The Poseidon Adventure (14 page)

'Oh dear,' murmured Miss Kinsale. 'I'd forgotten.'

'Is it anything serious?' Jane asked.

'No,' Miss Kinsale replied, 'you know, just . . .'

'Well then,' Jane said, 'I suggest that we nip down this aisle where it's dark, lift up our skirts and dribble quietly, the way we used to do when we were little girls.'

She wished then that she had not been quite so facetious but to her astonishment Miss Kinsale was not at all put out and merely said, 'How very sensible of you,' and went with her.

Scott had not yet returned. Left on their own, his followers were inclined to explore.

'We trust,' The Beamer suggested, 'our noses and our ears. There is the scent of vinous spirits and the sound of raucous laughter.'

'Right-o,' Pamela said, even though she had never felt less like tippling. She was haunted now by her mother dead in some horribly obscene manner and in some grotesque position that she could not even envision. She knew why she had been taken upon this cruise. It was for her to meet new people, make new friends -- eligible if possible -- to broaden her circle which, as owners of a small but successful dry cleaning establishment in an outlying district of London, was limited.

She did not even know how to mourn her mother. The city dweller knows death in hospital or home, the unaccustomed silences, the tiptoeing about and 'that room' into which one went in and out with unadmitted irony as noiselessly as possible. But here she was lost and confused.

She was further miserable because of the man at her side. She would have stayed with her mother that evening if The Beamer had not come tapping at her door. Her unsuspected capacity for holding drink had developed early on in the voyage, when she had outlasted an entire party invited by The Beamer late one night in the smoke-room. Tony Bates, it seemed, was fastidious and did not like lady drunks but this girl who could match him whisky for whisky had been a find. In this manner had begun their curious friendship. But it was no time for drinking now.

And yet against her very nature she wished The Beamer drunk again so that once more he would be wholly hers. Sober he saw too clearly and there was a hint of mockery in his attitude towards her which was painful. She remembered those two brief sentences which had pierced and wounded her: 'We've only just met!' and 'My God, I've been consorting with a human fly!' Drunk he would lean towards her and rest a warm, moist hand upon her arm in almost an affectionate gesture and say, 'Old girl, I'm afraid I'm beginning to hear what people are saying. We'd better have another one, what?' And thus she was his accepted associate.

She said, 'I think it comes from there,' and indicated the direction forward on the port side, which formerly had been starboard, where were located most of the storerooms with gangways connecting with interior staircases giving access to the kitchens above. There were service lifts for the speedy transfer of supplies and in one room were enormous tuns of draught beers and ales that were piped foaming directly to the half-dozen bars serving the passengers.

The Beamer took her by the arm, saying, 'Let's go, my girl!'

Pamela's heart warmed. Already at the mere thought of finding drink, his behaviour towards her was changing. She was his companion again; he was relying upon her.

They proceeded down the corridor in the direction Pam had indicated and explored an aisle, On one side of it were what had been right-side up of a series of steel half doors, the tops of which consisted of heavy wire mesh. Now, upside-down, the grill part was on the bottom and the wooden cases of wines had come tumbling from their racks and displayed their stencilled labels tantalizingly: Vin de Bourgogne, Bordeaux, Rosé, Côte du Rhône. The doors were heavily padlocked. The display was at eye-level and the two stood hand-in-hand like children looking into the cages of a zoo.

'God,' breathed The Beamer, 'what a sight! What we want now is the Reverend's axe. A wine drunk is a lovely one. You can understand why the Bacchi wove vine leaves in their hair.' He then pounded upon the iron with his fists and cried aloud, 'Chinese torturers!'

'Oh, Tony!' the girl said and bled for him.

The opposite side was the champagne room. Here the cases, tightly stocked to the ceiling, had not been dislodged by the whip of the capsized vessel and simply advertised their contents upside down: Roederer, Lanson, the yellow-labelled Veuve Cliquot, Mumm, Pommerey, Dom Perignon, Cristal.

The Beamer said, 'Bubbly, phui! A woman's drink, recommended by society doctors in cases of mal-de-mer or in early pregnancy.' And then with a grimace he added, 'Sour grapes and no pun intended. I'd drink even that. But what about that nose of yours?'

'Farther down, I think,' said the girl. They followed the scent to the spirits room. It was open. Cases and bottles were tumbled about. The storekeeper in a blue uniform and a half naked sailor lay before the doors, each clutching a bottle, unconscious.

The Beamer cried, 'Wonderful girl! Wonderful nose! Nirvana. Whisky, rum, gin, vodka, brandy -- we're home! What will you have?'

'I'm hungry,' Nonnie announced, 'I didn't have much din.'

Muller said, 'We ought to be able to find something to eat. Come on, let's forage.'

The long alleyway known to the crew as Broadway, not only was their thoroughfare but served as a staging area for the vast supplies of food and drink stored under deep refrigeration or semi-cold, or packed away in rodent-proof rooms below at special temperatures for preservation.

Every twenty-four hours, consignments of tinned goods, cereals, jams, jellies, conserves, bacon, hams, cheeses, butter and eggs, coffee, teas and sugar, fish, meat and fowls, sausages, vegetables and fresh fruits were sent up to special rooms off the alley on their way to the kitchens, thus preserving everything fresh with less likelihood of wastage.

Not packed as tightly or as carefully racked as in the bins below, the powerful whip of the overturning ship had spilled most of the edibles into an unsavoury heap.

The floor of .the breakfast storeroom was a glutinous mass of coffee, flour, milk, bacon, sausage and hundreds of smashed eggs. Nonnie made a face and gave a little shudder. 'Boy,' she said, 'what a mess! I was in a show once where they did a scene like that. Two comics with a lot of eggs and flour and water, chucking it about. We had to do six minutes in front of the drop afterwards while they cleaned it up. Is it all going to be like that, or do you suppose we'll be able to find something? I could do with a good tuck-in.'

Muller had been lost in the picture she had drawn of the famous knock-about comedy act adored of children and Nonnie, in some absurd costume, high-kicking in front of the backdrop while stage hands operated with brooms and shovels. He said, 'Come on, I think I see succour ahead.' They went past tumbled quarters of beef, lamb and veal which would have been on their way to the butcher's shop for final processing, and tumbled about heaps of tins, inviolable to anyone not equipped with a tin opener.

Nonnie stumbled on ahead with a little cry of delight, 'Bikkies! Lots of them.'

The upside-down locker they had found smashed open was the one that supplied those dull and inevitable afternoon teas awaited so eagerly by the British, served on silver trays by those immaculate stewards in the main lounge promptly at four every afternoon. Here, besides the tins of Oolong, Orange Pekoe and Earl Grey China teas, was collected sandwich bread, tubes of fish paste, jellies, jams, muffins for toasting, raisin cake, petit-fours and packets of tea biscuits, in short all of the non-perishable articles necessary to the rite.

It had all been overturned and hurled from the shelves into a jumble upon the floor, not disgustingly but rather like a heaped-up Christmas pile of edible treasure trove; unopened packages of ginger nuts, sugar wafers, chocolate wholemeal, vanilla fingers, mingled with muffins and cup cakes, and heaps of petit-fours covered with multicoloured icing.

The sight was entrancing to Nonnie and she cried, 'Oh, yummy!' her eyes grown large, her tiny face a mask of anticipatory greed. 'What shall we have first?'

'Wait,' said Muller, 'we might as well make ourselves comfortable and tackle this Roman fashion.'

He burrowed into the pile, pushing it into two halves to make a space in between where they could lie down side by side and had only to reach out to pluck something delectable from the mountainous heaps. He prised open several jars of preserves which he divided between Nonnie and himself.

'Sorry about no tea available,' he said, 'but there ought to be a coke machine somewhere around.'

'Never mind,' said Nonnie, only half audible due to a mouthful. She was stuffing herself with both hands. It was actually the same choice as passed around by the stewards, but the very profusion of the cakes brought on a kind of frenzy of eating to the girl.

Leaning on one elbow, Muller rather fastidiously dipped half of a muffin into strawberry jam and ate it with the same delicacy he would have shown at a tea table in Claridge's.

Nonnie laughed at him. 'You're a proper gent, aren't you?' she said.

He was amused. 'How would you define a gent? I've seen a lot of them all over the world, an extraordinary number have managed to incorporate a large amount of heel.'

Nonnie's mouth was filled again. She had engulfed a square chocolate petit-four topped by a half-candied cherry, in one hand she held a cup cake and in the other a half-opened packet of cream biscuits. Compelled to keep it short, she confined herself to trying to say, 'kindness', but it came out 'kin'eff.'

When she had swallowed, she asked, 'What did you mean, Roman style?'

'Oh, well,' Hubie replied, 'you know. The Romans ate their banquets lying down.'

Nonnie said, 'I've been in Rome, but nobody ever ate like that.'

'I mean the ancient ones, as in Nero's time.'

'Oh,' cried Nonnie, 'you mean when they had orgies? I went to an orgy once, but it was in London. It was frightfully dull. Everybody got drunk and said we should all take our clothes off.'

'Did you?' said Muller.

'Not everything!' Nonnie replied. 'Then we stood around with egg on our faces, giggling, and thought what a rum bunch the men looked without their trousies. A lot of men have such rotten legs.'

Muller asked, 'So what happened?'

'The men were too tight to do anything. They got off to one side and started playing leapfrog and kept falling down. It was winter and it was bloody cold as well. Sybil and I put our things on and went home.'

She suddenly turned her back upon him and Muller heard a slight catch of a sob and wondered what other memories this absurdity had suddenly stirred. And then he thought he knew. He touched her shoulder gently. 'Sybil?' he asked.

Nonnie turned back to him. 'Y-yes,' and he saw that tears had come. Then she asked, 'Is there any apricot jam?'

'Coming up!' Muller said. He unscrewed the top of a jar and passed it across to her.

She dipped in a finger, licked it clean, repeated it and was comforted. She said, 'You're kind. You understand things, don't you? That's my idea of a proper gent.'

Muller was experiencing a most curious kind of contentment even while he was reflecting upon what more perilous and at the same time ridiculous situation in which anyone could be plunged, to be lying here clad in the remnants of dinner clothes, as it were, on a capsized ship in the midst of a mountain of cookies, next to a common little hoofer with nothing on but a vulgar pink peignoir held together with his braces. Her face and little mouth were sticky with cakes and jam and so were her fingers. She lay on her side, leaning on one elbow, contemplating him with childlike enjoyment. He was utterly charmed by her.

CHAPTER XI

What about the Reverend Dr Scott?

Crew members had generated disturbingly again. They seemed to come out from the walls, though actually it was from the side aisles and the upside-down storerooms and workshops.

The long alley echoed with their shouts to one another, the rasping of their breathing as they floundered this way or that, and some were weeping. The reversed staircases defeated them. Most of them still had the old topography of the ship so firmly implanted in their minds that they could not see her as she was now; topsides under sixty feet of water, keel up. They were still thinking in terms of stations and lifeboat muster. No one was helping or advising them. They were lost souls in a world where they no longer knew left from right or up from down.

In the half gloom they could still identify and avoid the staircases and companionways that had led originally from the alley up to 'D' deck and which now were wells. Aft a whole section of the partition had been blown away, leaving a dark, bottomless pit.

Shelby said, 'Scott's right. If the lights fail, it'll be hell here. Those people will go crazy. We'd better get out of their way.' He and the rest had remained where Scott had left them.

'Such as where?' Rogo asked.

Martin said, 'Along the side, I expect, like he told us. Up against the wall there. The big pipe will give us some protection. I could do with a rest.'

Rogo said, 'That makes sense. Lie down there, Linda, and you won't get stepped on.'

Linda cursed him as usual but no one even heard it any more. Her obscenities used like a sailor's had lost all potency and meaning.

A big pipe some nine inches in diameter gave further shelter by sprouting valve handles like giant mushrooms at intervals.

A bald old fellow in dungarees, half-seas over, carrying a square bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, from which he simply had knocked the neck to open it, paused by where Manny and Belle Rosen had wedged themselves. He proffered the bottle.

'No, thank you,' Manny replied, 'I don't drink,' and then so as not to hurt his feelings added, 'Doctor's orders.'

The bald-headed one did not understand a word, but he smiled, tilted his head back and took a long slug. Then he went tottering off, stumbled and fell flat on his face, smashing the bottle, keeping intact only the one side with the label of the ridiculous trademark, the man in the high top hat, cutaway coat and monocle. He glanced at his broken bottle, lay there on his stomach and began to cry.

'Oh, the poor fellow!' said Belle Rosen, 'the things that can happen to you when everything turns upside-down like, the things you find out about people that you wouldn't never know.' She was quiet for a moment and then added, 'You know something else I'd like to find out now? Just on account of my curiosity?'

'No, what?'

'What's Rogo doing on this boat? Who's he after? Did you ever find out?'

'He says no one. He says he just come on vacation like us and everybody else.'

Belle said, 'You believe this? A cop can take a month off for a cruise like this?'

'Shhhh, Mamma!' Manny whispered, 'Not so loud, he could hear you. Anyway he has his wife with him, don't he?'

'Manny, don't be so foolish. That's only so nobody should think anything. Any time you got a cop around, there's a reason.'

He reflected, 'I thought the same, but who could it be? Nobody's even suggested a game higher than a quarter of a cent a point. So card-sharpers we ain't got. Anyway, that ain't Rogo's racket.'

Belle lowered her voice conspiratorily, 'Listen, Manny, could he maybe be after the Minister?'

'Mamma, don't be foolish. Everybody knows who
he
is.'

Belle said, 'You know something? Every time Mr Scott went on the shore when we went sightseeing, the Rogos went wherever he went.'

Her husband chuckled, 'And so did a couple of hundred others, and sometimes us, too. You got to do better than that, Belle.'

Belle snorted, 'Okay, Mr Smarty. So maybe you know something else about him?'

'No, what?'

'He got fired from his job.'

'So? How do you know?'

'I read it in
The News
. I remember it because I was looking for something in the ads and its was right next to it: "The Reverend F. C. Scott has severed his connections with the Tenth Avenue Church and Boys' Club," and then something about how over the past years he coached the Boys' Club to three titles in basketball, baseball and running.'

Manny said, 'Severed his connections? He quit.'

'Manny, you got something to learn yet. In newspapers, severed means fired. Maybe he done something with a girl in the choir, like you're always reading in the paper with ministers. You know, rape maybe, or getting 'em into trouble.'

Manny laughed. 'Mamma, you got an imagination. It's for people like you we got tabloids. The Tenth Avenue Church is in a bad neighbourhood. If he was coaching them kids, he wouldn't have had time to fool around with girls. Maybe be got too good and somebody got jealous.'

'Well, one thing for sure, Rogo don't like him.'

Manny shrugged. 'Rogo's like all those tough kids brought up on the East Side, they don't like nobody that had any education. He don't like Mr Muller. Maybe he's got his eye on him.'

Belle said, 'Mr Muller's a gentleman. Rogo's wife don't like the Minister either.'

'You think so? If you ask me, Linda's got a hots for the big boy and he ain't giving. For this he should want to arrest Mr Scott?'

'Ask Rogo,' said Belle aloud, 'maybe now he'd tell you.'

'Ask me what?' said Rogo. He and Linda were wedged, resting a little farther on from the Rosens.

'Now,' whispered Belle.

Rosen crawled up a little closer and said, 'Who were you after on this ship?'

Rogo replied, 'No one.

But Rosen was not to be put off. He said, 'Oh, come on now, Mike! It's like Belle says, since when does a big Broadway detective go cruising around Africa and South America? What's the difference? You could tell me now. Whoever he was, if it's true everybody drowned, he's dead now -- unless it's one of us.'

Rogo turned his fishiest stare upon him. 'What the hell would I want with one of you?'

Rosen said, 'I don't know. You know me and I know you. But who's anybody else? Mr Muller? Mr Martin? The Shelbys are a nice family, but Belle says even maybe it could be . . .' and here he lowered his voice but kept the inflexion of question, '. . . the Minister?'

Rogo's fishy stare did not change a flicker. 'What's Belle been reading?' he asked.

'That's what I said to her,' agreed Rosen, 'but she's got an imagination. You know how women are, and she says he was fired from his job in the Tenth Avenue Church.' Rosen was watching the detective shrewdly as he dropped the information, but Rogo's blank face remained wholly expressionless.

'Was he?' he said.

'Yeah,' Rosen continued, 'she read it in
The News
, but it didn't say why.'

'I wouldn't know.'

'So maybe that's why he's taking a vacation now.'

'Maybe it is.'

'Just like you.'

'Yeah, that's right,' said Rogo. 'Just like me.' And then he added, 'Why don't you forget it, Manny?'

Rosen subsided and when he rejoined Belle and she queried, 'Did you ask him? What did he say?' He replied, 'Nothing. When a cop like Rogo don't want to talk, he can be like a sphinx.'

'Did you say about the Minister?'

'Yeah. He wanted to know what you'd been reading, like me.'

Belle said, 'So somebody can be wrong, but I ain't never seen a Minister like him before. He could have been a big gangster, maybe.'

'Belle!' her husband reproached her. 'How foolish can you talk? Everybody's heard of Buzz Scott, the great athlete.'

Belle would not let go. She said, 'A big athlete couldn't get into trouble?'

'Rogo said to forget it.'

'That's an answer?' said Belle.

Farther along, tucked as far as possible out of harm's way and the zombie-like packs roaming through the murk of the fading light, something of the same topic was under discussion. Shelby said to Martin, 'What do you think of our Minister friend?' It seemed to be the first time he could remember having addressed a direct question to him. Although they were table neighbours, their orbits had been quite different during the voyage and he knew little or nothing about him. The truth was that he was so quiet, taciturn and almost invisible that practically no one asked his opinions. Martin proved voluble enough now.

'Well, come to tell,' he replied, 'I'd say he was quite a boy. Yessir, quite a boy! He's got something, ain't he? You wouldn't expect it of a minister, now, to take hold like that, would you? You take back home. We got a Baptist Minister who wouldn't be worth a hoot in a spot like this. Soft as a marshmallow. He can give you a tongue-lashing like Jeremiah, but he can't hardly lift the big Bible off the pulpit. The Sexton carries it up and down for him. Come to think of it, I ain't so sure he's worth much of a hoot back home, either. He's agin sin and can scare the pants off you preaching hellfire. Hellfire Hosey, we call him, but he's got a mean streak in him a yard wide.'

Susan Shelby said, 'Oh, Mr Martin, you aren't serious, are you? A minister really couldn't be mean, could he?'

He regarded her quizzically but not unkindly and said, 'Miss Susan, when you've growed a bit more into the beautiful woman you're going to be, you'll find that meanness ain't confined or unconfined to any one kind of people. It's just sort of universal. Why you know what he done the other day? Well, not exactly the other day, but a couple of weeks before I left. We were having a baptism at the Sunday night meeting at our Baptist Centre Auditorium in Evanston. Ed Bailey who has the Ford agency was up for baptism, and Hosey dunked him and held him under 'til he damn near drowned. He claimed that Ed sold him a lemon on his last Ford and wanted him to take it back. Ed said that Hosey drove it like a lunatic and near burned out the engine the first five hundred miles, so he wouldn't. When Ed came up, practically blue in the face and half choked to death, Sister Stoll, who was waiting her turn, heard Carl whisper, "You gonna take that car back? Or do I baptize you again real good this time?" Then Sister Stoll heard Ed say, "Okay, you . . ." and he called him a name which I'll not repeat in front of Miss Susan here, but it was what you might say a reflection upon Hosey's mother, if you know what I mean. Can you beat that? And afterwards his sermon was, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." And he was laying it on thick, and half the time he had his eye on Ed Bailey. Now, this fella here, is something more like it. He gave us all into the hands of the Almighty and after that he's putting the rest up to us.'

'Well,' said Shelby, 'that didn't seem to be exactly the way he put it. We had an assistant football coach at Michigan once, who used to talk like that -- "You fellas ought to thank the Almighty God that you're allowed to go out on to that field and carry the ball for this school."'

Martin grinned, his lips were so thin and drawn so tightly over his teeth that when he smiled it looked more as though he were gagging. He said, 'What's the difference, if it works?'

Shelby asked, 'Do you know anything at all about him? What do you suppose made a boy like that who had everything going for him -- his people are Middle Atlantic Food Processing -- millions -- turn to the Church?'

'How can you tell?' Martin replied. 'What made a fella like Carl Hosey turn preacher? He hates everybody and everything. His wife don't dare open her mouth around the house and he treats his kids like they was living in a reform school. What's more, he's a runty little guy with a face like a baboon and yet all the biddies in the congregation go for him and think he's Jesus Christ's Uncle. Scott's got some funny idea about himself and God.'

'I'm not sure I like him,' Susan put in suddenly.

'Why, Susan!' said her father. 'That surprises me. I admire him greatly. He's always seemed most pleasant and polite to you. Robin thinks he's immense.'

Susan said, 'Oh, kids!' and then added, 'Maybe it's because he's too good-looking.'

Martin gave a dry chuckle. 'I didn't know a fella could be too good-looking for a girl. Now what kind of looks do you like, Miss Susan?'

Susan reflected. 'Well, not the All-American boy, if you know what I mean. And then he has that funny stare sometimes. You know, he looks you right straight in the eye.'

Shelby said, 'That's how an honest man looks, isn't it?'

Martin laughed again. He said, 'Brother Hosey never raises his eyes above your third shirt button. We're lucky it wasn't him along with us. We'd still all be down in the dining-room with Hosey pointing that bony finger and shouting, "Repent ye sinners, for the day of judgement is at hand."'

The smile faded and the trap mouth closed. He said no more. 'Repent ye sinners' had brought it all back to him again: sick wife; pneumatic mistress; warm, soft, exciting body; adultery; floating corpse. The secret nobody need ever know. However could he expiate his guilty conscience? Through his mind passed a picture of ancient biblical characters in torment, beating their breasts and rending their clothes and for the first time he understood them. He wished he could have got at his own entrails with his fingernails. How and before whom could he shrive himself? Surely not the baboon he had just described who would only lick his lips and ask to hear every detail. Hell fire and damnation!