"Well, maybe she is," said Harry, lighting up his cigarette, his hands cupped against the wind.
Lucille said, "Do you think we ought to be friends, you and I?"
Harry leaned back. "Yes," he said, "I do. Don't ask me why. But I do."
"All right, then," said Lucille. "Because you're my friend, here's a five spot to buy yourself a drink."
She opened her lilac purse, and took out a $5 bill, which had been meticulously folded into a tiny square. She unfolded it, like origami in reverse, and held it out.
"I can't take that," said Harry.
"But you must. You saved Margaret."
"I didn't save Margaret for any other reason except I didn't want you to lose your doll."
"But you're a Communist. You believe in rich people sharing what they have with poor people. This is all I've got left from my allowance, and I want to share it with you."
Harry closed his hand over hers, so that she kept the bill tight within her grasp. "Listen," he said, "I really don't want it. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't want it."
Lucille frowned at him. "You're not really a real Communist then, are you?"
"Perhaps I'm not."
"But you can't be! Communists are supposed to be unscrupulous. You're not unscrupulous. Not a bit of it."
Harry smoked his cigarette and looked at Lucille through narrowed eyes. "Maybe you rich people do have an edge on us, after all," he said. "Maybe you're all psychic."
"Psychic? What does that mean?"
"It means knowing what goes on in other people's heads."
Lucille thought about that, and then said suddenly, "You're not going to do anything silly, are you?"
TWENTY-SIX
At six minutes to eight, as Lucille Foster climbed the companionway to the first-class deck, and returned to the anxious custody of Mrs. Hall, several other things were happening aboard the Arcadia. Maurice Peace, in the first-class Smoking Room, was dramatically laying down a straight flush in front of a small poker school of wealthy American and German businessmen, thereby beating the full house of Mr. Hubert Hubbard, who owned most of Minneapolis (if not St. Paul) and thereby collecting nearly $11,500 in winnings. Douglas Fairbanks, in his stateroom decorated on the theme of "Music', groaned and grumbled momentarily in his sleep, before burying his face in the pillow again. Baroness Zawisza, in her stateroom decorated on the theme of "Passion', lay back on her bed with her rose-and-green Bellina chemise drawn up around her white and ample thighs, dreaming of spring days in Dziwnow, on the Pomeranian Bay, while Sabran lapped at her dark-haired vulva with the elegant persistence of a young cat. Rudyard Philips tried to telephone Percy Fearson again, but without success. He bit his nails. And Monty Willowby was in the bathroom of Princess Xenia's stateroom with a screwdriver, struggling to remove the original mahogany lavatory seat, and replace it with a cheaper seat which he had taken from one of the third-class washrooms.
Oddest of all, though, Dick Charles was gradually opening his eyes in his own narrow berth, and attempting to remember what had happened to him during the night. He had been quite sure that he would wake up next to Lady Diana FitzPerry, and yet here he was, in his own quarters, with his mess uniform hung neatly on a hanger, his cap perched on top of his washstand, and a stunning hangover that would have brought a fully-grown ox to its knees. Jerkily, he sat up, gripping the varnished wooden side-rail of his bed for support, and tried to focus on the square-faced Smith's alarm clock on the shelf over his desk. He sank back into his bunk with relief. He wasn't due on duty for another hour yet, thank God. He actually said it out loud, "Thank God'.
But how had he got here? And where was Lady Diana? And all of those extraordinary pranks that had gone on during the night—had they really happened, or had he simply been dreaming, or drunk, or temporarily insane?"
He could remember Lady Diana insisting that he come to her stateroom for a nightcap. Both of them had drunk a considerable quantity of champagne already, and their progress along the blue-carpeted corridor of the first-class accommodation had been characterised by an intermittent series of sudden rushes from one side of the corridor to the other, and a lot of giggling. Once, Lady Diana had actually fallen over, and lain on her back, kicking her legs like a schoolgirl, and shrieking upper-class shrieks at the top of her voice. It was probably a good thing that the rest of the first-class passengers had been equally incapable, or else there might have been a nasty scene.
At last, they had reached her stateroom (theme: "Gold') and there she had thrown off her evening slippers, demonstratively unfastened her gown, and leaped around and around until her gown had eventually fallen to her ankles. She had tossed it carelessly across the room and Dick had caught it in mid-air. "You're a gentleman," she had shirred, "and an oshifer."
Naked, ribby, and ridiculously well-bred, she had thrown her arms around Dick and smothered him in so many kisses that he had gasped for breath. "This is the moment of truth!" she had declared. "So, open the champagne, and we'll drink to the moment of truth!"
They had drunk, in Mumm's, to the moment of truth.
"This is also the moment of reckoning!" Lady Diana had cued. "Let us drink to the moment of reckoning!"
They had drunk to the moment of reckoning. In Mumm's.
Then, they had drunk to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; to the late Gilbert John Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto; to the Lancashire Fusiliers, all of them; and to the Atherstone Hunt.
Dick Charles had almost forgonen his stutter by the time Lady Diana FitzPerry had dragged him by the wrist to her bed (a gilded four-poster, in the Egyptian style, with a gold-threaded counterpane). In fact, he had forgotten who he was, or why he was here, and he had been barely capable of anything that could reasonably have been interpreted as stiffness. There had been a half-hour interlude of juicy but inconsequential coupling, after which Lady Diana had suggested a light middle-of-the-night snack of cream cheese and soused herring. They had eaten, and then drunk chilled Polish vodka, and then returned hastily to bed; where Lady Diana had ridden him so mercilessly that he had cried out, "S-stop it! P-please!" until she had forced him into ejaculating with such violence that it was almost painful.
Later, with a glazed but direct stare, she had shaken him by the shoulder and said, "Have you ever played Corkies?"
Dick had been almost asleep, his mouth hanging open against the pillow. He had moved his head from side to side to indicate that he hadn't.
"That's why I like soused herring so much," she had said. "It gives me wind, so that I can play Corkies."
Dick had closed his eyes. In the darkness of his drunkenness, he had prayed for equilibrium, and for sleep. God, bring me sleep. Or, at the very least, bring me a glass of mineral water and four aspirin.
But there she had been again, shaking his shoulder. "If you've never played Corkies, you've never lived. You're not falling asleep on me, are you?"
"Nmph," Dick had assured her.
She had bounced out of bed, and walked through to the living-room. Dick had phased in and out of sleep at least three times before she had returned. She had peeled back his right eyelid with the ball of her thumb, and in her left hand held up two champagne corks. "You see these? Corks! These are what we use to play Corkies. It's really wonderful! The Master of the Rolls taught it to me. Or was it the Lord Chancellor? I forget which. One of these dear old legal boys, anyway."
Dick had pulled at his face with his fingers to wake himself up a little. Then, his head sagging and his brain spinning around and around like a ship's propeller, he had propped himself up on his elbow and tried to focus on what Lady Diana was doing.