Colleen Sullivan, to Sir Peregrine's acute annoyance, then sang a very slow and very Irish interpretation of the original Charleston, flinging her arms out at every high note, and continually tossing her trailing scarf over her shoulder. Jack Andrews, who was spiffily dressed in patterned golfing socks, baggy knickers and a bow tie, took off his cap and pretended that he was taking a collection for her. "With a voice like that, who needs to sing?" he quipped.
Although nobody noticed him, there was a sixth new passenger: a handsome-looking middle-aged man with chestnut hair that had been allowed to grow rather longer than the fashion of 1924 dictated; that is, it actually covered the tops of his ears. He had appeared to be one of the tweed-jacketed journalists who had accompanied Denis O'Hara and the rest of the Irish passengers out from Dublin harbour. At least, he had carried a bottle of Guinness in one sagging pocket and a dogeared notebook in the other, and in Ireland that was usually sufficient to establish a man's credentials as a member of the press. But when the cutter was untied, and when it was steered back in a foamy semi-circle across Dublin Bay with its whistle piping, he was not among the journalists, nor the photographers, nor the smartly-uniformed crew of the cutter, with their peaked caps as level as the tops of letter-boxes, and their collars buttoned up to their chins.
He was, in fact, still on board the Arcadia. He was folded up, in the words of that week's Comic Cuts, like a cheap penknife, in one of the linen cupboards on the first-class cabin deck. The cupboard was smotheringly warm, to keep the linen well-aired, and he was sweating like a cheese. But he preferred the heat and the contortions to the prospect of facing his creditors in Dublin.
His name was Maurice Peace. He had been born in Smackover, in Union County, Arkansas, and he was a one-time prestidigitator, small-arms runner, singer of political songs, slack-wire walker, and meadow violinist. These days, however, he was a full-time gambler.
SEVENTEEN
Catriona was swimming alone in the Arcadia's heated pool while Denis O'Hara and his lady wife were being welcomed aboard. It was peaceful and still, in the pool, with only the faintest slopping of the water against the gold mosaic tiles and the distant echo of the brass band; an arched sanctuary of palm trees and marble pillars and mosaic tiers. At the far end of the pool, a bubbling waterfall, lit with orange lights, coursed effusively down seventeen steps before splashing into a kidney-shaped whirl-bath; and by the windows, a curved nickel-plated cocktail bar offered champagne or fresh fruit juice to swimmers who had finished swimming, or swimmers who really preferred to stay quite dry and simply show off their new French bathing-costumes. It was still very risque to bare one's upper thighs, after all. Only two years ago, in Chicago, a whole bevy of bathing belles who had dared to swim in short bathing-suits had been manhandled into a paddy-wagon for alleged indecency and fined.
Catriona's bathing costume was in pink silk, designed by Madeleine Vionnet in a style which she called "La Rose de L"Infante', because of the Spanish roses around the short ruffled skin. The costume was an unusual combination of the demure and the erotic: the pink silk top clung like a second skin, transparently revealing Catriona's nipples as she bathed, whereas the skirt was as coy as a frill round the leg of a piano. To cover her bobbed hair, Catriona wore a tight pink cap of treated silk, sewn with patterns of seed pearls.
She had asked Edgar Deacon if she should be up on the boat deck to greet the O'Haras, but Edgar had told her that it really wasn't necessary. He didn't want to trouble her with the tedious formalities of shaking hands with an Irish banker and his lady wife; nor a golfer in funny socks; nor a would-be heroine of the Broadway stage. Besides, he preferred to produce her at tonight's banquet as a glamorous and glittering surprise, all dressed up like a fashion plate from La Gazette du Bon Ton.
There was another reason: he didn't yet want to have to introduce her to the tall fiftyish man in the long summer overcoat and the broad-brimmed hat. He wanted her to meet him later, in more controllable circumstances, and for a very particular purpose.
As Catriona languidly floated on the surface of the swimming pool, kicking her legs now and then, and looking up dreamily at the bronze-clad arches of the ceiling, she thought of Mark Beeney.
He disturbed her, and attracted her, as he must have attracted almost every girl who came within the radius of his smile. After all, she thought, he's handsome, and charming, and any man who gives you a diamond and ruby necklace worth thousands of dollars without asking for more than a peck on the cheek in return must have some sort of style. Yet, there seemed to be very much more to him. He wasn't just an American cake-eater with too much money and a gift for undermining a young girl's honour just when she thought she was clinging on to it the tightest. There was a complicated remoteness about him which made her feel as if he had something on his mind apart from necking. He was an interesting man, even a dangerous one. So dangerous that, as she circled around the pool, she found herself thinking about him as if they were lovers already.
Suddenly, she heard the sounds of an argument echoing loudly from the pool's entrance hall. A woman's voice first of all, high and histrionic and very foreign; and then the voice of the steward who was assigned to keep a discreet watch on the doors during lady's hour, to keep away peekers.
"This is quite absurd!" the foreign woman was shrilling. "The pool is practically empty, and how can you say that Sabran is anything but a decoration! He comes with me wherever I go! And if I wish to go to the pool in the lady's hour, then he shall come with me to the pool at lady's hour, also!"
Catriona swam to the steps at the shallow end of the pool and climbed out. Alice, who had been sitting on a narrow bentwood chair in the corner reserved for servants, brought her a huge white Turkish towel, and wrapped it around her shoulders. "What's going on?" Catriona asked her.
"It's Baroness Zawisza, Miss Keys. I think she's trying to bring her young man into the swimming bath."
Catriona put her feet up one after the other on to the chair so that Alice could dry them. Then she slipped on her pink silk mules and walked, still wrapped in her towel, to the entrance. Alice followed at a respectable distance behind.
By the door, accompanied by two uniformed maids, one of whom was carrying an incredibly fluffed-up white poodle, stood a tall defiant woman in a floor-length cape of scarlet marocain, a study in bright-red fury and bright-red wool. The cape was trimmed with a plumed collar of brown speckled feathers in which the woman's magnificent Slavic head, white as alabaster, with deep-set black eyes and black hair which had been scraped back and fastened with scarlet combs, nestled like an animated death-mask.
Beside the woman, indifferently smoking a Da Capo cigarette, slouched a bony youth in a white silk shirt and voluminous black silk Oxford bags.
"You are completely without imagination!" the baroness was snapping at the poor steward, who by now had turned extremely red. "You are a peasant, not fit to dig out potatoes! Tell him!" she said, suddenly turning to Catriona.
"He's only doing what he was ordered to do," said Catriona, gently.
"He was ordered to make a fool of me?" demanded Baroness Zawisza.
"He was ordered to keep men out of the pool during the lady's hour, that's all," Catriona told her. "You wouldn't want to see him lose his job, would you?"
"I demand to see Sir Peregrine!" cried the baroness, dramatically. "I demand! I demand! I demand!"
"I don't think there's any need to disturb the captain," smiled Catriona. She was rather enjoying this. "I'm Catriona Keys, and this whole shipping line belongs to my family. Don't you think I could help you?"