Night Over Water Read Online Free

said: “How can you laugh? It’s a tragedy!”
    Elizabeth was a great admirer of the Nazis. She spoke German—they both did, thanks to a German governess who had lasted longer than most—and she had been to Berlin several times and twice dined with the Führer himself. Margaret suspected the Nazis were snobs who liked to bask in the approval of an English aristocrat.
    Now Margaret turned to Elizabeth and said: “It’s time we stood up to those bullies.”
    “They aren’t bullies,” Elizabeth said indignantly. “They’re proud, strong, purebred Aryans, and it’s a tragedy that our country is at war with them. Father’s right—the white people will wipe each other out and the world will be left to the mongrels and the Jews.”
    Margaret had no patience with this kind of drivel. “There’s nothing wrong with Jews!” she said hotly.
    Father held a finger up in the air. “There’s nothing wrong with the Jew—in his place.”
    “Which is under the heel of the jackboot, in your—your Fascist system.” She had been on the point of saying “your filthy system,” but she suddenly got scared and bit back the insult: it was dangerous to get Father too angry.
    Elizabeth said: “And in your Bolshevik system the Jews rule the roost!”
    “I’m not a Bolshevik. I’m a socialist.”
    Percy, imitating Mother’s accent, said: “You can’t be, dear. You’re Church of England.”
    Margaret laughed despite herself; and once again her laughter infuriated her sister. Elizabeth said bitterly: “You just want to destroy everything that’s fine and pure, and then laugh about it afterward.”
    That was hardly worth a response; but Margaret still wanted to make her point. She turned to Father and said: “Well, I agree with you about Neville Chamberlain, anyway. He’s made our military position far worse by letting the Fascists take over Spain. Now the enemy is in the West as well as the East.”
    “Chamberlain did not let the Fascists take over Spain,” Father said. “Britain made a nonintervention pact with Germany, Italy and France. All we did was keep our word.”
    This was completely hypocritical, and he knew it. Margaret felt herself flush with indignation. “We kept our word while the Italians and the Germans broke theirs!” she protested. “So the Fascists got guns and the democrats got nothing ... but heroes.”
    There was a moment of embarrassed silence.
    Mother said: “I’m truly sorry that Ian died, dear, but he was a very bad influence on you.”
    Suddenly Margaret wanted to cry.
    Ian Rochdale was the best thing that ever happened to her, and the pain of his death could still make her gasp.
    For years she had been dancing at hunt balls with empty-headed young members of the squirearchy, boys who had nothing on their minds but drinking and hunting; and she had despaired of ever meeting a man of her own age who interested her. Ian had come into her life like the light of reason; and since he died she had been living in the dark.
    He had been in his final year at Oxford. Margaret would have loved to go to a university, but there was no possibility of her qualifying: she had never gone to school. However, she had read widely—there was nothing else to do!—and she was thrilled to find someone like herself, who liked talking about ideas. He was the only man who could explain things to her without condescension. Ian was the most clear-thinking person she had ever come across; he had endless patience in discussion; and he was quite without intellectual vanity—he never pretended to understand when he did not. She adored him from the very start.
    For a long time she did not think of it as love. But one day he confessed, awkwardly and with great embarrassment, uncharacteristically struggling to find the right words, finally saying: “I think I must have fallen in love with you—will it spoil everything?” And then she realized joyfully that she too was in love.
    He changed her life. It was as if she