Maiden Voyage

THIRTY-SEVEN

It was while Catriona was dressing for her cocktail appointment with George Welterman that Trimmer remembered where he had first seen Philip Carter-Helm. He waited, of course, until she was dressed; and he expressed his aspirate admiration for the way she looked, in her casual Patou gown of white crepe de Maroc, almost ankle-length, but bare-shouldered, with thin white straps. He particularly admired her headband, too, with a white silk rosette on it, and banging ribbons. But while he was serving her a single strong gin-and-bitters, and lighting her up a small black Dutch cigar, he said, uncertainly, "That gentleman what was 'ere this morning, miss."

"Yes?" asked Catriona. She tilted up her chin while Alice sprayed her with perfume. The gramophone played "Hit Me In The Nose Blues" with a sleazy, shuffling, late-night kind of rhythm.

"Well, miss," 'e did say as 'ow 'e used to be han hacquaintance hof your father's, hif I'm not mistaken."

"That's right. What of it?"

"I was trying to think what hof it myself, miss; and then this arver I remembered has 'ow I seen your father haccompanied by a young man not dissimilar to Mr. Carter-'Elm when I was chauffering your father just habout three year hago; honly then, hof course, Mr. Carter-'Elm was considerably younger-looking."

"Where was this?" asked Catriona. She splayed out her fingers, and Inspected her nails.

"Hin Formby, miss, when they was first discussing the plans for the Arcadia. I 'ad to drive them to Liverpool, and they was talking about it nineteen to the dozen, 'ow the money was going to be raised, 'ow they were going to lay the keel. I remember it so much because they 'ad a hargument. 'Ammer and tongs."

"Philip Carter-Helm had a hargument—I mean an argument—with my father?"

"That's right, miss, as I remember it."

"But what did they argue about? Come on, Trimmer, you can't leave me in suspenders."

Trimmer tried to look as if nothing short of white-hot pincers could drag such a confidence out of him.

"Oh, come along, Trimmer," said Catriona. She blew cigar smoke impatiently, and felt very Gloria Swanson. "Nobody blames chauffeurs for listening. Especially now that my father's dead."

"Well, miss, I believe they was discussing a ship that used to belong to Keys in them days, the Orange."

"The Orange sank, didn't it?"

"'Yes, miss. About two weeks hafter Mr. Carter-Helm and Mr. Keys 'ad such a bull-and-cow habout it. Mr Carter-'Elm was saying something habout hinsurance, and 'ow nobody would hallow it; and your poor father was 'ollering back hat 'im and telling 'im not to speak like that, 'ow dare 'e. Hexpediency, that's the word your father kept using, hover and hover. Hexpediency."

Catriona waited for Trimmer to say something else, to explain what her father's argument with Philip Carter-Helm was all about. But Trimmer simply stood there, the light from the chandelier shining off his polished black hair, and waited to be dismissed.

"That's all?" asked Catriona.

" 'Fraid so, miss. Hafter that we was in something of a haltercation with a homnibus, and I didn't 'ear the remainder."

"Well," said Catriona, "I suppose that's something. The Orange sank off India somewhere, didn't it?'

"That's it, miss. Gulf of Khambhat. All 'ands saved, luckily. But a sad thing to lose 'er. Lovely ship, one of the best we 'ad."

"I thought we was lost ourselves, that storm we had today," said Alice. "I really thought the Lord had called me at last."

Catriona held up a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings, one to each earlobe, to see how they looked. "My father designed this ship, Alice. You don't think one potty little storm could sink it, do you?"

"Oh, of course not, miss. I didn't actually allow as it would."

Trimmer, who had now returned to the cocktail bar to buff up the glasses, said, "I think Miss Keys is 'aving you hon toast, Alice."

Catriona pouted out her lips. She liked the way she looked in the mirror. Definitely Gloria Swanson. She just wished the storm hadn't given her such a headache.

Trimmer said, "Hit was quite a blow, miss, hall the same. Never known a blow so bad, not hin the summer."

"Perhaps God sent it to remind us that we shouldn't be so vain," said Catriona.

"Well, 'oo can tell, miss? 'E moves hin very hinscrutable ways."

Catriona was almost ready when Edgar knocked at the door, with yet another reminder that she had a cocktail appointment with George Welterman. "All right," she said snappily; but before he could close the door, she called, "Mr. Deacon?"

"Miss Keys?"

She hesitated, and then came across the room, and said, "Can I ask you something?"

His eyes were like those of a rabbit, not frightened, but utterly impenetrable, either out of great knowledge or out of massive ignorance, both of which are equally threatening.

"I, um—" said Catriona, and then realised that both Trimmer and Alice were listening intently, even though they were both devoting enormous energy to shining glasses and to tidying up her cosmetics. "Let's talk out on deck. I'd like some fresh air."

Edgar took her arm and escorted her out on to the first-class promenade deck. The wind was still brisk, but there was a cheery seaside friendliness about the ocean, and the flags and bunting clapped in endless and enthusiastic applause.

"Have you seen a young chap called Carter-Helm?" Catriona asked Edgar.

Edgar looked at her intently. "I believe so," he said. "Fresh-faced, is he? Quite personable?"

"That's the man. Have you ever met him before?"

Edgar shook his head. "I don't believe so. Should I have done?"

"Well, I don't know. But he told me himself that he was a friend of my father's; and just now Trimmer told me that my father and Philip Carter-Helm had a tremendous argument about something or other about three years ago, when he was driving them both into Liverpool."

Edgar looked perplexed. "Did Trimmer say what the argument might have been about?"

"The Orange, as far as he knows. And something about insurance. But this was about two weeks before the Orange sank."

Edgar burst out laughing, but his laughter was so yapping and high that Catriona couldn't believe for a moment that he was at all amused.

She said, "What on earth's the matter?"

"It's just funny, that's all. It's just the type of gossip that Trimmer revels in. You mustn't take any notice at all. Scuttlebutt they call it on board ship."

"I just thought it was peculiar, that's all."

"My dear, I don't suppose for a moment that it was Philip Carter-Helm at all. Trimmer's half-blind these days, anyway. He ought to wear spectacles, except he's too proud. Had an Indian clerk like that once, in Calcutta. We used to call him Andha, that's Hindu for someone who can't see his nose in front of his face."

"It seems odd that Trimmer should have made it up."

"Oh, I don't know," said Edgar with forced joviality. "Servants are always trying to impress. It's not a serious vice. But, well, you should take what they say with a pinch of salt."

Catriona said, "My gosh, it's nearly a quarter to seven. I was supposed to meet George Welterman at six. I'd better go back and get Alice."

"Alice?"

"Well, to chaperone me."

Edgar waved his hand dismissively. "You won't need Alice. George is a perfect gentleman. At least, from what I've seen of him."

"Are you sure?"

"Why?" laughed Edgar. "You're not frightened, are you?"

"No, of course not. But you seem to think this is all so important; I want to do the right thing."

"You'll be doing the right thing if you simply make George feel that you and everybody else at Keys thinks he's a wonderful chap. Or at least a half-wonderful chap. I'm afraid he's one of these people who needs flattery, as well as persuasion. He's already put in his offer, of course; but he would quite enjoy seeing us dance for our supper, while we're about it."

Catriona narrowed her eyes and scrutinised Edgar as if she were an elderly lady on her first jury service.

"I always thought I knew who you were," she told him. 'Now, I'm beginning to wonder if you're someone else altogether."

"I was your father's friend, if that's what you mean. I still am."

"No, I didn't mean that," said Catriona.

"Then what?"

"I mean you seem rather frantic about this sale to IMM. Not calm and collected at all. Couldn't we string them along a bit, make them dance, instead of us? That's if they want us so badly."

Edgar shrugged and looked away, as if he were already thinking about something else. "It's business, I'm afraid. There are other considerations, apart from money. Obligations, contracts, that kind of thing. Now that your father's gone—"

Catriona said, rather archly, "Now that my father's gone, I'm here."

"Well, of course. But in a more decorative capacity, shall we say."

"I don't think twenty-five per cent of the voting stock is entirely decorative, do you? At least, nobody else seems to think so. I'm beginning to wonder whether all you men are clustering around me for my stunning looks or my ravishing shares."

"Miss Keys, really," Edgar protested, almost primly, as if she had accused him of behaving indecently in front of a lady.

"I just hope you're not selling out to IMM because you don't want Keys to be managed by women, that's all."

"My dear Miss Keys, there isn't any question at all that the board doubts your sincerity, or your devotion to your father's memory. But running a shipping line in Liverpool is not like organising a the dansant in South Kensington, especially when to all intents and purposes that shipping line is already bankrupt."

Catriona turned her face to the wind. "Very well," she said. She tried to sound both offended and forgiving at the same time; because in spite of everything she didn't want to fall out with Edgar, or upset him too much. "But I do reserve the right to see what I can get out of George Welterman. Perhaps I can get more than eighteen million pounds, just by being decorative."

"Hmph," returned Edgar, unimpressed.

He escorted her down to A Deck, however, where they happened to bump into Dick Charles. Edgar inclined his head to Catriona in a reserved little gesture of respect, and said to Dick: "Will you please take Miss Keys to Mr. Welterman's cabin, Mr. Charles, and also present him with my regards."

"V-v-v—certainly, Mr. Deacon."

Catriona, as they walked together along the corridor, couldn't help thinking that Dick Charles looked extremely white.

"Are you all right, Mr. Charles?" she asked him. "You're not ill, or anything?"

"N-no, Miss Keys. Tremendous f-form. F-first class."

"Well, I hope you don't think that I'm being rude, but you don't look first class. You look rather pale."

"J-just a couple of things on my mind, Miss Keys. N-nothing to get worried about."

"You can always talk to me, you know, if there's something upsetting you."

Dick Charles saluted her. "V-very k-kind of you, Miss K-keys."

He led her to the door of George Welterman's stateroom. Perhaps he wasn't a very good sailor, thought Catriona. After all, the crew were just as susceptible to seasickness as the passengers. She couldn't have guessed for a moment that his problem centred entirely around Lady Diana FitzPerry, and the corks of Perrier-Jouёt champagne, and Pond's cold cream.

George Welterman opened the door of his stateroom himself. The theme of the apartment was "Mount Olympus", and the walls were decorated with friezes of Roman gods, all with marcelled hairstyles and pointed beards, with sheaves of lightning bolts in their quivers.

George Welterman himself had all the dignity and darkness of Zeus. He was wrapped in a black and silver quilted robe, with an ostentatious silver cravat around his neck. Beneath the lower hem of his robe, Catriona could see the cuffs of his evening trousers, with silver-grey stockings and black silk slippers. Smoke from his cigarette drifted raggedly across the room towards the ventilator grille.

"Is this your chaperone?" he asked Catriona, nodding towards Dick Charles.

"No," she said. "Mr. Charles was just leaving."

"Mr. D-deacon sends you his f— sends you his f— sends you his felicitations, sir."

"So," smiled George when Dick Charles had left. "You decided it was safe to come alone." He tapped his cigarette in a stainless-steel ashtray.

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

He made a self-deprecatory face, and bent forward to kiss her hand with dry lips. "There have been women," he said, "who have been afraid of being alone with me."

"Afraid? I can't think why. You're rather a teddy bear."

George let out a small explosion of amusement. "A teddy bear? That's the first time any woman has called me a teddy bear. Well, perhaps you'll learn otherwise."

"You intend to show me your claws?"

"Maybe. But let me pour you a drink first."

"All right,' said Catriona, turning away from him. "Gin and bitters. The way they make it in the crush bar at the Court."

"I can't say that I've ever been to the Court."

"You didn't see The Farmer's Wife? Well, perhaps you wouldn't have done, would you, being in Ireland. But you should have done. It was hilarious."

"You're quite a theatre person, aren't you?" asked George, opening up the black lacquered cocktail cabinet.

"I lived with an actor."

"I know," said George. He smiled in self-satisfaction as he half filled a modern Lausitzer glass with Gordon's gin. "Your father didn't approve of that, did he?"

"Is that anything to you?"

George shrugged. "It's nothing to me. Not morally. If a girl wants to live a slightly disreputable life, hanging around with actors, living in sin, that's no concern of mine."

Catriona flushed. "I don't think I'm enamoured of the tone of this conversation. I didn't accept your invitation so that you could make cheesy remarks about my private life. Anyway, I know dozens of perfectly reputable girls who live with their boyfriends. Well, quite a few, anyway."

George came across with her drink and held it up for her. "I'm not being critical. Don't get me wrong. It's just a little difficult for old fogies like me to get used to the modern age, that's all. When I was first stepping out with girls, remember, it was pretty scandalous if they smoked, even in private. You smoke anywhere you feel like it. And some of those clothes you wear well—well, they're pretty scandalous, even for today. You're a new kind of girl, and it takes a while for people like me to get used to the idea."

He sat on the largest chair in the room, a huge Olympian throne, without offering her a seat. He sipped his drink and then said, "Another thing that throws me off balance is your interest in business—coupled with the fact that you own so much of Keys Shipping. In my day, girls left business to the men. What did a girl know about buying and selling? It wasn't their world. A girl's world was all dances and tea parties and strawberries and cream."

"You have a very over-romanticised notion of the female sex," Catriona told him, sitting down on the end of a deep black velvet sofa. "At least, you have a very romanticised notion of the girls in London. I can't speak for Cheltenham or Oxford or anywhere else. I expect the girls there are still as fresh and goody-goody as you'd like to imagine them. Dances and tea-parties and frocks down to their ankles. And all virgins."

George drank and smoked and nodded reflectively. "I suppose they are. Well, I know they are. It's the same in America, in all the proper middle-class suburbs. Well-painted homes, shiny new Packards, and daughters who never listened to nigger music and walk down the aisle with their hymens intact. It has to be that way. That's what makes capitalism strong."

"I'm not sure that I follow you," said Catriona. "What makes capitalism strong? The well-painted houses or the intact hymens?"

George looked at her. She could tell that he was slightly surprised that a girl could say the word "hymens" out loud, even a sophisticated flapper like her.

"Well," he said, in a slow voice, "you have to remember that a country which bases its strength on capitalism needs a stable base, a middle class of moderately well off professional people who not only desire the products that capitalist industries offer them, but have the money and the credit to pay for them, and are satisfied with what they've got when they've got it—although not too satisfied not to hanker after next year's model. And the way to keep this middle-class base secure is to fix the prices of everything they want, from a spanking new automobile to a college education for their kids, at exactly the right level, so that they can just afford them if they're thrifty, and if they work hard, but never have too much money left over. It's that exact income-to-desire ratio that keeps a capitalist system functioning, and expanding. It has to be finely tuned. If people have too much free cash, they suddenly realise that they don't have to work so hard, and that they can afford booze and gambling and messing around with women not their wives. Homes break up, efficiency at work starts to suffer, moral codes crumble, people start asking awkward political questions. The economy loses its whole meaning and its whole momentum. Happiness, in a capitalist system, is always having not quite enough. That's why I believe in well-painted homes, and intact hymens, and non-union labour, and why I think that short skirts and jazz and bootleg liquor are the first signs of America's coming financial collapse."

"You drink liquor yourself. And you've invited a girl in a short skirt not your wife into your stateroom, alone, for cocktails."

"I'm different, my dear; just like most of the cabin-class passengers on this luxury tub of yours are different. We all have sufficient money to be both publicly moral and privately licentious at the same time. Not many middle-class folk can afford such extravagance."

Catriona sipped her cold gin and then said, "What do you think of me, really?"

"What do I think of you?" George repeated.

"I get the distinct feeling that you're trying to say something to me, or about me, and I'm not sure what it is. I don't know whether you disapprove of me because you think I'm a flapper, and because I drink gin and smoke cigarettes, and have love affairs with men—which I can assure you is quite usual, these days, especially if he's somebody you care for—or whether you're simply saying that you're a little old-fashioned and you haven't quite got the hang of me yet. Or whether you're saying—"

George raised his hand and shook it quickly, to tell her that she shouldn't say any more. "You're a social phenomenon, that's what I think of you," he said. "At least, you're part of a social phenomenon. if I appear to be talking my way around the bushes to get to the trees, it's only because I'm like a hunter who doesn't really understand the nature of the animal which he is stalking. When Edgar told me about you... Well, I knew your father, and I expected something different."

"A virgin."

"I didn't mean that. I see you're going to tease me with that for the rest of the voyage. I meant, I expected a girl who was going to be more conventional. Less free, less outspoken. Less worldly, but perhaps more practical, the way Northern girls usually are."

"You thought I was going to wear glasses, and sensible tweed suits and be able to train red setters with one hand, while baking leek and lamb pudding with the other?"

George smiled and then laughed. Then, more because she wanted to make him move out of his chair than because she actually wanted one, Catriona asked him, "Would you light me a cigarette, please?"

He opened a silver box of Abdullas and brought it over. He watched her with that same curious young/old expression as she took one and held it between her lips. She had a disturbing feeling that he found the gesture erotic. Nigel had once told her about a German friend of his who would pay ten pounds just to watch a woman, naked except for black silk stockings, sit on a bentwood chair and smoke a cigarette. And Welterman was a German sort of a name.

"Have you thought any more about my offer to buy up the Keys fleet?" asked George, lighting Catriona's cigarette.

"Not really. There's no rush, is there? Not that I'm aware of."

"You understand that I would quite like to be able to know that I can count on your support."

Catriona smoked for a while without answering. George Welterman disturbed her even more than Edgar. At least she was sure that whatever games Edgar was playing, he had the best interests of Keys Shipping at heart, and the interests of all those poor families in Liverpool who depended on Keys so much for a living. But George was enticing her out like a deep-sea fisherman who had hooked the hair of a mermaid, out into the cold waters of real risk, both personal and financial. And the question was: did he want this particular mermaid for her alluring human form, or did he want her because he could sell her tail for $2.50 the pound in the best fishmonger's? She couldn't tell; and despite the extraordinary frankness with which he spoke of love and sex and Myrtle Greensleeves, George wasn't giving any clues away at all. He had been angling these waters all his life, and they were his own chilly territory. Catriona began to feel the first palpitations of inexperience, even fright.

"I'm still not sure that we ought to sell," she said. "Edgar advises it, but honestly I don't know whether it would be such a good thing or not. Especially in such a hurry. I know that my father wouldn't have sold. Not the whole fleet, anyway."

"I dislike to have to remind you that your father is no longer with us," said George Welterman. "You really have very little choice, you know. And since mine is the only realistic offer—"

"It just seems like an indecent rush to me, that's all. Father's barely been buried, and yet everything he ever worked for is already being auctioned off."

"I'm afraid that business does have its indecent moments," said George. "And it is not a world for women. I was genuinely surprised when I learned that your father had left so large a stockholding to you."

"Perhaps he knew that I'd take care of it."

"My dear Catriona," George smiled, and he didn't need to say any more to communicate his contempt for the idea of a twenty-one-year-old girl dabbling in shipping.

Catriona said, "You don't have to patronise me, you know. I'll bet that I can shimmy better than you can."

"Oh, no doubt."

"Supposing I won't agree to sell?" Catriona asked him. She watched his eyes, but they scarcely even flickered.

"You'll probably be outvoted by your fellow stockholders. I know that your mother is keen to sell, she wants the financial security. And the banks appear to recognise the benefits of Keys being taken under the wing of International Mercantile Marine."

"Then you don't need to worry what I think, do you?"

"I prefer unanimity," George smiled. "It's better for the company's public appearance. Keys needs to engender all the confidence it can as a shipping line."

"Well, I don't know," said Catriona. "I just want to wait and see what happens when we get to New York."

"Very little will happen, my dear, believe me, except that you probably won't be able to afford to bring the Arcadia back to England again; and if you don't pay some of the outstanding accounts that Keys has in America, you may very well find that this glorious vessel is impounded until you can make some offers to settle your debts. Now, that would be very dismal, wouldn't it? And what would you a about it, shimmy for pennies in Battery Park?"

"You don't have to be insulting," snapped Catriona.

"The truth is always painful, isn't it?" George smiled. "I'm sorry, my pet, but you asked for it."

"No wonder Myrtle Greensleeves never writes back to you," said Catriona.

George stared at her for a very long moment; and in that moment Catriona realised that she had upset him beyond all reason. "What?" he demanded; and his voice barked like a half-brick thrown against the wall of an empty alley.

"I'm sorry, but you asked for it, too. You can't bully women the same way you bully your business colleagues. And when you're on somebody's ship, as a guest, I would have thought it was pretty rotten manners to behave as if you owned the place. You may do soon; but you don't yet."

"Do you want me to ruin you?" George rumbled. "I could, you know."

"I'd like to see you try."

"You wouldn't be worth it," said George, trying to control his sudden temper. He reached for the silver cigarette box, took out another cigarette, and then laid it back on the table whose top was inlaid with variegated marble portraits of the classic Roman gods.

"Is that what you think?" asked Catriona in a high-pitched voice. "Is that what you really thought of Miss Greensleeves?" She felt more confident now, now that she had been able to tug at his most sensitive nerve. Not too confident; he was a man with a convoluted and difficult personality, and even as he began to curb his anger she could sense him working out another approach, another ploy, another less troublesome way to reel this mermaid in. He made her feel exactly her age—grown-up, pretty, and confident. Sometimes brazen, often clever. But only twenty-one, with all the dangerous inexperience of someone who has only been an adult for two or three years. Old enough to say sharp and witty things. Too young to understand the devastating effect they might have.

In the company of older people, Catriona sometimes felt that she was almost a star—adorable, flirty, and fun. But at other times she felt that she wasn't really a very nice person at all. She hoped, uncertainly, that George, Edgar and Mark Beeney didn't talk about her behind her back as if she were an exhibitionist brat. But how could you be nicer, and still be treated as if you were an adult? And if you were a beautiful-looking girl, the kind of girl whom middle-aged theatrical producers had watched out of unblinking and acquisitive eyes as you were dancing across the stage of the Gaiety at the opening night party for Our Nell, your bare knees flickering on their irises like an erotic French nickelodeon, your breasts bouncing against the thin eau-de-Nil silk of your frock and at the same time hammering on the tautened valves of their hearts, how could you ever afford to be nice?

She hadn't yet discovered the fine balances between teasing and tempting; between wit and cheek. She hadn't even discovered herself: not as a lover, nor an heiress, nor a friend. But she knew a little. Her father had been both free with her, and yet strict. He had allowed her to find how wide and busy the world could be, and yet reminded her of its restrictions and its conventions. And perhaps the fact that Nigel had been her only lover—in that theatrical back-stage tumble where stars might easily take four men to their dressing-rooms at once, and chorus girls had it standing up behind the flats—perhaps that was the truest example of how caring and sympathetic her father's guidance had been.

They had done very little but shout at each other, she and her father. But she was gradually beginning to realise how strongly he had cared for her. It took the devious and manipulative attentions of a man like George Welterman to show her; and she felt like whispering a "thank you" to her father, along with the message "I miss you."

George said, "You mustn't think that I'm a bully."

"I don't," said Catriona. "And it wouldn't make any difference even if you were. I'm not the kind of girl who allows herself to be bullied."

"Well, I said you were a smart girl. And you are. You're smart."

"I think I'm rather callow, if you must know. If I were really smart, I'd be able to work out a way to tell you what you could do with your offer. Stick it up your jumper."

George Welterman threw himself back in his chair, jauntily crossed his legs, and laughed. "I like you," he said. "I really, truly, like you. How's your drink?"

"I won't have another one, thank you."

"Come on. You can manage the other half."

"No. I had too much of a hangover this morning. In any case, they'll be serving dinner soon."

"We ought to celebrate," said George. "The beginning of a marvellous business relationship. Welterman and Keys, I can see it now."

"Don't you think you'd better get down to writing to Myrtle?"

"Aha—" George grinned—"you can get me once but you can't get me twice. You'll learn that, as time goes by. One-Time Welterman, the man you can only trick but once. No, Myrtle can wait. Myrtle won't answer my letter anyway. Whereas you..."

He stood up again, both hands in his pockets, and leaned forward him to stare at her.

"... you remind me so much of the way she used to be. So much. You can really unsettle me sometimes. Do you know that? I look at you and I see Myrtle. Same profile. Same kind of provocative look. Shyness and pertness, all mixed up. Do you know who else you remind me of? Miss Austin, Texas. This year's Miss Austin, Texas. Same figure, just like an angel. I wired Miss Austin for an appointment when I saw the photographs, but, well, it wasn't to be. A previous commitment, she told me."

"George," said Catriona. "I think I have to go now."

"Oh, come on. We've settled our business. Patched up our differences. Have one more link snifter before you go."

"Well... I shouldn't."

"Who says you shouldn't? Let me tell you, you should! It relaxes the inhibitions. And there is no reason whatever why you should be feeling inhibited, is there?"

Catriona finished her cigarette and stubbed it out. George said, "One more little one, huh?"

It was the way he raised one eyebrow and rubbed his hands together that put her off. He looked suddenly grotesque—ingratiating and yet boorish at the same time. She found her shoes, slipped them on, and stood up. "No," she said. "I have to get ready for dinner. But thanks, anyway. If thanks is the word."

With one loping step forward, George suddenly snatched at Catriona's arm. Catriona, however, twisted herself away; and for a moment the two of them stood staring at each other, both of them surprised—George at his own behavior, and Catriona at the swiftness of her own reaction. It had been as quick as a well-rehearsed wrestling move, and if someone else had been in the room, and half-turned away at the crucial moment, they might not even have noticed that anything had happened.

"Ah," said George, "so you're as much of a tease as I thought you were. They have a name for girls like you in the States."

"They have a name for men like you the whole world over."

"Catriona, you're getting me wrong."

"I don't think so, George. I think you're getting me wrong. I think you've badly misunderstood what this phenomenon you think I'm a part of is all about. Young girls may be freer these days, but we're not all straight out of The Beautiful and Damned. My God, you're being so damned middle-aged!".

"You vamp," said George, in a soft, critical snarl.

"Oh, don't you just wish I was? A siren gliding into your life with slicked-back hair and dark eyes and half a gallon of Nights of Allah splashed over my shoulders. But, my dear George, we may have petting parties, we free and immoral young things, and we may have love affairs, but we have them only amongst our own immoral young selves. The last person I want to coax into the back of a struggle buggy is a wheezing old marine financier who's probably going to get his corset laces tangled up with the convertible top."

"Well," breathed George, "you're really something of a bitch, aren't you?"

"Perhaps you're right," Catriona retorted. "Perhaps I am a bitch. But then perhaps you should get it through your head that you're talking to someone who behaves the way they do in spite of people like you—not because of you. You and your whole stuffy, cheesy, pompous generation. You know what Scott Fitzgerald called it, the way young people feel today? 'One vast juvenile intrigue.' And it's true, that's exactly what it is. The young against the old. If my mother knew how young I was when I first kissed a boy, she'd probably fall over with her legs in the air. She still thinks that I'm going to shrivel up like an Egyptian mummy before I'm thirty because I've been living with a man without even being engaged to him. It mortified her! It scandalised her! But it's all part of young people fighting against old people. It's modern. And you know something else that Scott Fitzgerald says? 'At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.' "

George was noisily pouring himself another highball. "I'm glad you're well acquainted with the holy scrolls of the most tawdry and illiterate young American writer being published today."

"Of course I am. Didn't you ever have heroes? People you believed in?"

"The only people I ever believed in were William McKinley, J. Pierpoint Morgan, and Mark Hanna."

"Oh, yes? And what did they have to say for themselves?"

"Mark Hanna uttered the great truth that anyone who has any experience of public life knows that they never owe the public anything. And Morgan pointed out the greater truth that men don't go into business for their health."

"You obviously don't. Not the way you've been trying to do business with me. Any more of that pawing and you'll have a heart seizure."

"What the hell do you mean, pawing?" George roared. Really roared, with his neck veins bulging, and his fist clenched so tightly around the stem of his highball glass that Catriona was sure it was going to snap.

"This is still my father's ship, Mr. Welterman," Catriona replied. Her heart was tumbling over and over, cake and circuses, but she managed to keep her voice quite level, and as cool as she could. "And on my father's ship, I expect to be treated with respect. Even by you."

George circled cagily around the room, his fingers drumming on chairbacks, table-tops, bureaux lids. Drrrrp, drrrrp, drrrrp. He was breathing with the regular heaves of a long-distance swimmer, and his whole body was crammed with emotional tension.

"You're such a hypocrite," Catriona told him; and she was pleased by the assured, throaty way her voice came out. "You speak to me as if I'm a delinquent shopgirl. You talk about moral codes, and the middle class, and you give me all that applesauce about capitalism. God, you're a hypocrite! All you can think about is how to rake more money together, and how to get your hand up my dress at the same time. Moral codes? The only moral codes you live by are getting rich and taking as many dumb Doras to bed as you can fit in between telephone calls."

George abruptly stopped his pacing and stared across the room at Catriona as if he had decided something important.

"I'm going to show you something," he said.

"Well, I'm not interested," Catriona told him. "I'm leaving."

"Wait!" George bellowed at her; and in two or three violent wrenches, he pulled his quilted wrap down, and tore away his cravat, and bared his body from the waist up.

Catriona, who had been starting towards the door, stopped in shock. George Welterman was well-built for a man of his age, and a little underexercised, a little overweight, but it was not his physique which stopped Catriona so abruptly. It was the pattern of crimson and twisted burns which were emblazoned on his naked chest; a pattern which, as he turned towards her, formed itself into a single word and a single device, all fashioned from skin that had been shrivelled up like the umbilical cord of a three-day baby. She could not even begin to imagine what agony George must have endured to scar his body so deeply and irrevocably with a bean, and with letters three inches high that spelled out the name MYRTLE.

"Is this the kind of thing that you find on the chest of a hypocrite?" George panted. His forehead was glassy with sweat. Tributaries of sweat ran from his shaggy armpits. His belly swelled in and out as he breathed.

Catriona said, "George, I can't stay here any longer." Her voice was as uncontrolled as if she were speaking into a high wind.

George tugged off the robe that was bunched around his waist and threw it aside. Then, with quick jerks, he loosened his belt and kicked off his slippers.

"You have a right to go?" he asked her. "You think you have a right to insult me that way and then walk out? You call this floating stewpot of flatulent egotists your ship? Respect you want? On your ship? I'll tell you who owns this ship, Catriona, my darling. Mr. O'Hara owns this ship, and the National Marine Bank, and a hundred other creditors. My company, IMM, is one of them. So when you get high and fancy with me, when you talk about respect, just remember that this is our ship, my pet, not yours, and that a only respect we'll give you is the respect you deserve. You bitch."

Catriona felt as if she couldn't breathe. She thought, My God, I can't breathe. And in that breathless moment, George took two savage strides forward and gripped her wrist and yanked her arm around behind her back so hard that she screamed. With his free hand, he seized the thin strap of her white cocktail dress and tugged them off her shoulder, tearing her white silk underslip away with it. There was a flash of bare breast, of pink nipple, before Catriona twisted herself around and pulled her wrist free and scrambled onto the black velvet sofa.

George caught her frock, ripping it wide open at the back. Then, with a second lunge, his strong bare forearm was across her throat, and he was heaving her back against him, arching her spine, and forcing her head up.

"You're chok—" she tried to scream, but he clamped his hand over her mouth. She tried to bite at his fingers with her teeth, but he pulled her arm around behind her again, so far up her back that her fingers touched her bobbed hair, and the pain was so sharp that all she could do was squeeze her eyes tight shut and gurgle. The only thought in her mind was: He's killing me. He's killing me. He's killing me!

But then she felt her arm released, and his hand fumble under her skirt and reach up for the elastic of her step-ins. She felt the silk pulled away in three ferocious tugs; and then George forced her face forward into the cushions of the sofa, and tore away the last few shreds of her underthings.

"God!" she screamed, her voice muffled by the suffocating velvet pillows. "God, get off me!"

His penis was so hard it felt as if it had a bone in it. He forced it into her in an unstoppable thrust. He was a big, ugly and powerful man. He went right up inside her until she jumped with the nervous shock of it. She screamed again, but then he leaned heavily on top of her back, and forced his fingers between her teeth again. She bit him this time. She felt his flesh crunch, and she could taste his blood in her mouth. But he stayed on top of her, pushing himself into her in deep, irregular thrusts.

"You bitch," he grunted. "You bitch. You sleazy, immoral bitch."

She could scarcely hear him. There was a metallic singing noise in her ears, and she was choking for air. And all the time, he was bludgeoning her with his thighs, pushing his erection so far into her that she trembled like a storm-shocked racehorse. She thought: He's killing me. I'm going to die.

He shouted something; and then suddenly it was all over. He released her and rolled heavily off the sofa on to the floor, where he sat wheezing and panting, his reddened lust dying away in his lap.

"My God," he said. "Myrtle. Myrtle, my God."

Catriona, sobbing in spite of the fact that she didn't even want to sob, didn't want to show him how much he had hurt her, how humiliated and sullied and filthy she felt, climbed shakily on to her feet. She pulled down the hem of her dress, and then pressed her fingers to her lips, to feel how bruised they were.

She couldn't speak. Her throat felt as if it had been squeezed tight and would never open again.

George reached for his robe and wrapped himself up in it. Then he went across to the table, picked up his drink, and finished it in two swallows.

"You want one?" he asked her. Then, "No, I guess you probably don't."

"I'm going," said Catriona. The voice didn't sound like hers at all. Maybe she had only said it inside her head. She walked towards the door, colliding with a side table as she went. George moved across and barred her way.

"I suppose you expect an apology," he said. His eyes were puffy, and he seemed to be having difficulty focusing on her.

"I just want to get out of here," whispered Catriona.

"And then what?"

"And then I'm going to go to Sir Peregrine Arrowsmith and have you locked up. That's all."

"You realise that if you try to do that, I'll ruin you."

"I think you've already succeeded in doing that."

"Well, now," said George, keeping a firm grip on the door-handle, "don't you think you'd better consider your options carefully before you go rushing out of here?"

Catriona stared at him in disbelief. "You've just raped me!" she shrieked at him. "Now you're talking about choices? Let me get out of here!"

"I can't let you go, Catriona. Not until you promise that what happened is going to stay our secret. You get that? Our own personal secret, just you and me. A little romantic episode that nobody needs to know about."

"Romantic? Romantic! You must be out of your mind. You're a mental case. Now, let me go." She was babbling, half whispering, half screaming. All she could think about was this dark and threatening man blocking her way. This man who had already hurt her more than she could bear to think about, and who now might hurt her again. Even kill her this time.

"I've got to get out," she told him. And then, crying, her mouth turned down in despair and shock, "I've got to get out!"

"I can't let you out, Catriona. Not until you promise. And don't forget our little deal, either. We have a deal going, remember?"

Catriona pressed her hand against her mouth. The ship was rolling beneath her feet and she was sure she was going to be sick.

"I can't let you out," George repeated.

It was then that the door was suddenly pushed open from the outside, with all the momentum given to it by someone who has been striding along a corridor at top speed and opens a door without breaking stride. Miraculously, it was Mark. He took one step into the room and then stared at both George and Catriona in utter blankness. The door banged against the sideboard behind him, and then slowly swung shut again on its rising butts.

"Catriona? What the hell's going on here?" Mark asked her. "George? What's happened?"

Catriona said, "Oh, Mark. Oh, God," and then crumpled.