brother. Nancy began to worry about the problem all over again. Had Mac, her lawyer, been able to reach Danny? If so, how had Danny received the story about an inquiry into one of his past misdemeanors? Did he suspect that the whole thing had been invented to put pressure on him? Or was he scared out of his wits? She tossed and turned uncomfortably as she reviewed all the unanswered questions. She hoped she could talk to Mac on the phone at the next stop, Botwood in Newfoundland. Perhaps he would be able to relieve the suspense by then.
The plane had been jerking and swaying for some time, making Nancy even more restless and nervous, and after an hour or two, the movement got much worse. She had never been frightened in a plane before, but on the other hand she had never experienced such a storm. She held on to the edges of her bunk as the mighty aircraft tossed in the violent winds. She had faced a lot of things alone since her husband died, and she told herself to be brave and tough it out. But she could not help imagining that the wings would break off or the engines would be destroyed and they all would plunge headlong into the sea; and she became terrified. She screwed her eyes up tight and bit the pillow. Suddenly the plane seemed to go into free fall. She waited for the fall to stop, but it went on and on. She could not suppress a whimper of dread. Then at last there was a bump and the plane seemed to right itself.
A moment later she felt Mervyn’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s just a storm,” he said in his flat British accent. “I’ve known worse. There’s nothing to fear.”
She found his hand and gripped it tightly. He sat on the edge of her bunk and stroked her hair during the moments when the plane was stable. She was still frightened, but it helped to hold hands during the bumpy bits, and she felt a little better.
She did not know how long they stayed like that. Eventually the storm eased. She began to feel self- conscious, and she released Mervyn’s hand. She did not know what to say. Mercifully, he stood up and left the room.
Nancy turned on the light and got out of bed. She stood up shakily, put on an electric blue silk robe over her black negligee, and sat at the dressing table. She brushed her hair, which always soothed her. She was embarrassed about having held his hand. At the time she had forgotten about decorum, and had just been grateful for someone to comfort her; but now she felt awkward. She was glad he was sensitive enough to guess at her feelings and leave her alone for a few minutes to collect herself.
He came back with a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He poured drinks and gave one to Nancy. She held the glass in one hand and gripped the edge of the dressing table with the other: the plane was still bumping a little.
She would have felt worse if he had not been wearing that comical nightshirt. He looked ridiculous, and he knew it, but he behaved with as much dignity as if he were walking around in his double-breasted suit, and somehow that made him funnier. He was obviously a man who was not afraid to appear foolish. She liked him for the way he wore his nightshirt.
She sipped her brandy. The warm liquor immediately made her feel better, and she drank some more.
“An odd thing happened,” he said conversationally. “As I was going into the men’s room, another passenger came out looking scared to death. When I went inside, the window was broken, and the engineer was standing there looking guilty. He gave me a cock-and-bull story about the glass being smashed by a lump of ice in the storm, but it looked to me as if the two of them had had a fight.”
Nancy was grateful to him for talking about something, just so that they did not have to sit there thinking about holding hands. “Which one is the engineer?” she said.
“A good-looking lad, about my height, fair hair.”
“I know. And which passenger?”
“I don’t know his name. Businessman, on his own, in a pale gray suit.” Mervyn got up and poured her some more brandy.
Nancy’s robe unfortunately came only just below her knees, and she felt rather undressed with her calves and her bare feet exposed; but once again she reminded herself that Mervyn was in frenzied pursuit of an adored wife, and he had no eyes for anyone else; indeed, he would hardly notice if Nancy were stark naked. His holding her hand had been a friendly gesture from one human being to another, pure and simple. A cynical voice in the back of her mind said that holding hands with someone else’s husband was rarely simple and never pure, but she ignored it.
Searching for something to talk about, she said: “Is your wife still mad at you?”
“She’s as cross as a cat with a boil,” Mervyn said.
Nancy smiled as she recalled the scene she had found in the suite when she returned from getting changed: Mervyn’s wife yelling at him, and the boyfriend yelling at her, while Nancy watched from the doorway. Diana and Mark had quieted down immediately and left, looking rather sheepish, to continue their row elsewhere. Nancy had refrained from commenting at the time because she did not want Mervyn to think she was laughing at his situation. However, she did not feel inhibited about asking him personal questions: intimacy had been forced on them by circumstances. “Will she come back to you?”
“There’s no telling,” he said. “That chap she’s with.... I think he’s a weed, but maybe that’s what she wants.”
Nancy nodded. The two men, Mark and Mervyn, could hardly have been more different. Mervyn was tall and imperious, with dark good looks and a blunt manner. Mark was an altogether softer person, with hazel eyes and freckles, who normally wore a mildly amused look on his round face. “I don’t go for the boyish type, but he’s attractive in his way,” she said. She was thinking: If Mervyn was my husband, I wouldn’t exchange him for Mark; but there’s no accounting for taste.
“Aye. At first I thought Diana was just being daft, but now that I’ve seen him, I’m not so sure.” Mervyn looked thoughtful for a moment, then changed the subject. “What about you? Will you fight your brother off?”
“I believe I’ve found his weakness,” she said with grim satisfaction, thinking of Danny Riley. “I’m working on it.”
He grinned. “When you look like that, I’d rather have you for a friend than an enemy.”
“It’s for my father,” she said. “I loved him dearly, and the firm is all I have left of him. It’s like a memorial to him, but better than that, because it bears the imprint of his personality in every way.”
“What was he like?”
“He was one of those men nobody ever forgets. He was tall, with black hair and a big voice, and you knew the moment you saw him that he was a powerful man. He knew the name of every man who worked for him, and if their wives were sick, and how their children were getting along in school. He paid for the education of countless sons of factory hands who are now lawyers and accountants: he understood how to win people’s loyalty. In that way he was old-fashioned—paternalistic. But he had the best business brain I ever encountered. In the depths of the Depression, when factories were closing all over New England, we were taking on men because our sales were going up! He understood the power of advertising before anyone else in the shoe industry, and he used it brilliantly. He was interested in psychology, in what makes people tick. He had the ability to throw a fresh light on any problem you brought to him. I miss him every day. I miss him almost as much as I miss my husband.” She suddenly felt very angry. “And I will not stand by and see his life’s work thrown away by my good-for-nothing brother.” She shifted in her seat restlessly, reminded of her anxieties. “I’m trying to put pressure on a key shareholder, but I won’t know how successful I’ve been until—”
She never finished the sentence. The plane flew into the most severe turbulence yet, and bucked like a wild horse. Nancy dropped her glass and grabbed the edge of the dressing table with both hands. Mervyn tried to brace himself with his feet, but he could not, and when the plane tilted sideways he rolled onto the floor, knocking the coffee table aside.
The plane steadied. Nancy reached out a hand to help Mervyn up, saying: “Are you all right?” Then the plane tossed again. She slipped, lost her handhold and tumbled to the floor on top of him.
After a moment he started to laugh.
She had been afraid she might have hurt him, but she was light and he was a big man. She was lying across him, the two of them making the shape of an X on the terra-cotta carpet. The plane steadied, and she rolled off and sat up, looking at him. Was he hysterical, or just amused?
“We must look daft,” he said, and recommenced laughing.
His laughter was infectious. For a moment she forgot the accumulated tensions of the last twenty-four hours: the treachery of her brother, the near-crash in Mervyn’s small plane, her awkward situation in the
