Maiden Voyage

FORTY-SIX

Marcia said, "Where you have been? You haven't even changed. And where's the champagne?"

Mark looked down at his empty hands. "Did I say something about champagne?"

"Well, no. Not exactly. But one assumed."

"Oh," said Mark. He closed the door of the stateroom behind him. The theme of the sitting room was "Spring," but it was stifling enough in there to be midsummer. Marcia was curled up on the sofa with her long cigarette holder and a tall glass of seltzer, dressed in short-sleeved pyjamas of very pale green silk, with a laurel-green collar and piping.

"I don't know where your mind is these days," said Marcia. "You wander around as if you're half-asleep."

"Marcia, I have a thousand things on my mind. Not the least of which is you."

"And what are the other nine hundred and ninety-nine? Miss Catriona Keys, Miss Catriona Keys, Miss Catriona Keys, and so on, I suppose?"

"Will you forget about Miss Keys?"

"Only when you do."

Mark loosened his necktie and sat down in a green velvet armchair with varnished wickerwork sides. "You're being possessive again," he told her.

"Is that such a sin? Is it even so surprising, when you've just given me a diamond and emerald necklace and told me how much you adore me?"

Mark rubbed his eyes with his finger and thumb. "I'll call the steward," he said. "Do you really want champagne, or would you rather have coffee?"

"Coffee?"

Mark blearily checked his wristwatch. "It is nearly two in the morning. They'll be serving breakfast soon."

"Look," said Marcia, "if you want to go to bed, don't let me stop you. If my company makes you yawn, I'd hate to keep you."

"Stop being so damned unsure of yourself," Mark told her.

"Me? Unsure of myself? My dear Mark! I'm not unsure of myself, and I never have been. What I'm really unsure about is you. Do you really love me, or are you just playing?"

"Playing?" he asked her.

"Yes, my dear, playing. The same way you play with money, and the same way you play with ships. You've never had anything to do with anything that's real, have you? Not real struggle, or real love, or real disappointment. Even that beloved car of yours is only a fantasy. No wonder you're prepared to gamble it away. It never really existed at all, did it, except as a figment of your imagination. Now that it's real you don't even know if you want it or not. Well, I'm beginning to wonder if that's all that I've turned out to be. A dream girl who has come inconveniently true. A fantasy woman who has turned out to be a human being, much to your embarrassment. How discomfiting for you, to have to fulfil obligations and promises to someone you thought was nothing more than a pretty illusion inside of your head!"

"You're drunk," said Mark. "I'll order coffee."

"My God, if it could only be as simple as that," said Marcia. "If only I could be sure that you loved me, just by sobering up!"

Mark said, "Marcia, you're talking gibberish. You know what I feel about you."

"That's the trouble," she said. "That's the whole trouble."

"I don't know why you even came on this voyage," he told her. "You've done nothing but throw one jealous fit after another. And for no reason."

"I suppose Miss Catriona Keys isn't a reason?"

"What the hell does it matter if she is?"

"Well, is she?" Marcia demanded.

"Is she what?"

"A reason? Don't you even listen to me when I'm screaming at you?"

"For God's sake, pull yourself together," said Mark. "The more jealous you get, the uglier you look."

Marcia threw her glass of seltzer across the room. It smashed against the stainless-steel edge of a side table, and the contents fizzed across the carpet. "That's it, you bastard," she snapped. "You can take your diamonds back and your promises back and you can choke on them, for all I care!"

Mark stood up, and raised both of his hands. "Marcia," he said, "you're just acting crazy, that's all. Too much to drink. Too much dancing. Too much of everything."

Marcia stared at him with eyes as blue as cornflowers. "I came on this voyage because I was worried about you. I had a premonition that you were going to drown. It was so strong! I could almost feel the coldness of the sea."

Mark was silent. He lowered his hands.

Marcia said, "I came because I care about you desperately. Even if you and I aren't going to stay together, I still want to know that you're safe. I still want to know that you're happy."

Somehow, the impeccable English upper-class accent in which Marcia spoke these words made them seem all the more telling to Mark, and all the more poignant. An accent so crystalline was usually associated with confidence and self-assurance and inherited success. Instead, it was now being used to enunciate despair and uncertainty, and to express a longing that could never be fulfilled.

In spite of all of the diamonds, in spite of all of the champagne, in spite of all of the kisses, Marcia had been sensitive enough to understand that Mark didn't really, truly love her.

Mark said, softly, "I didn't ever intend to deceive you, you know. I never held out promises that I wasn't going to deliver."

Marcia's eyes were filling with tears. "You didn't have to," she said. "You, yourself, are the promise."

"I do love you, you know," he told her.

She looked up. Her voice came out as a brave, tearful gasp. "Yes," she said, "I know. It's wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful, how many different varieties of love there are. There are as many different varieties of love as there are candies in a sweetshop. I think you and I had the kind that tastes very, very sweet while it lasts, but melts away before you realise it's gone. Fondants, isn't that it? Strawberry fondant. It's a pity we didn't have the barley sugar. It doesn't taste so sweet, but it lasts almost forever."

She was crying quite openly now, the tears streaking dark marks on her pale silk pyjamas. Mark sat down beside her and held her shoulders, but she refused to allow him to draw her close to him.

"I know you went to see Catriona Keys just now," she sobbed. "My stewardess saw you outside her cabin."

"She was sick," said Mark. He hadn't told Marcia that George Welterman had raped Catriona. Mark and Alice and Edgar were the only ones who knew, although Dr. Fields had probably guessed. Dr. Fields had once told a young assistant of his that "medical complaints a board ship are caused seventy-five per cent by nausea and twenty-five per cent by libido"—so if Catriona's condition hadn't shown any symptoms of the first, it had almost certainly been attributable to the second.

"So sick that you had to visit her at one o'clock in the morning, for over half an hour?" Marcia demanded.

"What do you think?" Mark asked. "You think that I went to bed with her?"

"I don't know what to think. I know that I was waiting for you one to come with a bottle of champagne, and that I was expecting you to make love to me. But, well, obviously you had something more important to do."

"Marcia, you're not being fair."

"Why should I be? Why do I have to be fair? Are you fair to me? Have you ever been? What does fairness have to do with it?"

Mark let her go. He thought for a moment, and then stood up. "Listen," he said, "I'll come around again in the morning."

"Oh. You're going. So that's your answer, is it?"

"Marcia, if I were you, I'd order the giant pot of black coffee, drink all of it, and then go to bed."

"Oh, to hell with your coffee."

"Okay," said Mark. "I'm going. I'll be back in the morning, when you've come back to your senses. But right now, I don't particularly like your company and I don't particularly enjoy what you're saying to me. You can't bludgeon people into loving you, Marcia. It has to come naturally, if it's going to come at all."

"Brother," said Marcia, bitterly, "you just spoke a mouthful."

Mark turned, and walked across to the door.

"You don't have to give me any parting thoughts," said Marcia. "Just, you know"—and she flapped her hand at him—"be on your way."

Mark hesitated for a moment or two, then opened the door, went straight out, and closed it quietly behind him.

He didn't stay to listen to the painful sobbing that he could hear through the stateroom door. Instead, he took out a cigarette, lit it with a quick snap of his lighter, and strode with a serious face back to his cabin.