Night Over Water (12 page)

She did not expect him to reply, but—she would learn later—he had a quick, humorous mind, and he immediately said: “What section?”

It was a big library, but not so big that two people could lose one another for long; but she said the first thing that came into her mind: “Biology.” And he laughed.

She entered her house with that laugh in her ears: a warm, relaxed, delighted laugh, the laugh of a man who loved life and felt good about himself.

The house was empty. Mrs. Rollins, who did the housework, had already left; and Mervyn was not home yet. Diana sat in the modem hygienic kitchen and thought old-fashioned unhygienic thoughts about her humorous American poet.

The next morning she found him sitting at a table under a notice that read SILENCE. When she said: “Hello,” he put a finger to his lips, pointed to a chair and wrote her a note.

It said I love your hat.

She had on a little hat like an upturned flowerpot with a brim, and she wore it tilted all the way over to one side so that it almost covered her left eye: it was the current fashion, although few women in Manchester had the nerve for it.

She took a little pen from her bag and wrote underneath,
It wouldn’t suit you.

But my geraniums would look perfect in it,
he wrote.

She giggled, and he said: “Shhh!”

Diana thought: Is he mad, or just funny?

She wrote,
I love your poem.

Then he wrote,
I love you.

Mad, she thought; but tears came to her eyes. She wrote,
I don’t even know your name!

He gave her a business card. His name was Mark Alder, and he lived in Los Angeles.

California!

They went for early lunch to a V.E.M. restaurant—Vegetables, Eggs and Milk—because she could be sure she would not run into her husband there: wild horses could not have dragged him into a vegetarian restaurant. Then, as it was Tuesday, there was a midday concert at the Houldsworth Hall in Deansgate, with the city’s famous Hallé Orchestra and its new conductor, Malcolm Sargent. Diana felt proud that her city could offer such a cultural treat to a visitor.

That day she learned that Mark was a writer of comedy scripts for radio shows. She had never heard of the people he wrote for, but he said they were famous: Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos ’n’ Andy. He also owned a radio station. He wore a cashmere blazer. He was on an extended holiday, tracing his roots: his family had come originally from Liverpool, the port city a few miles west of Manchester. He was not much taller than Diana, and about her age, with hazel eyes and a few freckles.

And he was pure delight.

He was intelligent, funny and charming. His manners were nice, his fingernails were clean and his clothes were neat. He liked Mozart, but he knew about Louis Armstrong. Most of all, he liked Diana.

It was a peculiar thing how few men actually liked women, she thought. The men she knew would fawn on her, try to paw her, suggest discreet assignations when Mervyn’s back was turned and, sometimes, when they got maudlin drunk, declare their love for her; but they didn’t really like her: their conversation was all banter, they never listened to her and they knew nothing about her. Mark was quite different, as she found out during the following days and weeks.

The day after they met in the library, he rented a car and drove her to the coast, where they ate sandwiches on a breezy beach and kissed in the shelter of the dunes.

He had a suite at the Midland, but they could not meet there because Diana was too well known: if she had been seen going upstairs after lunch the news would have been all around town by teatime. However, Mark’s inventive mind produced a solution. They drove to the seaside town of Lytham St. Anne’s, taking a suitcase, and checked into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Alder. They had lunch, then went to bed.

Making love with Mark was such fun.

The first time, he made a pantomime of trying to undress in complete silence, and she was laughing too much to feel shy as she took off her clothes. She did not worry about whether he would like her: he obviously adored her. She was not nervous because he was so nice.

They spent the afternoon in bed, and then checked out, saying they had changed their minds about staying. Mark paid in full for the night so that there was no bad feeling. He dropped her at a station one stop down the line from Altrincham, and she arrived home by train just as if she had spent the afternoon in Manchester.

They did this all the blissful summer.

He was supposed to go back to the States at the beginning of August to work on a new show, but he stayed, and wrote a series of sketches about an American on holiday in Britain, sending his scripts over every week by the new airmail service operated by Pan American.

Despite this reminder that time was running out for them, Diana managed not to think about the future very much. Of course, Mark would go home one day, but he would still be here tomorrow, and that was as far ahead as she cared to look. It was like the war: everyone knew it would be awful, but nobody could tell when it would start; and until it happened there was nothing to do but carry on and try to have a good time.

The day after war broke out he told her he was going home.

She was sitting up in bed with the covers pulled up just under her bust, so that her breasts showed: Mark loved her to sit like that. He thought her breasts were wonderful, although she felt they were too large.

They were having a serious conversation. Britain had declared war on Germany, and even happy lovers had to talk about it. Diana had been following the grisly conflict in China all year, and the thought of war in Europe filled her with dread. Like the Fascists in Spain, the Japanese did not scruple to drop bombs on women and children; and the carnage in Chungking and I-chang had been sickening.

She asked Mark the question that was on everyone’s lips: “What do you think will happen?”

For once he did not have a funny answer. “I think it’s going to be awful,” he said solemnly. “I believe Europe will be devastated. Maybe this country will survive, being an island. I hope so.”

“Oh,” Diana said. Suddenly she was frightened. British people were not saying things like that. The newspapers were full of fighting talk, and Mervyn was positively looking forward to war. But Mark was an outsider, and his judgment, delivered in that relaxed American voice, sounded worryingly realistic. Would bombs be dropped on Manchester?

She remembered something Mervyn had said, and repeated it. “America will have to come into the war sooner or later.”

Mark shocked her by saying: “Christ, I hope not. This is a European squabble, nothing to do with us. I can just about see why Britain declared war, but I’m damned if I want to see Americans die defending fucking Poland.”

She had never heard him swear like this. Sometimes he whispered obscenities in her ear while they were making love, but that was different. Now he seemed angry. She thought perhaps he was a little frightened. She knew Mervyn was frightened: in him it came out as reckless optimism. Mark’s fear showed as isolationism and cursing.

She was dismayed by his attitude, but she could see his point of view: why should Americans go to war for Poland, or even for Europe? “But what about me?” she asked. She tried for a note of levity. “You wouldn’t like me to be raped by blond Nazis in gleaming jackboots, would you?” It wasn’t very funny and she regretted it immediately.

That was when he took an envelope out of his suitcase and handed it to her.

She pulled out a ticket and looked at it. “You’re going home!” she cried. It was like the end of the world.

Looking solemn, he said simply: “There are two tickets.”

She felt as if her heart would stop. “Two tickets,” she repeated tonelessly. She was disoriented.

He sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. She knew what he was going to say, and she was at the same time thrilled and terrified..

“Come home with me, Diana,” he said. “Fly to New York with me. Then come to Reno and get divorced. Then let’s go to California and be married. I love you.”

Fly.
She could hardly imagine flying across the Atlantic Ocean: such things belonged in fairy tales.

To New York.
New York was a dream of skyscrapers and nightclubs, gangsters and millionaires, fashionable heiresses and enormous cars.

And get divorced.
And be free of Mervyn!

Then let’s go to California. Where movies were made, and oranges grew on trees, and the sun shone every day.

And be
married.
And have Mark all the time, every day, every night.

She was unable to speak.

Mark said: “We could have babies.”

She wanted to cry.

“Ask me again,” she whispered.

He said: “I love you. Will you marry me and have my children?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and she felt as if she were already flying. “Yes, yes, yes!”

 

She had to tell Mervyn that night.

It was Monday. On Tuesday she would have to travel to Southampton with Mark. The Clipper left on Wednesday at two p.m.

She was floating on air when she arrived home on Monday afternoon; but as soon as she entered the house her euphoria evaporated.

How was she going to tell him?

It was a nice house: a big new villa, white with a red roof. It had four bedrooms, three of which were almost never used. There was a nice modern bathroom and a kitchen with all the latest gadgets. Now that she was leaving, she looked at everything with nostalgic fondness: this had been her home for five years.

She prepared Mervyn’s meals herself. Mrs. Rollins did the cleaning and laundry, and if Diana had not cooked she would have had nothing to do. Besides, Mervyn was a working-class boy at heart, and he liked his wife to put his meal on the table when he came home. He even called the meal “tea,” and he would drink tea with it, although it was always something substantial, sausages or steak or a meat pie. For Mervyn, “dinner” was served in hotels. At home you had tea.

What would she say?

Today he would have cold beef, left over from Sunday’s roast. Diana put on an apron and began to slice potatoes for frying. When she thought of how angry Mervyn was going to be, her hands shook, and she cut her finger with the vegetable knife.

She tried to get a grip on herself as she washed the cut under the cold tap, then dried her finger with a towel and wrapped a bandage around it. What am I afraid of? she asked herself. He won’t kill me. He can’t stop me: I’m over twenty-one and it’s a free country.

The thought did not calm her nerves.

She set the table and washed a head of lettuce. Although Mervyn worked hard, he almost always came home at the same time. He would say: “What’s the point of being the boss if I have to stop at work when everyone else goes home?” He was an engineer, and he had a factory that made all kinds of rotors, from small fans for cooling systems to huge screws for ocean liners. Mervyn had always been successful—he was a good businessman—but he really hit the jackpot when he started manufacturing propellers for aircraft. Flying was his hobby, and he had his own small plane, a Tiger Moth, at an airfield outside town. When the government started to build up the air force, two or three years ago, there were very few people who knew how to make curved rotors with mathematical precision, and Mervyn was one of those few. Since then, business had boomed.

Diana was his second wife. The first had left him, seven years ago, and run off with another man, taking their two children. Mervyn had divorced her as quickly as he could and proposed to Diana as soon as the divorce came through. Diana was then twenty-eight and he was thirty-eight. He was attractive, masculine and prosperous; and he worshipped her. His wedding present to her had been a diamond necklace.

A few weeks ago, on their fifth wedding anniversary, he had given her a sewing machine.

Looking back, she could see that the sewing machine had been the last straw. She had been hoping for a car of her own: she could drive, and Mervyn could afford it. When she saw the sewing machine, she felt she had come to the end of her tether. They had been together for five years and he had not noticed that she never sewed.

She knew that Mervyn loved her, but he did not see her. In his vision there was just a person marked WIFE. She was pretty, she performed her social role adequately, she put his food on the table and she was always willing in bed: what else should a wife be? He never consulted her about anything. Since she was neither a businessman nor an engineer, it never occurred to him that she had a brain. He talked to the men at his factory more intelligently than he talked to her. In his world, men wanted cars and wives wanted sewing machines.

And yet he was very clever. The son of a lathe operator, he had gone to Manchester Grammar School and studied physics at Manchester University. He had had the opportunity to go on to Cambridge and take his master’s degree, but he was not the academic type, and he got a job in the design department of a large engineering company. He still followed developments in physics, and would talk endlessly to his father—never to Diana, of course—about atoms and radiation and nuclear fission.

Unfortunately, Diana did not understand physics, anyway. She knew a lot about music and literature and a little about history, but Mervyn was not much interested in any kind of culture, although he liked films and dance music. So they had nothing to talk about.

It might have been different if they had had children. But Mervyn already had two children by his first wife and he did not want any more. Diana had been willing to love them, but she had never been given the chance: their mother had poisoned their minds against Diana, pretending that Diana had caused the breakup of the marriage. Diana’s sister in Liverpool had cute little twin girls with pigtails, and Diana lavished all her maternal affection on them.