Catriona danced a quick and complicated little fox-trot step, partly to show off, and partly because Mark made her feel immature and embarrassed. Mark had to double-shuffle to keep up with her.
"How do you know I haven't thought of that already?" she demanded.
"Because if you had, you wouldn't have mentioned the names of humanity and George Welterman in the same breath."
"I think I'm quite capable of handling my own business affairs, thank you."
"I'm sure you are. I'm just giving a word to the wise. Keep your eye on George Welterman, that's all."
"Don't think I won't be. And don't think that I won't be keeping my eye on you, too, Mr. Mark Beeney."
Mark steered Catriona around a couple of small-time Hollywood stars, who were dancing in place with their faces stretched into impossible smiles for the benefit of the official Keys photographer and his brightly popping flash gun.
"Miss Catriona Keys," said Mark, "I have no designs on you whatsoever. Except that I'd love another dance, when you're free. And maybe the last dance of the evening."
"What about Marcia Conroy?"
"Marcia? I told you. She's only a stenographer. Well, maybe not a stenographer. But a friend, and nothing else. You're worried how cross she's looking? Don't worry. It's only because she forgot to wash in Woodbury's Facial Soap this morning, and she doesn't have the "skin you love to touch". Or maybe it was Listerine she forgot. I don't know. I don't think I care. Do you?"
Catriona didn't answer. The orchestra brought "I'll See You In My Dreams" to a flourishing ending, and the dance was over.
"You'll dance with me again?" asked Mark.
"I don't know," she replied, turning away.
"You don't know?" he said hi surprise, "Who else is there to dance with? Schwab? Well, all right, Schwab. I suppose that's okay if you want to spend the rest of the evening talking about steel and money and steel and money. Catriona—" he caught her sleeve, tried to hold her back—"Catriona, listen to me. Listen! I think I have a crush on you. In fact, I think I'm smitten. You know what smitten means? It means I've been thinking about you all afternoon. I shouldn't have been. I should have thought about shipping. I should have thought about Marcia. But I didn't. I thought about you. Isn't that crazy?"
Catriona allowed him to pull her back. "Catriona?" he asked her gently.
She still wouldn't look at him. But she said, "All right. The last dance, if you really mean what you say."
He held on to her arm a moment longer. "Jesus," he said, with a voice that seemed to be choked up with frustration and affection, the same way a gutter chokes up with leaves. "Why didn't I meet you when you were sixteen? I could have trained you from the very second it was legal. Do you think that's outrageous of me?"
Catriona gave him a quick, vivid grin. "I don't take training," she said and walked off on her own with almost scandalous independence to rejoin Edgar.
Dick Charles had just handed over control of the Arcadia to the fifth officer, and had hurriedly changed for the evening into his full-dress uniform, the one with the button missing. As Catriona walked across the Grand Lounge to be introduced to George Welterman, Dick came clattering down the gilded staircase with his head bent downwards, hoping with a kind of panicky hopelessness that Lady Diana FitzPerry wouldn't notice him arriving.
Sir Peregrine, with all the skill of a man who has spent the better pan of his life piloting large ships into small harbours (albeit with occasional lapses of accuracy), came across the floor at full steam and intercepted him as he was making for the bar.
"Mr Charles," he said, dryly. "I have someone here who's been dying to meet you, although God alone knows why."
"Y-yes, sir. Of c-course, sir," Dick stuttered. "I was just getting myself a g-glass of champagne, sir."
"The stewards will bring you your champagne, Mr Charles," said Sir Peregrine. "Just come along with me."
Dick Charles followed in the wake of his captain with the obedient innocence of a young man who has not yet discovered that life features very few fated encounters, but that when it does, they are almost invariably vicious. It was only when Sir Peregrine stood aside, and tugged Dick around as if he were a ballroom dancer, that Dick understood how neatly and quickly he had been ambushed. Of course, the lady had asked for him by name; and, of course, Sir Peregrine had obliged by bringing him over. Sir Peregrine took a pride in giving his passengers everything they desired, especially when everything they desired was as easy to provide and as dispensable as a junior officer who couldn't even pronounce the word "pepper'. He had provided far more complicated pleasures in the past.
"Mr Charles, how lovely to meet you," smiled Lady Diana FitzPerry, and Dick Charles gave a rigid bow, as if the ship's laundry had left the ironing-board in the back of his shirt. He couldn't think what to do or what to say: he couldn't even think what to think. His mind felt as empty as a ship's funnel.
"Lady FitzPerry is on her way to the Great Plains," grinned Sir Peregrine, baring his teeth. "She tells me that she was much taken with that magazine advertisement for motor-cars, the one that describes how wonderful it is "Somewhere West of Laramie". Is that the one, Lady FitzPerry?"
"You must have seen it," gushed Lady FitzPerry, still holding on to Dick Charles" fingers. "They call it word-magic, the way it's written. It's all about driving into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight, with the wind blowing your hair, and a lean rangy cowboy riding beside you."
"It s-sounds p-" began Dick Charles and then found himself unable to say any more. He stood to attention, his brain as devoid of intelligence as that of a freshly-born infant, trapped into silence by his merciless stutter, and with one of London's most notorious femmes fatale pinching his fingers as possessively as a fiddler crab.
Lady FitzPerry glanced at Sir Peregrine uneasily, but Sir Peregrine was beaming as patiently and as affably at Dick Charles as if his fourth officer were carrying on the wittiest of cocktail conversations. In fact, the commodore was enjoying the spectacle of Dick Charles" total social paralysis almost as much as he enjoyed his Elgar records when he was alone in his sitting-room.
"Perfectly stunning," said Dick Charles, in quite a different sort of voice.
"Well," put in Sir Peregrine, "I really must circulate. Have you talked to Miss Pickford yet? Charming lady."
Dick Charles and Lady FitzPerry found themselves alone together. Dick Charles hesitantly raised his hand, as if to say "cheers, then', but when he looked down he realised he didn't yet have a drink. Instead, he turned the gesture into an abrupt tug at the end of his nose, and then he immediately wished he hadn't.
Lady FitzPerry, close up, had all the style of an upper-class English whore. She was wearing a slim evening gown of gold lace, through which Dick had no trouble at all in seeing the pinky-brown ovals of her nipples, and the curve of her small flattish breasts. Her hips were narrow, but more from dieting than from natural trimness, and her ankles were thicker than they should have been. But she had a devastatingly elegant eroticism about her, and Dick felt that if she hadn't been wearing a silver beaded apron around her waist, her gown would have shown just about everything she had on offer. She was smothered in diamonds — they clustered around her fingers, and clung to her ears, and sparkled around her wrists. Dick found himself staring at her full pale-pink lips and wondering how many noble penises she had taken between them to earn herself so much fabulous jewellery.
"You stutter," said Lady FitzPerry. "I didn't realise."