Maiden Voyage

FIFTY-EIGHT

Catriona was dressing to go out on deck that afternoon when Trimmer knocked on her door, and said, "Decent, Miss Keys? Might I come in?"

"Of course. I'm only doing my hair."

Alice said irritably, "Couldn't it wait?"

"I'm sorry, miss," said Trimmer. "I 'ave to get down to the laundry before the shift changes, just to make sure we get the right linen. Chaos it was yesterday."

"That Monty Willowby's been very lax this trip, I've noticed," said Alice. "Not like his usual self, not at all."

"Be fair, Alice," put in Trimmer. "The Arcadia's more than most pursers could 'andle."

"Is that for me?" Catriona asked him, nodding towards the brown envelope he was carrying.

"Ah, yes, Miss Keys. Found it in me scrapbook. Didn't know I kept a scrapbook, did you? Hevery trip I've been hon, I've halways kept a souvenir, something what reminds me hof heverything that 'appened."

"What will you keep from this trip?" asked Catriona, smiling.

"I 'opes to take a Blue Riband, Miss Keys, if we wins it. That'll be something, to beat the Mauretania, now won't it?"

He opened the envelope and produced a ship's cruising menu, printed in blue, with a colour painting of the ship pasted onto the front of it. Printed in silver script was the title SS Orange, and underneath "Mediterranean Cruise, 1911." Inside, there was a menu for Solferino Soup, Fried Fish with Orly Sauce, Prawn Curry, Sheep's Trotters, and Tapioca Pudding.

"That was the Orange. Thought you'd like to see 'ow she looked. Just has a matter hof hinterest."

"Well, thank you," said Catriona. "Do you mind if I keep this, and show it to Mr. Beeney?"

"By hall means, miss."

Mark Beeney came to call for Catriona at three; and together they promenaded gracefully around the first-class decks, Cartiona wearing a blue rep dress suit, checked socks and white golf shoes, and Mark in a blue and white striped yachting blazer and white ducks. It was a warm and exhilarating day. The Atlantic sparkled as brightly as if every lady in cabin class had tossed her diamonds into the ocean, and the orchestra played swooning tunes of love and silliness and youth.

Mark led her at last to the rail, and they looked back at the wide white wake that foamed ceaselessly from the Arcadia's stern. "This is when I love the sea," he said. "Look at it... it's marvellous."

Catriona said, "It always looks so lonely and empty to me."

"You don't feel lonely, do you?"

"A little."

He smiled. "That's not much of a compliment to me."

"Oh, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. I was just thinking about my father. He put his heart and soul into this ship, and he never saw it cross the Atlantic. He would have been so proud."

Mark took out his cigarette case and offered Catriona a Sobranie.

"How's Marcia?" asked Catriona, trying to change the subject so that they wouldn't become too entangled in emotional arguments.

"Jumping off an ocean liner into mid-Atlantic is pretty serious."

"'Well, maybe. But she was rescued, wasn't she?"

Catriona touched his hand. "You don't have to feel quite so guilty about it, you know. I don't think anybody really blames you. In fact, some of the women seem to think it makes you even more glamorous. They love a hint of danger."

"Danger, huh?" said Mark. He drew hard on his cigarette.

"'By the way," said Catriona, opening her bag, "do you remember this ship?"

"Sure," said Mark, examining the menu with narrowed eyes. "The Orange. Sank off the Indian coast, didn't she, four of five years ago? Just after the Armistice, anyway. Why?"

"Well, you know Philip Carter-Helm, don't you?"

"Sure. Not intimately, of course, but we seem to be getting on pretty reasonably together."

Catriona held her hat against a sudden gust of wind. "Do you have any idea why Philip Carter-Helm should have been arguing with my father about the Orange only a week or two before she sank?"

Mark studied the picture again, then looked back at Catriona. "No," he said slowly.

"He's in marine insurance, isn't he, Philip?"

"That's right. Well, that's what he tells me."

"Well, you don't think—"

Mark gave a quick glance over his shoulder, the instinctive reaction of a businessman who wants to make sure that nobody can overhear him. "You're not trying to suggest that your father and Philip Carter-Helm arranged to sink the Orange deliberately?'

"I don't know. But I've been thinking about it and thinking about it. I may be completely screwy. But the Orange sank without any loss of life at all, in calm water; and when the insurance money was paid by Lloyds, that did give father sufficient capital to lay down the keel of the Arcadia."

"It could have been coincidence."

"Well, yes, of course it could. And I don't have any means of proving it. But somehow the idea just won't seem to go away."

Mark took another deep suck at his cigarette. Then he flicked it, so that the butt spun out to sea. "Never did like smoking in the open air. You might just as well light a bonfire and breathe that in."

"But don't you think it's possible?" Catriona insisted. "Don't you think that the Orange could have been sunk for the money, and a nothing else?"

Mark shrugged. "I don't really know what to say. Stanley Keys was your old man, not mine."

"And your old man would never have done anything so underhand, is that it?"

"Do you think yours would?" asked Mark. "Come on, you know what a reputation he had for honesty. 'Stanley the Straight'."

"I know. But somehow—I can't really explain it—I seem to think that he could have done it. He was a very passionate man, you know; and when he wanted something, he did everything he possibly could to get it. He treated his workers exceptionally well, of course. They one all respected him, and admired him. But I wonder whether he did that only because he knew that was the best way to get them to work extra hard, and put in hours of overtime without being paid. I keep thinking about the woman that Edgar Deacon took me to see before we boarded. Father had done so much for her. In fact, in some ways, he seemed to have lavished more care on her than he ever did on my mother. Although he loved his own family, every one of us, I can't say he didn't—I think he considered that we were a nuisance, too, because we expected to be supported without making any real contribution to the company. There was something else that poor woman said, too: that her husband would have adored to have sailed on the Arcadia's maiden voyage. He'd put so much skill into building her, it seemed almost criminal that he wasn't allowed to sail on her. And, you know, there isn't a single Keys workman on this ship, apart from her maintenance crew. My father never gave anything away. Nothing. Not even his friendship."

Mark leaned back against the rail. "'Don't you think you're being a little bit too harsh on him?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I am."

"Maybe we should go and find ourselves some tea," Mark suggested. "Would you care for some tea?" he asked her, in a carefully studied English accent.

Catriona reached out and took his hand. "Yes, I would."

They walked along the deck to the staircase; but just as they were about to go down to the Orchid Lounge, they were hailed by John Crombey. "Mark, I really have to speak to you about those refit charges at Newport News."

"Does it have to be now?" asked Mark, impatiently. "Miss Keys and I were just going down for tea."

"I won't take more than a minute," John Crombey insisted.

They went downstairs together, John Crombey rattling through statistic after statistic: how the shipfitters were overcharging on hinges, pipework, underlay, and veneer work; how the suppliers were giving them short loads. "You have to understand, Mark, that for the cost of materials which we never get to see, we could build outselves another small ship."

John Crombey was still going through figures when they sat down. "We could halve the cost of turbine seals if we went to Oppenheimer's; and we could cut the cost of linoleum by over a third if we went to Indiana Flooring. We could save ourselves nearly a hundred thousand dollars if we had the sheet-metal work done by US Weld instead of Appalachian; and—what's that?"

There was an awkward pause. Then Mark said, blinking, nonplussed, "What's what?"

John Crombey reached across the table and picked up the menu of the SS Orange. "That's remarkable," he said.

"What's remarkable about it?" asked Mark.

"Well, it says SS Orange. And, yes, I guess it is the SS Orange. But it's not the Orange at all."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Catriona.

"What I mean is that this ship is sailing around the South China Sea, this identical ship, and yet she isn't called SS Orange at all. As far as I recall, she's called the Funabashi, and she belongs to the Kyoto Shipping and Trading Company."

"John," said Mark patiently, "the Orange was sunk nearly five years ago."

"I know that," said John Crombey, twitching his neat little moustache. "But the fact remains that this is the Funabashi. Look, you can tell by the notched effect on the stern counter. There is no a ship in the world that has that notch. It was designed specifically for the loading and offloading of cargoes of teak at Moulmein."

Mark looked across at Catriona, and she could see by the expression on his face that he was wondering how to prepare her for the thought that her father might have been very much less than the maritime hero he had always appeared to be.

Catriona saved his feelings by saying it out loud for both of them. "If the Funabashi is the Orange, then the Orange didn't sink at all; and yet Keys claimed the full insurance on her."

John Crombey stared at Mark worriedly, unused to a business competitor being so frank. Then, quite abruptly, he said, "It happens all the time, you know. It's not unusual, particularly with a ship that needs a refit. Well, available cash being what it is these days. All you have to do is take your ship out somewhere, open the seacocks, half flood the holds, and then allow yourself to be conveniently "discovered" by the ship of a friendly accomplice, so that all of your crew can be taken off to safety. You take photographs of the ship foundering, of course, to prove what happened; but immediately the "rescue vessel" is out of sight, you pump out the seawater, refloat your ship, paint over her name, and sail her at top speed to a prearranged dry dock to have her repainted and refitted. You leave as much debris floating on the ocean as you can; deck chairs with the ship's name stencilled on them, things like that; and with any luck you can claim your full insurance within two or three months; as well as the money you made from selling her off. You remember that Greek chap, what was his name, Kostas, he sunk the Iolanthe six times before they caught up with him; and he had the gall to keep selling her back to his own company."

There was a lengthy and difficult silence. John Crombey cleared his throat several times, a worrying little noise, as if he were trying to start up the engine of a model boat.

Mark said, "You realise that if your father was involved in sinking the Orange for the insurance money, then Edgar Deacon was probably involved, too."

"And Philip Carter-Helm?" said Catriona. "Perhaps Philip Carter-Helm was the one who put them up to it."

"I don't know. John, what do you know about the Kyoto Shipping and Trading Company? Is there anybody there we could contact by telegraph? How about Takemitsu? Didn't he use to work for them once?"

"Well, he used to," said John. "But Kyoto Shipping was taken over about four years ago by International Mercantile Marine, or at least by their Far East people."

Catriona frowned. "But that means that IMM probably know about the Orange too."

"They very well might," agreed John Crombey. "But a ship that's sold off after an insurance fraud usually comes pretty cheap; and it's not like IMM to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ask no questions, hear no lies."

The waitress brought them China tea and a silver plate arranged with crystallised plums and apricots, Bakewell tarts, and Maids of Honour. Mark took a Bakewell tart and bit into it unselfconsciously, with crumbs on his chin. "Who was Far Eastern director of IMM in those days? Don't tell me it was George Welterman."

John Crombey smiled tightly and nodded. "Who else? George Welterman."

"So, let's work this out. Why is Edgar Deacon so anxious to let Keys go for eighteen million to George Welterman? And why is George Welterman so wonderfully anxious to buy? IMM could certainly do with some of your ships, but do they really need the whole fleet, including the Arcadia, when they've already got the Mauretania? And why does it all have to be done in such indecent haste, so that the fleet's sold off before anyone has a chance to do any real deep digging in the company's books and records?"

"This may be hogwash. Edgar Deacon may be the honest man that Diogenes was always looking for. But it wouldn't surprise me if Edgar Deacon is so enthusiastic to sell and George Welterman so enthusiastic to buy because both of them were parties to the Orange fraud, if there was a fraud; and because the only way in which they can keep it quiet is to keep the books to themselves. What do you think about that, John?"

John Crombey peered at the illustration of the SS Orange and shrugged. "It's impossible to say. But the facts do appear to speak for themselves, don't they? There's no question in my mind that the Orange and the Funabashi are one and the same ship."

"Catriona?" asked Mark.

Catriona reached over and plucked the Orange's menu out of John Crombey's hands. "I don't know," she said. "But I'm going to find out. I think I've allowed myself to be Edgar Deacon's ornament for a little too long."

Mark encouragingly held her hand. "You may have to face up to the fact that the Orange was just the tip of the iceberg."

"The Titanic was sunk by an iceberg,' said Catriona, in a level voice.

"Well, let's make sure that the Arcadia doesn't go the same way."

"What will you do now?" John Crombey asked, picking an S-shaped thread from the knee of his immaculately pressed trousers. "I mean, I'm not trying to be presumptuous. We are rival companies. But since you've been so open with us..."

"I'm not sure," said Catriona. "But I expect that you'll be the first to know."

They finished their tea, and then Catriona said, "Let's continue that walk on the deck, Mark. I feel like some fresh air."

They walked along the starboard promenade deck, sheltered from the wind, with their hands in their pockets, a little way apart.

"You realise that all of this Orange business may be nothing more than an uninformed guess,' said Mark. "We may all end up eating Embarrassment Pie."

"I don't think so," said Catriona, staring at the sea.

Mark took her arm. "If it's true, well, there are hundreds of guys who have done the same kind of thing, to keep their business going, to protect their families. Life is a jungle, you know that already; and businessmen are the lions and tigers."

"And the jackals," said Catriona.

They walked on a little further, until they were sheltered from the wind by the gymnasium. The clatter of mechanical horses and rowing-machines could be heard through the open ventilators, and the intermittent squeaking of plimsolls on the polished oak floor.

Mark said, trying to be encouraging, "You'll love Boston. I have a house on Commonwealth Avenue. We can take the old horse-drawn carriage out and have codfish and brown bread and beans at the Bell in Hand."

Catriona said, "Can I trust you?"

"Trust me? Of course you can trust me. I'm the soul of discretion, incarnate."

"I didn't really mean that. Can I trust you not to take advantage of the way I feel about you? I know it sounds awful, but I don't want to wake up from some romantic dream, only to find that you've taken everything away from me without my knowing."

"Catriona, I can't make any secret of the fact that I want the Arcadia."

"I know. But don't do it sneakily."

Mark held her hand. Then he bent forward and kissed her, quite lightly, on the lips. He looked very closely into her eyes, and said, "Do you really think I could do anything to harm you?"

"No," said Catriona. Then, "I don't know. You've got so many other things to consider."

"I've fallen in love with you, Catriona."

She turned away, and looked out across the ocean. She felt alarmed by Mark's affection for her, but proud and happy at the same time. When she turned back to him, and saw him standing there with such a warm and caring expression on his face, and the breeze blowing his curly hair, she knew that if she didn't love him already, she easily could.

"You know what my father used to say?" she said.

Mark shook his head.

"He used to say, 'Never fall in love with anybody you don't feel a little bit frightened of'."

"Are you frightened of me?"

"A little. Not too much. But a little."

It wouldn't have been proper for them to kiss on deck, in front of everybody, but Mark took her hand and squeezed it, and the look on his face was as good as a kiss. They walked hand in hand to the forward part of the promenade deck, which was enclosed, and there they sat for another half hour, talking softly and laughing, and never taking their eyes off each other. Sir Peregrine, who was limping around the deck with Nurse Queensland to show everybody that he was still in command, saw them from the companionway amidships a and let out a grunt of disapproval.

"Damn canoodling with the enemy," he remarked.

"Well, I think it's wonderful," said Nurse Queensland. "I think everybody should fall in love when they cross the Atlantic. I wish I could fall in love myself."

"Not with me, I sincerely trust," said Sir Peregrine.

Nurse Queensland said nothing, but thought of what Sir Peregrine had murmured in his coma, about Maude; and she forgave him his crustiness, because she knew how deeply his devotion really could run.