Night Over Water

by Ken Follett

  The steward said: “Mr. Vandenpost, the engineer and the navigator will join you at your table, if that’s agreeable.”

  “Sure is,” Harry said. He would enjoy talking to some of the crew.

  Lord Oxenford ordered another whiskey. There was a man that had a thirst, as the Irish would say. His wife was pale and quiet. She had a book in her lap, but she never turned a page. She looked depressed.

  Young Percy went forward to talk to the off-duty crew, and Margaret came and sat next to Harry. He caught a breath of her scent and identified it as Tosca. She had taken off her coat, and he was able to see that she had her mother’s figure: she was quite tall, with square shoulders and a deep bust, and long legs. Her clothes, good quality but plain, did not do her justice: Harry could imagine her in a long evening dress with a plunging neckline, her red hair up and her long white neck graced by drop earrings in carved emeralds by Louis Cartier in his Indian period.... She would be stunning. Obviously that was not how she saw herself. She was embarrassed about being a wealthy aristocrat, so she dressed like a vicar’s wife.

  She was a formidable girl, and Harry was a little intimidated by her, but he could also see her vulnerable side, and he found that endearing. He thought: Never mind endearing, Harry boy—just remember that she’s a danger to you and you need to cultivate her.

  He asked her if she had flown before. “Only to Paris, with Mother,” she said.

  Only to Paris, with Mother, he thought wonderingly. His mother would never see Paris or fly in a plane. “What was it like?” he asked. “To be so privileged?”

  “I hated those trips to Paris,” she said. “I had to have tea with boring English people when I wanted to go to smoky restaurants that had Negro bands.”

  “My ma used to take me to Margate,” Harry said. “I used to paddle in the sea, and we had ice cream and fish-and-chips.”

  As the words came out he realized that he was supposed to lie about this, and he felt panicky. He should be mumbling something vague about boarding school and a remote country house, as he normally did when forced to talk about his childhood to upper-class girls. But Margaret knew his secret, and no one else could hear what he was saying above the hum of the Clipper’s engines. All the same, as he found himself spilling out the truth, he felt as if he had jumped out of the plane and was waiting for his parachute to open.

  “We never went to the seaside,” Margaret said wistfully. “Only the common people went paddling in the sea. My sister and I used to envy the poor children. They could do anything they liked.”

  Harry was amused. Here was further proof that he had been born lucky: the wealthy children, driving in big black cars, wearing coats with velvet collars and eating meat every day, had envied him his barefoot freedom and his fish-and-chips.

  “I remember the smells,” she went on. “The smell outside a pie-shop door at lunchtime; the smell of the oiled machinery as you go past a fairground; the cozy smell of beer and tobacco that comes out when a pub door opens on a winter evening. People always seemed to be having such fun in those places. I’ve never been in a pub.”

  “You haven’t missed much,” said Harry, who did not like pubs. “The food is better at the Ritz.”

  “We each prefer the other’s way of life,” she said.

  “But I’ve tried both,” Harry pointed out. “I know which is best.”

  She looked thoughtful for a minute, then said: “What are you going to do with your life?”

  It was a peculiar question. “Enjoy myself,” Harry said.

  “No, but really.”

  “What do you mean, ‘really’?”

  “Everyone wants to enjoy themselves. What will you do?”

  “What I do now.” Impulsively, Harry decided to tell her something he had never revealed before. “Did you ever read The Amateur Cracks-man, by Homung?” She shook her head. “It’s about a gentleman thief called Raffles, who smokes Turkish cigarettes and wears beautiful clothes and gets invited to people’s houses and steals their jewelry. I want to be like him.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t be silly,” she said brusquely.

  He was a little hurt. She could be brutally direct when she thought you were talking nonsense. But this was not nonsense; this was his dream. Now that he had opened his heart to her, he felt the need to convince her that he was telling the truth. “It’s not silly,” he snapped.

  “But you can’t be a thief all your life,” she said. “You’ll end up growing old in jail. Even Robin Hood got married and settled down eventually. What would you really like?”

  Harry normally answered this question with a shopping list: a flat, a car, girls, parties, Savile Row suits and fine jewels. But he knew she would pour scorn on that. He resented her attitude; but all the same it was true that his ambitions were not quite so materialistic. He very much wanted her to believe in his dreams; and to his surprise he found himself telling her things he had never admitted before. “I’d like to live in a big country house with ivy growing up the walls,” he said.

  He stopped. Suddenly he felt emotional. He was embarrassed, but for some reason he wanted very badly to tell her this. “A house in the country with a tennis court and stables, and rhododendrons all up the drive,” he went on. He could see it in his mind, and it seemed like the safest, most comfortable place in the world. “I’d walk around the grounds in brown boots and a tweed suit, talking to the gardeners and the stable boys, and they’d all think I was a real gent. I’d have all my money in rock-solid investments and never spend half the income. I’d give garden parties in the summer, with strawberries and cream. And five daughters all as pretty as their mother.”

  “Five!” she laughed. “You’d better marry someone strong!” But she became serious immediately. “It’s a lovely dream,” she said. “I hope it comes true.”

  He felt very close to her, as if he could ask her anything. “What about you?” he said. “Have you got a dream?”

  “I want to be in the war,” she said. “I’m going to join the A.T.S.”

  It still seemed funny, to talk about women joining the army, but of course it was common now. “What would you do?”

  “Drive. They need women to be dispatch riders and ambulance drivers.”

  “It will be dangerous.”

  “I know. I don’t care. I just want to be in the fight. This is our last chance to stop Fascism.” Her jaw was set firm and there was a reckless look in her eye, and Harry thought she was terribly brave.

  He said: “You seem very determined.”

  “I had a ... friend who was killed by the Fascists in Spain, and I want to finish the work he began.” She looked sad.

  On impulse, Harry said: “Did you love him?”

  She nodded.

  He could see that she was close to tears. He touched her arm in sympathy. “Do you still love him?”

  “I always will, a little bit.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “His name was Ian.”

  Harry felt a lump in his throat. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, and he would have done so had it not been for her red-faced father sitting on the far side of the compartment drinking whiskey and reading The Times. He had to be content with giving her hand a quick, discreet squeeze. She smiled gratefully, seeming to understand.

  The steward said: “Dinner is served, Mr. Vandenpost.”

  Harry was surprised that it was six o’clock already. He was sorry to break off his conversation with Margaret.

  She read his mind. “We’ve got lots more time to talk,” she said. “We’re going to be together for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Right.” He smiled. He touched her hand again. “See you later,” he murmured.

  He had started out befriending her in order to manipulate her, he remembered. He had ended up telling her all his secrets. She had a way of overturning his plans that was kind of worrying. Worst of all was that he liked it.

  He went into the next compartment. He was a little startled to see that it had been co
mpletely transformed, from a lounge into a dining room. There were three tables each for four people, plus two smaller serving tables. It was set out like a good restaurant, with linen tablecloths and napkins, and bone china crockery, white with the blue Pan American symbol. He noticed that the walls in this area were papered with a design showing a map of the world and the same winged Pan American symbol.

  The steward showed him to a seat opposite a short, thickset man in a pale gray suit that Harry rather envied. His tie was fixed with a stickpin that had a large, genuine pearl. Harry introduced himself, and the man stuck out a hand and said: “Tom Luther.” Harry saw that his cuff links matched the tiepin. Here was a man who spent money on jewelry.

  Harry sat down and unfolded his napkin. Luther had an American accent with something else at the bottom of it, some European intonation. “Where are you from, Tom?” Harry said, probing.

  “Providence, Rhode Island. You?”

  “Philadelphia.” Harry wished to hell he knew where Philadelphia was. “But I’ve lived all over. My father was in insurance.”

  Luther nodded politely, not much interested. That suited Harry. He did not want to be questioned about his background: it was too easy to slip up.

  The two crew members arrived and introduced themselves. Eddie Deakin, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired type with a pleasant face: Harry got the impression he would have liked to undo his tie and take off his uniform jacket. Jack Ashford, the navigator, was dark-haired and blue-chinned, a regular, precise man who looked as if he had been born in a uniform.

  As soon as they sat down, Harry sensed hostility between Eddie the engineer and Luther the passenger. That was interesting.

  The dinner started with shrimp cocktail. The two crew members drank Coke. Harry had a glass of hock and Tom Luther ordered a martini.

  Harry was still thinking about Margaret Oxenford and the boyfriend killed in Spain. He looked out of the window, wondering how much she still felt for the boy. A year was a long time, especially at her age.

  Jack Ashford followed his look and said: “We’re lucky with the weather, so far.”

  Harry noticed that the sky was clear and the sun was shining on the wings. “What’s it usually like?” he said.

  “Sometimes it rains all the way from Ireland to Newfoundland,” Jack said. “We get hail, snow, ice, thunder and lightning.”

  Harry remembered something he had read. “Isn’t ice dangerous?”

  “We plan our route to avoid freezing conditions. But in any event the plane is fitted with rubber deicing boots.”

  “Boots?”

  “Just rubber covers that fit over the wings and tail where they tend to ice up.”

  “So what’s the forecast for the rest of the trip?”

  Jack hesitated momentarily, and Harry saw that he wished he had not mentioned the weather. “There’s a storm in the Atlantic,” he said.

  “Bad?”

  “In the center it’s bad, but we’ll only touch the skirt of it, I expect.” He sounded only half convinced.

  Tom Luther said: “What’s it like in a storm?” He was smiling, showing his teeth, but Harry saw fear in his pale blue eyes.

  “It gets a little bumpy,” Jack said.

  He did not elaborate, but the engineer, Eddie, spoke up. Looking directly at Tom Luther, he said: “It’s kind of like trying to ride an unbroken horse.”

  Luther blanched. Jack frowned at Eddie, plainly disapproving of his tactlessness.

  The next course was turtle soup. Both stewards were serving now, Nicky and Davy. Nicky was fat and Davy was small. In Harry’s estimation they were both homosexual—or “musical,” as the Noel Coward set would say. Harry liked their informal efficiency.

  The engineer seemed preoccupied. Harry studied him covertly. He did not look the sulky type: he had an open, good-natured face. In an attempt to draw him out, Harry said: “Who’s flying the plane while you’re eating dinner, Eddie?”

  “The assistant engineer, Mickey Finn, is doing my job,” Eddie said. He spoke pleasantly enough, although he did not smile. “We carry a crew of nine, not counting the two stewards. All except the captain work alternate four-hour shifts. Jack and I have been on duty since we took off from Southampton at two o’clock, so we stood down at six, a few minutes ago.”

  “What about the captain?” Tom Luther said worriedly. “Does he take pills to stay awake?”

  “He naps when he can,” Eddie said. “He’ll probably take a long break when we pass the point of no return.”

  “So we’ll be flying through the sky and the captain will be asleep?” Luther said, and his voice was a little too loud.

  “Sure,” said Eddie with a grin.

  Luther was looking terrified. Harry tried to steer the conversation into calmer waters. “What’s the point of no return?”

  “We monitor our fuel reserves constantly. When we don’t have enough fuel to get back to Foynes, we’ve passed the point of no return.” Eddie spoke brusquely, and Harry now had no doubt the engineer was trying to scare Tom Luther.

  The navigator broke in, trying to be reassuring. “Right now we have enough fuel to reach our destination or to return home.”

  Luther said: “But what if you don’t have enough to get there or get back?”

  Eddie leaned across the table and grinned humorlessly at Luther. “Trust me, Mr. Luther,” he said.

  “It would never happen,” the navigator said hastily. “We’d turn back for Foynes before we reached that point. And for extra safety, we make the calculations based on three engines instead of four, just in case something should go wrong with one engine.”

  Jack was trying to restore Luther’s confidence, but of course talk of engines going wrong only made the man more frightened. He tried to drink some soup but his hand was shaking and he spilled it on his tie.

  Eddie sank back into silence, apparently satisfied. Jack tried to make small talk, and Harry did his best to help out, but there was an awkward atmosphere. Harry wondered what the hell was going on between Eddie and Luther.

  The dining room filled up rapidly. The beautiful woman in the dotted dress came to sit at the next table with her blue-blazered escort. Harry had found out that their names were Diana Lovesey and Mark Alder. Margaret should dress like Mrs. Lovesey, Harry thought: she could look even better. However, Mrs. Lovesey did not look happy—in fact she looked as miserable as sin.

  The service was fast and the food was good. The main course was filet mignon with asparagus hollandaise and mashed potatoes. The steak was about twice as big as would have been served in an English restaurant. Harry did not eat it all and he refused another glass of wine. He wanted to be alert. He was going to steal the Delhi Suite. The thought thrilled him but also made him apprehensive. It would be the biggest job of his career, and it could be the last, if he so chose. It could buy him that ivy-grown country house with a tennis court.

  After the steak they served a salad, which surprised Harry. Salad was not often served in fancy restaurants in London, and certainly not as a separate course following the main dish.

  Peach melba, coffee and petits-fours came in rapid succession. Eddie, the engineer, seemed to realize he was being unsociable, and made an effort to converse. “May I ask what’s the purpose of your trip, Mr. Vandenpost?”

  “I guess I want to stay out of the way of Hitler,” Harry said. “At least until America gets into the war.”

  “You think that will happen?” Eddie asked skeptically.

  “It did last time.”

  Tom Luther said: “We have no quarrel with the Nazis. They’re against communism, and so are we.”

  Jack nodded in agreement.

  Harry was taken aback. In England everyone thought America would come into the war. But around this table there was no such assumption. Perhaps the British were kidding themselves, he thought pessimistically. Maybe there was no help to be had from America. That would be bad news for Ma, back in London.

  Eddie said:
“I think we may have to fight the Nazis.” There was an angry note in his voice. “They’re like gangsters,” he said, looking directly at Luther. “In the end, people of that type just have to be exterminated, like rats.”

  Jack stood up abruptly, looking worried. “If we’re through, Eddie, we’d better get a little rest,” he said firmly.

  Eddie looked startled at this sudden demand, but after a moment he nodded assent, and the two crew members took their leave.

  Harry said: “That engineer was kind of rude.”

  “Was he?” said Luther. “I didn’t notice.”

  You bloody liar, Harry thought. He practically called you a gangster!

  Luther ordered a brandy. Harry wondered if he really was a gangster. The ones Harry knew in London were much more showy, with multiple rings and fur coats and two-tone shoes. Luther looked more like a self-made millionaire businessman, a meat packer or shipbuilder, something industrial. On impulse Harry asked him: “What do you do for a living, Tom?”

  “I’m a businessman in Rhode Island.”

  It was not an encouraging reply, and a few moments later Harry stood up, gave a polite nod and left.

  When he reentered his compartment, Lord Oxenford said abruptly: “Dinner any good?”

  Harry had enjoyed it thoroughly, but upper-class people were never too enthusiastic about food. “Not bad,” he said neutrally. “And there’s a drinkable hock.”

  Oxenford grunted and went back to his newspaper. There’s no one as rude as a rude lord, Harry thought.

  Margaret smiled and looked pleased to see him. “What was it like, really?” she said in a conspiratorial murmur.

  “Delicious,” he replied, and they both laughed.

  Margaret looked different when she laughed. In repose she was pale and unremarkable, but now her cheeks turned pink and she opened her mouth, showing two rows of even teeth, and tossed her hair; and she let out a throaty chuckle that Harry found sexy. He wanted to reach across the narrow aisle and touch her. He was about to do so when he caught the eye of Clive Membury, sitting opposite him, and for some reason that made him resist the impulse.