a personage on its passenger list, a personage varying from notable to
world-famous. A special suite was reserved for personages. Well-known
politicians, cabinet ministers, top stars of the stage and screen, the
odd famous writer or artist-if he was clean enough and used a razor-and
the lower echelons of the english nobility travelled in this suite at
vastly reduced prices; royalty, ex-presidents, ex-premiers, ranking
dukes and above travelled free. It was said that if all the british
peerage on the campari’s waiting list could be accommodated
simultaneously, the house of lords could close its doors. It need
hardly be added that there was nothing philanthropic in lord dexter’s
offer of free hospitality: he merely jacked up his prices to the wealthy
occupants of the other eleven suites, who would have paid the earth
anyway for the privilege of voyaging in such close contact with such
exalted company. After several years on this run our passengers
consisted almost entirely of repeaters. Many came as often as three
times a year, fair enough indication of the size of their bank roll. By
now the passenger list on the campari had become the most exclusive club
in the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, lord dexter had
distilled the aggregate elements of social and financial snobbery and
found in its purest quintessence an inexhaustible supply of gold. I
adjusted my napkin and looked over the current gold mine. Five hundred
million dollars on the hoof on the dove-grey velvet of the armchair
seats in that opulent and air-conditioned dining room; perhaps nearer a
thousand million dollars, and old man beresford would account for a good
third of it. Julius beresford, president and chief stockholder of the
hart-mccormick mining federation, sat where he nearly always sat, not
only now but on half a dozen previous cruises, at the top right-hand
side of the captain’s table, next to captain Bullen himself. He sat
there, in the most coveted position in the ship, not because he insisted
on it through sheer weight of wealth, but because captain Bullen himself
insisted on it. There are exceptions to every rule, and julius
beresford was the exception to Bullen’s rule that he couldn’t abide any
passenger, period. Beresford, a tall, thin, relaxed man with tufted
black eyebrows, a horseshoe ring of greying hair fringing the sunburnt
baldness of his head, and lively hazel eyes twiligh in the lined brown
leather of his face, came along only for the peace, comfort, and food:
the company of the great left him cold, a fact vastly appreciated by
captain Bullen, who shared his sentiments exactly. Beresford, sitting
diagonally across from my table, caught my eye. “Evening, mr. carter.”
unlike his daughter, he didn’t make me feel that he was conferring an
earldom upon me every time he spoke to me. “Splendid to be at sea
again, isn’t it? and where’s our captain tonight?”
“Working, i’m afraid, mr. beresford. I have to present his
apologies to his table. He couldn’t leave the bridge.”
“On the bridge?” mrs. beresford, seated opposite her husband,
twisted round to look at me. “I thought you were usually on watch at
this hour, mr. carter?”
“I am.” I smiled at her. I kept a special sort of smile for mrs.
beresford in the same way that I kept a special sort of look for young
dexter. Plump, bejewelled, overdressed, with dyed blonde hair, but
still beautiful at fifty, mrs. beresford bubbled over with good humour
and laughter and kindness, and to the sour remark that it is easy to be
that way with 300 million dollars in the bank, I can only observe that,
after several years on the millionaires’ run, the misery quotient of our
wealthy appeared to increase in direct proportion to the bullion in the
bank; this was only her first trip, but mrs. beresford was already my
favourite passenger. I went on: “but there are so many chains of
islets, reefs, and coral keys hereabouts that captain Bullen prefers to
see to the navigation himself.” I didn’t add, as I might have done,
that had it been in the middle of the night and all the passengers
safely in their beds captain Bullen would have been in his also,
untroubled by any thoughts about his chief officer’s competence. “But I
thought a chief officer was fully qualified to run a ship?” miss
beresford, needling me again, sweet-smiling, the momentarily innocent
clear green eyes almost too big for the delicately tanned face. “In
case anything went wrong with the captain, I mean. You must hold a
master’s certificate, mustn’t you?”
“I do. I also hold a driver’s licence, but you wouldn’t catch me
driving a bus in the rush hour in downtown manhattan.” old man
beresford grinned. His wife smiled. Miss beresford regarded me
thoughtfully for a moment, then bent to examine her hors d’oeuvres,
showing the gleaming auburn hair cut in a bouffant style that looked as
if it had been achieved with a garden rake and a pair of secateurs but
had probably cost a fortune. The man by her side wasn’t going to let it
go so easily, though. He laid down his fork, raised his thin dark head
until he had me more or less sighted along his acquiline nose, and said
in his clear high drawling voice, “oh, come now, chief officer. I don’t
think the comparison is very apt at all.” the “chief officer” was to
put me in my place. The duke of hartwell spent a great deal of his time
aboard the campari in putting people in their places, which was pretty
ungrateful of him, considering that he was getting it all for free. He
had nothing against me personally; it was just that he was publicly
lending miss beresford his support. Even the very considerable sums of
money earned by inveigling the properly respectful lower classes into
viewing his stately home at two and six a time were making only a slight
dent on the crushing burden of death duties, whereas an alliance with
miss beresford would solve his difficulties for ever and ever. Things
were being complicated for the unfortunate duke by the fact that, though
his intellect was bent on miss beresford, his attentions and eyes were
for the most part on the extravagantly opulent charms-and undeniable
beauty of the platinum blonde and often-divorced cinema actress who
flanked him on the other side. “I don’t suppose it is, sir,” I
acknowledged. Captain Bullen refused to address him as “your grace,”
and i’d be damned if i’d do it either. “But the best I could think up
on the spur of the moment.” he nodded as though satisfied and returned
to attack his hors d’oeuvre. Old beresford eyed him speculatively, mrs.
beresford half-smilingly, miss harcourtthe cinema actress -admiringly,
while miss beresford herself just kept on treating us to an
uninterrupted view of the auburn bouffant. There’s little enough to do
during off-duty hours at sea, and [1 watching developments at the
captain’s table would make a very entertaining pastime indeed. What
promised to make it even more entertaining was the very considerable
interest being taken in the captain’s table by the young man seated at
the foot of my own table. One of the passengers who had joined at
caracio. Tony carreras-my guess that he was miguel carteras’ son had
been a correct and far from difficult on-was by any odds the most
extraordinarily handsome man who’d ever passed through the dining-room
door of the campari. In one way this might not have signified much as
it takes many years to amass sufficient cash to sail on the campari even
for a weekend and young men were in a tiny minority at any time, but
nevertheless there was no denying his impact. Even at close-up range
there was none of that weakness, that almost effeminate regularity of
feature so often found in the faces of many very good-looking men. He
looked for all the world like a slightly latinate reincarnation of a
younger errol flynn, but harder, tougher, more enduring. The only flaw,
if one could call it flaw, lay in the eyes. There seemed to be
something ever so slightly wrong with them, as if the pupils were
slightly flattened, giving a hard, bright glitter. Maybe it was just
the lighting at the table. But there was nothing wrong with them as
eyes; he had twenty-twenty vision all right and was using it all to
study the captain’s table. Miss beresford or miss harcourt, I couldn’t
be sure which; he didn’t look the kind of man who would waste his time
studying any of the others at that table. The courses came and went.
Antoine was on duty in the kitchen that night, and you could almost
reach out and feel the blissful hush that descended on the company.
Velvet footed goanese waiters moved soundlessly on the dark grey pile of
the persian carpet; food appeared and vanished as if in a dream; an arm