Free Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge Page B

roll if we damn well didn’t.
    Outwardly he appeared confident, harsh almost, a demean-our which many held to be a deceptive covering developed to protect the sensitive man beneath. In my opinion this was so much baloney. He did have layers, but like an onion they were all the same. Now chief executive of the White Star Line, he had once owned it. My uncle, determined to dominate the transatlantic route, had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse; though the company had made huge earnings from Boer War contracts, my uncle coughed up ten times its value.
    Some years before, on a visit to England, I’d spent a weekend in Ismay’s company and not forgotten it. We were both guests of Sanderson, his fellow director, who had a house in Freshfield in Lancashire. Sanderson was captain of the county golf club and his house was built among pine woods swarming with red squirrels. His butler lent us guns and we spent a whole morning blasting them to bits from the porch. Even in high summer the wind blew and I emptied my shoes of sand a dozen times a day. Beyond the trees lay the black edge of the Irish Sea.
    The night of our arrival Mrs Sanderson gave a large dinner party, in my honour as much as Ismay’s. My connections have always made me welcome and the cotton merchants and shipping owners who attended treated me very civilly. At the end of the meal and before the women had left the room Mr Sanderson got up to make a little speech of welcome. It wasn’t a strictly formal occasion – there’d even been a bit of tomfoolery between the pudding and cheese involving the chucking of golf balls into the fruit bowl. I was seated to the left of Sanderson, next to a lady with a pug dog on her lap, Ismay on his right. I took out my cigarettes – the other men were already smoking – and being without matches reached across to bring the candles nearer, at which Ismay, leaning out over the table, violently slapped my outstretched hand. I was not yet eighteen years old.
    Smarting still, I wondered what he would say if I brought up that distant incident, and might have done if I hadn’t caught Melchett’s eye. He was looking distinctly frosty. I couldn’t think what was the matter with him until I suddenly remembered I’d walked out on him earlier.
    ‘Charlie,’ I pleaded, filled with genuine remorse. ‘Forgive me, there’s a good fellow. I was out of sorts.’
    Good fellow that he was, he responded instantly, even to getting to his feet and coming to shake me by the hand.
    At the end of the table Mrs Carter was shuddering in mock horror. Apparently the journalist Stead had once written a short story about a ship hit by an iceberg which she claimed to have read.
    ‘I can’t remember the ending,’ she cried, ‘but I know I had nightmares for weeks.’
    ‘Mr Stead ought to write one about a stoker coming up out a funnel,’ said Hopper. ‘Although the ladies have pretty well written it already.’
    ‘What did happen at the end?’ shouted Lady Duff Gordon. I noticed she had her hand on Rosenfelder’s arm.
    ‘They all drowned,’ said Stead. ‘All but the Captain.’
    ‘You shouldn’t let Wallis upset you,’ whispered Melchett. ‘She’s not worth it,’ which nearly put me out of sorts all over again.
    The party broke up at about eleven o’clock, by which time the restaurant was deserted. Ginsberg had left a good hour before; he’d been so busy buttering up the elder of the Taft cousins that he’d walked straight past.
    ‘The grown-ups are going to have coffee in the saloon,’ Mrs Carter told Hopper. ‘I expect you boys will want to go dancing.’
    None of us was keen. Hopper had some notion we should find George Dodge and all go down to the cargo hold to look at his father’s new motor-car. I said I’d wait for him and Charlie in the foyer; I didn’t want to bump into Wallis. As I loitered there Ismay came through on the way to his suite. He said, ‘I understand you know Scurra.’
    ‘I’ve only recently met