Night Over Water (26 page)

Diana leaned over him and looked out of the window, letting him smell her perfume. “I think that must be Devon,” she said, although she really did not know.

“What part are you from?” he said.

She sat down beside him. “Manchester,” she said. She glanced over at Mark, caught his startled look and returned her attention to Frank. “That’s in the northwest.”

Opposite, Ollis Field lit a cigarette with a disapproving air. Diana crossed her legs.

Frank said: “My family come from Italy.”

The Italian government was Fascist. Diana said candidly: “Do you think Italy will enter the war?”

Frank shook his head. “Italian people don’t want war.”

“I don’t suppose anybody
wants
war.”

“So why does it happen?”

She found him difficult to make out. He obviously had money, but he seemed uneducated. Most men were eager to explain things to her, to show off their knowledge, whether or not she wanted it. This one had no such impulse. She looked over at his companion and said: “What do you think, Mr. Field?”

“No opinion,” he said grumpily.

She turned back to the younger man. “Perhaps war is the only way Fascist leaders can keep their people under control.”

She looked at Mark again, and was disappointed to see that he was once again deep in conversation with Lulu, and they were giggling together like schoolgirls. She felt let down. What was the matter with him? Mervyn would have been ready to punch Frank’s nose by now.

She looked back at Frank. The words on her lips were “Tell me all about yourself,” but suddenly she could not face the boredom of listening to his reply, and she said nothing. At that point Davy the steward brought her champagne and a plate of caviar on toast. She took the opportunity to return to her seat, feeling despondent.

She listened resentfully to Mark and Lulu for a while; then her thoughts drifted away. She was silly to get upset about Lulu. Mark was committed to her, Diana. He was just enjoying talking about old times. There was no point in Diana’s worrying about America: the decision had been taken, the die was cast, Mervyn had by now read her note. It was stupid to start having second thoughts on account of a forty-five-year-old bottle-blonde such as Lulu. She would soon learn American ways, their drinks and their radio shows and their manners. Before long she would have more friends than Mark. She was like that: she attracted people to her.

She began to look forward to the long flight across the Atlantic. She had thought, when she read about the Clipper in the
Manchester Guardian,
that it sounded like the most romantic journey in the world. From Ireland to Newfoundland was almost two thousand miles, and it took forever, something like seventeen hours. There was time to have dinner, and go to bed, and sleep all night and get up again, before the plane landed. The idea of wearing nightclothes that she had worn with Mervyn had seemed wrong, but she had not had time to shop for the trip. Fortunately she had a beautiful café-au-lait silk robe and salmon pink pajamas that she had never worn. There were no double beds, not even in the honeymoon suite—Mark had checked—but his bunk would be over hers. It was thrilling and at the same time frightening to think of going to bed high over the ocean and flying on, hour after hour, hundreds of miles from land. She wondered if she would be able to sleep. The engines would work just as well whether she was awake or not, but all the same she would worry that they might stop while she slept.

Glancing out of the window she saw that they were now over water. It must be the Irish Sea. People said a flying boat could not land in the open sea, because of the waves; but it seemed to Diana that it surely had a better chance than a land plane.

They flew into clouds, and she could see nothing. After a while the plane began to shake. Passengers looked at one another and smiled nervously, and the steward went around asking everyone to fasten their safety belts. Diana felt anxious, with no land in sight. Princess Lavinia was gripping the arm of her seat hard, but Mark and Lulu carried on talking as if nothing was happening. Frank Gordon and Ollis Field appeared calm, but both lit cigarettes and drew hard on them.

Just as Mark was saying: “What the hell happened to Muriel Fair-field?” there was a thud and the plane seemed to fall. Diana felt as if her stomach had come up into her throat. In another compartment, a passenger screamed. But then the aircraft righted itself, almost as if it had landed.

Lulu said: “Muriel married a millionaire!”

“No kidding!” said Mark. “But she was so ugly!”

Diana said: “Mark, I’m scared!”

He turned to her. “It was only an air pocket, honey. It’s normal.”

“But it felt as if we were going to crash!”

“We won’t. It happens all the time.”

He turned back to Lulu. For a moment Lulu looked at Diana, expecting her to say something. Diana looked away, furious with Mark.

Mark said: “How did Muriel get a millionaire?”

After a moment Lulu replied: “I don’t know, but now they live in Hollywood and he puts money into movies.”

“Unbelievable!”

Unbelievable was right, Diana thought. As soon as she could get Mark on his own she was going to give him a piece of her mind.

His lack of sympathy made her feel more scared. By nightfall they would be over the Atlantic Ocean, rather than the Irish Sea; how would she feel then? She imagined the Atlantic as a vast, featureless blank, cold and deadly for thousands of miles. The only things you ever saw, according to the
Manchester Guardian,
were icebergs. If there had been some islands to relieve the seascape Diana might have felt less jittery. It was the complete blankness of the picture that was so frightening: nothing but the plane and the moon and the heaving sea. In a funny way it was like her anxiety about going to America: in her head she knew it was not dangerous, but the scenery was strange and there was not one single familiar landmark.

She was getting jumpy. She tried to think of other things. She was looking forward to the seven-course dinner, for she enjoyed long, elegant meals. Climbing into bunk beds would be childishly thrilling, like going to sleep in a tent in the garden. And the dizzying towers of New York were waiting for her on the other side. But the excitement of a journey into the unknown had now turned into fear. She drained her glass and ordered more champagne, but it failed to calm her. She longed for the feel of firm ground under her feet again. She shivered, thinking how cold the sea must be. Nothing she did could take her mind off her fear. If she had been alone, she would have hidden her face in her hands and shut her eyes tight. She stared malevolently at Mark and Lulu, who were chatting cheerfully, oblivious to her torment. She was even tempted to make a scene, to burst into tears or have hysterics; but she swallowed hard and stayed calm. Soon the plane would come down at Foynes and she could get off and walk around on dry land.

But then she would have to board again for the long transatlantic flight.

Somehow she could not bear that idea.

I can hardly get through an hour like this, she thought. How can I do it all night? It will kill me.

But what else can I do?

Of course, no one was going to force her to get back on the plane at Foynes.

And if no one forced her, she did not think she could do it.

But what would I do?

I know what I’d do.

I would telephone Mervyn.

She could hardly believe that her bright dream should collapse like this; but she knew it was going to happen.

Mark was being eaten alive in front of her eyes by an older woman with dyed hair and too much makeup, and Diana was going to telephone Mervyn and say: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I want to come home.

She knew he would forgive her. Feeling so sure of his reaction made her a little ashamed. She had wounded him, but he would still take her in his arms and be happy that she had returned.

But I don’t want that, she thought miserably. I want to go to America and marry Mark and live in California. I love him.

No, that was a foolish dream. She was Mrs. Mervyn Lovesey of Manchester, sister of Thea and Auntie Diana to the twins, the not-very-dangerous rebel of Manchester society. She would never live in a house with palm trees in the garden and a swimming pool. She was married to a loyal, grumpy man who was more interested in his business than in her; and most of the women she knew were in exactly the same situation, so it must be normal. They were all disappointed, but they were better off than the one or two who had married wastrels and drunks, so they commiserated with each other and agreed that it could be worse, and spent their husbands’ hard-earned money in department stores and hairdressing salons. But they never went to California.

The plane plunged into emptiness again, then righted itself as before. Diana had to concentrate hard not to throw up. But for some reason she was no longer scared. She knew what the future held. She felt safe.

She just wanted to cry.

 

 

 

 

E
ddie Deakin, the flight engineer, thought of the Clipper as a giant soap bubble, beautiful and fragile, which he must carry carefully across the sea while the people inside made merry, oblivious of how thin the film between them and the howling night was.

The journey was more hazardous than they knew, for the technology of the aircraft was new, and the night sky over the Atlantic was uncharted territory, full of unexpected dangers. Nevertheless, Eddie always felt, proudly, that the skill of the captain, the dedication of the crew and the reliability of American engineering would take them safely home.

On this journey, however, he was sick with fear.

There was a Tom Luther on the passenger list. Eddie had kept looking out of the flight-deck windows as the passengers boarded, wondering which of them was responsible for kidnapping Carol-Ann; but of course he could not tell—they were just the usual crowd of well-dressed, well-fed tycoons and movie stars and aristocrats.

For a while, preparing for takeoff, he had been able to turn his mind away from tormenting thoughts of Carol-Ann and concentrate on the task in hand: checking his instruments, priming the four massive radial engines, warming them up, adjusting the fuel mixture and the cowl flaps, and governing engine speeds during taxiing. But once the plane reached its cruising altitude, there was less for him to do. He had to synchronize engine speeds, regulate the engine temperature and adjust the fuel mixture; then his job consisted mainly of monitoring the engines to check that they were performing smoothly. And his mind started wandering again.

He had a desperate, irrational need to know what Carol-Ann was wearing. He would feel just a little less bad if he could picture her in her sheepskin coat, buttoned and belted, and wet-weather boots, not because she might be cold—it was only September—but so that the shape of her body would be disguised. However, it was more likely she would have on the lavender-colored sleeveless dress he loved so much, which showed off her lush figure. She was going to be locked up with a bunch of brutes for the next twenty-four hours and the thought of what might happen if they started drinking was agony to him.

What the hell did they want from him?

He hoped the rest of the crew would not notice the state he was in. Fortunately, they were all concentrating on their own tasks, and they were not crammed together as closely as in most aircraft. The flight deck of the Boeing 314 was very large. The spacious cockpit was only part of it. Captain Baker and copilot Johnny Dott sat on raised seats side by side at their controls, with a gap between them leading to a trapdoor that gave access to the bow compartment in the nose of the plane. Heavy curtains could be drawn behind the pilots at night so that the light from the rest of the cabin would not diminish their night vision.

That section alone was bigger than most flight decks; but the rest of the Clipper’s flight cabin was even more generous. Most of the port side, on the left as you faced forward, was taken up by the seven-foot-long chart table, at which navigator Jack Ashford now stood, bending over his maps. Aft of that was a small conference table, at which the captain could sit when he was not actually flying the plane. Beside the captain’s table was an oval hatch leading to the crawlway inside the wing: a special feature of the Clipper was that the engines could be reached during flight via this crawlway, and Eddie could do simple maintenance or repairs, such as fixing an oil leak, without the plane having to come down.

On the starboard, right-hand side, immediately behind the copilot’s seat was the staircase that led down to the passenger deck. Then came the radio operator’s station, where Ben Thompson sat facing forward. Behind Ben sat Eddie. He faced sideways, looking at a wall of dials and a bank of levers. A little to his right was the oval hatch leading to the starboard wing crawlway. At the back of the flight deck, a doorway led to the cargo holds.

The whole thing was twenty-one feet long and nine feet wide, with full headroom throughout. Carpeted, soundproofed and decorated with soft green wall fabric and brown leather seats, it was the most unbelievably luxurious flight deck ever made: when Eddie first saw it he thought it was some kind of joke.

Now, however, he saw only the bent backs and concentrated frowns of his crewmates, and judged, with relief, that they had not noticed that he was beside himself with fear.

Desperate to understand why this nightmare was happening to him, he wanted to give the unknown Mr. Luther an early opportunity to make himself known. After takeoff Eddie hunted around for an excuse to pass through the passenger cabin. He could not think of a good reason, so he made do with a bad one. He stood up, mumbled to the navigator, “Just going to check the rudder trim control cables,” and went quickly down the stairs. If anyone should ask him why he took it into his head to perform that check at that moment he would just say: “Hunch.”