Ken Follett - Night Over Water

She felt her way around it, then walked on with both arms stretched out in front of her.

After a while she stumbled down another curb. Regaining her balance, she felt relieved: she had reached Aunt Martha’s street. She turned left.

It occurred to her that Aunt Martha might not hear the doorbell. She lived alone: there was no one else to answer. If that happened, Margaret would have to make her way back to Catherine’s building and sleep in the corridor. She could cope with sleeping on the floor, but she dreaded another walk through the blackout. Perhaps she would simply curl up on Aunt Martha’s doorstep and wait for daylight.

Aunt Martha’s small house was at the far end of a long block. Margaret walked slowly. The city was dark but not silent. She could hear the occasional car in the distance. Dogs barked as she passed their doors and a pair of cats howled, oblivious of her. Once she heard the tinkling music of a late party. A little farther on she picked up the muffled shouts of a domestic row behind the blackout curtains. She found herself longing to be inside a house with lamps and a fireplace and a teapot.

The block seemed longer than Margaret remembered. However, she could not possibly have gone wrong: she had turned left at the second cross street. Nevertheless, the suspicion that she was lost grew relentlessly. Her sense of time failed her: had she been walking along this block for five minutes, twenty minutes, two hours or all night? Suddenly she was not even sure whether there were any houses nearby. She could be in the middle of Hyde Park, having wandered through the entrance by blind luck. She began to feel that there were creatures all around her in the darkness, watching her with catlike night vision, waiting for her to stumble into them so they could grab her. A scream started low in her throat and she pushed it back.

She made herself think. Where could she have gone wrong? She knew there was a cross street when she stumbled down a curb. But, she now recalled, as well as the main cross streets there were little alleys and mews. She might have turned down one of those. By now she could have walked a mile or more in the wrong direction.

She tried to recall the heady feeling of excitement and triumph she had felt on the train, but it had gone, and now she just felt alone and afraid.

She decided to stop and stand quite still. No harm could come to her like that.

She stayed still for a long time: after a while she could not tell how long it was. Now she was afraid to move: fear had paralyzed her. She thought she would stand upright until she fainted with exhaustion, or until morning.

Then a car appeared.

Its dim side lights gave very little illumination, but by comparison with the previous pitch-blackness it seemed like daylight. She saw that she was, indeed, standing in the middle of the road, and she scurried to the pavement to get out of the way of the car. She was in a square that seemed vaguely familiar. The car passed her and turned a corner, and she hurried after it, hoping to see a landmark that would tell her where she was. Reaching the corner, she saw the car at the far end of a short, narrow street of small shops, one of which was a milliner’s patronized by Mother; and she realized she was just a few yards from Marble Arch.

She could have wept with relief.

At the next corner she waited for another car to light up the way ahead; then she walked on into Mayfair.

A few minutes later she stood outside Claridge’s Hotel. The building was blacked out, of course, but she was able to locate the door, and she wondered whether to go in.

She did not think she had enough money to pay for a room, but her recollection was that people did not pay their hotel bill until they left. She could take a room for two nights, go out tomorrow as if she expected to return later, join the A.T.S., then phone the hotel and tell them to send the bill to Father’s lawyer.

She took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

Like most public buildings that were open at night, the hotel had rigged up a double door, like an airlock, so that people could go in and out without the interior lights showing on the outside. Margaret let the outer door close behind her, then went through the second door and into the grateful light of the hotel foyer. She felt a tremendous surge of relief. This was normality: the nightmare was over.

A young night porter was dozing at the desk. Margaret coughed, and he woke up, startled and confused. Margaret said: “I need a room.”

“At this time of night?” the man blurted.

“I got caught in the blackout,” Margaret explained. “Now I can’t get home.”

The man began to gather his wits. “No luggage?”

“No,” Margaret said guiltily; then she was struck by a thought, and added: “Of course not—I didn’t plan to get stranded.”

He looked at her rather strangely. Surely, Margaret thought, he could not refuse her. He swallowed, rubbed his face and pretended to consult a book. What was the matter with the man? Making up his mind, he closed the book and said: “We’re full.”

“Oh, come on, you must have something—”

“You’ve had a fight with your old man, haven’t you?” he said with a wink.

Margaret could hardly believe this was happening. “I can’t get home,” she repeated, as the man had obviously failed to understand her the first time.

“I can’t help that,” he said. With a sudden access of wit he added: “Blame Hitler.”

He was rather young. “Where is your supervisor?” she said.

He looked offended. “I’m in charge, until six o’clock.”

Margaret looked around. “I’ll just have to sit in the lounge until morning,” she said wearily.

“You can’t do that!” the porter said, looking scared. “A young girl alone, with no luggage, spending the night in the lounge? It’s more than my job’s worth.”

“I’m not a young girl,” she said angrily. “I’m Lady Margaret Oxenford.” She hated to use her title but she was desperate.

However, it did no good. The porter gave her a hard, insolent look, and said: “Oh, yeah?”

Margaret was about to shout at him when she caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the door, and realized she had a black eye. On top of that her hands were filthy and her dress was torn. She recalled that she had bumped into a pillar box and sat on the floor of a train. No wonder the porter would not give her a room. She said desperately: “But you can’t turn me out into the blackout!”

“I can’t do anything else!” the porter said.

Margaret wondered how he would react if she simply sat down and refused to move. That was what she felt like doing: she was bone tired and weak with strain. But she had been through so much that she had no energy left for a confrontation. Besides, it was late and they were alone: there was no telling what the man might do if she gave him an excuse to lay hands on her.

Wearily, she turned her back on him and went out, bitterly disappointed, into the night.

Even as she walked away from the hotel, she wished she had put up more of a fight. Why was it that her intentions were always so much more fierce than her actions? Now that she had given in, she was angry enough to defy the porter. She was almost ready to turn back. But she kept on walking: it seemed easier.

She had nowhere to go. She would not be able to find Catherine’s building again; she had never succeeded in finding Aunt Martha’s house; she could not trust any other relatives and she was too dirty to get a hotel room.

She would just have to wander around until it got light. The weather was fine: there was no rain and the night air was only slightly chilly. If she kept moving she would not even feel cold. She could see where she was going now: there were plenty of traffic lights in the West End, and a car passed every minute or two. She could hear music and noise from the nightclubs, and now and again she would see people of her own class: the women in gorgeous gowns and the men wearing white tie and tails, arriving home in their chauffeur-driven cars after a late party. In one street, rather curiously, she saw three other solitary women: one standing in a doorway, one leaning on a lamppost and one sitting in a car. They were all smoking and apparently waiting for people. She wondered if they were what Mother called Fallen Women.