Maiden Voyage

FIVE

He was staying at Brown's, on the Albemarle Street side, in a suite of rooms which cost seven pounds the night. As he entered the lobby, the porter called, "Messages, Mr. Beeney!" and hurried across with a sheaf of envelopes.

Mark sorted through the messages quickly, then tipped the porter half a-crown, although a florin would have been enough. The porter said, "Obliged, Mr. Beeney, sir," and retreated to his cubbyhole. Mark walked along the corridor to his suite, tearing open the messages one by one, feeling unusually despondent. Or perhaps it wasn't despondency at all; perhaps it was just that unsettling sensation that the world of shipping had somehow changed, and changed forever, now that one of its pivotal personalities had so suddenly disappeared.

"Mr. Beeney, sir, glad to have you with us," said the assistant manager, gliding past him on the left-hand side like a ballroom dancer.

Mark opened the door of his suite and stepped inside, kicking the door closed behind him with his foot.

"Damn it," he said aloud. Philip Carter-Helm had really aroused his curiosity, and he hated curiosity, especially his own.

Something tumultuous must be happening at Keys: not only within the Keys boardroom but within the Keys family itself. Carter-Helm had given him one version of it, but there had to be others. Was it true that Stanley Keys had left a quarter of his voting stock to his twenty-one-year-old daughter? Was it true that most of the small shareholders and insurance companies wanted Keys to remain independent? It was crucial to Mark if they did, because he coveted the Arcadia more than any other vessel in the world. She was the ship he would have built as his own flagship, if the board of American TransAtlantic hadn't so consistently counselled him to hold back. They agreed in principle with the idea of building or acquiring a new express flagship; but did it really have to be a gilded barge, like the Arcadia? The future of travel lay not with the first-class passenger, whose tastes and expectations required prodigious numbers of trained staff and extraordinary feats of catering; but with the second-and third-class passenger, who required only a bed, a chair, a little deck space, and plain good cooking. One director had even suggested that transcontinental aeroplanes could soon take over from the giant liners, and that in ten years" time the grand shipping companies would all be out of business.

That, of course, was somewhat far-fetched. As another American TransAtlantic director had retorted, "Your first-class passenger wouldn't contemplate crossing the Atlantic without his full quota of luggage and at least some rudimentary entertainment en route. By the time you've loaded an aeroplane with a hundred pieces of Swaine, Adeney and Brigg luggage and a Steinway grand piano, where's the room even for one passenger, leave alone hundreds?"

Mark had been torn. He recognised that tourist-class fares were going to bring American TransAtlantic the steady profits of the next decade; and he was modern-minded enough to accept that air travel might one day cream off some of the business trade. After all, there were many passengers who would be prepared to sacrifice luxury for speed. But he still believed that American TransAtlantic needed a glittering flagship; a ship which would carry the company name into high social currency all over the world, and which would lure passengers to travel American TransAtlantic in the same way that the Mauretania's glamour attracted passengers to travel Cunard.

He stripped off his tweed coat, and tossed it onto a chair. Just then his manservant Wallis appeared, buttoning up his vest. "Mr. Crombey has been waiting for you for some time, sir," he said, collecting up Mark's coat, and folding it neatly over his arm. "He's back in his room now, sir, and asks if you could be kind enough to call him when you come in."

Wallis was a grey-haired Louisiana negro whom Mark's father had met on board the Mississippi steamer Alonzo Child in the 1880s. He had been a deckhand then, but Joe Beeney had taught him the rudiments of social grace, and Chloe Beeney had eventually turned him into one of the best black butlers in Boston.

Mark's father often used to say that when he met Mark's mother, "the whole damned Western hemisphere trembled'. There was no doubt that Mark was the product of one of the most passionate collisions of wilful and headstrong people that the nineteenth century had ever witnessed; and his father often used to compare his meeting with Mark's mother with the poem that Thomas Hardy had written to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic by an iceberg.

Alien they seemed to be

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history.

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event.

Mark's mother, Chloe McKeown Amery, had been the daughter of one of Boston's noblest and wealthiest families. When Chloe's father had earnestly complained at a public luncheon that he was taxed ninety-two per cent, one wag in the audience had shouted out a he would certainly like to try to live on the remaining eight per cent. The Amery's money was in property, in railroad stocks, in mercantile insurance, and shipping; and it was through the shipping side of their business that Chloe had accidentally come to meet Joshua Marblehead Beeney, the captain of one of the Amery's largest vessels, Seraphic. Chloe had always been an obstinate girl, and when she had been dispatched to Switzerland at the age of eiteen to "finish', her mother had entrusted her into Captain Beeney's personal custody; little realising that this blunt, rugged, oddly becoming man would promptly and insatiably fall in love with Chloe, and that she would just as promptly and with equal ferocity fall in love with him. When he had found out about their affair, Chloe's father had thrown a fit of rage close to the epileptic, but Chloe had been as persistent as ever, and in the same way that she had persuaded her father to buy her a rocking horse when she was four, she had persuaded him to let her marry Joe Beeney. Part of her dowry had been a sizeable interest in Amery shipping; and after the death of Chloe's father in 1893, Joe Beeney had taken over the entire company. Tragically, he had died himself only four years later, drowned while sailing his yacht off Point Gammon, Massachusetts. And so, at the age of twenty-three, Mark Beeney had inherited a shipping line that was second only to United States Lines, and an incalculable fortune in property, stocks, paintings, racehorses, and land. It was hardly surprising that he was considered to be one of the world's most eligible young men.

Mark shook open the Evening Standard that he had bought, and said, "Get me a drink before you call Mr Crombey, will you? Did you know that Stanley Keys is dead?"

""No, sir. Mr Stanley Keys of Keys Shipping, sir?"

"The very same. Look, here it is in the paper."

The story was on the front page, under advertisements for Dr. J. Collis Brown's Chlorodyne and a Thursday night "Souper Dansant" at the Metropole. Stanley Keys, chairman, founder, and principal stockholder of Keys Shipping Line, had died the previous night of a massive heart seizure. So far the company had not announced a successor, but the directors were adamant that Mr. Keys would have wished the new luxury liner Arcadia to leave Liverpool on Tuesday, as scheduled, for her maiden voyage.

"Mr Keys" only child, his twenty-one-year-old daughter Miss Catriona Keys, is understood to have returned to the family home from London, where she has become well-known in recent months in theatrical circles. She recently denied suggestions that she was engaged to marry musical actor Mr Nigel Myers, who is currently appearing in Daydreams of 1924 at the Prince Edward."

Mark turned the City pages, but apart from a note that "Keys Shipping shares drop 1¹/₂ pence" there was nothing about the company's future plans, or how dangerously in debt they were. Wallis brought him a bourbon and seltzer, and he sipped it thoughtfully.

The last time he had met Stanley Keys, in the bar of Scott's restaurant in Piccadilly, he had openly expressed his admiration of Arcadia, and said, "If ever you need liquidity, Mr. Keys, I'll buy her from you for cash."

Stanley Keys had given Mark that quizzical, amused look which either charmed or infuriated the people he met, and replied, "I'll never be that hard up, my lad. The Arcadia's more than just a ship; she's my own flesh and blood. Aye, and my spirit, too. You don't go selling your spirit."

Nonetheless, it was common knowledge in the shipping business that Keys had desperately overstretched their resources by building such a lavish flagship; and it had always been Mark's intuition that Stanley Keys would sacrifice her at the very last if it meant that he could keep the rest of his fleet alive. Stanley Keys had always been a fleet man, rather than a devotee to one particular ship. He had been just as happy crossing the Atlantic in one of his small single-class steamers as he had been in the best of his luxury liners. Given the right historical circumstances, and a better social background, Stanley Keys would have made a fine Naval commander.

But now he was abruptly gone, and it was almost impossible for Mark to guess what the board of Keys would do to remain solvent. It was quite possible that they would auction off the entire fleet, and they would probably come under heavy pressure from George Welterman to make a bargain offer to IMM.

One thing was certain: they would have to let the Arcadia sail on Tuesday. They would have far too much capital and prestige invested in the maiden voyage to cancel or postpone it now. But what then? If Mark knew anything about Keys" finances, they would scarcely able to afford to bring her back to Liverpool again. He said to Wallis, "Bring me the telephone, will you? I think I'd better make few calls."

"You're dining in tonight, sir?"

'"Maybe. I'll see how hungry I feel. I was toying with the idea of going to Rule's for a pork chop."

Wallis brought him the white candlestick telephone, and he asked the hotel operator to connect him with Mr. Edgar Deacon, of Formby, in Lancashire. Then he said to Wallis, "Call Mr. Crombey, will you? And tell him to bring in all the Italian figures, and all the reports on De Freitas."

"Yes, sir. But I have to say that Mr. Crombey's not in a happy mood tonight, sir."

"I don't care what kind of a mood he's in. Will you call him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Operator?" said Mark. "Ah, good. Do you have the number? Formby what? Two-oh-fife-fower? Hey, don't you feel a bally ass having to pronounce numbers like that? Oh, well, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. Yes, I'll make a note of it. All right. Now, could you please connect me?"

There was a knock at the sitting-room door. Mark waved Wallis to go and answer it, and the butler tugged at his lapels, opened the door, and inquired, "Who is it, please?1

At the same time, Edgar Deacon came on the line. He was just about to have dinner with Catriona, and he sounded vaguely exasperated. "Who is it?" he asked, his voice tinny and distant.

"It's Mark Beeney," shouted Mark. "Can you hear me?" He felt as if he were trying to shout to someone on the opposite rim of the Grand Canyon. "I was talking to Mr Keys not long ago about buying the Arcadia."

"Yes, Mr Beeney. Quite so. What can I do for you?

"I read the papers tonight. I'm sorry to hear about Stanley. It was a great shock."

"Well, thank you for your condolences," said Edgar, "but is that all you rang for? I'm really very busy. I expect you can imagine that it's been a frightfully gruelling day."

"I'm sure of it, and I'm sorry," Mark told him. "But listen, that isn't all. What I wanted to do was repeat my offer. I'd very much like to buy the Arcadia as the flagship of American TransAtlantic. I'm prepared to pay four pounds million cash, subject to survey, and I'm prepared to settle the deal right away, even before she's cut her teeth."

There was a silence, punctuated only by the crackling of long-distance telephone lines. Then Edgar Deacon said, with all the correctness of an experienced office wallah, "You realise, Mr Beeney, that you cannot actually buy the Arcadia. A ship in British law is a small piece of the Kingdom, whether it is at sea or at anchor. No alien can actually own a British ship or any share of it, and even if he were to acquire one by accident or good fortune, he would immediately forfeit it to the Crown, although he would undoubtedly be compensated for his loss. A foreigner may not even serve as an officer on a British vessel."

Mr. Deacon, I know all of that, and it entrances me," said Mark. But I don't intend to buy the Arcadia as an individual. I simply want control of the Arcadia transferred to Amery, London, so that my British board of directors will control the Arcadia for me at two removes. All legal, and correct, but the money's just as good."

There was a long silence. Mark said, "Hello? You still there?"

"Yes, I'm still here, Mr Beeney," said Edgar Deacon. "But I must say that I'm really not used to doing business over the telephone. You are coming along on the voyage, aren't you? Perhaps we can discuss the matter then, in a more civilised manner, over a chota peg."

"A what?"

"Two fingers to you, old chap."

"I beg your pardon?" asked Mark, perplexed, but still trying to sound British.

"Two fingers of gin, or whatever it is you drink. Burra peg is three fingers. But listen, we'll have plenty of time to talk about this later. Poor Stanley is still warm in his coffin. It's hardly appropriate to discuss this now. The Arcadia was like a daughter to him, closer in some ways than his own daughter was. And I have yet to discuss this matter in any detail with my board of directors."

"You won't get a better offer, nor such a fast one," said Mark.

"It's very generous," Edgar acknowledged. "And please don't think that I'm turning you down out of hand."

"Well, of course you can have some tune to think about it," said Mark. "But I don't want to have to wait indefinitely. Four million is a great deal of money to lay my hands on in cash; and there'll be some financial planning to do."

"I understood completely," said Edgar. "But, if you could excuse me—"

"Sure," said Mark. "I'm sorry I called you on a question of business on a day like today."

"Stanley wouldn't have minded," Edgar replied. "Stanley would have recognized that respect for the dead has to wait for the needs of the living."

Mark was a little baffled by that remark. He said, "Sure, okay," and hung up the earpiece.

"I don't think I can ever quite get the hang of dealing with the British," he remarked, turning around to Wallis. But it was then that he saw who it was that Wallis had let into the room, and his frown faded immediately, and he spread his arms in welcome, and said, "Marcia, I thought you were in Paris."

Marcia Conroy came flowing towards him across the sitting-room, the sleeves of her silvery dress rippling in the breeze of her own coming, tall and blonde, with shingled hair and pearl ear-rings that danced and swung (in Wallis" words) "like the drip on the end of a Mississippi river pilot's beezer'.

Marcia had been graced with what was easily the most beautiful profile of any of the debutantes of 1922, but she was one of the few who had remained unmarried. She had contrived to meet Mark at last year's Ascot, by deliberately tipping strawberries-and-cream down the left leg of his trousers, and since then they had carried on a spasmodic, combative, irregular affair whenever their paths happened to cross.

Marcia's seasonal cycle took her to Paris in the springtime, then home to England for the Derby and Ascot, and London's high season,-then to the regatta at Cowes, off to Germany for a cure at Marienbad, Scotland for the fall shooting; followed by a winter cruise of the Mediterranean. Her friends always knew where Marcia was by the social calendar, but Mark only ever ran Into her by accident. That was what made their affair so exciting: the fact that after each brief bout of lovemaking, they might never actually meet again, ever. But they never said "goodbye'.

"I was astonished when Bangers told me you were here," said Marcia, kissing Mark on both cheeks as if he had just been awarded the Croixe-Guerre. She threw her silvery evening-purse down on the sofa, and opened the onyx cigarette-box on the table.

Mark offered her a light. "Who the hell's Bangers?" he wanted to know.

"The Honorable Phoebe Tawthome-Bangs," said Marcia, blowing smoke out of her nostrils. "She said she'd seen you at the Criterion, in the crash bar, but the crush had been too crushing to reach you. She did shout "cooee", but she's never had a very convincing voice."

"Can anybody say "cooee" convincingly?" grinned Mark.

"Bangers can't," said Marcia.

"Wallis," asked Mark, "will you bring me a fresh drink, please? A Ward Eight, and what's yours, Marcia?"

"Anything but champagne," said Marcia. "One gets so tired of champagne."

Mark sat down on the sofa and Marcia perched herself on his lap, her cigarette held at the very tips of her fingers. She tugged up the long hem of her dress so that she might be more comfortable, and also more provocative. Underneath the silver satin she wore silver silk stockings, with silver garters. Mark knew from experience that she rarely wore panties. She had an aura of perfume around her that was heavy with Gueriain's fashionable new Chamade.

Paris was so tiring this year," she said. Her eyes were the blandest blue that Mark could ever remember seeing, like a clear sky glimpsed through a frozen windowpane. "There were so many Americans there, begging your national pardon. I was taken to dinner at the Ritz one evening by Due de Gramont, and all around me there was positive ocean of Americans: Berry Wall, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, the Dolly sisters. And all braying, my darling, like hounds."

Mark touched her cheek, and twisted one of her curls around his finger. "I am sorry about the braying," he said. "I'll speak to Olivier about it."

"Oh, it wasn't really so bad," Marcia said, kissing the veins on the a Mark's wrist. "I was just feeling unusually vexatious. I feel better now that I'm here, with you. You have a wonderfully calming effect on me. You're like a good lunch."

"Well'—Mark smiled—"I've been compared to one or two things in my life: an ass and a thick-headed bullock. But never a good lunch."

Wallis came in with a tray of drinks—a Ward Eight for Mark, he being a good Bostonian; and a glass of very cold Polish vodka for Marcia, so frigid that it smoked. The Ward Eight was a kind of bourbon sling, devised at Locke-Ober's Winter Palace Wine Rooms in Boston in the 1890s, and it was said to make the experience of being struck by lightning seem comparatively mild.

Once Wallis had retired to his quarters, with instructions not to disturb them, Mark and Marcia raised their glasses to each other. Marcia said, "Your man murmured that I shouldn't keep you longer than necessary. He said you had an important meeting with your company secretary."

"All my company secretary can do is to nag me about the deficiencies in my long-term planning. Besides that, he's in one of his bates. Isn't that what the English call it, a bate?"

They clinked glasses, and sipped their drinks. "Cherry vodka," said Marcia appreciatively, shifting herself on Mark's lap. "Your man may be fussy, but he has taste."

"We Americans aren't as ignorant as we seem," Mark told her, with the smile of an impudent boy. "We don't want very much out of life, but then there isn't ever very much of the best, is there?"

They kissed, with a fierceness and a hungriness that would have startled anyone who was secretly watching. The insides of their mouths were cold with ice and aromatic with spirits, and their tongues sought each other's teeth like chilly seals in Arctic waters.

"I always think I'm going to hate you when I see you again," breathed Marcia. "I always think I'm going to walk into the room and think how ugly you are, and how dull you are. But I never do. You always make me feel so abandoned. You make me feel as if I'm being swept away by a hurricane."

Mark said nothing, but sought her mouth again, and kissed her into breathless silence.

"Music," she said. "Why isn't there music?"

"They don't have victrolas in the rooms, that's why. I can hum, if you want me to. How about "Little Alabama Coon"? My father taught me that. I do the baby cry and the clog noises, too."

"God, you Americans are so romantic," said Marcia, in mock disdain. "I want music to dance to, music to make love to."

Mark shrugged, and tipped Marcia off his lap. He went across to the telephone, and tapped the bar for the hotel operator. "Get me the manager, will you? This is Mark Beeney. That's right."

Marcia, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa and her dress right up to her slender thighs, sipped her drink and watched him with the smouldering coldness of a lascivious Ice Queen. He smiled at her, and one by one began to undo the buttons of his black vest.

"Is that the manager? This is Mark Beeney. Yes, fine. every thing's really fine. Well, I have a favour to ask. Sure. You had a string quartet playing at dinner this evening, am I right? I heard it on the way in. Do you think if they're all through in the restaurant they could come down to my room and play a little dance music outside of my door? Would that be too much to ask?"

Marcia threw her head back and laughed out loud. "You're mad," she sad. "Quite mad, but I adore you."

And so it was that in ten minutes" time, Mark and Marcia were dancing cheek-to-cheek around the sitting-room to the muffled waltz music of the Albemarle Quartet, who sat outside in the corridor on gilt chairs provided by the hotel management. Mark was naked, Marcia wore nothing but her pearls. As they danced, she pressed her small rose-nippled breasts against his chest, and he pressed the stiffened thrust of his penis against her bare stomach.

They made love on the Turkey rug, violently and greedily, while the quartet outside played "Les Roses" and then "We'll Meet Beyond the River". Marcia clutched her legs around Mark's back, and closed her eyes tight as he pushed and pushed inside her. He grasped her breasts so tightly that the flesh and nipples bulged between his fingers.

There was a moment for both of them when there was neither music nor light, no hotel, no rug, no day and no night. Then, his chest shiny with sweat, Mark knelt upright, and looked down at Marcia with that same stunned expression that Paavo Nurmi had had after running two miles in nine minutes. Marcia turned her face away, and that perfect 1922 profile was outlined by the pattern on the carpet. Her neck was flushed, and there were scarlet finger marks on her breasts.

"God, you're beautiful," she said, as if she were addressing the leg of the table. "But thank God I don't have to marry you. I think we'd drive each other mad."

Outside the hotel room, the music abruptly scraped and died. His body still sticky, Mark got up, went to the bedroom to find his blue silk bathrobe, and then went to the door.

"I'm afraid we have to finish now, sir," said the violinist. "We don't wsh to disturb the other guests."

"You did a magnificent job," smiled Mark. He took four ten-pounds notes out of his wallet, and handed them one each. For each of them, ten pounds was the equivalent to three weeks" earnings.

Mark closed the door and came back into the sitting-room. Marcia was still naked, sitting in a deliberately dryadic pose on the sofa, the white pearls of Mark's semen clinging to the close-trimmed curls of her pubic hair. She sipped her vodka, and followed him with her cold, cold eyes.

"I suppose you're going back to America soon," she said.

He nodded. "I'm sailing on the Arcadia on Tuesday."

"Sailing on the competition? You surprise me."

"I'm looking forward to it. They've billed it as the most luxurious passenger liner afloat. I want to see if they can live up to their billing."

Marcia smiled at him provocatively. "How would you bill me, if you had to?"

"You? I'd bill you as the Mistress of the Century."

"You disappoint me. Not the millenium?"

"Give it time."

Marcia thought for a moment. Then she stood up, and came across to him, and reached out her hand so that her fingertips were touching his lips. "I don't want you to say anything," she said, "but I think I'm going to come to America with you."

He frowned, and was about to say something, but she pressed his lips to keep him silent. "I just have a feeling, that's all," she told him. "I don't think I'm ever going to see you again, not unless I come with you."

"You always said that you didn't mind if we saw each other again or not."

"Well, suddenly I do mind. Is that so terrible?"

"I don't know. You might as well understand that I'm not going to marry you."

"I don't expect you to," said Marcia. "I don't expect you to marry anybody. There isn't a girl alive who could keep you happy, not on her own."

Mark said, "What are you going to do? Sail on the Arcadia with me? All my staterooms are taken. Claude Graham-White's got one, and Victor Sorbay has the other."

"I'll book one for myself."

"They're all booked up."

"Then I'll make sure that somebody unbooks one. I'm coming, Mark, whether you want me to or not."

"I don't understand the panic," said Mark. "This isn't you. This isn't the cool, sophisticated Marcia Conroy; daughter of Lord and Lady Conroy of some muddy place in the English countryside I can't immediately remember."

Marcia was suddenly quiet. "I have a premonition, that's all," she said. "I felt a shiver come over me, like cold water."

"Here, borrow my bathrobe. You're feeling chilly, that's all."

"It's not that. I was always supposed to be rather psychic."

Mark stripped off his bathrobe and hung it around Marcia's shoulders. "A warm bath does wonders for a case of the premonitions," he told her, and kissed her close-cropped hair.

She looked up at him. "Yes, I suppose you're right. I am being rather absurd. Do you think your man could bring me another of those vodkas? I need to drink myself cheerful again."

They kissed once more, and then Marcia went through to the bedroom suite to take a bath. Mark watched her go, and stood in the centre of the room for a while, his hand thoughtfully covering his mouth, until the sound of faucets gushing disturbed his reverie.

He was about to pick up the telephone when the door opened and John Crombey stepped in. As usual, John was dressed with utter correctness, right up to the highly starched linen collar and the rosebud in his buttonhole. Only someone who knew him very well, as Mark did, could have guessed how angry he was. His nostrils were slightly widened, like an anxious thoroughbred horse, and there was a whiteness around his eyes which betrayed his sense of outrage and shock.

"You're naked," he pronounced in his marked Philadelphia accent.

"You could have knocked," Mark replied.

John Crombey turned around with exaggerated care and stared at door as if it should have knocked for him. "We had a meeting arranged for an hour ago," he said, still rigid with indignation. "I have all the figures you asked for: the Italian figures, how many long tons went in and out of Naples; the French figures, how many passengers sailed in and out of Cherbourg. I also have a comprehensive analysis of our entire business dealings with De Freitas, bills of lading, end-of-year accounts, financial prognoses. I understand from Wallis, however, that other considerations proved more attractive."

"Well," said Mark, "you're right. They did."

"I can't say that I'm not disappointed," said John Crombey. He pursed his lips.

"Oh? Well, I'm sorry, because I'm not," Mark told him. "And you can do something for me."

"Yes?" asked John, with cautious ire. His eyes were as black as a boiled lobster's.

"I want you to call the offices of Keys Shipping in Liverpool, if they're still open, and see if they have a single spare stateroom in first-class. If they don't, ask them to mail you a passenger list right away. Then go through it from A-Z, and see if you can't persuade someone to give up their stateroom for twice what they paid for it. I want just one first-class stateroom, that's all; but I want it booked in the name of the Honorable Miss Marcia Conroy. You got that?"

John Crombey said, "I see," suddenly deflated. He laid his sheaf of accounts and company reports down on the table in front of him. Mark looked up and Marcia was standing in the doorway, wearing a pink hotel bathcap, and wrapped in a huge white towel. Her face was pretty but unreadable. She might have been smiling. She might have been annoyed. Mark couldn't tell.

He said, "Are you through with my robe yet, Marcia? I'm beginning to feel like the Old Adam, standing here."

John Crombey thought for a second that Marcia was going to unwrap herself there and then, and flinched, as if someone had thrown a baseball directly at his face.