Maiden Voyage

FORTY-FIVE

Although it was one o'clock in the morning, Mark knocked at the door of Catriona's stateroom; and when Alice answered, he asked if she was awake, and if he could see her. Marcia had gone on ahead to slip into silk pyjamas, refresh her make-up, and spray herself with perfume. She imagined that Mark, too, was getting himself ready, and collecting a bottle of cold Perrier-Jouet for them to crack.

Alice said, "She's awake, but I don't know whether she'll want a visitor. She's been having nightmares, you know."

Mark passed a sharply folded five-pounds note through the gap in the door. "Tell her that it'll do her good to talk to somebody friendly."

Alice stared at the money for a moment; and then, by that extraordinary sleight-of-hand in which all domestics of the 1920s were expert, caused it to vanish from Mark's fingers and reappear in the pocket of her frilly apron. "I'll try, Mr. Beeney," she said. "I can but try."

After a minute or two, she came back, and beckoned him inside. "She's feeling much better. Dr. Fields came around about an hour ago and said she's recovered from the worst of the shock. A monster, that man, I can't tell you. But I heard what you did later, and I'm very gratified."

"You heard?" Mark smiled.

Alice made a pushing-down gesture with her hands, miming the way Mark had submerged George Welterman in his own bathtub. "The bath," she said. "Drowning was too good for him, if you ask my opinion."

She led Mark across the sitting room to the bedroom. Catriona was propped up on three frilly pillows, looking pale but relaxed. She wore a pair of pleated georgette pyjamas in pale rose, with Brussels lace panelling over the bust, and tight wrist-length lace sleeves. She had been drinking cocoa and reading a copy of Elite Styles. When Mark came in she smiled and patted the bed to show him that he should sit close to her.

"I don't know what I would have done without you," she said. "I think he would have murdered me."

"How are you feeling?" he asked her, taking her hand with all the directness of a longtime friend.

"I'm tired," she told him. 'I still feel bruised. But I don't think I feel as hysterical as I did before."

"Is Mr Deacon going to press any charges?"

"I don't know," she said. "It's really up to me."

"But Mr. Deacon has suggested you shouldn't make too much of a fuss, in case IMM change their minds about doing a deal with you. Is that it?"

Catriona nodded.

"I thought that might happen," said Mark. "And the trouble is that Mr. Deacon is probably quite right. That's why I took the trouble to pay George Welterman a little visit of my own."

"I know," said Catriona. "Alice told me. From what his valet said, you almost drowned him, and then punched him so hard that he couldn't hear in his left ear for half an hour."

"He deserves worse. But he's a very influential man, as well as a very unscrupulous one."

"I can't even think about him without feeling nauseous," Catriona shivered.

Mark said, "You could get your own back, of course."

"I don't even know whether I want to."

"You could hold out against selling Keys to IMM."

"And sell the Arcadia to you, instead? God, you're as unscrupulous as he is."

"I'm sorry," said Mark. "I didn't mean to sound as if I was exploiting your feelings."

"Well, aren't you? Isn't everybody?"

Mark held her hand between his. "Believe it or not, I care about you. In fact, I care about you very much."

Catriona said nothing. She felt jagged and wretched, like a china-headed doll that was coming apart at the seams.

Mark said, "Whatever Edgar tells you, not all of your fellow stockholders want to sell out to IMM. If you were to vote against a sale to George Welterman, then you'd probably find that you had just about enough backing to prevent it, at least for the time being."

"But Edgar keeps telling me that we have to. If we don't, we'll go bankrupt, and everybody who works for Keys will be thrown out of a job. Believe me, Mark, he showed me a family down by the docks, and the way they have to live, you wouldn't believe it. I couldn't be responsible for making their lives any more poverty-stricken. If I did that, do you think I'd ever be able to go back to my father's grave and lay flowers on it?"

"A flapper with a social conscience," said Mark, gently teasing her.

"A person who happens to care about other people, that's all," Catriona retorted.

"Really?"

Catriona said, "I'm twenty-one, Mark, that's all. I want to behave like twenty-one. I want to enjoy everything that there is to enjoy. But that doesn't mean that I have to be completely callous, does it?"

Mark stood up. "You remember that young chap I sent round to see you? Philip Carter-Helm?"

"Yes. What about him? I thought he was rather stodgy."

"Hm," said Mark, "he's not nearly as stodgy as he first appears. In fact he knows a great deal more about Keys Shipping than I do; and I even suspect that he knows a great deal more about it than you do."

"He used to know my father; or so he says."

"I was talking to him in London," said Mark. "He explained quite carefully how the common stock in Keys Shipping is apportioned. The way it works out at the moment, those stockholders likely to vote in favour of selling out to IMM number fifty-one per cent. Those who are likely to vote against selling out to IMM number twenty-four per cent. That, of course, is without counting in your own twenty-five per cent on either side.

"If you decided to go along with Edgar and the rest of the board, then obviously the vote would be overwhelmingly in favour of the sale to IMM. But if you didn't—well, there are one or two waverers in the yes lobby. Mr. Fearson for one. He doesn't like IMM one little bit; and there's no doubt at all that if they bought up Keys he'd be out of a job. And your Aunt Isabelle is something of an unknown quantity."

"How do you know all this?" asked Catriona.

"I have to confess that I was told most of it by Philip Carter-Helm. He's quite encyclopaedic when it comes to the subject of Keys Shipping. He knows your gross annual turnover, the amount of freight, and the number of passengers you carried, as well as their classes and their destinations; the names of all of your agents abroad; how many ships you own; and where they all are. You name it, he knows it."

"He doesn't make a very good Cupid, though. Too dull."

"Well, I'm sorry about that. I thought you were mad at me for mixing business with pleasure."

"I was."

"And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad. The trouble is, we don't have very much time. When the Arcadia arrives in New York, Edgar's got to have some kind of a financial deal wrapped up, at least tentatively; because otherwise Keys may never be able to get her out of harbour again, and you can imagine what that will do for your reputation. I don't know how many return bookings you have already, but I should imagine you're almost sold out. Can you imagine the consequences of having to turn all those people away?"

Catriona closed her eyes for a long moment, and then opened them again and looked at Mark with tiredness and resignation.

"I know what the problem is," said Mark. "The problem is that you don't think you can trust me. What's going through your head right at this particular instant is: Mark Beeney wants the Arcadia, and he'll do anything and say anything to get it. Whereas you, of course, are worried about the chances of the family business surviving on its own, and all those unfortunate poverty-stricken people who work for Keys back in Liverpool."

Catriona was about to say something, but Mark raised his hand. "'Hear me out, that's all. International Mercantile Marine took over the Blue Funnel Line three years ago. Maybe you don't remember the Blue Funnel Line. It wasn't much: a little family business about a sixth of the size of Keys, mainly carrying livestock and peanuts between Galveston and Pensacola and New York. A few business passengers, not too many. But IMM dismantled that shipping line in six months. It sold off all the ships it didn't want for breaking; or to shipping companies in Japan and China; and it sacked all the staff and sold off all the warehouses. By the end of a year, you wouldn't have known that Blue Funnel Line had ever existed."

"But Edgar said that IMM had promised to keep Keys together," Catriona protested. She didn't really feel like arguing, but Mark seemed to be so insistent on having it all out, on explaining his motives, and excusing his lack of sensitivity.

"What do you think a promise from George Welterman is worth?" asked Mark. "The kind of man who can attack a woman when there's nothing she can do to defend her honour... you believe a man like that?"

"I don't know. I really don't. I don't actually want to talk about it anymore."

Mark said, "You really believe that I was trying to seduce you so that you would sell me the Arcadia? You really believe that?"

Catriona looked away. She suddenly felt embarrassed. "It crossed my mind, of course it did."

"Well, why don't you ask me? Straight and direct?"

She looked quickly and directly into those clear and overserious eyes of his. "Well?' she asked. "Did you?"

"You want me to tell you a romantic lie, or the naked truth?"

"I've always preferred the naked truth."

"Well, if that's what you want... I first approached you because I thought you were stunningly pretty, and because I wanted to get to know you."

"And you don't want the Arcadia at all?'

"Of course I want the Arcadia. I want both of you. You, personally, and the ship. It's only my eagerness, yes, and maybe my clumsiness, too, that allowed the two to get themselves mixed up."

"You really think—" began Catriona.

Mark shushed her. "Dr. Fields said you had to rest. Rest, he said, okay?"

"You don't have any heart at all, do you?" Catriona asked him. She knew she shouldn't have invited him in, especially now, when she was feeling so touchy. Why couldn't he say the right thing, just once, whether it was the truth or not? All he seemed to do was upset her. He was worse than George Welterman; worse because he was just as hypocritical, and eight times as good-looking, and because George Welterman had raped her and Mark Beeney hadn't.

Alice had already laid down her crochet and was looking at Mark, Sizing him up, in case any forcible chaperone work was called for. In her time, Alice had protected dozens of ladies and less-than-ladies from dozens of ardent gentlemen, many of whom had been far larger and far more persistent than Mark, and a great deal drunker. It was partly a question of persuading them that they would be doing the honourable thing by saying goodnight and leaving, and partly a question of jabbing them very hard in the arse with her crochet hook.

But Mark, leaning forward, took both of Catriona's hands between his and said quietly, "Perhaps it's just infatuation. I hope it isn't, because it feels so good that I want it to last. You have to understand that what I said yesterday about loving you... I meant it. But it doesn't change things, in the sense that I can allow myself to give up trying to buy the Arcadia. It can't, and I'd be screwy if I pretended it could. I want you, and I want your ship. But I don't intend to exploit either need in order to satisfy the other. If you can't love me the way I love you, but you want to sell me the Arcadia... well, I suppose I'll have the consolation prize, at least. If you love me, and you don't want to sell me the Arcadia... I'll have to accept that, too, although a great deal more gladly."

'And if I don't love you, and I don't want to sell you the Arcadia, either?' asked Catriona in a soft whisper.

Mark looked down at the embroidered counterpane, still clasping her hand between his. His diamond-studded Jaeger-le-Coultre wristwatch was ticking away the seconds to one-thirty in the morning.

"I'm not sure," he said. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I believe in whirlwind romances, sure. But is this a romance? I mean, in the ordinary sense? I don't know. I can't explain how I feel. I'm used to talking in terms of preferred stock and tonnage and bills of lading. How can you use that kind of language to say that you've met someone you shouldn't really get involved with, for all sorts of the very best reasons, and yet you only have to look at her and you can't resist her?"

He raised his eyes. The glow from the futuristic Marianne Brandt bedside lamps outlined his tanned and angular cheekbones by lighting up the tiny blond hairs on them. Catriona felt like reaching up and touching them, but Mark still held her hands fast together, as if she were a prisoner of his passionate indecision—a hostage to the feelings which disturbed him so deeply.

"'I felt so responsible for what happened to you today," he said. "I should have stepped on George Welterman's hands the first minute he tried to climb on board."

"It doesn't alter the way you feel about me?"

"Do you think it should?"

"You understand what he did to me, don't you?" asked Catriona. She was trying to keep her voice level but it wasn't easy.

Mark released her hands at last. She wasn't sure what the significance of this sudden letting-go might be; but he said, in a sentence that was made up of small chopped-up phrases, "I've known George for years, and I should have realised right from the start what he was trying to do."

Catriona said, "You're screwy."

He smiled. "Of course I'm screwy. I'm screwy about you."

"You're screwy to be screwy about me."

"Well, maybe. But I can't help it."

"Oh, nerts."

"You don't believe me? You don't believe what I'd do for you?"

"I don't believe that anyone can fall in love so quickly. Nobody except me."

Mark grinned, a wide grin that was full of sparkling white teeth. "You love me too? You and your ship, or just you?"

"Just me. You can leave my ship out of this."

"But you don't mind any more that I want the Arcadia?

Catriona shook her head. Mark was making her feel quite intoxicated now, with all this talk of love. She suddenly thought, it's absurd, but I do love him. I loved him the very first moment I looked at him. And now he loves me, too. And there's nothing to worry about but love, love, love.

"Wait," said Mark, unexpectedly serious. 'You do realise that this could be nothing more than one of those infamous shipboard romances? You know what they say in those Keys advertisements about taking a girl down to the rail, and showing her the wake of the ship glistening in the moonlight, as if that was all you were going to show her?"

Catriona frowned. "You're right. We should probably call the whole thing off before it gets too hot. Besides, it's late. Goodnight, Mr. Beeney. So nice of you to enquire after my health."

Alice suddenly put in, "Excuse me just a moment, Miss Keys. I think I forgot to switch off the gramophone," and she put down her crochet and bustled into the sitting room. Closing the door behind her, of course.

"Dear Alice," said Catriona. "She's strict, but she's understanding."

In the lamplight, with her bobbed hair shining, she looked to Mark like somebody magical: half human and half enchanted. It was probably nothing more than her dark, slightly slanted eyes, or the curve of her forehead. How can anybody describe the subtle shades and elusive lines that make one girl beautiful? There were similarities in Catriona's face to Marcia's, and to all of the girls that Mark had found especially attractive. But to him, Catriona had everything that made a girl irresistible, and even if she had been George Welterman's sister, he would have fallen in love with her right from the start.

He bent his head towards her, his lips parted, and for a moment they looked at each other from only three inches apart. The hovering anticipation of a kiss, thought Catriona, is equal to at least half the total pleasure of the whole experience. Gradually, as if she were falling asleep, she closed her eyes, and then Mark touched her lips with his, delicately at first, as softly as if he were trying to bite snow; and then more insistently, tasting the sweet greasiness of her lipstick again and again. She uttered something, but neither of them knew what it was. It was simply a sound of love.

His tongue tip ran the length of her closed mouth, and then gently thrust forward, parting her lips, encountering her teeth and the tip of her own tongue. He licked her upper incisors, feeling the white square shape of them, and then he ran his tongue around her top teeth from the back to the front, and deep into the back again.

For a moment, their tongues wrestled, in a welter of shared saliva. Then Mark's rigid tongue licked Catriona's tongue into curling submission, circling around it, thrusting beneath it, and teasing the membrane that joined it to the floor of her mouth. Her tongue retreated, shyly, while he provoked it and played with it.

Catriona opened her eyes for a moment and she could see the side of Mark's forehead, and his short, well-brushed curls. She reached up with her hand and stroked the back of his neck, around his stiff starched collar, and then the curve around his ears. He was so appealing, so masculine, that she could almost have eaten him. Sunk her teeth into those golden-brown muscles, and devoured him whole.

The kiss, after whole minutes, was over. Mark sat up straight, staring at her, unable to take his eyes off her, any more than she was able to take her eyes off him.

"Well," he said. "Miss Catriona Keys."

"Mr Mark Beeney," she answered him.

"Where do we go from here?" he asked her.

"Do you really want to go anywhere?"

"Not just now. But what about tomorrow? And what about the day after tomorrow? And Saturday, when we reach New York?"

She reached out her arm, tightly encased in exquisite lace, and touched his shoulder. At that moment Alice, who wasn't taking any chances with Catriona when it came to young gentlemen, returned with a fresh skein of cotton.

"You're feeling all right, Miss Keys? Not too tired?"

"Alice, I'm feeling wonderful."

"Well, that's as may be. But remember what the doctor said. And wasn't let yourself get carried away. You had a nasty shock. You haven't felt the worst of it yet."

"I know," said Catriona.

Mark said, "I ought to be going. I don't want to tire you out."

"You'll come and have breakfast with me tomorrow?"

"Of course I will, if you think you'll be up to it."

"I think so," said Catriona. She smiled at him, because she couldn't help smiling at him. "I seem to have a new lease of life all of a sudden. I can't think why."

"You'll take care, won't you?" he told her. "George may have hurt you more than you realise."

"I'll get my own back on him yet," said Catriona. "Don't you worry about that."

"You won't be the first person who's wanted to. I just hope you're the first person who succeeds."

Catriona said, "By the way, how's Sir Peregrine? Have you heard any more news? Edgar told me what happened at dinner."

"Nothing so far," said Mark. "They're saying that he was probably overtired, after the first night and the storm and everything. 1 According to the purser, he's resting."

"Mark," she said, as he stood up and straightened his coattails.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," she said. "It isn't really anything."

He waited where he was. He knew she had something important to tell him. In the end, in a strained voice, she said, "You will give me I time, won't you?"

"For what?"

"For everything. To think."

"Sure," he said and leaned forward and kissed her again.

Alice said, "It's time you took a rest, Miss Keys. You've had enough excitement for one evening. Come on, if you want to get up tomorrow—"

Catriona said, "Yes. I suppose I'd better." She felt more tired than she could ever remember. She smiled at Mark, and settled down amongst her pillows, and the last thing she heard was the soft sound he made as he snicked the door lock closed in the sitting room.