Tidal Wave (9 page)

He was thankful that she had not seen this little scene. It was one of the less attractive aspects of being a public personality, a superstar. There would be time enough for her to face that part of his life. But first he wanted her to know the private Nicholas Frayne. Once they knew each other they could go out into the world and enjoy it all! He warmed at the thought of them in the world together and his depression lifted almost as quickly as it had come.

Nicholas thought how wonderful it was going to be learning about Arabella, how she lived, what she liked and disliked, what she had done with her life so far. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know about her past loves, but he hoped there were no complications about any present ones. He knew in his heart of hearts that they were meant for each other. Crazy? No, certainly not. There was so much to look forward to. Thinking about her, he felt a heightened sense of anticipation about the days and nights ahead. He laughed out loud just as he had when she had first landed
the helicopter on the dock.

The scene with Wendy was an unfortunate necessity but it was done now, finished. He realized that wanting Arabella made him that little bit more ruthless. He needed to be, and he liked it.

He leaned back and looked around the room again. He admired it and could not wait to bring Arabella there. He took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, put them on, and looked at the wonderful paintings. There was a series of six huge oil paintings of Armenian dancing girls that were dark, dense, in deep browns, black, crimson, and bottle green. They had been painted by long-forgotten Armenian artists in the early part of the eighteenth century. The voluptuous, succulent figures in rich costumes and exotic painted faces enchanted him. He puffed on his cigar and thought of Armenia, Georgia, Russia.

For Nicholas, shades of Russian literature came to life in the room. Chekhov, Turgenev, Dostoevski. He thought of Nabokov exiled in America and dying in Switzerland; the giants Gogol and Gorky; and he hoped Arabella had a love of Russian literature as he did.

Chapter Seven

Early the next morning, there were deck stewards everywhere setting out the reclining chairs, writing out name cards to slip into the brass metal slots on the headrests, folding soft blue, mauve, and lavender plaid mohair blankets. One steward was plumping up feathered pillows, slipping them into matching plaid cases and tying them to the top of the deck chairs with neat bows.

Isador walked down the enclosed sun deck to a pair of doors at the end through a stream of “Good morning,” “Did you sleep well, sir?” “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”

He pushed the doors open against a cold, hard wind. Out on the open deck the bright sunshine hit him like a spotlight. He leaned on the shiny mahogany railings and looked down to the decks below and the three swimming pools, empty of swimmers but full of sparkling aquamarine water rippling from side to side. Waves he would rather not look at. Swirls of steam rose up from the heated pools into the cold salt air. He looked beyond the floating hotel to the inky-blue Atlantic Ocean, inhaled deep breaths of the ocean air, and found it invigorating.

He ran his fingers through his steel-gray hair and pulled a very smart check English wool cap from a pocket in his camel-hair jacket. He adjusted it on his head, thankful for its warmth and grateful to Herbert Johnson, the English gentlemen’s hatter who had been filling his standing order of one every year for nearly thirty years now, ever since Isador’s graduate year at Oxford.

Eager to get his bearings, Izzy was doing an early-morning tour of the ship. He was enjoying the quiet and luxury
of doing it alone. He loved the bite of the salt air and, even more, the fact that he was not seasick. At last he had found a ship that did not shudder, rock, heave, and roll to the steady beat of its muffled engines. And then again, he thought, putting his hand to his neck, maybe these silly Band-Aids work! As long as he never fixed his eyes on the sway of water in a swimming pool, his bathtub, or even a glass, he knew this would be a painless crossing. He took a few more deep breaths and did a couple of half-hearted knee bends. He swung his arms a few times as if he were hitting a four-hundred-yard shot straight down the fairway of one of the most difficult greens at the West Hartford Country Club.

Too cold, he turned to go back to the warmth of the enclosure. As he did, he took notice of a lone figure in a heavy white V-neck cable-stitch sweater and white flannel trousers, standing barefoot and making extraordinary movements with his arms and legs. The tall, athletic, Oriental man glistened in the sunshine. The graceful, slow-motion movements of Tai Chi were so spiritual they had Izzy mesmerized.

He watched in silence and admiration. When Xu had completed his morning exercises, he slipped into a pair of shoes and bent down to tie them. The two men then walked toward each other.

Izzy said, “Excuse me, I hope you did not mind my watching. It was Tai Chi, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“I’ve only seen it once before, in a park in Peking. My wife and I were there a few years ago. There were dozens of people out doing it. Young and old. Old retired men in their seventies and eighties would go there with their songbirds in cages, hang them in the trees for an airing, and do Tai Chi. I was very moved by it all. I even bought a book, read it and understood it, but couldn’t get the hang of it, you know?”

Izzy managed one of the more simple movements with
a fair amount of grace and said, “I think it’s like releasing a flock of blackbirds trapped within you.”

He tried another movement and smiled at Xu.

“I will come here every morning at this time and I would be pleased if you would like to join me. You are more than welcome, and if I can help you it would give me pleasure.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. er, Mr ….”

“Xu, spelled X-u.”

Izzy put out his hand and said, “I’m Isador Katz, from West Hartford, Connecticut.” They shook hands, with Xu towering over his new friend.

“It’s too cold out here,” Izzy said, and they left the outside deck. “Do you play golf, Mr. Xu?”

“No, no golf. But I may learn because the lady I work for says she is thinking of taking up the game.”

“It’s a wonderful game, you know. I’ve been playing since I was a young boy and for me it’s still the best sport in the world.”

“Would you like your chairs, gentlemen?” interrupted a steward.

“Oh, yes,” said Izzy. “I’d like to have a word with you about the deck chairs. My name is Katz, Isador Katz.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Katz. We have you over here.”

The two men followed the steward. Isador was quite satisfied with his chair. Then, checking the names on either side of his deck chair, he turned, reached into his pocket, took out a ten-dollar bill, and handed it to the young man, saying “Steward, you see that chair marked Mrs. Katz, and that one, Mrs. Davis, and that one, Mrs. Tillman. Those three ladies are my traveling companions. They love to gossip and be together. So take those three nametags and move them way down to the far end of this deck, away from me.”

That done, he turned to Xu, who had been settled by another steward three empty chairs away. Izzy sat down and after a few minutes asked, “Mr. Xu, how about taking a chair next to me, unless, of course, you have other people to sit with?”

“Thank you,” Xu answered and changed chairs.

Izzy said, “Now then, Mr. Xu, since I am going to take advantage of your knowledge of Tai Chi, how about letting me teach you how to drive a good golf ball? They have a driving range on board — I checked it out. I’m quite a good golfer and there’s a pro here who could give you some lessons.”

Isador was being quite modest about his golfing abilities. He was a golfer with a bookcase full of trophies and several titles that he had held for years, such as the New England Championship Golfer of the Year.

“Mr. Katz, I’d love to!”

Izzy and Xu reclined in their chairs side by side, both happy to have a new companion.

Missy was looking very pretty. Her five feet two inches were dressed in well-tailored camel-hair trousers, a white cashmere turtleneck sweater, and a camel-hair jacket. She ran her fingers through her short, wavy, jet-black hair. It fell perfectly into place around her attractive face. She smacked her cheeks lightly to bring out the color she wanted, for she never wore makeup. She grabbed her handbag, a Purdey hunting bag of natural canvas trimmed in olive green, tossed it on her shoulder, and hurried out of her cabin to the eight-o’clock breakfast sitting in the second-class dining room.

Selina Yeats, you’re a lucky devil! She said to herself. How many women are there like you whose working life is as exciting, adventurous, rewarding, and luxurious as yours? Just as Daddy Sam always says, you get what you get because you are what you are, and you’ve been lucky enough to get the best sides of both your parents!

She smiled to herself as she thought, Mama, thanks for my vivacity and adventurous nature, and Dad, thanks for my looks and unrelenting positive attitude to life.

Missy made a mental note to call her dad. She wanted to catch him at home on their horse farm in Wiltshire where she had been born and brought up. Sam Yeats was one of
the finest racehorse trainers in England and would be leaving shortly for the sales in Kentucky. She wanted to know his plans in the hope that their paths might cross. Missy was close to both her parents, but it was Dad and Spring Mile, the farm, that were her anchor. That was where she had met Arabella Crawford and the Earl of Heversham.

Just back from secretarial college in London, Missy had spent a great deal of time with her father, Miss Crawford, and the Earl of Heversham that summer while Miss Crawford was putting together a racing stable. Missy got to know the glamorous lady very well that way. Her father had suggested that Arabella take Missy off his hands and make something of her out in the world beyond Wiltshire.

Well, thought Missy, as she stepped out of the elevator, she sure did that! Her father was very proud of her and her position as Arabella’s personal assistant.

Missy pushed the doors to the dining room open, thinking how lovely it was having two families — a working family of Arabella, Xu, Rupert, and Oskar, as well as a blood family of mother, father, and two wonderful brothers.

Surprisingly, the eight-o’clock breakfast sitting was booked to near capacity. The dining room bustled. It was filled with people studying the menu, the ship’s paper, the activities for the day; brochures filled the tables along with the food: “Know Your Ship”; “Where to Find What You Are Looking For”; sample menus of the ship’s fare available to be ordered in advance; “Whom to Call to Book Yourself into What You Want.”

Missy looked around the room. They were for the most part well-dressed, wealthy, well-traveled passengers. Most of the Americans looked like they had stepped out of Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Fields, Neiman Marcus, or one of the expensive shops on Rodeo Drive. The women were high on Armani, Missoni, Ralph Lauren, and Jones of New York sportswear.

The American men were for the most part divine. Well tailored, tanned, courtly, and solicitous to their wives; generous, patient, and charming to the single women, young
or old; highly competitive, overly knowledgeable, obsessed with statistics, and masters of generalizations. Preoccupied with success, money, culture, and winning. Some handled it with more finesse than others.

The S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
had American tourists who were chic and well traveled, who had been everywhere and were looking for alternative ways of travel to places where they could have the same luxurious life as they did at home. From what Missy could see, they were certainly in the right place.

Missy recognized the English passengers easily from the perfect cut of the men’s suits — Savile Row, Dougy Heywood — and the Scottish tweeds and cashmere pullovers, smartly worn though patched. Turnbull & Asser shirts; no cufflinks. The well-worn school tie and those dinner suits and shirts — the epitome of 1930’s good taste and lack of flash.

It was especially easy to spot the English women. They always had the best complexions; naturally white, paper-thin skin with an under color and glow, giving them cosmetics from within instead of from the beauty section of the ground floor of Harrods. They were naturally beautiful from breeding and understatement. They were strong with fragile looks, a prerequisite for living with the English gentleman. What other women could ride with the hounds, follow the shoot, kill the salmon, fly fish the trout, keep their servants for a lifetime? Or load up their cars with logs for the fire, trees and shrubs for the garden, picnics for their outings, blond Labrador retrievers or Dalmatians and terriers, then chug along the motorways and London streets only to be hooted at by their husband’s chauffeur as the family (for income tax purposes “company”) Rolls passed them by and streaked ahead with husband sitting in the back reading
The Financial Times, Country Life, Field and Stream
?

Praise be the English woman who can turn her hand to drawing and plucking a pheasant, muck out the stable, clean a fish, cook a gourmet meal, and keep her looks and figure.
Spend endless hours on her hands and knees with her gardener and hang on to her stately home while still managing most discreetly a lover and the children at half-term. All this in the shadow of a social calendar no less busy than the Queen’s.

The delicious English woman who is tough but tender, exhausted but bites the bullet for family and country. These were the women who looked best when their hairdos looked messed. Torn between dressing like the Queen, whom they loved, and the Paris fashions they admired, they still had the ability to get away with the long evening skirt in black velvet or tartan, cotton in summer, and the St. Laurent cream silk blouse. Except when they pulled out their ballgowns, which were always divine. They were as much Ascot as the horses, that being the only time their clothes and hats were allowed to surpass those of their peacock husbands, dressed in gray top hat and tails. The Ascot Man — a species of penguin the whole world prayed would never die out.

The English couples were adored and sought after by the American passengers because they spoke English instead of American. For the Americans, every Englishman was a lord and every lord as good as a duke because of his upper-class accent, his heritage, and the fact that he had not emigrated.

The previous night at dinner Missy had seen several elegant, reserved Swedes and a group of Germans who were tall and white-haired, the younger men blond and handsome. The German women fell into two categories — extremely elegant and attractive, or the opposite. They were the present-day Marlene Dietrichs, Romy Schneiders, or Marie Dresslers, and extremely pleasant and charming to everyone.

There were almost as many French as there were Americans on board, and they were the most elegant, well dressed, and attractive of all the passengers. The women were terrific looking and the French men, from sixteen to sixty, all looked like Alain Delon, sounded like Sacha Distel, charmed like Jean Gabin, and, one hoped, made love like Jean Paul Belmondo looked. They barely spoke a word of English to
anyone — insisting on their own language, as they always did wherever they went.

If the Americans were the most generous travelers and the English surprisingly open and charming once they saw Dover fade into the sunset, then the French were the most demanding and difficult, forming cliques and sending back opened bottles of wine.

All in all, quite a cross-section of cultures, thought Missy. And I consider myself lucky to be here with them.

It was odd to think that none of these people would be there, that there would be no crossing on this magnificent ocean liner and, as a matter of fact, no ship, if not for her boss. Arabella Crawford had been the merchant banker who put the money together for the Anglo-French line and the S.S.
Tatanya Annanovna
, although she managed to conceal her identity during the transaction, as was her practice with many of her successful business ventures. Public recognition was not her goal and her anonymity permitted her to negotiate more freely on an international scale.