Alice said, almost crossly, "It wouldn't be very grateful of you not to wear it, would it? After all the trouble Mr. Beeney's gone to."
"What trouble? He bought me an orchid from the ship's florist, that's all. He probably didn't even go down there himself. I expect his man bought it."
"But it's exactly the right colour."
Catriona picked up the orchid by the stem, and turned it around between her fingers. "Yes," she said, airily. "I wonder how he knew."
There was another knock. Alice answered it, and this time it was Edgar Deacon, in full evening dress, looking dark and grey-haired and rather saturnine.
"Miss Keys," he greeted her; and then, "May I come in?"
"Of course," said Catriona. "You can have a drink if you want to."
"I brought you this," said Edgar, offering her a white lily in a cellophane box, tied with a blue ribbon.
"Oh," grinned Catriona. "I seem to have one of these already. Une embarrasse da corsages. Mark Beeney sent me an orchid. Look."
"Oh," said Edgar, irritably. "Well, you'll wear this one, naturally."
"Why naturally?" Catriona teased him. "I'm not sure I like white as much as purple. White is so... sterile. Don't you think so?"
Edgar reached into his inside pocket and took out his cigarette holder. "As a matter of fact," he said, lighting up, "it isn't from me. It's from somebody else. Somebody who's interested in meeting you and getting to know you."
"Not Jack Dempsey, I hope?" asked Catriona. "I saw him this afternoon, on the promenade deck, and he looked so moody. I think I'd be afraid to say "good morning" to him, in case he decided to try out his latest punch on me."
Edgar said, "No, no. Not him. It's... well, it's one of the people who came aboard just now, from Ireland."
"O'Hara? From the bank?"
"Not exactly, no. Not O'Hara."
"Mr. Deacon," said Catriona, "I think you're being very coy at this particular moment, and I think I want to know why."
"Miss Keys, I am simply trying to be socially correct." There was a note of forced amusement in Edgar's voice, and Catriona knew that she had just managed to get the edge on him. He was abrasive and sly and calculating as an adder, and he wouldn't let her hold her advantage for long. But right at this moment he wanted something from her quite badly, and although she didn't know what it was, she knew that the only way she was going to stay in control of her own destiny was to keep him wanting.
"You're not sounding sweetly coy," Catriona retorted. "You're sounding deviously coy."
"I'm not sure that I know the difference."
Catriona pursed her lips in a mock-cherubic pout. "I just think that you've got things a lot more planned out than you've been telling me. You've planned my wardrobe, you've planned out every hour of every day. Now I'm supposed to accept a lily from a strange Irishman. Well, I'm not sure that I'm very stuck on lilies. They remind me of death."
"He's not Irish," said Edgar. "His name's George Welterman, of International Mercantile Marine."
"Oh. The people you want to buy up Keys."
"The people I would prefer to buy up Keys if we find that we are obliged to sell it."
"So you don't want me to offend him?"
"I would rather you didn't." Edgar removed his cigarette from its holder and crushed it out in a stainless-steel ashtray which was presided over by a naked stainless-steel nymph. "He's not quite as dashing as Mark Beeney, I'm afraid, but it's very important that he gets a good impression of us. It will be his recommendation that will go to the Morgan bank to raise the finance to buy us out."
Catriona picked up the lily between finger and thumb, and twiddled it around. "I don't even know if selling Keys would be the right thing or wrong thing anymore. We'll be talking about the only thing. If we can't convince our bankers that we're going to pull through, and especially if we don't win the Blue Riband, then we won't have any more alternatives left open to us; and that is why it is absolutely essential that we keep on the right side of George Welterman."
"I nope you're not using me as bait," said Catriona.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"Well, you haven't promised him that I'm going to spend all evening with him, have you? The Houri of the Atlantic?"
"I did say that I'd introduce him to you."
"And that means I have to cut Mark Beeney?"
Edgar said a little impatiently, "Nobody said you had to cut him. You simply have to understand that, no matter how handsome he is, he isn't going to do any of us any good. He wants the Arcadia alone; and as far as he's concerned the rest of the fleet can go hang. You just think about young Godfrey Colehill when you think about cutting the rug with a chap like Mark Beeney."
"It really isn't fair," Catriona protested.
Edgar said, more gently, "I quite understand how you feel. But remember your father."
"I am remembering my father. All he ever did was to spoil my fun."
Edgar let out a laugh like a piece of dry toast. "You know something, my dear?" he asked her. "You're so much like your father I can scarcely believe it. If your father had been a woman, that's exactly what he would have told me, too. Well, it serves me right for underestimating the hereditary Keys character, doesn't it? All fire and charm and melodrama, hot one minute, cold the next; and as stubborn as a stableful of donkeys."
Catriona, who had her arms outstretched as Alice draped her white mink stole around her shoulders, said nothing. Edgar glanced at her and gave a slight and inconsequential shrug, as if to acknowledge that there was nothing else he could do. He picked up the discarded lily.
"Ill go and tell Mr Welterman that his corsage was unacceptable."
"Not really?" said Catriona.
"Well, of course. If you don't wear it, he's going to ask me why not."
"But he couldn't have expected me to, could he? I've never even met him."
"It was simply a gesture of respect, from one steamship company to another. It wasn't intended to mean anything else."
Catriona turned her head sideways. "Alice," she murmured. "Alice what shall I do?"
"Wear Mr Beeney's, Miss Keys, if I were you," Alice murmured back, as she straightened out the hem of Catriona's gown.
"Well, no, I don't think I will," said Catriona. "It's all too ridiculous. In fact, I don't think I'll wear either. You can tell Mr Welterman, or whatever his name is, that I have decided not to wear flowers at all tonight. I am not in a floral frame of mind. Alice, you can flush both of them down the loo."
Edgar raised a hand. "If that's the way you feel."
"Yes, it is. That's exactly the way I feel. I don't belong to anybody, -and that includes you."
"But you'll let me have a dance tonight?" asked Edgar, unexpectedly.
Catriona stared at him. For a long, oddly magnetised moment, their eyes were held on each other, as if each of them were trying to convey something far more than they could express in polite (or even impolite) conversation. Nigel had once said to Catriona, "There are some things that can only be explained in bed." When Catriona looked at the darkness in Edgar's eyes, she knew exactly what Nigel had meant. Could he really be "one of those', or was there much more to him?
What nobody on board the Arcadia knew at that moment, though, was that the tide was gradually washing the brutalised body of Thomas Dennis in to shore, and that, not far away, weeping with shock and desperation, a young boy called Sean Joyce was clinging coldly to a broken spar.