Pollock, this man is a doctor,’ Troy said.
‘You’re joking? Doctor? Of what?’
‘Of medicine,’ Mr Bard said. ‘You should consult your passenger list, my dear fellow. He’s an MD.’
‘You can tell people you’re anything,’ Mr Pollock darkly declared. ‘Anything. I could tell them I was a bloody earl. Pardon the French, I’m sure.’ He glared at Troy who was giggling. The shadow of a grin crept into his expression. ‘Not that they’d credit it,’ he added. ‘But still.’
The young man on the motorcycle sounded a derisive call on his siren. ‘Taa t’–ta ta ta. Ta-Taa.’ He and his girlfriend were looking towards the bend in the river.
A rivercraft had come into view. She was painted a dazzling white. A scarlet and green houseflag was mounted at her bows and the red ensign at her stern. Sunlight splashed her brass-work, red curtains glowed behind her saloon windows. As she drew towards her moorings her name could be seen, painted in gold letters along her bows.
M.V. Zodiac.
The clock in a church tower above the river struck twelve.
‘Here she is,’ Mr Bard said. ‘Dead on time.’
III
The Zodiac berthed and was made fast very smartly by a lad of about fifteen. Her skipper left the wheelhouse and said goodbye to his passengers who could be heard to thank him, saying they wished the voyage had been longer. They passed through the waiting group. A woman, catching Troy’s eye said: ‘You’re going to love it.’ And a man remarked to his wife: ‘Well, back to earth, worse luck,’ with what seemed almost excessive regret after a five day jaunt.
When they had all gone the new passengers moved down to the Zodiac and were greeted by the skipper. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, very neat in his white duck shirt and dark blue trousers and tie. He wore the orthodox peaked cap.
‘You’d all like to come aboard,’ he said. ‘Tom!’ The boy began to collect the luggage and pile it on the deck. The skipper offered a hand to the ladies. Miss Rickerby-Carrick made rather heavy-going of this business. ‘Dear me!’ she said, ‘Oh. Oh, thank you,’ and leapt prodigiously.
She had a trick of clutching with her left hand at her dun-coloured jumper: almost, Troy thought, as if she carried her money in a bag round her neck and wanted continuously to assure herself it was still there.
From amidships and hard-by the wheelhouse the passengers descended, by way of a steep little flight of steps and a half-gate of the loosebox kind, into the saloon. From there a further downward flight ended in a passage through the cabin quarters. Left of this companion-way a hatch from the saloon offered a bird’s-eye view into the cuddy which was at lower-deck level. Down there a blonde woman assembled dishes of cold meats and salads. She wore a starched apron over a black cotton dress. Her hair, pale as straw, was drawn back from a central parting into a lustrous knob. As Troy looked down at it the woman turned and tilted her head. She smiled dazzlingly and said: ‘Good morning. Lunch in half an hour. The bar will be open in a few minutes.’ The bar, Troy saw, was on the port side of the saloon, near the entry.
The boy came down with Troy’s suitcase and paintbox. He said: ‘This way, please,’ and she followed him to the lower deck and to her cabin.
No. 7 was the third on the starboard side, and was exactly twice the size of its bunk. It had a cupboard, a washbasin and a porthole near the ceiling. The counterpane and curtains were cherry-red and in a glass on the bedside shelf there was a red geranium mixed with a handful of fern and hedgerow flowers. This pleased Troy greatly. The boy put her suitcase on the bunk and her paintbox under it. For some reason she felt diffident about tipping him. She hesitated but he didn’t. He gave her a smile that was the very print of the woman’s and was gone. ‘He’s her son,’ thought Troy, ‘and perhaps they’re a family. Perhaps the Skipper’s his father.’
She unpacked her suitcase and stowed it under her bunk, washed her hands and was about to return to the saloon when, hearing voices outside, she knelt on her bunk and looked through the porthole. It was at dockside level and there, quite close at hand, were the shiny leggings and polished boots of the smart chauffeur, his brown breeches and his gloved hands each holding a suitcase. They moved out of sight, towards the boarding plank, no doubt, and were followed by shoes and clerical grey trousers. These legs paused and formed a truncated triangular frame through which Troy saw, as if in an artfully directed film, the distant black-leathered cyclists, still glinting, chewing and staring in the cobbled lane. She had the oddest notion that they stared at her, though that, as she told herself, was ridiculous. They had just been joined by the boy from the Zodiac when all of them were blotted out by a taxi that shot into her field of vision and halted. The framing legs moved away. The door of the taxi began to open but Troy’s attention was abstracted by a loud rap on her cabin door. She sat down hurriedly on her bunk and said: ‘Come in.’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s active face appeared round the door.
‘I say,’ she said. ‘Bliss! A shower and two loos! Aren’t we lucky!’
Before Troy could reply she had withdrawn. There were sounds within the craft of new arrivals.
‘Thank you very much … Er – here –’ the voice was lowered to an indistinguishable murmur. A second voice said: ‘Thank you, sir.’ A door was shut. Boots tramped up the companion-way and across the deck overhead. ‘The chauffeur,’ Troy thought, ‘and Mr. J. de B. Lazenby.’ She waited for a moment listening to the movements of the other passengers. There was a further confusion of arrival and a bump of luggage. A woman’s voice said: ‘That’s correct, stooard, we do have quite a bit of photographic equipment. I guess I’ll use Number 3 as a regular stateroom and Number 6 can accommodate my brother and the overflow. OK? OK, Earl?’
‘Sure. Sure.’
The cabin forward of Troy’s was No. 6. She heard sounds of the bestowal of property and a number of warnings as to its fragility, all given with evident good humour. The man’s voice said repeatedly: ‘Sure. Sure. Fine. Fine.’ There was an unsuccessful attempt to tip the boy. ‘Thanks all the same,’ Troy heard him say. He departed. There followed a silence and an ejaculation from the lady. ‘Do you look like I feel?’ and the man’s answer: ‘Forget it. We couldn’t know.’
Troy consulted her passenger list. Mr Earl J. and Miss Sally-Lou Hewson had arrived. She stowed away her baggage and then went up to the saloon.
They were all there except the three latest arrivals. Dr Natouche sat by himself reading a newspaper with a glass of beer to hand. Miss Rickerby-Carrick, in conversation with Mr Pollock, occupied a seat that ran round the forward end of the saloon under the windows. Mr Caley Bard who evidently had been waiting for Troy, at once reminded her that she was to have a drink with him. ‘Mrs Tretheway,’ he said, ‘mixes a superb Martini.’
She was behind the little bar, displayed in the classic manner within a frame of bottles and glasses many of which were splintered by sunlight. She herself had a kind of local iridescence: she looked superb. Mr Pollock kept glancing at her with a half-smile on his lips and then turning away again. Miss Rickerby-Carrick gazed at her with a kind of anguished wonder. Mr Bard expressed his appreciation in what Troy was to learn was a very characteristic manner.
‘The Bar at the Folies Bergère may as well shut up shop,’ he said to Troy. ‘Manet would have changed his drinking habits. You, by the way, could show him where he gets off.’ And he gave Troy a little bow and a very knowing smile. ‘You ought to have a go,’ he suggested. ‘Don’t,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Please.’ He laughed and leant across the bar to pay for their drinks. Mrs Tretheway gave Troy a woman-to-woman look that included her fabulous smile.
Even Dr Natouche lowered his paper and contemplated Mrs Tretheway with gravity for several seconds.
At the back of the bar hung a framed legend, rather shakily typed.
THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC