well be a nun. I should have gone to bed with Nat Ridgeway: he would have been nice.
She had had a couple of dates with a new man, just before leaving for Europe, an unmarried accountant of about her own age; but she did not wish she had gone to bed with him. He was kind but weak, like too many of the men she met. They saw her as strong and they wanted her to take care of them. But I want someone to take care of me! she thought.
If I survive this, I’m going to make damn sure I have one more lover before I die.
Peter would win now, she realized. That was a damn shame. The business was all that was left of their father, and now it would be absorbed and disappear into the amorphous mass of General Textiles. Pa had worked hard all his life to build that company and Peter had destroyed it in five idle, selfish years.
Sometimes she still missed her father. He had been such a
Suddenly the thought that she would die seemed ridiculous and unreal. It would be like the curtain coming down before the play ended, when the leading actor was in the middle of a speech: that was simply not how things happened. For a while she felt irrationally cheerful, confident that she would live.
The plane continued to lose height, as the coast of Ireland came rapidly nearer. Soon she could see emerald fields and brown bogs. This is where the Black family originated, she thought with a little thrill.
Immediately in front of her, Mervyn Lovesey’s head and shoulders began to move, as if he was struggling with the controls; and Nancy’s mood switched again, and she started to pray. She had been raised Catholic, but she had not gone to Mass since Sean was killed; in fact the last time she had been inside a church had been for his funeral. She did not really know whether she was a believer or not, but now she prayed hard, figuring that she had nothing to lose, anyway. She said the Our Father; then she asked God to save her so that she could be around at least until Hugh got married and settled down; and so that she might see her grandchildren; and because she wanted to turn the business around and continue to employ all those men and women and make good shoes for ordinary people; and because she wanted a little happiness for herself. Her life, she felt suddenly, had been all work for too long.
She could see the white tops of the waves now. The blur of the approaching coastline resolved into surf, beach, cliff and green field. She wondered, with a shiver of fear, whether she would be able to swim to shore if the plane came down in the water. She thought of herself as a strong swimmer, but stroking happily up and down a pool was very different from surviving in the turbulent sea. The water would be bonechillingly cold. What was the word used when people died of cold? Exposure. Mrs. Lenehan’s plane came down in the Irish Sea and she died of exposure, The Boston Globe would say. She shivered inside her cashmere coat.
If the plane crashed she probably would not live to feel the temperature of the water. She wondered how fast it was traveling. It cruised at about ninety miles per hour, Lovesey had told her; but it was losing speed now. Say it was down to fifty. Sean had crashed at fifty and he had died. No, there was no point in speculating how far she could swim.
The shore came nearer. Perhaps her prayers had been answered, she thought; perhaps the plane would make landfall after all. There had been no further deterioration in the engine sound: it went on at the same high, ragged roar, with an angry tone, like the vengeful buzzing of a wounded wasp. Now she began to worry about where they would land if they did make it. Could a plane come down on a sandy beach? What about a pebble beach? A plane could land in a field, if it were not too rough; but what about a peat bog?
She would know only too soon.
The coast was now about a quarter of a mile away. She could see that the shoreline was rocky and the surf was heavy. The beach looked awfully uneven, she saw with a sinking heart: it was littered with jagged boulders. There was a low cliff rising to a stretch of moorland with a few grazing sheep. She studied the moorland. It looked smooth. There were no hedges and few trees. Perhaps the plane could land there. She did not know whether to hope for that or try to prepare herself for death.
The yellow plane struggled bravely on, still losing height. The salty smell of the sea reached Nancy’s nose. It would surely be better to come down on the water, she thought fearfully, than to try to land on that beach. Those sharp stones would tear the flimsy little plane to pieces—and her, too.
She hoped she would die quickly.
When the shore was a hundred yards away, she realized the plane was not going to hit the beach: it was still too high. Lovesey was obviously aiming at the clifftop pasture. But would he get there? They now seemed almost on a level with the clifftop, and they were still losing height. They were going to smash into the cliff. She wanted to close her eyes, but she did not dare. Instead she stared hypnotically at the cliff rushing at her.
The engine howled like a sick animal. The wind blew sea spray into Nancy’s face. The sheep on the cliff were scattering in all directions as the plane zoomed at them. Nancy gripped the rim of the cockpit so hard her hands hurt. She seemed to be flying straight at the very lip of the cliff. It came at her in a rush. We’re going to hit it, she thought; this is the end. Then a gust of wind lifted the plane a fraction, and she thought they were clear. But it dropped again. The cliff edge was going to knock the little yellow wheels off their struts, she thought. Then, with the cliff a split second away, she closed her eyes and screamed.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then there was a bump, and Nancy was thrown forward hard against her seat belt. For an instant she thought she was going to die. Then she felt the plane rise again. She stopped screaming and opened her eyes.
They were in the air still, just two or three feet above the clifftop grass. The plane bumped down again, and this time it stayed down. Nancy was shaken mercilessly as it shuddered over the uneven ground. She saw that they were headed for a patch of bramble, and realized they could yet crash; then Lovesey did something and the plane turned, avoiding the hazard. The shaking eased; they were slowing down. Nancy could hardly believe she was still alive. The plane came unsteadily to a halt.
Relief shook her like a fit. She could not stop trembling. For a moment she let herself shudder. Then she felt hysteria coming on, and got a grip on herself. “It’s over,” she said aloud. “It’s over, it’s over. I’m all right.”
In front of her, Lovesey got up and climbed out of his seat with a toolbox in his hand. Without looking at her, he jumped down and walked around to the front of the aircraft, where he opened the hood and peered in at the engine.
He might have asked me if I’m all right, Nancy thought.
In an odd way, Lovesey’s rudeness calmed her. She looked around. The sheep had returned to their grazing as if nothing had happened. Now that the engine was silent, she could hear the waves exploding on the beach. The sun was shining, but she could feel a cold, damp wind on her cheek.
She sat still for a moment. When she was sure her legs would hold her, she stood up and clambered out of the aircraft. She stood on Irish soil for the first time in her life, and felt moved almost to tears. This is where we came from, she thought, all those years ago. Oppressed by the British, persecuted by the Protestants, starved by potato blight, we crowded onto wooden ships and sailed away from our homeland to a new world.
And a very Irish way this is to come back, she thought with a grin. I almost died landing here.
That was enough sentiment. She was alive, so could she still catch the Clipper? She looked at her wristwatch. It was two fifteen. The Clipper had just taken off from Southampton. She could get to Foynes in time, if this plane could be made to fly, and if she could summon up the nerve to get back into it.
She walked around to the front of the plane. Lovesey was using a big spanner to loosen a nut. Nancy said: “Can you fix it?”
He did not look up. “Don’t know.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Don’t know.”
Clearly he had reverted to his taciturn mood. Exasperated, Nancy said: “I thought you were supposed to be an engineer.”
That stung him. He looked at her and said: “I studied mathematics and physics. My specialty is wind
