Maiden Voyage

THIRTY-FOUR

As soon as the storm subsided, Monty Willowby gave instructions for the Arcadia to be cleaned and disinfected, from the boat deck down to the waterline. It was an Augean task, involving the sluicing of hundreds of acres of corridors and dining rooms, the drying out of scores of rugs, and the remaking of more than a thousand bunks and beds. Broken plates and glasses had to be swept up, baths and basins scoured out, lavatories cleaned, and carpets (where anyone had been blessed with sufficient foresight to have them rolled up) replaced and fastened down.

Stewards went from cabin to cabin with tea, coffee, seltzer, and sandwiches. Any passenger who still felt chronically sick was wrapped in a blanket and ushered solicitously to the ship's hospital, which was directly over the swimming pool. Monty Willowby ordered the ship's printing press to run off 2,000 "storm certificates", which would be filled in with each passenger's name and presented as a souvenir of their experience. It had, after all, been the worst summer storm for four years.

Towards the cocktail hour, the ship began to return to normal. Welders and carpenters were out on the foredeck in a flurry of windblown sparks, patching up the damage to the railings and the knightsheads. Stewards were busily laying the tables for dinner and unfastening the fiddles which had kept the lunchtime cutlery in place. The chandeliers were glittering, and all the palms in the Palm Court had been restored to their upright positions. The kitchens began to clatter, and to fill their lungs again with the aroma of ris de veau Brillat-Savarin, chateaubriand cloute aux truffes, and la mousseline de grenouilles au Riesling—a delicate mousse of frogs' legs in Austrian wine.

Nonetheless, the Arcadia had been christened in her first rough sea, and she would no longer smell so aromatically of fresh paint and new varnish and musky wood veneers. Like all of her sister steamers on the North Atlantic route, she would now be haunted by the lingering smell of seasickness. It was unavoidable: it was as much a part of sailing across to America as the fancy-dress ball on the last night afloat, or the first sight of the Statue of Liberty.

Sir Peregrine left the bridge to Derek Holdswoith and retired to his cabin, where he sat for an hour in silent meditation before ordering his steward to run him a bath, seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit exactly, and to bring him a fresh bottle of Haitian rum. He was now catastrophically drunk, but he also felt calmer and more resolved about himself than he had for months. Perhaps the world had failed to recognise his greatness. Perhaps Mavis had failed to recognise his love. But destiny, after all, could rise above such disappointments. Destiny would bear him in her arms, and ensure that when the golden rolls of history were written, his name would shine in its deserved place. That was the way he pronounced the word in his mind: deserved.

Lucille Foster was asleep, drugged with codeine, in the ship's hospital; while Mrs Hall, in a brown dress, waited by her bedside with an expression of martyrdom. Mrs Hall had been brought up in martyred circumstances. Her father had been a loss adjuster and a fanatical believer in St. Sebastian. Her mother had been one of the few ugly daughters from a large and wealthy family from Back Bay, Boston. Now she was responsible for the safe passage across the Atlantic of the hysterically bereaved daughter of two of the world's most glamorous corpses. It was all too much.

Harry Pakenow had found himself to be a hero. Dazed, drenched and shivering like a greyhound, he had been wrapped in a large plaid blanket and taken by two cheerful stewards to Catriona's stateroom, where he had been given a steaming and cologne-perfumed bath by one of the stewards. He had then been dressed in well-pressed flannels and a warm shirt, and invited up to the Orchid Lounge for a drink. Edgar had shaken his hand and given him a company check for twenty pounds, and Catriona had asked him to join her for a glass of champagne.

Catriona thought that all of this fuss was absolutely marvellous, especially since it gave her the chance to play out her role of Queen of the Atlantic. She hadn't had so much run since the opening night of The Mask And The Face at the Criterion, when Frank Cellier had got gloriously drunk and told her he loved her, and Athene Seyler had attempted to dance the can-can. She adored Harry's bemusement: the way he sat so awkwardly on his chair and blinked through his pigeon-fancier's spectacles at all the fluffy mink stoles and the clinging satin dresses and the sparkling diamonds. She was reminded of her childhood in Formby, when she was five or six, and perfumed ladies had come into her bedroom to bestow vermouth-flavoured kisses on her and feed her with chocolates and trifle. That had been "before the War", when summers had been longer and more idyllic, and ladies had worn skirts that swept the grass. But the Titanic had sunk when Catriona was nine; and when she was eleven, war had been declared; so that "before the War" was only a heavenly memory of childhood, a blurred fantasy both of her own memory and of her Mother's nostalgia.

She said to Harry, "You were very brave."

He held his champagne glass in both hands, uncertain of how much to drink, and how quickly. "I didn't see what else I could do," he replied. "She couldn't get down by herself."

"Nobody else managed to do it," Catriona told him.

"No, well, it was pretty wild out there, wasn't it?"

Catriona watched him for a while. He sipped his champagne, and then cleared his throat..

"You're not embarrassed, are you?" she asked him.

"A bit," he admitted.

"You've nothing to be embarrassed about. You're the man of the hour."

Harry looked around, and then pulled a face. "I'm not used to nobs, that's all."

"Oh, nobs are we?" teased Catriona.

Harry gave her a shy grin. "Well, you know what I mean. First class. It's a different world, isn't it? Different people."

"You really think so?"

Harry didn't answer. But he swallowed another mouthful of champagne and nodded.

Catriona said, "Supposing I said you could travel first class for the rest of the voyage?"

"Pardon?" He looked at her in alarm.

"There's no need to jump up in the air. I think you've deserved it. I can't give you a medal. The least I can do is let you travel the rest of the way in luxury."

"Well," said Harry breathlessly. "No, I don't think I can. I mean, you know, thanks, but no."

"We can lend you a dinner jacket, if that's what you're worried about."

A dinner jacket? thought Harry. She thinks I'm worried about a dinner jacket? All I'm worried about is blowing the bottom out of this ship, and sinking everyone and everything in it.

"I'd rather—Well, I'd rather stay in third, if you don't mind," he told her.

At that moment, Edgar came up. He looked at his pocket-watch and snapped it shut with an audible click. "Don't you have a cocktail appointment, Miss Keys?"

"All in good time, Mr. Deacon," said Catriona. "By the way, I've been trying to persuade our hero here to travel for the rest of the voyage in cabin class."

Edgar grasped Harry's shoulder and smiled. "Of course you must. I wouldn't hear of anything else. I think we have one spare stateroom on the bridge deck. I'll make sure that the purser arranges it right away."

"Listen, I really appreciate it," said Harry. He was feeling cornered now, trapped by everybody's upper class geniality and suffocated by Chanel perfume and that overheated atmosphere of furs and silks and diamonds. "I appreciate it very much, but no. I paid for a third-class ticket, and I guess you could say that I'm sort of a third-class person."

"Of course you're not," said Catriona. "What's third class about rescuing a girl from a crane in the middle of a storm?"

Edgar said, with a slight hint of tension in his voice, 'Miss Keys, your appointment."

"Oh, yes," said Catriona. Then, to Harry, "You'll have to excuse me. I have to change for a private meeting. But do promise me that you're going to travel first. Promise me."

Harry looked down at the expensive Indian carpet on the floor, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Catriona stood up and regarded him with gentle amusement. Then she bent forward and kissed him on the forehead. He jerked his head up as if he had been burnt.

"Oh," Catriona smiled with mock-coyness. "I didn't mean to startle you. I just thought the hero deserved a kiss from the management. After all, if this was a French ship, they would have kissed you on both cheeks."

"You're lucky it's not a Greek ship, squire," said Monty Willowby. Even his struggles with the first-class toilet seats had not completely squashed his sense of humour. "Did I hear you wanted that suite on the bridge deck, Mr Deacon? Not the best, I'm afraid. But much more spacious than third. A bath of your own. A double bed. And hot cocoa before you go to sleep at night, with two sugars."

"I really don't want to cause any trouble," said Harry. He was feeling panicky now, and almost asthmatically breathless. He wondered if he were actually allergic to rich people.

"No trouble at all, squire," said Monty genially. He laid one podgy arm around Harry's shoulders—a familiarity which he never would have allowed himself with a genuine first-class passenger—and said, "Take the opportunity while you've got it. You won't be able to do it again. Once in a lifetime, for a fellow like you, travelling first class. You can tell your grandchildren about it."

Harry stared back at him, wide-eyed behind his spectacles. There seemed to be no way out but to say yes. All of these people were so dominant, so confident, and so relaxed in these intimidatingly opulent surroundings. The only way to escape them was to do whatever they wanted.

"All right," he whispered. "That's great."

Monty bent towards him and said, "Speak up, squire. Didn't catch you." But all Harry could do was lick his lips in consternation and wonder if they would bring him some more champagne.