Night Over Water - Ken Follett [93]
For a moment he did nothing.
The shortfall was terribly small: just a few pounds of payload too much, a few gallons of gas too little. And Carol-Ann was waiting somewhere, scared to death.
He should now tell Captain Baker that takeoff would have to be postponed until the weather improved, unless he was willing to fly through the heart of the storm.
But the gap was so small.
Could he lie?
There was a safety margin built in, anyhow. If things went badly the plane could fly through the storm instead of going around it.
He hated the thought of deceiving his captain. He had always been aware that the lives of the passengers depended on him, and he was proud of his meticulous accuracy.
On the other hand, his decision was not irrevocable. Every hour during the trip he had to compare actual fuel consumption with the projection on the Howgozit Curve. If they burned more than anticipated they simply had to turn back.
He might be found out, and that would be the end of his career, but what did that matter when the lives of his wife and his unborn baby were at stake?
He worked through the calculations again; but this time, when checking the tables, he made two deliberate errors, taking fuel consumption for the lower payload in the next column of figures. Now the result came inside the safety margin.
Still, he hesitated. Lying did not come easily to him, even in this appalling predicament.
Finally Captain Baker got impatient and looked over Eddie’s shoulder, saying: “Snap it up, Ed—do we go or stay?”
Eddie showed him the doctored result on the pad and kept his eyes down, not wanting to look his captain in the eye. He cleared his throat nervously, then did his best to speak in a firm, confident voice.
He said: “It’s close, Captain—but we go.”
PART III
FOYNES TO MID-ATLANTIC
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Diana Lovesey stepped onto the dock at Foynes and felt patheti cally grateful for the feeling of solid ground under her feet.
She was sad but calm. She had made her decision: she was not going to get back on the Clipper, she was not going to fly to America and she was not going to marry Mark Alder.
Her knees seemed wobbly, and for a moment she was afraid she might fall, but the sensation passed and she walked along the dock to the customs shed.
She put her arm through Mark’s. She would tell him as soon as they were alone. It would break his heart, she thought with a stab of grief: he loved her very much. But it was too late to think of that now.
The passengers had disembarked, all except the odd couple sitting near Diana, handsome Frank Gordon and bald Ollis Field. Lulu Bell had not stopped chatting to Mark. Diana ignored her. She no longer felt angry with Lulu. The woman was intrusive and overbearing, but she had enabled Diana to see her true situation.
They passed through customs and left the dock. They found themselves at the western end of a one-street village. A herd of cows was being driven along the street, and they had to wait while the beasts passed.
Diana heard Princess Lavinia say loudly: “Why have I been brought to this farm?”
Davy, the little steward, replied in a soothing voice: “I’ll take you into the terminal building, Princess.” He pointed across the road to a large building like an old inn with ivy growing up the walls. “There’s a very comfortable bar, called Mrs. Walsh’s pub, where they sell excellent Irish whiskey.”
When the cows had gone, several of the passengers followed Davy to Mrs. Walsh’s pub. Diana said to Mark: “Let’s walk through the village.” She wanted to get him on his own as soon as possible. He smiled and agreed. However, some other passengers had the same idea, Lulu among them; and it was a small crowd that strolled along the main street of Foynes.
There were a railway station, a post office and a church, then two rows of gray stone houses with slate roofs. Some of the houses had shop fronts. There were several pony carts parked along the street but only one motorized truck. The villagers, dressed in tweeds and homespun, stared at the