Chapter 4 #2
“Oh, but she’s not,” Daisy protested. “That is, Mr. Gotobed has lots of money now, but his antecedents are no better than hers.”
“One cannot help but notice the influence of Yorkshire in his speech. However, I referred to his manners, not his birth.”
“Only the most inveterate snob could hold his birth against him,” Daisy agreed. “From all I’ve seen, he’s thoroughly nice.”
“So I have observed. I do not believe him a weakling, however, except in having married a … No, I must not cast invidious aspersions! But if I were her, I should take great care how I behaved in his presence.”
“He’s no doormat,” Daisy agreed, “or he couldn’t have made his millions. You’re right, he worships the ground she treads; but it wouldn’t surprise me if he put his foot down if she carries on carrying on.”
Mrs. Gotobed was quite subdued at lunch, so perhaps her husband had put his foot down.
In fact, Alec told Daisy later that he had whisked her off willy-nilly to their suite on the specious excuse of changing his tie before lunch.
She even invited Daisy and Gloria to call her Wanda, forcing them to reciprocate.
After lunch, Alec and Daisy attended the dancing lesson, the teacher adding the tango to the curriculum. Alec emerged confident of having mastered the fox-trot. Daisy hoped she’d be able to follow his lead.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he said apologetically,
“I’m not sure I’m prepared to attempt the tango in public, not among experts like the Petries and the Gotobeds.”
“Let’s not,” Daisy said fervently.
Next on the programme came the life-boat drill. Wanda didn’t turn up.
“She said she wouldn’t be seen dead in one of these hulking great things,” Gotobed explained, as they tried on the clumsy life-jackets under the direction of the second mate, Mr. Harvey. “Leastways, she wouldn’t be seen in one unless the alternative was imminent death.”
“There are always a few who don’t come,” sighed Harvey. “Ladies who’d rather risk their lives than don anything so unfashionable, and men who refuse to be told what to do.”
“That’s why Chester wouldn’t leave his blasted poker game.” Lady Brenda, who had created a fuss at the next boat station until she was transferred to Harvey’s boat, batted her eyelashes at him. “I’ll do anything you tell me,” she cooed, “but may I take it off now? It’s frightfully uncomfortable.”
With great solicitude, he helped her undo the straps. If Wanda had bothered to attend, she could have learnt a lesson about making the best of the most unpromising occasion.
Later that afternoon, Wanda did unbend sufficiently to join Gotobed and Arbuckle in a decorous game of shuffle-board, at which she proved surprisingly adept.
“Not so surprising,” Gloria said when Daisy commented, as they watched. “Dancing in a chorus line, you’d have to make every move real precise, so your muscles and reflexes would get trained. I guess she’d be good at deck tennis, too, but I doubt she’ll play. It might mess up her hair-do.”
Daisy giggled, but said, “We really must try to be more charitable to the blooming bride. We have the rest of the
voyage to get through, and then you’ll be entertaining her at the other end, won’t you?”
“Yes, Poppa invited Mr. Gotobed to stay before he married, of course; but he can’t very well take back the invitation, let alone exclude Wanda. You’re right, Daisy, I’ll try to like her. Come and have a game of tennis now. You’ll get better with practice.”
“Not me! I’ve always been hopeless at sports, though I liked bicycling and climbing trees. Besides, what with playing this morning and dancing and everything, I’m going to be so stiff by tomorrow I shan’t be able to move.”
“What you need’s a bit of gentle exercise to loosen up those muscles,” said Gloria ruthlessly. “Come on, I’ll coach you so when we play tomorrow you’ll dazzle them all.”
“A hot bath, followed by poplar-bark salve,” came a murmur from behind.
“Miss Oliphant!”
“Sorry,” said the witch. “I do endeavour not to push my remedies, and I promised Dr. Amboyne …”
“You’re not competing with him,” Daisy said, “since I wouldn’t go to him anyway, not for stiffness. Your prescription sounds much pleasanter than Gloria’s, though it doesn’t seem likely that the shop sells poplar salve.”
“I can let you have some,” offered Miss Oliphant hesitantly.
“Spiffing! Gloria, if the salve works, you can coach me tomorrow, I promise; but it really is time I did a bit of work before I forget my first impressions of the voyage. Lead the way, Miss Oliphant. I’ll stagger along after you.”
In a third-class cabin shared with three strangers, the witch showed Daisy her medicine chest, a plain but well-polished teak box with a brass lock.
It was lined with green plush, with dozens of blue glass vials and jars, neatly labelled, resting each in its own niche. Some of the labels were bright
red, Daisy noted, perhaps those of dangerous herbs like foxglove which had both therapeutic and deadly qualities.
No wonder herbalists had been regarded as witches with mysterious powers for good and evil. She wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of someone with that sort of knowledge.
Luckily, Miss Oliphant was a good witch. She refused payment for the salve, saying, “You will not need a great deal. Rub a little into the stiff muscles and please return the rest.”
“Of course. Thank you so much; it’s very kind of you.”
Daisy left the jar in her cabin and went to the writing room.
One wall, or bulkhead as it was called by those in the know, was devoted to the ship’s library.
This was kept in glass-fronted cabinets, not because of its value—it consisted of all the books passengers had brought to read on board and not considered worth keeping—but to stop the volumes flying about in rough seas.
The several writing desks, like the swivel chairs in front of them, were securely fastened to the deck.
Like school desks, they had holes to hold sunken inkwells, with the addition of hinged caps to stop ink sploshing about in a storm.
At one of the desks, Alec was already intent on the stacks of information his superiors at the Met considered necessary to his job in Washington.
Daisy glanced around. All those reading and writing seemed to be minding their own business, so she kissed the back of Alec’s neck, where the crisp, dark hair she loved turned into tiny, curly wisps. He jumped.
“Darling, I couldn’t resist. How is it going?”
“Ghastly. Great Scott, they expect me to be a diplomat and a bureaucrat crossed with a don, not a policeman!”
“What a frightful miscegenation! But I know you can handle it, darling. You’ll show Mr. Arbuckle’s J. Edgar Whatsit what’s what. I’ll leave you in peace—I’ve got to get deck tennis and life-boat drills and dancing lessons down on paper,
and the auction pool Mr. Gotobed explained to me. Not to mention fellow passengers!”
“I wonder if I ought to warn them?” Alec mused.
“Don’t you dare! They won’t be half so amusing if they know they might turn up in a magazine article. Names changed to protect the guilty, of course.”
“I hope so. The A.C. would have a fit if you were sued for libel.”
They both stayed there for a couple of hours.
Daisy did not have to go in search of tea.
A steward brought it around, complete with triangular, crustless cucumber and gentleman’s relish sandwiches, assorted biscuits, and those decorative petits fours which look so much better than they taste, as Daisy told herself firmly.
In due time, she went down to bag the bathroom they shared with three other cabins. Whether it was the poplar-bark salve or simply the hot sea-water, she felt much less stiff after her bath. She returned to the cabin feeling able to face an evening of dancing.
Under Lucy’s critical eye, Daisy had bought two new evening frocks for the trip. Both were simple, so that their appearance could be altered with a coloured scarf or a length of the newly fashionable coloured glass beads.
The black she had worn last night. Tonight she put on the dark blue, silk charmeuse, the shade of the sky when the first stars come out.
It consisted of a thigh-length tunic over a straight underskirt to just above the ankles, more flattering to her figure, according to Lucy, than anything with a belt around the hips.
Alec came in just as she put a long string of azure blue beads over her head.
“Just the colour of your eyes,” he said approvingly, kissing
the tip of her nose. “You look stunning, love. Every man there will want to dance with you.”
“Oh, gosh, I do hope not!”
“Don’t sound so panic-stricken. We’ll tell them we’re still honeymooning.”
Daisy breathed a sigh of relief.
After dinner, they waltzed together to “Swanee River Moon,” watched a tango, then tackled a fox-trot while the tenor warbled some sort of twaddle with a chorus beginning, “Stealing, stealing with your eyes appealing …” Daisy didn’t think she utterly disgraced Alec, but in spite of his strong lead, she was so tense she was exhausted by the end.
Alec grinned at her as she sank into a chair. “They’re playing Schubert and Dvorak tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “You’ll enjoy that.”
“As long as I don’t have to dance to it!”
“All you need is practice, darling.”
“I feel such an absolute ass.”
“We must practise in private. There’s nowhere on board, but when we get ashore … In the meantime, suppose we go ‘stealing’ away to see what the moon’s doing tonight?”
Up on the boat-deck, it was a little warmer than the night before. The almost balmy breeze came from the southwest, rather than the east, sending wispy clouds drifting across a haloed moon.
“‘Wrapped in a gauzy veil,’” said Daisy, who knew her English literature if she knew nothing else, “but it never looks to me ‘like a dying lady, lean and pale.’ More of a ‘Goddess excellently bright.’”
“Mmmm,” said Alec, putting a stop to Ben Jonson and Percy Bysshe Shelley alike in the most agreeable manner possible.
For some minutes Daisy was too busy to contemplate the
moon or attend to her surroundings. Low voices, the scrape of a match nearby, footsteps coming and going barely impinged upon her consciousness, but she was jerked back to awareness by a sudden, wordless yell, followed by a splash.
“Man overboard!” someone bawled, and others took up the cry.
Alec sprang into action. Grabbing the nearest life-belt, he hung over the rail, peering down at the water. “There!” He flung the belt. “Damn, he’s gone down again!”
Heart in mouth, Daisy leant beside him as a second life-belt spun down.
In the moonlight, the bow wake was a white frill, losing definition as it spread.
The water just below them was a dark, heaving mass, glimmering as it swelled and receded, with the white circles of the life-belts floating swiftly backwards as the ship steamed on.
Daisy and Alec ran aft, along with an agitated group, trying to keep up with the receding circles.
Between the rings, something broke the surface. Arms reached upward, flailing, begging for help.
“The belt!” shouted several voices. “Grab the belt!”
As the drowning man floundered towards the nearest life-belt, Daisy discovered she was holding her breath. Suddenly she realized that the throb of the engines, the constant, unheeded heartbeat of the Talavera, had ceased.
“Fast reflexes on the bridge,” Alec commented.
“I think he’s got it,” someone said. “Yes, he’s got it!”
“Hang on!”
“Hold hard, fella, we’ll get you out of there.” That was surely Harvey, the second mate—and a dozen seamen had materialized on deck. “Here, men, this boat. Lower away, now! Ladies and gentlemen, out of the way, if you please.”
They moved back, crowded to the rail a little further along. Someone was sobbing. Daisy clung to Alec, weak with
shock and still tentative relief. Creaking, the davit swung the life-boat out over the side and began to lower it.
“Lights!” called Harvey impatiently.
“How the dickens did he come to fall?” a man wondered aloud.
“I saw it,” a hysterical voice responded. “He was pushed!”