The Arcadia's maiden voyage was to be a four-day party, and each night was to be crowned by balls and banquets. But for Rudyard a it was an ocean-going wake, a celebration of the death of his marriage. He had learned three days before the Arcadia was due to sail that his wife Toy had a lover, and that she was thinking of leaving him.
He couldn't blame her, he supposed. He was usually away for weeks on end, leaving her with the full responsibility of looking after Matthew and Janet. She was alone in a strange suburb, a delicate and educated Chinese girl in a terrace of English redbrick villas, with nobody to talk to but surly shopkeepers and Rudyard's sister, who I friendly, yes—friendly to the point of frenzy—but no company a all with her endless chatter about knitting patterns and coal prices and neighbourhood scandals for a girl who liked poetry and serene landscapes and flying kites.
There was no chance that Toy could have kept Laurence a secret for very long. Nobody had secrets in Warrington Avenue: especially when the secret was a vigorous, lean, long-haired university professor with a red Austin Chummy tourer and a multi-coloured scarf that must have been twenty feet long. Laurence had met Toy at a bus stop in Runcorn, one day when it was raining, and given her a ride. Then he had started taking her out at weekends, for drives to Chester and Ellesmere Port and once even to Mostyn. They had talked about Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu and the silk paintings of the Sung dynasty. Then their conversation had turned to the erotic Tao novel Ch"Ing P"Ing Mei, and at last their conversation had turned to gasps and kisses in the professor's bed-sitting room in Birkenhead. Matthew and Janet were already calling him "Uncle Laurence" by the time Rudyard came home on leave before joining the Arcadia's maiden voyage. Toy had cried and asked Rudyard to forgive her. Rudyard, just like a British officer, just like a pompous self-righteous Boys" Own idiot, had punched her and bruised her cheek. He still went hot when he thought about it. To have punched Surprise-Bloom Flower had been nothing less than madness. Because here he was on the promenade deck of the Arcadia, forty-five minutes out of Liverpool, smoking a cigarette and feeling sick, with nobody to go home to.
Meeting Catriona had been just about the last straw. He had expected Stanley Keys" only daughter to be strong; but he had also expected her to be plain and practical, and to talk to him about bollards, and windlasses, and wear beige Fair Isle cardigans. Instead, she had turned out to be waspish and perfumed and slanty-eyed, and to have that intense femininity about her that had first attracted him to Surprise-Bloom Flower. Catriona Keys had both stimulated and humiliated him, and he wasn't sure whether he felt angrier with her than he did with himself; it was a close-run thing.
Just then, one of the stewards came out on the promenade deck, a gingery-haired fairy called McNulty. He shrieked against the wind, "Mr. Philips, sir! Mr. Philips, sir! Problems!"
Rudyard tossed his cigarette over the rail, and went back inside. McNulty was hot and excited and smelled of lavender-water, and he stood much closer to Rudyard than he needed to. "It's Mademoiselle Narron, sir. The opera-singer lady. She's locked herself in her stateroom and she's sobbing fit to bust. Mr. Willowby's worried she's going to do something drastic."
"You've got your pass-key, haven't you?" Rudyard demanded.
"Mademoiselle's jammed the lock somehow. Don't know how, sir. We've tried everything."
Rudyard hurried down the first-class staircase, beaming reassuringly to the passengers with whom he almost collided on the way. Then he was half-running down the long maroon-carpeted corridor, holding the peak of his cap to stop it falling off. On either side of him, in eurhythmic poses, naked girls cast out of stainless steel were holding up frosted-glass lamps, their eyes closed in 20th century ecstasy. Through half-open stateroom doors, he glimpsed mink coats laid out on beds; and tail-coats being shaken out for the evening. The whole length of this corridor was stuffy with French perfumes and expensive colognes, and with that inimitable aroma of real leather and real fur and real vicuna that always seems to accompany the very wealthy, a laconic haze of authenticity.
Mademoiselle Narron's stateroom was at the very end of the corridor, underneath the wheelhouse. Monty Willowby the purser was there, as well as Dick Charles the fourth officer, two stewards, and one of the first-class maids, Iris.
"Ah, Mr. Philips," said Monty Willowby. "Glad you could come so promtly. Seems like a case of the artistic hystericals, unless I'm mistaken. You wouldn't have remembered Mr. Caruso, on the Eximious, would you? Quite vocal, he got. Crying, and singing "Vesti la giubba'. We had to break down the door and give him cold tea with comfrey in it."
"We are not breaking down this door," said Rudyard. "Not if we can help it."
"I've t-t-tried p-p-pleading with her, s-s-sir," put in Dick Charles.
Rudyard tried to imagine Dick Charles pleading with anybody, even with Jesus, and didn't find the thought particularly inspiring. Not that Dick was lacking in any of the other qualities that made an excellent fourth officer. He was clever, confident, and responsible. He was good with children, especially first-class children. It was just that his interminable stutter tried everybody's patience to the utmost. In Monty Willowby's words, "You could drink fourpence-worth of Guinness and eat a sixpenny ham sandwich in between "w" and "would you like some luncheon?" "
Monty Willowby, of course, was a species unto himself. The purser on a huge luxury liner like the Arcadia was as near to being an emperor as it was possible to be without actually owning India. He was in charge of the entire corps of stewards and stewardesses, and of everything social, recreational, and financial. He sat on the summit of a busy pyramid of tips, back-handers, pourboires, bets, and out-and-out bribes. When a wealthy passenger gave him a sizeable gratuity to ensure special and prompt attention, Monty Willowby in turn would tip the bedroom-steward concerned, and the bedroom-steward in his turn would tip the chambermaids and the pantrymen, and the pantrymen would tip the chefs. In most good travel guides that year, 1924, it was suggested to first-class passengers on front-rank liners like the Arcadia and the Mauretania that they should calculate on spending a sum equal to at least five per cent of their total fare on tips. Bedroom-stewards should be tipped the most; dining-stewards sixpence less.
But whatever was paid out, whether it was a shilling for setting out deckchairs or threepence for carving an extra slice of rare roast beef, Monty Willowby would collect his tithe. He was stout, loud, and authoritative, with fiery red cheeks that looked hot to the touch, and a moustache like an explosion in a horsehair sofa. He had served as a sergeant-major at Ypres and Passchendaele, and shot eleven Bosch. He proudly claimed that his wife Violet had the fattest bottom in the North of England. "My Yorkshire mare," he called her. If he made less than 750 pounds in tips and bribes on a one-way trip to New York, he considered that times were thin. That was his pet phrase. "Times is thin, Mr. Philips. Times is very thin."
Now, however, with the greatest diva of the decade sobbing and locked irremovably in her stateroom, Monty Willowby's times were more awkward than thin. Shouting through the keyhole in a stentorian voice had brought no results; nor had the promise of complimentary champagne and free Floris chocolates. After bullying and bribery, Monty Willowby had nothing left in his diplomatic quiver except to call for an officer. That was why he had sent for Rudyard Philips. "Officers is paid to impress the passengers. That's what officers is paid for. It don't matter a shit if they can't sail a duck in a bathtub, as long as they impress."