Maiden Voyage

TWO

Her mother was resting in the day room when Catriona arrived home. She was propped up in a white-painted basketwork chair with far too many cushions, and she was wearing a tiny and menacing pair sunglasses, presumably to hide her swollen eyes. She had just finished a mug of Home & Colonial Beef Tea, but she hadn't been able to touch the ham salad that cook had prepared for her.

The day room had always been her mother's room; it was a small pretty parlour with French windows which gave out on to a flight of stone steps, and on to that part of the garden which her father had always liked to call the nattery—where Mother's friends would gather on summer afternoons to natter. Unlike almost every other room in the house, there were no etchings or oil paintings of ships in the day room, just pink flowery wallpaper and gilded mirrors. In the corner stood an unfinished embroidery of Balmoral Castle.

"You came, darling," Catriona's mother cried tearfully, lifting her hands. "Oh, my dear Catriona, they brought you back."

Catriona crossed the room and knelt beside her mother's chair. They embraced each other, tightly and awkwardly. Catriona stroked her mother's auburn-tinted hair, and scratched her hand on one of her mother's diamond combs. Her mother wept and trembled in a tussle of frustration and grief, and Catriona knew that there was nothing she could say or do to help her, not now, and maybe not ever. Her father had been the firm ground on which her mother had walked, and the vault of heaven above her head. His death had been more than the loss of a husband: it had been the sudden and utter vanishing of every recognisable landmark in her life. It was as if she had been abruptly blinded as she was walking across an unfamiliar pasture.

"I was afraid you weren't going to cuh-uh-ome," sobbed her mother. She had to take off her dark spectacles to dab at her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief. "After what happened last time, well, I just didn't know."

"Mother, of course I came," Catriona soothed her. She took her hand and squeezed it twice. Her mother's hands were knobbly with diamond and sapphire rings—ugly Victorian rings that were probably worth thousands and thousands of pounds. She always wore them, and even today she hadn't forgotten to put them on. But her dress was plain and unfamiliar and black, with a jet brooch at her neck, and double pleats of black lace over the bust, and she wore black shoes and black stockings. Her mother had always looked like Catriona expected she would look in twenty years' time, and somehow the black dress reinforced that impression. A black and white photograph from tomorrow.

"Is Isabelle here?" asked Catriona. "I saw the Crossley parked outside."

"Mr. Fearson sent her a telegraph very first thing," said her mother. "She's having a light supper now, with Mrs Brackenthorpe. She's been wonderful, of course. Everybody's been wonderful. But your poor father, my darling. It was such a shock. And so young, and so vigorous."

"Hush, mother," said Catriona, but her mother didn't seem to hear her.

"He went to church as regularly as anyone," she said. "Every Sunday, Holy Communion and Evensong, both. So how could the Lord have taken him so young? Only fifty-three! His life only two-thirds lived! And to think of the sinners and the ruffians who live to a ripe old age, and have never once seen the inside of a chapel! That's what I've been asking myself today. How could the Lord have taken so obedient a servant so young?"

Catriona stood up, and brushed her skin straight. "Mother," she said, "you really must try to rest. It's no good thinking about why Father died. You have to start thinking about helping yourself now. That's the way he would have wished it, wouldn't he?"

Her mother let out a wretched sob, her lips as wet as a child's. How do I know what he would have wanted? He never told me what he wanted. He was just there."

"Mother, rest. I'll see if Isabella can get something to help you sleep."

"Sleep? How can I sleep? The last time I slept, I woke up to find that I'd lost the only person I've ever cared about. I never want to sleep again."

"Mother," said Catriona, and bent forward to hug her mother very close to her. "I do love you, Mother."

At that very moment the door opened and Isabelle came in with a piece of blackberry and apple pie on a plate. When she saw the uneaten salad and Catriona, she said, "Oh," in an affronted tone, as if all of her painstaking nursing was being thrown back in her face. Isabelle was her mother's younger sister, a narrower, thinner, sourer version of her mother, with skimpier hair, a sharper nose, smaller breasts, and bonier ankles; Catriona's father always used to say that when Isabelle had been younger, she had been "quite a dazzler". But care and jealousy had prematurely worn her out, while Catriona's mother, by contrast, had grown smooth-faced and placid.

"You're going to have to eat something sometime, you know, dear," said Isabelle. "And cook did make a special effort to give you something light and tasty. Hallo, Catriona. I'm surprised to see you back so prompt."

"My father's dead," said Catriona, simply, standing up straight.

Isabelle ignored her. "You really ought to make an effort with the salad, dear," she persisted. "Cook will be frightfully hurt if you don't even make an effort."

Catriona's mother looked sideways at her supper tray. Catriona said, "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to, Mother. I don't think ham salad is the best antidote to grief, anyway."

Catriona's mother continued to stare at the supper tray, and two large tears rolled out from under her dark glasses and down her cheeks. She was thinking, probably, as Catriona was thinking, that this was the first supper she was having to eat without her husband. Her first supper alone, and all of those lonely suppers ahead of her, for the rest of her life. She could never conceive of marrying anyone else. What other man was so much a part of the fabric and the firmament of Formby; what other man was big enough to build the world's largest passenger liner and still care for everything that his wife wished for?

"I'll send Gwen for the tray, then," said Isabelle.

Catriona said clearly, "No, Aunt Isabelle. Please I'd really appreciate it if you took the tray away now."

Isabelle hesitated by the door. Then fussily she came across and picked up the tray. "I hope you don't think that you'll be running things around here," she said, in a voice as sharp as a lemon-drop. "Not after your scarlet goings-on. Actors and the like. I've heard all about it, don't you worry."

"I'm not worried," Catriona told her levelly.

"Not even ashamed, I shouldn't wonder," said Isabella.

"Izzy," put in Catriona's mother wanly. "I do wish you wouldn't. Not now."

"Well, I'm sorry, I'm sure, but even at the worst of times some things have to be said, don't they?" Isabella retorted. "She wasn't what you'd call a model daughter, was she? Never did a solitary thing that Stanley wanted. But now he's been taken, she's around the honeypot soon enough, isn't she, the busy little bee?"

Catriona pressed her hands together as if she were praying, and lowered her head. She could never get to grips with Isabella's bitterness: it was like a wriggling sour-tempered hedgehog that hated its life, but refused to be helped. The whole family knew why Isabelle was so bitter, of course; and Isabelle knew they knew. But she couldn't help herself. When she was seventeen, she had been far prettier than Catriona's mother, and she had always had dozens of boyfriends. She had eloped with Tony, a dashing young commercial traveller who had dazzled her into believing that he was going to make a million out of selling Brooke's Monkey Brand soap throughout the northwest of England. But now Tony was a shop-assistant in Liverpool, selling ready-made gents' suits and celluloid collars, and Isabelle was having to make do on 6 pounds seven and nine a week; while Catriona's mother, who had gradually developed during her twenties into a young Victorian woman of ravishing looks, had at last married Stanley Keys, the self-made shipping magnate, after meeting him at a teatime concert in Formby, and was now the mistress of five large houses, seven motorcars, and a fleet of passenger liners that before the War had been the acknowledged to be the most gracious ships afloat. Of course, Catriona's mother had always helped Isabelle out with occasional gifts of money. The Crossley motorcar had been a birthday present. But Isabelle's bitterness had not been softened by her inability to say no. Isabelle had her pride, naturally, but not that much pride.

"I'm just pleased that Catriona is here," her mother told Isabelle in a gentle voice. "This is a time when I'm going to need all of my family around me, without any prejudice or favour shown to anyone. And if you do think of poor Stanley's fortune as a honeypot, well, just remember that Stanley never denied any of his relatives or friends any of the honey. He was a Christian: a man who believed that everybody had a right to a fair share of luxury, if there was any luxury ever to be had."

Isabelle gave a petulant shrug. "I'd better instruct cook about dinner tonight, if Mr Deacon's coming. And I suppose Mr Fearson will want to stay, too."

"I would like it if he were to," said Catriona's mother.

I just hope we have enough cutlets to go around," Isabelle replied, as if someone had already plucked her dinner off the end of her fork.

When she was gone, Catriona took her mother's hand again and stroked it.

"I'm sorry," said Catriona's mother.

"There's no need to be," Catriona told her. "I think I'm used to Aunt Isabelle after all these years."

"It's not her fault, really," said Catriona's mother. "I can understand how she feels. Fate is very unjust sometimes, or at least it appears to be. She doesn't seem to realise that I would gladly give up everything—the house, the shipping line—just for one more day with Stanley. Just for one more minute. We were very happy, you know. Very much in love."

Catriona smiled.

"Are you going to be staying long?" asked her mother. "You don't have to rush back to London straight away?"

"I'll stay for as long as you need me."

"But there's nobody waiting for you, is there? What about that actor boy, Terence?"

"Nigel."

"Oh, yes. Nigel. Won't he be waiting for you?"

Catriona stood up, and walked across to the French windows. It was dark outside now, and she could see her own reflection in the glass, like a ghostly waif standing outside in the garden without even the courage to knock.

"I think I've left Nigel."

"For good?"

"I think so."

Her mother turned around in her chair and looked at her sympathetically. She felt sorry for Catriona, but of course it was also good news. Catriona's waywardness with boys had been the cause of more family dissention than almost anything else, and the Yorkshire relatives in particular had been so scandalised that they had sent Catriona no birthday presents since she was fifteen. The day that her father had discovered that Catriona was playing around in bed with Monsieur Nasillard, her young French tutor, he had furiously sent her off to live with his spinster sister in Morecambe. Every visit of Catriona's to Formby after that had been short, sharp, and attended by hellish arguments. Stanley Keys had loved his daughter too much to disinherit her, or punish her too severely or for too long: but he had come to believe at last that she was a girl with a will and a passion of her own, and when she was eighteen he had given her enough money to go to London, and stay with one of his retired liner captains and his wife, knowing quite well that she would soon find her own friends and lovers, and her own place to live.

He may never have really known how much Catriona had adored him, nor how much she had wanted him simply to say that she could continue to stay at home, and live with the family in a state of truce, even if they couldn't actually live together in accord. It probably wouldn't have worked, anyway. He had probably done the right thing, letting her have her head. But if only he had asked. It would have meant that at least one of her parents understood that she wasn't really the confident, casual, promiscuous girl she appeared to be.

At least one of her parents would have known that she needed more love and encouragement than most children; that her prettiness and her brashness were masks behind which she hid a baffling uncertainty a and an almost addictive need for reassurance. But she realised now that expecting her father to penetrate her personality as deeply as that had been too much. He had been a rich, busy man, and he had been preoccupied with the financing and the building of the world's largest and most luxurious ocean passenger liner, the Arcadia. Apart from loving her, plainly and straightforwardly, what else could he have found the time to do? She thought it was strange that she could not remember what his face had actually looked like. Did people vanish from memory so quickly, when they died? Yesterday he had been alive. He had made telephone calls and eaten a mutton pie. Today, he might just as well never have existed.

"NigeI was a nice chap, wasn't he?" Catriona's mother asked her carefully. "He didn't—well, he didn't treat you roughly, did he?"

Catriona gave her mother a brief, rueful smile. "No, mother. He didn't treat me roughly. He was a bit of a harebrain. Father would have called him a "rumble-seat Roger". But he was very fond of me. He could be marvellous. And when he was on the stage, you wouldn't have believed it was the same man."

"Well, anyway," said Catriona's mother, smoothing her dress. There were tears in her eyes again and Catriona knew that another wave a was coming over her, in spite of the beef tea and the sedatives that Dr Whitby had given her.

"I'll stay, mother, don't worry," Catriona told her softly.

"It's the ship," said her mother. "It's so sad about the ship. The finest ship that ever was, and he never saw it sail."

"I know, mother," whispered Catriona. "But try to be brave. He wouldn't have asked for a better way to be remembered, would he? Whenever anyone mentions the Arcadia, they'll always think of Stanley Keys."

At that moment, Catriona raised her eyes, and there on the small Regency table beside the window was a photograph of her father in a silver frame. The picture must have been taken on a windy day, because his hand was blurred as it went up to catch his cap. But he was smiling, brightly and confidently, a man who was very pleased with himself, and a pleased with life, and quite certain about the future.