She pinned Rudyard down on the silky quilt of her bed while she forced him to penetrate her. She gripped his wrists and clung on to them as if she were riding a Scott motorcycle, and jostled her ample buttocks onto his midriff until he had pierced the very deepest crevice of her. His face was ruddily tanned as far as his collar: the rest of him was white, apart from the two tanned gloves of his hands. He coughed and went crimson as he filled her, far too promptly, with semen. Then she rolled over and lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, while he hopped and struggled into his mess trousers.
He didn't feel guilty, of course, that he hadn't satisfied her. In 1924 it was still unusual for men to realise that women needed to reach a climax quite as regularly as men. The word "orgasm" was not in public currency. As long as a chap got it over with, well, that was all right; and if the woman liked it too, well, that was a bonus.
"You're disappointed," said Louise.
"Of course not," Rudyard told her, flicking one end of his bow tie over the other and tightening it up. "That was wonderful."
"No, it wasn't," said Louise. "It was sad. Sad, and useless."
Rudyard knew that she was right. But he couldn't understand what had gone wrong. As a matter of fact, he couldn't understand why it had happened at all. He finished tying his tie.
Louise sat up. Between her parted thighs, white fluid dripped slowly out of ginger hair, as slowly as glue, or honey. She thought of the morning that Raymond had once sat naked on a Czechoslovakian bentwood chair and played Mozart on his cello. Sad, sweet, throatsome music that had made her openly cry. She had left a single tear running down the window that overlooked Kensington Gore and the Albert Hall.
"Well, perhaps we should try again, when I have had fewer Poppea cocktails," said Louise. "Or then again, perhaps not."
Rudyard said, "I'm sorry. I don't know what to say."
"Why should you say anything? It was just as much my fault as yours."
Rudyard buttoned up his suspenders, and then pushed his arms into the sleeves of his mess jacket. "Let's talk tomorrow," he said.
"Yes," she said. She was still sitting on the bed when Rudyard left the stateroom and closed the door behind him as quietly as if he were closing a safe which contained a guilty secret.
Only a few minutes after Rudyard had left Louise Narron's stateroom, the wireless officer—Willis the Wireless, as he was unfailingly nicknamed—knocked respectfully at the door of Sir Peregrine's sitting-room. Sir Peregrine was listening to Elgar on his gramophone and twiddling his stockinged toes in tune to the music. "What is it?" he demanded. He was drinking mineral water with a slice of lemon in it, and nibbling at cashew nuts. He always felt hungry in the early hours of the morning, and he had been known on several occasions to make his way down to a ship's pantry in his dressing gown, to pilfer a slice of game pie or some of the hot rolls that the night shift were making in the bakery.
"Message from the harbourmaster at Dublin, sir," said the wireless officer.
"Well? What do the bloody Irish want now?"
Willis the Wireless had only been seconded to the Arcadia at the last moment, and he was unused to captains as grand and as elevated as Sir Peregrine Arrowsmith. What was even more unnerving, he had taken the wireless message himself, and he knew what was in it. All he could find the courage to do was to hold out the message in a trembling hand until Sir Peregrine snatched it from him, and then to stand to attention, his eyes fixed on the oil painting above the fireplace of RMS Shannon in an Atlantic swell. Sir Peregrine's sitting room was panelled in oak and spread with Indian carpets, like a Pall Mall club in miniature. The interior designers had originally suggested "a functional studio', but Sir Peregrine had adamantly refused to have anything to do with it. "Too damned German," he had declared.
Chewing cashews, Sir Peregrine unfolded the message and read it. Halfway through, he stopped chewing. In the quick block letters of a wireless operator's hand were written the words: "Irish fishing vessel has rescued eleven-year-old boy Sean Joyce, survivor of wreck of fishing smack Drogheda, out of Dublin. Boy claims Drogheda was run down by Arcadia at high speed and sunk. Search continues for Thomas Dennis, hirer of boat, feared drowned."
"What's this nonsense?" asked Sir Peregrine, fiercely, holding up the message as he chased the last few fragments of nut around the him of his cheeks with the tip of his tongue. "When did this arrive?"
"Just arrived, sir," said Willis. "Just arrived this minute."
"Well, what does it mean?" demanded Sir Peregrine. "What does it all mean? An eleven-year-old boy says I ran him down? What kind of damned nonsense is that?"
"I don't know, sir," said Willis, unhappily.
"I don't expect you to know, don't worry about that," blustered Sir Peregrine. "Every single damned wireless message the Irish send out is either incomprehensible or reprehensible. Generally both. I'm asking you rhetorically, if you know what it means. In other words, I'm asking you, but I know the answer already, and the answer is humbug, that's what the answer is. Hum-bloody-bug."
He circled his sitting-room as if he were chasing a bluebottle. Then he stopped and stiffly handed the message back to the wireless operator and snapped, "Send a message to the Dublin harbourmaster. What's his name? O'Shaughnessy or some other damned barbaric nonsense. Ask him what the damned hell he means by this message. Ask him what the damned hell he's going on about. Put it politely, of course. Say, "Arcadia in no known collision. Kindly furnish details. And may the whole of Ireland sink into the sea without a trace". No, leave out that last sentence, damn it."
Back in the wireless room, Willis the Wireless donned his headphones and hurriedly began to send back to Dublin the message that the Arcadia knew nothing of any collision with the Drogheda, and would Dublin please furnish further information. He was still tapping away at his key when Rudyard Philips looked in at the door, looking tired and anxious and still adjusting his bow tie.
"Anything up?" he asked, offering the wireless officer a cigarette.
Willis declined the cigarette with a wave of his hand and continued tapping out Morse.
"What's wrong?" Rudyard repeated. In reply, Willis pushed across the original message from Dublin harbour. Rudyard picked it up and read it carefully.
"My God," he said. "We've killed someone."
The wireless officer took off his headphones and laid them on the table. "I don't know yet, sir. That's the only information we've received."
"What did Sir Peregrine say about it? I mean, he's seen it, of course?"
"Oh yes, sir, I took it straight round to his sitting room. He took it very bad, sir. Said it was nonsense."
Rudyard said, "Very well," and walked quickly along the deck to the door of Sir Peregrine's quarters. He tightened his bow tie and knocked.
"Oh, it's you," said Sir Peregrine. He was ready for bed now, in royal blue silk pyjamas, with the Keys company crest embroidered on the pocket in gold braid.
"I've just seen the message from Dublin, Sir Peregrine," said Rudyard.
"As well you might," Sir Peregrine nodded. "More damned madness, that's all I can say. The whole damned country's populated by thieves and lunatics. Now they're claiming we've run over one of their sightseeing vessels. Madness."