She went first to Philip Carter-Helm's stateroom; but it was locked, and there was no reply when she knocked. She went through to the smoking lounge and down to the library; but she found him at last sitting by himself by the swimming pool reading a copy of Babbitt. He was wearing half-glasses, and looked unusually boyish and vulnerable, especially after the testy way in which he had behaved when he had last spoken to her.
"Mr Carter-Helm," she said, quite softly.
He turned around. "Miss Keys," he replied. He folded over the edge of the page which he had been reading, and closed the book.
"Don't get up," she told him, although it was obvious that he hadn't been going to. He half lifted his bottom, in a belated attempt to correct his breach of etiquette, and then sat back again. Catriona drew across the next deck chair and sat quite close to him. The knees of her silk stockings shone in the sunlight.
"I've been wondering and wondering about you," she said.
"Yes? Why were you doing that?"
"Oh, you don't have to be so gruff," she told him. "I'm not being critical. I've been wondering about you because of what you said to me yesterday evening."
"I apologise if I was offhand. I wasn't feeling particularly well."
"Don't even think about it. I wasn't offended. I was more curious than offended."
"Curious?" he asked her. He took off his half-glasses and folded them.
"Well, you seemed to be showing such an interest in whether I should sell Keys Shipping or not, and to whom, and for how much. You seemed to have such a personal interest in the Arcadia. That's what made me wonder."
"I'm in shipping," said Philip, staring at her with that foxy-eyed look common to people who have just removed their spectacles. "Of course I'm interested. Everybody in shipping from London to Tokyo is interested in what happens to Keys."
"Not as personally as you."
"I'm not sure that I follow you."
Catriona reached across and touched Philip's arm. He looked slowly down at her hand and then back up at her face again, and she could see then that he realized the masquerade was over.
"The very best thing happened," she said. "Nobody gave you away but yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"Philip, I know who you are." She lifted up the radio messages which she had just received. "I've had confirmation from England. You can't deny it. And I'm pleased. Do you understand me? I'm delighted."
"Why should you be?" he asked her aggressively. "There's nothing for you to be delighted about."
Catriona tugged insistently at his sleeve. "It was the nursery rhyme that gave you away. I thought that I'd seen you somewhere before; there was something about you which struck a chord; and of course I'd seen you before. You look just like him; you look more like him than I do."
Philip let out a long, controlled breath. "I didn't really want you to know."
"I know you didn't. But the nursery rhyme. 'Where the fish swim free, child'. I don't know if ever he told you, but he made that up himself. Nobody else knows it but you and me. Until you recited it to me yesterday, I thought I was the only one."
Philip said, "It's a mess, isn't it?"
"Why is it a mess? How can you say that it's a mess?"
He covered his mouth with his hand for almost a minute, as if he didn't trust himself to speak. Then he said, "The Orange was the last straw."
"I don't understand."
"We'd argued and argued for more than a year about building the Arcadia. He was determined to do it. Determined! He had to challenge White Star and Cunard. Keys was going to be greater than both of them. He didn't seem to realise that he didn't have the assets, and he didn't have the backing. He didn't seem to understand that he lacked some essential talent when it came to running a shipping line. I don't know what it was, quite. He had genius, of a kind. Everybody said he was a genius. He knew how to get the best out of people, and pay them hardly anything in return. That was a talent in itself. He knew how to build ships, too. You only have to look at the Aurora; that's a beautiful ship. But he didn't have that gift of being able to attend to every detail at once, and so many sides of the company began to suffer from neglect, and overmanning, and sheer bad management. In 1919, when so many shipping companies were making a roaring profit, we were scarcely breaking even, and all because of top-heavy management and this lady, this bitch, the Arcadia. They say that she cost four million pounds, but believe me, she cost nearly twice as much as that, when you write in all the waste, and all the bad planning, and all the extravagance. Six first-class staterooms were fitted out, and then stripped again, right back to the bulkheads, because he didn't like the decoration. Can you imagine what that cost? And they had the engines in and out of the hull about fourteen times before he would pass them. He was a perfectionist, as most geniuses are. But he squandered so much time and so much money on achieving perfection; and when it came down to it, it wasn't even worth it. Have you noticed that the inlays in your cupboard doors are abura, and not mahogany?"
"But the Orange," said Catriona.
"Yes," said Philip, "the Orange. And not just the Orange, but the Hecate, and the Phyllis, and the Daphne, and the Equitable."
Catriona frowned. "You don't mean—?"
"All of them," Philip nodded, "all sunk. And all of them, except the Phyllis, which caught fire off Honduras about three years ago, all of them still afloat, in various guises."
"Oh, no," whispered Catriona.
"Oh, yes. Can you wonder that I argued with him, when he suggested the Orange? But we were running out of money, and he wanted the Arcadia's keel laid down; and he wouldn't take no for an answer. That's when I told him that I resigned; and that's when he cut me off without the proverbial penny."
"I can't believe it."
"Well, it's true; and in a way I'm glad you've found out. Perhaps someone can now put the record straight on the great and honest Stanley Keys. He was sinking his own ships and robbing his own warehouses and setting fire to his own wharfs, anything for extra money, anything to build this ridiculous floating fun palace."
Philip said this with such bitterness that Catriona scarcely knew what to say. He stared at her fiercely for a moment, and then he stood up and swung back his arm and threw his book as far out to sea as he possibly could, the pages fluttering in the afternoon breeze like a falling bird.
"Father was like Babbit in reverse," he said vehemently. "A man knew the value of everything and the price of nothing. But life wasn't like that any more; the grand Edwardian days are gone. He never understood that. He thought he was Brunel reborn. I don't know. I don't know what he thought he was. But he made sure that he ruined my career. He went ahead and sank the Orange, and as far as I was concerned, that was the end. He was stealing; and the Arcadia was built out of nothing but stolen and borrowed money. She doesn't belong to Keys Shipping; not one single bolt of her, not one plate, not one plank. And not much else of Keys Shipping belongs to us, either."
Catriona said, "That's why you wanted to sell her to American Trans-Atlantic?"
Philip nodded. "We have to pay some of this money back, Miss Keys. Or perhaps I should call you Catriona."
"You can call me Catriona."
He looked out to sea. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. "Honour is a difficult animal, you know. Perhaps it's the privilege of the young to be able to handle it, or at least to believe that we can. But if you want to know the truth, I intended to persuade you as far as I could to support the selling of the Arcadia to Mark Beeney, so that at least she would have a good home. No matter how unethical her origins, she's a very fine ship, the finest in the world, and I think Father deserves at least that much of a memorial, for all his sins. But you may have realised that the proceeds from selling her would only delay the death of the rest of the Keys fleet. It would pay off a few creditors who honestly deserve to be paid, and then the fleet would have to be dismantled, and everybody else would have to scramble for what they could get."