To her surprise, he looked uncomfortable and threw a worried glance at Mark, as if he felt disconcerted at being touched by his wife in front of her lover. His Irish whiskey came and he drank it quickly. Mark looked wounded, and moved his chair closer to the table again.
Diana felt flustered. She had never been in a situation like this. They both loved her. She had been to bed with both of them—and they both knew it. It was unbearably embarrassing. She wanted to comfort them both, but she was afraid to. Feeling defensive, she leaned back, putting more space between herself and them. “Mervyn,” she said, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
He looked hard at her. “I believe you,” he said evenly.
“Do you ... ? Can you understand what happened?”
“I can grasp the broad outlines, simple soul though I am,” he said sarcastically. “You’ve run off with your fancy man.” He looked at Mark and leaned toward him aggressively. “An American, I gather, the weedy type who’ll let you have your own way.”
Mark leaned back and said nothing, but stared intently at Mervyn. Mark was not a confronter. He did not look offended, just intrigued. Mervyn had been a major figure in Mark’s life, although they had never met. All these months Mark must have been consumed with curiosity about the man Diana slept with every night. Now he was finding out, and he was fascinated. Mervyn, by contrast, was not the least interested in Mark.
Diana watched the two men. They could hardly have been more different. Mervyn was tall, aggressive, bitter, nervy; Mark was small, neat, alert, open-minded. The thought occurred to her that Mark would probably use this scene in a comedy script one day.
Her eyes were heavy with tears. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I know I’ve been imprudent,” she said.
“Imprudent!” Mervyn snapped, mocking the inadequacy of the word. “You’ve been bloody daft.”
Diana winced. His scorn always cut her to the quick. But on this occasion she deserved it.
The barmaid and the two men in the corner were following the conversation with unabashed interest. Mervyn waved to the barmaid and called out: “Could I have a plate of ham sandwiches, love?”
“With pleasure,” she said politely. Barmaids always liked Mervyn.
Diana said: “I just ... I’ve been so miserable lately. I was only looking for a little happiness.”
“Looking for happiness! In America—where you’ve no friends, no relations, no home.... Where’s your sense?”
She was grateful to him for coming, but she wished he would be kinder. She felt Mark’s hand on her shoulder. “Don’t listen to him,” he said quietly. “Why shouldn’t you be happy? There’s nothing wrong with that.”
She looked fearfully at Mervyn, afraid of offending him further. He might yet reject her. How humiliating it would be if he should spurn her in front of Mark (and, she thought in the back of her mind, while the horrible Lulu Bell was on the scene). He was capable of it: that was the kind of thing he did. She wished now that he had not followed her. It meant he would have to make a spot decision. Given more time, she could have soothed his wounded pride. This was too rushed. She picked up her glass and put it to her lips, then set it down untasted. “I don’t want this,” she said.
Mark said: “I expect you’d like a cup of tea.”
That was
just
what she wanted. “Yes, I’d love it.”
Mark went to the bar and ordered it.
Mervyn would never have done that: to his way of thinking, tea was got by women. He gave Mark a look of contempt. “Is that what’s wrong with me?” he asked her angrily. “I don’t fetch your tea—is that it? You want me to be housemaid as well as breadwinner?” His sandwiches came but he did not eat any.
Diana did not know how to answer him. “There’s no need for a row,” she said softly.
“No need for a row? When is there need for one, then, if not now? You run off with this little pillock, without saying goodbye, leaving me a silly bloody note....” He took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and Diana recognized her letter. She blushed scarlet, feeling humiliated. She had shed tears over that note: how could he wave it about in a bar? She moved back from him, feeling resentful.
The tea came and Mark picked up the pot. He looked at Mervyn and said: “Would you like a cup of tea poured by a little pillock?” The two Irishmen in the comer burst out laughing, but Mervyn glared stonily and said nothing.
Diana began to feel angry with him. “I may be bloody daft, Mervyn, but I’ve got a right to be happy.”
He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You made a vow when you married me and you’ve no right to leave.”
She felt mad with frustration. He was so completely unyielding. It was like explaining something to a block of wood. Why couldn’t he be reasonable? Why did he have to be so damn certain he was always right and everyone else was wrong?
Suddenly she realized this feeling was very familiar. She had had it about once a week for five years. During the last few hours, in her panic on the plane, she had forgotten how awful he could be, and how unhappy he could make her. Now it all came back like the horror of a remembered nightmare.
Mark said: “She can do what she likes, Mervyn. You can’t make her do a single thing. She’s a grown-up. If she wants to go home with you, she will. And if she wants to come to America and marry me, she’ll do that.”
Mervyn banged his fist on the table. “She can’t marry you. She’s already married to me!”
“She can divorce you.”
“On what grounds?”
“You don’t need grounds in Nevada.”
Mervyn turned his angry eyes on Diana. “You’re not going to Nevada. You’re coming back to Manchester with me.”
She looked at Mark. He smiled gently at her. “You don’t have to obey anyone,” he said. “Do what
you
want.”
Mervyn said: “Get your coat on.”
In his blundering way, Mervyn had given Diana back her sense of proportion. She now saw her fear of the flight and her anxieties about living in America as minor worries by comparison with the all-important question: Who did she want to live with? She loved Mark, and Mark loved her, and all other considerations were marginal. A tremendous sense of relief came over her as she made her decision and announced it to the two men who loved her. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mervyn,” she said. “I’m going with Mark.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
N
ancy Lenehan enjoyed a minute of jubilation as she looked down from Mervyn Lovesey’s Tiger Moth and saw the Pan American Clipper floating majestically on the calm water of the Shannon estuary.
The odds had been against her, but she had caught up with her brother and foiled at least part of his plan. You’ve got to get up very early in the morning to outsmart Nancy Lenehan, she thought, in a rare moment of self-congratulation.
Peter was going to have the shock of his life when he saw her.
As the little yellow plane circled, and Mervyn searched for a place to land, Nancy began to feel tense about the forthcoming confrontation with her brother. She still found it hard to believe that he had deceived and betrayed her with such complete ruthlessness. How could he? As children they had been bathed together. She had put Band-Aids on his knees, told him how babies were made, and always given him a chew of her gum. She had kept his secrets and told him her own. After they grew up she had nursed his ego, never letting him be embarrassed because she was so much smarter even though she was a girl.
All their lives she had taken care of him. And when Pa died she had allowed Peter to become chairman of the company. That had cost her dearly. Not only had she suppressed her own ambition to make way for him: at the same time she had stifled a budding romance; for Nat Ridgeway, Pa’s deputy, had resigned when Peter took charge. Whether anything would have come of that romance, she would never know, for Ridgeway had since married.
Her friend and lawyer, Mac MacBride, had advised her not to let Peter be chairman, but she had gone against his counsel, and her own best interests, because she knew how wounded Peter would be that people thought he was not fit to fill his father’s shoes. When she remembered all she had done for him, and then thought of how he had tried to cheat her and lie to her, she wanted to weep with resentment and rage.
She was desperately impatient to find him and stand in front of him and look into his eyes. She wanted to know how he would act and what he would say to her.
She was also eager to join battle. Her catching up with Peter was only the first step. She had to get on the plane. That might be straightforward; but if the Clipper was full, she would have to try to buy someone else’s seat, or use her charm on the captain, or even bribe her way on board. When she got to Boston, she had to persuade the minority shareholders, her aunt Tilly and her father’s old lawyer, Danny Riley, to refuse to sell their holdings to Nat Ridgeway. She felt she could do that, but Peter would not give up without a fight, and Nat Ridgeway was a formidable opponent.
Mervyn brought the plane down on a farm track at the edge of the little village. In an uncharacteristic display of good manners, he helped Nancy get out and climb down onto the ground. As she set foot on Irish soil for the second time she thought of her father who, although he talked constantly of the old country, never actually went there. She felt that was sad. He would have been pleased to know that his children had made it to Ireland. But it would have broken his heart to know how the company that had been his life had been run down by his son. Better that he was not here to see that.
Mervyn roped the plane down. Nancy was relieved to leave it behind. Pretty though it was, it had almost killed her. She still shivered every time she remembered flying toward that cliff. She did not intend to get into a small plane again for the rest of her life.
They walked briskly into the village, following a horse-drawn wagon loaded with potatoes. Nancy could tell that Mervyn, too, was feeling a mixture of triumph and apprehension. Like her, he had been deceived and betrayed, and had refused to take it lying down; and like her, he got great satisfaction from defying the expectations of those who had plotted against him. But for both of them the real challenge was still ahead.
A single street led through Foynes. Halfway along it they met a group of well-dressed people who could only be Clipper passengers: they looked as if they had wandered onto the wrong set at a film studio. Mervyn approached them and said: “I’m looking for Mrs. Diana Lovesey—I believe she’s a passenger on the Clipper.”
“She sure is!” said one of the women; and Nancy recognized the movie star Lulu Bell. There was a note in her voice that suggested she did not like Mrs. Lovesey. Once again Nancy wondered what Mervyn’s wife was like. Lulu Bell went on. “Mrs. Lovesey and her—companion?—went into a bar just along the street here.”
Nancy said: “Could you direct me to the ticket office?”
“If I ever get cast as a tour guide, I won’t need to rehearse!” said Lulu, and the passengers with her laughed. “The airline building is at the far end of the street, past the railroad station, opposite the harbor.”
Nancy thanked her and walked on. Mervyn had already started out, and she had to run to catch up with him. However, he stopped suddenly when he caught sight of two men strolling up the street, deep in conversation. Nancy looked curiously at the men, wondering why they had stopped Mervyn in his tracks. One was a silver-haired swell in a black suit with a dove gray waistcoat, obviously a passenger from the Clipper. The other was a scarecrow of a man, tall and bony, with hair so short he almost looked bald, and the expression of someone who has just woken up from a nightmare. Mervyn went up to the scarecrow and said: “You’re Professor Hartmann, aren’t you?”
The man’s reaction was quite shocking. He jumped back a pace and held up his hands defensively, as if he thought he was about to be attacked.
His companion said: “It’s all right, Carl.”
Mervyn said: “I’d be honored to shake your hand, sir.”
Hartmann dropped his arms, although he still looked wary. He shook hands.
Nancy was surprised at Mervyn’s behavior. She would have said that Mervyn Lovesey thought nobody in the world was his superior, yet here he was acting like a schoolboy asking a baseball star for his autograph.
Mervyn said: “I’m glad to see you got out. We feared the worst, you know, when you disappeared. By the way, my name is Mervyn Lovesey.”
Hartmann said: “This is my friend Baron Gabon, who helped me to escape.”
Mervyn shook hands with Gabon, then said: “I won’t intrude anymore. Bon voyage, gentlemen.”
Hartmann must be something very special, Nancy thought, to have distracted Mervyn, even for a few moments, from his single-minded pursuit of his wife. As they walked on through the village she asked: “So who’s he?”
“Professor Carl Hartmann, the greatest physicist in the world,” Mervyn replied. “He’s been working on splitting the atom. He got into trouble with the Nazis for his political views, and everyone thought he was dead.”
“How do you know about him?”
“I did physics at university. I thought of becoming a research scientist, but I haven’t the patience for it. I still keep up with developments, though. It so happens there have been some amazing discoveries in the field over the last ten years.”
“Such as?”
“There’s an Austrian woman—another refugee from the Nazis, by the way—called Lise Meitner, working in Copenhagen, who managed to break the uranium atom into two smaller atoms, barium and krypton.”
“I thought atoms were indivisible.”
“So did we all, until recently. That’s what’s so amazing. It makes a very big bang when it happens, which is why the military are so interested. If they can control the process, they’ll be able to make the most destructive bomb ever known.”
Nancy looked back over her shoulder at the frightened, shabby man with the burning gaze. The most destructive bomb ever known, she said to herself, and she shivered. “I’m surprised they let him walk around unguarded,” she said.