And as Catriona crossed the floor of the lounge to be greeted by Edgar Deacon and by Monsieur Victor Detain, of the Gazette du Bon Ton, who was organising the fashion parade, she felt an extraordinary sensation of unreality as the deck tilted uphill, paused, and then tilted downhill again.
Just behind Edgar stood George Welterman. He watched Catriona trying to stagger as elegantly as she could towards them, but his expression remained strangely rubbery and unformed, like an empty hot-water bag. Only Percy Fearson stepped forward to give Catriona his hand and steady her.
"There aren't many people here yet," remarked Catriona, looking around. A long roll of maroon carpet had been laid down across the centre of the lounge, and it was lined on either side by two rows of little gilt chairs. But so far, fewer than a third of the chairs were occupied, and fewer than half of the ladies who occupied them were smiling. Every now and then, one of them would get up, carefully set down on her seat the tasselled notepad and silver pencil supplied by Keys Shipping, and hurry biliously away to the Ladies'.
"It is just my luck," said Monsieur Delain. "I organise the most splendid of fashion shows outside France, and what is my reward? A storm, and everybody sick. Even my best mannequin is sick."
"I suppose we'd better start," said Edgar, tiredly. The Arcadia's social director, a normally breezy man called Eric Coleman, was standing on the other side of the lounge with a faraway look, absentmindedly chewing the edge of his clipboard. "Eric!" called Edgar, and when he had caught the social director's attention, he mouthed the word "start'.
Catriona had been looking for Mark Beeney, or for Marcia, but there was no sign of them. Instead, George Welterman stepped forward and loomed close to her and said, "Would you do me the honour of sitting next to me?"
Catriona glanced at Edgar. Nobody else would have known what the blank look on Edgar's face was actually supposed to convey, but Catriona did. It meant, Be nice to George Welterman, if you please. It meant, Every thing's at risk; not just Keys Shipping itself but your family fortune, too, and all of your gorgeous salon dresses and your ritzy South African diamonds. It meant, I didn't make you Queen of the Atlantic for nothing.
"Of course, Mr. Welterman," said Catriona. "The honour is all mine."
"I did ask you to call me George."
Catriona smiled a bright, false smile. "Oh, of course. I'm so sorry. George it is, then."
George Welterman propelled her with the respectful tips of his fingers to one of the little gilt chairs.
"You don't suffer from seasickness?" she asked him, as she sat down.
He shook his head. "Seasickness is all in the imagination."
"And you don't have any imagination?"
He lowered his broad bottom on to the inadequate seat. "You're teasing me," he told her, with no sign of humour, but equably enough to show that he wasn't upset. "Well," he said, "you're a young girl."
"Does that give me a special dispensation to tease you?" Catriona asked him.
"No," he replied. "But it means that I can forgive you more quickly."
"What makes you think that I want to be forgiven?"
George Welterman reached into the cuff of his expensive grey morning suit and pulled out a cream-coloured handkerchief. He dabbed at the sides of his mouth, and then patted his forehead. "You really don't like me?" he asked.
"I didn't say that."
"You said nearly as much. If you don't think it's worth asking my forgiveness for teasing me, then you don't think much of me at all."
Catriona stared at him. Through the middle-aged ambiguity of his face, those disconcertingly youthful eyes stared back at her. He wanted something from her, but she couldn't decide what. Not affection. Not passion. Perhaps it was nothing more than approval. Yet why should such a wealthy and domineering man want the approval of a pretty flapper of twenty-one?
"You seem rather... heavy, that's all," said Catriona. "You don't seem to be the kind of man who likes to depend on people. Not for anything."
"You don't think I ever depended on Myrtle?"
"Myrtle? I don't know. How could I possibly judge?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said George Wetterman, crossing his legs, "I did depend on Myrtle. I depended on Myrtle for my future happiness. Of course it wasn't her fault that she let me down."
"She had muscular dystrophy and you accuse her of letting you down?"
George Welterman waved his big hand dismissively. "I didn't mean E like that. I loved her. As a matter of fact, she looked a whole lot like you do now. That day I first met her, out on the movie lot... she shone like the sun. You have that quality. That shine. You also have Myrtle's sharpness. She could be sharp, you know. She had a temper, too. I knew her so mad one evening that she ripped her evening gown apart'—he made a pulling-apart gesture with his fists—"a Chanel gown that cost me nearly a thousand dollars."
Catriona didn't say anything. Instead, she looked at George Welterman narrowly. He was bulky and strong, and you could tell as soon as you came close to him that he had influence. His shirt cuffs were so starched, and his gold cufflinks were so expensive and yet so hideous, and he smelled so distinctively of masculine sweat and old-fashioned barber-shop shaving lotions, that he couldn't have been anything else but a self-made business mogul. A Big Cheese par excellence.
It was their very ugliness, their very awkwardness, that made men like George Welterman attractive to women. Better-looking men could never understand how any woman could find them even remotely interesting; let alone put up with their brutishness and their ill-temper and their crude sentimental maunderings. But women understood. Women knew what it was about men like George Welterman that made them irresistible. It was their lumpy bodies, their demanding morality, and their knotted-up personalities. There was nothing a woman could find more intriguing than a man with a grudge, or a problem, or a psychological complex, especially when he wanted very little more from her than money, unconditional sympathy, and the occasional grunting bout in bed. Not that any woman, no matter how Intrigued she was, could ever unravel the complexities of George Welterman's mind. She could never understand his peevish day-to complaints, his blinded sense of right and wrong, or his inverted interpretation of human happiness. She would try, of course. Often passionately, usually desperately, but always unsuccessfully. Myrtle Greensleeves had tried, but she had failed, too. Because George Welterman believed that nobody in the world could ever be happy unless they lived the way he lived, and accepted capitalism without question, like he did. Yet he himself was never happy.
This was the paradox about George Welterman which Catriona was already finding interesting, and which compelled her to listen to what he had to say, even though her instincts were jangling warnings to her with every word that he spoke, and every suggestion that he came up with. Then there was his uncompromising ugliness, which stirred up extraordinary thoughts inside her, like: I wonder what he looks like naked. I wonder how it would feel to be assaulted by such a grotesque man. To be utterly sullied by someone so lumpish.
George Welterman said, "The next time I see Myrtle will be at her funeral. Can you imagine that? Well, I guess you can. You've just lost your father, haven't you?"