Maiden Voyage

FIFTY-THREE

Marcia had been lifted aboard, wrapped in a blanket, and then carried in Mark's arms down to the ship's hospital, where Dr. Fields and his nurses had already prepared a bed for her in a private room. Catriona followed a little way behind in her mauve Doucet dress, escorted by Dick Charles. Behind her came a shouting collection of American journalists and photographers, and a herd of curious passengers. Monty Willowby appeared from the direction of the forward staterooms with a large brown-paper parcel under his arm (Sir Gerald and Lady Burnutt's lavatory-seat, which he had feverishly unscrewed during Marcia's rescue) and he succeeded in diverting the press and the passengers so that Marcia could be borne safely to her bed. Marcia's stewardess, Ada, was already there with a clean nightgown of turquoise silk, and she shooed Mark into the hospital anteroom while Marcia was bathed and changed.

|The anteroom was plain and painted in cream. On the wall was a single Georges Barbier print, mostly orange, of two nude ladies pouting at two pouting doves. Catriona took a cigarette out of her small silver case, and Mark came across and lit it.

For two or three minutes, Catriona smoked in silence. Then she said, "Is this going to change anything?"

Mark said, "Why should it?"

"Oh, don't be so naive," she told him. "She tried to kill herself, and all because of you."

Mark shrugged. "We'd argued. But I didn't have any idea that she felt so rejected."

"You must have told her about us."

"I didn't, as a matter of fact."

"You should have done, just to be fair."

"That's what she told me," complained Mark. He took out a cigarette himself and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "I had to be fair, I said. Well-what's fair? I ask you? I don't know what's fair. Is that I've fallen in love with you, and out of love with her? Is that I've fallen in love with you, and yet I still want to buy the Arcadia? Tell me what's fair, and I'll do it. I don't know what's fair."

"Oh, for God's sake,' said Catriona. "You don't have to be so petulant about it."

"Petulant?" he exclaimed. But then he banged his fist on his own forehead, and nodded, and grinned, and said, "All right. I'm being petulant. It's inherited. In Boston, they call us the Petulant Beeneys."

Catriona said, "I'm just concerned that you're going to feel responsible for her now, in case she tries to kill herself again."

"Of course I feel responsible."

"So responsible that she's going to come between us?"

"Of course not."

Catriona blew out smoke. "You say, of course not. But if you feel responsible, then you're going to have to act accordingly, aren't you? In a responsible way. And the only way to fulfil your responsibility, and to prevent Miss Conroy from leaping off this ship again, is to tell her that you've loved her all the time, and that you still love her. 'Sorry about Catriona, she was just a mistake'."

Mark said, "Why do girls always have to make life so damned complicated?"

"We don't make it complicated," Catriona told him. "It's simply that we can face up to things, which men can't. You don't have anything more complicated to do than make up your mind whether you want to stay with Marcia, or come with me."

"You make yourself sound so hardboiled," said Mark. "I think I'm hardboiled. In business, I'm hardboiled. But you—whoo!"

Catriona came and sat down beside him. She touched the back of his wrist, her fingertip circling around and around. "There's nothing hardboiled about facing up to what you are and what you want out of your life," she said, gently. "It's honesty, that's all. I inherited it from my father and I had to use it against my father when I first went to London. I knew what I wanted, even though I was only seventeen. I wanted to be free. I wanted to discover what life was really like, outside Formby, and I did. Perhaps it was scandalous. Well, it was scandalous. None of my friends ever managed to do it, and most of them are still living at home with their parents even now. But I found a man who loved me, and I learned about love, and I don't think that's too hardboiled, do you?"

Mark looked at her seriously, and then down at her circling finger. His cigarette was still unlit. "I don't think I've ever had to go after love like that," he said.

"You make it sound like a bear in the woods, which you can either hunt or leave alone."

"Well, isn't it?"

"Sometimes. And sometimes it springs up on you and attacks you when you're least suspecting it."

"Like when?"

"Like the moment I first saw you."

"I don't believe you fell in love with me then," smiled Mark. He kissed her forehead, and then her cheek, and then her lips. "Nobody in love like that."

"Prove it."

It was then that Dr. Fields appeared, with his stethoscope hanging from his neck, and set his black leather bag down on the art deco liable. He thoughtfully sucked a shred of breakfast bacon out from his false teeth, and then he said, "Well ... I've made an examination."

"Is she all right?" asked Mark.

"She's as well as one might reasonably expect her to be. She has severe bruising, from jumping into the water from such a height. She is also suffering from shock, from exposure to cold seawater, and from the complete exhaustion. But, well, none of those conditions is difficult to treat. If she has plenty of rest, and plenty of affectionate company, she should recover by the time we reach New York."

Mark said, "Did she tell you why she'd jumped?"

Dr. Fields looked at him narrowly, and then nodded. "She did explain it to me, yes."

"And?"

"And nothing," said Dr. Fields. "What do you expect me to tell you? That you shouldn't jilt young ladies when you're as rich and as good looking as you are, in case they kill themselves? It's a risk that some people have to take. Not a risk that I've ever been fortunate enough to have to run. But a risk, nonetheless, which can have tragic consequences for everybody concerned."

"So what do you suggest?" asked Mark.

Dr. Fields coughed. "If you like, you could try being more considerate towards her for a while, provided you don't raise her expectations beyond what you're prepared to give her. Don't tell her that you love her if you don't. Don't promise to marry her, or anything foolish like that. It might help her to come out of her depression now, but it would kill her later on, when she found out that you didn't mean it. Be her friend, that's all I can say. She deserves at least that much."

Mark said, "Can I see her?"

"For a short while, yes. But I want her to sleep."

They went into the room where Marcia was lying. The shade had been drawn down over the porthole so that the sunlight was dimmed. There was a vase of pink silk peonies on the table; and, on the wall, a soothing pink and grey landscape. Marcia's head was wrapped in snowy white bandages, and the hand that lay on the plum-coloured blanket was bruised and scratched. She looked up at Mark and Catriona with eyes that were already drooping from the effects of sedatives.

"Mark?" she whispered.

He drew a chair across. Catriona sat on the end of the bed.

"I'm here," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Unreal," she slurred. "I'm not sure if I'm dead or if I'm alive."

"You're alive, believe me. I didn't know you could swim like that."

"Was I really swimming? I can't think why. I thought drowning would be easy. But once I was in the water, I kept thinking, Swim. I could hear my old games mistress calling out, Swim, gel, swim! And so I swam."

Catriona said, "You were lucky somebody saw you. There were only two or three people out on deck."

"Lucky?" said Marcia. She turned towards Catriona for the first time. "Well, I suppose I am, if you can call it lucky to survive when you've lost everything you've ever wanted."

"I'm sorry," Catriona told her. "I wasn't trying to crow."

"You don't have to apologise," said Marcia. "It isn't your fault that Mark loves you more than me. It's just the way of the world, isn't it?"

Mark held Marcia's hand. "Don't even think about it. Just get yourself well first."

Marcia gave him a fleeting, regretful smile. She kept closing her eyes for longer and longer intervals each time, and it was obvious that she was almost asleep.

"That officer who saved me..." she whispered. "Is he all right?"

Mark looked towards Catriona. Catriona said, "He's quite well, as far as I know."

"He said something strange to me... when he reached me... Do you know what he said?"

Catriona shook her head, but then realised that Marcia couldn't focus on her any longer, and said, "No. What did he say?"

"He said ... 'You were quite right, this is the way to go'... I couldn't think what he meant."

She slept, her mouth slightly open. She stirred for a moment, and said, "Mark... it can't be true that you're..." and then she slept. After two or three minutes, Mark and Catriona got up and went out of the room on tiptoe.

Dr. Fields was in the anteroom, making neat illegible notes with a tortoiseshell Waterman pen. Mark told him, "She's sleeping now." Catriona gently linked her arm with Mark's, and Mark covered her arm with his own. The way they were standing, they could have been bride and groom standing before a registrar. Dr. Fields screwed the cap on his pen and looked up at them.

"Well," he said, "it's always very difficult to say anything about an attempted suicide, particularly to those most closely involved. One has to work out for oneself how responsible one should be for the welfare of others. Are you, Mr Beeney, responsible for Miss Conroy's life because you courted her and then rejected her? Are you your sister's keeper, as it were? These are difficult questions, hard to answer."

Mark said, "Do you really think she'll try it again?"

"That's impossible for me to judge,' said Dr Fields. "She's chronically depressed about your abandoning her. It appears from what she told me that you never made her any romantic pledges; but that she had always assumed from your conduct towards her that one day you might ask her to marry you."

"I'm afraid that's an assumption that I did nothing to foster,' said Mark. "I never promised to marry her and I never would. I don't think for a moment that we'd be suited."

"You couldn't even carry on your relationship at—shall we say—the same distance as before?"

"I don't think so. Not since I've met Miss Keys."

Dr Fields stood up, and with the air of a stage magician, produced from his breast pocket a white handkerchief the size of a small bedsheet. He blew his nose two or three times, and then folded it back again.

"There's nothing more that we can do, then, except to keep her under supervision; to feed her with tranquillisers; and to make sure that even if she feels unwanted as a prospective wife, she doesn't feel unloved as an individual human being. It's asking a lot of both of you, I know. But in your own different ways—as far as one person can ever be responsible for the health and safety of another—you owe her at least the opportunity to live.'

Afterwards, Mark took Catriona up to the Orchid Lounge, where he ordered for himself a large Peter Dawson on the rocks, and for Catriona a Bellinger mimosa. They sat silently for quite a while, until Catriona said, "You're thinking about jilting me, aren't you?"

He looked up quickly. "Of course not. What gave you that idea?"

"It would be easier, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to feel guilty about Marcia any more. And you wouldn't have to feel guilty about me, either. If there's one thing I've learned about you, it's quite simply that you don't know how to mix business with romance."

Mark leaned back in his mauve wickerwork chair. "I wish you'd tell me the secret."

"There isn't any secret. Not as far as I can make out, anyway. It just seems to me that if you want to do business, you have to do business, and that if you want to make love, you have to make love. But you can't do both. Business has a hopelessly brutalising effect on love, and love has a hopelessly confusing effect on business."

Mark took out his cigarette case. "I guess I can't argue with that. You've just had the experience firsthand, after all."

Catriona gazed at him for a moment, trying to find the courage to say what she had planned to say next. She was the Queen of the Atlantic, and when you were a queen, you had royal pride. You had personal pride, too. Pride that made it a matter of importance that men never jilted you—you always jilted them. Even men you really cared about, the way that Catriona had grown in the past two days to care about Mark.

At last she managed to say, "I think we'd better call this off, you and I. I think we're going to end up hurting everybody, including ourselves and perhaps our businesses as well."

Mark frowned at her. "Are you serious?" Then, looking at her more closely, he said, "You're serious."

She prayed that she wasn't going to cry. She could feel her mouth tightening as she tried to suppress the ache in her throat. In a voice a sounded almost like a ventriloquist's doll, she said, "It's no use, Mark. It isn't going to bring us anything but heartache. Let's just pretend we never met."

Over in the corner of the Orchid Lounge, the ship's pianist began to play romantic and nondescript tunes, like "Days of Desire" and "Moonlight Promenade". They were silly songs, written for banal singers, but somehow Catriona thought of the words of "Moonlight Promenade" and the tears slipped from her eyes like liquid mercury running through her fingers.

Mark took her hand, grasped it tight. "Catriona," he told her. Catriona, listen to me. How many times in my life do you think I've fallen in love? I mean, really fallen in love, as if I've been struck a lightning. The answer is twice. Once, when I was twenty, I fell in love with a girl who used to pose for Broadway Magazine calendars. Her name was Eunice, and my mother hated her. And the other time was you. But between Eunice and you, there hasn't been anybody. Flirtations, maybe. Affairs. But nobody who's hit me over the head the way you have."

"'What about Marcia?" Catriona asked, wiping her eyes.

"As far as Marcia's concerned, I'm going to do just what the doctor asked me to do. Be friendly, make her feel wanted. But I'm not going to make any promises. The only promises I'm going to make are to you."

Catriona said, "I love you." And then, "Damn it!"

"You'll come with me to Boston?"

"I haven't made up my mind yet."

"Then make it up."

Catriona hesitated for a moment, but then she thought, What on earth am I hesitating for? It's all happened like a whirlwind, but who cares? When you find the man you really love, that's the way it happens. You fly together like two magnets, and from then on you're stuck.

"All right," she said, with a slow smile. "I'll come. As long as you're sure that I can bring Alice."

"You can bring fifty Alices."

Mark glanced up at the clock. It was two minutes of twelve. "I have to run now," he said. "I have a meeting with John Crombey, and then I have some wireless messages to dictate. But let's take a walk after luncheon; and why don't you let me escort you to the fancy-dress ball tonight?"

"I was going to go with Mr Philips," said Catriona. The thought was suddenly sad and strong. Edgar had told her that it would be excellent for passenger morale if she appeared at the fancy-dress ball on Rudyard Philips' arm. Now Rudyard Philips was lost, presumed drowned; and although Catriona could only remember him as a short, rather pugnacious man with a rather abrupt way of speaking—a stickler for shipboard etiquette, rather diffident and difficult to talk to—she was still regretful, because he was one of her officers and he had died in the course of his duty. Her father would have been upset, and so was she.

Mark said, "I've lost some good friends at sea, including my father. The sad thing is, you can't even bury them."

"I don't suppose Mr. Philips would have minded," said Catriona. "He did tell me that the sea was everything he had."

"In that case," said Mark, "I guess he wouldn't have minded too much. I don't suppose my father would, either. But my mother used to say that it wasn't the same, throwing a wreath on the sea. Not the same as placing it on a headstone."

Catriona said gently, "I'll see you at three, in the Palm Court."

It was twelve o'clock exactly.