"Actually, it's very wearing to be popular," said Nigel, unconvincingly.
Catriona leaned towards him, and nuzzled her head affectionately against his shoulder. "I'm so pleased to see you. Don't let's start bickering."
"You mean that? You're really pleased?"
"Of course I'm pleased, chump."
"Then you'll come back to London with me?"
Catriona stared at him, her lips puckered in a held-back laugh, and shook her head slowly from side to side. "No, Nigel, I can't. But I won't forget you, and I'll always come back to see you if you'll still have me."
Nigel took a shallow breath. "Well," he said, plainly deflated, "I didn't really expect you to say anything else."
Catriona said, "You'll stay for tonight, won't you?"
"What for?"
"There are no trains back to London, not now. It's too late."
"I've got myself a room at the Royal Liverpool Hotel. It's not much. Faces a brick wall, actually. But there wasn't much available, what him this floating fun palace of yours about to depart. However, it'll do."
Catriona hugged him close. "Don't be so silly. You can stay with me. Come and join the party, have some champagne, and then I'll show you my stateroom."
Nigel eased his finger around the side of his stiff white collar. "Do you know something?" he told her, "I think this is the first time that a girl has actually seduced me, instead of the other way around. I would say that just about calls for a glass of champagne. Maybe two glasses of champagne. Or three."
"Then come and have some."
Inside the Grand Lounge, as they descended the staircase, the orchestra was blaring out "Pretty Soft For You', and the dance floor was whirling with shining evening gowns and black coattails. Catriona saw Edgar standing dark-countenanced among the directors of Keys Shipping, making no secret of his displeasure at Nigel's gatecrashing.
"Bit of a grim cove, that Edgar Deacon," remarked Nigel. "Want a dance before he rushes you off again?"
Nigel, despite his affected manners, was a strong and immaculate dancer. He took Catriona around the beautifully-sprung dance floor as if he were carrying her through a field of summer flags, around and around with their distorted reflections teasing and dazzling them from the lounge's gleaming pillars. She closed her eyes and listened to the music and the laughter, and somehow now that Nigel was here it all seemed like a fantasy. as if the only reality in the world were she and he, dancing.
She remembered (dizzily) drinking more champagne. She also remembered making a presentation of a silver-plated model of the Arcadia to some distant cousin of the King who had no chin whatsoever and ears like a woodland elf. She remembered dancing with the Lord Mayor, and with two or three fat and perspiring directors, whose bellies bounced against her like over-inflated footballs. But most of all she remembered climbing the staircase from the Grand Lounge to the rippling applause of everybody there, and then walking arm in arm with Nigel along the first-class promenade deck as the early-morning sun outlined the dark Gothic towers of the Royal Liver Friendly Society, and the Liverpool Pier Head, and sparkled on the Mersey as if gold sequins had been stitched on to every wave.
In her stateroom, Trimmer had left her a small tray with ice and seltzer on it and a fresh white gardenia. "Anti-acid for the hangover, flowers for the soul," said Nigel. "What an imaginative steward you have." In the bedroom, Alice had turned down the bed, both sides. "And your maid has an excellent intelligence network," Nigel added.
They locked the doors, and then Nigel put some sweet low jazz music on the gramophone. He took Catriona in his arms, kissed her, and unhooked the delicate catches of her dress. It fell away from her as softly as it had fallen on to her.
"Perhaps this is what I really missed," he whispered. "A chance to say goodbye to you the same way I said hello."
His right hand cupped the heaviness of her breast, and her nipple crinkled and rose the palest pink between his fingers. He tugged at it gently between his finger and his thumb. He kissed her again and again, and the tip of his tongue touched every one of her teeth, as if he needed to feel every intimate part of her before he lost her for ever.
Underneath his black evening trousers he was rearing hard and unmistakable. He peeled off his tailcoat, loosened his diamond cufflinks, wrenched open the buttons of his white vest, tugged free his necktie. Soon he was naked except for his white silk drawers.
The gramophone record came to an end and hiss-clicked, hiss-clicked, while the early sunlight began to illuminate the bedroom like a modern cathedral, all white drapes and lemon-wood and frosted glass. But as she lay back on the sheets, still wearing her rolled-down stockings and her dancing slippers, but otherwise completely naked, it was Nigel who filled Catriona's consciousness, and Nigel alone.
Nigel meant security; that little London love-nest for two. Nigel meant fun and freedom, but also closeness and friendliness and understanding, and waking up in the morning to find that someone you feel really fond of is lying asleep next to you. Catriona was brave and often arrogant, but not so brave or arrogant that she didn't miss Nigel's arms around her, or the simple days of making him cinnamon toast in that kitchen in Royal Hospital Road. She knew those days had inevitably passed; but this morning in her stateroom aboard the Arcadia she clung to them one last time.
Her eyes were closed as Nigel kissed her neck and her breasts, and his tongue ran up the curves inside her thighs. She caressed and squeezed his bony muscular shoulders and ruffled his wavy hair, and while she caressed him his tongue found every crevice of her and explored it both lovingly and provocatively. Something happened to her like a box Brownie closing its shutter in a moment of utter darkness.
Then he was astride her, and she reached up for him. He was pushing into her, forcefully but not roughly, and with an irresistible rhythm that made her feel as if the inside of her body was effervescent. lit seemed to go on and on, but not to last. He shuddered, and she held him tighter, the way you hold someone tighter when something has gone wrong, what's the matter, come tighter, come closer. But the tightness and the closeness was only her last desperate effort to cling on to him, knowing that once he had climaxed she would have to lose him.
"Nigel," she said. The word rose like a smoke-ring, and faded across the silent bedroom.
They lay side by side for almost an hour. They didn't say much. Then, without prompting, Nigel got up and dressed. Catriona stayed where she was, in bed, afraid to get up in case that made him leave all the more quickly.
"Have a safe journey, old thing," he told her. "Look me up when you get back. That's if you still want to."
Catriona's eyes were clustered with tears. She let out a long wavering breath, and then said unhappily, "I won't forget you. You know that, don't you?"
"Chin up, toots," he said, smiling.
"You could come, you know," she blurted out. "I could find you a stateroom, and you could come along too. My God, I'm the head of the whole shipping line. I can take along anyone I want to."
"Sorry," said Nigel. "It's back on the boards tonight. I only got away yesterday by pleading double pneumonia."
"But you don't have to go. It's only a play."
"My darling," said Nigel, "I said exactly the same thing to you. "You don't have to go. It's only a shipping line." But you knew that you had to, just as I know that I've got to. It's sad, and I'm going to miss you like hell, but it's the stuff that real life is made of."
The tears rolled down her cheeks. "How do you know what real life is made of? You're only an actor. Half the time you don't know what's real and what isn't."