MAIDEN VOYAGE BY GRAHAM MASTERTON QUEEN OF THE ATLANTIC! 'I think it's amazing,' Catriona said. 'You would hardly believe that you're on board a ship at all.' Edgar took out his pocket-watch and squinted at it. 'The Press should be ready for you in about ten minutes, if they're not queuing up outside already. I expect we'll have quite a few people from the shipbuilders and the company, too. Do you want to get changed now? I can send your maid in.' him 'Not just yet,' she replied. 'I just want to wallow for a while.' She peered out of one of her portholes at the sparkling reaches of the Mersey estuary. The reedy jazz music made her feel like dancing, around and around. She felt as if she must be dreaming, or drunk. There was a brisk knock at the stateroom door, but it was only the florist, with a huge bunch of fifty white roses to symbolise the Arcadia's maiden voyage. Also by Graham Masterton in Sphere Books: RAILROAD FAMINE RICH SOLITAIRE REVENGE OF THE MANITOU THE DEVILS OF D-DAY THE HEIRLOOM THE WELLS OF HELL CHARNEL HOUSE TENOU a. Maiden Voyage GRAHAM MASTERTON a SPHERE BOOKS LIMITED 30-32 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8JL V *1 Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the chairman and directors of Keys Shipping Line Ltd for their invaluable and patient assistance in the preparation of this book. He also wishes to thank the Beeney Memorial Library in Boston, Massachusetts, for access to the letters and business papers of Mr Mark Beeney. Thanks also to Constance Spratt who so diligently typed the manuscript. Thanks to Messrs Sussman & Bergman for permission to use the words of Moonlight Promenade (copyright ? Harris and Harris, 1924); and for the lyrics from Let's Talk Turkey (copyright ? Godber and Mesdag, 1922). & Maiden Voyage ONE I* tog cinnamon toast in the kitchen, quite naked except velvet dippers and a pink velvet hair riband, when they the house to give her the news that her father had died Nigel came into the kitchen in his purple and turquoise dtessing-gown, and said seriously, 'You'd better pop on. Mr Pearson's outside and says it's rather drastic.' ,pas probably her last-ever carefree moment, her last carefree moment, and Nigel would remember it for years even when he was married and living in Oxfordshire with Penelope, three Shetland ponies, a duck, and a pair of twin daughters with Fair Isle sweaters and freckles. He tee it as an illuminated picture-postcard: Catriona standing New World gas stove, her white face already turning towards and those slightly slanted eyes already beginning to cloud, her curly hair tied back with the riband, and the long, bare curve back limned by the eleven o'clock sunlight. Eleven o'clock morning on Thursday, June 12,1924: what a time and a day twenty-three years old, and in love, especially with Catriona. had her mother's height and her mother's figure, tall and ily large-breasted for 1924, but with narrow hips. And was easily the most devastating girl that Nigel had ever known, more of a goddess than Rosebud Wilkinson; and he eyed her possessively as she walked across the kitchen, lifted her satin robe from the back of the kitchen chair, and slipped it on. _ /Cat, old girl,' said Nigel, grasping her shoulders. He was conscious of the slight sway of a heavy breast beneath slippery satin. 'I do hope it's nothing frightful.' She nodded, but didn't say anything. Nigel hesitated for a moment, his lips pursed indecisively, then he opened the door wider to let her through into the passage. He held back for a second or two, but then he followed her, clawing quickly at his blond marcelled hair to smarten himself up. He knew the news was serious, and he felt inexplicably ratty. Chaps had no right to come knocking on a chap's door with serious news, not when a chap was just about to have breakfast. As he passed the foot of the stairs, Nigel could hear the phonograph in the bedroom still squawking out the last few lines of'My Rambler Rose'. He had bought the record for Rosebud, but in the past few weeks it had become the song that would always remind him of Catriona's body and Catriona's spirit. He suddenly felt that he might never play 'My Rambler Rose' on his phonograph again; might not be able to bear to. Mr Pearson was waiting in the cocktail room and so was Mr Thurrock. Against the snazzy black and gold wallpaper with its pattern of tipsy highball glasses, they looked unrelievedly staid and discomfited, visitors from another age and another morality, before short skirts and bobbed hair and fox trotting had ever been imagined, even in the most indecent of fantasies. Neither Mr Pearson nor Mr Thurrock had sat himself in either of the armchairs that Nigel had offered them: in one of the armchairs was a discarded peach-coloured camisole, and in the other was a dirty bread and butter plate on which someone had crushed out a purple cigarette. 'Well?' asked Catriona, her hand still on the door knob. 'I'm surprised to see you." Mr Pearson's black morning-coat was buttoned tightly over a chest that was as solid as the boiler of a small riverboat, and his cheeks were still ruddy from his kipper breakfast. He said, in a blurting voice, 'It's not what you think, miss. It's not The Pop.' The Pop was what she and Mr Pearson had irreverently christened those occasional visits that Mr Pearson was called upon to make whenever company business brought him down south from Formby. 'Your father said I should just pop in to see how you were.' Because in spite of all their arguing; in spite of their constant clashes over clothes, and smoking, and going out with fast friends, Catriona's father had always prized her and protected her, and wanted to know that she was safe. The newspapers a days were full of stories about cocaine, and white slavery, and him mashers. Gttriona looked at Mr Thurrock but Mr Thurrock could do [more than remove his spectacles, fold them, and stare short back at her out of eyes like pale-blue marbles. pc came down on the first train,' said Mr Pearson. 'We thought : telephone, or a telegram; but your mother thought it wiser |M you in person. It's bad news I'm sorry to say. Your father , just gone midnight last night, of a heart attack. Had he lived, bitby said, he would have lived the life of a vegetable.' no; V'A cabbage,' put in Mr Thurrock, as if it were necessary to specify him variety of vegetable. u!Ke's dead?' said Catriona. She was still holding the doorknob. wasn't understand you.' 5;;'Cat, my dear girl,' said Nigel, and attempted to take her arm, but iMnigged it away. She could feel the tears in her eyes but somehow a didn't seem to do anything but blur her vision, and turn Mr him and Mr Thurrock into dark dancing outlines. The tears didn't : the rising lump of grief in her ribcage, nor explain why these r4%O solemn men had suddenly appeared to give her this hateful news p*0 a sunny June morning when it seemed nothing so tragic could possibly have happened. There were blue skies outside those curtains, a "?ad birds, and motor-car horns parping in the street. How could her if father have died? ' *Your mother would like it very much if you could come back with '* * ?Sj' said Mr Pearson. He sniffed in one nostril, and looked very ->*' Whappy. ?r, 'The rest of the family are coming tomorrow, like,' added Mr ff'vThurrock. 'Your cousins, and all.' ^' 'Was it quick?' asked Catriona. <', Mr Pearson blinked. He didn't quite know what she meant. '!i>' 'Was it quick?' she repeated. 'The heart attack?' 'Oh, quick,' said Mr Pearson. 'Oh, yes, quick.' He snapped his fingers and then obviously wished that he hadn't. 'Quick as a candle I Snuffed out, that's what Dr Whitby said. With us one second, and %*in the bosom of the Lord the next. Not even time for last words.' I' Catriona touched the tears in her eyes with her fingertips. 'I don't no:, suppose he would have wanted any last words,' she said. 'He always said that deeds made talking redundant.' There was a long silence. Then Mr Pearson said, 'I'm very sorry, miss. You do have my sympathy. It's a very sad loss.' 'Well, yes, it is,' said Catriona. She looked at him and gave him a tight, puckered smile. 'I suppose the worst of it is that the last time I saw him, we argued.' 'They say that fathers and daughters only clash because they're like each other,' said Mr Thurrock. 'Same as magnets, you know. Opposite poles attract. Like poles repel.' 'Yes,' said Catriona. Her voice was as soft as a sheet of tissue-paper, falling from between the leaves of a photograph album. And the photograph she would always recall, whenever she thought of her father, was the one of them walking side by side through the sandhills at Formby, when she was only eight; and both of them, she and her father, had their hands clasped obstinately behind their backs, as if to make absolutely certain that they would not hold hands with each other, not for anything. Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, she thought. A whole life of being stubborn, and what for? To die, as quick as a snuffed-out candle, at the age of fifty-three. For some reason, she thought of her father carving the Sunday joint; she could almost smell the roast lamb, and picture his square-fingered hands holding the bone-handled carving knife; and the vision coaxed up more tears. 'Would you like a drink, old girl?' asked Nigel, anxiously. 'Cup of coffee? Brandy, maybe? I must say you look like something out of Tutankhamen's tomb.' 'Make me a ... gin-and-bitters,' she said. She held her pink dressing-gown around herself as if she were ...
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