The loud conversation all around them immediately died away. The rope had been lifted! But for whom? Catriona found herself being stared at by hundreds of pairs of curious eyes; winked at by hundreds of diamonds in scores of necklaces; dazzled by a gross of starched shirtfronts. Then, at the prompting of a Keys officer at the back of the crowd, everybody started to clap, although most of them didn't have the faintest idea why. Catriona smiled and waved, as regally and as sweetly as she could, although underneath her flimsy dress her heart was running an hysterical bicycle-race. Two or three flash guns flared, and Catriona paused and turned by the open doorways to give the crowd one last theatrical display of teeth. She loved it, every moment of it. Her adrenalin was high, she felt pretty and bright and full of "It'. Now she knew why Nigel never tired of going out on to the stage every night, and twice on Saturdays. To be applauded, to be looked at, to have everybody whispering about you and wondering who you were—it was all too marvellous for words.
Arm-in-arm, Catriona and Edgar Deacon descended the staircase to the Grand Lounge. The staircase came down in a wide asymmetric sweep of semi-circular steps, each one cut and polished out of different-coloured marble. On either side of her, as she came down, Catriona could see herself a thousand times over, reflected and reflected again in tall fluted columns of sparkling mirrors.
Then they were in the Grand Lounge itself, and the orchestra struck up first with a fanfare of trumpets, and then with "Pomp and Circumstance'. The directors of Keys Shipping were all there, and the man from the Government, and a whole cluster of minor celebrities from sport, theatre and films. They stood up and clapped enthusiastically as Catriona came across the Lounge, and she almost felt like crying.
The Grand Lounge was brilliant. It rose the height of three decks, to an arched glass roof that was a glittering masterpiece of lightness and grace. Supporting the roof were twelve pillars of highly polished chrome, which mirrored every movement of the assembled guests in curves and stripes, and made the whole room flicker with life, like a film. Behind the pillars there were glass-and-chrome tables and chairs, and eleven fountains—naked stainless-steel girls, their arms stretched upwards, with spray surging out all around them to give the impression of undulating waves.
A table was spread with the most lavish buffet that Catriona had ever seen; and behind the table stood a starched rank of waiters and chefs in lofty white hats, ready to serve whatever a guest might wish, a hot country ham to rare roast beef, from hot and cold pigeon to smoked duck, from dry Indian curries with fresh nan bread and tandoori chicken to slices of pale Scottish smoked salmon. There was crisp-crusted cottage bread, still hot from the Arcadia's bakery; there was cheese from Cheshire and Cheddar from Lancashire; there were huge five-to-sixteen-pound marble pots of caviar, embedded in ice; there were fresh wood strawberries and cakes that were monuments in themselves, crammed with cream and nuts and fruits, and laced with kirsch.
The Grand Lounge's shining cocktail bar was as long as an American railroad car, and was ready with more than three hundred bottles of non-vintage champagne, as well as every cocktail imaginable, from a Blue Blazer (fiery whisky poured from one shaker to another) to the gentler tastes of Fish House Punch (rum and peach brandy).
The orchestra quickened its tempo to play "My Girl" and "Get "Em Again', and Catriona was steered around by Edgar to meet Lord Screpple, who leaned at an alarming angle and looked as if he had been boiled like a lobster, and the Marquis of Henrick, who looked distinctly underdone and had difficulty in catching the attention of the waiters. Then she had to shake hands with every one of the directors and senior management of Keys Shipping, almost every one of whom seemed to have watery eyes and a purple roadmap of Liverpool on his nose, and almost every one of whom pressed her hand between his, pressed it tight, and said how sorry he was, love, that Stanley had gone so suddenly to meet his Maker—but still, love, just look at you now, you're a successor and a half, better than a pound and a half of black pudding I'll say—and those watery eyes would strain to penetrate the cobwebs of her dress as if staring alone could melt them away.
"That's a fine lass, Albert. Just like her poor old Dad, what? But better-looking, eh?"
"I'll say. Can you take orders from a lass, though?"
"Who's talking about orders?"
After the first introductions had been made, Catriona was taken aside by a reporter from The Times who had arrived too late for the afternoon's press conference, a vague young man of about thirty-five with a dirty collar and breath that smelled of brandy. He asked her what she thought about Freud and she said she didn't mind his opinions but she wasn't particularly hipped on his taste in suits. The reporter licked his pencil a lot but didn't write anything down.
At ten-thirty, by a sequence of signals as subtle as any of those at a Sotheby's auction, the manager of the first-class restaurant, Mr. Dunstan Oliver, let it be known to the officers upstairs on the promenade deck that they might release the velvet ropes restraining the remainder of the guests, so that they too, could join the party. The orchestra played "Sons Of The Sea" as grandly as if it were the National Anthem, but there was still a rather noisy jostle on the staircase, and the lady wife of one of Liverpool's aldermen put her heel through the hem of her dress. Mr. Oliver, his profile raised like a circular saw, advanced smiling on the jostlers with an equally smiling escort of six headwaiters, and by the sheer intimidating glare of their teeth they quietened the commotion and directed everyone around the Grand Lounge to collect their buffet plates.
Catriona was talking to Lord Hinchcliffe and his daughter Elsie McKay. Miss McKay had been invited as a friend of the Arcadia's interior designer and herself designed interiors of liners for P&O. She wore a slinky butter-yellow gown and a yellow headband, crested by a huge diamond-and-carnelian clasp. "You just watch this mob," she said, in a brittle commentator's voice. "They're going to fall on all that food as if they were starving orphans."
She was right. As the orchestra played selections of Schubert from the year's most popular West End musical, Lilac Time, the guests crowded greedily along the length of the buffet table, elbowing and pushing each other, and leaving the end of the line with plates that were heaped as high as Egyptian pyramids with roast suckling pig, marinated sole, slices of rare beef, caviar and mayonnaise.
The hubbub of conversation, clattering plates, shuffling feet, and clinking glasses made the lounge sound, as Lord Hinchcliffe gloomily remarked, "like the eight-twenty rush hour at Babel railway station."
But to Catriona, the party was sparkling and funny and delightful. Despite the possessive way in which Edgar tried to pilot her through the throng, she managed to attract quite a crowd of sharp young men, one of whom was an outrageously handsome young Californian whose white teeth and white collar gleamed against his suntanned skin, and who made her promise to visit his family's orange groves in Bakerfield "as soon as humanly poss'. Another young man, English, and very thin, was a lyricist of popular jazz tunes, and just for her he composed on the spot a quirky little fox trot, which he accompanied with two teaspoons.
My, my, my sweet Catriona,
No, no, nobody can own her.
Like a dream
Or a song,
You can never