Furthermore, I have learned from Sir Edwin Lutyens, the well-known architect, and a frequent traveller on Keys vessels, that his daughter Ursula is engaged to marry Viscount Ridley. This news also came by wireless, and I'm sure that each and every one of you is as thrilled and as... well, as thrilled as I am. Simply thrilled."
Rudyard was worried now. He squeezed Louise's hand just once, and then released it. He heard someone in the dining lounge say quite distinctly, "He's drunk. The fellow's quite drunk."
Sir Peregrine suddenly said, "To sail... as indeed we are sailing now... on the maiden voyage of one of the world's most..." He paused, searching for an adjective. "Most... auspicious... ocean liners, a veritable Venus of the waves... that indeed is a privilege both for myself as captain and indeed for every one of you who has been lucky enough... or indeed privileged enough..."
"He's paralytic," someone else whispered loudly.
An anxious murmuring rippled up and down the dining lounge. Sir Peregrine looked around and half-raised his arm, as if the murmuring were caused by a wasp which he could swat. But then a woman's voice said, "I can't believe it. He's actually drunk. He can't even talk properly."
Rudyard got up from his seat, and quickly crossed the aisle to Sir Peregrine's table. He grasped Sir Peregrine's elbow, and steadied him, smiling as he did so to all the guests who were staring at him in such surprise and anxiety.
"Mr. Philips," said Sir Peregrine, "what the devil are you doing? I'm addressing the passengers. Kindly return to your seat at once."
"Sir, you're not well," Rudyard insisted. "Why don't you come back to your quarters with me and lie down for a while."
"Lie down? Lie down? Are you mad? I'm giving a speech. I can't lie down."
"It's all right, Sir Peregrine. You've said everything you needed to say. Now, why don't you let me help you get back to your quarters."
Sir Peregrine indignantly wrenched his arm away, and stood up straight, his eyes bright with indignation. "Mr. Philips, sir, I'll have you know that I am completely in control of my faculties, and that you have committed a serious breach of company and maritime discipline. Besides, I thought you were supposed to be under arrest, in your cabin."
"Sir Peregrine, please" Rudyard begged him.
But he didn't have to beg any more. Sir Peregrine's face suddenly turned a hideous mauve, and he opened and closed his mouth like a fish behind glass. Before Rudyard could save him, he toppled over backwards and fell into his strawberry souffle, and then on to the floor. He lay there twitching and quivering for a moment, and then lay still.
"Go down to the second-class dining lounge and bring Dr. Fields up," Rudyard ordered one of the stewards. "Quickly, now! Tell him the captain's had a heart seizure!"
FORTY-TWO
Rudyard's diagnosis, as it turned out, was not entirely accurate. According to Dr. Fields, the commodore had suffered an attack of apoplexy—the rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain—brought on by drinking three bottles of Haitian rum one after the other, and by the unusual tension in his cerebral arteries caused by the excitement of arguing with Rudyard.
"You need not blame yourself, Mr Philips," he said. "The commodore was well overdue for something like this."
"Will he die?" asked Rudyard.
Dr. Fields was rummaging in one of his coat pockets for something.
"Die? Well, he may. In fact it's quite likely. He's a very sick man indeed."
Rudyard looked over Dr. Field's shoulder, through the half-open door of Sir Peregrine's bedroom, where the commodore was lying on his bed, his face reposed, but oddly cream-coloured, as if it had been carved out of cold semolina, except for two flushed spots on his cheeks, like blobs of raspberry jam.
"He's in a coma," said Fields. "It's quite common after an apoplectic attack. He may gradually recover from it, or he may die within a few hours. There is very little that any doctor can do."
"If he recovers...?" asked Rudyard.
Dr. Fields was an experienced ship's doctor, and nobody's fool. "If he recovers, Mr. Philips, he will probably be paralysed down his right side. I can tell that already by lifting his arms and his legs, and seeing how they fall. He won't be able to resume his duties for months, if at all. I doubt if he will ever command the Keys fleet again, or the Arcadia."
Rudyard stared at Dr. Fields and swallowed so loudly that he was sure that Dr. Fields had heard him. If Sir Peregrine was unable to command the Arcadia again, that meant simply that Rudyard, as the next most senior Keys officer, would take over. He had won, after all. Sir Peregrine had toppled himself, in the greatest act of poetic justice that Rudyard had ever heard of. Rudyard looked around Sir Peregrine's sitting room and thought to himself: this is going to be mine. Where that picture of the Shannon hangs, there I shall hang the Chinese watercolour that Toy gave me on our first anniversary, birds on a summer evening. And over there, on that bureau, I can set out my photographs of Matthew and Janet.
Dr. Fields said, "Sir Peregrine isn't a bad man, you know. He's pompous, of course, but then I think that he has a right to be. The saddest thing of all is that he wanted to be a great liner captain, of the same stature as Sir James Charles, and somehow that lustre always seemed to escape him. I hope, when you command this ship, that you will remember him occasionally and with some charity."
"That's a very old-fashioned speech," Rudyard smiled at him.
"Loyalty and respect are old-fashioned values," said Dr. Fields. "Why do you think I wear a wing collar? Not out of affectation, but to remind myself that there was once a time when people treated each other according to certain codes of courtesy."
"Well, yes," said Rudyard uncomfortably. "I suppose I'd better get to the bridge."
"It's all yours, Mr. Philips," Dr. Fields told him.
FORTY-THREE
A drama of a different kind took place an hour or two later, in the first-class smoking lounge. There, the ship's wealthier gamblers had assembled to bid for numbers in the ship's pool, and also to hear the results of the previous twenty-four hours' sailing. The room was dense with cigar and cigarette smoke, gusty with laughter, and heady with that second-night-at-sea feeling when you know that land has been left far behind you, and your destination is still far ahead of you, and that you can kick up your heels and do whatever you damn well please for the next two and a half days.
Maurice Peace was there, of course, with a club sandwich and a pack of cards, quietly eating while he relieved the tall man in the toupee of forty-five pounds at poker. Mark Beeney was sitting on a leather sofa by the mock-Tudor fireplace with Marcia, his tie loose and his tan rather reddened by champagne. Marcia herself was wearing a contented, provocative smile, lots of scarlet lipstick and a clinging green satin dress which did very little more than emphasise, en vert, that she was naked underneath. She had been quite determined this evening that Catriona wouldn't outdo her, although her pleasure at the announcement that Catriona was "indisposed" had been enormous. For one whole evening, she had no competition from the twenty-one-year-old queen of puppy fat. For one whole evening, she could have Mark all to herself.
Philip Carter-Helm was smoking a Passing Clouds and lying back in a club armchair watching the smoke rings rise to the ceiling. Douglas Fairbanks, his bandaged leg propped on a footstool, was telling yet another enthralled circle of passengers about his exploits during the storm. From the way he told it, he had been the only person on the whole ship, and the odd thing was that nobody interrupted him to say that, excuse me, but I went through the storm, too.