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“What do you mean, the Captain won’t marry you and Osgood?”
“Not won’t, Sugar. Can’t. It turns out ships’s captains aren’t legally authorized to do marriages after all.”
“But everyone thinks they are. Can’t he just make an exception?”
“It wouldn’t be legal. They won’t buy it at Customs without the proper paperwork.”
Sugar heaved an empathetic sigh:
“And without paperwork, you can’t go ashore to find a Justice of the Peace either. Could Osgood get one out here?”
Osgood’s yacht was swank, but Daphne was going to have to go ashore sooner or later. She’d already broken convention by becoming a woman. Turning mermaid would be a step too far. Well, if mermaids could step. It was a figure of speech. At any rate, Daphne, on the high seas, could be whomever she liked; but the land demanded sacrifice to the gods of paperwork.
“Ozzie’s having a talk with another one now. But the last two said the yacht being outside city limits, they couldn’t marry us either. Their jurisdiction doesn’t extend this far. And a priest can’t do it because we’re neither of us Catholics.”
“What if you find a Unitarian priest, or a Theosophist or something?” offered Joe, who’d returned from his stroll around the decks in time to hear the latter half of the conversation.
“Off the Italian coast?” Daphne snapped. “Ozzie was right, we ought to have gone to Cuba. If only the thought of being able to sail anywhere hadn’t turned my head.”
“Well, I did say to get as far away as possible.” Joe hesitated. “You really do plan to marry him, then?”
“I know he’s an odd duck, but I’m beginning to love him for it.”
There was a polite cough from Osgood’s butler, dapper in his white mess jacket:
“Miss Daphne, will you and Mr. Fielding’s guests take cocktails on deck?”
“Splendid idea, Wing, thanks ever so.” Daphne could get used to being addressed as the lady of the house, or yacht, or whatever. She gestured to Joe and Sugar. “Well, kids? You heard the nice man.” They left the cabin and settled themselves on assorted deck chairs. Daphne gazed wistfully out towards the little town on the coast as Wing returned with a tray and handed around frothy pink drinks. Clover club cocktails were all very well and good, she thought, but Ozzie was better company. She hoped he’d be back soon.
Presently she heard the kaput-put-put sound of the motor launch, and soon one of Osgood’s crew was tying it up as the millionaire came aboard to join his guests for drinks. It seemed to Daphne that her fiancé’s step wanted its usual spring; his shoulders sagged slightly, and though his gilt-braided cap glinted in the Mediterranean sunshine at its usual jaunty angle atop his head, his wide mouth made a flat horizontal line. More bad news then.
“Hiya, kitten,” he said to her nevertheless, kissing her forehead without disturbing her wig, and tipping his cap to Joe and Sugar: “Folks.”
Sugar set her drink down and put her arm around Joe:
“Honey, you were going to show me.... where they keep the clay pigeons,” she said, looking up at him with a sidelong glance at the other couple.
“I was?— oh yes, I was. Let’s be off, then. Back in a while, Osgood, just going to check out the other end of the boat.” Not the smoothest exit dialogue, but Daphne was grateful her friends knew when to skedaddle. When they’d gone, she gave Ozzie a real kiss, and afterwards he kept his arms wrapped tight about her.
“Didn’t go well, I’m guessing?” she asked, and felt him heave a sigh:
“They’re just kicking up a fuss about papers,” he said over her shoulder. “Something about needing a birth certificate or an affidavit that you’re of age—”
Daphne laughed:
“Do I look like a little girl?” This, at least, made Osgood smile. Then his eyes clouded again:
“And single.”
“Always harder to prove, though I think I can guarantee no jilted husband is going to turn up and stop our wedding, not unless you’ve got something you’re not telling me. Why are they making everything so difficult, anyway?” Daphne asked. “My uncle Ira, the traveling salesman, was married to three women in three different cities and to hear him tell it nobody ever gave him the slightest bit of trouble about it— well, except his wives, eventually.”
Osgood had taken the remaining clover club from Wing’s tray with a nod of thanks to the butler, and was now sipping it thoughtfully. It’s possible to throw back a clover club, but unnecessary.
“I’ll sort it out, darling, don’t you worry,” he assured Daphne. “But it’s looking like I’m going to have to...finesse some papers for you, and I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go down that route. If I’ve learnt one thing from a lifetime watching musical comedies, it’s that the fewer lies you tell, the less you have to remember.”
“It needn’t be all that much of a lie,” said Daphne, patting his arm. “All we need is my birth certificate, but with a different given name, and.... the other thing.”
“That’s just the trouble, sweetheart— if we do that, it’ll be too easy to check, if anyone— Mummy, for example— decides to go dig up dirt.” He pushed his cap back on his head. “We could use somebody else’s name, but another thing I’ve learnt from musical comedy is that if you use somebody else’s name, it’s a dead cert that the very next day the real person will check into the same hotel where you happen to be staying. And if we make up a name from scratch, we still have to explain where you came from. Officials are generally too hard-nosed to buy the stork line.”
Wing, clearing away the cocktail glasses, hesitated a moment and then gave one of his little polite coughs of interruption:
“Trouble with Miss Daphne’s papers? No problem. Miss Daphne just needs to be from Frisco.”
Daphne laughed sadly:
“I’m afraid it’s too late to arrange that, Wing.” But the butler shook his head, smiling:
“Never too late to be from Frisco. Earthquake destroyed all the records. Ever since Exclusion Act, more than half the Chinese people in America born in Frisco.”
Understanding was dawning on Osgood’s face, and his jack-o’lantern grin beginning to reappear:
“Zowie! I suppose it’s just a matter of getting someone to swear an affidavit that she’s a relative? I’d better arrange that part myself, Wing— no offense, but no one’s going to believe Daphne’s Chinese. She’s a blonde.”
If Wing thought of any reply to this description of Daphne, he kept it to himself.
“How’s tricks?” asked Sugar, returning with Joe. From her slightly smudged lipstick, Daphne guessed their expedition to the other side of the yacht had been as much about finding some privacy for themselves as giving it to her and her fiancé.
“Wedding’s back on, and Wing’s getting a raise,” said Ozzie, as the latter took the tray and vanished.
“You’re sure your butler isn’t... well, setting you up for blackmail further down the line, or anything like that?” Joe asked, after Daphne had explained everything.
“He’s kept all my other secrets,” said Osgood, somewhat taken aback that anyone would impugn Wing’s honor.
“And besides,” said Sugar cheerfully, “he as good as admitted to you that he’s done the same thing. So you can all trust each other.”
“That’s... not how trust is supposed to work—” Joe began. Daphne raised an eyebrow at him. It was even more devastatingly effective now that she plucked her brows to delicate half-circles.
“Yeah,” she reminded him. “Trust is supposed to start with deceptions and disguises that end up turning into the real thing.”
“Well kiddies,” said Osgood, “here’s to the real thing!”