Night Over Water (7 page)

“Yes, I can give you all that. The restaurant—”

“Good. You stay here.” He pointed at the accused man. “You sit down.” He waved his hand at the crowd of young men. “The rest of you can go home.”

They all looked rather nonplussed. Their great adventure had ended in anticlimax. For a moment none of them moved.

The sergeant said: “Go on, bugger off, the lot of you!”

Margaret had never heard so much swearing in one day.

The young men moved off, muttering. The boy in the striped suit said: “You bring a thief to justice and you get treated as if you were a criminal yourself!” But he was passing through the door before he finished the sentence.

The sergeant began to question the dark-haired boy, making notes. Harry Marks stood beside him for a moment, then turned away impatiently. He spotted Margaret, threw her a sunny grin and sat down next to her. He said: “All right, girl? What you doing here, then, this time o’ night?”

Margaret was nonplussed. He was quite transformed. His haughty manner and refined speech had gone, and he spoke with the same accent as the sergeant. For a moment she was too surprised to reply.

Harry threw an appraising glance at the doorway, as if he might be thinking of making a dash for it; then he looked back at the desk and saw the younger policeman, who had not yet said a word, staring at him watchfully. He seemed to give up the idea of escape. He turned back to Margaret. “Who give you that black eye, your old man?”

Margaret found her voice and said: “I got lost in the blackout and bumped into a pillar box.”

It was his turn to be surprised. He had taken her for a working-class girl. Now, hearing her accent, he realized his mistake. Without a blink he reverted to his former persona. “I say, what jolly bad luck!”

Margaret was fascinated. Which was his real self? He smelled of cologne. His hair was well cut, if a fraction too long. He wore a midnight blue evening suit in the fashion set by Edward VIII, with silk socks and patent-leather shoes. His jewelry was very good: diamond studs in his shirt front, with matching cuff links; a gold wristwatch with a black crocodile strap; and a signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. His hands were large and strong-looking, but his fingernails were perfectly clean.

In a low voice she said: “Did you really leave the restaurant without paying?”

He looked at her appraisingly, then seemed to reach a decision. “Actually, I did,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.

“But why?”

“Because, if I’d listened for one more minute to Rebecca Maugham-Flint talking about her blasted horses, I should have been unable to resist the urge to take her by the throat and strangle her.”

Margaret giggled. She knew Rebecca Maugham-Flint, who was a large, plain girl, the daughter of a general, with her father’s hearty manner and parade-ground voice. “I can just imagine it,” she said. It would be hard to think of a more unsuitable dinner companion for the attractive Mr. Marks.

Constable Steve appeared and picked up her empty mug. “Feeling better, Lady Margaret?”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harry Marks react to her title. “Much better, thank you,” she said. For a moment she had forgotten her own troubles in talking to Harry, but now she remembered all she had to do. “You’ve been so kind,” she went on. “Now I’m going to leave you to get on with more important things.”

“No need for you to rush off,” the constable said. “Your father, the marquis, is on his way to fetch you.”

Margaret’s heart stopped. How could this be? She had been so convinced that she was safe—she had underestimated her father! Now she was as frightened as she had been walking along the road to the railway station. He was after her, on his way here at this very minute! She felt shaky. “How does he know where I am?” she said in a high, strained voice.

The young policeman looked proud. “Your description was circulated late yesterday evening, and I read it when I come on duty. I never recognized you in the blackout, but I remembered the name. The instruction is to inform the marquis immediately. As soon as I brought you in here, I rung him up on the telephone.”

Margaret stood up, her heart fluttering wildly. “I shan’t wait for him,” she said. “It’s light now.”

The policeman looked anxious. “Just a minute,” he said nervously. He turned to the desk. “Sarge, the lady doesn’t want to wait for her father.”

Harry Marks said to Margaret: “They can’t make you stay—running away from home isn’t a crime at your age. If you want to go, just walk out.”

Margaret was terrified that they would find some excuse to detain her.

The sergeant got off his seat and came around the counter. “He’s quite right,” the sergeant said. “You can go any time you like.”

“Oh, thank you,” Margaret said gratefully.

The sergeant smiled. “But you’ve got no shoes, and there’s holes in your stockings. If you must leave before your father gets here, at least let us call a taxi.”

She thought for a moment. They had phoned Father as soon as Margaret arrived at the police station, but that was less than an hour ago. Father could not possibly get here for another hour or more. “All right,” she said to the kindly sergeant. “Thank you.”

He opened a door off the hall. “You’ll be more comfortable in here, while you wait for the taxi.” He switched on the light.

Margaret would have preferred to stay and talk to the fascinating Harry Marks, but she did not want to refuse the sergeant’s kindness, especially after he had given in to her. “Thank you,” she said again.

As she walked to the door she heard Harry say: “More fool you.”

She stepped into the little room. There were some cheap chairs and a bench, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a barred window. She could not imagine why the sergeant thought this more comfortable than the hallway. She turned to tell him so.

The door closed in her face. A presentiment of ruin filled her heart with dread. She lunged at the door and grabbed the handle. As she did so her sudden fear was confirmed and she heard a key turn in the lock. She rattled the handle furiously. The door would not open.

She slumped in despair with her head against the wood.

From outside she heard a low laugh, then Harry’s voice, muffled but comprehensible, saying: “You bastard.”

The sergeant’s voice was now anything but kindly. “You shut your hole,” he said crudely.

“You’ve got no right—you know that.”

“Her father’s a bloody marquis, and that’s all the right I need.”

No more was said.

Margaret realized bitterly that she had lost. Her great escape had failed. She had been betrayed by the very people she thought were helping her. For a little while she had been free, but now it was over. She would not be joining the A.T.S. today, she thought miserably: she would be boarding the Pan Am Clipper and flying to New York, running away from the war. After all she had been through, her fate was unchanged. It seemed so desperately unfair.

After a long moment she turned from the door and walked the few steps to the window. She could see an empty yard and a brick wall. She stood there, defeated and helpless, looking through the bars at the brightening daylight, waiting for her father.

 

However, he was planning to give it up soon. He was thirty years old, he had been married for a year, and Carol-Ann was pregnant. Flying was all right for a single man, but he was not going to spend his life away from his
wife and children. He had been saving money and he had almost enough to start
a
business of his own. He had an option on a site near Bangor, Maine, that would make
a
perfect airfield. He would service planes and sell
fuel, and eventually have an aircraft for charter. Secretly he dreamed that one day he might have an airline of his own, like the pioneering Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American.

A whole series of awful explanations came to mind: the house had burned down, someone had died, she had hurt herself in some kind of accident, she had
suffered
a miscarriage—

 

 

 

 

H
arry Marks was the luckiest man alive.

His mother had always told him he was lucky. Although his father had been killed in the Great War, he was lucky to have had a strong and capable mother to bring him up. She cleaned offices for a living, and all through the Slump she had never been out of work. They lived in a tenement in Battersea, with a cold-water tap on each landing and outside toilets, but they were surrounded by good neighbors who helped one another through times of trouble. Harry had a knack of escaping from trouble! When boys were being thrashed at school, the teacher’s cane would break just before he got to Harry. Harry could fall under a horse and cart and have them pass over him without touching him.