Mark stood up, and raised both of his hands. "Marcia," he said, "you're just acting crazy, that's all. Too much to drink. Too much dancing. Too much of everything."
Marcia stared at him with eyes as blue as cornflowers. "I came on this voyage because I was worried about you. I had a premonition that you were going to drown. It was so strong! I could almost feel the coldness of the sea."
Mark was silent. He lowered his hands.
Marcia said, "I came because I care about you desperately. Even if you and I aren't going to stay together, I still want to know that you're safe. I still want to know that you're happy."
Somehow, the impeccable English upper-class accent in which Marcia spoke these words made them seem all the more telling to Mark, and all the more poignant. An accent so crystalline was usually associated with confidence and self-assurance and inherited success. Instead, it was now being used to enunciate despair and uncertainty, and to express a longing that could never be fulfilled.
In spite of all of the diamonds, in spite of all of the champagne, in spite of all of the kisses, Marcia had been sensitive enough to understand that Mark didn't really, truly love her.
Mark said, softly, "I didn't ever intend to deceive you, you know. I never held out promises that I wasn't going to deliver."
Marcia's eyes were filling with tears. "You didn't have to," she said. "You, yourself, are the promise."
"I do love you, you know," he told her.
She looked up. Her voice came out as a brave, tearful gasp. "Yes," she said, "I know. It's wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful, how many different varieties of love there are. There are as many different varieties of love as there are candies in a sweetshop. I think you and I had the kind that tastes very, very sweet while it lasts, but melts away before you realise it's gone. Fondants, isn't that it? Strawberry fondant. It's a pity we didn't have the barley sugar. It doesn't taste so sweet, but it lasts almost forever."
She was crying quite openly now, the tears streaking dark marks on her pale silk pyjamas. Mark sat down beside her and held her shoulders, but she refused to allow him to draw her close to him.
"I know you went to see Catriona Keys just now," she sobbed. "My stewardess saw you outside her cabin."
"She was sick," said Mark. He hadn't told Marcia that George Welterman had raped Catriona. Mark and Alice and Edgar were the only ones who knew, although Dr. Fields had probably guessed. Dr. Fields had once told a young assistant of his that "medical complaints a board ship are caused seventy-five per cent by nausea and twenty-five per cent by libido"—so if Catriona's condition hadn't shown any symptoms of the first, it had almost certainly been attributable to the second.
"So sick that you had to visit her at one o'clock in the morning, for over half an hour?" Marcia demanded.
"What do you think?" Mark asked. "You think that I went to bed with her?"
"I don't know what to think. I know that I was waiting for you one to come with a bottle of champagne, and that I was expecting you to make love to me. But, well, obviously you had something more important to do."
"Marcia, you're not being fair."
"Why should I be? Why do I have to be fair? Are you fair to me? Have you ever been? What does fairness have to do with it?"
Mark let her go. He thought for a moment, and then stood up. "Listen," he said, "I'll come around again in the morning."
"Oh. You're going. So that's your answer, is it?"
"Marcia, if I were you, I'd order the giant pot of black coffee, drink all of it, and then go to bed."
"Oh, to hell with your coffee."
"Okay," said Mark. "I'm going. I'll be back in the morning, when you've come back to your senses. But right now, I don't particularly like your company and I don't particularly enjoy what you're saying to me. You can't bludgeon people into loving you, Marcia. It has to come naturally, if it's going to come at all."
"Brother," said Marcia, bitterly, "you just spoke a mouthful."
Mark turned, and walked across to the door.
"You don't have to give me any parting thoughts," said Marcia. "Just, you know"—and she flapped her hand at him—"be on your way."
Mark hesitated for a moment or two, then opened the door, went straight out, and closed it quietly behind him.
He didn't stay to listen to the painful sobbing that he could hear through the stateroom door. Instead, he took out a cigarette, lit it with a quick snap of his lighter, and strode with a serious face back to his cabin.
FORTY-SEVEN
Rudyard opened the door of the wheelhouse and stepped in, carrying a Coronation mug full of sweet cocoa. Dick Charles was already there, his face lit an unnatural green by the lights from the ship's instruments. Through the darkness of the windows in front of them, Rudyard and Dick and the helmsman could see their own reflections suspended in the night, as if their own ghosts were tirelessly following them across the Atlantic to remind them, in Shakespearian fashion, of their own mortality.
"Good evening, sir," said Dick, smartly, with scarcely the trace of a stutter.
"Good evening, Mr. Charles," Rudyard replied, and set his cocoa down on the ledge beneath the windows. "Everything quiet?"
"Everything s-steady, sir. The wind's dropped to f-four knots, and w-we're m-making just over the twenty-eight."
"Think she can go faster?"
"P-p-possibly, sir. But Mr. Deacon said to keep her under twenty-eight and a half. He d-doesn't want to b-blow her up the fir—the first time out."
Rudyard smiled. "She won't blow. She's unburstable. And smooth? Look at that skin on my cocoa. Not a ripple. She makes the Aurora seem like a motorbus."
There was a momentary pause while Rudyard leaned over to check their compass heading. Then Dick said, "Have you seen Sir P-peregrine recently, Mr. Philips?"
"I spoke to Dr. Fields just before I came up here."
"Is there any imp-provement?"
Rudyard shook his head. "He's still in a deep sleep. Dr. Fields thinks he may sleep for another twelve hours yet. But there isn't any doubt that he's going to be paralysed."
Dick Charles didn't say it, but the way he looked at Rudyard and then glanced out towards the prow of the ship, where it was cutting a white arrowhead of foam into the darkness of the sea, that look left the thought, Well, so you got what you wanted after all, fluttering between them like invisible signal flags.
"He's a grand old chap, Sir Peh—Sir Peregrine," said Dick. "One I the grand old men."
"That's right," said Rudyard. It suddenly occurred to him that Dick Charles didn't like him at all. Dick hadn't appeared to like Sir Peregrine much when Sir Peregrine was still in charge. But his resentment of Rudyard—for no reason that Rudyard could think of—seemed by comparison to be quite open and undisguised.
"I suppose they'll g-give the Aurora to Ralph Peel," Dick suggested.
"I don't know,' said Rudyard. "So far, nobody's given anything to anyone. Sir Peregrine is still the commodore of the fleet, and still captain of the Arcadia."
"But if he's p-paralysed..."
"If he's paralysed, then it's up to Mr Deacon and the rest of the board to decide what to do. Not to me."
Dick thought about that and then said, "G-good. I'm g-glad we've got that s-straight."
Rudyard looked at him oddly. But Dick Charles only grinned and then picked up his waterproof jacket. "I'll go off d-duty now, Mr. Philips, if it's all the s-same to you."
"Very well. Could you ask Mr. Peel to spare me a moment, if he's in the wardroom?"
"Y-yes, sir."
Dick Charles left, and Rudyard was left staring out at his own phantom face. It had never crossed his mind before that he might not be very popular, and the feeling was both disconcerting and depressing. He picked up his cocoa, spooned out the crinkly brown milk-skin, and ate it. Then he sipped the scalding-hot drink, and wished that he had a digestive biscuit to eat with it.