"Has she said why she's up there?' asked Harry, concerned, but still confused by his sickness.
Monty shook his jowls. "Too windy. Can't hear. Besides, I don't think she'd tell us in any case."
"Well," said Harry, "what do you want me to do?"
"You've made a friend of her, haven't you? Saved her doll, and all that. And didn't I see you talking to her just this morning on the after poopdeck?"
"We've talked, yes," admitted Harry. "But that's about all. I don't know whether she thinks that I'm a friend of hers or not. All she wanted to do this morning was pay me a fiver for rescuing Margaret, and ask me what my politics were. I think she finds poor people like me to be a curiosity."
"But you'll come and help us to get her down?"
"I suppose I'll have to."
"No suppose about it, squire. If we don't get her down soon, she's is going to fall down. She might have fallen down already, while you're sitting here discussing it and making up your mind."
Harry rubbed his unshaven chin. He hadn't been back to his cabin to wash or change since the German salesman in the bunk below had vomited porridge and half-chewed bratwurst all over his own chest. Harry thought that his own seasickness was disgusting enough. Other people's was stunning. It was only during a storm at sea that you realised that there had to be limits to human comradeship, even for enthusiastic Communists.
"We'd better hurry, then," he said, and squeezed out from behind the table.
"Your young lady's all right?" asked Monty, nodding at Philly.
"Oh, sure," said Harry. "She just had a little bit too much of everything.'
Monty buttoned up his coat, and pulled a face. "Don't know what's the matter with young girls today. Wasn't like that in my day, and I can tell you that for nothing. In my day, a chap at least had to ask."
"Times change," muttered Harry, and then said, "Which way?"
"Up the stairs, I'm afraid. Lifts aren't used in bad weather, in case they jam."
They reached the second-class promenade deck, where a steward bustled Harry into a black oilskin and a black waterproof hat. Then Monty Willowby pushed him out through the door into the storm, and across to the rail where Derek Holdsworth, Mark Beeney, and Catriona were all trying to shout and wave encouragement to Lucille.
Harry was completely unprepared for the noise and the violence of the sea. He stood for a moment rigidly clutching the rail, the brim of his hat lowered against the splattering spray, his shoulders hunched against the wind. He had never seen nature in such a catastrophic temper, and for the first time in his life he actually felt frightened. It was the feeling of helplessness that alarmed him so much: the feeling that, no matter how important and historical he considered himself to be, the wind and the sea would pluck him off the Arcadia's deck and drown him just as contemptuously as anyone else.
"Is this the man?" Mark Beeney yelled at Monty Willowby.
"That's right, Mr Beeney, sir! Mr Pakemoff!"
"Pakenow!" Harry shouted out.
"What?" asked Mark.
"Never mind," said Harry. "Where's the girl?"
Mark gripped his shoulder and pointed to the far end of the crane's jib. "You see her?" Harry stared and blinked and then nodded.
Mark shouted, "We have to coax her down to the lower end of the jib. We should be able to reach her then."
Harry was conscious of someone else standing beside him, and turned around. It was a tall girl in wet oilskins and boots. Even through the wind and the spray he could catch that faint whiff of expensive perfume that means money, and heaps of it. Under her drooping sou'wester the girl was remarkably pretty, with slightly slanted eyes and a full-lipped mouth. It took a very rare beauty to be able to look feminine and desirable in an oversized oilskin.
"Tell her we understand how she's feeling," said the girl. "Tell her she mustn't give up."
Harry looked questioningly at Mark, who said, "Oh, this is Miss Keys. Catriona, this is Mr. Pakemoff."
"I'm glad you could come up,' said Catriona in her clipped London accent. "We don't know how much longer she can hold on."
"You're Miss Keys of Keys Shipping?" asked Harry.
Catriona nodded.
"Right, then," said Harry. He couldn't think what else to say, especially to such young and exalted capitalists as these. He knew Mark Beeney, of course; he had seen his photograph in the newspaper dozens of times. But the few pictures he had seen of Catriona hadn't prepared him for anyone so pretty and alluring. He felt suddenly shabby and out of place, and he wished he had been able to shave. And yet, damn it, why should he? He was just as good as either of these two; and whatever monuments to selfish wealth they could build up, he could just as readily tear down again.
"Can you get me a loud-hailer, please," he asked, wiping rain and snot away from his face with the back of his hand.
"A loud-hailer, Mr. Holdsworth!" called Mark Beeney.
Catriona said, quite sharply, "How did you manage to get to know someone like Lucille Foster?"
"Is it so surprising that I should have done?" asked Harry. Then he shrugged, and said, "Yes, well, I suppose it is. Different walks of life, and all that."
"Mr. Willowby said something about you saving her doll."
"That's right. It, er—well, it blew off the deck. I caught it and brought it back to her, that's all. Well, I tried to bring it back, but you know what the rules are. I wasn't allowed past the third-class entrance. No cross-fertilisation, by order."
Catriona looked at him carefully. He was good-looking in a scruffy, boyish way, and he reminded her of some of the young actors she had met when she was living with Nigel. Awkward, sarcastic, talented young men in their early twenties; already bitter about the unfairness of a world which seemed to be indifferent to their abilities, and yet still energetic enough to keep on railing against it, and keep on trying. Harry Pakenow hadn't yet reached the brink of the waterfall, where aggressive bitterness tips over into unrelieved defeat.
She thought she rather liked him. In those spray-speckled glasses, he looked studious and cute. The kind of boy you take home to meet your parents and who makes a tremendous hit with your mother, although your father doesn't care for the potatoes in his socks and the way he refers so disparagingly to Stanley Baldwin.
"Hey, Catriona, look!" shouted Mark. "The girl's waving! Look, she's waving!"
Everybody looked up towards the jib of the crane, shielding their eyes against the wind. And sure enough, like the flapping arm of a rag doll, Lucille Foster's arm was waving slowly backwards and forwards. Over the doleful moaning of the wires, Catriona could hear the word "Harry," and then again, still faint, but more distinctive than before, "Harry."
"Harry?" she asked Harry. "Is that your name?"
Harry swallowed. For some ridiculous reason, he felt suddenly drowned in sentimental feelings. He wiped his nose again, and cleared his throat, and then gave Lucille a wave with both of his arms, and shouted, in a voice which caught in the middle, "Lucille! It's me! Come down!"
Lucille kept on waving, and then they heard the snatched-away word "Can't." And then, "Can't come down."
Harry turned to Catriona. "She's stuck up there," he said, seriously. "Someone's going to have to climb right up there and get her."
Derek Holdsworth arrived with the loud-hailer. Mark said, "Mr. Pakemoff here says the girl's stuck. We're going to have to climb up and get her loose."
"Pakenow," said Harry.
Mark said, "What?"
Derek Holdsworth looked unhappy. "I was hoping she could climb down by herself," he said. He had a thin triangular face, and a large nose, under which a small moustache clung like a smudge of coal dust. He could have been a very young Eugene O'Neill. He certainly shared O'Neill's intense and worried expressions.