Maiden Voyage

FIFTY-FIVE

As the first-class passengers filed into luncheon, Mademoiselle Louise Narron was still in her stateroom, staring at her three reflections in the triple looking glass on her dressing table. Each reflection looked more bleary and more devastated than the next. She had been crying for a whole hour, a monotonous and wearisome series of high yelps, as if a Pomeranian bitch had caught her leg in an automobile door.

Her stewardess, Madge, was waiting patiently beside her bed, where the diva's clothes were laid out for luncheon. Madge would have done almost anything for a cap of tea, as long as it was reasonably moral. The chief steward always seemed to give her the hysterical ones to look after. Once, on the Fatidical, she had been allocated the wife of a Brazilian politician who had thrown fits of dramatic rage at the slightest provocation, and had once ripped her evening gown down to her waist during a diplomatic cocktail party in the Crystal Lounge. Then there had been Mrs. Wuldorf, the wife of the catering billionaire, who had insisted on changing her dress every three hours every day. During the whole four-and-a-half day voyage across the Atlantic, she had never worn the same dress twice.

Louise at last said, "Madge, will you bring me a cigarette?"

Madge did as she was told, but as she offered Louise the open silver cigarette-box, she said, "You did tell me you weren't supposed to smoke. Bad for your voice, and all that."

Louise stared at herself in the mirror. "Who cares about my voice? I have lost the man I was going to marry. Je suis desolee. Do you know what that means?"

"You feel fed up, I suppose."

"Fed up? It means my entire world has collapsed around me." She pronounced it "coll-upsed", as in "scallops".

"Did he really ask you to marry him?" said Madge, striking a match.

Louise lifted her cigarette to the flame and nodded. "We plighted our troth by the light of the moon. I shall never be able to go out in the moonlight again."

She smoked one or two puffs, and then began to sing, "And ere now thy glowing eye have I seen: the man whose glance solaced my grief; When he greeted me had that eye—I knew him because of his eye."

She crushed out the cigarette and made a face. "Sieglinde, from Die Walkure. Poor Sieglinde. Poor me."

There was a knock at her stateroom door. Madge said, "Shall I answer it, mum?"

"Oh... if you wish," said Louise. She felt as if madness were stealing up on her. She had done so much to persuade herself to love Rudyard. She had turned herself inside out. And now there was no purpose in it, because he was drowned, and gone for ever, taking him him below the surface of the ocean all of her efforts to forget Raymond.

She had seen Rudyard's discarded shoes and jacket on the bridge. I had let out a howl of anguish, one of those incredible operatic shrieks that make wineglasses ring, and milk turn sour, and bodies rise to the surface of ponds. It had made Ralph Peel's hair stand on end, all of it. But it had also brought this magnificent red-haired Amazon to his immediate attention again. And so it was that when Madge went to open the door of Louise Narron's stateroom, Ralph was there, with a small posy of white flowers and a look on his face that could only be described as sly sympathy.

"Mademoiselle... so sorry to intrude... but this is just a small personal gesture... considering how Mr. Philips and I were such close friends."

"Oh," said Louise, sitting bolt upright in her clashing orange bathrobe. Then, "Oh, you'd better come in. Why, that's most thoughtful of you. Flowers! You Englishmen are all such gentlemen! That is what I told poor Rudyard when—Well, I don't know when it was. My mind has been smashed to tiny pieces, like a broken mirror."

"Yes," said Ralph, unsure of what any of this meant.

"Have a drink," suggested Louise. "Can you help yourself?"

"Well," said Ralph, "I'm not really supposed to. But considering the tragic circumstances..."

He set down the posy of flowers on the table and went stiffly across to the cocktail cabinet, where he picked up one decanter after another, sniffing them carefully until he found the single-malt whisky. He poored himself a very large glassful, and swallowed half of it straight down, with his back still turned, so that Louise wouldn't see how much he had.

"Would you like one?" he asked her.

Louise tossed her fiery red hair. "Drink is no consolation."

"Well, no," said Ralph. "But it's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick."

Louise turned on her dressing table stool and stared at him. He gave her an uncomfortable smile, which soon died away.

"Do you know what it is to be loved?" she demanded.

Ralph didn't answer.

Louise stood up and swept across the room in her orange robe, until she was towering over him. Ralph looked up and her right breast was almost level with his chin.

"Do you know what it is to lose everything you have?" asked Louise.

Ralph hesitated, and then said, "I lost my wage packet once."

"Oh, you British men! You are all so cold! Ice runs in your veins!"

Ralph, embarrassed, looked down at his drink, and then across at Madge. Madge gave him a slow, exaggerated wink, which plainly meant, Never mind the theatricals. Just keep on acting English, and you'll be all right.

Ralph coughed. "Mademoiselle Narron..." he said, "perhaps I could escort you in to luncheon?"

"I have nothing black to wear. Nothing suitable, anyway."

"I don't really think that matters, Mademoiselle. Not many people knew that you and Rudyard were—well, you know, friends of any kind. Perhaps it's better not to advertise the fact."

Mademoiselle Narron slowly nodded. Then she reached out and touched the back of Ralph's hand, which was patterned with dark whorls of fur.

"You are so hairy," she whispered. "I have always wondered what it would be like to be... touched by a hairy man."

Madge puffed her cheeks out in exasperation. Ralph said, in a voice that for him sounded oddly cultured, "It was a pity about Rudyard, don't you think? It should never have happened, really. There wasn't any point."

"Is there a point to anything?" asked Louise.

Ralph leaned forward and kissed her cheek. "To me there is," he said, ambiguously, and waited for the quiet flicker of understanding which eventually appeared in her eyes.

She said, "Perhaps I could learn to love moonlight again. Do you think so?"