Maiden Voyage

FIFTY

Breakfast on Thursday morning was an especially grand affair. The first-class dining lounge had been festooned with garlands of roses, which had been specially prepared before the voyage by the royal florists in London and stored in pink tissue in the Arcadia's cold room, behind the bacon sides and legs of lamb.

The lounge was sparkling with nine o'clock sunshine, and fragrant with the scent of pink and white floribunda. Twelve pretty young girls in Greek tunics with roses in their hair flittered between the tables in a free-form interpretation of music from Ravel's ballet Daphnis and Chloe, while stewards carried out shining chafing dishes that were heaped with glistening yellow mountains of freshly scrambled eggs, crisply fried bacon, fried whitebait, curried kidneys, brains in black butter, and shoals of brown varnished Loch Fyne kippers.

Champagne was served, and so was Dragon Smoke tea from south-western China, and Costa Rican coffee. The table-linen was all pink damask, and every table was strewn with white roses. Everyone had dressed up for breakfast, the gentlemen in white flannel blazers and white ducks, and the ladies in a variety of pink and white frocks of silk and laon and crepe de chine. "The whole lounge had the appearance of being in a froth," wrote the society editor of the newly established newsmagazine Time.

Mark was waiting for Catriona at a small circular table in the corner of the lounge opposite the orchestra. As she made her entrance, he stood up, his tan looking darker than ever against his perfectly cut blazer. The crest of American TransAtlantic was embroidered in red and gold on his breast pocket.

Catriona, a little pale, was escorted in by Edgar Deacon. She had chosen to wear not pink or white, although it had been requested that all first-class passengers should do so, but a mauve crepe dress with flowing sleeves, a black feather belt, and a skirt that was formed of layers of triangular drapes of pleated fabric. She also wore a matching cloche hat, in mauve, with one long ribbon which reached down as far as her hem.

"You look just a little bit more than perfect," said Mark, reaching out and taking her hand. There was a bustle of conversation as people around them noticed the way they greeted each other.

"And you look just a little bit like Rudolph Valentino on a yachting holiday." Catriona smiled.

"That's a compliment?" Mark asked Edgar. But Edgar refrained from smiling or from answering. George Welterman was sitting only two tables away, talking in a loud voice to Charles Schwab, and Edgar didn't want to look as if last night's crisis had disturbed him.

"Enjoy your breakfast," Edgar told Catriona, pushing in her chair for her. "I must go and have a word with Mr. Philips."

Rudyard Philips, in his white cruising uniform, was sitting in the captain's chair, recounting his story about the mixed-up shoes on Aurora (Grand Duchess Marie, America's ranking Russian exile, had found a pair of men's tennis shoes, size ten, outside her door in the morning instead of her silver evening slippers, size four, and had illustrated her displeasure to the captain by wearing them in to dinner).

Edgar leaned over and said quietly, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Philips. But a quick word in your ear."

Rudyard excused himself, and followed Edgar outside to the anteroom,

where they stood in a corner by a large overhanging Helzine soleirolii, or Baby's Tears.

"You seem to be filling in for Sir Peregrine very adequately," said Edgar.

"Thank you,' said Rudyard. "I am a master in my own right, of course."

Edgar nodded. "I've spoken to Dr. Fields again," he said. 'Sir Peregrine isn't likely to regain the use of his right arm, it seems, nor his right leg—not without months and possibly years of treatment."

"I see," said Rudyard.

Edgar laid a hand on Rudyard's gold-braided shoulder. "We have to face up to the fact that this is the end, as far as Sir Peregrine's seagoing career is concerned, although he may probably wish to stay with Keys as an adviser. We're going to need a new master for the Arcadia, and a new fleet commodore."

"Yes," Rudyard replied. He was standing as straight-backed as he could.

"Obviously you're hankering to get back to the Aurora," Edgar went on, "but under the circumstances the board is going to have to ask you to take over as captain of the Arcadia for the rest of this voyage, and also for the return run to Liverpool. After that—well, it's no secret that the future of the company is in the balance."

"Taking command of the Arcadia is scarcely a hardship, Mr. Deacon." Rudyard smiled. "And didn't I understand you to say that IMM have guaranteed the jobs of all of our officers and crew?"

"As far as economically possible, they have," said Edgar. "But what I really want you to understand is that it may be two or three months before we can find a suitable replacement for Sir Peregrine, and even when we've found him, he's going to have to spend quite a few weeks familiarising himself with the ship. So you may be away from the Aurora for some time."

Rudyard felt as if his stomach had dropped down one of the Arcadia's lift shafts. He could see himself in one of the engraved mirrors on the other side of the anteroom, and his mouth had opened. He looked like a bystander in a news photograph of a serious accident. The serious accident, however, had happened to him.

"You're, er, happy with that arrangement?" asked Edgar, a little puzzled by Rudyard's silence. His voice was very clipped, very office-wallah.

"I sort of took it for granted that I was next in seniority," Rudyard told him, trying hard not to sound desperate. 'After Sir Peregrine, I mean."

"Yes?" said Edgar, obviously expecting him to say more.

"Well, I assumed that if anything were to happen to Sir Peregrine... I mean, I didn't think that anything like this would happen... but if he retired... or decided he wanted a shorebound billet rather than an oceangoing job... well, I assumed that I would take over the Arcadia."

"You are taking over," said Edgar.

"But only temporarily," Rudyard told him.

"Yes," said Edgar.

"But why? I thought I was the natural successor. I've had enough years at sea, damn it. I'm experienced enough."

Edgar put his arm further around Rudyard's shoulders and spoke to him in a clipped, fatherly tone. "We know that, Mr Philips. We're aware of your record, and how long you've been serving the company, don't y'know. But the thing is, when it comes to making a choice a commodore, you have to think of the way the shipping company is going to appear in the eyes of the travelling public. Do you a what I'm saying? We need somebody for commodore who is not only experienced, but looks experienced. A weathered seadog, if you like. A man with presence, and dignity, and age."

"You don't think I have dignity?"

"Mr. Philips, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm simply saying that we now have to look for a commodore who fits the public's idea of what a commodore should be."

"You're passing me over because I haven't got a grey beard?"

"Of course not. And, in any case, you're not being passed over. You're still captain of our second most luxurious steamship. You can't sneeze at the Aurora."

"The Aurora is not the Arcadia, Mr Deacon, and you damn well know it. The Aurora is old, underpowered, and she has about as much elegance as the Liver Building."

"I've always thought of the Liver Building as rather dramatic," said Edgar.

"It may well be," Rudyard retorted, "but you wouldn't want to put to sea in it, would you?"

"Mr. Philips, I think you're exaggerating," said Edgar. "The position is that if Keys remains independent, the board will shortly choose a new commodore, and that in the meantime you are to be captain of the Arcadia. That is all."

"I don't think you quite understand," said Rudyard. He was so hot now with anger and fear and disappointment that he was sweating into his tight white collar like an attendant in a Turkish bath. "I've been counting on this promotion."

"Counting?' asked Edgar, cocking his head to one side. "I'm sorry?"

"I've been counting on it," Rudyard repeated, but he couldn't bring himself to say how much. His humiliation was agonising enough without having to admit to Edgar that only an hour ago he had sent a wireless message back to Toy, telling her that under no circumstances could he consider a career on land, and that he had found new happiness with another woman. Whether this woman was Louise Narron, or whether she was the Arcadia, even Rudyard himself had not quite been sure. But one thing was now certain: he wasn't going to get the Arcadia, even if his happiness depended on it.

"You shouldn't be too disappointed," Edgar was saying, although Rudyard was scarcely listening to him now. "If Keys is bought up by IMM, you'll no doubt get the chance to command IMM ships, as well. Perhaps the Mauretania."

Rudyard said abruptly, "I'd better get back to the passengers."

"Listen," said Edgar, "you didn't really believe that—well, you didn't think that you were automatically going to take over as commodore, did you? Because nobody ever said anything about that in writing. You weren't given that specific promise."

"No," said Rudyard. "Nobody gave me that specific promise."

Edgar looked relieved. "You'd better get back to your passengers then."

Rudyard returned to the dining lounge with two spots of high colour on his cheeks. The steward drew out his chair for him, and he sat down. He began to eat his bacon and sausage links with quick, mechanical gestures, nodding and smiling now and then at the passengers who sat opposite him. One of these was Baroness Zawisza, who this morning was in excellent spirits. Sabran had lost his last cent last night to Maurice Peace, and in an attempt to win just a little of his money back, he had given Maurice a note for five hundred pounds. He had lost all of that, too; and so he had been presented with no alternative but to return to the baroness and ask her to meet his debt. The baroness had gladly written him a cheque; but had demanded in return a whole night of slavish service, including one of her favourite delights, which was to be made love to while she was asleep. Or mostly asleep, anyway.

Baroness Zawisza said to Rudyard, "You're looking thoughtful, Captain. You were going to tell us about the time that you lost your propellers off the island of Crete."

Rudyard said, "I've just learned that I am not going to take over the Arcadia permanently."

It was unforgivable to share a company confidence with a passenger. But Rudyard was so mortified by what Edgar had said that he had to tell someone, and that someone couldn't be any other member of the ship's complement, and it especially couldn't be Louise Narron. He could see Louise's flaming red hair between Jack Dempsey and George Welterman, and he felt like throwing back his chair, stalking across the dining lounge, and strangling her.

Baroness Zawisza said, "You must be very disappointed."

"I'm—" began Rudyard loudly, but then, more softly, "I'm quite disappointed, yes. She's a marvellous vessel, you see. Quite unlike anything else on the Atlantic today, and that includes the Mauretania."

Sabran, sitting next to the baroness, lit up a cigarette, took two or three sulky puffs at it, and then crushed it out into his kippers. Baroness Zawisza patted the poor boy's wrist, and said to Rudyard, "We all have our problems, you know. Ones I was riding on the banks of the Wrka, and I met an old peasant who had fallen down under the weight of a load of firewood. I wet his lips with Chateau Lynch-Bages as he lay there on the ground, and fed him a small piece of smoked quail. Then I rode on my way."

"He must have been very consoled," said Rudyard.

Sabran said, "Wee-meen! They are completely without mercy!"

Maurice Peace was thoroughly enjoying his breakfast. He sat with his napkin tucked into his collar, munching his way through bacon and whitebait, and alternately sipping coffee and soda. He had made a healthy profit from last night's cards, and the only possible cloud on his horizon was the fact that there were no clouds on the horizon. The day was clear and calm, and the Arcadia was making good time. He was wondering whether the best start to his morning might be to set fire to a few oily rags and push them down a ventilator shaft, so that the ship would have to slow down for a fire drill.

At the very far end of the lounge, however, Joe Kretchmer and Duncan Wilkes were in serious difficulties. They sat facing each other, divided only by their dogged rivalry and by seventeen different platefuls of breakfast, including plovers' eggs and pickled headcheese. Duncan Wilkes had nearly given up at the sight of more brains. He had only just managed to gag down two of them last night. Now, here they were again, fried crisp on the outside, and swimming in black butter, with capers.

Henrietta Chibnall, Mr. Kretchmer's second, was growing bored and rather nauseated by the whole affair. Mr. Kretchmer had not yet been spectacularly sick, as she had hoped, and she was growing increasingly sensitive to his grunts and puffs of abdominal exertion, not to mention the grease which kept running down his chin, and which it was her duty to mop up.

Grace Bunyon on the other hand had almost completely fallen in love with Duncan Wilkes, although she was concerned that by the end of the voyage, he would be far too fat to be good for anything, let alone romance. But she bravely mopped his sweating forehead for him, and quoted Shakespeare to give him encouragement. What she didn't know was that Duncan Wilkes, within the orderly caverns of his mind, had decided that his heart was probably not going to be capable of withstanding this constant feasting, and that by the time the Arcadia docked in New York, he would be dead.

The prospect did not alarm him. Throughout his life, as he had built up his small newspaper empire, he had always learned to abide by the decision that he had taken, whether they were good decisions or bad ones. He had decided, wisely or foolishly, to compete with Joe Kretchmer in an eating contest, and he was prepared to die rather than to give in. He believed quite firmly in a Victorian Heaven, in which gentle angels in long nightgowns flew about amongst the clouds with feathered wings, and in which the righteous and the persevering were allowed to sit at God's table, irradiated by the sort of warm tangerine-coloured light you see on summer evenings in the Midwest.

He would miss the crabmeat crepes Louise at the Chicago Pump Room; and he would miss his St Bernard named Flong (after the papier-mache moulds in which hot metal was poured to make plates for his newspapers' rotary presses). But, on the whole, he was content to go out eating.

Maurice Peace, with his uncanny nose for anything that smelled like a loser, watched Duncan Wilkes and noted his silent internal resignation with relish. He had seen too much death in the name of a good bet to feel sentimental about it.

Mark Beeney, who had ordered nothing more for breakfast than a pink grapefruit, three pieces of toast, and a bottle of Mme Bollinger's finest champagne, glanced across at the Wilkes-Kretchmer table and grinned. "How those two manage it, I just don't know. I doubt if they'll ever want to eat again."

Catriona said, "Mr Deacon says it's good for publicity. Particularly since Mr. Wilkes owns his own newspapers."

The steward came around, and Catriona ordered eggs Benedict and coffee.

"You're feeling better?" asked Mark.

"I think so. Dr. Fields gave me some sleeping pills, and I think that I'm over it now. But I don't know how he's got the nerve just to seat there as if nothing had happened," she said, nodding towards George Welterman.

"That's George Welterman's style. You'll just have to grin and bear it. He's the original thick-skinned gorilla."

"Did you know he had a burn across his chest?" said Catriona. 'It's terrible. Really deep, livid scars. He must have done it himself. It spells out the name Myrtle."

"He's screwy," said Mark. It was obvious that he didn't really want to talk about George Welterman; and that, for Catriona, was a quietly reassuring sign of his affection for her. A man who really loves you doesn't want to discuss any of the other men you've known. He has an interest in trying to pretend that he's the first. The first to buy you jewels, the first to give you your taste for Bollinger champagne. The first to love you so that the stars seem to burst above your bed.

Catriona laid her hand on the pink tablecloth, among the white roses, and Mark laid his darkly tanned hand on top of hers.

"I feel as if I don't have anything to give you," she said, in a quiet voice. "I feel as if George Welterman took it all away from me."

"That's nonsense," said Mark. "I can understand it, but it's nonsense."

"You really think so?" asked Catriona. The steward arrived with a silver coffeepot and poured her a cup of coffee.

Mark leaned forward and spoke to Catriona confidentially. "George Welterman didn't take anything from you. All he did was to destroy his own dignity."

Catriona would have loved to be able to believe him. But the shock of being attacked by George Welterman had abated, only to leave her with a terrible sensation of emptiness. She felt warm towards Mark. She hoped that she could trust him. But somehow the warmth had very little oxygen to sustain it, within that emptiness; and the trust had nothing to lean on. She seemed to have been betrayed by so many more people than George Welterman alone. She seemed to have been betrayed by everyone who allowed a man to do what he wanted with a girl, and then advised her that to complain about it would be more trouble than it was worth. Life and Business have to go on, Catriona. Don't rock the boat for the sake of an inconsequential rape. And, anyway, how can you ever prove that it was a rape? The way girls dress these days... the way they behave in Scott Fitzgerald novels ... why, you were lucky to be raped by somebody who was white and middle-aged and respectable. You were lucky it wasn't somebody from steerage!

Mark said, "I'm opening my mouth and putting my foot in it, aren't I?"

Catriona nodded. Quite suddenly she was near to tears.

"I'm sorry," he said, withdrawing his hand. "I shouldn't have been so insensitive. I guess I deserve a kick in the head."

"You're not insensitive," said Catriona. 'It's just that—well, what happened—it's going to take me a little while to get over it."

"I know," said Mark. "I feel like a failure for not killing him."

"You would have killed him?" asked Catriona.

"I felt like it. I even opened my desk drawer and took out my gun and loaded it. But killing George Welterman wouldn't have solved any problems. It would only make them worse. The genius of men him George is that they make themselves so obnoxious when they're alive that you know damn well they're going to be absolutely intolerable when they're dead."

"I suppose you're right," said Catriona. "But thank you for thinking of it. He's such a toad."

Mark said, "Don't thank me too much. My motives were pretty selfish, too. In fact very selfish. I didn't particularly want to be sent to prison, not when I had the chance of spending more time with you."

"You're banana-oiling again."

"Not a bit of it." Mark smiled. "In fact, there was something I wanted to ask you. Something serious."

"How serious?" asked Catriona. The steward had just brought her eggs, and set them in front of her. She looked up at Mark and in that moment, when she saw his face, she knew what he was going to ask her. God, she thought, he's desperately handsome. In that white flannel blazer, with that curly hair of his, he looks absolutely the bee's knees. And I know that I'm pretty, and I know what he's going to ask me, but please God don't let him ask me. It's too soon after George; and it's too soon after Nigel; and it's too soon for me. I've only just begun to discover that what I thought was sophistication was only confidence, the sheer confidence of being twenty-one; and I only just discovered that there's a whole complicated unknown world going on out there, and that too many people are expecting me to understand what it's all about, when I don't.

Mark said, "You're not ready for this, are you?"

"For what?" she asked him, breathlessly.

"I can see it in your face. I'm sorry. I think I've made a fool of myself."

"Tell me," she insisted.

He shook his head. "Forget I said anything. Let's just talk about business."

"I don't want to talk about business. I want to know what you were going to say."

"I was going to say—" began Mark, but then he shook his head again, and made a production out of spreading ids toast with Oxford marmalade.

"If you don't tell me, I shall do something drastic," said Catriona. "Like scream."

Mark looked up from his toast and smiled. "I'd rather you didn't scream," he said. "Too many people have hangovers around here. What I was going to say was that I don't want this voyage to be the last I see of you. In fact, I'd like you to get off the Arcadia when she docks in New York and spend a week or two with me in Boston. You could take Alice along as your chaperone."

More seriously, Mark said, "I'm stuck on you, Catriona, if you want to know the truth. It sounds too sudden. It sounds absurd. It probably sounds like a whole lot of applesauce. But that's the way I feel. I love you. You're the cat's miaow."

- Catriona hesitated for a moment, but then she touched his hand again, and said, "What happened last night—"

Mark made a face. "To some people, what happened last night may make a difference. I don't know. It doesn't to me. I know what George Welterman is like and I know that it wasn't your fault. I just hope that you can forgive me for not getting there earlier."

Catriona said, "You'll have to give me some time to think."

"I know. Well—maybe I shouldn't have asked you at all. I didn't want you to get the wrong idea."

"How could I possibly get the wrong idea about you?" asked Catriona.

"Well—"

"You said you love me. I believe you. All I have to think about is what I'm going to do about it."

Mark raised his hands as if he were being stuck up in a bank robbery. "You've got me, Miss Keys, just any way you want me. But let me know soon, won't you?"

As Catriona leaned across the table to kiss his cheek, Mark lifted his eyes for just a fraction of a second, and saw Marcia Conroy appear in the doorway of the dining lounge, dressed in pink and white. Marcia's face was open and expectant for a moment, until she caught sight of Mark and Catriona together. It was too late to do anything; too late to pretend. So Mark reached up and held Catriona's cheek with his fingertips, delaying the kiss, and that was in spite of the murmur of gossip all around them, and in spite of the fact that Marcia turned around and stormed angrily away, pushing aside a steward carrying a tray of cocktails, and tearing away a whole green tendril of baby tears from the anteroom.

Life on an ocean liner thrives on gossip, and society scandal, and everybody saw what had happened, even if they didn't understand the full implications of it. Only one first-class passenger wasn't there as a witness, because he felt that he had something far more important to do. Harry Pakenow had returned to third class.