Night Over Water - Ken Follett [83]
She listened resentfully to Mark and Lulu for a while; then her thoughts drifted away. She was silly to get upset about Lulu. Mark was committed to her, Diana. He was just enjoying talking about old times. There was no point in Diana’s worrying about America: the decision had been taken, the die was cast, Mervyn had by now read her note. It was stupid to start having second thoughts on account of a forty-five-year-old bottle-blonde such as Lulu. She would soon learn American ways, their drinks and their radio shows and their manners. Before long she would have more friends than Mark. She was like that: she attracted people to her.
She began to look forward to the long flight across the Atlantic. She had thought, when she read about the Clipper in the Manchester Guardian, that it sounded like the most romantic journey in the world. From Ireland to Newfoundland was almost two thousand miles, and it took forever, something like seventeen hours. There was time to have dinner, and go to bed, and sleep all night and get up again, before the plane landed. The idea of wearing nightclothes that she had worn with Mervyn had seemed wrong, but she had not had time to shop for the trip. Fortunately she had a beautiful café-au-lait silk robe and salmon pink pajamas that she had never worn. There were no double beds, not even in the honeymoon suite—Mark had checked—but his bunk would be over hers. It was thrilling and at the same time frightening to think of going to bed high over the ocean and flying on, hour after hour, hundreds of miles from land. She wondered if she would be able to sleep. The engines would work just as well whether she was awake or not, but all the same she would worry that they might stop while she slept.
Glancing out of the window she saw that they were now over water. It must be the Irish Sea. People said a flying boat could not land in the open sea, because of the waves; but it seemed to Diana that it surely had a better chance than a land plane.
They flew into clouds, and she could see nothing. After a while the plane began to shake. Passengers looked at one another and smiled nervously, and the steward went around asking everyone to fasten their safety belts. Diana felt anxious, with no land in sight. Princess Lavinia was gripping the arm of her seat hard, but Mark and Lulu carried on talking as if nothing was happening. Frank Gordon and Ollis Field appeared calm, but both lit cigarettes and drew hard on them.
Just as Mark was saying: “What the hell happened to Muriel Fair-field?” there was a thud and the plane seemed to fall. Diana felt as if her stomach had come up into her throat. In another compartment, a passenger screamed. But then the aircraft righted itself, almost as if it had landed.
Lulu said: “Muriel married a millionaire!”
“No kidding!” said Mark. “But she was so ugly!”
Diana said: “Mark, I’m scared!”
He turned to her. “It was only an air pocket, honey. It’s normal.”
“But it felt as if we were going to crash!”
“We won’t. It happens all the time.”
He turned back to Lulu. For a moment Lulu looked at Diana, expecting her to say something. Diana looked away, furious with Mark.
Mark said: “How did Muriel get a millionaire?”
After a moment Lulu replied: “I don’t know, but now they live in Hollywood and he puts money into movies.”
“Unbelievable!”
Unbelievable was right, Diana thought. As soon as she could get Mark on his own she was going to give him a piece of her mind.
His lack of sympathy made her feel more scared. By nightfall they would be over the Atlantic Ocean, rather than the Irish Sea; how would she feel then? She imagined the Atlantic as a vast, featureless blank, cold and deadly for thousands of miles. The only things you ever saw, according to the Manchester Guardian, were icebergs. If there had been some islands to relieve the seascape Diana might have felt less jittery. It was the complete blankness of the picture that was so frightening: nothing but the plane and the moon and the heaving