Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [11]
Lucy hated the way they trivialized bloodshed and destruction. She said: “David, we should go and change now.”
They went in separate cars to Lucy’s home. Her mother helped her out of the wedding dress and said: “Now, my dear, I don’t quite know what you’re expecting tonight, but you ought to know—”
“Oh, mother, this is 1940, you know!”
Her mother colored slightly. “Very well, dear,” she said mildly. “But if there is anything you want to talk about, later on…”
It occurred to Lucy that to say things like this cost her mother considerable effort, and she regretted her sharp reply. “Thank you,” she said. She touched her mother’s hand. “I will.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then. Call me if you want anything.” She kissed Lucy’s cheek and went out.
Lucy sat at the dressing table in her slip and began to brush her hair. She knew exactly what to expect tonight. She felt a faint glow of pleasure as she remembered.
It happened in June, a year after they had met at the Glad Rag Ball. They were seeing each other every week by this time, and David had spent part of the Easter vacation with Lucy’s people. Mother and Father approved of him—he was handsome, clever and gentlemanly, and he came from precisely the same stratum of society as they did. Father thought he was a shade too opinionated, but Mother said the landed gentry had been saying that about undergraduates for six hundred years, and she thought David would be kind to his wife, which was the most important thing in the long run. So in June Lucy went to David’s family home for a weekend.
The place was a Victorian copy of an eighteenth-century grange, a square-shaped house with nine bedrooms and a terrace with a vista. What impressed Lucy about it was the realization that the people who planted the garden must have known they would be long dead before it reached maturity. The atmosphere was very easy, and the two of them drank beer on the terrace in the afternoon sunshine. That was when David told her that he had been accepted for officer training in the RAF, along with four pals from the university flying club. He wanted to be a fighter pilot.
“I can fly all right,” he said, “and they’ll need people once this war gets going—they say it’ll be won and lost in the air, this time.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” she said quietly.
“Not a bit,” he said. Then he looked at her and said, “Yes, I am.”
She thought he was very brave, and held his hand.
A little later they put on swimming suits and went down to the lake. The water was clear and cool, but the sun was still strong and the air was warm as they splashed about gleefully.
“Are you a good swimmer?” he asked her.
“Better than you!”
“All right. Race you to the island.”
She shaded her eyes to look into the sun. She held the pose for a minute, pretending she did not know how desirable she was in her wet swimsuit with her arms raised and her shoulders back. The island was a small patch of bushes and trees about three hundred yards away, in the center of the lake.
She dropped her hands, shouted, “Go!” and struck out in a fast crawl.
David won, of course, with his enormously long arms and legs. Lucy found herself in difficulty when she was still fifty yards from the island. She switched to breaststroke, but she was too exhausted even for that, and she had to roll over on to her back and float. David, who was already sitting on the bank blowing like a walrus, slipped back into the water and swam to meet her. He got behind her, held her beneath the arms in the correct lifesaving position, and pulled her slowly to shore. His hands were just below her breasts.
“I’m enjoying this,” he said, and she giggled despite her breathlessness.
A few moments later he said, “I suppose I might as well tell you.”
“What?” she panted.
“The lake is only four feet deep.”
“You…!” She wriggled out of his arms, spluttering and laughing, and found her footing.
He took her hand and led her out of the water and through the trees. He pointed to an old wooden rowboat rotting upside-down beneath