"Well, I just hope that I don't have to meet this George Welterman," said Catriona.
"Oh, I'm afraid that you will," said Edgar. "You're coming along on the maiden voyage, after all; and Mr. Welterman will be joining us."
"I'm coming?" asked Catriona.
"Of course. Who else is there to represent the Keys family? Your mother can't come, she's just not up to it, and somebody has to be sweet to the bankers and the food suppliers."
"Your father always talked about cajoling you into coming along," Percy Fearson smiled. "He wanted to attract the younger travellers, you see, the bright young things, so that if they got the idea it was smart to travel Keys, he'd have loyal new passengers who would travel with Keys for ever after."
"But I don't see where I come into it," said Catriona.
"He was going to publicise you as the Queen of the Atlantic," said Percy. "He was going to have you dressed by Paris designers, and buy you jewellery and furs and you name it. There's a whole file on it down at the office."
"He never told me," said Catriona. "The last time we met, we had that awful row, and he never told me."
"I think he was almost afraid you wouldn't agree to do it," said Percy.
"Afraid?" frowned Catriona. She couldn't imagine her father ever having been afraid.
"He wanted you to be the star of the whole voyage," Percy told her gently. "He loved you, you know; and I sometimes think that when he built the Arcadia he built it for you."
Isabelle stared at Catriona with an expression of such jealousy that she could have made a herring curl up. Catriona felt giddy, and the table seemed to tilt away from her. She was used to Nigel's poisonous Chicago cocktails, but not to Chateau Mouton Rothschild from her father's cellars. But perhaps it wasn't the wine at all. Perhaps it was the way in which her life had so suddenly tricked her. She had thought she was free of her father, and relieved of all involvement in the Keys family. A carefree, heel-kicking flapper. But now she had discovered that freedom is something which is granted—by a government to its people; by a parent to his child—and when death supervenes, the grant of freedom is automatically withdrawn, and has to be renewed.
"Mr. Deacon," she said, "I really don't know what to say. You'll nave to give me time to think about it."
"There isn't much time, my dear," said Mr. Fearson. "The Arcadia has to sail on Tuesday, whatever."
"You can't even delay her until father's buried?"
Edgar shook his head. "The cost of even one day's delay would be more than we could stand. And apart from that, the Arcadia must start off her active life with a reputation for reliability."
Catriona sat where she was, and then discovered that tears were sliding down her cheeks.
"Forgive me, Miss Keys," said Edgar. "I didn't intend to upset you today of all days."
"No, no. It's not your fault," said Catriona. "I'm just tired, that's all."
"Dottie has your room ready for you, if you wish to withdraw."
Percy Fearson escorted Catriona out of the dining-room; and in the dark timbered hallway he gave her over to Dottie, the upstairs maid, a ruddy-faced young girl who had come into service with the Keys family when she was fourteen. Dottie took Catriona's arm and led her a upstairs to the green-wallpapered guest bedroom at the end of the landing. Catriona's old bedroom was being redecorated, and there was a sharp smell of lead paint and wallpaper-paste around.
"The night was so warm that the diamond-leaded window which gave out on to the main sweep of the garden had been left wide open, and the full moon could be seen rising from behind the poplars. Moths pattered and battered against the green-and-white frosted bedside lamp. "I'll squirt them with Flit if you want," Dottie suggested.
Catriona stood with her arms by her sides, her eyes closed, while Dottie unhooked her black dress for her, and lifted it over her head. She wore no slip or corset; she thought her figure looked more boyish if she went without. Dottie helped her to roll down her black silk stockings and step out of her crepe-de-chine panties.
Catriona said to her, "What was the last thing my father ever said to you, Dottie? Can you remember?"
Dottie had to think about that. She was holding up Catriona's biscuit-on-cream pleated voile nightgown, and she was obviously astonished by the shortness and the airiness of it. "I don't know, miss," she said, "I think I'm still perplexed by it all."
"You can't remember anything?"
Dottie frowned. "Now, then. I remember I saw him in the hallway just before he went upstairs to bed. He said, "You won't forget to remind Cook that I want my Food of Life, will you, Dottie?" That's what he said."
Catriona sat down on the edge of the bed, and started to unpin her hair. "Food of Life," she whispered sadly, and she thought of the little nursery rhyme her father used to sing her, the one which he had invented himself.
Where the fish swim free, child,
And never bite the line;
Keep your nose in your own soup
And keep it out of mine."
FOUR
Mark Beeney said, "I've always been an Anglophile. I love your climate, I love your women, I love your mutton pies. But God Almighty, I've never understood your cricket."
Philip Carter-Helm lifted his boater off his neatly-trimmed hair and wiped around the leather sweatband with his handkerchief. "You can't really understand cricket until you understand loafing," he said. "You must never listen to any explanations of the rules of cricket, byes or fours or lows; or any tommy-rot like that. It's the mental attitude that counts. The British love to loaf; but unlike Americans, they have to find an excuse for it. Hence, cricket."
Mark and Philip were strolling in Hyde Park, late in the afternoon, within sight of the Albert Memorial. Some small boys were playing cricket under the trees; their single stump casting a long sundial shadow across the marmalade-coloured grass. Their cries as they played were like the cries of small birds. There was a smell of soil-mown grass in the air, and London evenings.
Mark said, "You're a little cynical, aren't you?"
"Ah," said Philip, "but all Englishmen are. Our cynicism protects us from our sentimentality."
Mark stooped to pick up a long whippy branch. As he walked, he swished it in the air. "You want to talk about the Arcadia?" he asked.
Philip Carter-Helm was tall, and well built, with the kind of open-faced good looks that characterised Old Boys from minor public schools, especially those whose photographs appeared in the school magazine after they had been killed at Omdurman or Killa Khazi. He had chestnut hair, and very clear grey eyes, and a bump on the bridge of his nose from boxing. He spoke hi that clipped newsreel accent that made Americans believe that every Briton must be a relative of the King; but English ears could pick up the slightest of Northern intonations. He said, "path', with a short "a', instead of the drawled-out aristocratic "parth'.
Mark had been disinclined to talk to Philip at first, since he was on a furious-tour of all his European interests, and London was his last and busiest stop before sailing back to the States. In two months Mark had visited Zurich, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Frederikshaven, Naples, Capri, and Marseilles. In all, he had visited seventeen cities and nine countries, and now he was anxious to get back to Boston; a to assess the state of his business interests from a detached distance, but to see Juliet again, the girl he had met only days before he had sailed for Europe. She was the only daughter of the Harrises; the Newport Harrises; and she was not only dark-eyed and curiously beautiful, she was awash with inherited dollars. Mark had an unashamed liking both for looks and money. After all, he had both attributes himself.