“That’s a very, very profound observation, Miss Rickerby-Carrick,” Mr Hewson observed kindly.
“I just don’t go along with it,” his sister said. “I’ve seen a whole lot of Truth that wasn’t beautiful. A whole heap of it.”
Mr Pollock, who had been utterly silent for a very long time now heaved an enormous sigh and as if infected by his gloom the other passengers also fell silent.
Somebody — Mr Lazenby? — had left the morning’s newspaper on the settle, the paper in which her own photograph had appeared. Troy, who did not eat with her tea, picked it up and seeing nothing to interest her, idly turned over a page.
“Man found strangled.
“The body of a man who had been strangled was found at 8pm last night in a flat in Cyprus Street, Soho. He is believed to have been a picture-dealer and the police who are making inquiries give his name as K. G. Z. Andropulos.”
The passenger list was still on the table. Troy looked at the name Caley Bard had crossed out in favour of her own.
She rose with so abrupt a movement that one or two of her companions glanced up at her. She dropped the newspaper on the seat and went down to her cabin. After some thought, she said to herself: “If nobody has read it there’s no reason why I should point it out. It’s a horrible bit of news.”
And then she thought that if, as seemed probable, the paragraph had in fact not been noticed, it might be as well to get rid of the paper, the more especially since she would like to repress her own photograph before it went into general circulation. She could imagine Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s ejaculations: “And there you both are, you and the murdered man who was to have your berth. Fancy!” She hunted out her sketchbook and returned to the saloon.
The newspaper was nowhere to be seen.
-3-
Troy waited for a minute or two in the saloon to collect her thoughts. Her fellow-passengers were still at tea and apparently quite undisturbed. She went up on deck. The Skipper was at the wheel.
“Everything all right, Mrs Alleyn?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you. Yes. Everything,” said Troy and found herself a chair.
Most of the detergent foam had been left behind by now. The Zodiac sailed towards evening through clear waters, low fields and occasional groups of trees.
Troy began to draw the Signs of the Zodiac, placing them in a ring and giving them a wonderfully strange character. Mrs Tretheway’s rhyme could go in the middle and later on there would be washes of colour.
She was vaguely aware of a sudden burst of conversation in the saloon. After a time a shadow fell across her hand and there was Caley Bard again. Troy didn’t look up. He moved to the opposite side and stood with his back towards her, leaning on the taffrail.
“I’m afraid,” he said presently, “that they’ve rumbled you. Lazenby spotted the photograph in this morning’s paper. I wouldn’t have told them.”
“I believe you.”
“The Rickerby-Carrick is stimulated, I fear.”
“Hell.”
“And the Hewsons are gratified because they’ve read an article about you in Life magazine so they know you’re O.K. and famous. They just can’t think how they missed recognising you.”
“Too bad.”
“Pollock, surprisingly, seemed to be not unaware of your great distinction. Lazenby himself says you are regarded in Australia as being the equal of Drysdale and Dobell.”
“Nice of him.”
“There’s this about it: you’ll be able to do what you are doing now, without everybody exclaiming and breathing down your neck. Or I hope you will.”
“I won’t be doing anything that matters,” Troy mumbled.
“How extraordinary!” he said lightly.
“What?”
“That you should be so shy about your work. You!”
“Well, I can’t help it. Do pipe down like a good chap.”
She heard him chuckle and drag a deck chair into position. Presently she smelt his pipe. “Evidently,” she thought, “they haven’t spotted the Andropulos bit in the paper.” She considered this for a moment and then added: “Or have they?”
The River now described a series of loops so extreme, and so close together that the landscape seemed to turn about the Zodiac like a diorama. Wapentake church spire advanced and retreated and set to partners with a taller spire in the market town of Tollardwark which they approached with the utmost slyness, now leaving it astern and now coming round a bend and making straight for it. The water darkened with the changing sky. Along its banks and in its backwaters and eddies the creatures that belonged to The River began to come out on their evening business: water-rats, voles, toads and leaping fish as well as the insects: dragon-flies in particular. Once, looking up from her drawing, Troy caught sight of a pair of ears against the sky and thought: “There goes Wat, the hare.” A company of ducks in close formation paddled past the Zodiac. Where trees stood along the banks the air pulsated with high, formless, reiterative bird-chattering.
Troy thought: “Cleopatra on the River Cydnus wasn’t given more things to hear and look at.”
At intervals she stopped drawing in order to observe, but the Signs of the Zodiac grew under her hand. She amused herself by mentally allotting one to each of her fellow-passengers. The Hewsons, of course, belonged to the Heavenly Twins and Mr Pollock, because his club foot affected his gait, would be the Crab. Miss Rickerby-Carrick might be assigned to Taurus because she ran like a Bull at every Gate, but almost certainly, thought Troy, Virgo was entirely appropriate. So she gave a pair of bovine horns to the rampaging motor-cyclist. Because of a certain sting in the tail of many of his observations, she decided upon Scorpio for Caley Bard. And Mr Lazenby? Welclass="underline" he seemed to be extremely ill-sighted, his dark spectacles gave him a blind look like Justice, and Justice carries Scales. Libra for him. As for Dr Natouche, he must be a splendour in the firmament: Sagittarius the Archer with open shoulders and stretched bow. She began to draw The Archer in his image. Mrs Tretheway didn’t seem to fit anywhere except perhaps, as they had a sexy connotation, under the Fish with the Glittering Tails. She observed the Skipper at his wheel, noted the ripple of muscles under his immaculate shirt and the close-clipped curly poll beneath his cap. The excessive masculinity, she decided, belonged to the Ram and Tom-of-all-work could be the Man who carried the Watering-Pot. And having run out of passengers she raised one of the Lion’s eyebrows and thus gave him a look of her husband. “Which leaves me for the Goat,” thought Troy, “and very suitable too, I daresay.”
One by one the passengers, with the exception of Dr Natouche, came on deck. In their several fashions and with varying degrees of success, they displayed tact towards Troy. The Hewsons smiled at each other and retired, with brochures and Readers’ Digests, to their chairs. Mr Lazenby turned his dark spectacles towards Troy, nodded three times and passed majestically by. Mr Pollock behaved as if she wasn’t there until he was behind her and then, she clearly sensed, had a good long stare over her shoulder at what she was doing.
Miss Rickerby-Carrick was wonderful. When she had floundered, with her customary difficulty, through the half-door at the top of the companionway, she paused to converse with the Skipper but as she talked to him she rolled her eyes round until they could take in Troy. Presently she left him and archly biting her underlip advanced on tip-toe. She bent and whispered, close to Troy’s ear: “Don’t put me in it,” and so passed on gaily to her deckchair.
The general set-up having now become quietly ridiculous, Troy swung round to find Mr Pollock close behind her.