Maiden Voyage

TWENTY-EIGHT

During the fashion show, Mark Beeney and Marcia Conroy were I a screaming match in March's stateroom.

Mark had knocked at Marcia's door to explain about the previous night, to tell her that he hadn't taken Catriona to bed, that he wasn't I about her, and that he hadn't meant to humiliate Marcia so openly. The truth was that he hadn't heard from Catriona all morning, that he hadn't dared to send Philip Carter-Helm around to her stateroom again, and that he was pretty certain that their flirtation was over and out. He still had a crush on Catriona. There was something about her which made his blood race around like two bees in a buggy. But he had to face up to facts—and the facts were that Catriona didn't appear to have responded to Philip playing Cupid, nor to Alice's highly-paid assurances that Mark Beeney was a desirable man on board, and Mark's father had always told him that it was no good flogging a dead horse, even if it was only two feet away from the winning-post.

Marcia was puffy-eyed and pale. She smoked a pink cocktail cigarette as furiously as if she were falling behind in a cigarette smoking race, and tried to look everywhere, except at Mark. Her stateroom was decorated in the style of "Spring', with a mural of orange grass and black silhouetted poplars, and she complemented the theme by wearing a white crepe-de-chine teddy with ruffled pink stars and bows.

"Thank God you didn't do that to me in London," she said. "Every gossip columnist in Fleet Street would have crucified me. "The girl Mark Beeney jilted". I can see it now."

Mark leaned against die bureau, in pleated white sailing pants and a beautifully cut blazer with gold buttons. At his neck was a loosely tied silk cravat, which lent him the appearance of a slightly piratical college rowing buff. "Marcia," he said, "I'm sorry. I got carried away."

"Well, don't let me stop you, old thing. Far be it from me to come between an American shipping magnate and his puppy-fat floozy."

"She's not a floozy, and you know she isn't. The whole point is that she's going to inherit a quarter-share in Keys Shipping, including this ship, and I very badly want this ship."

"So you're prepared to snuffle around her like a sex-starved truffle hound, is that it?"

"Listen, Marcia, I have my business to think about."

"Your business, but not the dignity of the girl you invited to come to New York with you? Is that it?"

Mark jabbed a finger at her. "I didn't invite you. You invited yourself."

"So you keep reminding me. Just in case I forget that I'm not wanted on this voyage."

"You invited yourself because you had some damn-fool premonition. Well, the way you're going on, and the way that ridiculous Keys girl is going on, I hope the damn premonition comes true."

"Oh," crowed Marcia, "so that's why you've come crawling back! She doesn't want you! The plump little heiress isn't interested! Well, that serves you damn well right. You cabin-class cowboy."

"Who the hell are you calling a cowboy?" Mark demanded. "Who came tapping on my door like some second-class whore when I was in London? Don't talk to me about crawling!"

"You boorish shit!" screamed Marcia. "Every day I offer up a prayer of thanks that I never agreed to marry you!"

"I never asked you! And I never would!"

"Oh, so your memory's failing you, as well as your talent for picking up fat little girls? Just remember that evening in Brussels! Was that or was that not a proposal of marriage? And did I or did I not turn you down?"

Mark took a deep breath through both nostrils. He paused. Then he said, "We'd both had too much wine. And too many moules marinieres."

Marcia clapped her hand against her forehead as if it were a cold compress. "Do you know something, Mark," she said, in a quieter and a more regretful voice, "you really don't have the first idea about how to make a girl feel better."

"I'm not trying to make you feel better," Mark told her. "I'm trying to tell you that I'm sorry I embarrassed you. You can either accept my apology or kick me out of the door. It's up to you. But—well, I hope you say that you forgive me."

Marcia sucked tightly at her cigarette, and then crushed it out in the stainless-steel ashtray. "I suppose it would be pretty frightful for you to have nobody to sleep with for the next two days."

"That isn't what I mean and you know it."

"Do I?"

Mark couldn't help grinning. "Well, maybe I do. But right now I can't think of anyone I'd rather sleep with than you."

Even if your podgy heroine changes her mind?"

Mark ran his hand through his curly hair in exasperation. "Will him stop calling her names? She's a nice girl."

"She's large."

"She has an ample bust, that's all. You're only jealous."

"Not very modern, are they, ample busts? Ample busts were what my grannies used to have. Busts and bustles, and peacock feathers a their hats. Anyway, Freud says you're looking for a mother figure if you go for girls with large bosoms."

"Marcia—" Mark protested.

Marcia swung her long legs off the sofa and stood up. "All right," she said, "I'm being jealous. I'm not usually. But somehow this is all different. When we're on land, I can catch the next train, or hire a limousine and disappear, and never have to see the girl you sleep with next. What the eye can't see, the heart can't grieve over. I love you. You're a beautiful creature. But I know that I can never own you, and that's why sometimes I have to pretend."

Mark lowered his head, and then looked up at Marcia from under V-shaped eyebrows. "Do you want a drink?" he asked her.

She nodded. "There's some Perrier-Jouet in the icebox."

While Mark untwisted the wire on the champagne cork, Marcia opened her cigarette case and took out another cigarette, yellow this time, and lit it. "I suppose I've spoiled everything," she said. "Now you'll be afraid even to talk to me, in case I try to snare you."

"It hasn't occurred to you that I'm very fond of you, too?"

"Fond? That's a carefully chosen word. You can be fond of dogs, or children, or Black Forest gateau."

Mark filled two Lalique glasses with vintage champagne. "Are you asking me to prove it to you?"

"Love can't be proved, Mark. Love can only be established. One act of sex means nothing."

"How about this?" said Mark, and produced from the breast pocket of his jacket an emerald and diamond necklet—a simply-designed rectangle which flashed with thirty-eight half-carat diamonds and a rare Brazilian emerald of absolutely flawless cut. He held it out to Marcia on the palm of his hand, and when she hesitated, he cocked his head inquisitively sideways, as if he were asking her why she should even think of holding back.

"You're bribing me," she said, in a thick whisper.

"I'm saying I'm sorry. Is this such an immoral way of saying sorry?"

She turned away. She sucked tearfully at her cigarette. "I don't know," she said. Then, turning back to him, "You've done it again, haven't you? You've caught me completely off guard. God, you're a cowboy, and no mistake."

"I'm not asking you to go to bed with me."

"You don't have to ask me, do you?"

The emerald flashed with gaudy green fire in Mark's outstretched hand. "It's beautiful," said Marcia. "And for all I know, you might have bought it for her."

"Do you really need to know?"

She shook her head. There were sparkling tears in her eyelashes. She held out both hands, cupped, the yellow cigarette still burning between her fingers, and Mark nonchalantly allowed the diamond and emerald necklet to pour out of his hand into hers. She held it up, and her face was prickled by hundreds of reflected sparks of light. The necklet felt warm and slippery, as real diamonds do; the smoothness of silk, the utter hardness of human emotion.

Mark stepped forward, and lowered one strap of Marcia's teddy. "I'd like to see you wearing it," he said. "Shall I put it on for you?"

She held up the necklace between fingers and thumbs. "You're such a bastard," she said.

Mark took her cigarette away from her, and stubbed it out. Then he lowered the second strap of her teddy, and slipped the shiny crepe-de-chine free from her breasts. He leaned forward and kissed her bare I throat, and bit at the lobes of her ears. He sensually rolled her nipples until they crinkled up tight. With a smooth sweep of his hand down her bare back, he slid down her teddy to her waist so that she could step out of it. She huddled up to him like a naked orphan, clutching the lapels of his blazer, her breasts touching his cold gold buttons, her moist pubic hair pressed against the sharply creased leg of his white yachting pants. They kissed voraciously.

Later, Marcia lay back on the spring-green quilt of her curtained bed, surrounded by flower-patterned pillows and carved daffodils, a Mark caressed and kissed her and made her feel as if she was suffocating from suppressed passion. She closed her eyes, and concentrated on the deep erotic sensation that was tensing the muscles of her thighs, and making her vagina tight with pleasure.

"You know that I shall never forgive you for this," she whispered, her eyes still tightly closed. All she could see was darkness, figured with scarlet designs. All she could feel was that nervy, trembling tautness that made her want to clench her thighs together.

Yet Mark, with both hands, spread her thighs wide apart and carefully draped the diamond and emerald necklace in her blonde pubic hair, which she always kept closely trimmed with nail scissors. The emerald itself he laid with his fingers between her opened lips, vivid green on vivid pink.

"You wear it like a queen," he told her with a crooked grin. His dark eyes were sparkling with delight. His shoulders were so suntanned that Mania's fingers looked in contrast as if they had been fashioned by Michaelangelo out of flawless white Carrara marble.

They made love in absolute silence. The Arcadia rolled and swayed and dropped beneath Marcia's bed, but somehow it only added to a rhythm of their joyful and friendly copulation. Afterwards, Mark went through to the sitting room to pour them more champagne and to light them a cigarette each, one turquoise and one black.

"You still want her, don't you?" asked Marcia, sitting up in bed, her small breasts squashed against the quilt.

"Who?"

"You know damned well who. Miss Catriona Keys. The puppy-fat flapper of 1924. You won't rest until you've thoroughly dishonoured her."

"You think that going to bed with me is dishonouring?"

"I think that going to bed with you is delightful. But that's another story altogether. We aren't talking about the same thing."

Mark lay back on the large pillows, smoking his black Russian cigarette. His suntan was cut sharply in half by the white outline of his thigh-length shorts and by his white feet. Absentmindedly, the way men do, he played with his softened penis, unconscious of how Marcia was watching him. It was so different from the gentle long-fingernailed way in which she touched him. He squeezed it and rolled it, and stroked the dark dividing line between his balls with his middle finger, quite innocently, thinking of nothing else but how relaxed he was, and how much he enjoyed lying here next to Marcia while the Arcadia plunged herself into a summer storm.

Marcia said, with a faint hint of regret, "I could watch you all day."

"All day every day?" asked Mark.

Marcia said, "You're not that fascinating," and couldn't understand it when Mark burst out laughing.