitzPerry, with a resigned sigh, "It looks as if I'm in for four days of coitus interrupts."

"I beg your pah —" said Dick Charles.

"Never mind, my love," smiled Lady FitzPerry. "We all have our crosses to bear. Can you find me some more champagne?"

Dick Charles beckoned to one of the stewards, feeling not unlike a nine-month-old mink who is immediately destined to become the collar of a wealthy society lady's fur-coat. The steward came speeding over with a tray of champagne and a lascivious leer that Dick Charles didn't care for at all.

Ralph Peel, the second officer, was doing rather better. He had found an innocent and enthusiastic admirer in Alison Cabot White, a seventeen-year-old Cape Cod heiress with big eyes, buck teeth, and an urgent desire to dispense with her virginity. She adored hairy men (having glimpsed, at the age of fifteen, the dark pubic curls which strayed out of the bathing costume of a Hyannis lifeguard) and the sleek sea-lion whorls of hair which emerged from Ralph Peel's stiff white collar were enough to enthral her for the whole evening.

Ralph Peel was telling her, "I went to sea because I was lonely. I thought, the sea's a lonely place, it'll suit me, if you know what I mean. I never thought that I'd meet anyone like you. I suppose if I never thank the sea for anything else, I'll thank it for introducing me to you."

Monty Willowby overheard him as he was passing by, and rolled his eyes up in mock-prayer. Monty, looking like a sartorial Humpty-Dumpty in his immaculately-pressed full-dress uniform, was on his way to have a quiet word with the bar steward about putting aside one bottle of Perrier-Jouet for every five bottles opened. Normally, Monty expected a lay-away ratio of one-to-10, but it was unlikely that the company accountants would miss fifty cases of champagne, when more than 500 would be poured down the privileged throats of the passengers.

Similarly, Monty operated a complicated network of "savings', as he called them, on every level of the nine-storey liner, in every class, and in every department. If only one spoonful of Malossol or Beluga caviar were "saved" from every order that was sent from the kitchens to the first-class staterooms, then by the end of the four-day voyage, there would be six ten-ounce jars of caviar which would technically not exist, and which therefore could be sold at premium prices to Monty's friends in the New York restaurant trade. There was one fashionable restaurant on East 49th Street which served its customers almost exclusively with provisions which had been originally intended for the kitchens of White Star, Cunard, and American TransAtlantic — fillet steaks, fresh vegetables, and fine French wines.

The Keys company were quite aware of the extent of Monty Willowby's operations, although no official word was actually spoken about them. The simple truth was that they preferred to have somebody powerful and efficient in charge of the "savings', rather than let the crew and the kitchen-staff pillage what they could. On one Keys steamer, the Elite, the passengers had been reduced to eating sausages and meat pies after the ship's entire chilled-meat store had been stripped and sold at bargain prices to a wholesale butcher in Sydney, Australia, in the middle of a cruise. Monty Willowby would never have allowed that kind of daylight robbery, nor would he countenance the pilfering of glassware, linen, cutlery, ropes, brass fittings, or hot water bags. His "savings" business was profitable, and clean, and he wanted it to stay that way.

As he walked with rotund dignity across the Grand Lounge, however, he was abruptly arrested by a dapper little man with no medal miniatures (hence: no class) but a look about him which immediately gave the impression of money. He was slightly Latin, this man, with a close-clipped moustache, drooping eyelids with long eyelashes, and an expression on his face of permanent amusement, as if he had just thought about something very private but very funny. He was smoking a cigar which Monty recognised at once as a Partagas Flor Special Cabinet No. 7.

"You're Mr. Willowby, aren't you?" asked the man, in a flat Michigan accent.

"That's correct, sir. And you must be Mr. Fribourg, of New York, unless I'm badly mistook."

"You know your passenger list, Mr. Willowby."

"It's my job, sir. Everything to your satisfaction, sir?"

"Eminently," said Mr Fribourg. "In fact, I don't think I've been spoiled so outrageously since I dined at the Men's Cafe at the Waldorf-Astoria with James A. Patten."

"We're flattered, sir," nodded Monty Willowby. "Now, if there's nothing else...?"

"Just one thing," said Mr. Fribourg, "It strikes me, as a businessman, and as an entrepreneur, that a voyage of such historic importance is sadly lacking in souvenirs."

"Souvenirs?" asked Monty Willowby, suspiciously. "Souvenirs" were what some of the Belfast ship-fitters called such sentimental memorabilia as three hundredweight of brass stopcocks, or a complete set of mahogany wardrobes.

Mr. Fribourg puffed briefly at his cigar to keep it burning, and then smiled at Monty Willowby with the same close-up candour that dentists radiate when they size up a badly-decayed molar.

"You know the kind of thing," he said. "Facecloths with "Arcadia" sewn on them. Cutlery with the company crest."

"There is a souvenir shop in the gallery, sir," said Monty. "They do an excellent line in Arcadia teaspoons, and emblazoned luggage. Not to mention hand-coloured postcards."

"Well, those kind of things are all very nice," said Mr. Fribourg, resting one hand on Monty's left epaulet, and guiding him out of the mainstream of the reception. "But what makes the money is originality. Originality, coupled with intimacy."

"I don't get your drift, I'm afraid," said Monty, doubling up his chins to stare uncomfortably down at the nail-polished hand which continued to clutch at his gold-braided shoulder. "And I'm afraid that I'm terrifically pushed for time just at the moment. Perhaps we could talk this over in the morning."

"Come on, now, Mr/ Willowby, the moment I saw you I guessed that you were the kind of man who always had his ears open for an interesting deal. I'm talking big money. Thousands of dollars. You think I'm kidding?"

"Not for a moment," Monty told him, with a sigh.

"Good," said Mr. Fribourg. "Because this is my idea. You have several hundred famous people aboard this liner, right? Well, you know that better than I do. Each of these people occupies a stateroom, and each of these staterooms has a bathroom which is lavishly equipped with the very latest Crane fittings, right?"

"I'm not sure of the brand," said Monty. "But, yes."

"Well, I happen to know they're Crane fittings, because Crane were the only people who could make them in the right shapes and the right colours. So — these fittings are very desirable. The kind of fittings that nobody would be ashamed to have in their own home. But just think how much more desirable they are because they're fitted to the first-class staterooms of the Arcadia on her maiden voyage, and because they've been used, intimately, by motion picture stars and big financiers and famous sports personalities."

Now Mr. Fribourg's voice dropped to an amused whisper, and he brought Monty so close to him that Monty could smell the brandy and tobacco smoke on his breath. "Think, Mr. Willowby, of owning the actual toilet seat that Princess Xenia of Russia — well, the actual toilet seat. Think of being able to say to your dinner guests: "You see that toilet seat, that toilet seat is the very same toilet seat which Mary Pickford — well, it was fitted in Miss Pickford's bathroom on the maiden voyage of the Arcadia". That's what I am talking about when I say originality and intimacy. It's original, and it's intimate. It's the very next best thing to having that famous personality kiss you. Well, isn't it? It actually means that you, the toilet seat's new owner, can sit where a motion picture star sat. I've even thought of a romantic name for it. Cheek-to-Cheek. Now, isn't that genius?"

Monty Willowby gradually eased himself out of Mr Fribourg's grasp. It was about as easy as unwinding a particularly tenacious snake from around his neck, and when at last he was able to stand straight again, at a reasonably refreshing distance from Mr Fribourg's Havana-laden breath, he tugged down his evening coat with relief.

"I think, Mr. Fribourg, that one of us is probably going mad," he said. "And since you are the passenger, and I am paid to be respectful to you, it must be me."

"You don't like the idea?"

"It doesn't matter whether I like it or not. It can't be done. And what's more, I won't let it be done. I'm not in the business of unscrewing this vessel's sanitary fittings and auctioning them off to a lot of film fans. I'm the purser."

"I know," said Mr. Fribourg. "I know. But you were also the purser on the Calliipygic, weren't you, in 1912?"

"What of it?" Monty Willowby demanded.

"What of it? I'll say what of it. The Callipygic was sunk in the Straits of Johore, that's what of it, in October of that same year. No loss of life, but a very unfortunate loss of valuable cargo, namely five thousand pounds weight of opium for the manufacture of laudanum and morphine and suchlike. And yet who was seen in Singapore only a week or two later, looking very prosperous indeed, and in the company of Kim Lim, the opium merchant? It wouldn't have been you, by any chance?"

"You're talking dangerous talk, Mr. Fribourg," said Monty Willowby, uneasily. "I could have you confined to your stateroom for this."

"And I could have you confined to one of His Majesty's prisons, Mr. Willowby. Come on, now—pilferage is pilferage. But there are limits. I could mention two firms of Lloyd's underwriters who would pay dearly to find out what happened to that cargo. Not to mention the directors of Keys Shipping."

Monty Willowby snapped out a clean white handkerchief, and pressed it against the side of his neck. "That's the way it is, is it?" he asked, and obviously didn't require an answer. Mr. Fribourg wetted the end of his cigar and kept on smiling.

"Toilet seats, is it?" said Monty Willowby. Mr. Fribourg nodded.

"Well," said Monty Willowby, "I'll have to give it some thought. I can't rush into it without proper preparation. It needs thought. Strategy."

"Don't leave it too long," said Mr. Fribourg, smoothly.

"Don't you worry about that," Monty Willowby blustered. "I've got a reputation for extricating myself out of awkward spots."

A deep and sonorous gong announced to the chattering assembly in the Grand Lounge that the banquet was served. Sir Peregrine led Catriona into the first-class dining saloon, followed by Edgar Deacon with Princess Xenia, and a red-faced Rudyard Philips, escorting Mademoiselle Narron. The orchestra played the promenade from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition', as arranged by Ravel, with a clashing surfeit of cymbals and an excessive blaring of trumpets, completely overdoing the grandeur of what was already a colossally grand procession. "The privileged went in two-by-two," reported a a from the Los Angeles Examiner, "and your correspondent was inspired by the comforting notion that even if the Lord saw fit to drown the entire Earth during dinner, and left no survivors except those who had booked passage on this vessel, at least the finest of the world's diamonds and the most tempting of its couture gowns would have been saved from the flood."

Mark Beeney took Marcia through to dinner. He said, "You're tense. You're all tensed up. Why are you so tense?"

"Why do you think I'm tense?" Marcia demanded. "You don't think I've noticed how you've been making pilchard's eyes over that Keys girl? It's so embarrassing."

"What's embarrassing? She's a sweet young girl."

"You know damn well what's embarrassing," retorted Marcia. She flashed a synthetic smile at Claude Graham-White, who had found himself in the company of a silver-rinsed lady from Delaware with an ostrich plume in her headband and a diamond necklace that spread over her poitrine like a million-dollar child's bib. Whatever Graham-White said to her, she giggled and said, "That's so English. It makes my toes curl up just to hear you say it that way."

Mark said under his breath, "What you don't seem to understand is that Miss Catriona Keys will shortly inherit a very major stockholding in this shipping company. I need to be friends with her."

"Well, I suppose I've heard worse excuses," said Marcia.

"Marcia, I don't have to make excuses. Not to you, nor anybody. I don't know why you've come over so possessive all of a sudden. We've always been chums, haven't we? Why the grand production? You know how I feel about you. Nothing can ever change that."

"You didn't send me an orchid this evening."

"No, I didn't. I sent you a gardenia. What's the difference?"

Marcia made a face. "The difference is that I'm jealous, that's all. There, I've finally managed to spit it out."

Mark stopped, and stared at her in disbelief. "You're jealous? What do you have to be jealous about? Anyway, you're not the jealous type. When was Marcia Conroy, the elegant lady-about-town, the beautiful bitch of the Biarritz set, ever, and I mean ever, jealous?"

Marcia closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again and looked at Mark with a tiredness that he had never seen in her before. "I've never admitted it to you before, and if you ask me tomorrow I'll probably deny it, even under torture. But the fact is that I've been carrying a torch for you ever since I first met you. You don't think I'd drop strawberries and cream down just anybody's pants, do you? I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you in a way that I've never been in love with any other man. And that includes Woofy Thomas."

She paused, and took a steadying breath. Then she said, "And the reason I've never told you before is because I knew that if I did, I would lose you. Just like I know that I'm going to lose you now. Well, all I can say is, I did try, didn't I? And jolly good luck to Miss Catriona Keys."

"Marcia, she's nothing more than a sweet young girl."

"I know, darling. I can tell by the way your mouth fills up with saliva every time you think of her. You can't wait to bury your face in those huge great bosoms of hers, can you? I should have known you'd go for a girl like her. Half-child and half-mother. Your Freudian susceptibilities are showing. In fact, they're quite naked."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Oh, Mark, you don't have to pretend. Not for my sake. If you like her, then go and get her. How can I stop you? But just remember that I'm on this ship, too, and that I don't really enjoy being humiliated in public."

Mark guided her to the captain's table and pulled out her chair for her. "I seem to remember that you invited yourself along on this little bunfight," he told her. "And I also seem to remember what you told me in Venice. You remember that night in Venice, at the Grand Luxe Hotel?"

"You wore grey silk pyjamas."

"And you wore nothing at all."

Marcia hesitated and then sat down, nodding in acknowledgement to Baroness Zawisza, who was sitting opposite in a peacock-blue gown onto which pink pearls had been sewn in trompe-l'oeil circles on each breast. Somehow it was five times as erotic to glimpse the baroness's priceless simulations than it was to see the real authentic articles. Sabran, who wore white pumps and no socks, stood sulkily behind the baroness's chair.

Marcia murmured to Mark, reaching her hand up to touch his cheek, "I told you that night that we were two free-flying creatures, lovers by accident rather than design. Two random snowflakes whirling through the night, sometimes touching, sometimes far away, blown on the wind."

"Thats right. That's what you said."

"And you believed me?"

"Why not?"

"If you don't know why not, then you don't know women very well. Good God, Mark, you don't even understand how gorgeous you are. Ronald Colman? He's nothing. You're a beautiful man; so beautiful you're more like some exotic species of animal, rather than a man. Whenever I hold you, it's like holding a lion."

"Marcia," Mark interrupted hastily, conscious that Baroness Zawisza and two or three of the other guests were listening to all of this with undisguised fascination. "Marcia, this isn't the time or the place. Please. Let's discuss it later."

Marcia was unabashed by the amused stares of her table companions. "Perhaps there won't be any later. After all, you seem to have other things in mind."

Mark took Marcia's hand and pressed it to his lips. "You are quite stunning," he told her softly, "in every sense of the word."

Baroness Zawisza laughed out loud, and applauded. Mark raised his eyes from Marcia's hand, and for one split-second caught Catriona looking at him from her seat next to Sir Peregrine. He had no way of knowing that Catriona had Baroness Zawisza's words on her mind: Men are interested only in three things: automobiles, fighting, and their own semen."

Catriona had been placed opposite George Welterman, and next (on her left) to Douglas Fairbanks. While Douglas Fairbanks dominated the conversation with a long and funny story about Lee de Forest and the problems he had encountered with Phonofilm—the first sound-on-film motion picture, which had been released last year—Catriona had time to study George Welterman more closely. He was a big, padded-looking man, with a large, horselike head, and yet he wasn't entirely unattractive. His face was deeply cleft with lines, and his hair was a dull alloy grey; but there was a strangely youthful look in his pale blue eyes, as if a twenty-year-old man had been made up with cosmetics and rubber and false eyebrows to play the part of a middle-aged tyrant. He wore only one ring, and that was not on his wedding-finger. It was a heavy signet of twenty-four carat gold with an embossed crest on it.

Douglas Fairbanks, having finished his story, turned to Catriona and raised his glass of champagne. "That's enough about me," he told her. "I think it's time we heard from our beautiful hostess, don't you? We may not have got very far yet, but up until now this voyage has been the most fun I've had in years, and that includes making The Three Musketeers in "twenty-one. I'd like to propose an impromptu toast to Miss Catriona Keys, for being such a brilliant jewel in such a brilliant setting."

till drink to that," said George Welterman, and raised his glass, too. He had a slow, exact, and cultured-sounding voice. His blue eyes didn't leave Catriona's face once. "This shipping line has an unfair advantage in my opinion. The world's most beautiful passenger liner, and the world's most beautiful heiress."

Catriona glanced at Edgar, and saw that he was watching her keenly but with obvious approval. When George Welterman reached across the white linen tablecloth and touched Catriona's hand, Edgar smiled to himself and took a sip of champagne as buoyantly as if he were congratulating himself.

"You're too flattering," Catriona told George Welterman. She wished very much that Edgar would stop staring, and smiling.

George Welterman said, "I never flatter. I'm not in the flattering business. I'm a man of complete exactitude."

"You hear that?" laughed Douglas Fairbanks. "When a man like that tells you you're beautiful, you can lay money on it, you're beautiful. I wish he'd tell me that I'm beautiful."

"How do you like Ireland, Mr. Welterman?" asked Catriona, in that lofty tone of voice that Nigel always used to call her "Queen-Victoria-asking-the-Zulu-King-how-he-liked-whist" voice. But George Welterman recognised her attempt to distance him for what it was, and in the same precise way as before said, "You can call me George, if you care to." His eyes were still fixed on her, still unblinking. He gave Catriona the unsettling feeling that he was able to see right 1 her clothes, perhaps even deeper than that, into her mind. It was like having the leg of her step-ins pulled aside by a cold and inquiring hand, like feeling icy fingers caressing her with detached and calculating intimacy. She looked away to one side, but him she looked back again, George Welterman was still staring at her.

"Very well, then, George," she acknowledged, with a polite smile that she allowed to die almost instantly. She couldn't think why he made her feel so very young, and so very clumsy. She was used to being able to captivate almost all of the men and boys she met, simply by being pretty and sharp and bright. But it was going to take more than prettiness, and more than brightness, to cope with George Welterman. It might even take more than her inherited fortune. He a about him an utter hardness which even his precise voice and his friendly table talk couldn't disguise. Anybody who wanted to beat George Welterman at his own game, business or sexual, would have to be equally uncompromising: diamond against diamond.

"You went to Ireland on business? Or just for the Guinness?" asked Douglas Fairbanks.

"Personally, I can't think of a single defensible inducement for visiting Ireland at all," put in Sir Peregrine, and then abruptly remembered, like a man jolted by that odd falling sensation just before going to sleep, that he was sitting only one place away from Mr. O'Hara, from the Irish bank. Fortunately, Mr. O'Hara seemed to be engrossed in a conversation about bedding plants with Mrs John D. Rappermeyer IV, who cultivated rhododendra, and he hadn't heard. Or diplomatically pretended he hadn't.

"I don't have the time to travel for any other reason except business," George Welterman said. "I haven't taken a vacation in twenty years and I'm not sure that I'd take one if it was offered to me. That doesn't mean that I'm blind to my surroundings, though. Whenever I can, I try to take a quick tour of the surrounding countryside. This time, I was given the use of an automobile for a few days, and I was able to visit the west coast."

"Very romantic place, the west coast of Ireland," Douglas Fairbanks remarked, brushing up his moustache with his fingertips. "But the precipitation is all hell."

"He means the rain," put in Mary Pickford, who had been half listening to what they were saying.

"I found it... rather frightening, in a way," said George Welterman.

"I couldn't imagine anything frightening you," Catriona said, archly.

"Oh, I don't mean frightened in the sense that I felt personally threatened. The Irish are very friendly people, perhaps more so to Americans than they are to the English. No, what frightened me was the lack of will to progress. It was the acceptance of things as they are, and as they always have been. As long as there are just sufficient potatoes to keep the family alive, and just enough peat to cook them on, and as long as there's a little tea-bread on Sundays for when the priest comes to call, and a little whiskey to keep the cold out, they seem to be satisfied. There's no sense of commercial aggression whatsoever. There's no capitalism, not in the way that we understand it."

"And it frightens you?" asked Catriona.

"Yes, frankly, it does. Capitalism is the essential tool for the general improvement of the human condition, and for the stability of nations."

"It also keeps me in silk socks," said Douglas Fairbanks.

"I'm serious," said George Weherman.

"Well, maybe that's your trouble," Douglas Fairbanks grinned at him.

Catriona said, "Don't you ever take time off, George? Ever? Don't you have a hobby?"

"Does it worry you that I shouldn't?"

"Yes, I suppose it does. If you don't take any time off, how can you ever look at your business with a fresh eye?"

George realigned his place card so that it squared up with his dessert fork. "I'm a self-contained kind of man, I suppose. An internal combustion engine. Everything I need in life is inside of me."

"You can't be that self-contained. Nobody is."

Douglas Fairbanks said, "Were you ever married?"

"No," admitted George. "But once I was in love."

"Only once? Didn't you know that love is the essential tool for the improvement of the human condition, and for the gradual erosion of the bank balance?"

George smiled, but didn't answer directly. Instead, he said, "Her name was Myrtle Greensleeves."

"Myrtle Greensleeves the motion picture actress?" asked Douglas Fairbanks. "Seriously?"

"I told you, I'm always serious." There was no hint of mockery on George Westerman's face, none at all.

"Hey, darling," Douglas Fairbanks called Mary Pickford. "Did you hear that? Our friend here was once in love with Myrtle Greensleeves."

"Oh, really? asked Mary Pickford, her face bright. But then she frowned and said, "But didn't she—"

George Welterman fastidiously arranged his fish knives and forks so that they were all parallel. "Yes," he said. "Idiopathic muscular dystrophy. Well, that's what her doctors called it. She wasted away."

"She was so pretty," said Mary Pickford. She plainly didn't know what else to say.

"Yes." George Welterman nodded. "She was so pretty, and she was so talented, too, and I suppose that's why I loved her. To some people, almost every love seems like the great love of their life, but Myrtle was truly mine."

"Those are very romantic words," said Catriona without sarcasm.

"Romantic?" asked George Welterman. "I don't think so. I'm not a romantic man, Miss Keys. I'm just describing the way it was."

"I never heard," said Douglas Fairbanks. "Did Myrtle... well, what l'm trying to ask is, What ever happened to her?"

"She's still alive if that's what you mean. She's in a sanitarium in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona now. You wouldn't recognise her."

"Do you ever go to see her?" asked Catriona.

George shook his head. "She made me promise to stay away. The last time I saw her, she was like a skeleton. All she can do is lie on her bed all day and watch her old movies. She watches them over and over. Do you remember Bitter Roses? Well, she was making that picture when I first met her. We had a hand in some of the finance. She watches that one all the time."

Now the stewards were hurrying around with terrine of guinea fowl, quenelles of pike, and dove breasts in gin-flavoured aspic. Catriona looked at George Welterman, and said, "Let's talk about something else, shall we? I didn't want to upset you."

"I'm not upset," said George. "I simply wanted you to understand that just because a man doesn't take vacations, and just because he sees human tragedy in terms of economic failure, that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a soul."

Douglas Fairbanks said loudly, "Did anyone here ever try to run fifty feet with an orange between his knees?"