The Poseidon Adventure (11 page)

It needed only a hint or two picked up here and there during the early part of the voyage to put the seal on his credentials. Travelling alone, the small-town, midwestern merchant with a wife crippled by arthritis had been allowed off the leash to take his first holiday in years by himself. His taciturnity indicated that he could keep his mouth shut. And as for his bland, colourless exterior, it promised an absolute volcano of inhibited eroticism once released. Mrs Lewis, seven days out, had organized a simple experiment. Would Mr Martin join her and the So-and-Sos for cocktails in her cabin suite at eight, black tie. When he arrived it seemed the So-and-Sos had had to beg off. After two drinks, Mrs Lewis pretended to adjust a barette holding the coils of her hair. Loosened, they came cascading down, lustrous and fragrant over one bare shoulder, in an instant transforming what had been a somewhat formidable and unassailable lady into a moist-eyed, willing woman.

No further notice was necessary. Martin had been sex-starved for a decade. For the rest of the trip they had a roaring time.

It was also one of the best kept secrets of the voyage. They had not associated during the day, only when the merry-making had shut down for the night did Martin discreetly slip into her cabin.

As for the inevitable, irrevocable bill -- paradise paid for -- he soon found out. Like so many insignificant little men too often overlooked by women, Martin was a sexual marvel. He became a victim to his own prowess. She was not going to let him go. And since the affair had never been complicated by love and it was just sheer fun, Mrs Lewis could not see why it should not be continued on dry land. She had an elegantly furnished apartment on the Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. Martin's establishment in near-by Evanston provided the perfect excuse for a weekly business visit. She had enthusiastically discussed plans for such with him.

And there it was, payment in weekly instalments and all the trouble that would go with it -- lies, subterfuges, narrow escapes and the inevitable discovery. Ethically upright, Martin cared about his wife and did not want to hurt her. But also having gradually accustomed himself to a sexless existence, now that he had begun again, he did not want to quit. He particularly did not want to quit with Mrs Lewis. Yet he really did not crave a mistress and above all he did not want trouble.

And now there was not going to be any. He could half envision the inverted room in his mind, with the furniture suspended from the ceiling. He knew so intimately its arrangements and decor; the pink and white chenille covering on the three-quarter bed, the modern two-toned chest of drawers, the stylized mural print of a formal garden, the thick carpeting, the sofa and easy-chairs. They had played in and about and around them naked, grotesque fauns. Now it would be filled with water like an aquarium, in which floating, her long tresses outflowing like a mermaid's, those prominent eyes wide open and staring, would be Wilma Lewis.

The night watchman who would probably have seen him emerge in the mornings would be dead, too. Nobody would ever know and there were not going to be any consequences. And this involved him in a struggle that was threatening to tear him apart. He ought to be mourning the woman who had so generously given him pleasure and fulfilment and he was not. He should have gone to her that night in spite of her remonstrances. He should be dead with her and he was glad that he was alive. He had sinned. Sin called for punishment and he was free and clear, always provided they managed to escape from the capsized ship. Or perhaps his punishment was to be teased with a little more of life and then to be extinguished like the rest below. But as a practical man who had made his way in the world, he could not swallow a Deity who to get even with him for indulging his libido extra-maritally, would drown a thousand lives as well.

What was he to say to Scott? How bring up the subject? And would he care? What was there he could do or even say beyond the stereotypes to which his own church had accustomed him: repent, go and sin no more and he would be forgiven. It was not forgiveness he wanted but punishment for the injustice that Mrs Lewis was dead and he was alive.

He came suddenly to the overwhelming feeling that Buzz Scott would not be greatly interested in his sexual shenanigans and the consequences to his conscience. The young man had other things on his mind. He was back on the field again playing a game. Martin pressed his thin lips more tightly together again, lest any foolish words that he might later regret were to escape them. Besides, he was embarrassed, the Minister was so much younger than he.

Scott almost terrifyingly corroborated his feelings when he turned to him, winked and said, 'If you can't go through the middle, go 'round the end.'

Martin asked, 'Do you think we can make it?'

Scott replied curtly, 'You bet!'

Martin thought to himself:
Hell, maybe God does need guys like this!

The Beamer's foot slipped from one of the pipes. He swore and would have fallen if Pamela had not held him up by the arm with a firm grip. This strength and her support irritated him to the point that he became even more aware of how shockingly sober he was.

He had booked for the cruise, not in search of companionship so much as because it offered a month of undisturbed drinking under pleasant circumstances. He drank in London, too, but it was more difficult when he had to go to the office. A ship was a marvellous, mobile bar room, liberated from the ridiculous licensing laws of shore-based establishments. It extended the drinking day to the point where he need hardly ever be aware of that inexplicable longing and misery within him. Why miserable? Longing for what? He simply did not know. It was just that there always seemed to have been something hollow inside him and the only thing he knew to do for it was to fill it with alcohol.

He was content with this lumpy girl, whose mother had obviously taken her on this cruise on a husband hunt. Drinking with a companion was more fun than drinking alone.

Pamela, with her clear eyes in which there was never so much as a glance of reproach, short-cut, dun-coloured hair, thick body and those two marvellous, apparently hollow legs into which whisky disappeared, had been ideal.

And she demanded nothing from him; she kept others off. She sat with him, stood with him and drank. She hardly ever even talked. He knew that she had been good at games in some English school, and little more about her.

The Beamer slipped again and the girl supported him with her strong forearm. He covered his annoyance with a laugh, 'That's what happens when you get too sober, it's dangerous. Let go. I'll be all right.' She looked hurt and he said, 'No, no, you'd better hang on to me.' He was far from a heartless man. His ever-recurring loneliness that needed quenching precluded that. It was just that he did not want to be bothered. He overcame his resentment and added, 'You're a good kid.'

The trouble was that the girl was dead cold sober herself now, else she would never have dreamed of asking the question she did. While the liquor she consumed with The Beamer had little visible outward effect upon her, inwardly she was as drunk as he and immersed in a golden glow of perpetual adoration of him. But now the shock of the loss of her mother and the horror of things she had seen had eradicated every last trace of alcohol.

She asked, 'Tony, what makes you drink so?'

The Beamer looked at the girl in astonishment and suppressed an inward sigh. His wife had asked him that, too. He replied, 'Nothing,' and then he added, 'I like the feeling. I love everybody when I'm drunk.'

'And when you aren't?'

He looked at her again and this time beamed and said, 'I can't remember.'

'Oh,' cried Pamela, 'that's why they call you The Beamer! You do beam upon one.'

'Do they?' he said. 'I suppose 1 must look rather a silly ass, sitting up on a bar stool all day long. But everyone looks so lovely to me and I feel friendly towards them.'

'Do you love
me
when you're drunk, Tony?'

'Prodigiously!' The Beamer answered. 'You're the light of my life -- the drinking man's dream girl. Right?'

'And when you're sober?'

Bates replied with a laugh, 'How can I tell? It's the first time we've been, isn't it?' It had slipped out, meant as a joke, but he realized quickly how cruel his remark was. His regret was lost in annoyance that she had asked it and put him into the position dreaded by every man who associates with a woman he does not love.

He was placated when she said, with utter simplicity, 'I don't mind.' And if anything, even a slight feeling of male chagrin came over him; why didn't she?

Her hand gripped his arm even more firmly, 'Careful!' she said, 'There's another of those silly ones with a knob on it.'

The march suddenly came to a halt and from ahead they heard Rogo's voice, 'Holy, jumping Jesus! That cooks it!'

They had come to the staircase at the end of the corridor.

CHAPTER IX

The Adventure of the Second Staircase

The party gathered in consternation and anguished silence at the bottom of the well of the second obstacle. The invention and acquisition of a new skill by means of which they had conquered the first of the reversed ascents had given them hope and confidence in the leadership of the young Minister. They had been able to dismiss upside-down staircases as a problem. Every step they had taken away from the unspeakable and unthinkable things that lay beneath them made the horrors seem less real.

There was no slope up which the women could be hauled. The staircase here was terminal to the corridor and quite different, a broad, double companionway in which the steep overhang of iron steps and polished steel handrails was suspended above their heads, out of reach. Facing them was a bulkhead some twelve feet in height, down which in parallel lines spilled the pipes from the inverted ceiling.

Muller thought to himself,
Dead end!
and gave up. His despair through the sudden slackening of his body must have communicated itself to Nonnie, for she looked at him anxiously. He tried to smile encouragingly at her but could not.

Jane Shelby said to her husband, 'It can't be done, can it?'

He replied, 'I don't see how.'

The Beamer said to Scott, 'I'm afraid we've had it, old boy.'

Rogo turned upon Scott with angry contempt and asked, 'You got any more bright ideas?'

The truculent insolence of Rogo's speech was meant to be both irritating and dangerous, a challenge so that at the merest indication of its being picked up, he could throw his hard fists into play, the only way he knew how to dominate.

Scott refused to be drawn. Instead he merely remarked, after a few moments of study, 'The next one, you know, will probably be more difficult for us than this.'

Muller could not repress a chuckle at the manner in which Scott's calm demolishing of the problem by the use of the phrase, 'the next one' had stilled the incipient panic he had experienced. Nonnie looked at him apprehensively and whispered, 'Is he crazy?'

Muller replied, 'Like a fox.'

Rogo maintained his belligerency, 'What the hell do you mean by the next one? We can't get by here.'

'Well, for one thing,' Scott replied, 'we can still see. We may not be able to much longer when the lights go out.'

They had forgotten that they were on sufferance of a set of storage batteries which were rapidly being depleted. The thought of the total darkness into which they could be plunged at any moment struck new terror into all hearts, with the possible exception of Miss Kinsale who broke the silence with, 'Yes, we should count our blessings, shouldn't we?'

'Besides,' Scott continued, 'if you will think of the next as being even tougher and in the dark, it rather softens up this one, doesn't it?'

At that moment above their heads a bearded face, pale, with frightened eyes, peered down at them for a minute.

Rogo yelled, 'Hey you, Walio! Paisan! Get somebody! We want to get up there.'

The head disappeared and they heard footsteps diminishing. They waited, listening. Nothing happened. Nobody came. 'Well, the dirty, lousy, bastard!' Rogo shouted.

'Didn't you see?' Scott said, 'He was frightened to death. Probably all those up there are in the same state and useless. We'll have to depend on ourselves.'

'Oh, sure!' Rogo said sarcastically. 'Go up the wall like monkeys.'

'Or like people.' Scott went over to examine it, and as he did so they saw what their preoccupation with the stairs had prevented them from noticing before.

Bottom side up, the top of the seemingly unreachable bulkhead, which would be the floor to them could they gain it, was like the one upon which they had been walking -- lined with pipes -- except that some of these as they came down the side vertically, were not only heavier but were equipped with wheel valves of various sizes.

There was heavy asbestos packing around the joints and at intervals the pipes were fixed to the bulkhead with collars attached to flanges recessed into the wall, a matter of some three inches but sufficient to give a finger- and toe-hold. Two large and several smaller wheel valves thrusting outwards offered further purchase.

Hope swelled and the repetition by Scott of what seemed to be a pet phrase, 'piece of cake,' lifted up their spirits once more. Relief and admiration overcame Jane Shelby's doubts of Scott.

Linda Rogo said, 'Not for me.'

A sad expression came over her husband's face again as he shook his head, 'You're gonna be awfully lonely down here by yourself, baby.'

She told him what he could do with himself and then added, 'I'll have company. You think old fatty is going to get up there?'

Jane Shelby wondered whether this was to be the prelude to another outburst of violence but this time Rogo merely nodded morosely to Scott, 'She'll go.'

But Mrs Rosen, who in their euphoria they had forgotten, had been put back into their minds and they turned to her now.

'Look,' replied Belle Rosen, 'you shouldn't even ask me such a foolish thing. I couldn't do it. Manny should go but I wouldn't even try. It makes me ashamed even you should think about it.'

'The tablecloths . .' Muller suggested, but Scott vetoed them before he finished the sentence.

'Won't work here. No purchase. It will be simpler to climb.'

Manny said, 'I should go and leave you? Are you crazy, Mamma? Who says I could go up there? Everybody else should go and leave us. We don't want to make any trouble.'

In his refined and modulated voice with its pseudo English accent, Hubie Muller said, 'There's no question of leaving either of you behind, Mrs Rosen. We all started off on this thing together and we ought to keep to it.'

Linda Rogo snapped quickly, 'Why? It's their idea if they don't want to come, not ours. Let 'em stay. And the same to all of you,' she added, for she felt the shock wave of their dislike of her.

Scott said to Belle Rosen, 'Down in the dining-room would you have believed that you could have got this far?'

Belle said. 'No, I wouldn't. But pulling up is one thing, climbing is another.' And then she added, 'You're a terrible man. I suppose I should try.'

Scott grinned down upon her almost affectionately and said, 'You're my girl! As a matter of fact, we shall have you up top there before anyone else and then you can watch the rest of us struggling.' He turned again to look at the bulkhead and said, 'We'll want the axe here. Who's got it?'

A deep groan came from Manny Rosen. Belle asked, 'Manny, what's wrong with you? Are you sick?'

Rosen groaned again, 'Am I sick! I was the last man up. I forgot it.'

Linda cracked, 'That's the Yid for you.' It was as though she was determined to acerbate them all at every turn.

Rosen answered, 'So what's Yid got to do with forgetting something? I shouldn't of, but anyone can forget something when he's excited.'

Belle said, 'Sure, Manny. Why didn't somebody say to you to bring it up?' Then, with surprising mildness she added, 'Calling names don't do any good, Mrs Rogo. We are what we are, and you are what you are, and no one should blame anyone for that.'

Linda was too stupid to catch the full subtlety of Mrs Rosen's remark, but she was prepared to battle with her when Rogo quickly interposed. 'I'll go for it.' He felt he had lost face with his obstructionism to Scott's leadership and wanted to regain some.

'No you won't!' said Linda. 'He forgot it. Let him get it.'

'Now baby,' Rogo soothed, 'don't be like that. He'd never make it. Mr Rosen is a friend of mine.' And actually at that moment the detective was thinking of the number of pastrami and Rosen Special three-decker sandwiches he had consumed in the uptown delicatessen shop and always on the house with a bottle of beer thrown in. He turned to Scott, 'Gimme the rope.'

Scott handed over the coil. 'Can you manage?'

Rogo looked at him squarely and not pleasantly in the face and said with quiet and direct insolence, 'Just because cops are supposed to be dumb, don't get any ideas in your head about me.'

They watched the stocky, compact figure make his way down the corridor from whence they had come.

Scott suggested. 'We'll rest,' and disposed his length along the piping. 'Try to make yourselves as comfortable as you can.'

Nonnie whispered to Muller, 'I liked what you said about not leaving the Rosens. They're sweet. They think about each other.' As she knelt, her dressing-gown flew open and she quickly clutched it about her again saying, 'Oh dear, I'm so ashamed about not having anything on underneath.'

It was Muller's first encounter with the paradoxical modesty of some professional performers and in a curious way he found it moving. He was aware that her shyness in this instance was genuine. Whatever or whoever she was, she valued her person. He smiled at her and said, 'I've got an idea.' He unfastened his braces, handed them to her and said, 'Here, tie these around your middle.'

'Oh,' she cried, 'what about your trousies! Won't they fall down?'

Muller patted his stomach, 'Not over this gourmet's pot,' he declared. 'I wear suspenders merely as a symbol.'

Nonnie asked, 'What's a symbol?'

Muller replied, 'In this case, kidding myself that I need something to hold up my pants.'

She whispered, 'Oh, you are funny!' and hugged his arm, and the pressure sent a thrill of pleasure through him.

Lying uncomfortably on the pipes, out of earshot, Belle asked her husband, 'What's with that Linda woman, who does she think she is? Why does he put up with it? I thought cops were supposed to be tough.'

'She thinks she's better than he is,' Manny replied.

'Better from what?'

'She was going to be a big movie star. She gave up her career and let herself down when she married Rogo.'

'Who says so?'

'Rogo.'

'He believes this?'

Manny said, 'I remember once before he got married, he come into the store. He had a copy of Life Magazine and he showed me her picture. There was four or five girls and the heading was, "Starlets Today: Star Tomorrow", and they were from different companies. I think she was with Paramount. She was cute then. She didn't look spoiled. Anyway, Rogo says to me, "Manny, I'm walking on air. We're going to get married. A bum like me married to a moving picture star!" You see, for him she was a star already. He says, "I'm crazy about her. What right has a dumb cop got with a wonderful dame like that, who could have her name up in lights?" I said to him, "She must be pretty crazy about you, too," and he said, "I can't hardly believe it yet. And me, I wasn't brung up; I was yanked up on First Avenue."'

Belle snorted, 'Huh! They must have been going to chuck her from the films, or she got herself into trouble.'

Manny said, 'I think she was in some Broadway show, but it flopped. Though Rogo didn't say nothing about that.'

'And she should spit on us, or a nice kid like Nonnie?'

Manny nodded, 'Ain't that always the way?'

Belle said, 'What she needs is another good slap across the mouth.'

But after having said this she became suddenly reflective, fingered her torn lace dress, felt her aching feet and even looked for a moment at the big diamond sparkling on her finger. She said, 'What a stupid thing to say at a time like this, Manny. Who cares? We're in bad trouble, ain't we?'

'I shouldn't tell you no lies, Belle.'

'We could go down?'

'We could.'

She was silent for an instant and then said, 'You gave me a good life, Manny.'

'I wouldn't have been anything without you, Mamma.'

She sighed, 'So what's the point of all this climbing up?'

'If there's a chance, we ought to take it, oughtn't we?' Manny replied.

She did not reply to this.

Miss Kinsale was not lying down but sitting across the pipes, her unfashionably too long, grey frock pulled well down over her knees. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was staring straight ahead at nothing.

Scott opened his eyes and sat up. He took in the figure opposite. 'Are you all right, Miss Kinsale?'

She came out of her reverie with a slight shiver and then favoured him with a small, bright smile and the softening of her expression had the effect of removing a decade from her plain, unadorned countenance. 'Oh, yes, quite,' she replied, 'thank you.'

Scott said, 'What a quiet person you are.'

It was an echo of what most everyone who had encountered her on the cruise felt about her. Miss Kinsale never said very much. One had gathered that she was a bookkeeper in a bank in a place called Camberley near London. She had saved up her money for a winter holiday cruise. In the morning the promenade deck resounded to the click of her sensible heels as she did her twenty laps around, which constituted a mile. She took tea in the afternoon with a group of ladies, but listened more than she talked. She attended the cinema and during the shore excursions, one was conscious of her from time to time as an eager, interested little figure carrying a notebook, pencil and camera. She also bought innumerable coloured postcards to pile up a record of all she had seen and done. But what she thought, felt, or was like, nobody knew.