Chapter 3
The Gotobeds’ sitting room was three times the size of Daisy and Alec’s tourist-class cabin.
On the walls hung large paintings of the Talavera’s sister ships, Vitoria and Waterloo.
The furniture was in the style of Sheraton or Hepplewhite (Daisy was vague as to which was which), gleaming with polish and silk brocade.
Matching curtains hung at the portholes, which were disguised as casement windows, presumably so that the occupants could pretend they were not at sea.
Under one of these windows stood a table large enough to seat four in reasonable comfort. A tray of champagne glasses and a silver ice-bucket with the wired neck of a magnum protruding promised oil to smooth the social waters.
Alec and Daisy were the first guests to arrive.
“Welcome to our home away from home,” Gotobed greeted them expansively. “Fletcher, mebbe you’d like to tackle the champagne bottle? I’ve niver opened one in my life. Beer I was brought up on and beer’s my tipple, though I confess to an occasional whisky and water.”
“A man after my own heart,” said Alec, grinning. “I’ve never opened champagne either, but Great Scott, how difficult
can it be? Absolute idiots do it all the time. Let’s have a dekko.”
The two men moved over to the table. Alec tore off the foil and, examining the wiring beneath, they discussed the best way to attack it.
“Have a seat, do,” Mrs. Gotobed invited Daisy. With a careless gesture, she waved at the room. “Not bad, eh?”
Daisy detected tension beneath the assumption of nonchalance.
The poor woman must feel like a dandelion in a bed of dahlias.
Well, perhaps not quite, not with the peroxided, marcelled hair, that fringed, beaded, rose silk evening frock—probably straight from Paris, as was her perfume—and the long rope of pearls which Daisy suspected of being genuine.
Still, Mrs. Gotobed was not altogether at ease. Daisy sympathized, remembering how odd she had felt just after her wedding, although she had been amongst friends and relatives.
“Very nice,” she said, glancing around the room again.
The white walls, picked out in gilt, the blue-and-gold brocade and blue-and-white carpet were in the best of interior decorator taste.
Daisy preferred the comfortably eclectic decor of Fairacres, where every style from Jacobean onwards had melded over the centuries into its own particular charm, happily unaltered by Edgar and Geraldine.
Possibly Mrs. Gotobed preferred something gaudier.
“Very elegant,” Daisy assured her. “I hope your sleeping cabin is comfortable.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Gotobed archly. “Mr. Gotobed insisted on me taking forty winks before you came, after such a busy day as we had. I had to chase him out so’s I could get ready in time. He doesn’t understand yet how long it takes a girl to make the best of herself, even with Baines to help.”
She paused, apparently awaiting a compliment on her appearance,
but Daisy’s sympathy did not extend quite so far.
It had taken her just fifteen minutes, in the cramped little cabin with pipes running across the ceiling, to wash, dress, and powder her nose.
She had been feeling quite smart in a new, black georgette frock, dressed up with a cerise chiffon scarf held with a diamanté brooch, until she saw Wanda Gotobed’s Paris model.
“It’s such a beautiful evening, Alec and I stayed up on deck.
It was interesting watching the tugs pull and push the ship out into the channel.
Then we met the Talavera’s sister ship, Salamanca, coming in.
I expect you heard the whistles blowing again?
They greet each other with a W for Wellington in Morse code, short-long-long.
All the Salamanca’s passengers were at the rails waving to us. ”
Supremely uninterested, Mrs. Gotobed complained, “I don’t see why British ships have foreign names. You’d think they’d want to give them good English names.”
“I suppose, since it’s the Wellington Line, they thought it a good idea to name them after Wellington’s victories.” History at Daisy’s school had consisted of long lists of English kings and battles, that she remembered, with dates, that she forgot. “I wonder if there’s a Ciudad Rodrigo.”
“But even the big liners of the other lines, like the Mauretania, they have funny-sounding names. I’d’ve rather sailed on … Dickie, someone’s knocking.”
“Come in, come in!” called Gotobed, striding to open wide the door.
“Ah, Mrs. Petrie, come and meet my wife. You know the Fletchers, don’t you?
Arbuckle, happen you or Petrie can help us.
Fletcher and I are afraid to open the champagne for fear of sending the cork ricocheting around the room, to the danger of the ladies. ” He laughed heartily.
“Phillip’s your man,” said Arbuckle.
“Aye, o’ course, the technical wizard. Just the lad we need.”
Daisy went over to Alec while the introductions were performed, but she observed the participants. Phillip was, as ever, the courteous English gentleman. Gloria, usually outgoing in the American manner, was reserved. Arbuckle looked on with the impassivity of a good butler.
Phillip came to join Alec and Daisy at the table. “Have to make the best of a bad job,” he said in a low voice, dealing efficiently with the champagne’s wire headdress. “No good getting into a stew over spilt milk.”
“No,” Daisy agreed, “nor locking the stable door after the cows have come home.”
He gave her a slightly puzzled look, then concentrated on easing out the cork.
Pop!
“Ooh, I do love bubbly!” Mrs. Gotobed cried.
“I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get it on this ship.
As I was just saying to Mrs. Fletcher, I wanted to go on one of the big, fast liners, but Mr. Gotobed simply wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Not on your life,’ says he, ’not when my friend Arbuckle’s booked on the Talavera. ’”
Though this was uttered in a tone as much playful as complaining, Arbuckle didn’t take it kindly.
“I prefer smaller ships,” he grunted. “For one thing, if I must be one of a crowd, I’d rather it was a small crowd. And then, I saw the Vaterland’s arrival and departure from New York on her maiden voyage.”
Phillip looked round from pouring the champagne. “It must have been quite a spectacle.”
“It was the largest vessel in the world when it was built, wasn’t it, sir?” Alec asked, handing round glasses. “I remember something about its having trouble leaving New York.”
“Trouble! It was darn near disaster. The Germans enlarged her in the building just so as to beat Cunard’s Aquitania, with no regard for common sense or engineering
principles. The noospapers were full of her expected arrival, with the New York World calling her a ‘sea monster’ in huge headlines.
Thousands gathered in Hoboken to watch. Waal, she steamed up the Hudson and came abreast her pier.
Then a string of barges cut across her bows.
” Arbuckle’s pause was a masterpiece of the raconteur’s art.
Sipping her champagne, Daisy watched Mrs. Gotobed’s face. At first bored, she was quickly caught up in the story.
Arbuckle continued. “The pilot ordered the engines cut. The wind and tide and current were all against her, and she started moving broadside downstream. Being so long, she had no room to manoeuvre. They didn’t dare restart the engines.
More and more tugs joined in—twenty—five in the end, I heard—and they finally managed to stop her just before she went aground on a mud-bank. ”
“Cripes!” exclaimed Mrs. Gotobed. “And it was worse when it left New York?”
“Much worse.” Arbuckle actually smiled at her.
“She backed out of her berth much too fast, zipped across the river, and got stuck in the mud between two piers on the other side. The engines were reversed at high speed to try to get her off. A couple of small ships docked nearby were sucked from their moorings, hawsers snapping, then flung back against the piers and badly damaged.”
“Cripes!”
“At the same time, the wash of those great engines swamped a coal barge. The captain of that managed to jump to the nearest pier, but the engineer of a nearby tug was drowned.”
“Good heavens!” said Daisy.
“Did the Vaterland get out of the mud?” asked Mrs. Gotobed, agog.
“Yes siree, she pulled out, turned, and steamed off downriver, calm as you please. She was just too big to notice
the difficulties of anything smaller. But you wouldn’t get me travelling on anything that size, let alone investing in ’em.”
“I’d give something to see her engines,” said Phillip. “More champers, anyone?” He refilled glasses.
“I can fix it for you to take a look, son,” promised his father-in-law.
“She’s sailed under the American flag since the War as Leviathan.
She’s not doing too well, I guess. Prohibition is in effect on board all U.S.
ships. I’m as patriotic as the next man, but you won’t catch me sailing in her.
” He hoisted his glass. “Here’s to my good pal, Jethro Gotobed, and his blooming bride.
May they have many happy years together. ”
As Fletchers and Petries joined the toast, Gotobed looked delighted, his wife relieved. Daisy thought “blooming” was an unfortunate choice of adjective. She was not sure whether the American realized its significance in English slang, but as neither of the principals took it amiss, all was well.
Arbuckle seemed to have resigned himself to his friend’s faux pas, a changed attitude which was bound to make the voyage much pleasanter.
The Talavera’s comparatively small complement of passengers meant that first, tourist, and third classes all shared the same public facilities.
“Real democratic,” Arbuckle observed to Daisy as they entered the extravagantly named Grand Salon, “but you won’t mind that. They clear away the tables after dinner for concerts and dancing and such. I fixed with the Purser to seat us at the doctor’s table. He’s an interesting guy.”