Of course Kachina would have a doctor on board. “Did he say you could drink?”
“He’s Irish.” Again, of course, like almost every other ship’s doctor Ranklin had met. And they only prescribed abstinence as a last, baffled resort.
They drank. “Are they treating you well, below – what d’you say on a ship? Below decks?”
“Ah, they’re being new mothers to me, a poor Irish slave to an English milord, not knowing the English gentry for the kind generous folk they really are.”
“How difficult for you,” Ranklin said coolly.
O’Gilroy grinned and started rolling a cigarette. “Mrs Finn was saying ye’d done more than the lawyer fella to get me out. Thank ye.”
“Part of the job. But I think Reimers did more than either of us: he wants us running free to hang ourselves on a bigger charge. Have you any idea who denounced you?”
“I’m thinking it was the boyos from last night again. Had to be somebody knew what had happened to make up he’d seen something that didn’t.”
Ranklin nodded. “I learned a little more about Anya and her circus.”
O’Gilroy listened, smoke trickling from his nose. Then: “Yes, when ye’ve fancy women like that, ye’ve always got hard men to keep them and the customers in line. But what’s she got against us?”
Tired of saying “I just don’t know”. Ranklin shook his head. “It started when you bought those pictures in the pub. Somebody else must have been watching you besides the detective.”
“Seems like we marched into town with a flag and drum saying who we was.”
Ranklin decided it was his duty to do a little morale-building. “Well, we’re safe enough aboard here. Things’ll look better in the morning.”
O’Gilroy’s expression wasn’t convinced. “Did ye think ’twould be like this? – the whole job? Like always being on the run and wondering which of yer friends’ll sell ye to the police for the price of a drink?”
“I think I prefer a proper war,” Ranklin admitted.
“At least ye can shoot back.” A dressing gong rumbled in the corridor and O’Gilroy stubbed out the wisp of his cigarette. “Are ye going to the shebang aboard the liner?”
“I think so – if Mrs Finn does. It’s the sort of thing James Spencer would probably do. D’you want me to try and wangle you …?”
“No thank ye; I’ll stay home tonight.” He got up and flexed his shoulders cautiously, then went to peer at the one painting in the cabin. It was of a canoe on a forest stream, and so dark that Ranklin hadn’t at first realised it was a watercolour. “D’ye see how she’s done up the cabin from it? Clever, that.”
Only then did Ranklin see that the painting’s blue-green forest was repeated in the cabin’s curtains and carpet, the glimpse of a sunset sky in the pale gold wallpaper, the paddle blade by the elm furniture.
He finished his dressing bemused both by Corinna’s imaginative decorative touch and O’Gilroy’s ability to spot it. What else am I missing, he wondered uneasily? Oh well, I’m a better artillery commander than either of them. Only I’m not even allowed to be that, now.
31
The four-funnelled Victoria Luise had started life, Ranklin learned, as the Deutschland and fastest ship across the Atlantic, albeit shaking her passengers’ teeth loose with vibration. So she had been refitted with slower and smoother engines, fewer and less urgent passengers, renamed after the Kaiser’s favourite daughter, and sent cruising. And acting as host ship during Kiel Week.
Corinna dragged Ranklin straight onto the dance floor – perhaps, he thought, just to check up on his range of social graces. He was quite an adequate dancer, of course, certainly not a good one – that was for gigolos and, in their own barbaric way, Scotsmen. But he felt they must make a grotesque pair, with her towering over him, and was happy when she was ready to retire to the inevitable fruit punch.
It was odd to be in a ship so big and in water so still that it was only when the band and dancers paused and he could feel the rumble of the generators that he remembered they were afloat. Most of the uniforms were Navy – as Ranklin expected, the Prussian officer class had stayed away – and the women, while expensively dressed … well, it wasn’t Paris. I wonder if the Kaiser himself will drop in, he thought, then realised that the same half-exciting, half-sobering thought dominated the ballroom.
“Not the most lively crowd,” Corinna commented. She was using her height and a very simple ballgown of dark red to look stately – perhaps flying the American flag. Then she spoiled it by whispering: “How much d’you think it would take to bribe the band-leader to play a tango?”
“I don’t know just what the tango is …”
“It was invented in an Argentinian bordello.”
“What a remarkable depth of knowledge you do have. But I do know the Kaiser’s forbidden his officers to dance it.”
“I know. The Pope doesn’t like it, either.”
“You surprise me. But since we’re probably within earshot of the Kaiser, I’d suggest a bribe of not less than a lifetime job for the band aboard the Kachina. And pensions.”
“Nope,” she decided. “They aren’t good enough. Maybe they know a hootchie-kootchie though.”
“My ignorance of the world’s vulgarities is positively embarrassing. Where was that invented?”
“In some US bordello, I guess. Just ‘hootch’ means home-made liquor, from some Alaskan Indian tribe who were good at it.”
“You seem very knowledgeable about Red Indians. Were they your favourite subject at school?”
“Matter of fact, yes – kind of. It was in Switzerland and all the other girls were always telling me about how old their countries and families were, so I got hold of some books on pre-Columbian America to balance things up.”
So now he knew where her accented German came from: a Swiss finishing school. “You didn’t offer to demonstrate scalping on them?”
“I came close. Good evening,” she abruptly swung round to face a German Naval officer who had been not quite eavesdropping; it was Reimers, of course. “I saw you outside the police station.”
Reimers would far rather not have been seen on that occasion, but clicked his heels and bowed over her hand. “Mrs Finn – and Mr Spencer. Kapitanleutnant Reimers, at your service.”
“Delighted to meet you, Captain. I see you know James.”
“Indeed. But he had not told me you and he were buddies.”
Reimers’ Americanisms still startled Ranklin, who believed all foreigners should learn the King’s, not the President’s, English; Corinna seemed not to notice.
“Why, James,” she said, “haven’t you been boasting of our acquaintance?”
“Mea culpa. Somehow, we got stuck on less important matters.”
“And Mr Finn?” Reimers continued. “Is he in Kiel?”
Mr Finn was somebody Ranklin had wanted to ask about himself, but Corinna had never given him an opening.
“No, he’s back home in the States.”
Ranklin hoped Reimers would press for more information, but he just bowed and said: “May I ask you for this dance?”
Corinna turned pointedly to Ranklin, who should have been asked for his permission first. “If Mrs Finn isn’t too tired,” he said with automatic tact, then added: “and if she doesn’t mind anything so old-fashioned as a waltz.”
Corinna made a graceful scalping gesture with her fan as Reimers led her away. Watching her go, Ranklin glanced past her and seemed to catch the eyes of a squat middle-aged woman in a green gown. But she looked away immediately.
He left his unfinished punch – he mistrusted mixed drinks – and intercepted a passing glass of champagne, then looked round for conversation. He agreed with an Austrian that the champagne was fine and the international situation poor, and with an Italian Naval officer that both weather and champagne were fine – but all the time had the idea that the woman in green was watching him. Probably, he thought, she’s just interested in who Corinna’s with tonight.