Night Over Water - Ken Follett [63]
If Elizabeth could do it, so could she.
She smelled the sea. The train entered the docks. It ran along the waterfront, moving slowly past sheds, cranes and ocean liners. Despite her grief at parting with her sister, Margaret began to feel the thrill of anticipation.
The train stopped behind a building marked IMPERIAL HOUSE. It was an ultramodern structure that looked a bit like a ship: its comers were rounded, and the upper story had a wide veranda like a deck, with a white rail all around.
With the other passengers, the Oxenfords retrieved their overnight bags and got off the train. While their checked baggage was being transferred from the train to the plane, they all went into Imperial House to complete the departure formalities.
Margaret felt dazed. The world around her was changing too rapidly. She had left her home, her country was at war, she had lost her sister, and she was about to fly to America. She wished she could stop the clock for a while and try to take it all in.
Father explained that Elizabeth would not be joining them, and a Pan American official said: “That’s all right—there’s someone waiting here hoping to buy an unused ticket. I’ll take care of it.”
Margaret noticed Professor Hartmann, standing in a corner, smoking a cigarette, looking around him with nervous, wary glances. He looked jumpy and impatient. People like my sister have made him like this, Margaret thought; Fascists have persecuted him and turned him into a nervous wreck. I don’t blame him for being in a hurry to get out of Europe.
They could not see the plane from the waiting room, so Percy went off to find a better vantage point. He came back full of information. “Takeoff will be on schedule at two o’clock,” he said. Margaret felt a shiver of apprehension. Percy went on: “It should take us an hour and a half to get to our first stop, which is Foynes. Ireland is on summer time, like Britain, so we should arrive there at half past three. We wait there an hour while they refuel and finalize the flight plan. So we take off again at half past four.”
Margaret noticed that there were new faces here, people who had not been on the train. Some passengers must have come directly to Southampton this morning, or perhaps stayed overnight at a local hotel. As she thought this, a strikingly beautiful woman arrived in a taxi. She was a blonde in her thirties, and she wore a stunning dress, cream silk with red dots. She was accompanied by a rather ordinary, smiling man in a cashmere blazer. Everyone stared at them: they looked so happy and attractive.
A few minutes later the plane was ready for boarding.
They went out through the front doors of Imperial House directly onto the quay. The Clipper was moored there, rising and falling gently on the water, the sun gleaming off its silver sides.
It was huge.
Margaret had never seen a plane even half this size. It was as high as a house and as long as two tennis courts. A big American flag was painted on its whalelike snout. The wings were high, level with the very top of the fuselage. Four enormous engines were built into the wings, and the propellers looked about fifteen feet across.
How could such a thing fly?
“Is it very light?” she wondered aloud.
Percy heard her. “Forty-one tons,” he said promptly.
It would be like taking to the air in a house.
They came to the edge of the quay. A gangplank led down to a floating dock. Mother trod gingerly, hanging on tight to the rail: she looked almost doddery, as if she had aged twenty years. Father had both their bags. Mother never carried anything—it was one of her foibles.
From the floating dock, a shorter gangplank took them onto what looked like a stubby secondary wing, half submerged in the water. “Hydrostabilizer,” Percy said knowledgeably. “Also known as a sea-wing. Prevents the plane from tipping sideways in the water.” The surface of the sea-wing was slightly curved, and Margaret