Night Over Water - Ken Follett [40]
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