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.
SIX
It was the summer of 1924. In England, bright young men were striding about in those voluminous grey-flannel trousers known as Oxford bags. In France, Gloria Swanson was being courted by her husband-to-be, the Marquis at la Falaise de la Coudray. It was the summer of mah-jongg, crossword puzzles, and the last fading popularity of "Yes, We Have No Bananas'. On the day that Stanley Keys died, the Republican Convention in Cleveland nominated Calvin Coolidge to be their Presidential candidate for the November elections.