Night Over Water

CHAPTER ONE

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

Standing on the dock at Southampton, at half past twelve on the day war was declared, Tom Luther peered into the sky, waiting for the plane with a heart full of eagerness and dread. Under his breath he hummed a few bars of Beethoven over, and over again: the first movement of the Emperor Concerto, a stirring tune, appropriately warlike.

There was a crowd of sightseers around him: aircraft enthusiasts with binoculars, small boys and curiosity seekers. Luther reckoned this must be the ninth time the Pan American Clipper had landed on Southampton Water, but the novelty had not worn off. The plane was so fascinating, so enchanting, that people flocked to look at it even on the day their country went to war. Beside the same dock were two magnificent ocean liners, towering over people’s heads, but the floating hotels had lost their magic: everyone was looking at the sky.

However, while they waited they were all talking about the war, in their English accents. The children were excited by the prospect; the men spoke knowingly in low tones about tanks and artillery; the women just looked grim. Luther was an American, and he hoped his country would stay out of the war: it was none of America’s business. Besides, one thing you could say for the Nazis: they were tough on communism.

Luther was a businessman, manufacturing wool cloth, and he had had a lot of trouble with Reds in his mills at one time. He had been at their mercy: they had almost ruined him. He still felt bitter about it. His father’s menswear store had been run into the ground by Jews setting up in competition, and then Luther Woolens was threatened by the Commies—most of whom were Jews! Then Luther had met Ray Patriarca, and his life had changed. Patriarca’s people knew what to do about Communists. There were some accidents. One hothead got his hand caught in a loom. A union recruiter was killed in a hit-and-run. Two men who complained about breaches of the safety regulations got into a fight in a bar and finished up in the hospital. A woman troublemaker dropped her lawsuit against the company after her house burned down. It only took a few weeks: since then there had been no unrest. Patriarca knew what Hitler knew: the way to deal with Communists was to crush them like cockroaches. Luther stamped his foot, still humming Beethoven.

A launch put out from the Imperial Airways flying-boat dock, across the estuary at Hythe, and made several passes along the splashdown zone, checking for floating debris. An eager murmur went up from the crowd: the plane must be approaching.

The first to spot it was a small boy with large new boots. He had no binoculars, but his eleven-year-old eyesight was better than lenses. “Here it comes!” he shrilled. “Here comes the Clipper!” He pointed southwest. Everyone looked that way. At first Luther could see only a vague shape that might have been a bird but soon its outline resolved, and a buzz of excitement spread through the crowd as people told one another that the boy was right.

Everyone called it the Clipper, but technically it was a Boeing B-314. Pan American had commissioned Boeing to build a plane capable of carrying passengers across the Atlantic Ocean in total luxury, and this was the result: enormous, majestic, unbelievably powerful, an airborne palace. The airline had taken delivery of six and ordered another six. In comfort and elegance they were equal to the fabulous ocean liners that docked at Southampton, but the ships took four or five days to cross the Atlantic, whereas the Clipper could make the trip in twenty-five to thirty hours.

It looked like a winged whale, Luther thought as the plane came closer. It had a big blunt whalelike snout, a massive body and a tapering rear that culminated in twin high-mounted tailfins. The huge engines were built into the wings. Below the wings was a pair of stubby sea-wings, which served to stabilize the aircraft when it was in the water. The bottom of the plane had a sharp knife-edge like the hull of a fast ship.

Soon Luther could make out the big rectangular windows, in two irregular rows, marking the upper and lower decks. He had come to England on the Clipper exactly a week earlier, so he was familiar with its layout. The upper deck comprised the flight cabin and baggage holds and the lower was the passenger deck. Instead of seat rows, the passenger deck had a series of lounges with davenport couches. At mealtimes the main lounge became the dining room, and at night the couches were converted into beds.

Everything was done to insulate the passengers from the world and the weather outside the windows. There were thick carpets, soft lighting, velvet fabrics, soothing colors and deep upholstery. The heavy soundproofing reduced the roar of the mighty engines to a distant, reassuring hum. The captain was calmly authoritative, the crew clean-cut and smart in their Pan American uniforms, the stewards ever attentive. Every need was catered to. There were constant food and drink. Whatever you wanted appeared as if by magic, just when you wanted it: curtained bunks at bedtime, fresh strawberries at breakfast. The world outside started to appear unreal, like a film projected onto the windows; and the interior of the aircraft seemed like the whole universe.

Such comfort did not come cheap. The round-trip fare was $675, half the price of a small house. The passengers were royalty, movie stars, chairmen of large corporations and presidents of small countries.

Tom Luther was none of those things. He was rich, but he had worked hard for his money, and he would not normally have squandered it on luxury. However, he had needed to familiarize himself with the plane. He had been asked to do a dangerous job for a powerful man—very powerful indeed. He would not be paid for his work, but to be owed a favor by such a man was better than money.

The whole thing might yet be called off: Luther was waiting for a message giving him the final go-ahead. Half the time he was eager to get on with it; the other half, he hoped he would not have to do it.

The plane came down at an angle, its tail lower than its nose. It was quite close now, and Luther was struck again by its tremendous size. He knew that it was 109 feet long and 152 feet from one wingtip to the other, but the measurements were just numbers until you actually saw the goddamn thing floating through the air.

For a moment it looked as if it were not flying but falling, and would crash into the sea like a dropped stone and sink to the bottom. Then it seemed to hang in the air, just above the surface, as if dangling on a string, for a long moment of suspense. At last it touched the water, skipping the surface, splashing across the tops of the waves like a stone thrown skim-wise, sending up small explosions of foam. But there was very little swell in the sheltered estuary, and a moment later, with an explosion of spray like the smoke from a bomb, the hull plunged into the water.

It cleaved the surface, plowing a white furrow in the green, sending twin curves of spray high in the air on either side; and Luther thought of a mallard coming down on a lake with spread wings and folded feet. The hull sank lower, enlarging the sail-shaped curtains of spray that flew up to left and right; then it began to tilt forward. The spray increased as the plane leveled out, submerging more and more of its whale’s belly. Then at last its nose was down. Its speed slowed suddenly, the spray diminished to a wash, and the aircraft sailed the sea like the ship it was, as calmly as if it had never dared to reach for the sky.

Luther realized he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a long relieved sigh. He started humming again.

The plane taxied toward its berth. Luther had disembarked there a week ago. The dock was a specially designed raft with twin piers. In a few minutes, ropes would be attached to stanchions at the front and rear of the plane and it would be winched in, backward, to its parking slot between the piers. Then the privileged passengers would emerge, stepping from the door onto the broad surface of the sea-wing, then onto the raft, and from there up a gangway to dry land.

Luther turned away, then stopped suddenly. Standing at his shoulder was someone he had not seen before: a man of about his own height, dressed in a dark gray suit and a bowler hat, like a clerk on his way to the office. Luther was about to pass on; then he looked again. The face beneath the bowler hat was not that of a clerk. The man had a high forehead, bright blue eyes, a long jaw, and a thin, cruel mouth. He was older than Luther, about forty; but he was broad-shouldered and seemed fit. He looked handsome and dangerous. He stared into Luther’s eyes.

Luther stopped humming.

The man said: “I am Henry Faber.”

“Tom Luther.”

“I have a message for you.”

Luther’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to hide his excitement, and spoke in the same clipped tones as the other man. “Good. Go ahead.”

“The man you’re so interested in will be on this plane on Wednesday when it leaves for New York.”

“You’re sure?”

The man looked hard at Luther and did not answer.

Luther nodded grimly. So the job was on. At least the suspense was over. “Thank you,” he said.

“There’s more.”

“I’m listening.”

“The second part of the message is: don’t let us down.”

Luther took a deep breath. “Tell them not to worry,” he said, with more confidence than he really felt. “The guy may leave Southampton, but he’ll never reach New York.”

Imperial Airways had a flying-boat facility just across the estuary from Southampton Docks. Imperial’s mechanics serviced the Clipper, supervised by the Pan American flight engineer. On this trip the engineer was Eddie Deakin.

It was a big job, but they had three days. After discharging its passengers at Berth 108, the Clipper taxied across to Hythe. There, in the water, it was maneuvered onto a dolly; then it was winched up a slipway and towed, looking like a whale balanced on a baby carriage, into the enormous green hangar.

The transatlantic flight was a punishing task for the engines. On the longest leg, from Newfoundland to Ireland, the plane was in the air for nine hours (and on the return journey, against head winds, the same leg took sixteen and a half hours). Hour after hour the fuel flowed, the plugs sparked, the fourteen cylinders in each enormous engine pumped tirelessly up and down, and the fifteen-foot propellers chopped through clouds and rain and gales.

For Eddie that was the romance of engineering. It was wonderful; it was amazing that men could make engines that would work perfectly and precisely, hour after hour. There were so many things that might have gone wrong, so many moving parts that had to be precision-made and meticulously fitted together so that they would not snap, slip, get blocked or simply wear out while they carried a forty-one-ton airplane over thousands of miles.

By Wednesday morning the Clipper would be ready to do it again.

CHAPTER TWO

The day war broke out was a lovely late-summer Sunday, mild and sunny.

A few minutes before the news was broadcast on the wireless, Margaret Oxenford was outside the sprawling brick mansion that was her family home, perspiring gently in a hat and coat, and fuming because she was forced to go to church. On the far side of the village the single bell in the church tower tolled a monotonous note.

Margaret hated church, but her father would not let her miss the service, even though she was nineteen and old enough to make up her own mind about religion. A year or so ago she had summoned up the nerve to tell him that she did not want to go; but he had refused to listen. Margaret had said: “Don’t you think it’s hypocritical for me to go to church when I don’t believe in God?” Father had replied: “Don’t be ridiculous.” Defeated and angry, she had told her mother that when she was of age she would never go to church again. Mother had said: “That will be up to your husband, dear.” As far as they were concerned the argument was over; but Margaret had seethed with resentment every Sunday morning since then.

Her sister and her brother came out of the house. Elizabeth was twenty-one. She was tall and clumsy and not very pretty. Once upon a time the two sisters had known everything about each other. As girls they had been together constantly for years, for they never went to school, but got a haphazard education at home from governesses and tutors. They had always known one another’s secrets. But lately they had grown apart. In adolescence, Elizabeth had embraced their parents’ rigid traditional values: she was ultraconservative, fervently royalist, blind to new ideas and hostile to change. Margaret had taken the opposite path. She was a feminist and a socialist, interested in jazz music, Cubist painting and free verse. Elizabeth felt Margaret was disloyal to her family in adopting radical ideas. Margaret was irritated by her sister’s foolishness, but she was also very sad and upset that they were no longer intimate friends. She did not have many intimate friends.

Percy was fourteen. He was neither for nor against radical ideas, but he was naturally mischievous, and he empathized with Margaret’s rebelliousness. Fellow-sufferers under their father’s tyranny, they gave one another sympathy and support, and Margaret loved him dearly.

Mother and Father came out a moment later. Father was wearing a hideous orange-and-green tie. He was practically color-blind, but Mother had probably bought it for him. Mother had red hair and sea green eyes and pale, creamy skin, and she looked radiant in colors like orange and green. But Father had black hair going gray and a flushed complexion, and on him the tie looked like a warning against something dangerous.

Elizabeth resembled Father, with dark hair and irregular features. Margaret had Mother’s coloring: she would have liked a scarf in the silk of Father’s tie. Percy was changing so rapidly that no one could tell whom he would eventually take after.

They walked down the long drive to the little village outside the gates. Father owned most of the houses and all the farmland for miles around. He had done nothing to earn such wealth: a series of marriages in the early nineteenth century had united the three most important landowning families in the county, and the resulting huge estate had been handed down intact from generation to generation.

They walked along the village street and across the green to the gray stone church. They entered in procession: Father and Mother first; Margaret behind with Elizabeth; and Percy bringing up the rear. The villagers in the congregation touched their forelocks as the Oxenfords made their way down the aisle to the family pew. The wealthier farmers, all of whom rented their land from Father, inclined their heads in polite bows; and the middle classes, Dr. Rowan and Colonel Smythe and Sir Alfred, nodded respectfully. This ludicrous feudal ritual made Margaret cringe with embarrassment every time it happened. All men were supposed to be equal before God, weren’t they? She wanted to shout out: “My father is no better than any of you, and a lot worse than most!” One of these days perhaps she would have the courage. If she made a scene in church she might never have to go back. But she was too scared of what Father would do.

Just as they were entering their pew, with all eyes on them, Percy said in a loud stage whisper: “Nice tie, Father.” Margaret suppressed a laugh and was seized by a fit of the giggles. She and Percy sat down quickly and hid their faces, pretending to pray, until the fit passed. After that Margaret felt better.

The vicar preached a sermon about the Prodigal Son. Margaret thought the silly old duffer might have chosen a topic more relevant to what was on everyone’s mind: the likelihood of war. The Prime Minister had sent Hitler an ultimatum, which the Führer had ignored, and a declaration of war was expected at any moment.

Margaret dreaded war. A boy she loved had died in the Spanish Civil War. It was just over a year ago, but she still cried sometimes at night. To her, war meant that thousands more girls would know the grief she had suffered. The thought was almost unbearable.

And yet another part of her wanted war. For years she had felt strongly about Britain’s cowardice during the Spanish war. Her country had stood by and watched while the elected socialist government was overthrown by a gang of bullies armed by Hitler and Mussolini. Hundreds of idealistic young men from all over Europe had gone to Spain to fight for democracy. But they lacked weapons, and the democratic governments of the world had refused to supply them; so the young men had lost their lives, and people such as Margaret had felt angry and helpless and ashamed. If Britain would now take a stand against the Fascists she could begin to feel proud of her country again.

There was another reason why her heart leaped at the prospect of war. It would surely mean the end of the narrow, suffocating life she lived with her parents. She was bored, cramped and frustrated by their unvarying rituals and their pointless social life. She longed to escape and have a life of her own, but it seemed impossible: she was underage, she had no money, and there was no kind of work that she was fit for. But, she thought eagerly, surely everything would be different in wartime.

She had read with fascination how in the last war women had put on trousers and gone to work in factories. Nowadays there were female branches of the army, navy and air force. Margaret dreamed of volunteering for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s army. One of the few practical skills she possessed was that she could drive. Father’s chauffeur, Digby, had taught her on the Rolls; and Ian, the boy who died, had let her ride his motorcycle. She could even handle a motor-boat, for Father kept a small yacht at Nice. The A.T.S. needed ambulance drivers and dispatch riders. She saw herself in uniform, wearing a helmet, astride a motorcycle, carrying urgent reports from one battlefield to another at top speed, with a photograph of Ian in the breast pocket of her khaki shirt. She felt sure she could be brave, given the chance.

War was actually declared during the service, they found out later. There was even an air-raid warning at twenty-eight minutes past eleven, in the middle of the sermon, but it did not reach their village, and anyway it was a false alarm. So the Oxenford family walked home from church unaware that they were at war with Germany.

Percy wanted to take a gun and go after rabbits. They could all shoot: it was a family pastime, almost an obsession. But of course Father turned down Percy’s request, for it was not done to shoot on Sundays. Percy was disappointed, but he would obey. Although he was full of devilment, he was not yet man enough to defy Father openly.

Margaret loved her brother’s impishness. He was the only ray of sunshine in the gloom of her life. She often wished that she could mock Father as Percy did, and laugh behind his back, but she got too cross to joke about it.

At home they were astonished to find a barefoot parlormaid watering flowers in the hall. Father did not recognize her. “Who are you?” he said abruptly.

Mother said in her soft American voice: “Her name is Jenkins. She started this week.”

The girl dropped a curtsy.

Father said: “And where the devil are her shoes?”

An expression of suspicion crossed the girl’s face and she shot an accusing look at Percy. “Please, your lordship, it was young Lord Isley.” Percy’s title was the Earl of Isley. “He told me parlormaids must go barefoot on Sunday out of respect.”

Mother sighed and Father gave an exasperated grunt. Margaret could not help giggling. This was Percy’s favorite trick: telling new servants of imaginary house rules. He could say ridiculous things with a dead straight face, and the family had such a reputation for eccentricity that people would believe anything of them.

Percy often made Margaret laugh, but now she was sorry for the poor parlormaid, standing barefoot in the hall and feeling foolish.

“Go and put your shoes on,” Mother said.

Margaret added: “And never believe Lord Isley.”

They took off their hats and went into the morning room. Margaret pulled Percy’s hair and hissed: “That was a mean thing to do.” Percy just grinned: he was incorrigible. He had once told the vicar that Father had died of a heart attack in the night, and the whole village went into mourning before they found out it was not true.

Father turned on the wireless, and it was then that they heard the news: Britain had declared war on Germany.

Margaret felt a kind of savage glee rising in her breast, like the excitement of driving too fast or climbing to the top of a tall tree. There was no longer any point in agonizing over it: there would be tragedy and bereavement, pain and grief, but now these things could not be avoided. The die was cast and the only thing to do was fight. The thought made her heart beat faster. Everything would be different. Social conventions would be abandoned, women would join in the struggle, class barriers would break down, everyone would work together. She could taste the air of freedom already. And they would be at war with the Fascists, the very people who had killed poor Ian and thousands more fine young men. Margaret did not believe she was a vindictive person, but when she thought about fighting the Nazis she felt vengeful. The feeling was unfamiliar, frightening and thrilling.

Father was furious. He was already portly and red-faced, and when he got mad he always looked as if he might burst. “Damn Chamberlain!” he said. “Damn and blast the wretched man!”

“Algernon, please,” Mother said, reproving him for his intemperate language.

Father had been one of the founders of the British Union of Fascists. He had been a different person then: not just younger, but slimmer, more handsome and less irritable. He had charmed people and won their loyalty. He had written a controversial book called Mongrel Men: The Threat of Racial Pollution, about how civilization had gone downhill since white people started to interbreed with Jews, Asians, Orientals and even Negroes. He had corresponded with Adolf Hitler, who he thought was the greatest statesman since Napoleon. There had been big house parties here every weekend, with politicians, foreign statesmen sometimes, and—on one unforgettable occasion—the king. The discussions went on far into the night, the butler bringing up more brandy from the cellar while the footmen yawned in the hall. All through the Depression, Father had waited for the country to call him to its rescue in its hour of need, and ask him to be prime minister in a government of national reconstruction. But the call never came. The weekend parties got fewer and smaller; the more distinguished guests found ways to dissociate themselves publicly from the British Union of Fascists; and Father became a bitter, disappointed man. His charm went with his confidence. His good looks were ruined by resentment, boredom and drink. His intellect had never been real: Margaret had read his book, and she had been shocked to find that it was not just wrong but foolish.

In recent years his platform had shrunk to one obsessive idea: Britain and Germany should unite against the Soviet Union. He had advocated this in magazine articles and letters to the newspapers, and on the increasingly rare occasions when he was invited to speak at political meetings and university debating societies. He held on to the idea defiantly as events in Europe made his policy more and more unrealistic. With the declaration of war between Britain and Germany his hopes were finally dashed; and Margaret found in her heart a little pity for him, among all her other tumultuous emotions.

“Britain and Germany will wipe one another out and leave Europe to be dominated by atheistical communism!” he said.

The reference to atheism reminded Margaret of being forced to go to church, and she said: “I don’t mind, I’m an atheist.”

Mother said: “You can’t be, dear. You’re Church of England.”

Margaret could not help laughing. Elizabeth, who was close to tears, said: “How can you laugh? It’s a tragedy!”

Elizabeth was a great admirer of the Nazis. She spoke German—they both did, thanks to a German governess who had lasted longer than most—and she had been to Berlin several times and twice dined with the Führer himself. Margaret suspected the Nazis were snobs who liked to bask in the approval of an English aristocrat.

Now Margaret turned to Elizabeth and said: “It’s time we stood up to those bullies.”

“They aren’t bullies,” Elizabeth said indignantly. “They’re proud, strong, purebred Aryans, and it’s a tragedy that our country is at war with them. Father’s right—the white people will wipe each other out and the world will be left to the mongrels and the Jews.”

Margaret had no patience with this kind of drivel. “There’s nothing wrong with Jews!” she said hotly.

Father held a finger up in the air. “There’s nothing wrong with the Jew—in his place.”

“Which is under the heel of the jackboot, in your—your Fascist system.” She had been on the point of saying “your filthy system,” but she suddenly got scared and bit back the insult: it was dangerous to get Father too angry.

Elizabeth said: “And in your Bolshevik system the Jews rule the roost!”

“I’m not a Bolshevik. I’m a socialist.”

Percy, imitating Mother’s accent, said: “You can’t be, dear. You’re Church of England.”

Margaret laughed despite herself; and once again her laughter infuriated her sister. Elizabeth said bitterly: “You just want to destroy everything that’s fine and pure, and then laugh about it afterward.”

That was hardly worth a response; but Margaret still wanted to make her point. She turned to Father and said: “Well, I agree with you about Neville Chamberlain, anyway. He’s made our military position far worse by letting the Fascists take over Spain. Now the enemy is in the West as well as the East.”

“Chamberlain did not let the Fascists take over Spain,” Father said. “Britain made a nonintervention pact with Germany, Italy and France. All we did was keep our word.”

This was completely hypocritical, and he knew it. Margaret felt herself flush with indignation. “We kept our word while the Italians and the Germans broke theirs!” she protested. “So the Fascists got guns and the democrats got nothing ... but heroes.”

There was a moment of embarrassed silence.

Mother said: “I’m truly sorry that Ian died, dear, but he was a very bad influence on you.”

Suddenly Margaret wanted to cry.

Ian Rochdale was the best thing that ever happened to her, and the pain of his death could still make her gasp.

For years she had been dancing at hunt balls with empty-headed young members of the squirearchy, boys who had nothing on their minds but drinking and hunting; and she had despaired of ever meeting a man of her own age who interested her. Ian had come into her life like the light of reason; and since he died she had been living in the dark.

He had been in his final year at Oxford. Margaret would have loved to go to a university, but there was no possibility of her qualifying: she had never gone to school. However, she had read widely—there was nothing else to do!—and she was thrilled to find someone like herself, who liked talking about ideas. He was the only man who could explain things to her without condescension. Ian was the most clear-thinking person she had ever come across; he had endless patience in discussion; and he was quite without intellectual vanity—he never pretended to understand when he did not. She adored him from the very start.

For a long time she did not think of it as love. But one day he confessed, awkwardly and with great embarrassment, uncharacteristically struggling to find the right words, finally saying: “I think I must have fallen in love with you—will it spoil everything?” And then she realized joyfully that she too was in love.

He changed her life. It was as if she had moved to another country, where everything was different: the landscape, the weather, the people, the food. She enjoyed everything. The constraints and irritations of living with her parents came to seem minor.

Even after he joined the International Brigade and went to Spain to fight for the elected socialist government against the Fascist rebels, he continued to light up her life. She was proud of him because he had the courage of his convictions, and was ready to risk death for the cause he believed in. Sometimes she would get a letter from him. Once he sent a poem. Then came the note that said he was dead, blown to bits by a direct hit from a shell; and Margaret felt that her life had come to an end.

“A bad influence,” she echoed bitterly. “Yes. He taught me to question dogma, to disbelieve lies, to hate ignorance and to despise hypocrisy. As a result, I’m hardly fit for civilized society.”

Father, Mother and Elizabeth all started talking at once, then stopped because none of them could be heard; and Percy spoke into the sudden silence. “Talking of Jews,” he said, “I came across a curious picture in the cellar, in one of those old suitcases from Stamford.” Stamford, Connecticut, was where Mother’s family lived. Percy took from his shirt pocket a creased and faded sepia photograph. “I did have a great-grandmother called Ruth Glencarry, didn’t I?”

Mother said: “Yes—she was my mother’s mother. Why, dear, what have you found?”

Percy gave the photograph to Father and the others crowded around to look at it. It showed a street scene in an American city, probably New York, about seventy years ago. In the foreground was a Jewish man of about thirty with a black beard, dressed in rough workingman’s clothes and a hat. He stood by a handcart bearing a grinding wheel. The cart was clearly lettered with the words REUBEN FISHBEIN—GRINDER. Beside the man stood a girl, about ten years old, in a shabby cotton dress and heavy boots.

Father said: “What is this, Percy? Who are these wretched people?”

“Turn it over,” said Percy.

Father turned the picture over. On the back was written: RUTHIE GLENCARRY, NÉE FISHBEIN, AGED 10.

Margaret looked at Father. He was utterly horrified.

Percy said: “Interesting that Mother’s grandfather should marry the daughter of an itinerant Jewish knife grinder, but they say America’s like that.”

“This is impossible!” Father said, but his voice was shaky, and Margaret guessed that he thought it was all too possible.

Percy went on blithely: “Anyway, Jewishness descends through the female, so as my mother’s grandmother was Jewish, that makes me a Jew.”

Father had gone quite pale. Mother looked mystified, a slight frown creasing her brow.

Percy said: “I do hope the Germans don’t win this war. I shan’t be allowed to go to the cinema and Mother will have to sew yellow stars on all her ballgowns.”

This was sounding too good to be true. Margaret peered intently at the words written on the back of the picture, and the truth dawned. “Percy!” she said delightedly. “That’s your handwriting!”

“No, it’s not!” said Percy.

But everyone could see that it was. Margaret laughed gleefully. Percy had found this old picture of a little Jewish girl somewhere and had faked the inscription on the back to fool Father. Father had fallen for it, too, and no wonder: it must be the ultimate nightmare of every racist to find that he has mixed ancestry. Serve him right.

Father said, “Bah!” and threw the picture down on a table. Mother said, “Percy, really,” in an aggrieved voice. They might have said more, but at that moment the door opened and Bates, the bad-tempered butler, said: “Luncheon is served, your ladyship.”

They left the morning room and crossed the hall to the small dining room. There would be overdone roast beef, as always on Sundays. Mother would have a salad: she never ate cooked food, believing that the heat destroyed the goodness.

Father said grace and they sat down. Bates offered Mother the smoked salmon. Smoked, pickled or otherwise preserved foods were all right, according to her theory.

“Of course, there’s only one thing to be done,” Mother said as she helped herself from the proffered plate. She spoke in the offhand tone of one who merely draws attention to the obvious. “We must all go and live in America until this silly war is over.”

There was a moment of shocked silence.

Margaret, horrified, burst out: “No!”

Mother said: “Now I think we’ve had quite enough squabbling for one day. Please let us have lunch in peace and harmony.”

“No!” Margaret said again. She was almost speechless with outrage. “You—you can’t do this. It’s—it’s ...” She wanted to rail and storm at them, to accuse them of treason and cowardice, to shout her contempt and defiance out loud; but the words would not come, and all she could say was: “It’s not fair!”

Even that was too much. Father said: “If you can’t hold your tongue you’d better leave us.”

Margaret put her napkin to her mouth to choke down a sob, pushed her chair back and stood up, and then fled the room.

They had been planning this for months, of course.

Percy came to Margaret’s room after lunch and told her the details. The house was to be closed up, the furniture covered with dust sheets and the servants dismissed. The estate would be left in the hands of Father’s business manager, who would collect the rents. The money would pile up in the bank: it could not be sent to America because of wartime exchange control rules. The horses would be sold, the blankets moth-balled, the silver locked away.

Elizabeth, Margaret and Percy were to pack one suitcase each: the rest of their belongings would be forwarded by a removal company. Father had booked tickets for all of them on the Pan American Clipper, and they were to leave on Wednesday.

Percy was wild with excitement. He had flown once or twice before, but the Clipper was different. The plane was huge, and very luxurious: the newspapers had been full of it when the service was inaugurated just a few weeks ago. The flight to New York took twenty-nine hours, and everyone went to bed in the night over the Atlantic Ocean.

It was disgustingly appropriate, Margaret thought, that they should depart in cosseted luxury when they were leaving their countrymen to deprivation, hardship and war.

Percy left to pack his case and Margaret lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, bitterly disappointed, boiling with rage, crying with frustration, powerless to do anything about her fate.

She stayed in her room until bedtime.

On Monday morning, while she was still in bed, Mother came to her room. Margaret sat up and gave her a hostile stare. Mother sat at the dressing table and looked at Margaret in the mirror. “Please don’t make trouble with your father over this,” she said.

Margaret realized that her mother was nervous. In other circumstances this might have caused Margaret to soften her tone; but she was too upset to sympathize. “It’s so cowardly!” she burst out.

Mother paled. “We’re not being cowardly.”

“But to run away from your country when a war begins!”

“We have no choice. We have to go.”

Margaret was mystified. “Why?”

Mother turned from the mirror and looked directly at her. “Otherwise they will put your father in prison.”

Margaret was taken completely by surprise. “How can they do that? It’s not a crime to be a Fascist.”

“They have Emergency Powers. Does it matter? A sympathizer in the Home Office warned us. Father will be arrested if he’s still in Britain at the end of the week.”

Margaret could hardly believe that they wanted to put her father in jail like a thief. She felt foolish: she had not thought about how much difference war would make to everyday life.

“But they won’t let us take any money with us,” Mother said bitterly. “So much for the British sense of fair play.”

Money was the last thing Margaret cared about right now. Her whole life was in the balance. She felt a sudden access of bravery, and she made up her mind to tell her mother the truth. Before she had time to lose her nerve, she took a deep breath and said: “Mother, I don’t want to go with you.”

Mother displayed no surprise. Perhaps she had even expected something like this. In the mild, vague tone she used when trying to avoid an argument, she said: “You have to come, dear.”

“They’re not going to put me in jail. I can live with Aunt Martha, or even cousin Catherine. Won’t you talk to Father?”

Suddenly Mother looked uncharacteristically fierce. “I gave birth to you in pain and suffering, and I’m not going to let you risk your life while I can prevent it.”

For a moment Margaret was taken aback by her mother’s naked emotion. Then she protested: “I ought to have a say in it—it’s my life!”

Mother sighed and reverted to her normal languorous manner. “It makes no difference what you and I think. Your father won’t let you stay behind, whatever we say.”

Mother’s passivity annoyed Margaret, and she resolved to take action. “I shall ask him directly.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Mother said, and now there was a pleading note in her voice. “This is awfully hard for him as it is. He loves England, you know. In any other circumstances he’d be telephoning to the War Office trying to get a job. It’s breaking his heart.”

“What about my heart?”

“It’s not the same for you. You’re young. Your life is in front of you. For him this is the end of all hope.”

“It’s not my fault he’s a Fascist,” Margaret said harshly.

Mother stood up. “I hoped you’d be kinder,” she said quietly, and she went out.

Margaret felt guilty and indignant at the same time. It was so unfair! Her father had been pouring scorn on her opinions ever since she had had any, and now that events had proved him wrong she was being asked to sympathize.

She sighed. Her mother was beautiful, eccentric and vague. She had been born rich and determined. Her eccentricities were the result of a strong will with no education to guide it: she latched on to foolish ideas because she had no way of discriminating between sense and nonsense. The vagueness was a strong woman’s way of coping with masculine dominance: she was not allowed to confront her husband, so the only way she could escape his control was by pretending not to understand him. Margaret loved her mother, and regarded her peculiarities with a fond tolerance; but she was determined not to be like her, despite their physical resemblance. If others refused to educate her she would jolly well teach herself; and she would rather be an old spinster than marry some pig who thought he had the right to boss her around like an under-house parlormaid.

Sometimes she longed for a different kind of relationship with her mother. She wanted to confide in her, gain her sympathy, ask her advice. They could be allies, struggling together for freedom against a world that wanted to treat them as ornaments. But Mother had given up that struggle long ago, and she wanted Margaret to do the same. It was not going to happen. Margaret was going to be herself: she was absolutely set on it. But how?

All day Monday she felt unable to eat. She drank endless cups of tea while the servants went about the business of closing up the house. On Tuesday, when Mother realized that Margaret was not going to pack, she told the new maid, Jenkins, to do it for her. Of course, Jenkins did not know what to pack, and Margaret had to help her; so in the end Mother got her way, as she so often did.

Margaret said to the girl: “It’s bad luck for you that we decided to close up the house the week after you started work here.”

“There’ll be no shortage of work now, m’lady,” Jenkins said. “Our dad says there’s no unemployment in wartime.”

“What will you do—work in a factory?”

“I’m going to join up. It said on the wireless that seventeen thousand women joined the A.T.S. yesterday. There’s queues outside every town hall in the country—I seen a picture in the paper.”

“Lucky you,” Margaret said despondently. “The only thing I’ll be queuing for is a plane to America.”

“You’ve got to do what the marquis wants,” Jenkins said.

“What does your dad say about you joining up?”

“I shan’t tell him—just do it.”

“But what if he takes you back?”

“He can’t do that. I’m eighteen. Once you’ve signed on, that’s it. Provided you’re old enough there’s nothing your parents can do about it.”

Margaret was startled. “Are you sure?”

“ ’Course. Everyone knows.”

“I didn’t,” Margaret said thoughtfully.

Jenkins took Margaret’s case down to the hall. They would be leaving very early on Wednesday morning. Seeing the cases lined up, Margaret realized that she was going to spend the war in Connecticut for sure if she did nothing but sulk. Despite Mother’s plea not to make a fuss, she had to confront her father.

The very thought made her feel shaky. She went back to her room to steel her nerves and consider what she might say. She would have to be calm. Tears would not move him and anger would only provoke his scorn. She should appear sensible, responsible, mature. She should not be argumentative, for that would enrage him, and then he would frighten her so much that she would be unable to go on.

How should she begin? “I think I have a right to say something about my own future.”

No, that was no good. He would say: “I am responsible for you so I must decide.”

Perhaps she should say: “May I talk to you about going to America?”

He would probably say: “There is nothing to discuss.”

Her opening had to be so inoffensive that even he would not be able to rebuff it. She decided she would say: “Can I ask you something?” He would have to say yes to that.

Then what? How could she approach the subject without provoking one of his dreadful rages? She might say: “You were in the army in the last war, weren’t you?” She knew he had seen action in France. Then she would say: “Was Mother involved?” She knew the answer to this, too: Mother had been a volunteer nurse in London, caring for wounded American officers. Finally she would say: “You both served your countries, so I know you’ll understand why I want to do the same.” Now surely that was irresistible.

If only he would concede the principle, she could deal with his other objections, she felt. She could live with relatives until she joined up, which would be a matter of days. She was nineteen: many girls of that age had been working full-time for six years. She was old enough to get married, drive a car and go to jail. There was no reason why she should not be allowed to stay in England.

That made sense. Now all she needed was courage.

Father would be in his study with his business manager. Margaret left her room. On the landing outside her bedroom door she suddenly felt weak with fear. It infuriated him to be opposed. His rages were terrible and his punishments cruel. When she was eleven she had been made to stand in the corner of his study, facing the wall, for an entire day after being rude to a houseguest; he had taken away her teddy bear as a punishment for bed-wetting at the age of seven; once, in a fury, he had thrown a cat out of an upstairs window. What would he do now when she told him she wanted to stay in England and fight against the Nazis?

She forced herself to go down the stairs, but as she approached his study her fears grew. She visualized him getting angry, his face reddening and his eyes bulging, and she felt terrified. She tried to calm her racing pulse by asking herself whether there was anything really to be afraid of. He could no longer break her heart by taking away her teddy bear. But she knew deep down that he could still find ways of making her wish she were dead.

As she stood outside the study door, trembling, the housekeeper rustled across the hall in her black silk dress. Mrs. Allen ruled the female staff of the household strictly, but she had always been indulgent toward the children. She was fond of the family and was terribly upset that they were leaving: it was the end of a way of life for her. She gave Margaret a tearful smile.

Looking at her, Margaret was struck by a heart-stopping notion.

An entire plan of escape came full-blown into her head. She would borrow money from Mrs. Allen, leave the house now, catch the four fifty-five train to London, stay overnight at her cousin Catherine’s flat, and join the A.T.S. first thing in the morning. By the time Father caught up with her it would be too late.

The plan was so simple and daring that she could hardly believe it might be possible. But before she could think twice about it she found herself saying: “Oh, Mrs. Allen, would you give me some money? I’ve got to do some last-minute shopping and I don’t want to disturb Father—he’s so busy.”

Mrs. Allen did not hesitate. “Of course, my lady. How much do you need?”

Margaret did not know what the train fare to London was: she had never bought her own ticket. Guessing wildly, she said: “Oh, a pound should be enough.” She was thinking: Am I really doing this? .

Mrs. Allen took two ten-shilling notes from her purse. She would probably have handed over her life savings if asked.

Margaret took the money with a trembling hand. This could be my ticket to freedom, she thought; and frightened as she was, a small flame of joyful hope flickered in her breast.

Mrs. Allen, thinking she was upset about emigrating, squeezed her hand. “This is a sad day, Lady Margaret,” she said. “A sad day for us all.” Shaking her gray head dismally, she disappeared into the back of the house.

Margaret looked around frenziedly. No one was in sight. Her heart was fluttering like a trapped bird and her breath came in shallow gasps. She knew that if she hesitated she would lose her nerve. She did not dare wait long enough to put on a coat. Clutching the money in her hand, she walked out the front door.

The station was two miles away in the next village. At every step along the road Margaret expected to hear Father’s Rolls-Royce purring up behind her. But how could he know what she had done? It was unlikely that anyone would notice her absence at least until dinner-time ; and if they did, they would assume she had gone shopping as she had told Mrs. Allen. All the same, she was in a constant fever of apprehension.

She got to the station in plenty of time, bought her ticket—she had more than enough money—and sat in the ladies’ waiting room, watching the hands of the big clock on the wall.

The train was late.

Four fifty-five came around, then five o’clock, then five past five. By this time Margaret was so frightened that she felt like giving up and returning home just to escape the tension.

The train came in at fourteen minutes past five, and still Father had not come.

Margaret boarded with her heart in her mouth.

She stood at the window, staring at the ticket barrier, expecting to see him arrive at the last minute to catch her.

At last the train moved.

She could hardly believe that she was getting away.

The train picked up speed. The first faint tremors of elation stirred in her heart. A few seconds later the train was out of the station. Margaret watched the village recede, and her heart filled with triumph. She had done it—she had escaped!

Suddenly she felt weak-kneed. She looked around for a seat, and realized for the first time that the train was full. Every seat was taken, even in this first-class carriage; and there were soldiers sitting on the floor. She remained standing.

Her euphoria did not diminish even though the journey was, by normal standards, something of a nightmare. More people crowded into the carriages at each station. The train was delayed for three hours outside Reading. All the lightbulbs had been removed because of the blackout, so after nightfall the train was in total darkness except for the occasional gleam of the guard’s flashlight as he patrolled, picking his way over passengers sitting and lying on the floor. When Margaret could stand no longer she, too, sat on the floor. This sort of thing did not matter anymore, she told herself. Her dress would get filthy, but tomorrow she too would be in uniform. Everything was different: there was a war on.

Margaret wondered whether Father might have learned she was missing, found out she caught the train, and driven at top speed to London to intercept her at Paddington Station. It was unlikely, but possible, and her heart filled with dread as the train pulled into the station.

However, when at last she got off he was nowhere to be seen, and she felt another thrill of triumph. He was not omnipotent after all! She managed to find a taxi in the cavernous gloom of the station. It took her to Bayswater with only its side lights on. The driver used a flashlight to guide her to the apartment building in which Catherine had a flat.

The building’s windows were all blacked out, but the hall was a blaze of light. The porter had gone off duty—it was now almost midnight—but Margaret knew her way to Catherine’s flat. She went up the stairs and rang the bell.

There was no reply.

Her heart sank.

She rang again, but she knew it was pointless: the flat was small and the bell was loud. Catherine was not there.

It was hardly surprising, she realized. Catherine lived with her parents in Kent, and used the flat as a pied-à-terre. London social life had come to a halt, of course, so Catherine would have no reason to be here. Margaret had not thought of that.

She was not dashed, but she was disappointed. She had been looking forward to sitting down with Catherine, drinking cocoa and sharing with her the details of her great adventure. However, that would have to wait. She considered what she should do next. She had several relatives in London, but if she went to them they would telephone Father. Catherine would have been a willing coconspirator, but she could not trust any of her other relations.

Then she remembered that Aunt Martha did not have a phone.

She was a great-aunt, in fact, a fractious spinster of about seventy. She lived less than a mile away. She would be fast asleep by now, of course, and it would make her furious to be wakened, but that could not be helped. The important thing was that she would have no way of alerting Father to Margaret’s whereabouts.

Margaret went back down the stairs and out into the street—and found herself in total darkness.

The blackout was quite scary. She stood outside the door and looked around, with her eyes wide-open and staring, seeing nothing. It gave her a queer feeling in her tummy, like being dizzy.

She closed her eyes and pictured the familiar street scene as it ought to be. Behind her was Ovington House, where Catherine lived. Normally there would be lights in several windows and a splash of brilliance from the lamp over the door. On the comer to her left was a small Wren church whose portico was always floodlit. The pavement was lined with lampposts, each of which should cast a little circle of light; and the road should be lighted by the headlamps of buses, taxis, and cars.

She opened her eyes again, and saw nothing.

It was unnerving. For a moment she imagined that there was nothing around her: the street had disappeared and she was in limbo, falling through a void. She felt suddenly seasick. Then she pulled herself together and visualized the route to Aunt Martha’s house.

I head east from here, she thought, and go left at the second turning, and Aunt Martha’s place is at the end of that block. It should be easy enough, even in the dark.

She longed for some relief: a lighted taxi, a full moon or a helpful policeman. After a moment her wish was granted: a car came creeping along, its faint side lights like the eyes of a cat in the heavy gloom, and suddenly she could see the line of the curb all the way to the street comer.

She began to walk.

The car passed on, its red rear lights receding into the dark distance. Margaret thought she was still three or four steps from the comer when she stumbled down the curb. She crossed the road and found the opposite pavement without falling over it. That encouraged her and she walked on more confidently.

Suddenly something hard smacked into her face with agonizing violence.

She cried out in pain and sudden fear. For a moment she was in a blind panic and wanted to turn and run. With an effort she calmed herself. Her hand went to her cheek and rubbed where it hurt. What on earth had happened? What was there to hit her at face level in the middle of the pavement? She reached out with both hands. She felt something almost immediately, and jerked her hands back fearfully; then she gritted her teeth and reached out again. She was touching something cold and hard and round, like an oversized pie dish floating in midair. Exploring it further, she felt a round column with a rectangular hole and an outjutting top. When she realized what it was she laughed despite her sore face. She had been attacked by a pillar box.

She felt her way around it, then walked on with both arms stretched out in front of her.

After a while she stumbled down another curb. Regaining her balance, she felt relieved: she had reached Aunt Martha’s street. She turned left.

It occurred to her that Aunt Martha might not hear the doorbell. She lived alone: there was no one else to answer. If that happened, Margaret would have to make her way back to Catherine’s building and sleep in the corridor. She could cope with sleeping on the floor, but she dreaded another walk through the blackout. Perhaps she would simply curl up on Aunt Martha’s doorstep and wait for daylight.

Aunt Martha’s small house was at the far end of a long block. Margaret walked slowly. The city was dark but not silent. She could hear the occasional car in the distance. Dogs barked as she passed their doors and a pair of cats howled, oblivious of her. Once she heard the tinkling music of a late party. A little farther on she picked up the muffled shouts of a domestic row behind the blackout curtains. She found herself longing to be inside a house with lamps and a fireplace and a teapot.

The block seemed longer than Margaret remembered. However, she could not possibly have gone wrong: she had turned left at the second cross street. Nevertheless, the suspicion that she was lost grew relentlessly. Her sense of time failed her: had she been walking along this block for five minutes, twenty minutes, two hours or all night? Suddenly she was not even sure whether there were any houses nearby. She could be in the middle of Hyde Park, having wandered through the entrance by blind luck. She began to feel that there were creatures all around her in the darkness, watching her with catlike night vision, waiting for her to stumble into them so they could grab her. A scream started low in her throat and she pushed it back.

She made herself think. Where could she have gone wrong? She knew there was a cross street when she stumbled down a curb. But, she now recalled, as well as the main cross streets there were little alleys and mews. She might have turned down one of those. By now she could have walked a mile or more in the wrong direction.

She tried to recall the heady feeling of excitement and triumph she had felt on the train, but it had gone, and now she just felt alone and afraid.

She decided to stop and stand quite still. No harm could come to her like that.

She stayed still for a long time: after a while she could not tell how long it was. Now she was afraid to move: fear had paralyzed her. She thought she would stand upright until she fainted with exhaustion, or until morning.

Then a car appeared.

Its dim side lights gave very little illumination, but by comparison with the previous pitch-blackness it seemed like daylight. She saw that she was, indeed, standing in the middle of the road, and she scurried to the pavement to get out of the way of the car. She was in a square that seemed vaguely familiar. The car passed her and turned a corner, and she hurried after it, hoping to see a landmark that would tell her where she was. Reaching the corner, she saw the car at the far end of a short, narrow street of small shops, one of which was a milliner’s patronized by Mother; and she realized she was just a few yards from Marble Arch.

She could have wept with relief.

At the next corner she waited for another car to light up the way ahead; then she walked on into Mayfair.

A few minutes later she stood outside Claridge’s Hotel. The building was blacked out, of course, but she was able to locate the door, and she wondered whether to go in.

She did not think she had enough money to pay for a room, but her recollection was that people did not pay their hotel bill until they left. She could take a room for two nights, go out tomorrow as if she expected to return later, join the A.T.S., then phone the hotel and tell them to send the bill to Father’s lawyer.

She took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

Like most public buildings that were open at night, the hotel had rigged up a double door, like an airlock, so that people could go in and out without the interior lights showing on the outside. Margaret let the outer door close behind her, then went through the second door and into the grateful light of the hotel foyer. She felt a tremendous surge of relief. This was normality: the nightmare was over.

A young night porter was dozing at the desk. Margaret coughed, and he woke up, startled and confused. Margaret said: “I need a room.”

“At this time of night?” the man blurted.

“I got caught in the blackout,” Margaret explained. “Now I can’t get home.”

The man began to gather his wits. “No luggage?”

“No,” Margaret said guiltily; then she was struck by a thought, and added: “Of course not—I didn’t plan to get stranded.”

He looked at her rather strangely. Surely, Margaret thought, he could not refuse her. He swallowed, rubbed his face and pretended to consult a book. What was the matter with the man? Making up his mind, he closed the book and said: “We’re full.”

“Oh, come on, you must have something—”

“You’ve had a fight with your old man, haven’t you?” he said with a wink.

Margaret could hardly believe this was happening. “I can’t get home,” she repeated, as the man had obviously failed to understand her the first time.

“I can’t help that,” he said. With a sudden access of wit he added: “Blame Hitler.”

He was rather young. “Where is your supervisor?” she said.

He looked offended. “I’m in charge, until six o’clock.”

Margaret looked around. “I’ll just have to sit in the lounge until morning,” she said wearily.

“You can’t do that!” the porter said, looking scared. “A young girl alone, with no luggage, spending the night in the lounge? It’s more than my job’s worth.”

“I’m not a young girl,” she said angrily. “I’m Lady Margaret Oxenford.” She hated to use her title but she was desperate.

However, it did no good. The porter gave her a hard, insolent look, and said: “Oh, yeah?”

Margaret was about to shout at him when she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the door, and realized she had a black eye. On top of that her hands were filthy and her dress was torn. She recalled that she had bumped into a pillar box and sat on the floor of a train. No wonder the porter would not give her a room. She said desperately: “But you can’t turn me out into the blackout!”

“I can’t do anything else!” the porter said.

Margaret wondered how he would react if she simply sat down and refused to move. That was what she felt like doing: she was bone tired and weak with strain. But she had been through so much that she had no energy left for a confrontation. Besides, it was late and they were alone: there was no telling what the man might do if she gave him an excuse to lay hands on her.

Wearily, she turned her back on him and went out, bitterly disappointed, into the night.

Even as she walked away from the hotel, she wished she had put up more of a fight. Why was it that her intentions were always so much more fierce than her actions? Now that she had given in, she was angry enough to defy the porter. She was almost ready to turn back. But she kept on walking: it seemed easier.

She had nowhere to go. She would not be able to find Catherine’s building again; she had never succeeded in finding Aunt Martha’s house; she could not trust any other relatives and she was too dirty to get a hotel room.

She would just have to wander around until it got light. The weather was fine: there was no rain and the night air was only slightly chilly. If she kept moving she would not even feel cold. She could see where she was going now: there were plenty of traffic lights in the West End, and a car passed every minute or two. She could hear music and noise from the nightclubs, and now and again she would see people of her own class: the women in gorgeous gowns and the men wearing white tie and tails, arriving home in their chauffeur-driven cars after a late party. In one street, rather curiously, she saw three other solitary women: one standing in a doorway, one leaning on a lamppost and one sitting in a car. They were all smoking and apparently waiting for people. She wondered if they were what Mother called Fallen Women.

She began to feel tired. She was still wearing the light indoor shoes she had had on when she made her escape from home. On impulse she sat down on a doorstep, took off her shoes and rubbed her aching feet.

Looking up, she realized that she could make out the vague shape of the buildings on the other side of the street. Was it getting light at last? Perhaps she would find a workmen’s cafe that opened early. She could order breakfast and wait there until the recruiting offices opened. She had eaten next to nothing for two days, and the thought of bacon and eggs made her mouth water.

Suddenly there was a white face hovering in the air in front of her. She let out a little cry of fright. The face came closer, and she saw a youngish man in evening dress. He said: “Hello, beautiful.”

She scrambled to her feet quickly. She hated drunks—they were so undignified. “Please go away,” she said. She tried to sound firm, but there was a tremor in her voice.

He staggered closer. “Give us a kiss, then.”

“Certainly not!” she said, horrified. She took a step back, stumbled and dropped her shoes. Somehow the loss of her shoes made her feel helplessly vulnerable. She turned around and bent down to grope for them. He chuckled fruitily; then to her horror she felt his hand between her thighs, fumbling with painful clumsiness. She straightened up instantly, without finding her shoes, and stepped away from him. Turning to face him, she shouted: “Get away from me!”

He laughed again and said: “That’s right. Go on. I like a bit of resistance.” With surprising agility he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. His alcoholic breath blew over her face in a nauseating fog, and suddenly he was kissing her mouth.

It was unspeakably disgusting, and she felt quite sick, but his embrace was so strong that she could hardly breathe, let alone protest. She squirmed ineffectually while he slobbered over her. Then he took one hand from her shoulder to grasp her breast. He squeezed brutally hard and she gasped with pain. But because he had let go of her shoulder she was mercifully able to half turn away from him and start to scream.

She screamed loud and long.

She could vaguely hear him saying, in a worried voice: “All right, all right, don’t take on so. I didn’t mean any harm.” But she was too scared to be reasoned with and she just carried on screaming. Faces materialized out of the darkness: a passerby in workman’s clothes, a Fallen Woman with cigarette and handbag, and a head at a window in the house behind them. The drunk vanished into the night, and Margaret stopped screaming and began to cry. Then there was the sound of running boots, the narrow beam of a masked flashlight, and a policeman’s helmet.

The policeman shone his light on Margaret’s face.

The woman muttered: “She ain’t one of us, Steve.”

The policeman called Steve said: “What’s your name, girl?”

“Margaret Oxenford.”

The man in work clothes said: “A toff took her for a tart—that’s what happened.” Satisfied, he went off.

The policeman said: “Would that be Lady Margaret Oxenford?”

Margaret sniffed miserably and nodded.

The woman said: “I told you she weren’t one of us.” With that, she drew on her cigarette, dropped the end, trod on it and disappeared.

The policeman said: “You come with me, my lady. You’ll be all right now.

Margaret wiped her face with her sleeve. The policeman offered her his arm. She took it. He shone his flashlight on the pavement in front of her and they began to walk.

After a moment Margaret shuddered and said: “That frightful man.”

The policeman was briskly unsympathetic. “Can’t really blame him,” he said cheerfully. “This is the most notorious street in London. It’s a fair assumption that a girl alone here at this hour is a Lady of the Night.”

Margaret supposed he was right, although it seemed rather unfair.

The familiar blue lamp of a police station appeared in the morning twilight. The policeman said: “You have a nice cup of tea and you’ll feel better.”

They went inside. There was a counter ahead of them with two policemen behind it, one middle-aged and stocky and the other young and thin. On each side of the hall was a plain wooden bench up against the wall. There was only one other person in the hall: a pale woman with her hair in a scarf and house slippers on her feet, sitting on one of the benches, waiting with tired patience.

Margaret’s rescuer directed her to the opposite bench, saying: “Sit yourself down there for a minute.” Margaret did as she was told. The policeman went up to the desk and spoke to the older man. “Sarge, that’s Lady Margaret Oxenford. Had a run-in with a drunk in Bolting Lane.”

“I suppose he thought she was on the game.”

Margaret was struck by the variety of euphemisms for prostitution. People seemed to have a horror of calling it what it was, and had to refer to it obliquely. She herself had known about it only in the vaguest possible way; indeed she had not really believed it went on, until tonight. But there had been nothing vague about the intentions of the young man in evening dress.

The sergeant looked over at Margaret in an interested way, then said something in a low voice that she could not hear. Steve nodded and disappeared into the back of the building.

Margaret realized she had left her shoes on that doorstep. Now there were holes in the feet of her stockings. She began to worry: she could hardly turn up at the recruiting station in this state. Perhaps she could go back for her shoes in daylight. But they might no longer be there. And she badly needed a wash and a clean dress, too. It would be heartbreaking to be turned down for the A.T.S. after all this. But where could she go to tidy herself? By morning even Aunt Martha’s house would not be safe: Father might turn up there, searching for her. Surely, she thought with anguish, her whole plan was not going to fall apart because of a pair of shoes?

Her policeman came back with tea in a thick earthenware mug. It was weak and had too much sugar in it, but Margaret sipped it gratefully. It restored her resolve. She could overcome her problems. She would leave as soon as she had finished her tea. She would go to a poor district and find a shop selling cheap clothes: she still had a few shillings. She would buy a dress, a pair of sandals and a set of clean underwear. She would go to a public bathhouse and wash and change. Then she would be ready for the army.

While she was elaborating this plan, there was a noise outside the door and a group of young men burst in. They were well dressed, some in evening clothes and others in lounge suits. After a moment Margaret realized they were dragging with them an unwilling companion. One of the men started to shout at the sergeant behind the counter.

The sergeant interrupted him. “All right, all right, quiet down!” he said in a commanding voice. “You’re not on the rugby field now, you know—this is a police station.” The noise muted somewhat, but not enough for the sergeant. “If you don’t behave yourselves I’ll clap the lot of you in the bleedin’ cells,” he shouted. “Now bloody well shut up!”

They became quiet and released their unwilling prisoner, who stood there looking sulky. The sergeant pointed at one of the men, a dark-haired fellow of about Margaret’s age. “Right—you. Tell me what all the fuss is about.”

The young man pointed at the prisoner. “This blighter took my sister to a restaurant, then sneaked off without paying!” he said indignantly. He spoke with an upper-class accent, and Margaret realized his face was vaguely familiar. She hoped he would not recognize her: it would be too humiliating for people to know that she had had to be rescued by. a policeman after running away from home.

A younger man in a striped suit added: “His name’s Harry Marks and he ought to be locked up.”

Margaret looked with interest at Harry Marks. He was a strikingly handsome man of twenty-two or twenty-three, with blond hair and regular features. Although he was rather rumpled, he wore his double-breasted dinner jacket with easy elegance. He looked around contemptuously and said: “These fellows are drunk.”

The young man in the striped suit burst out: “We may be drunk but he’s a cad—and a thief. Look what we found in his pocket.” He threw something down on the counter. “These cuff links were stolen earlier in the evening from Sir Simon Monkford.”

“All right,” said the sergeant. “So you’re accusing him of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception—that’s not paying his restaurant bill—and of stealing. Anything else?”

The boy in the striped suit laughed scornfully and said: “Isn’t that enough for you?”

The sergeant pointed his pencil at the boy. “You remember where you bloody well are, son. You may have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth but this is a police station and if you don’t speak politely you’ll spend the rest of the night in a bleedin’ cell.”

The boy looked foolish and said no more.

The sergeant turned his attention back to the first speaker. “Now can you supply all the details of both accusations? I need the name and address of the restaurant, your sister’s name and address, plus the name and address of the party that owns the cuff links.”

“Yes, I can give you all that. The restaurant—”

“Good. You stay here.” He pointed at the accused man. “You sit down.” He waved his hand at the crowd of young men. “The rest of you can go home.”

They all looked rather nonplussed. Their great adventure had ended in anticlimax. For a moment none of them moved.

The sergeant said: “Go on, bugger off, the lot of you!”

Margaret had never heard so much swearing in one day.

The young men moved off, muttering. The boy in the striped suit said: “You bring a thief to justice and you get treated as if you were a criminal yourself!” But he was passing through the door before he finished the sentence.

The sergeant began to question the dark-haired boy, making notes. Harry Marks stood beside him for a moment, then turned away impatiently. He spotted Margaret, threw her a sunny grin and sat down next to her. He said: “All right, girl? What you doing here, then, this time o’ night?”

Margaret was nonplussed. He was quite transformed. His haughty manner and refined speech had gone, and he spoke with the same accent as the sergeant. For a moment she was too surprised to reply.

Harry threw an appraising glance at the doorway, as if he might be thinking of making a dash for it; then he looked back at the desk and saw the younger policeman, who had not yet said a word, staring at him watchfully. He seemed to give up the idea of escape. He turned back to Margaret. “Who give you that black eye, your old man?”

Margaret found her voice and said: “I got lost in the blackout and bumped into a pillar box.”

It was his turn to be surprised. He had taken her for a working-class girl. Now, hearing her accent, he realized his mistake. Without a blink he reverted to his former persona. “I say, what jolly bad luck!”

Margaret was fascinated. Which was his real self? He smelled of cologne. His hair was well cut, if a fraction too long. He wore a midnight blue evening suit in the fashion set by Edward VIII, with silk socks and patent-leather shoes. His jewelry was very good: diamond studs in his shirt front, with matching cuff links; a gold wristwatch with a black crocodile strap; and a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. His hands were large and strong-looking, but his fingernails were perfectly clean.

In a low voice she said: “Did you really leave the restaurant without paying?”

He looked at her appraisingly, then seemed to reach a decision. “Actually, I did,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.

“But why?”

“Because, if I’d listened for one more minute to Rebecca Maugham-Flint talking about her blasted horses, I should have been unable to resist the urge to take her by the throat and strangle her.”

Margaret giggled. She knew Rebecca Maugham-Flint, who was a large, plain girl, the daughter of a general, with her father’s hearty manner and parade-ground voice. “I can just imagine it,” she said. It would be hard to think of a more unsuitable dinner companion for the attractive Mr. Marks.

Constable Steve appeared and picked up her empty mug. “Feeling better, Lady Margaret?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harry Marks react to her title. “Much better, thank you,” she said. For a moment she had forgotten her own troubles in talking to Harry, but now she remembered all she had to do. “You’ve been so kind,” she went on. “Now I’m going to leave you to get on with more important things.”

“No need for you to rush off,” the constable said. “Your father, the marquis, is on his way to fetch you.”

Margaret’s heart stopped. How could this be? She had been so convinced that she was safe—she had underestimated her father! Now she was as frightened as she had been walking along the road to the railway station. He was after her, on his way here at this very minute! She felt shaky. “How does he know where I am?” she said in a high, strained voice.

The young policeman looked proud. “Your description was circulated late yesterday evening, and I read it when I come on duty. I never recognized you in the blackout, but I remembered the name. The instruction is to inform the marquis immediately. As soon as I brought you in here, I rung him up on the telephone.”

Margaret stood up, her heart fluttering wildly. “I shan’t wait for him,” she said. “It’s light now.”

The policeman looked anxious. “Just a minute,” he said nervously. He turned to the desk. “Sarge, the lady doesn’t want to wait for her father.”

Harry Marks said to Margaret: “They can’t make you stay—running away from home isn’t a crime at your age. If you want to go, just walk out.”

Margaret was terrified that they would find some excuse to detain her.

The sergeant got off his seat and came around the counter. “He’s quite right,” the sergeant said. “You can go any time you like.”

“Oh, thank you,” Margaret said gratefully.

The sergeant smiled. “But you’ve got no shoes, and there’s holes in your stockings. If you must leave before your father gets here, at least let us call a taxi.”

She thought for a moment. They had phoned Father as soon as Margaret arrived at the police station, but that was less than an hour ago. Father could not possibly get here for another hour or more. “All right,” she said to the kindly sergeant. “Thank you.”

He opened a door off the hall. “You’ll be more comfortable in here, while you wait for the taxi.” He switched on the light.

Margaret would have preferred to stay and talk to the fascinating Harry Marks, but she did not want to refuse the sergeant’s kindness, especially after he had given in to her. “Thank you,” she said again.

As she walked to the door she heard Harry say: “More fool you.”

She stepped into the little room. There were some cheap chairs and a bench, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a barred window. She could not imagine why the sergeant thought this more comfortable than the hallway. She turned to tell him so.

The door closed in her face. A presentiment of ruin filled her heart with dread. She lunged at the door and grabbed the handle. As she did so her sudden fear was confirmed and she heard a key turn in the lock. She rattled the handle furiously. The door would not open.

She slumped in despair with her head against the wood.

From outside she heard a low laugh, then Harry’s voice, muffled but comprehensible, saying: “You bastard.”

The sergeant’s voice was now anything but kindly. “You shut your hole,” he said crudely.

“You’ve got no right—you know that.”

“Her father’s a bloody marquis, and that’s all the right I need.”

No more was said.

Margaret realized bitterly that she had lost. Her great escape had failed. She had been betrayed by the very people she thought were helping her. For a little while she had been free, but now it was over. She would not be joining the A.T.S. today, she thought miserably: she would be boarding the Pan Am Clipper and flying to New York, running away from the war. After all she had been through, her fate was unchanged. It seemed so desperately unfair.

After a long moment she turned from the door and walked the few steps to the window. She could see an empty yard and a brick wall. She stood there, defeated and helpless, looking through the bars at the brightening daylight, waiting for her father.

Eddie Deakin gave the Pan American Clipper a final once-over. The four Wright Cyclone 1500-horsepower engines gleamed with oil. Each engine was as high as a man. All fifty-six spark plugs had been replaced. On impulse, Eddie took a feeler gauge from his overalls pocket and slid it into an engine mount between the rubber and the metal, to test the bond. The pounding vibration of the long flight put a terrific strain on the adhesive. But Eddie’s feeler would not go in even a quarter of an inch. The mounts were holding.

He closed the hatch and climbed down the ladder. While the plane was being eased back into the water he would change out of his overalls, get cleaned up and put on his black Pan American flight uniform.

The sun was shining as he left the dock and strolled up the hill toward the hotel where the crew stayed during the layover. He was proud of the plane and the job he did. The Clipper crews were elite, the best men the airline had, for the new transatlantic service was the most prestigious route. All his life he would be able to say he had flown the Atlantic in the early days.

However, he was planning to give it up soon. He was thirty years old, he had been married for a year, and Carol-Ann was pregnant. Flying was all right for a single man, but he was not going to spend his life away from his wife and children. He had been saving money and he had almost enough to start a business of his own. He had an option on a site near Bangor, Maine, that would make a perfect airfield. He would service planes and sell fuel, and eventually have an aircraft for charter. Secretly he dreamed that one day he might have an airline of his own, like the pioneering Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American.

He entered the grounds of the Langdown Lawn Hotel. It was a piece of luck for Pan American crews that there was such a pleasant hotel a mile or so from the Imperial Airways complex. The place was a typical English country house, run by a gracious couple who charmed everyone and served tea on the lawn on sunny afternoons.

He went inside. In the hall he ran into his assistant engineer, Desmond Finn—known, inevitably, as Mickey. Mickey reminded Eddie of the Jimmy Olsen character in the Superman comics: he was a happy-go-lucky type with a big toothy grin and a propensity to hero-worship Eddie, who found such adoration embarrassing. He was speaking into the telephone, and now when he saw Eddie he said: “Oh, wait. You’re lucky. He just walked in.” He handed the earpiece to Eddie and said: “A phone call for you.” Then he went upstairs, politely leaving Eddie alone.

Eddie spoke into the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Edward Deakin?”

Eddie frowned. The voice was unfamiliar, and nobody called him Edward. He said: “Yes, I’m Eddie Deakin. Who are you?”

“Wait. I have your wife on the line, ”

Eddie’s heart lurched. Why was Carol-Ann calling him from the States? Something was wrong.

A moment later he heard her voice. “Eddie?”

“Hi, honey. What’s up?”

She burst into tears.

A whole series of awful explanations came to mind: the house had burned down, someone had died, she had hurt herself in some kind of accident, she had suffered a miscarriage—

“Carol-Ann, calm down. Are you all right?”

She spoke through sobs. “I’m ... not ... hurt—”

“What, then?” he said fearfully. “What’s happened? Try to tell me, babe.”

“These men... came to the house.”

Eddie went cold with dread. “What men? What did they do?”

“They made me get into a car.”

“Jesus God, who are they?” The anger was like a pain in his chest and he had to fight for breath. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m all right ... but, Eddie, I’m so scared.”

He did not know what to say next. Too many questions came to his lips. Men had gone to his house and forced Carol-Ann to get into a car! What was happening? Finally he said: “But why?”

“They won’t tell me.”

“What did they say?”

“Eddie, you have to do what they want—that’s all I know.”

Even in his anger and fear, Eddie heard Pop say Never sign a blank check. All the same he did not hesitate. “I’ll do it, but what—”

“Promise! ”

“I promise!”

“Thank God.”

“When did this happen?”

“A couple of hours ago.”

“Where are you now?”

“We’re in a house not far—Her speech turned into a shocked cry.

“Carol-Ann! What’s happening? Are you okay?”

There was no response. Furious, frightened and impotent, Eddie squeezed the phone until his knuckles turned white.

Then the original male voice returned. “Listen to me very carefully, Edward. ”

“No, you listen to me, shitheel,” Eddie raged. “If you hurt her I’ll kill you, I swear to God, I’ll track you down if it takes as long as I live, and when I find you, you punk, I’ll tear your head off your neck with my hands. Now do you read me loud and clear?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, as if the man at the other end of the line had not expected such a tirade. Then he said: “Don’t act tough. You’re too far away.” He sounded a little shaken, but he was right: Eddie could do nothing. The man went on: “Just pay attention.”

Eddie held his tongue with an effort.

“You’ll get your instructions on the plane from a man called Tom Luther.”

On the plane! What did that mean? Would this Tom Luther be a passenger, or what? Eddie said: “But what do you want me to do?”

“Shut up. Luther will tell you. And you’d better follow his orders to the letter, if you want to see your wife again.”

“How do I know—”

“And one more thing. Don’t call the police. It won’t do you any good. But if you do call them, I’ll fuck her just to be mean.”

“You bastard, I’ll—”

The line went dead.

CHAPTER THREE

Harry Marks was the luckiest man alive.

His mother had always told him he was lucky. Although his father had been killed in the Great War, he was lucky to have had a strong and capable mother to bring him up. She cleaned offices for a living, and all through the Slump she had never been out of work. They lived in a tenement in Battersea, with a cold-water tap on each landing and outside toilets, but they were surrounded by good neighbors who helped one another through times of trouble. Harry had a knack of escaping from trouble! When boys were being thrashed at school, the teacher’s cane would break just before he got to Harry. Harry could fall under a horse and cart and have them pass over him without touching him.

It was his love of jewelry that had made him a thief. As an adolescent he had loved to walk along the opulent shopping streets of the . West End and look in the windows of jewelers’ shops. He was enraptured by the diamonds and precious stones glinting on dark velvet pads under the bright display lights. He liked them for their beauty, but also because they symbolized a kind of life he had read about in books, a life of spacious country houses with broad green lawns, where pretty girls with names like Lady Penelope and Jessica Chumley played tennis all afternoon and came in panting for tea.

He had been apprenticed to a jeweler, but he had been bored and restless, and he left after six months. Mending broken watch straps and enlarging wedding rings for overweight wives had no glamour. But he had learned to tell a ruby from a red garnet, a natural pearl from a cultured one, and a modern brilliant-cut diamond from a nineteenth-century old mine cut. He had also discovered the difference between an appropriate setting and an ugly one, a graceful design and a tasteless piece of ostentation; and the ability to discriminate had further inflamed his lust for beautiful jewelry and his longing for the style of life that went with it.

He eventually found a way to satisfy both desires by making use of girls such as Rebecca Maugham-Flint.

He had met Rebecca at Ascot. He often picked up rich girls at race meetings. The open air and the crowds made it possible for him to hover between two groups of young racegoers in such a way that everyone thought he was part of the other group. Rebecca was a tall girl with a big nose, dreadfully dressed in a ruched jersey dress and a Robin Hood hat with a feather in it. None of the young men around her paid any attention to her, and she was pathetically grateful to Harry for talking to her.

He had not pursued the acquaintanceship right away, for it was best not to seem eager. But when he ran into her a month later, at an art gallery, she greeted him like an old friend and introduced him to her mother.

Girls such as Rebecca were not supposed to go unchaperoned to cinemas and restaurants with boys, of course; only shopgirls and factory workers did that. So they would pretend to their parents that they were going out in a crowd; and to make it look right, they would generally begin the evening at a cocktail party. Afterward they could go off discreetly in pairs. This suited Harry ideally: since he was not officially “courting” Rebecca, her parents saw no need to look closely into his background, and they never questioned the vague lies he told about a country house in Yorkshire, a minor public school in Scotland, an invalid mother living in the south of France and a prospective commission in the Royal Air Force.

Vague lies were common in upper-class society, he had found. They were told by young men who did not want to admit to being desperately poor, or having parents who were hopeless drunks, or coming from families that had disgraced themselves by scandal. No one troubled to pin a fellow down until he showed signs of a serious attachment to a well-bred girl.

In this indefinite way Harry had been going around with Rebecca for three weeks. She had got him invited to a weekend house party in Kent, where he had played cricket and stolen money from the hosts, who had been too embarrassed to report the theft for fear of offending their guests. She had also taken him to several balls, where he had picked pockets and emptied purses. In addition, when calling at her parents’ house he had taken small sums of money, some silver cutlery and three interesting Victorian brooches that her mother had not yet missed.

There was nothing immoral in what he did, in his opinion. The people from whom he stole did not deserve their wealth. Most of them had never done a day’s work in their lives. Those few who had to have some kind of job used their public-school connections to get overpaid sinecures: they were diplomats, chairmen of companies, judges or Conservative MPs. Stealing from them was like killing Nazis: a service to the public, not a crime.

He had been doing this for two years, and he knew it could not go on forever. The world of upper-class English society was large but limited, and eventually someone would find him out. The war had come at a time when he was ready to look for a different way of life.

However, he was not going to join the army as a regular soldier. Bad food, itchy clothes, bullying and military discipline were not for him, and he looked sickly in olive drab. Air force blue matched his eyes, however, and he could easily see himself as a pilot. So he was going to be an officer in the R.A.F He had not yet figured out how, but he would manage it: he was lucky that way.

In the meantime he decided to use Rebecca to get inside one more wealthy home before dropping her.

They began the evening at a reception in the Belgravia home of Sir Simon Monkford, a rich publisher.

Harry spent some time with the Honorable Lydia Moss, the overweight daughter of a Scottish earl. Awkward and lonely, she was just the kind of girl who was most vulnerable to his charm, and he enchanted her for twenty minutes more or less out of habit. Then he talked to Rebecca for a while, to keep her sweet. After that, he judged the time was right to make his move.

He excused himself and left the room. The party was going on in the large double drawing room on the second floor. As he crossed the landing and slipped up the stairs he felt the thrilling rush of adrenaline that always came to him when he was about to do a job. The knowledge that he was going to steal from his hosts, and risk being caught red-handed and shown up as a fraud, filled him with fear and excitement.

He reached the next floor and followed the corridor to the front of the house. The farthest door probably led to the master bedroom suite, he thought. He opened it and saw a large bedroom with flowered curtains and a pink bedspread. He was about to step inside when another door opened and a challenging voice called out: “I say!”

Harry turned around, his tension drawing tighter. He saw a man of about his own age step into the corridor and look curiously at him.

As always, the right words came to him when he needed them. “Ah, is it in there?” he said.

“What?”

“Is that the lav?”

The young man’s face cleared. “Oh, I see. You want the green door at the other end of the corridor.”

“Thanks awfully.”

“Not at all.”

Harry went along the corridor. “Lovely house,” he remarked.

“Isn’t it?” The man descended the staircase and disappeared.

Harry allowed himself a pleased grin. People could be so gullible.

He retraced his steps and went into the pink bedroom. As usual, there was a suite of rooms. The color scheme indicated that this was Lady Monkford’s room. A rapid survey revealed a small dressing room off to one side, also decorated in pink; an adjoining, smaller bedroom, with green leather chairs and striped wallpaper; and a gentleman’s dressing room off that. Upper-class couples often slept separately, Harry had learned. He had not yet decided whether that was because they were less randy than the working class, or because they felt obliged to make use of all the many rooms in their vast houses.

Sir Simon’s dressing room was furnished with a heavy mahogany wardrobe and matching chest. Harry opened the top drawer of the chest. There, inside a small leather jewel box, was an assortment of studs, collar stiffeners and cuff links, not neatly arranged but tumbled about haphazardly. Most of them were rather ordinary, but Harry’s discriminating eye lit on a charming pair of gold cuff links with small rubies inset. He put them in his pocket. Next to the jewel box was a soft leather wallet containing about fifty pounds in five-pound notes. Harry took twenty pounds and felt pleased with himself. Easy, he thought. It would take most people two months’ hard work in a dirty factory to earn twenty pounds.

He never stole everything. Taking just a few items created a doubt. People thought they might have mislaid the jewelry or made a mistake about how much was in the wallet, so they hesitated to report the theft.

He closed the drawer and moved into Lady Monkford’s bedroom. He was tempted to get out now with the useful haul he had already made, but he decided to risk a few minutes more. Women generally had better jewelry than their husbands. Lady Monkford might have sapphires. Harry loved sapphires.

It was a fine evening, and a window was open wide. Harry glanced through it and saw a small balcony with a wrought-iron balustrade. He went quickly into the dressing room and sat at the dressing table. He opened all the drawers and found several boxes and trays of jewelry. He began to go through them rapidly, listening warily for the sound of the door opening.

Lady Monkford did not have good taste. She was a pretty woman who had struck Harry as rather ineffectual, and she—or her husband—chose showy, rather cheap jewelry. Her pearls were ill-matched, her brooches big and ugly, her earrings clumsy and her bracelets flashy. He was disappointed.

He was hesitating over an almost attractive pendant when he heard the bedroom door open.

He froze, stomach in a knot, thinking fast.

The only door out of the dressing room led to the bedroom.

There was a small window, but it was firmly closed and he probably could not open it quickly or silently enough. He wondered if he had time to hide in the wardrobe.

From where he stood, he could not quite see the bedroom door. He heard it close again; then there were a feminine cough and light footsteps on the carpet. He leaned toward the mirror and found he could see into the bedroom. Lady Monkford had come in, and she was heading for the dressing room. There was not even time to close the drawers.

His breath came fast. He was taut with fear, but he had been in spots like this before. He paused for one more moment, forcing himself to breathe evenly, calming his mind. Then he moved.

He stood up, stepped quickly through the door into the bedroom, and said: “I say!”

Lady Monkford was brought up short in the middle of the room. She put her hand to her mouth and let out a tiny scream.

A flowered curtain flapped in the breeze from the open window, and Harry was inspired.

“I say,” he repeated, deliberately sounding a bit stupefied. “I’ve just seen someone jump out of your window.”

She found her voice. “What on earth do you mean?” she said. “And what are you doing in my bedroom?”

Acting the part, Harry strode to the window and looked out. “Gone already!” he said.

“Please explain yourself!”

Harry took a deep breath, as if marshaling his thoughts. Lady Monkford was about forty, a fluttery woman in a green silk dress. If he kept his nerve, he could deal with her. He smiled winningly, assumed the persona of a hearty, rugby-playing, overgrown schoolboy—a type that must be familiar to her—and began to pull the wool over her eyes.

“It’s the oddest thing I ever saw,” he said. “I was in the corridor when a strange-looking cove peeped out of this room. He caught my eye and ducked back in again. I knew it was your bedroom, because I had looked in here myself when I was hunting for the bathroom. I wondered what the chap was up to—he didn’t look like one of your servants and he certainly wasn’t a guest. So I came along to ask him. When I opened the door he jumped out of the window.” Then, to account for the still-open drawers of the dressing table, he added: “I’ve just looked into your dressing room, and I’m afraid there’s no doubt he was after your jewelry.”

That was brilliant, he said admiringly to himself. I should be on the bleedin’ wireless.

She put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, what a dreadful thing,” she said weakly.

“You’d better sit down,” Harry said solicitously. He helped her to a small pink chair.

“To think!” she said. “If you hadn’t chased him off, he would have been here when I walked in! I’m afraid I shall faint.” She grasped Harry’s hand and held it tightly. “I’m so grateful to you.”

Harry smothered a grin. He had got away with it again.

He thought ahead for a moment. He did not want her to make too much fuss. Ideally he would like her to keep the whole thing to herself. “Look, don’t tell Rebecca what’s happened, will you?” he said as a first step. “She’s got a nervous disposition and something like this could lay her low for weeks.”

“Me, too,” said Lady Monkford. “Weeks!” She was too upset to reflect that the muscular, hearty Rebecca was hardly the type to have a nervous disposition.

“You’ll probably have to call the police, and so on, but it will spoil the party,” he went on.

“Oh, dear—that would be too dreadful. Do we have to call them?”

“Well ...” Harry concealed his satisfaction. “It rather depends on what the blighter stole. Why don’t you have a quick look?”

“Oh, goodness, yes, I’d better.”

Harry squeezed her hand for encouragement, then helped her up. They went into the dressing room. She gasped when she saw all the drawers open. Harry handed her to her chair. She sat down and started looking through her jewelry. After a moment she said: “I don’t think he can have taken much.”

“Perhaps I surprised him before he got started,” Harry said.

She continued sorting through the necklaces, bracelets and brooches. “I think you must have,” she said. “How wonderful you are.”

“If you haven’t lost anything, you don’t really have to tell anyone.”

“Except Sir Simon, of course,” she said.

“Of course,” Harry said, although he had hoped otherwise. “You could tell him after the party’s over. That way at least you won’t spoil his evening.”

“What a good idea,” she said gratefully.

This was very satisfactory. Harry was immensely relieved. He decided to quit while he was so far ahead. “I’d better go down,” he said. “I’ll leave you to catch your breath.” He bent swiftly and kissed her cheek. She was taken by surprise, and she blushed. He whispered in her ear: “I think you’re terribly brave.” With that, he went out.

Middle-aged women were even easier than their daughters, he thought. In the empty corridor he caught sight of himself in a mirror. He stopped to adjust his bow tie and grinned triumphantly at his reflection. “You are a devil, Harold,” he murmured.

The party was coming to an end. When Harry reentered the drawing room, Rebecca said irritably: “Where have you been?”

“Talking to our hostess,” he replied. “Sorry. Shall we take our leave?”

He walked out of the house with his host’s cuff links and twenty pounds in his pocket.

They got a cab in Belgrave Square and rode to a restaurant in Piccadilly. Harry loved good restaurants: he got a deep sense of well-being from the crisp napkins, the polished glasses, the menus in French and the deferential waiters. His father had never seen the inside of such a place. His mother might have, if she had come in to clean it. He ordered a bottle of champagne, consulting the list carefully and choosing a vintage he knew to be good but not rare, so that the price was not too high.

When he first started taking girls to restaurants, he had made a few mistakes; but he was a quick learner. One useful trick had been to leave the menu unopened, and say: “I’d like a sole. Have you got any?” The waiter would open the menu and show him where it said Sole meuniere, Les goujons de sole avec sauce tartare, and Sole grillée, and then, seeing him hesitate, would probably say: “The goujons are very nice, sir.” Harry soon learned the French for all the basic dishes. He also noticed that people who frequently ate in such places quite often asked the waiter what a particular dish was: wealthy English people did not necessarily understand French. Thereafter he made a point of asking for the translation of one dish every time he ate in a fancy restaurant; and now he could read a menu better than most rich boys of his age. Wine was no problem, either. Sommeliers were normally pleased to be asked for a recommendation, and they did not expect a young man to be familiar with all the chateaus and communes and the different vintages. The trick, in restaurants as in life, was to appear at ease, especially when you were not.

The champagne he chose was good, but there was something wrong with his mood tonight, and he soon figured out that the problem was Rebecca. He kept thinking how delightful it would be to bring a pretty girl to a place like this. He always went out with unattractive girls: plain girls, fat girls, spotty girls, silly girls. They were easy to get acquainted with; and then, once they had fallen for him, they were eager to take him at face value, reluctant to question him in case they should lose him. As a strategy for getting inside wealthy homes it was matchless. The snag was that he spent all his time with girls he did not like. One day, perhaps ...

Rebecca was sullen tonight. She was discontented about something. Perhaps after seeing Harry regularly for three weeks, she was wondering why he still had not attempted to “go too far,” by which she would mean touching her breasts. The truth was he could not pretend to lust after her. He could charm her, romance her, make her laugh, and make her love him; but he could not desire her. On one excruciating occasion, he had found himself in a hayloft with a skinny, depressed girl set on losing her virginity, and he had tried to force himself; but his body had refused to cooperate, and he still squirmed with embarrassment every time he thought of it.

His sexual experience, such as it was, was mostly with girls of his own class, and none of those relationships had lasted. He had had just one deeply satisfying love affair. At the age of eighteen he had been shamelessly picked up in Bond Street by an older woman, the bored wife of a busy solicitor, and they had been lovers for two years. He had learned a lot from her—about making love, which she taught him enthusiastically; about upper-class manners, which he picked up surreptitiously; and about poetry, which they read and discussed in bed together. Harry had been deeply fond of her. She ended the affair instantly and brutally when her husband found out that she had a lover (he never knew who). Since then, Harry had seen them both several times: the woman always looked at him as if he were not there. Harry found this cruel. She had meant a lot to him, and she had seemed to care for him. Was she strong-willed, or just heartless? He would probably never know.

The champagne and the good food were not lifting Harry’s spirits or Rebecca’s. He began to feel restless. He had been planning to drop her gently after tonight, but suddenly he could not bear the thought of spending even the rest of this evening with her. He wished he had not wasted money on dinner for her. He looked at her grumpy face, bare of makeup and squashed beneath a silly little hat with a feather, and he began to hate her.

When they had finished dessert, he ordered coffee and went to the bathroom. The cloakroom was right next to the men’s room, near the exit door, and not visible from their table. Harry was seized by an irresistible impulse. He got his hat, tipped the cloakroom attendant, and slipped out of the restaurant.

It was a mild night. The blackout made it very dark, but Harry knew the West End well, and there were traffic lights to navigate by, plus the sparing glow of car side lights. He felt as if he had been let out of school. He had got rid of Rebecca, saved himself seven or eight pounds and given himself a night off, all in one inspired stroke.

The theaters, cinemas and dance halls had been closed by the government, “until the scale of the German attack upon Britain has been judged,” they said. But nightclubs always operated on the fringe of the law and there were still plenty open if you knew where to look. Soon Harry was making himself comfortable at a table in a cellar in Soho, sipping whiskey and listening to a first-rate American jazz band and toying with the idea of making a play for the cigarette girl.

He was still thinking about it when Rebecca’s brother came in.

The following morning he sat in a cell in the basement underneath the courthouse, depressed and remorseful, waiting to be taken before the magistrates. He was in deep trouble.

Walking out of the restaurant like that had been bloody silly. Rebecca was not the type to swallow her pride and pay the bill quietly. She had made a fuss, the manager had called the police, her family had been dragged in.... It was just the kind of furor Harry was normally very careful to avoid. Even so, he would have got away with it, had it not been for the incredible bad luck of running into Rebecca’s brother a couple of hours later.

He was in a large cell with fifteen or twenty other prisoners, who would be brought before the Bench this morning. There were no windows, and the room was full of cigarette smoke. Harry would not be tried today: this would be a preliminary hearing.

He would eventually be convicted, of course. The evidence against him was indisputable. The headwaiter would corroborate Rebecca’s complaint, and Sir Simon Monkford would identify the cuff links as his.

But it was worse than that. Harry had been interviewed by an inspector from the Criminal Intelligence Department. The man had been wearing the detective’s uniform of serviceable serge suit, plain white shirt and black tie, waistcoat with no watch chain, and highly polished, well-worn boots; and he was an experienced policeman with a sharp mind and a wary manner. He had said: “For the last two or three years we’ve been getting odd reports, from wealthy houses, of lost jewelry. Not stolen, of course. Just missing. Bracelets, earrings, pendants, shirt studs ... The losers are quite sure the stuff can’t have been stolen, because the only people who had the opportunity to take it would have been their guests. The only reason they report it is that they want to claim it if it turns up somewhere.”

Harry had kept his mouth shut tight throughout the entire interview, but inside he was feeling sick. He had been sure that his career had gone entirely unnoticed until now. He was shocked to learn the opposite: they had been on to him for some time.

The detective opened a fat file. “The Earl of Dorset, a Georgian silver bonbonnière and a lacquered snuffbox, also Georgian. Mrs. Harry Jaspers, a pearl bracelet with ruby clasp by Tiffany’s. The Contessa di Malvoli, an Art Deco diamond pendant on a silver chain. This man has good taste.” The detective looked pointedly at the diamond studs in Harry’s dress shirt.

Harry realized the file must contain details of dozens of crimes committed by him. He knew also that he would eventually be convicted of at least some of those crimes. This shrewd detective had put together all the basic facts: he could easily gather witnesses to say that Harry had been at each location at the time of the theft. Sooner or later they would search his lodgings and his mother’s house. Most of the jewelry had been fenced, but he had kept a few pieces: the shirt studs the detective had noticed had been taken from a sleeping drunk at a ball in Grosvenor Square, and his mother had a brooch he had deftly plucked from the bosom of a countess at a wedding reception in a Surrey garden. And then how would he answer when they asked him what he lived on?

He was headed for a long stretch in jail. And when he got out, he would be conscripted into the army, which was more or less the same thing. The thought made his blood run cold.

He steadfastly refused to say a word, even when the detective took him by the lapels of his dinner jacket and slammed him against the wall; but silence would not save him. The law had time on its side.

Harry had only one chance of freedom. He would have to persuade the magistrates to give him bail, then disappear. Suddenly he yearned for freedom as if he had been in jail for years instead of hours.

Disappearing would not be simple, but the alternative made him shiver.

In robbing the rich, he had grown accustomed to their style of living. He got up late, drank coffee from a china cup, wore beautiful clothes and ate in expensive restaurants. He still enjoyed returning to his roots, drinking in the pub with old mates or taking his ma to the Odeon. But the thought of prison was unbearable: the dirty clothes, the horrible food, the total lack of privacy and, worst of all, the grinding boredom of a totally pointless existence.

With a shudder of loathing he concentrated his mind on the problem of getting bail.

The police would oppose bail, of course; but the magistrates would make the decision. Harry had never appeared in court before, but in the streets from which he came, people knew these things just as they knew who was eligible for a council house and how to sweep chimneys. Bail was automatically refused only in murder trials. Otherwise it was up to the discretion of the magistrates. Normally they did what the police asked, but not always. Sometimes they could be talked around, by a clever lawyer or by a defendant with a sob story about a sick child. Sometimes, if the police prosecutor was a little too arrogant, they would give bail just to assert their independence. He would have to put up some money, probably twenty-five or fifty pounds. This was no problem. He had plenty of money. He had been allowed to make a phone call, and he had rung the newsagent’s shop on the comer of the street where his ma lived and asked Bemie, the proprietor, to send one of the paper boys to fetch Ma to the phone. When finally she got there, he told her where to find his money.

“They’ll give me bail, Ma,” Harry said cockily.

“I know, son,” his mother said. “You’ve always been lucky.”

But if not ...

I’ve got out of awkward situations before, he told himself cheerily. But not this awkward.

A warder shouted out: “Marks!”

Harry stood up. He had not planned what he would say: he was a spur-of-the-moment improviser. But for once he wished he had something prepared. Let’s get it over with, he thought edgily. He buttoned his jacket, adjusted his bow tie and straightened the square of white linen in his breast pocket. He rubbed his chin and wished he had been allowed to shave. At the last minute the germ of a story appeared in his mind, and he took the cuff links out of his shirt and pocketed them.

The gate was opened and he stepped outside.

He was led up a concrete staircase and emerged in the dock in the middle of the courtroom. In front of him were the lawyers’ seats, all empty; the magistrates’ clerk, a qualified lawyer, behind his desk; and the Bench, with three nonprofessional magistrates.

Harry thought: Christ, I hope the bastards let me go.

In the press gallery, to one side, was a young reporter with a notebook. Harry turned around and looked toward the back of the court. There in the public seats he spotted Ma, in her best coat and a new hat. She tapped her pocket significantly: Harry took that to mean that she had the money for his bail. He saw to his horror that she was wearing the brooch he had stolen from the Countess of Eyer.

He faced front and grasped the rail to keep his hands from trembling. The prosecutor, a bald police inspector with a big nose, was saying: “Number three on your list, your worships: theft of twenty pounds in money and a pair of gold cuff links worth fifteen guineas, the property of Sir Simon Monkford; and obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception at the Saint Raphael restaurant in Piccadilly. The police are requesting a remand in custody because we are investigating further offenses involving large sums of money.”

Harry was studying the magistrates warily. On one side was an old codger with white sideburns and a stiff collar, and on the other a military type in a regimental tie: they both looked down their noses at him, and he guessed they believed that everyone who appeared before them must be guilty of something. He felt hopeless. Then he told himself that stupid prejudice could quickly be turned into equally foolish credulity. Better they should not be too clever, if he was going to pull the wool over their eyes. The chairman, in the middle, was the only one who really counted. He was a middle-aged man with a gray mustache and a gray suit, and his world-weary air suggested that in his time he had heard more tall stories and plausible excuses than he cared to remember. He would be the one to watch, Harry thought anxiously.

The chairman now said to Harry: “Are you asking for bail?”

Harry pretended to be confused. “Oh! Goodness gracious! I think so. Yes—yes, I am.”

All three magistrates sat up and began to take notice when they heard his upper-class accent. Harry enjoyed the effect. He was proud of his ability to confound people’s social expectations. The reaction of the Bench gave him heart. I can fool them, he thought. I bet I can.

The chairman said: “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Harry was listening carefully to the chairman’s accent, trying to place his social class precisely. He decided the man was educated middle class: a pharmacist, perhaps, or a bank manager. He would be shrewd, but he would be in the habit of deferring to the upper classes.

Harry put on an expression of embarrassment, and adopted the tone of a schoolboy addressing a headmaster. “I’m afraid there’s been the most frightful muddle, sir,” he began. The interest of the magistrates went up another notch, and they shifted in their seats and leaned forward interestedly. This was not going to be a run-of-the-mill case, they could see, and they were grateful for some relief from the usual tedium. Harry went on: “To tell you the truth, some of the fellows drank too much port at the Carlton Club yesterday, and that was really the cause of it all.” He paused, as if that might be all he had to say, and looked expectantly at the Bench.

The military magistrate said: “The Carlton Club!” His expression said it was not often that members of that august institution appeared before the Bench.

Harry wondered if he had gone too far. Perhaps they would refuse to believe that he was a member. He hurried on: “It’s dreadfully embarrassing, but I shall go round and apologize immediately to all concerned and get the whole thing straightened out without delay ...” He pretended to remember suddenly that he was wearing evening dress. “That is, as soon as I’ve changed.”

The old codger said: “Are you saying you didn’t intend to take twenty pounds and a pair of cuff links?”

His tone was incredulous, but nevertheless it was a good sign that they were asking questions. It meant they were not dismissing his story out of hand. If they had not believed a word of what he was saying they would not have bothered to challenge him on the details. His heart lifted: perhaps he would be freed!

He said: “I did borrow the cuff links—I had come out without my own.” He held up his arms to show the unfastened cuffs of his dress shirt sticking out from the sleeves of his jacket. His cuff links were in his pocket.

The old codger said: “And what about the twenty pounds?”

That was a harder question, Harry realized anxiously. No plausible excuse came to mind. You might forget your cuff links and casually borrow someone else’s, but borrowing money without permission was the same as stealing. He was on the edge of panic when inspiration rescued him once again. “I do think Sir Simon might have been mistaken about how much there was in his wallet originally.” Harry lowered his voice, as if to say something to the magistrates that the common people in the court ought not to hear. “He is frightfully rich, sir.”

The chairman said: “He didn’t get rich by forgetting how much money he had.” There was a ripple of laughter from the people in the court. A sense of humor might have been an encouraging sign, but the chairman did not crack a smile: he had not intended to be funny. He’s a bank manager, Harry thought; money’s no joking matter. The magistrate went on. “And why did you not pay your bill at the restaurant?”

“I say, I am most awfully sorry about that. I had the most appalling row with—with my dining partner.” Harry ostentatiously refrained from saying who he was dining with: it was bad form, among public-school boys, to bandy a woman’s name about, and the magistrates would know that. “I’m afraid I sort of stormed out, completely forgetting about the bill.”

The chairman looked over the top of his spectacles and fixed Harry with a hard stare. Harry felt he had gone wrong somewhere. His heart sank. What had he said? It occurred to him that he had displayed a casual attitude toward a debt. This was normal among the upper classes but a deadly sin to a bank manager. Panic seized him and he felt he was about to lose everything by a small error of judgment. Quickly he blurted out: “Fearfully irresponsible of me, sir, and I shall go round there this lunchtime and settle up, of course. That is, if you let me go.”

He could not tell whether the chairman was mollified or not. “So you’re telling me that when you have made your explanations the charges against you are likely to be dropped?”

Harry decided he ought to guard against appearing to have a glib answer to every question. He hung his head and looked foolish. “I suppose it would serve me bally well right if people refused to drop the charges.”

“It probably would,” the chairman said sternly.

You pompous old fart, Harry thought; but he knew that this kind of thing, though humiliating, was good for his case. The more they scolded him, the less likely they were to send him back to jail.

“Is there anything else you would like to say?” the chairman asked.

In a low voice Harry replied: “Only that I’m most frightfully ashamed of myself, sir.”

“Hm.” The chairman grunted skeptically, but the military man nodded approvingly.

The three magistrates conferred in murmurs for a while. After a few moments, Harry realized he was holding his breath, and forced himself to let it out. It was unbearable that his whole future should be in the hands of these old duffers. He wished they would hurry up and make up their minds; when they all nodded in unison he wished they would postpone the awful moment.

The chairman looked up. “I hope a night in the cells has taught you a lesson,” he said.

Oh, God, I think he’s going to let me go, Harry thought. He swallowed and said: “Absolutely, sir. I never want to go back there again, ever”.

“Make sure of it.”

There was another pause; then the chairman looked away from Harry and addressed the court. “I’m not saying we believe everything we’ve heard, but we don’t think this is a case for a custodial remand.”

A wave of relief washed over Harry, and his legs went weak.

The chairman said: “Remanded for seven days. Bail in the sum of fifty pounds.”

Harry was free.

He saw the streets with new eyes, as if he had been in jail for a year instead of a few hours. London was getting ready for war. Dozens of huge silver balloons floated high in the skies to obstruct German planes. Shops and public buildings were surrounded by sandbags, to protect them from bomb damage. There were new air-raid shelters in the parks, and everyone carried a gas mask. People felt they might be wiped out at any minute, and this caused them to drop their reserve and converse amiably with total strangers.

Harry had no memory of the Great War—he had been two years old when it ended. As a little boy he had thought “The War” was a place, for everyone said to him: “Your father was killed in The War,” like they said: “Go and play in The Park. Don’t fall in The River. Ma’s going up The Pub.” Later, when he was old enough to realize what he had lost, any mention of The War was painful to him. With Marjorie, the solicitor’s wife who had been his lover for two years, he had read the poetry of the Great War, and for a while he had called himself a pacifist. Then he had seen the Black Shirts marching in London and the scared faces of the old Jews as they watched, and he had decided some wars might be worth fighting. In the last few years he had been disgusted at the way the British government turned a blind eye to what was happening in Germany, just because they hoped Hitler would destroy the Soviet Union. But now that war had actually broken out, he thought only of all the small boys who would live, as he had, with a hole in their lives where a father should be.

But the bombers had not yet come, and it was another sunny day.

Harry decided not to go to his lodgings. The police would be furious about his getting bail and they would want to rearrest him at the first opportunity. He had better lie low for a while. He did not want to go back to jail. But how long would he have to keep looking back over his shoulder? Could he evade the police forever? And if not, what would he do?

He got on the bus with his ma. He would go to her place in Battersea for the moment.

Ma looked sad. She knew how he made his living, although they had never talked about it. Now she said thoughtfully: “I could never give you nothing.”

“You gave me everything, Ma,” he protested.

“No, I didn’t. Otherwise why would you need to steal?”

He did not have an answer to that.

When they got off the bus he went into the corner newsagent’s, thanked Bemie for calling Ma to the phone earlier and bought the Daily Express. The headline said: POLES BOMB BERLIN. As he came out he saw a bobby cycling along the road, and he felt a moment of foolish panic. He almost turned and ran before he got himself under control and remembered they always sent two people to arrest you.

I can’t live like this, he thought.

They went to Ma’s building and climbed the stone staircase to the fifth floor. Ma put the kettle on and said: “I’ve pressed your blue suit—you can change into that.” She still took care of his clothes, sewing on buttons and darning his silk socks. Harry went into the bedroom, dragged his case from under the bed and counted his money.

After two years of thieving he had two hundred forty-seven pounds. I must have pinched four times that much, he thought. I wonder what I spent the rest on?

He also had an American passport.

He flicked through it thoughtfully. He remembered finding it in a bureau at the home of a diplomat in Kensington. He had noticed that the owner’s name was Harold and the picture looked a little like himself, so he had pocketed it.

America, he thought.

He could do an American accent. In fact, he knew something most British people did not—that there were several different American accents, some of which were posher than others. Take the word Boston. People from Boston would say Bahston. People from New York would say Baa.uston. The more English you sounded, the more upper class you were, in America. And there were millions of rich American girls just waiting to be romanced.

Whereas in this country there was nothing for him but jail and the army.

He had a passport and a pocketful of money. He had a clean suit in his mother’s wardrobe and he could buy a few shirts and a suitcase. He was seventy-five miles from Southampton.

He could be gone today.

It was like a dream.

His mother woke him up by calling from the kitchen: “Harry—d’you want a bacon sandwich?”

“Yes, please.”

He went into the kitchen and sat at the table. She put a sandwich in front of him, but he did not pick it up. “Let’s go to America, Ma,” he said.

She burst out laughing. “Me? America? I should cocoa!”

“I mean it. I’m going.”

She became solemn. “It’s not for me, son. I’m too old to emigrate.”

“But there’s going to be a war.”

“I’ve lived here through one war, and a general strike and a Slump.” She looked around at the tiny kitchen. “It ain’t much but it’s what I know.”

Harry had not really expected her to agree, but now that she had said it, he felt despondent. His mother was all he had.

She said: “What’ll you do there, anyway?”

“Are you worried about me thieving?”

“It always ends up the same way, thieving. I never heard of a tea leaf that wasn’t collared sooner or later.”

A tea leaf was a thief, in rhyming slang. Harry said: “I’d like to join the air force and learn to fly.”

“Would you be allowed?”

“Over there, they don’t care if you’re working class, so long as you’ve got the brains.”

She looked more cheerful then. She sat down and sipped her tea while Harry ate his bacon sandwich. When he had finished he took out his money and counted out fifty pounds.

“What’s that for?” she said. It was as much money as she earned in two years of cleaning offices.

“It’ll come in handy,” he said. “Take it, Ma. I want you to have it.”

She took the money. “You’re really going, then.”

“I’m going to borrow Sid Brennan’s motorbike and drive to Southampton today and get a ship.”

She reached across the little table and took his hand. “Good luck to you, son.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “I’ll send you more money, from America.”

“No need, unless you’ve got it to spare. I’d rather you send me a letter now and again, so I know how you’re going on.”

“Yeah. I’ll write.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Come back and see your old ma one day, won’t you?”

He squeezed her hand. “’Course. I will, Ma. I’ll be back.”

Harry looked at himself in the barber’s mirror. The blue suit, which had cost him thirteen pounds in Savile Row, fitted beautifully and went well with his blue eyes. The soft collar of his new shirt looked American. The barber brushed the padded shoulders of the double-breasted jacket, and Harry tipped him and left.

He went up the marble staircase from the basement and emerged in the ornate lobby of the South-Western Hotel. It was thronged with people. This was the departure point for most transatlantic crossings, and thousands of people were trying to leave England.

Harry had discovered how many when he tried to get a berth on a liner. All the ships were booked up for weeks ahead. Some of the shipping lines had closed their offices rather than waste staff time turning people away. For a while it had looked impossible. He had been ready to give up, and start thinking of another plan, when a travel agent had mentioned the Pan American Clipper.

He had read about the Clipper in the newspapers. The service had started in the summer. You could fly to New York in less than thirty hours, instead of four or five days on a ship. But a one-way ticket cost ninety pounds. Ninety pounds! You could almost buy a new car for that.

Harry had spent the money. It was mad, but now that he had made up his mind to go, he would pay any price to get out of the country. And the plane was seductively luxurious: it would be champagne all the way to New York. This was the kind of insane extravagance that Harry loved.

He was no longer jumping every time he saw a copper: there was no way the Southampton police could know about him. However, he had never flown before, and now he was feeling nervous about that.

He checked his wristwatch, a Patek Philippe stolen from a Royal Equerry. He had time for a quick cup of coffee to settle his stomach. He went into the lounge.

While he was sipping his coffee, a stunningly beautiful woman walked in. She was a perfect blonde, and she wore a wasp-waisted dress of cream silk with orange-red polka dots. She was in her early thirties, about ten years older than Harry, but that did not stop him smiling when he caught her eye.

She sat at the next table, sideways to Harry, and he studied the way the dotted silk clung to her bosom and draped her knees. She had on cream shoes and a straw hat, and she put a small handbag on the table.

After a moment she was joined by a man in a blazer. Hearing them speak, Harry discovered that she was English but he was American. Harry listened carefully, brushing up on his accent. Her name was Diana; the man was Mark. He saw the man touch her arm. She leaned closer. They were in love, and saw no one but each other: the room might have been empty.

Harry felt a pang of envy.

He looked away. He still felt queasy. He was about to fly all the way across the Atlantic. It seemed an awfully long way to go with no land beneath. He had never understood the principle of air travel, anyway: the propellers went round and round, so how come the plane went up?

While he listened to Mark and Diana, he practiced looking nonchalant. He did not want the other passengers on the Clipper to know he was nervous. I’m Harry Vandenpost, he thought, a well-off young American returning home because of the war in Europe. Pronounced Yurrup. I don’t have a job just now, but I suppose I’ll have to settle down to something soon. My father has investments. My mother, God rest her soul, was English, and I went to school over there. I didn’t go to university—never did like swotting. (Did Americans say swotting? He was not sure.) I’ve spent so much time in England that I’ve picked up some of the local lingo. I’ve flown a few times, sure, but this is my first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, you bet. I’m really looking forward to it!

By the time he finished his coffee, he was hardly scared at all.

Eddie Deakin hung up. He looked around the hall: it was empty. No one had overheard. He stared at the phone, which had plunged him into horror, hating it, as if he might end the nightmare by smashing the instrument. Then he slowly turned away.

Who were they? Where had they taken Carol-Ann? Why had they kidnapped her? What could they possibly want from him? The questions buzzed in his head like flies in a jar. He tried to think. He forced himself to concentrate on one question at a time.

Who were they? Could they be simple lunatics? No. They were too well organized: crazy people might manage a kidnapping, but it had taken careful planning to find out where Eddie would be immediately after the snatch and get him on the phone with Carol-Ann at the right moment. They were rational people, then, but they were prepared to break the law. They might be anarchists of some kind, but most likely he was dealing with gangsters.

Where had they taken Carol-Ann? She had said she was in a house. It might belong to one of the kidnappers, but more likely they had taken over or rented an empty house in a lonely spot. Carol had said it had happened a couple of hours ago, so the house could not be more than sixty or seventy miles from Bangor.

Why had they kidnapped her? They wanted something from him, something he would not give voluntarily, something he would not do for money—something, he guessed, that he would want to refuse them. But what? He had no money, he knew no secrets and no one was in his power.

It had to be something to do with the Clipper.

He would get his instructions on the plane, they had said, from a man called Tom Luther. Might Luther be working for someone who wanted details of the construction and operation of the plane? Another airline, perhaps, or a foreign country? It was possible. The Germans or the Japanese might be hoping to build a copy to use as a bomber. But there had to be easier ways for them to get blueprints. Hundreds of people, maybe thousands, could supply such information: Pan American employees, Boeing employees, even the Imperial Airways mechanics who serviced the engines here at Hythe. Kidnapping was not necessary. Hell, enough technical details had been published in the magazines.

Might someone want to steal the plane? It was hard to imagine.

The likeliest explanation was that they wanted Eddie to cooperate in smuggling something, or somebody, into the United States.

Well, that was as much as he knew or could guess. What was he going to do?

He was a law-abiding citizen and the victim of a crime, and he wanted with all his heart to call the police.

But he was terrified.

He had never been so scared in his life. As a boy he had been frightened of Pop and the devil, but since then nothing had really petrified him. Now he was helpless and rigid with fear. He felt paralyzed: for a moment he could not even move from where he stood.

He thought of the police.

He was in goddamn England. There was no point in talking to their bicycling local cops. But he could try to put a telephone call through to the county sheriff back home, or the Maine State Police, or even the F.B.I., and get them to start searching for an isolated house that had recently been rented by a man—

Don’t call the police. It won’t do you any good, the voice on the phone had said. But if you do call them, I’ll fuck her just to be mean.

Eddie believed him. There had been a note of longing in the spiteful voice, as if the man was half hoping for an excuse to rape her. With her rounded, belly and swollen breasts she had a lush, ripe look that—

He clenched his fist, but there was nothing to punch but the wall. With a groan of despair he stumbled out through the front door. Not looking where he was going, he crossed the lawn. He came to a stand of trees, stopped and leaned his forehead against the furrowed bark of an oak.

Eddie was a simple man. He had been born in a farmhouse a few miles out of Bangor. His father was a poor farmer, with a few acres of potato fields, some chickens, a cow and a vegetable patch. New England was a bad place to be poor: the winters were long and bitterly cold. Mom and Pop believed that everything was the will of God. Even when Eddie’s baby sister caught pneumonia and died, Pop said God had a purpose in it “too deep for us to comprehend.” In those days Eddie daydreamed about finding buried treasure in the woods: a brass-bound pirate’s chest full of gold and precious gems, like in the stories. In his fantasy he took a gold coin into Bangor and bought big soft beds, a truckload of firewood, pretty china for his mother, sheepskin coats for all the family, thick steaks and an icebox full of ice cream and a pineapple. The dismal, ramshackle farmhouse was transformed into a place of warmth, comfort and happiness.

He never found buried treasure, but he got an education, walking the six miles to school every day. He liked it because the schoolroom was warmer than his home; and Mrs. Maple liked him because he always asked how things worked.

Years later it was Mrs. Maple who wrote to the congressman who got Eddie a chance to take the entrance examination for Annapolis.

He thought the Naval Academy was paradise. There were blankets and good clothes and all the food you could eat: he had never imagined such luxury. The tough physical regimen was easy to him; the bullshit was no worse than he had listened to in chapel all his life; and the hazing was petty harassment by comparison with the beatings his father handed out.

It was at Annapolis that he first became aware of how he appeared to other people. He learned that he was earnest, dogged, inflexible and hardworking. Even though he was skinny, bullies rarely picked on him: there was a look in his eye that scared them off. People liked him because they could rely on him to do what he promised, but nobody ever cried on his shoulder.

He was surprised to be praised as a hard worker. Both Pop and Mrs. Maple had taught him that you could get what you wanted by working for it, and Eddie had never conceived any other way. All the same the compliment pleased him. His father’s highest term of praise had been to call someone a “driver,” the Maine dialect word for a hard worker.

He was commissioned an ensign and assigned to aviation training on flying boats. Annapolis had been comfortable, by comparison with his home; but the U.S. Navy was positively luxurious. He was able to send money home to his parents, for them to fix the farmhouse roof and buy a new stove.

He had been four years in the navy when Mom died, and Pop went just five months later. Their few acres were absorbed into the neighboring farm, but Eddie was able to buy the house and the woodland for a song. He resigned from the navy and got a well-paid job with Pan American Airways System.

In between flights he worked on the old house, installing plumbing and electricity and a water heater, doing the work himself, paying for the materials out of his engineer’s wages. He got electric heaters for the bedrooms, a radio and even a telephone. Then he found Carol-Ann. Soon, he had thought, the house would be filled with the laughter of children, and then his dream would have come true.

Instead it had turned into a nightmare.

CHAPTER FOUR

The first words Mark Alder said to Diana Lovesey were: “My goodness, you’re the nicest thing I’ve seen all day.”

People said that sort of thing to her all the time. She was pretty and vivacious, and she loved to dress well. That night she was wearing a long turquoise dress, with little lapels, a shirred bodice and short sleeves gathered at the elbow; and she knew she looked wonderful.

She was at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, attending a dinner dance. She was not sure whether it was the Chamber of Commerce, the Freemasons’ Ladies’ Night, or the Red Cross fund-raiser: the same people were at all such functions. She had danced with most of her husband, Mervyn’s, business associates, who had held her too close and trodden on her toes; and all of their wives had glared daggers at her. It was strange, Diana thought, that when a man made a bit of a fool of himself over a pretty girl, his wife always hated the girl for it, not the man. It was not as if Diana had designs on any of their pompous, whiskey-soaked husbands.

She had scandalized them all and embarrassed her husband by teaching the deputy mayor to jitterbug. Now, feeling the need of a break, she had slipped into the hotel bar, on the pretense of buying cigarettes.

He was there alone, sipping a small cognac, and he looked up at her as though she had brought sunshine into the room. He was a small, neat man with a boyish smile and an American accent. His remark seemed spontaneous, and he had a charming manner, so she smiled radiantly at him, but she did not speak. She bought cigarettes and drank a glass of iced water, then returned to the dance.

He must have asked the barman who she was, and found her address somehow, for the next day she got a note from him, on Midland Hotel writing paper.

Actually, it was a poem.

It began:Fixed in my heart, the picture of your smile

Engraven, ever present to mind’s eye

Not pain, nor years, nor sorrow can defile

It made her cry.

She cried because of everything she had hoped for and never achieved. She cried because she lived in a grimy industrial city with a husband who hated to take holidays. She cried because the poem was the only gracious, romantic thing that had happened to her for five years. And she cried because she was no longer in love with Mervyn.

After that it happened very quickly.

The next day was Sunday. She went into town on the Monday. Normally she would have gone first to Boots to change her book at the circulating library, then bought a combined lunch-and-matinee ticket for two shillings and sixpence at the Paramount Cinema in Oxford Street. After the film she would have walked around Lewis’s department store and Finnigan’s, and bought ribbons, or napkins, or gifts for her sister’s children. She might have gone to one of the little shops in The Shambles to buy some exotic cheese or special ham for Mervyn. Then she would have taken the train back to Altrincham, the suburb where she lived, in time to get the supper.

This time, she had coffee in the bar of the Midland Hotel, lunch in the German restaurant in the basement of the Midland Hotel, and afternoon tea in the lounge of the Midland Hotel. But she did not see the charming man with the American accent.

She went home feeling heartsick. That was ridiculous, she told herself. She had met him for less than a minute and had never said a word to him! He had seemed to symbolize everything she felt was missing from her life. But if she saw him again she would surely discover that he was boorish, insane, diseased, smelly, or all of those things.

She got off the train and walked along the street of large suburban villas where she lived. As she approached her own home, she was shocked and flustered to see him walking toward her, looking at her house with a pretense of idle curiosity.

She flushed scarlet and her heart raced. He too was startled. He stopped, but she carried on walking; then, as she passed him, she said: “Meet me in the Central Library tomorrow morning!”

She did not expect him to reply, but—she would learn later—he had a quick, humorous mind, and he immediately said: “What section?”

It was a big library, but not so big that two people could lose one another for long; but she said the first thing that came into her mind: “Biology.” And he laughed.

She entered her house with that laugh in her ears: a warm, relaxed, delighted laugh, the laugh of a man who loved life and felt good about himself.

The house was empty. Mrs. Rollins, who did the housework, had already left; and Mervyn was not home yet. Diana sat in the modem hygienic kitchen and thought old-fashioned unhygienic thoughts about her humorous American poet.

The next morning she found him sitting at a table under a notice that read SILENCE. When she said: “Hello,” he put a finger to his lips, pointed to a chair and wrote her a note.

It said I love your hat.

She had on a little hat like an upturned flowerpot with a brim, and she wore it tilted all the way over to one side so that it almost covered her left eye: it was the current fashion, although few women in Manchester had the nerve for it.

She took a little pen from her bag and wrote underneath, It wouldn’t suit you.

But my geraniums would look perfect in it, he wrote.

She giggled, and he said: “Shhh!”

Diana thought: Is he mad, or just funny?

She wrote, I love your poem.

Then he wrote, I love you.

Mad, she thought; but tears came to her eyes. She wrote, I don’t even know your name!

He gave her a business card. His name was Mark Alder, and he lived in Los Angeles.

California!

They went for early lunch to a V.E.M. restaurant—Vegetables, Eggs and Milk—because she could be sure she would not run into her husband there: wild horses could not have dragged him into a vegetarian restaurant. Then, as it was Tuesday, there was a midday concert at the Houldsworth Hall in Deansgate, with the city’s famous Hallé Orchestra and its new conductor, Malcolm Sargent. Diana felt proud that her city could offer such a cultural treat to a visitor.

That day she learned that Mark was a writer of comedy scripts for radio shows. She had never heard of the people he wrote for, but he said they were famous: Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos ’n’ Andy. He also owned a radio station. He wore a cashmere blazer. He was on an extended holiday, tracing his roots: his family had come originally from Liverpool, the port city a few miles west of Manchester. He was not much taller than Diana, and about her age, with hazel eyes and a few freckles.

And he was pure delight.

He was intelligent, funny and charming. His manners were nice, his fingernails were clean and his clothes were neat. He liked Mozart, but he knew about Louis Armstrong. Most of all, he liked Diana.

It was a peculiar thing how few men actually liked women, she thought. The men she knew would fawn on her, try to paw her, suggest discreet assignations when Mervyn’s back was turned and, sometimes, when they got maudlin drunk, declare their love for her; but they didn’t really like her: their conversation was all banter, they never listened to her and they knew nothing about her. Mark was quite different, as she found out during the following days and weeks.

The day after they met in the library, he rented a car and drove her to the coast, where they ate sandwiches on a breezy beach and kissed in the shelter of the dunes.

He had a suite at the Midland, but they could not meet there because Diana was too well known: if she had been seen going upstairs after lunch the news would have been all around town by teatime. However, Mark’s inventive mind produced a solution. They drove to the seaside town of Lytham St. Anne’s, taking a suitcase, and checked into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Alder. They had lunch, then went to bed.

Making love with Mark was such fun.

The first time, he made a pantomime of trying to undress in complete silence, and she was laughing too much to feel shy as she took off her clothes. She did not worry about whether he would like her: he obviously adored her. She was not nervous because he was so nice.

They spent the afternoon in bed, and then checked out, saying they had changed their minds about staying. Mark paid in full for the night so that there was no bad feeling. He dropped her at a station one stop down the line from Altrincham, and she arrived home by train just as if she had spent the afternoon in Manchester.

They did this all the blissful summer.

He was supposed to go back to the States at the beginning of August to work on a new show, but he stayed, and wrote a series of sketches about an American on holiday in Britain, sending his scripts over every week by the new airmail service operated by Pan American.

Despite this reminder that time was running out for them, Diana managed not to think about the future very much. Of course, Mark would go home one day, but he would still be here tomorrow, and that was as far ahead as she cared to look. It was like the war: everyone knew it would be awful, but nobody could tell when it would start; and until it happened there was nothing to do but carry on and try to have a good time.

The day after war broke out he told her he was going home.

She was sitting up in bed with the covers pulled up just under her bust, so that her breasts showed: Mark loved her to sit like that. He thought her breasts were wonderful, although she felt they were too large.

They were having a serious conversation. Britain had declared war on Germany, and even happy lovers had to talk about it. Diana had been following the grisly conflict in China all year, and the thought of war in Europe filled her with dread. Like the Fascists in Spain, the Japanese did not scruple to drop bombs on women and children; and the carnage in Chungking and I-chang had been sickening.

She asked Mark the question that was on everyone’s lips: “What do you think will happen?”

For once he did not have a funny answer. “I think it’s going to be awful,” he said solemnly. “I believe Europe will be devastated. Maybe this country will survive, being an island. I hope so.”

“Oh,” Diana said. Suddenly she was frightened. British people were not saying things like that. The newspapers were full of fighting talk, and Mervyn was positively looking forward to war. But Mark was an outsider, and his judgment, delivered in that relaxed American voice, sounded worryingly realistic. Would bombs be dropped on Manchester?

She remembered something Mervyn had said, and repeated it. “America will have to come into the war sooner or later.”

Mark shocked her by saying: “Christ, I hope not. This is a European squabble, nothing to do with us. I can just about see why Britain declared war, but I’m damned if I want to see Americans die defending fucking Poland.”

She had never heard him swear like this. Sometimes he whispered obscenities in her ear while they were making love, but that was different. Now he seemed angry. She thought perhaps he was a little frightened. She knew Mervyn was frightened: in him it came out as reckless optimism. Mark’s fear showed as isolationism and cursing.

She was dismayed by his attitude, but she could see his point of view: why should Americans go to war for Poland, or even for Europe? “But what about me?” she asked. She tried for a note of levity. “You wouldn’t like me to be raped by blond Nazis in gleaming jackboots, would you?” It wasn’t very funny and she regretted it immediately.

That was when he took an envelope out of his suitcase and handed it to her.

She pulled out a ticket and looked at it. “You’re going home!” she cried. It was like the end of the world.

Looking solemn, he said simply: “There are two tickets.”

She felt as if her heart would stop. “Two tickets,” she repeated tonelessly. She was disoriented.

He sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. She knew what he was going to say, and she was at the same time thrilled and terrified..

“Come home with me, Diana,” he said. “Fly to New York with me. Then come to Reno and get divorced. Then let’s go to California and be married. I love you.”

Fly. She could hardly imagine flying across the Atlantic Ocean: such things belonged in fairy tales.

To New York. New York was a dream of skyscrapers and nightclubs, gangsters and millionaires, fashionable heiresses and enormous cars.

And get divorced. And be free of Mervyn!

Then let’s go to California. Where movies were made, and oranges grew on trees, and the sun shone every day.

And be married. And have Mark all the time, every day, every night.

She was unable to speak.

Mark said: “We could have babies.”

She wanted to cry.

“Ask me again,” she whispered.

He said: “I love you. Will you marry me and have my children?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and she felt as if she were already flying. “Yes, yes, yes!”

She had to tell Mervyn that night.

It was Monday. On Tuesday she would have to travel to Southampton with Mark. The Clipper left on Wednesday at two p.m.

She was floating on air when she arrived home on Monday afternoon; but as soon as she entered the house her euphoria evaporated.

How was she going to tell him?

It was a nice house: a big new villa, white with a red roof. It had four bedrooms, three of which were almost never used. There was a nice modern bathroom and a kitchen with all the latest gadgets. Now that she was leaving, she looked at everything with nostalgic fondness: this had been her home for five years.

She prepared Mervyn’s meals herself. Mrs. Rollins did the cleaning and laundry, and if Diana had not cooked she would have had nothing to do. Besides, Mervyn was a working-class boy at heart, and he liked his wife to put his meal on the table when he came home. He even called the meal “tea,” and he would drink tea with it, although it was always something substantial, sausages or steak or a meat pie. For Mervyn, “dinner” was served in hotels. At home you had tea.

What would she say?

Today he would have cold beef, left over from Sunday’s roast. Diana put on an apron and began to slice potatoes for frying. When she thought of how angry Mervyn was going to be, her hands shook, and she cut her finger with the vegetable knife.

She tried to get a grip on herself as she washed the cut under the cold tap, then dried her finger with a towel and wrapped a bandage around it. What am I afraid of? she asked herself. He won’t kill me. He can’t stop me: I’m over twenty-one and it’s a free country.

The thought did not calm her nerves.

She set the table and washed a head of lettuce. Although Mervyn worked hard, he almost always came home at the same time. He would say: “What’s the point of being the boss if I have to stop at work when everyone else goes home?” He was an engineer, and he had a factory that made all kinds of rotors, from small fans for cooling systems to huge screws for ocean liners. Mervyn had always been successful—he was a good businessman—but he really hit the jackpot when he started manufacturing propellers for aircraft. Flying was his hobby, and he had his own small plane, a Tiger Moth, at an airfield outside town. When the government started to build up the air force, two or three years ago, there were very few people who knew how to make curved rotors with mathematical precision, and Mervyn was one of those few. Since then, business had boomed.

Diana was his second wife. The first had left him, seven years ago, and run off with another man, taking their two children. Mervyn had divorced her as quickly as he could and proposed to Diana as soon as the divorce came through. Diana was then twenty-eight and he was thirty-eight. He was attractive, masculine and prosperous; and he worshipped her. His wedding present to her had been a diamond necklace.

A few weeks ago, on their fifth wedding anniversary, he had given her a sewing machine.

Looking back, she could see that the sewing machine had been the last straw. She had been hoping for a car of her own: she could drive, and Mervyn could afford it. When she saw the sewing machine, she felt she had come to the end of her tether. They had been together for five years and he had not noticed that she never sewed.

She knew that Mervyn loved her, but he did not see her. In his vision there was just a person marked WIFE. She was pretty, she performed her social role adequately, she put his food on the table and she was always willing in bed: what else should a wife be? He never consulted her about anything. Since she was neither a businessman nor an engineer, it never occurred to him that she had a brain. He talked to the men at his factory more intelligently than he talked to her. In his world, men wanted cars and wives wanted sewing machines.

And yet he was very clever. The son of a lathe operator, he had gone to Manchester Grammar School and studied physics at Manchester University. He had had the opportunity to go on to Cambridge and take his master’s degree, but he was not the academic type, and he got a job in the design department of a large engineering company. He still followed developments in physics, and would talk endlessly to his father—never to Diana, of course—about atoms and radiation and nuclear fission.

Unfortunately, Diana did not understand physics, anyway. She knew a lot about music and literature and a little about history, but Mervyn was not much interested in any kind of culture, although he liked films and dance music. So they had nothing to talk about.

It might have been different if they had had children. But Mervyn already had two children by his first wife and he did not want any more. Diana had been willing to love them, but she had never been given the chance: their mother had poisoned their minds against Diana, pretending that Diana had caused the breakup of the marriage. Diana’s sister in Liverpool had cute little twin girls with pigtails, and Diana lavished all her maternal affection on them.

She was going to miss the twins.

Mervyn enjoyed an energetic social life with the city’s leading businessmen and politicians, and for a time Diana enjoyed being his hostess. She had always loved beautiful clothes and she wore them well. But there had to be more to life than that.

For a while she had played the role of the nonconformist of Manchester society—smoking cigars, dressing extravagantly, talking about free love and communism. She had enjoyed shocking the matrons, but Manchester was not a highly conservative place, and Mervyn and his friends were Liberals, so she had not caused much of a stir.

She was discontented, but she wondered whether she had the right. Most women thought her lucky: she had a sober, reliable, generous husband, a lovely home and crowds of friends. She told herself she ought to be happy. But she was not—and then Mark came along.

She heard Mervyn’s car pull up outside. It was such a familiar noise, but tonight it sounded ominous, like the growl of a dangerous beast.

She put the frying pan on the gas stove with a shaking hand.

Mervyn came into the kitchen.

He was breathtakingly handsome. There was gray in his dark hair now, but it only made him look more distinguished. He was tall, and had not got fat like most of his friends. He had no vanity, but Diana made him wear well-cut dark suits and expensive white shirts because she liked him to look as successful as he was.

She was terrified he would see the guilt on her face and demand to know what was the matter.

He kissed her mouth. Full of shame, she kissed him back. Sometimes he would embrace her and press his hand into the cleft of her buttocks, and they would become passionate so that they had to hurry to the bedroom and leave the food to burn; but that did not happen much anymore, and today was no exception, thank God. He kissed her absentmindedly and turned away.

He took off his jacket, waistcoat, tie and collar, and rolled up his sleeves; then he washed his hands and face at the kitchen sink. He had broad shoulders and strong arms.

He had not sensed that anything was wrong. He would not, of course; he did not see her; she was just there, like the kitchen table. She had no need to worry. He would not know anything until she told him.

I won’t tell him yet, she thought.

While the potatoes were frying she buttered the bread and made a pot of tea. She was still shaky, but she hid it. Mervyn read the Manchester Evening News and hardly looked at her.

“I’ve got a bloody troublemaker at the works,” he said as she put the plate in front of him.

I couldn’t care less, Diana thought hysterically. I’ve nothing to do with you anymore.

Then why have I cooked your tea?

“He’s a Londoner, from Battersea, and I think he’s a Communist. Anyway, he’s asking for higher rates for working on the new jig borer. It’s not unreasonable, really, but I’ve priced the job based on the old rates, so he’ll have to put up with it.”

Diana screwed up her nerve and said: “I’ve got something to tell you.” Then she wished fervently that she could take the words back, but it was too late.

“What did you do to your finger?” he said, noticing the little bandage.

This commonplace question deflated her. “Nothing,” she said, slumping into her chair. “I cut it slicing potatoes.” She picked up her knife and fork.

Mervyn ate heartily. “I should be more careful who I take on, but the trouble is, good toolmakers are hard to come by nowadays.”

She was not expected to respond when he talked about his business. If she made a suggestion, he would give her an irritated look, as if she had spoken out of turn. She was there to listen.

While, he talked about the new jig borer and the Battersea Communist, she remembered their wedding day. Her mother had been alive then. They had got married in Manchester, and the reception had been held at the Midland Hotel. Mervyn in morning dress had been the handsomest man in England. Diana had thought it would be forever. The idea that the marriage might not last had not crossed her mind. She had never met a divorced person before Mervyn. Recalling how she felt then, she wanted to cry.

She also knew that Mervyn would be shattered by her leaving. He had no idea what was in her mind. The fact that his first wife had left him in exactly the same way made it worse, of course. He was going to be distraught. But first he would be furious.

He finished his beef and poured himself another cup of tea. “You haven’t eaten much,” he said. In fact she had not eaten anything.

“I had a big lunch,” she replied.

“Where did you go?”

The innocent question threw her into a panic. She had eaten sandwiches in bed with Mark at a hotel in Blackpool, and she could not think of a plausible lie. The names of the principal restaurants in Manchester came to mind, but it was possible that Mervyn had had lunch in one of those. After a painful pause she said: “The Waldorf Café.” There were several Waldorf Cafés—it was a chain of inexpensive restaurants where you could get steak and chips for one shilling and ninepence.

Mervyn did not ask her which one.

She picked up the plates and stood up. Her knees felt so weak she was afraid she would fall down, but she made it to the sink. “Do you want a sweet?” she asked him.

“Yes, please.”

She went to the pantry and found a can of pears and some condensed milk. She opened the tins and brought his dessert to the table.

Watching him eat canned pears, she was swamped by a sense of the horror of what she was about to do. It seemed unforgivably destructive. Like the coming war, it would smash everything. The life that she and Mervyn had created together in this house, in this city, would be ruined.

She suddenly realized she could not do it.

Mervyn put down his spoon and looked at his fob watch. “Half past seven—let’s tune in to the news.”

“I can’t do it,” Diana said aloud.

“What?”

“I can’t do it,” she said again. She would call the whole thing off. She would go and see Mark now and tell him she had changed her mind. She was not going to run away with him after all.

“Why can’t you listen to the wireless?” Mervyn said impatiently.

Diana stared at him. She was tempted to tell him the whole truth; but she did not have the nerve for that either. “I have to go out,” she said. She cast about frantically for an excuse. “Doris Williams is in hospital and I ought to visit her.”

“Who’s Doris Williams, for heaven’s sake?”

There was no such person. “You have met her,” Diana said, improvising wildly. “She’s had an operation.”

“I don’t remember her,” he said, but he was not suspicious: he had a bad memory for casual acquaintances.

Diana was inspired to say: “Do you want to come with me?”

“Good God, no!” he said, as she had known he would.

“I’ll drive myself, then.”

“Don’t go too fast in the blackout.” He got up and went through to the parlor, where the wireless was.

Diana stared after him for a moment. He’ll never know how close I came to leaving him, she thought with a kind of sadness.

She put on a hat and went out with her coat over her arm. The car started the first time, thank God. She steered out of the drive and turned toward Manchester.

The journey was a nightmare. She was in a desperate rush, but she had to crawl along because her headlights were masked and she could see only a few yards in front; and besides, her vision was blurred because she could not stop crying. If she had not known the road well, she would probably have crashed.

The distance was less than ten miles but it took her more than an hour.

When finally she stopped the car outside the Midland, she was exhausted. She sat still for a minute, trying to compose herself. She took out her compact and powdered her face to hide the signs of tears.

Mark would be brokenhearted, she knew; but he could bear it. He would soon come to look back on this as a summer romance. It was less cruel to end a short, passionate love affair than to break up a five-year marriage. She and Mark would always look back on the summer of 1939 fondly—

She burst into tears again.

It was no use sitting here thinking about it, she decided after a while. She had to go in and get it over with. She repaired her makeup again and got out of the car.

She walked through the lobby of the hotel and went up the staircase without stopping at the desk. She knew Mark’s room number. It was, of course, quite scandalous for a woman alone to go to a single man’s hotel room; but she decided to brazen it out. The alternative would have been to see Mark in the lounge or the bar, and it was unthinkable to give him this kind of news in a public place. She did not look around her, so she did not know whether she had been seen by anyone she knew.

She tapped on his door. She prayed that he would be here. What if he had decided to go out to a restaurant, or to see a film? There was no reply, and she knocked again, harder. How could he go to the cinema at a time like this?

Then she heard his voice: “Hello?”

She knocked again and said: “It’s me!”

She heard rapid footsteps. The door was flung open and Mark stood there, looking startled. He smiled happily, drew her inside, closed the door and embraced her.

Now she felt as disloyal to him as she had to Mervyn earlier. She kissed him guiltily, and the familiar warmth of desire glowed in her veins; but she pulled away and said: “I can’t go with you.”

He blanched. “Don’t say that.”

She looked around the suite. He was packing. The wardrobe and drawers were open, his cases were on the floor and everywhere there were folded shirts, tidy piles of underwear and shoes in bags. He was so neat. “I can’t go,” she repeated.

He took her hand and drew her into the bedroom. They sat on the bed. He looked distraught. “You don’t mean this,” he said.

“Mervyn loves me, and we’ve been together for five years. I can’t do this to him.”

“What about me?”

She looked at him. He was wearing a dusty pink sweater and a bow tie, blue-gray flannel trousers and cordovan shoes. He looked good enough to eat. “You both love me,” she said. “But he’s my husband.”

“We both love you, but I like you,” Mark said.

“Don’t you think he likes me?”

“I don’t think he even knows you. Listen. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been in love before. I once had an affair that lasted six years. I’ve never been married but I’ve been around. I know this is right. Nothing has ever felt so right to me. You’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re unorthodox, you’re bright and you love to make love. I’m cute, I’m funny, I’m unorthodox, I’m bright and I want to make love to you right now—”

“No,” she said, but she did not mean it.

He drew her to him gently and they kissed.

“We’re so right for each other,” he murmured. “Remember writing notes to one another underneath the silence sign? You understood the game, right away, without explanations. Other women think I’m nuts, but you like me this way.”

It was true, she thought; and when she did oddball things, like smoking a pipe, or going out with no panties on, or attending Fascist meetings and sounding the fire alarm, Mervyn became annoyed, whereas Mark laughed delightedly.

He stroked her hair, then her cheek. Slowly her panic subsided, and she began to feel soothed. She laid her head on his shoulder and let her lips brush the soft skin of his neck. She felt his fingertips on her leg, beneath her dress, stroking the inside of her thigh where her stockings ended. This was not what was supposed to happen, she thought weakly.

He pushed her gently backward on the bed, and her hat fell off. “This isn’t right,” she said feebly. He kissed her mouth, nibbling her lips gently with his own. She felt his fingers through the fine silk of her panties, and she shuddered with pleasure. After a moment his hand slid inside.

He knew just what to do.

One day early in the summer, as they lay naked in a hotel bedroom with the sound of the waves coming through the open window, he had said: “Show me what you do when you touch yourself.”

She had been embarrassed, and pretended not to understand. “What do you mean?”

“You know. When you touch yourself. Show me. Then I’ll know what you like.”

“I don’t touch myself,” she lied.

“Well ... when you were a girl, before you were married—you must have done it then—everyone does. Show me what you used to do.”

She was about to refuse; then she realized how sexy it would be. “You want me to stimulate myself—down there—while you watch?” she said, and her voice was thick with desire.

He grinned wickedly and nodded.

“You mean... all the way?”

“All the way.”

“I couldn’t,” she said; but she did.

Now his fingertips touched her knowingly, in exactly the right places, with the same familiar motion and just the right pressure; and she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sensation.

After a while she began to moan softly and raise and lower her hips rhythmically. She felt his warm breath on her face as he leaned closer to her. Then, just as she was losing control, he said urgently: “Look at me.”

She opened her eyes. He continued to caress her in exactly the same way, just a little faster. “Don’t close your eyes,” he said. Looking into his eyes while he did that was shockingly intimate, a kind of hypernakedness. It was as if he could see everything and know everything about her, and she felt an exhilarating freedom because she had nothing left to hide. The climax came, and she forced herself to hold his gaze while her hips jerked and she grimaced and gasped with the spasms of pleasure that shook her body; and he smiled down at her all the while and said: “I love you, Diana. I love you so much.”

When it was over, she grabbed him and held him, panting and shaking with emotion, feeling that she never wanted to let go. She would have wept, but she had no tears left.

She never did tell Mervyn.

Mark’s inventive mind came up with the solution, and she rehearsed it as she drove home, calm and collected and quietly determined.

Mervyn was in his pajamas and dressing gown, smoking a cigarette and listening to music on the wireless. “That were a bloody long visit,” he said mildly.

Only a little nervous, Diana said: “I had to drive terribly slowly.” She swallowed, took a deep breath and said: “I’m going away tomorrow.”

He was faintly surprised. “Where to?”

“I’d like to visit Thea and see the twins. I want to make sure she’s all right, and there’s no telling when I’ll get another chance: the trains are already becoming irregular and petrol rationing starts next week.”

He nodded assent. “Aye, you’re right. Better go now while you can.”

“I’ll go up and pack a case.”

“Pack one for me, will you?”

For an awful moment she thought he wanted to go with her. “What for?” she said, aghast.

“I’ll not sleep in an empty house,” he said. “I’ll stop at the Reform Club tomorrow night. You’ll be back Wednesday?”

“Yes, Wednesday,” she lied.

“All right.”

She went upstairs. As she put his underwear and socks into a small suitcase, she thought: It’s the last time I’ll ever do this for him. She folded a white shirt and picked out a silver-gray tie: somber colors suited his dark hair and brown eyes. She was relieved that he had accepted her story, but she also felt frustrated, as if there were something she had left undone. She realized that although she was terrified of confronting him, she also wanted to explain why she was leaving him. She needed to tell him that he had let her down, he had become overbearing and thoughtless, he no longer cherished her as he once had. But now she never would say those things to him, and she felt oddly disappointed.

She closed his case and began to put makeup and toiletries into her sponge bag. It seemed a funny way to end five years of marriage, packing socks and toothpaste and cold cream.

After a while Mervyn came upstairs. The packing was all done and she was in her least attractive nightdress, sitting in front of her dressing table mirror, taking off her makeup. He came up behind her and grasped her breasts.

Oh, no, she thought, not tonight, please!

Although she was horrified, her body responded immediately, and she blushed guiltily. Mervyn’s fingers squeezed her swelling nipples, and she drew in her breath in a small gasp of pleasure and despair. He took her hands and drew her up. She followed helplessly as he led her to the bed. He turned out the light, and they lay down in pitch-blackness. He mounted her immediately and made love to her with a kind of furious desperation, almost as if he knew she was going away from him and there was nothing he could do about it. Her body betrayed her and she thrilled with pleasure and shame. She realized with extreme mortification that she would have reached orgasm with two men in two hours, and she tried to stop herself, but she could not.

When she came, she cried.

Fortunately, Mervyn did not notice.

As Diana sat in the elegant lounge of the South-Western Hotel on Wednesday morning, waiting for a taxi to take Mark and her to Berth 108 in Southampton Docks to board the Pan American Clipper, she felt triumphant and free.

Everyone in the room was either looking at her or trying not to look at her. She was getting a particularly hard stare from a handsome man in a blue suit who must be ten years younger than she was. But she was used to that. It always happened when she looked good, and today she was stunning. Her cream-and-red dotted silk dress was fresh, summery and striking. Her cream shoes were right and the straw hat finished the outfit off perfectly. Her lipstick and nail varnish were orange-red like the dots on the dress. She had thought about red shoes but decided they would look tarty.

She loved traveling: packing and unpacking her clothes, meeting new people, being pampered and cosseted and plied with champagne and food, and seeing new places. She was nervous about flying, but crossing the Atlantic was the most glamorous voyage of all, for at the other end was America. She could hardly wait to get there. She had a filmgoer’s picture of what it was like: she saw herself in an Art Deco apartment, all windows and mirrors, with a uniformed maid helping her put on a white fur coat and a long black car in the street outside with its engine running and a colored chauffeur waiting to take her to a nightclub, where she would order a martini, very dry, and dance to a jazz band that had Bing Crosby as its singer. That was a fantasy, she knew; but she could hardly wait to discover the reality.

She felt ambivalent about leaving Britain just as the war was starting. It seemed a cowardly thing to do, yet she was thrilled to be going.

She knew a lot of Jewish people. Manchester had a big Jewish community: the Manchester Jews had planted a thousand trees in Nazareth. Diana’s Jewish friends watched the progress of events in Europe with horror and dread. It was not just the Jews, either: the Fascists hated the coloreds, and the Gypsies, and the queers, and anyone else who disagreed with Fascism. Diana had an uncle who was queer and he had always been kind to her and treated her like a daughter.

She was too old to join up, but she probably ought to stay in Manchester and do volunteer work, winding bandages for the Red Cross....

That was a fantasy, even more unlikely than dancing to Bing Crosby. She was not the type to wind bandages. Austerity and uniforms did not suit her.

But none of that was truly important. The only thing that counted was that she was in love. She would go where Mark was. She would have followed him into the heart of a battlefield if necessary. They were going to get married and have children. He was going home, and she was going with him.

She would miss her twin nieces. She wondered how long it would be before she would see them. They might be grown up next time, wearing perfume and brassieres instead of ankle socks and pigtails.

But she might have little girls of her own....

She was thrilled about traveling on the Pan American Clipper. She had read all about it in the Manchester Guardian, never dreaming that one day she would actually fly in it. To get to New York in little more than a day seemed like a miracle.

She had written Mervyn a note. It did not say any of the things she wanted to tell him; did not explain how he had slowly and inexorably lost her love through carelessness and indifference; did not even say that Mark was wonderful.Dear Mervyn,I am leaving you. I feel you have become cold toward me, and I have fallen in love with someone else. By the time you read this, we will be in America. I am sorry to hurt you but it is partly your fault.

She could not think of an appropriate way to sign off—she could not write: Yours or With love—so she just put: Diana.

At first she had intended to leave the note in the house, on the kitchen table. Then she had become obsessed by the possibility that he would change his plans, and instead of staying at his club on Tuesday night, he would go home, and find the note, and make some kind of trouble for her and Mark before they were out of the country. So in the end she had mailed it to him at the factory, where it would arrive today.

She looked at her wristwatch (a present from Mervyn, who liked her to be punctual). She knew his routine: he spent most of the morning on the factory floor; then toward midday he would go up to his office and look through the mail before going to lunch. She had marked the envelope PERSONAL so that his secretary would not open it. It would be lying on his desk in a pile of invoices, orders, letters and memos. He would be reading it about now. The thought made her guilty and sad, but also relieved that she was two hundred miles away.

“Our taxi’s here,” Mark said.

She felt a little nervous. Across the Atlantic in a plane!

“Time to go,” he said.

She suppressed her anxiety. She put down her coffee cup, stood up and gave him her brightest smile. “Yes,” she said happily. “Time to fly.”

Eddie had always been shy with girls.

He had graduated from Annapolis a virgin. When he was stationed at Pearl Harbor, he had gone with prostitutes, and that experience had left him with a sense of self-disgust. After leaving the navy, he had just been a loner, driving to a bar a few miles away any time he felt the need of companionship. Carol-Ann was a ground hostess working for the airline at Port Washington, Long Island, the New York terminal for flying boats. She was a suntanned blonde with eyes of Pan American blue, and Eddie would never have dared to ask her for a date. But one day in the canteen a young radio operator gave him two tickets to Life with Father on Broadway, and when he said he did not have anyone to take, the radioman turned to the next table and asked Carol-Ann if she wanted to go.

“Ayuh,” she said, and Eddie realized she was from his part of the world.

He later learned that at that time she had been desperately lonely. She was a country girl, and the sophisticated ways of New Yorkers made her anxious and tense. She was a sensual person, but she did not know what to do when men took liberties, so in her embarrassment she rebuffed advances indignantly. Her nervousness got her the reputation of an ice queen, and she was not often asked out.

But Eddie knew nothing of this at the time. He felt like a king with her on his arm. He took her to dinner, then back to her apartment in a taxi. On the doorstep he thanked her for a nice evening and screwed up his courage to kiss her cheek, whereupon she burst into tears and said he was the first decent man she had met in New York. Before he knew what he was saying, he had asked her for another date.

He fell in love with her on that second date. They went to Coney Island on a hot Friday in July, and she wore white slacks and a sky blue blouse. He realized to his astonishment that she was actually proud to be seen walking alongside him. They ate ice cream, rode a roller coaster called the Cyclone, bought silly hats, held hands and revealed trivial intimate secrets. When he took her home Eddie told her frankly that he had never been this happy in his entire life, and she astonished him again by saying she hadn’t, either.

Soon he was neglecting the farmhouse and spending all his leave in New York, sleeping on the couch of a surprised but encouraging fellow engineer. Carol-Ann took him to Bristol, New Hampshire, to meet her parents, two small, thin, middle-aged people, poor and hardworking. They reminded him of his own parents, but without the unforgiving religion. They could hardly believe they had produced a daughter so beautiful, and Eddie understood how they felt, for he could hardly believe such a girl could have fallen in love with him.

He thought of how much he loved her, as he stood the grounds of the Langdown Lawn Hotel, staring at the bark of the oak tree. He was in a nightmare, one of those hellish dreams in which you start by feeling safe and happy, but you think, in a fit of idle speculation, of the worst thing that could occur, and suddenly you find that it is actually happening, the worst thing in the world is actually, unstoppably, terrifyingly happening, and there is nothing you can do about it.

What made it even more terrible is that they had quarreled just before he left home, and had parted without making it up.

She had been sitting on the couch, wearing a denim work shirt that belonged to him and not much else, her long, suntanned legs stretched out in front, her fine fair hair lying across her shoulders like a shawl. She was reading a magazine. Her breasts were normally quite small, but lately they had swollen. He felt an urge to touch them, and he thought: Why not? So he slid his hand inside the shirt and touched her nipple. She looked up at him and smiled lovingly, then went on with her reading.

He kissed the top of her head, then sat down next to her. She had astonished him right from the start. They were both shy at first, but soon after they returned from their honeymoon holiday and started living together here in the old farmhouse, she had become wildly uninhibited.

First she wanted to make love with the light on. Eddie felt awkward about it, but he consented, and he kind of liked it, although he felt bashful. Then he noticed that she did not lock the door when she took a bath. After that, he felt foolish about locking the door himself, so he did the same as she did, and one day she just walked in with no clothes on and got right in the tub with him! Eddie had never felt so embarrassed in his life. No woman had seen him naked since he was about four years old. He got an enormous hard-on just watching Carol-Ann wash her underarms, and he covered his dick with a washcloth until she laughed him out of it.

She started walking around the farmhouse in various states of undress. The way she was now, this was nothing. She was practically overdressed by her standards. You could only just see a little white triangle of cotton at the top of her legs where the shirt did not quite cover her panties. She was normally much worse. He would be making coffee in the kitchen and she would come in wearing nothing but her underwear and start toasting muffins; or he would be shaving and she would appear in her panties, with no brassiere, and just brush her teeth like that; or she would come into the bedroom stark naked with his breakfast on a tray. He wondered if she was “oversexed;” he had heard people use that term. But he also liked her to be that way. He liked it a lot. He had never dreamed he would have a beautiful wife who would walk around his house undressed. He felt so lucky.

Living with her for a year had changed him. He had gotten so uninhibited that he would walk naked from the bedroom to the bathroom; sometimes he did not even put on his pajamas before getting into bed; once he even took her here in the living room, right on that couch..

He still wondered whether there was something psychologically abnormal about this kind of behavior, but he had decided that it did not matter: he and Carol-Ann could do anything they liked. When he accepted that, he felt like a bird let out of a cage. It was incredible; it was wonderful; it was like being in heaven.

He sat beside her, saying nothing, just enjoying being with her and smelling the mild breeze coming in from the woods through the open windows. His bag was packed and in a few minutes he was leaving for Port Washington. Carol-Ann had left Pan American—she could not live in Maine and work in New York—and she had taken a job in a store in Bangor. Eddie wanted to talk to her about that before he left.

Carol-Ann looked up from Life magazine and said: “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you’re going to, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “How did you know?”

“Eddie, you know I can hear when your brain is working. What is it?”

He put his big, blunt hand on her belly and felt the slight swelling there. “I want you to quit your job. ”

“It’s too early—”

“It’s okay. We can afford it. And I want you to take real good care of yourself. ”

“I’ll take care of myself. I’ll quit work when I need to.”

He felt hurt. “I thought you’d be pleased. Why do you want to go on?”

“Because we need the money and I have to have something to do.”

“I told you, we can afford it.”

“I’d get bored.”

“Most wives don’t work. ”

She raised her voice. “Eddie, why are you trying to tie me down?”

He did not want to tie her down, and the suggestion infuriated him. He said: “Why are you so determined to go against me?”

“I’m not going against you! I just don’t want to sit here like a lumper’s helper! ”

“Don’t you have stuff to do?”

“What?”

“Knit baby clothes, make preserves, take naps—”

She was scornful. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—”

“What’s wrong with that, for Christ’s sake?” he said crossly.

“There’ll be plenty of time for all that when the baby comes. I’d like to enjoy my last few weeks of freedom. ”

Eddie felt humiliated, but he was not sure how it had happened. He wanted to get out of there. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a train to catch.”

Carol-Ann looked sad. “Don’t be angry,” she said in a conciliatory tone.

But he was angry. “I guess I just don’t understand you,” he said with irritation.

“I hate to be fenced in.”

“I was trying to be nice.” He stood up and went into the kitchen, where his uniform jacket hung on a peg. He felt foolish and wrong-footed. He had set out to do something generous and she saw it as an imposition.

She brought his suitcase from the bedroom and handed it to him when he had his jacket on. She turned up her face and he kissed her briefly.

“Don’t go out the door mad at me,” she said.

But he did.

And now he stood in a garden in a foreign country, thousands of miles from her, with a heart as heavy as lead, wondering if he would ever see his Carol-Ann again.

CHAPTER FIVE

For the first time in her life, Nancy Lenehan was putting on weight.

She stood in her suite at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, beside a pile of luggage that was waiting to be taken on board the S.S. Orania, and gazed, horrified, into the mirror.

She was neither beautiful nor plain, but she had regular features—a straight nose, straight dark hair and a neat chin—and she looked attractive when she dressed carefully, which was most of the time. Today she was wearing a featherweight flannel suit by Paquin, in cerise, with a gray silk blouse. The jacket was fashionably tight-waisted, and it was this that had revealed to her that she was gaining weight. When she fastened the buttons of the jacket, a slight but unmistakable crease appeared, and the lower buttons pulled against the buttonholes.

There was only one explanation for this. The waist of the jacket was smaller than the waist of Mrs. Lenehan.

It was probably a result of having lunched and dined at all the best restaurants in Paris throughout August. She sighed. She would go on a diet for the entire transatlantic crossing. When she reached New York, she would have her figure back.

She had never had to go on a diet before. The prospect did not trouble her: although she liked good food, she was not greedy. What really worried her was that she suspected it was a sign of age.

Today was her fortieth birthday.

She had always been slender, and she looked good in expensive tailored clothes. She had hated the draped, low-slung fashions of the twenties and rejoiced when waists came back into fashion. She spent a lot of time and money shopping, and she enjoyed it. Sometimes she used the excuse that she had to look right because she was in the fashion business, but in truth she did it for pleasure.

Her father had started a shoe factory in Brockton, Massachusetts, outside Boston, in the year Nancy was born, 1899. He got high-class shoes sent over from London and made cheap copies; then he made a selling point out of his plagiarism. His advertisements showed a $29 London shoe next to a $10 Black’s copy and asked: “Can you tell the difference?” He worked hard and did well, and during the Great War he won the first of the military contracts that were still a staple of the business.

In the twenties he built up a chain of stores, mostly in New England, selling only his shoes. When the Depression hit, he reduced the number of styles from a thousand to fifty and introduced a standard price of $6.60 for every pair of shoes regardless of style. His audacity paid off, and while everyone else was going broke, Black’s profits increased.

He used to say that it cost as much to make bad shoes as good ones, and there was no reason why working people should be poorly shod. At a time when poor folk were buying shoes with cardboard soles that wore out in a few days, Black’s Boots were cheap and long-lasting. Pa was proud of this, and so was Nancy. For her, the good shoes the family made justified the grand Back Bay house they lived in, the big Packard with the chauffeur, their parties and their pretty clothes and their servants. She was not like some of the rich kids, who took inherited wealth for granted.

She wished she could say the same for her brother.

Peter was thirty-eight. When Pa died five years ago, he left Peter and Nancy equal shares in the company, forty percent each. Pa’s sister, Aunt Tilly, got ten percent, and the remaining ten went to Danny Riley, Pa’s disreputable old lawyer.

Nancy had always assumed she would take over when Pa died. Pa had favored her over Peter. A woman running a company was unusual, but not unknown, especially in the clothing industry.

Pa had a deputy, Nat Ridgeway, a very able lieutenant who made it quite clear that he thought he was the best man for the job of chairman of Black’s Boots.

But Peter wanted it too, and he was the son. Nancy had always felt guilty about being Pa’s favorite. Peter would be humiliated and bitterly disappointed if he did not inherit his father’s mantle. Nancy did not have the heart to deal him such a crushing blow. So she agreed that Peter should take over. Between them, she and her brother owned eighty percent of the stock, so when they were in agreement they got their way.

Nat Ridgeway had resigned and gone to work for General Textiles in New York. He was a loss to the business, but in another way he was a loss to Nancy. Just before Pa died, Nat and Nancy had started dating.

Nancy had not dated anyone since her husband, Sean, died. She had not wanted to. But Nat had picked his time perfectly, for after five years she was beginning to feel that her life was all work and no fun, and she was ready for a little romance. They had enjoyed a few quiet dinners and a theater visit or two, and she had kissed him good night, quite warmly; but that was as far as it had gone when the crisis hit, and when Nat left Black’s the romance ended too, leaving Nancy feeling cheated.

Since then, Nat had done spectacularly well at General Textiles, and he was now president of the company. He had also got married, to a pretty blond woman ten years younger than Nancy.

By contrast, Peter had done badly. The truth was he was not up to the job of chairman. In the five years during which he had been in charge, the business had gone steeply downhill. The stores were no longer making a profit, just breaking even. Peter had opened a swanky shoe store on Fifth Avenue in New York, selling expensive fashion shoes for ladies, and that took all his time and attention—but it lost money.

Only the factory, which Nancy managed, was making money. In the mid-thirties, as America was beginning to come out of the Depression, she had started making very cheap open-toed sandals for women, and they had been very popular. She was convinced that in women’s shoes the future lay in light, colorful products that were cheap enough to throw away.

She could sell double the number of shoes she was making, if she had the manufacturing capacity. But her profits were swallowed up by Peter’s losses and there was nothing left for expansion.

Nancy knew what had to be done to save the business.

The chain of stores would have to be sold, perhaps to their managers, to raise cash. The money from the sale would be used to modemize the factory and switch to the conveyor-belt style of production that was being introduced in all the more progressive shoe-manufacturing plants. Peter would have to hand over the reins to her, and confine himself to running his New York store, working within strict cost controls.

She was willing for him to retain the title of chairman and the prestige that went with it, and she would continue to subsidize his store from the factory’s profits, within limits; but he would have to give up all real power.

She had put these proposals in a written report, for Peter’s eyes only. He had promised to think about it. Nancy had told him, as gently as she could, that the decline of the company could not be allowed to continue, and that if he did not agree to her plan, she would have to go over his head to the board—which meant that he would be sacked and she would become chairman. She hoped fervently that he would see sense. If he were to provoke a crisis, it was sure to end with a humiliating defeat for him and a family split that might never be repaired.

So far he had not taken offense. He seemed calm and thoughtful, and remained friendly. They decided to go to Paris together. Peter bought fashion shoes for his store, and Nancy shopped for herself at the couturiers’ and kept an eye on Peter’s expenditures. Nancy had loved Europe, Paris especially, and she had been looking forward to London; then war was declared.

They decided to return to the States immediately; but so did everyone else, of course, and they had terrible trouble getting passage. In the end Nancy got tickets on a ship leaving from Liverpool. After a long journey from Paris by train and ferry, they had arrived here yesterday, and they were due to embark today.

She was unnerved by England’s war preparations. Yesterday afternoon a bellhop had come to her room and installed an elaborate light-proof screen over the window. All windows had to be completely blacked out every evening so that the city would not be visible from the air at night. The windowpanes were crisscrossed with adhesive tape so splinters of glass would not fly when the city was bombed. There were stacks of sandbags at the front of the hotel and an underground air-raid shelter at the back.

Her terrible fear was that the United States would get into the war and her sons, Liam and Hugh, would be conscripted. She remembered Pa saying, when Hitler first came to power, that the Nazis would stop Germany going Communist; and that was the last time she had thought about Hitler. She had too much to do to worry about Europe. She was not interested in international politics, the balance of power, or the rise of Fascism: such abstractions seemed foolish when set against the lives of her sons. The Poles, the Austrians, the Jews and the Slavs would have to take care of themselves. Her job was to take care of Liam and Hugh.

Not that they needed much taking care of. Nancy had married young and had her children right away, so the boys were grown up. Liam was married and living in Houston, and Hugh was in his final year at Yale. Hugh was not studying as hard as he should, and she had been disturbed to learn that he had bought a fast sports car, but he was well past the age of listening to his mother’s advice. So, as she could not keep them out of the army, there was not much to draw her home.

She knew that war would be good for business. There would be an economic boom in America, and people would have more money to buy shoes. Whether the U.S. got into the war or not, the military was bound to be expanded, and that meant increased orders on her government contracts. All in all, she guessed her sales would double and perhaps treble over the next two or three years—another reason for modernizing her factory.

However, all that paled into insignificance beside the glaring, awful possibility that her own sons would be conscripted, to fight and be wounded and perhaps to die in agony on a battlefield.

A porter came for her bags and interrupted her morbid thoughts. She asked the man whether Peter had yet dispatched his luggage. In a thick local accent she could hardly understand, he told her that Peter had sent his bags to the ship last night.

She went along to Peter’s room to see whether he was ready to leave. When she knocked, the door was opened by a maid, who told her in the same guttural accent that he had left yesterday.

Nancy was puzzled. They had checked in together yesterday evening. Nancy decided to have dinner in her room and get an early night; and Peter had said he would do the same. If he had changed his mind, where had he gone? Where had he spent the night? And where was he now?

She went down to the lobby to phone, but she was not sure whom to call. Neither she nor Peter knew anybody in England. Liverpool was just across the water from Dublin: could Peter have gone to Ireland, to see the country where the Black family came from? It had been part of their original plan. But Peter would know he could not get back from there in time for the departure of the ship.

On impulse, she asked the operator for Aunt Tilly’s number.

Calling America from Europe was a chancy business. There were not enough lines, and sometimes you could wait a long time. If you were lucky you might get through in a few minutes. The sound quality was generally bad, and you had to shout.

It was a few minutes before seven a.m. in Boston, but Aunt Tilly would be up. Like many older people she slept little and woke early. She was very alert.

The lines were not busy at the moment—perhaps because it was too early for businessmen in the States to be at their desks—and after only five minutes the phone in the booth rang. Nancy picked it up to hear the familiar American ringing tone in her ear. She pictured Aunt Tilly in her silk dressing gown and fur slippers, padding across the gleaming wood floor of her kitchen to the black telephone in the hall.

“Hello?”

“Aunt Tilly, this is Nancy.”

“My goodness, child, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. They’ve declared war but the shooting hasn’t started yet, at least not in England. Have you heard from the boys?”

“They’re both fine. I had a postcard from Liam in Palm Beach, he says Jacqueline is even more beautiful with a suntan. Hugh took me for a ride in his new car, which is very pretty.”

“Does he drive it very fast?”

“He seemed pretty careful to me, and he refused a cocktail because he says people shouldn’t drive powerful automobiles when they’ve been drinking.”

“That makes me feel better.”

“Happy birthday, dear! What are you doing in England?”

“I’m in Liverpool, about to take ship for New York, but I’ve lost Peter. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from him, have you?”

“Why, my dear, of course I have. He’s called a board meeting for the day after tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”

Nancy was mystified. “You mean Friday morning?”

“Yes, dear, Friday is the day after tomorrow,” Tilly said with a touch of pique. Her tone of voice implied I’m not so old that I don’t know what day of the week it is.

Nancy was baffled. What was the point of calling a board meeting when neither she nor Peter would be there? The only other directors were Tilly and Danny Riley, and they would never decide anything on their own.

This had the marks of a plot. Was Peter up to something?

“What’s on the agenda, Aunt?”

“I was just looking it over.” Aunt Tilly read aloud: “ ‘To approve the sale of Black’s Boots, Inc., to General Textiles, Inc., on the terms negotiated by the chairman.’ ”

“Good God!” Nancy was so shocked that she felt faint. Peter was selling the company behind her back!

For a moment she was too stunned to speak; then, with an effort, she said in a shaky voice: “Would you mind reading that to me again, Aunt?”

Aunt Tilly repeated it.

Nancy suddenly felt cold. How had Peter managed to do this beneath her eyes? When had he negotiated the deal? He must have been working on it surreptitiously ever since she gave him her secret report. While pretending to consider her proposals, he had in fact been plotting against her.

She had always known that Peter was weak, but she would never have suspected him of such treachery.

“Are you there, Nancy?”

Nancy swallowed. “Yes, I’m here. Just dumbstruck. Peter has kept this from me.”

“Really? That’s not fair, is it?”

“He obviously wants it passed while I’m away ... but he won’t be at the meeting, either. We’re taking a ship today—we won’t be home for five days.” And yet, she thought, Peter has disappeared....

“Isn’t there an airplane now?”

“The Clipper!” Nancy remembered: it had been in all the papers. You could fly across the Atlantic in a day. Was that what Peter was doing?

“That’s right, the Clipper,” said Tilly. “Danny Riley says Peter’s coming back on the Clipper and he’ll be here in time for the board meeting.”

Nancy was finding it hard to take in the shameless way her brother had lied to her. He had traveled all the way to Liverpool with her, to make her think he was taking the ship. He must have left again the moment they parted company in the hotel corridor, and driven overnight to Southampton in time for the plane. How could he have spent all that time with her, talking and eating together, discussing the forthcoming voyage, when all along he was scheming to do her in?

Aunt Tilly said: “Why don’t you come on the Clipper, too?”

Was it too late? Peter must have planned this carefully. He would have known she would make some inquiries when she discovered he was not going on the ship, and he would try to make sure that she was not able to catch up with him. But timing was not Peter’s strength, and he might have left a gap.

She hardly dared to hope.

“I’m going to try,” Nancy said with sudden determination. “Goodbye.” She hung up.

She thought for a moment. Peter had left yesterday evening and must have traveled overnight. The Clipper must be scheduled to leave Southampton today and arrive in New York tomorrow, in time for Peter to get to Boston for the meeting on Friday. But what time did the Clipper take off? And could Nancy get to Southampton by then?

With her heart in her mouth, she went to the desk and asked the head porter what time the Pan American Clipper took off from Southampton.

“You’ve missed it, madam,” he said.

“Just check the time, please,” she said, trying to keep the note of impatience out of her voice.

He took out a timetable and opened it. “Two o’clock.”

She checked her watch: it was just noon.

The porter said: “You couldn’t get to Southampton in time even if you had a private airplane standing by.”

“Are there any airplanes?” she persisted.

His face took on the tolerant expression of a hotel employee humoring a foolish foreigner. “There’s an airfield about ten miles from here. Generally you can find a pilot to take you anywhere, for a price. But you’ve got to get to the field, find the pilot, make the journey, land somewhere near Southampton, then get from that airfield to the docks. It can’t be done in two hours, believe me.”

She turned away from him in frustration.

Getting mad was no use in business, she had learned long ago. When things went wrong you had to find a way to put them right. I can’t get to Boston in time, she thought; so maybe I can stop the sale by remote control.

She returned to the phone booth. It was just after seven o’clock in Boston. Her lawyer, Patrick “Mac” MacBride, would be at home. She gave the operator his number.

Mac was the man her brother should have been. When Sean died, Mac had stepped in and taken care of everything: the inquest, the funeral, the will, and Nancy’s personal finances. He had been marvelous with the boys, taking them to ball games, turning up to see them in school plays, and advising them on college and careers. At different times he had talked to each of them about the facts of life. When Pa died, Mac counseled Nancy against letting Peter become chairman: she went against his advice, and now events had proved that Mac had been right. She knew that he was more or less in love with her. It was not a dangerous attachment: Mac was a devout Catholic and faithful to his plain, dumpy, loyal wife. Nancy was very fond of him, but he was not the kind of man she could ever fall in love with: he was a soft, round, mild-mannered type with a bald dome, and she was always attracted to strong-willed types with a lot of hair—men such as Nat Ridgeway.

While she waited for the connection, she had time to reflect on the irony of her situation. Peter’s coconspirator against her was Nat Ridgeway, her father’s onetime deputy and her old flame. Nat had left the company—and Nancy—because he could not be boss; and now, from his position as president of General Textiles, he was trying again to take control of Black’s Boots.

She knew Nat had been in Paris for the collections, although she had not run into him. But Peter must have held meetings with him and closed the deal there, while pretending to be innocently buying shoes. Nancy had not suspected anything. When she thought how easily she had been deceived, she felt furious with Peter and Nat—and most of all with herself.

The phone in the booth rang and she picked it up: she was lucky with connections today.

Mac answered with his mouth full of breakfast. “Hmm?”

“Mac, it’s Nancy.”

He swallowed rapidly. “Thank God you called. I’ve been searching Europe for you. Peter is trying to—”

“I know, I just heard,” she interrupted. “What are the terms of the deal?”

“One share in General Textiles, plus twenty-seven cents cash, for five shares in Black’s.”

“Jesus, that’s a giveaway!”

“On your profits it’s not so low—”

“But our asset value is much higher!”

“Hey, I’m not fighting you,” he said mildly.

“Sorry, Mac, I’m just angry.”

“I understand.”

She could hear his children squabbling in the background. He had five, all girls. She could also hear a radio playing and a kettle whistling.

After a moment he went on: “I agree that the offer is too low. It reflects the current profit level, yes, but it ignores asset value and future potential.”

“You can say that again.”

“There’s something else, too.”

“Tell me.”

“Peter will be retained to run the Black’s operation for five years following the takeover. But there’s no job for you.”

Nancy closed her eyes. This was the cruelest blow of all. She felt sick. Lazy, dumb Peter, whom she had sheltered and covered for, would remain; and she, who had kept the business afloat, would be thrown out. “How could he do this to me?” she said. “He’s my brother!”

“I’m really sorry, Nan.”

“Thanks.”

“I never trusted Peter.”

“My father spent his life building up this business,” she cried. “Peter can’t be allowed to destroy it.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Can we stop it?”

“If you could get here for the board meeting I believe you could persuade your aunt and Danny Riley to turn it down—”

“I can’t get there—that’s my problem. Can’t you persuade them?”

“I might, but it would do no good—Peter outvotes them. They only have ten percent each and he has forty.”

“Can’t you vote my stock on my behalf?”

“I don’t have your proxy.”

“Can I vote by phone?”

“Interesting idea ... I think it would be up to the board, and Peter would use his majority to rule it out.”

There was a silence while they both racked their brains.

In the pause she remembered her manners, and said: “How’s the family?”

“Unwashed, undressed and unruly, right now. And Betty’s pregnant.”

For a moment she forgot her troubles. “No kidding!” She had thought they had stopped having children: the youngest was now five. “After all this time!”

“I thought I’d found out what was causing it.”

Nancy laughed. “Hey, congratulations!”

“Thanks, although Betty’s a little ... ambivalent about it.”

“Why? She’s younger than I am.”

“But six is a lot of kids.”

“You can afford it.”

“Yes.... Are you sure you can’t make that plane?”

Nancy sighed. “I’m in Liverpool. Southampton is two hundred miles away and the plane takes off in less than two hours. It’s impossible.”

“Liverpool? That’s not far from Ireland.”

“Spare me the travelogue—”

“But the Clipper touches down in Ireland.”

Nancy’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure?”

“I read it in the newspaper.”

This changed everything, she realized with a surge of hope. She might be able to make the plane after all! “Where does it come down—Dublin?”

“No, someplace on the west coast. I forget the name. But you might still make it.”

“I’ll check into it and call you later. ’Bye.”

“Hey, Nancy?”

“What?”

“Happy birthday.”

She smiled at the wall. “Mac ... you’re great.”

“Good luck.”

“Goodbye.” She hung up and went back to the desk. The head porter gave her a condescending smile. She resisted the temptation to put him in his place: that would make him even more unhelpful. “I believe the Clipper touches down in Ireland,” she said, forcing herself to sound friendly.

“That’s correct, madam. At Foynes, in the Shannon estuary.”

She wanted to say So why didn’t you tell me that before, you pompous little prick? Instead she smiled and said: “What time?”

He reached for his timetable. “It’s scheduled to land at three thirty and take off again at four thirty.”

“Can I get there by then?”

His tolerant smile vanished and he looked at her with more respect. “I never thought of that,” he said. “It’s a two-hour flight in a small airplane. If you can find a pilot you can do it.”

Her tension went up a notch. This was beginning to look seriously possible. “Get me a taxi to take me to that airfield right away, would you?”

He snapped his fingers at a bellhop. “Taxi for the lady!” He turned back to Nancy. “What about your trunks?” They were now stacked in the lobby. “You won’t get that lot in a small plane.”

“Send them to the ship, please.”

“Very good.”

“Bring my bill as quick as you can.”

“Right away.”

Nancy retrieved her small overnight case from the stack of luggage. In it she had her essential toiletries, makeup and a change of underwear. She opened a suitcase and found a clean blouse for tomorrow morning, in plain navy blue silk, and a nightdress and bathrobe. Over her arm she carried a light gray cashmere coat, which she had intended to wear on deck if the wind was cold. She decided to keep it with her now: she might need it to keep warm in the plane.

She closed up her bags.

“Your bill, Mrs. Lenehan.”

She scribbled a check and handed it over with a tip.

“Very kind of you, Mrs. Lenehan. The taxi is waiting.”

She hurried outside and climbed into a cramped little British car. The porter put her overnight case on the seat beside her and gave instructions to the driver. Nancy added: “And go as fast as you can!”

The car went infuriatingly slowly through the city center. She tapped the toe of her gray suede shoe impatiently. The delay was caused by men painting white lines down the middle of the road, on the curbs and around roadside trees. She wondered irritably what their purpose was; then she figured out the lines were to help motorists in the blackout.

The taxi picked up speed as it wound through the suburbs and headed into the country. Here she saw no preparations for war. The Germans would not bomb fields, unless by accident. She kept looking at her watch. It was already twelve thirty. If she found an airplane, and a pilot, and persuaded him to take her, and negotiated a fee, all without delay, she might take off by one o’clock. Two hours’ flight, the porter had said. She would land at three. Then, of course, she would have to find her way from the airfield to Foynes. But that should not be too great a distance. She might well arrive with time to spare. Would there be a car to take her to the dockside? She tried to calm herself. There was no point in worrying that far ahead.

It occurred to her that the Clipper might be full: all the ships were.

She put the thought out of her mind.

She was about to ask her driver how much farther they had to go when, to her grateful relief, he abruptly turned off the road and steered through an open gate into a field. As the car bumped over the grass Nancy saw ahead of her a small hangar. All around it, small brightly colored planes were tethered to the green turf, like a collection of butterflies on a velvet cloth. There was no shortage of aircraft, she noted with satisfaction. But she needed a pilot too, and there seemed to be no one about.

The driver took her up to the big door of the hangar.

“Wait for me, please,” she said as she jumped out. She did not want to get stranded.

She hurried into the hangar. There were three planes inside but no people. She went out into the sunshine again. Surely the place could not be unattended, she thought anxiously. There had to be someone around; otherwise the door would be locked. She walked around the hangar to the back, and there at last she saw three men standing by a plane.

The aircraft itself was ravishing. It was painted canary yellow all over, with little yellow wheels that made Nancy think of toy cars. It was a biplane, its upper and lower wings joined by wires and struts, and it had a single engine in the nose. It sat there with its propeller in the air and its tail on the ground like a puppy begging to be taken for a walk.

It was being fueled. A man in oily blue overalls and a cloth cap was standing on a stepladder pouring petrol from a can into a bulge on the wing over the front seat. On the ground was a tall, good-looking man of about Nancy’s age wearing a flying helmet and a leather jacket. He was deep in conversation with a man in a tweed suit.

Nancy coughed and said: “Excuse me.”

The two men glanced at her but the tall man continued speaking and they both looked away.

That was not a good start.

Nancy said: “I’m sorry to bother you. I want to charter a plane.”

The tall man interrupted his conversation to say: “Can’t help you.”

“It’s an emergency,” Nancy said.

“I’m not a bloody taxi driver,” the man said, and turned away again.

Nancy was angered sufficiently to say: “Why do you have to be so rude?”

That got his attention. He turned an interested, quizzical look at her, and she noticed that he had arched black eyebrows. “I didn’t intend to be rude,” he said mildly. “But my plane isn’t for hire, nor am I.”

Desperately, she said: “Please don’t be offended, but if it’s a matter of money, I’ll pay a high price—”

He was offended: his expression froze and he turned away.

Nancy observed that there was a chalk-striped dark gray suit under the leather jacket, and the man’s black Oxford shoes were the genuine article, not inexpensive imitations such as Nancy made. He was obviously a wealthy businessman who flew his own plane for pleasure.

“Is there anybody else, then?” she said.

The mechanic looked up from the fuel tank and shook his head. “Nobody about today,” he said.

The tall man said to his companion: “I’m not in business to lose money. You tell Seward that what he’s getting paid is the rate for the job.”

“The trouble is, he has got a point, you know,” said the one in the tweed suit.

“I know that. Say we’ll negotiate a higher rate for the next job.”

“That may not satisfy him.”

“In that case he can get his cards and bugger off.”

Nancy wanted to scream with frustration. Here was a perfectly good plane and a pilot, and nothing she said would make them take her where she needed to go. Close to tears, she said: “I just have to get to Foynes!”

The tall man turned around again. “Did you say Foynes?”

“Yes—”

“Why?”

At least she had succeeded in engaging him in conversation. “I’m trying to catch up with the Pan American Clipper.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “So am I.”

Her hopes lifted again. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re going to Foynes?”

“Aye.” He looked grim. “I’m chasing my wife.”

It was an odd thing to say, she noticed, even though she was so wrought up: a man who would confess to that was either very weak or very self-assured. She looked at his plane. There appeared to be two cockpits, one behind the other. “Are there two seats in your plane?” she asked with trepidation.

He looked her up and down. “Aye,” he said. “Two seats.”

“Please take me with you.”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not?”

She wanted to faint with relief. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “I’m so grateful.”

“Don’t mention it.” He stuck out a big hand. “Mervyn Lovesey. How do you do?”

She shook hands. “Nancy Lenehan,” she replied. “Am I pleased to meet you.”

Eddie eventually realized he needed to talk to someone.

It would have to be someone he could trust absolutely; someone who would keep the whole thing secret.

The only person he discussed this kind of thing with was Carol-Ann, She was his confidante. He would not even have discussed it with Pop when Pop was alive: he never liked to show weakness to his father. Was there anyone he could trust?

He considered Captain Baker. Marvin Baker was just the kind of pilot that passengers liked: good-looking, square-jawed, confident and assertive. Eddie respected him and liked him, too. But Baker’s loyalty was to the plane and the safety of the passengers, and he was a stickler for the rules. He would insist on going straight to the police with this story. He was no use.

Anyone else?

Yes. There was Steve Appleby.

Steve was a Lumberjack’s son from Oregon, a tall boy with muscles as hard as wood, a Catholic from a dirt-poor family. They had been midshipmen together at Annapolis. They had become friends on their first day, in the vast white mess hall. While the other plebes were bitching about the chow, Eddie cleaned his plate. Looking up, he saw that there was one other cadet poor enough to think this was great food: Steve. Their eyes had met and they understood one another perfectly.

They had been pals through the academy; then later they were both stationed at Pearl Harbor. When Steve married Nella, Eddie was best man; and last year Steve did the same service for Eddie. Steve was still in the navy, stationed at the shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They saw each other infrequently now, but it did not matter, for theirs was a friendship that would survive long periods with no contact. They would not write letters unless they had something specific to say. When they both happened to be in New York, they would have dinner or go to a ball game and would be as close as if they had parted company only the day before. Eddie would have trusted Steve with his soul.

Steve was also a great fixer. A weekend pass, a bottle of hooch, a pair of tickets for the big game—he could get them when no one else could.

Eddie decided to try to get in touch with him.

He felt a little better having made some kind of decision. He hurried back into the hotel.

He went into the little office and gave the number of the naval base to the hotel’s proprietress; then he went to his room. She would come and fetch him when the call came through.

He took off his overalls. He did not want to be in the tub when she came, so he scrubbed his hands and washed his face in the bedroom, then put on a clean white shirt and his uniform pants. The routine activity calmed him a little, but he was feverishly impatient. He did not know what Steve would say but it would be a tremendous relief to share the problem.

He was tying his tie when the proprietress knocked at the door. He hurried down the stairs and picked up the phone. He was connected with the switchboard operator at the base.

He said: “Would you put me through to Steve Appleby, please?”

“Lieutenant Appleby cannot be reached by telephone at this time,” she said. Eddie’s heart sank. She added: “May I give him a message?”

Eddie was bitterly disappointed. He knew Steve would not have been able to wave a wand and rescue Carol-Ann, but at least they could have talked, and maybe some ideas would have come out of the discussion.

He said: “Miss, this is an emergency. Where the hell is he?”

“May I ask who is calling, sir?”

“This is Eddie Deakin.”

She dropped her formal tone immediately. “Oh, hi, Eddie! You were his best man, weren’t you? I’m Laura Gross. We met.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Unofficially, Steve spent last night off the base.”

Eddie groaned inwardly. Steve was doing something he shouldn’t—at just the wrong time. “When do you expect him?”

“He should have been back before daybreak, but he didn’t show up.”

Worse yet—Steve was not just absent but possibly in trouble too.

The operator said: “I could put you through to Nella. She’s in the typing pool. ”

“Okay, thanks.” He could not confide in Nella, of course, but he could find out a little more about where Steve might be. He tapped his foot restlessly while he waited for the connection. He could picture Nella: she was a warmhearted, round-faced girl with long curly hair.

At last he heard her voice. “Hello?”

“Nella, this is Eddie Deakin.”

“Hello, Eddie. Where are you?”

“I’m calling from England. Nella, where’s Steve?”

“Calling from England! My goodness! Steve is, uh, out of touch right now.” She sounded uneasy as she added: “Is something wrong?”

“Ayuh. When do you think Steve will be back?”

“Sometime this morning, maybe in an hour or so. Eddie, you sound really shook. What is it? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Maybe Steve could phone me here if he gets back in time.” He gave her the phone number of Langdown Lawn.

She repeated it. “Eddie, won’t you please tell me what’s goin’ on?”

“I can’t. Just get him to call. I’ll be here for another hour. After that, I have to go to the plane—we fly back to New York today. ”

“Whatever you say,” Nella said doubtfully. “How’s Carol-Ann ?”

“I have to go now,” he said. “Goodbye, Nella.” He hung up the phone without waiting for her reply. He knew he was being discourteous but he was too upset to care. His insides felt tied in knots.

He did not know what to do, so he climbed the stairs and went to his room. He left the door ajar so that he would hear the ring of the phone from the hall, and sat down on the edge of the single bed. He felt close to tears, for the first time since he was a child. He buried his head in his hands and whispered: “What am I going to do?”

He recalled the Lindbergh kidnapping. It had been in all the papers when he was at Annapolis, seven years ago. The child had been killed. “Oh, God, keep Carol-Ann safe,” he prayed.

He did not often pray, nowadays. Prayer had never done his parents any good. He believed in helping himself. He shook his head. This was no time to revert to religion. He had to think it out and do something.

The people who had kidnapped Carol-Ann wanted Eddie on the plane—that much was clear. Maybe that was a reason not to go. But if he stayed away he would never meet Tom Luther and find out what they wanted. He might frustrate their plans, but he would lose any slight chance of gaining control of the situation.

He stood up and opened his small suitcase. He could not think of anything but Carol-Ann, but he automatically stowed his shaving kit, his pajamas and his laundry. He brushed his hair absently and packed the brushes.

As he was sitting down again, the phone rang.

He was out of the room in two strides. He hurried down the stairs, but someone got to the phone before him. Crossing the hall, he heard the proprietress say: “October the fourth? Just let me see whether we have a vacancy.”

Crestfallen, he turned back. He told himself there was nothing Steve could do, anyway. Nobody could do anything. Someone had kidnapped Carol-Ann, and Eddie was just going to have to do whatever they wanted; then he would get her back. No one could release him from the bind he was in.

With a heavy heart he recalled that they had quarreled the last time he saw her. He would never forgive himself for that. He wished with all his soul that he had bitten his tongue instead. What the hell had they been arguing about, anyway? He swore he would not fight with her ever again, if only he could get her back safe.

Why wouldn’t that goddamn phone ring?

There was a tap on the door and Mickey came in, wearing his flight uniform and carrying his suitcase. “Ready to go?” he asked cheerfully.

Eddie felt panicky. “It can’t be time already!”

“Sure is!”

“Shit—”

“What’s the matter? You like it so much here? You want to stay and fight the Germans?”

Eddie had to give Steve a few more minutes. “You honk on ahead,” he said to Mickey. “I’ll catch up with you. ”

Mickey looked a little hurt that Eddie did not want to go with him. He shrugged, said, “See you later,” and went out.

Where the hell was Steve Appleby?

He sat and stared at the wallpaper for the next fifteen minutes.

At last he picked up his case and went slowly down the stairs, staring at the phone as if it were a rattlesnake poised to strike. He stopped in the hall, waiting for it to ring.

Captain Baker came down and looked at Eddie in surprise. “You’re running late,” he said. “You’d better come in the taxi with me.” The captain had the privilege of a taxi to the hangar.

“I’m waiting for a telephone call,” Eddie said.

The ghost of a frown shadowed the captain’s brow. “Well, you can’t wait any longer. Let’s go!”

Eddie did not move for a moment. Then he realized this was stupid. Steve was not going to call, and Eddie had to be on the plane if he was going to do anything. He forced himself to pick up his case and walk out through the door.

The taxi was waiting and they got in.

Eddie realized he had been almost insubordinate. He did not want to offend Baker, who was a good captain and had always treated Eddie decently. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I was expecting a call from the States.”

The captain smiled forgivingly. “Hell, you’ll be there tomorrow!” he said cheerfully.

“Right, Eddie said grimly.

He was on his own.