Alistair MacLean: The Golden Rendezvous

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 twilight 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 Harcourt the 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 I 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 Carracio. Tony Carreras — my guess that he was Miguel Carreras’ son had been a correct and far from difficult one — 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. May be 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 always appeared at the precisely correct moment with the precisely correct wine. But never for me. I drank soda water. It was in my contract. The coffee appeared. This was the moment when I had to earn my money. When Antoine was on duty and on top of his form, conversation was a desecration and a hallowed hush of appreciation, an almost cathedral ecstasy, was the correct form. But about forty minutes of this rapturous silence was about par for the course. It couldn’t and never did go on. I never yet met a rich manor woman, for that matter of it who didn’t list talking, chiefly and preferably about themselves, as among their favourite occupations. And the prime target for their observations was invariably the officer who sat at the head of the table. I looked round ours and wondered who would set the ball rolling.