Night Over Water - Ken Follett [148]
Eddie went out and found Davy making a milk drink in the galley. “The window’s broken in the john,” he told him.
“I’ll fix it as soon as I’ve given the princess her cocoa.”
“I’ve installed the deadlight.”
“Gee, thanks, Eddie.”
“But you need to sweep up the glass as soon as you can.”
“Okay.”
Eddie would have liked to offer to sweep up himself, because he had made the mess. That was how his mother had trained him. However, he was in danger of appearing suspiciously overhelpful, and betraying his guilty conscience. So, feeling bad, he left Davy to it.
He had achieved something, anyway. He had scared Luther badly. He now thought Luther would go along with the new plan and have Carol-Ann brought to the rendezvous in the launch. At least he had reason to hope.
His mind returned to his other worry: the plane’s fuel reserve. Although it was not yet time for him to go back on duty, he went up to the flight deck to speak to Mickey Finn.
“The curve is all over the place!” Mickey said excitably as soon as Eddie arrived.
But have we got enough fuel? Eddie thought. However, he maintained a superficial calm. “Show me.”
“Look—fuel consumption is incredibly high for the first hour of my shift. Then it comes back to normal for the second hour.”
“It was all over the place during my shift, too,” Eddie said, trying to show mild concern where he felt terrible fear. “I guess the storm makes everything unpredictable.” Then he asked the question that was tormenting him. “But do we have enough fuel to get home?” He held his breath.
“Yeah, we have enough,” Mickey said.
Eddie’s shoulders slumped with relief. Thank God. At least that worry was over.
“But we’ve got nothing in reserve,” Mickey added. “I hope to hell we don’t lose an engine.”
Eddie could not worry about such a remote possibility: he had too much else on his mind. “What’s the weather forecast? Maybe we’re almost through the storm.”
Mickey shook his head. “Nope,” he said grimly. “It’s about to get an awful lot worse.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nancy Lenehan found it unsettling to be in bed in a room with a total stranger.
As Mervyn Lovesey had assured her, the “honeymoon suite” had bunk beds despite its name. However, he had not been able to wedge the door open permanently, because of the storm: whatever he tried, it kept banging shut, until they both felt it was less embarrassing to leave it closed than to continue fussing about keeping it open.
She had stayed up as long as possible. She was tempted to sit in the main lounge all night, but it had become an unpleasantly masculine place, full of cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes and the murmured laughter and cursing of gamblers, and she felt conspicuous there. In the end there was nothing for it but to go to bed.
They put out the light and climbed into their bunks, and Nancy lay down with her eyes closed, but she did not feel in the least sleepy. The glass of brandy that young Harry Marks got for her had not helped at all: she was as wide awake as if it had been nine o’clock in the morning.
She could tell that Mervyn was awake, too. She heard every move he made in the bunk above her. Unlike the other bunks, those in the honeymoon suite were not curtained, so her only privacy was the darkness.
She lay awake and thought about Margaret Oxenford, so young and naive, so full of uncertainty and idealism. She sensed great passion beneath Margaret’s hesitant surface, and identified with her on that account. Nancy, too, had had battles with her parents, or, at least, with her mother. Ma had wanted her to marry a boy from an old Boston family, but at the age of sixteen Nancy fell in love with Sean Lenehan, a medical student whose father was actually a foreman in Pa’s own factory, horrors! Ma campaigned against Sean for months, bringing wicked gossip about him and other girls, snubbing his parents viciously, falling ill and retiring to bed only to get up again and harangue her daughter for selfishness and ingratitude. Nancy had