Maiden Voyage

TWENTY-SIX

At six minutes to eight, as Lucille Foster climbed the companionway to the first-class deck, and returned to the anxious custody of Mrs. Hall, several other things were happening aboard the Arcadia. Maurice Peace, in the first-class Smoking Room, was dramatically laying down a straight flush in front of a small poker school of wealthy American and German businessmen, thereby beating the full house of Mr. Hubert Hubbard, who owned most of Minneapolis (if not St. Paul) and thereby collecting nearly $11,500 in winnings. Douglas Fairbanks, in his stateroom decorated on the theme of "Music', groaned and grumbled momentarily in his sleep, before burying his face in the pillow again. Baroness Zawisza, in her stateroom decorated on the theme of "Passion', lay back on her bed with her rose-and-green Bellina chemise drawn up around her white and ample thighs, dreaming of spring days in Dziwnow, on the Pomeranian Bay, while Sabran lapped at her dark-haired vulva with the elegant persistence of a young cat. Rudyard Philips tried to telephone Percy Fearson again, but without success. He bit his nails. And Monty Willowby was in the bathroom of Princess Xenia's stateroom with a screwdriver, struggling to remove the original mahogany lavatory seat, and replace it with a cheaper seat which he had taken from one of the third-class washrooms.

Oddest of all, though, Dick Charles was gradually opening his eyes in his own narrow berth, and attempting to remember what had happened to him during the night. He had been quite sure that he would wake up next to Lady Diana FitzPerry, and yet here he was, in his own quarters, with his mess uniform hung neatly on a hanger, his cap perched on top of his washstand, and a stunning hangover that would have brought a fully-grown ox to its knees. Jerkily, he sat up, gripping the varnished wooden side-rail of his bed for support, and tried to focus on the square-faced Smith's alarm clock on the shelf over his desk. He sank back into his bunk with relief. He wasn't due on duty for another hour yet, thank God. He actually said it out loud, "Thank God'.

But how had he got here? And where was Lady Diana? And all of those extraordinary pranks that had gone on during the night—had they really happened, or had he simply been dreaming, or drunk, or temporarily insane?"

He could remember Lady Diana insisting that he come to her stateroom for a nightcap. Both of them had drunk a considerable quantity of champagne already, and their progress along the blue-carpeted corridor of the first-class accommodation had been characterised by an intermittent series of sudden rushes from one side of the corridor to the other, and a lot of giggling. Once, Lady Diana had actually fallen over, and lain on her back, kicking her legs like a schoolgirl, and shrieking upper-class shrieks at the top of her voice. It was probably a good thing that the rest of the first-class passengers had been equally incapable, or else there might have been a nasty scene.

At last, they had reached her stateroom (theme: "Gold') and there she had thrown off her evening slippers, demonstratively unfastened her gown, and leaped around and around until her gown had eventually fallen to her ankles. She had tossed it carelessly across the room and Dick had caught it in mid-air. "You're a gentleman," she had shirred, "and an oshifer."

Naked, ribby, and ridiculously well-bred, she had thrown her arms around Dick and smothered him in so many kisses that he had gasped for breath. "This is the moment of truth!" she had declared. "So, open the champagne, and we'll drink to the moment of truth!"

They had drunk, in Mumm's, to the moment of truth.

"This is also the moment of reckoning!" Lady Diana had cued. "Let us drink to the moment of reckoning!"

They had drunk to the moment of reckoning. In Mumm's.

Then, they had drunk to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; to the late Gilbert John Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto; to the Lancashire Fusiliers, all of them; and to the Atherstone Hunt.

Dick Charles had almost forgonen his stutter by the time Lady Diana FitzPerry had dragged him by the wrist to her bed (a gilded four-poster, in the Egyptian style, with a gold-threaded counterpane). In fact, he had forgotten who he was, or why he was here, and he had been barely capable of anything that could reasonably have been interpreted as stiffness. There had been a half-hour interlude of juicy but inconsequential coupling, after which Lady Diana had suggested a light middle-of-the-night snack of cream cheese and soused herring. They had eaten, and then drunk chilled Polish vodka, and then returned hastily to bed; where Lady Diana had ridden him so mercilessly that he had cried out, "S-stop it! P-please!" until she had forced him into ejaculating with such violence that it was almost painful.

Later, with a glazed but direct stare, she had shaken him by the shoulder and said, "Have you ever played Corkies?"

Dick had been almost asleep, his mouth hanging open against the pillow. He had moved his head from side to side to indicate that he hadn't.

"That's why I like soused herring so much," she had said. "It gives me wind, so that I can play Corkies."

Dick had closed his eyes. In the darkness of his drunkenness, he had prayed for equilibrium, and for sleep. God, bring me sleep. Or, at the very least, bring me a glass of mineral water and four aspirin.

But there she had been again, shaking his shoulder. "If you've never played Corkies, you've never lived. You're not falling asleep on me, are you?"

"Nmph," Dick had assured her.

She had bounced out of bed, and walked through to the living-room. Dick had phased in and out of sleep at least three times before she had returned. She had peeled back his right eyelid with the ball of her thumb, and in her left hand held up two champagne corks. "You see these? Corks! These are what we use to play Corkies. It's really wonderful! The Master of the Rolls taught it to me. Or was it the Lord Chancellor? I forget which. One of these dear old legal boys, anyway."

Dick had pulled at his face with his fingers to wake himself up a little. Then, his head sagging and his brain spinning around and around like a ship's propeller, he had propped himself up on his elbow and tried to focus on what Lady Diana was doing.

"It needs wind, of course," she had been chattering. "It's no use at all without wind, but then dear Lord What's-his-name always had such dreadful wind. You can't sit on the Woolsack all day or whatever it is without suffering from some flatulence, can you?"

Dick had stared at her in silent desperation. "No," he had told her, in a voice like someone agreeing to have their dog put down.

Lady Diana had climbed onto the gilded counterpane on all fours, with her wide bottom cocked into the air and her elbows spread like a chicken. "All we need is a champagne cork... and only a champagne cork will do, mind you ... and a little cold cream ... and then ... ahh ..."

Dick had frowned at her intently. "Now what happens?" he had asked her.

"Well, you're supposed to do it as well. It's a kind of game. The person who shoots the cork the furthest is the winner."

"W-what do they w-win?"

"Well, I don't know. What do you think they ought to win?"

"I d-don't know."

Nothing had happened for almost five minutes. Lady Diana had remained in her peculiar crouching position, her bottom still raised, expression on her face that could only be described as The Considerable Inconvenience of St Theresa. But then, without warning, there was a ripping kind of a noise, and the champagne cork popped across the bedroom and landed somewhere on the white merino rug.

"There!" Lady Diana had clapped. "A good four-footer, at least!"

Dick Charles had sat up straight. He had suddenly caught sight of his face in the mirror on the dressing table, and he had never seen himself looking so drawn or so perplexed. "Four-footer?" he had queried.

"One of the best I've ever done!" cried Lady Diana. "Do you want to try? I bet you could beat me, if you really put your mind to it! Try for a five-footer, at least!"

The rest of the morning had been a jumbled collection of laughter, rolling on the bed, and strange disconnected conversations. He could remember Lady Diana recounting in some detail a picnic she had once attended, with the Greys, who had been relatives of the Viceroy of India, or some such; and how the Hon. Arabella Timmons had shown the assembled company what unusual tricks could be accomplished with hard-boiled eggs. All this talk of the landed classes being pillars of England's morality were rot. Utter rot. They were the most licentious assembly of people on God's earth, and what lusts they were unable to satisfy on horseback, they promptly extinguished in the loins of the nearest maidservant, like plunging a red-hot poker into a bucket of water. Then... Lady Diana had discussed at length the comparative merits of dukes and baronets, and how the baronets that she knew, although they were largely not as energetic as the dukes, were largely larger. This conclusion provoked gales of laughter, and a lot of ankle-thrashing, and it took several large drafts of champagne to settle Lady Diana down again.

The extraordinary thing was Dick couldn't remember, even impressionistically, how the morning had ended. He could vaguely recall pouring another drink for them both, but after that, hardly anything at all, except perhaps, a remote argument about champagne corks and cold cream. He had been nuzzling up to Lady Diana's naked side, he could remember that, and laughing about something silly.

But then nothing— except waking up in his own quarters, with a crashing hangover.

He went to the washstand, fumbled it open, and filled up the basin with tepid water, which he splashed into his face in an ineffectual attempt to revive himself. In the oval minor on top of the washstand, he looked like a photograph of a death mask by Madame Tussaud. God knows what Sir Peregrine would say when he turned up on the bridge for duty. "Need the padre, do you, Number Four?" he would say, in that stiff, buzzardlike croak of his. "Expecting to get a free burial at sea?"

"N-no, sir," Dick said to his reflection in the mirror.

He dressed slowly, and with increasing thoughtfulness. Surely, a woman like Lady Diana could have had her pick of any one of twenty aristocratic young men who were travelling on the Arcadia. There were two peers of the realm on board, too, so why not them? Instead, she had chosen him, Fourth Officer Dick Charles, for no reason that seemed to make any sense. Well, he knew he was moderately good-looking, and that in spite of his stutter he was quite a personable young man. He could row quite well, and he didn't drop his aitches. He even ate his fish with two forks, instead of a fish knife, which among young ocean liner officers these days was one of those refinements of etiquette which had almost completely died out. He could speak French, bad Cantonese and a smattering of Portuguese.

Still, why had Lady Diana so carnivorously picked on him, when there was such an abundance of upper-class prey for her to snatch? And if she was the kind of woman who enjoyed slumming, well, there were scores of well-sculpted young men in steerage—much lower class and much better looking.

He opened three drawers in his locker before he found a clean pair of underpants and a short-sleeved undervest. He tugged them on uncomfortably, as if they belonged to someone else. Then he pulled on a pair of calf-length navy-blue socks, and fastened them with sock suspenders. It was then that he rang for his steward to bring him a pot of treacly black coffee, three aspirin, and a corned-beef sandwich spread a quarter-of-an-inch thick with hot English mustard.

At the same moment that Dick Charles" steward poked his ginger short-back-and-sides around the cabin door and said, "Ready for brekker, sir?" Edgar Deacon was round on the far side of the boat deck, rapping at Sir Peregrine's quarters. Percy Fearson stood beside at Sir Peregrine's quarters. Percy Fearson stood beside him, grim and stocky-shouldered, his hair standing on end in the morning wind.

Sir Peregrine's voice called, "Come," with a slight thickening of phlegm, and this was followed by a noisy throat-clearing.

Edgar opened the door and stepped inside. It was hot in the commodore's sitting-room, with that particular stifling heat that you only came across on ocean liners, smelling of baked paint, diesel oil, fuel oil, and stuffed upholstery. Edgar said, "Good morning, Sir Peregrine," with the flat carefulness of a man who cannot trust himself to hold back his temper. "You slept well?"

At this unexpectedly solicitous remark, Sir Peregrine lifted his skeletal head, and stared at Edgar with one eye open and one eye tightly closed, as if he were finding it difficult to focus. "Well, Mr. Deacon," he said, "you too?"

Sir Peregrine was sitting in his armchair, which he had dragged to the middle of his sitting-room, with all the stiffness of an elderly and unpopular monarch. He was still wearing his crested bathrobe and his leather slippers, and his reading spectacles were suspended by a thin chain that had tangled itself around one of his ears. He had been reading Vanity Fair, and the book was now spread open over the arm of his chair, like a ridge tile, to keep his place. He had reached chapter thirteen, and he had been relishing Thackeray's comment that "whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and my-lorded him, as only a free-born Briton can do'. The sarcasm, of course, was quite lost on Sir Peregrine, who quite seriously believed that he himself was a great man, and that grovelling from both his crew and his passengers was what he rightly and properly deserved.

The problem was that since the war, it wasn't easy to get people to grovel. The war had made the hoi-polloi too cocky, too damned "equal'. Take this overbearing office-wallah Edgar Deacon, as a gross example. A professional bloody nuisance of the first water.

He misjudged Edgar, of course, and badly. Edgar saw the tragedy of Sir Peregrine's career with great clarity, and it was often painful for Edgar to watch. There was almost a Shakespearian quality about the way in which this hollow-looking man dragged himself down all the years of his life, hideously burdened by his huge sense of pomp, and by an heroic vision of himself which few of his friends or his subordinates shared.

Edgar said, "I'm told that you ordered Mr Philips to confine himself to his quarters." He stood with one hand thrust into his trouser pocket and the other hand pressed against his neck, as if he had a boil or a wasp sting.

"I have ordered Mr Philips to consider himself under close arrest, if that's what you're getting at," replied Sir Peregrine.

"Would it be too impertinent of me to ask why?"

Sir Peregrine cleared his throat again. "I am the master of this vessel, Mr Deacon. As such, I have both a right and a duty to do whatever may be legally necessary to protect the ship herself, her crew, her cargo, and her passengers."

"And you considered it legally necessary to confine Mr Philips to his quarters?"

"You're questioning my authority?" asked Sir Peregrine, with a sudden burst of fierceness. "Is that it?" He continued to squint at Edgar with his one moist eye, his lips tightly drawn together like the sewn-together lips of a shrunken head from the Upper Amazon, his neck stringy and red. But despite this gizzardly show of outrage, Edgar wasn't at all sure how angry the commodore truly was. Sir Peregrine didn't really seem to be concentrating on what they were talking about at all. His attention seemed to be stealing off somewhere else, to some remembered time and place where Edgar and Percy Fearson were unable to follow.

"We simply want to know what's up," put in Percy Fearson. "Mr. Philips rang me this morning and gave me his side of the story. Now I think we ought to hear yours. Fair does, after all."

"Well," said Sir Peregrine, remotely, "and what does Mr Philips say about me?"

"He says he's still completely loyal to you, if that's any consolation," said Percy Fearson.

"I don't think it is a consolation, thank you," said Sir Peregrine.

"Well, whether it is or whether it isn't, locking a man up is a serious matter. He's a captain in his own right, you know. A respected officer of the line. So that's why we need to know what's going on, and urgently. We don't want no scandals on this voyage. None of your Sunday paper headlines, "Mutiny on the Arcadia", or whatever."

"You won't get any scandal," said Sir Peregrine, with a wonky smile. "And I can assure you that whatever Mr. Philips says, he has only been confined to his quarters for a small misunderstanding over the chain of command. An example to his brother officers, that's all. It's unpleasant, I'll grant you. But, occasionally, one is obliged to take certain disciplinary steps."

Edgar was twirling the model gyroscope on Sir Peregrine's sitting-room table. Quite calmly, without looking up, he said, "Mr. Philips seems to feel that his arrest has something to do with our running down a fishing smack called the Drogheda."

"What?" snapped Sir Peregrine. His manner reminded Edgar of a retired lieutenant-general he had once known, in Murree, who had fought out the Battle of the Somme again and again on his croquet lawn, requisitioning his guests" tea-cakes to form the German lines, and clambering breathlessly out of his ha-ha in a tweed deerstalker to represent going "over the top'.

"According to Mr Philips, we ran down a fishing-smack," Edgar repeated. "He says that we were running out of Irish waters at full speed ahead, in poor visibility, and we sank it without anyone on board knowing that we'd hit it. A man is missing, feared drowned."

"Well," said Sir Peregrine, "that's quite correct."

"How long have you known?" asked Edgar.

"The message reached us just a few hours ago."

"A few hours ago? And you didn't think to inform me?"

"I was awaiting confirmation. You know what the Irish are like. Full of—you know, wild stories."

"We receive a message telling us that we've run down a fishing-smack and drowned one of its occupants and you can seriously dismiss that as a wild story?"

Sir Peregrine pronounced each word of his reply with exaggerated care, but he still managed to invest it with a certain shabby dignity. "I have commanded the bridges of some of the greatest ocean liners of my day, Mr Deacon. When you were still a boy in knee-britches, I was crossing the North Atlantic as the master of the Aurora, the Eximious, and the Lustrous; through storm, accident, and blizzard. The message from Ireland was unconfirmed, and therefore I sought confirmation. The last thing I wanted to do, especially when there was no immediate danger to the safety of the Arcadia, was to spread exactly the kind of alarm and hysteria to which you are now demonstrating yourself to be prone."

He rose from his armchair, knocking his book on to the floor. "Mr. Philips was on the bridge at the time of the incident. I shall expect him to make a full report. It appears to me that the reason for the collision was that Mr Philips was disobeying my specific instruction to make way with such expediency as may be safe. Perhaps it went to his head, taking command of such a powerful vessel for the very first time. Perhaps he thought to prove that I was too old and cautious for such a commission. But the outcome was that the Arcadia was sailing far too fast for the prevailing visibility, and for the waters she was in, and there was a tragic accident."

"Mr. Philips says just the opposite," put in Percy Fearson. "Mr. Philips claims it were you who told him to make full ahead, against the warnings of the Irish authorities, and against his own better advice."

"Mr. Philips was on the bridge," replied Sir Peregrine. "Although I must always take ultimate responsibility for anything that happens aboard this ship, Mr. Philips was on the bridge. That means that the piloting of the Arcadia at the time of the incident was his responsibility. If visibility was poor, he should have slowed down. Can you really imagine any captain, even the most reckless, ordering full speed without having any regard to the weather, or the surrounding seas? No, gentlemen. If you are looking for a culprit, I'm afraid you will have to look to Mr. Philips. Regrettable, but there you are. A fine young captain gone to the dogs, I'm afraid."

Percy Fearson breathed to Edgar, "I do hear that Mr. Philips has been having a little trouble at home. You know, domestic problems. Wife went off with somebody else."

Edgar gave the gyroscope one final spin. It hummed around like a top, tilting from one side to the other in its gimbals, as the Arcadia rolled from port to starboard, hesitated, and then rolled back again.

"All right, Sir Peregrine," he said at last. "But remember this: in future I want to hear every message of any importance that reaches us by wireless. I should have known about this incident the minute you received the news yourself. You may be a legendary sea captain, but you're not a businessman, and you're not a banker, and you have very little expertise in public relations."

Sir Peregrine said, "I shall judge the suitability of passing on any wireless messages to you strictly according to the contents of each message, as and when it arrives."

"Just make sure that your definition of suitability concurs with mine," said Edgar. Then, "Come on, Percy, I think it's time we found ourselves some breakfast."

They left Sir Peregrine's quarters and closed the door behind them. Percy Fearson said, "Is that it? Is that all you're going to do?"

"Do you really think that I'd let that old goat speak to me like that without taking it further?" said Edgar. "If we received a warning from the Irish authorities, then the wireless officer took it down at the time, and the helmsman must have been aware of it, too. Who was on the helm when we left Dun Laoghaire?"

"Bunyan, I believe."

"Then before we eat, let's go and find Bunyan."

Bunyan had just woken up after six hours" sleep. His tiny cabin smelled of sweat and beer. There was a photograph on the wall of a terraced house in Manchester, and a pin-up of Anna Q. Nilsson. Bunyan sat on the edge of his bunk in large trousers and a stained white undershirt, alternately blinking and sniffing.

"What we need to know is precisely what warning the Irish port authority gave to Sir Peregrine when the Arcadia left Dun Laoghaire," said Edgar, as warmly as he could.

Bunyan sniffed, and blinked. "Well, sir, they said there was small vessels in the vicinity."

"And?"

"And, we had to proceed slowly for at least one mile, sir."

"Are you sure that's what they said?"

Bunyan nodded.

"And so that's what you did?"

"Yes, sir. Sir Peregrine said, slow ahead for one mile, then full ahead."

"Full ahead after one mile, regardless?"

"Not regardless, sir. Full ahead after one mile, should it be safe, sir."

Edgar glanced at Percy Fearson. Then he said to Bunyan, "You'd swear to this in a court of law?"

Bunyan nodded and blinked.

"Very well, then," said Edgar, and left the cabin.

Outside, Percy Fearson said, "What do you think?"

"I don't know what I think," Edgar replied. "Well, I do really. I think he's been nobbled."

"You're serious?"

"It only takes five pounds to change a man's mind, Percy. That, and the promise of promotion in a year or two."

"We've still the wireless officer to talk to," said Percy.

Edgar checked his watch. "All right," he said. "Let's see what that message said for ourselves."

They went up to the telegraph room. The wireless officer who had been on duty the night the Arcadia left Dun Laoghaire was off duty, but the second wireless officer, a nervous young man with a large pimple on the end of his nose, hastily produced the wireless messages for the night in question.

Edgar went through the messages one by one, quickly and coldly. The second wireless officer watched him with a stare as fixed as a parrot. At last Edgar said, "Here it is. Harbourmaster Dun Laoghaire to Arcadia. You may now proceed. We wish you calm sea, a voyage crowned by glorious success, and something illegible about King Neptune. You are advised of the presence of small sightseeing craft, and requested not to make full speed for one mile."

He held the message up to the light. Then, for comparison, he held up the next message, a telegraph from London for Mr. Charles Schwab. He said, "This message was written with a blunt pencil, the next message with a sharp pencil. The message before it was written with a sharp pencil. So why is this message different?"

The second wireless officer looked at Edgar balefully. Then he pushed forward a small glass jar, containing more than a dozen different pencils. "This is our pencil jar, sir. Some of them are sharp and some of them are blunt."

Edgar stared back at him, then collated the messages and replaced them neatly on the desk.

"Penny for 'em," said Percy Fearson, as they went down the companionway to the Orchid Lounge for breakfast.

"I don't know what to think," said Edgar. "It doesn't sound like Philips, handling a ship so recklessly. He's not the type. But, if you say he's been having wife trouble... well, maybe he wanted to try to outshine Sir Peregrine, to bolster his own morale. Chaps do the oddest things when they have wife trouble. Or maybe he just wasn't paying attention."

"The lookout couldn't have seen the Drogheda either. And there's not often the lookout doesn't pay attention."

They walked into the pale mauve Orchid Lounge, where gilded basketwork chairs were arranged beside trellises of silk artificial flowers. A waitress in a mauve pillbox hat topped with a gold tassel showed them to a table in the corner. "Enjoy your breakfast, Mr. Deacon. You too, Mr. Fearson," she said, making big movie-actress eyes at Edgar and coquettishly jiggling the fringes of her skirt as she walked away.

"Have Monty Willowby speak to that girl," Edgar said irritably. "The last thing our cabin-class passengers want is a flirtatious breakfast."

Percy Fearson opened the breakfast menu and studied it with a great show of earnestness. "I don't know whether to have the Belgian waffles or the coddled eggs," he remarked. "Perhaps I ought to have both."

In his sitting-room, Sir Peregrine was pouring out the last of his breakfast. He held the empty rum bottle upside down for almost a minute, waiting for the last hesitant drop to fall into his beaker. Then he sighed and set the bottle back on top of the sideboard. One dead, how many more to go? He knew that he wouldn't be able to resist drinking again, now that he'd started. He had a pounding headache, and breath so strong that pigeons could have perched on it.

Still, for a man of his character, what did a few drinks matter? There were plenty of great men in history who had been fond of the sherbet. He wouldn't be surprised if the King himself didn't gargle once or twice in Napoleon brandy before retiring, or even after rising.

Drink helped a man's vision. It steadied his temper, collected his thoughts and enabled him to see things shipshape and sharp. And those were qualities you couldn't even claim for a woman.

Ah, a woman, he thought. What I could have been with a woman. And for a brief moment, before he lifted his last mug of rum to his lips, he remembered a sweet Edwardian profile, and Lily Langtry curls, and a voice that now spoke from nowhere but his memory.

On the deck below, Catriona slept. She dreamed of dancing and of running down one claustrophobic passageway after another, looking anxiously for Mark. She dreamed that Mark's lips were close to her ear and whispered, "I will love you for money'.

And as the morning passed, the Arcadia began to plunge and toss like a wild pony as she forced her bows into an ocean that was already beginning to grow tumultuous and dark.