Night Over Water - Ken Follett [73]
“But I am,” she said. “I run a factory too.”
He was taken aback. “What kind?”
“I make five thousand seven hundred pairs of shoes a day.”
He was impressed, but he also seemed to feel he had been trumped, for he said: “Good for you,” in a tone of voice that mixed mockery with admiration. Nancy guessed that his business was much smaller than hers.
“Maybe I ought to say I used to make shoes,” she said, and the taste of bile was in her mouth as she admitted it. “My brother is trying to sell the business out from under my feet. That,” she added with an anxious look at the plane, “is why I have to catch the Clipper.”
“You will,” he said confidently. “My Tiger Moth will get us there with an hour to spare.”
She hoped with all her heart that he was right.
The mechanic jumped down from the plane and said: “All set, Mr. Lovesey.”
Lovesey looked at Nancy. “Fetch her a helmet,” he said to the mechanic. “She can’t fly in that bloody silly little hat.”
Nancy was taken aback by the sudden reversion to his previous offhand manner. Clearly, he was happy enough to talk to her while there was nothing else to do, but as soon as something important cropped up he lost interest in her. She was not used to such a casual attitude from men. Although not the seductive type, she was attractive enough to catch a man’s eye, and she carried a certain authority. Men patronized her often enough, but they rarely treated her with Lovesey’s insouciance. However, she was not going to protest. She would put up with a lot worse than rudeness for the chance of catching up with her treacherous brother.
She was mightily curious about his marriage. “I’m chasing my wife,” he had said, a surprisingly candid admission. She could see why a woman would run away from him. He was terribly good-looking, but he was also self-absorbed and insensitive. That was why it was so odd that he was running after his wife. He seemed the type who would be too proud. Nancy would have guessed he would say: “Let her go to hell.” Perhaps she had misjudged him.
She wondered what the wife was like. Would she be pretty? Sexy? Selfish and spoiled? A frightened mouse? Nancy would find out soon—if they could catch up with the Clipper.
The mechanic brought her a helmet and she put it on. Lovesey climbed aboard, shouting over his shoulder: “Give her a leg up, will you?” The mechanic, more courteous than his master, helped her put on her coat, saying: “It’s chilly up there, even when the sun shines.” Then he hoisted her up and she clambered into the backseat. He passed her overnight case to her and she stowed it under her feet.
As the engine turned over, she realized, with a shiver of nervousness, that she was about to take to the air with a total stranger.
For all she knew, Mervyn Lovesey might be a completely incompetent pilot, inadequately trained, with a poorly maintained plane. He could even be a white slaver, intent on selling her into a Turkish brothel. No, she was too old for that. But she had no reason to trust Lovesey. All she knew was that he was an Englishman with an airplane.
Nancy had flown three times before, but always in larger planes with enclosed cabins. She had never experienced an old-fashioned biplane. It was like taking off in an open-top car. They sped down the runway with the roar of the engine in their ears and the wind buffeting their helmets.
The passenger aircraft Nancy had flown in seemed to ease gently into the air, but this went up with a jump, like a racehorse taking a fence. Then Lovesey banked so steeply that Nancy held on tight, terrified she would fall out despite her safety belt. Did he even have a pilot’s license?
He straightened up and the little plane climbed rapidly. Its flight seemed more comprehensible, less miraculous, than that of a big passenger