Semi-Detached Marriage (10 page)

Simon put his arm round her and drew her to
him, put his face against her hair, savouring its clean, sweet smell. `It's all
I could manage, love. Do you think I wouldn't have stayed longer if I could
possibly have arranged it?'

'When will you be able to get home again?'
    

He shrugged. `I just can't say, I'm afraid.
At the moment we're working out a whole new pay structure
system
with the unions that we hope will settle all our labour difficulties once and
for all. But as there are over a dozen different unions involved in various
jobs on the site it's no easy matter to get them all in agreement. Often you
think you're really getting somewhere when one union will bring up a point that
throws them all into disruption again.' He grinned wryly and went to go on, but
glanced at Cassie's face and then sat back, withdrawing his arm. 'But you don't
want to know about that.'

For a second she almost made the mistake of
agreeing with him, but just in time saw the tight look in his face and was
filled with a sudden surge of love and need. Impulsively she leaned over and
grabbed the lapels of his overcoat, saying fiercely, 'I do, if it's what's
keeping us apart. You've never been away for so long before and I miss you.'
She kissed him, her lips urgent. 'And I want you. Oh, Simon, I want you so
much!'

His arms went round her again as he returned
her kiss, answering her urgency with a fierce need of his own, his arms hurting
her as he crushed her to him. After he at length raised his head, he still held
her close, her head against his shoulder as he put up a hand to gently stroke
her face, to smooth back a lock of hair. His voice thick, he said, 'Look, try
and get up to Scotland next weekend, okay? I'll try and arrange for the firm to
fly you up.'

'Oh, but next Saturday I was going to have a
meeting with the window dressers to decide on how to display the new Spring
collection.' She felt his fingers tighten against her face and saw a bleak,
closed in look come into his eyes. Impulsively she reached up and caught his
wrist just as he was about to withdraw his hand.

'All right, I'll come. It will be the devil's
own job to get everyone to stay behind one evening after work instead, but I'll
manage it somehow.'

Immediately his eyes grew warm and he kissed
her again. 'That's great. I'll lay it on with the firm.'

He went to get out of the car, but Cassie
stopped him. 'Wait. What clothes will I need? Is it still cold up there? What
will we be doing?'

Simon grinned, a devilish light in his eyes.
'Just bring your sexiest nightdress. Because I'm going to take you to bed and
we're going to stay there for the whole weekend!'

Cassie laughed and pretended to be a little
shocked, but as she drove back to the West End she felt gay and bubbly with
inner excitement, glad that she'd promised to go even though it meant asking
several people to reorganise their schedules just to achieve it. As soon as she
reached the store she asked Sue Martin to get the first of the people on the
phone.

'Shall I talk to them?' Sue offered.

No, I'd better speak to them myself; they'll
be upset enough at having to change the time of the meeting, better not make it
worse by delegating the job to you.' As Sue dialed the number, Cassie added,
'How about you, Sue? I know you were going to come to the Saturday meeting, but
I expect you'll want to get home to Chris in the evening, won't you?'

Her assistant pulled a wry face. 'Oh, there's
no hurry. Chris seems to be working late at the office quite a bit lately, much
more than he used to.'

'Is there a special job on or something?'
    

'Not really. He said that someone left rather
suddenly and hasn't yet been replaced, so he's having to take on an extra
work-load. He even had to go into the office last Saturday and again this
week.'

`Well, I'm sure his firm will appreciate him helping
them out, and it all helps in the promotion stakes. Look on it as logging up
some credit for the future,' Cassie said encouragingly, adding, `Anyway, I
don't expect it will be for long.'

'I hope not,' Sue answered glumly. `I'm
getting fed up with being by myself. What's the point of being married if you
can't be together?'

Cassie looked at the younger girl sharply,
but she was too wrapped up in her own problems to realise that her remark also
applied to Cassie's situation. Then the person Cassie wanted to speak to came
on the line, so the two girls were plunged back into the work routine, their
domestic difficulties for the moment shelved.

The rest of that week was both hectic and
frustrating, with things seeming to go wrong all the time and one problem being
solved only to have several more crop up. And this happened at home as well as
in the office: first the television went into fuzzy lines and then Cassie got a
panic phone call from the people in the flat below and she rushed home to find
that the washing machine, which she'd left working happily, had gone wrong and
was continually pouring out water that had flooded the kitchen and spread to
the sitting room carpet. Cassie managed to turn the water off and mop up the
worst of the mess, but then had to dash back to the store to interview a
salesman who had come all the way from Denmark and had only stopped over on his
way to America.

By the time Friday evening came all she
wanted to do was put her feet up, but she had arranged with Mullaine's for a car
to pick her up straight from work, but of course there was inevitably for that
ghastly week, a last minute phone call with another problem she had to solve,
so the car was left waiting for half an hour and then there was a mad panic to
get through the Friday night rush hour traffic of workers trying to get home
while others were driving into the West End to do some window-shopping or to
have a meal before going on to a show or cinema. The driver was none too
pleased with her and let his annoyance show by making the ride as rough and
jerky as possible taking corners , too fast so that she had to hold on to the
strap to stop herself swinging across the car and putting on his brakes sharply
at traffic lights so that she shot forward in her seat.

When she got to Heathrow she was seething
with anger and would have given the driver a piece of her mind if he hadn't
thwarted her by dumping her case on the pavement and immediately getting back
in and driving off, leaving her staring after him, fuming with annoyance.
Cassie picked up her case and walked to-wards the area for private flights,
trying to will herself to simmer down, longing to get on the plane and relax
with a drink. God, she needed it, she thought, her nerves felt like the teeth
of a saw, cutting their way into her brain.

And when she reached the desk she was told
there was a delay, so instead she went to stand in line at the self-service
counter and eventually managed to get a coffee and a sandwich, but then had to
stand up to eat them because all the seats round the tables were taken; not
that Cassie particularly wanted to sit down when she saw the white plastic
tables piled with dirty crockery, their surfaces unwiped and wet with spilt
drinks.

After half an hour she went back to the desk
and
demanded to know what was happening.

'I'm sorry, madam,' the receptionist told
her, `but all flights to Scotland have been grounded indefinitely because of
freezing fog that's come down in the Glasgow and Edinburgh area.'

`Indefinitely?' Cassie stared at the man in
horror. `But haven't you any idea how long it's going to be?'
            

`Sorry, we've just got to wait until the fog
lifts.'
            

`But that might not be until tomorrow!'

'That's possible, quite likely even,' the man
said with a shrug, then pointed out, 'But perhaps, if you don't want to wait,
you might consider going by train? I could phone through and book you a seat on
the night express to Glasgow if you like?'

Cassie hesitated only a moment; there was no
way she wanted to go home and then come all the way out to the airport again
tomorrow. 'Yes, all right, do that for me, would you? And book me a sleeper,
please.'

The receptionist phoned through while Cassie
thought miserably of the long journey ahead, but at least she'd be able to get
some sleep on the way. But that, too, was to be denied her in this worst of all
weeks.

'I'm sorry, Mrs. Ventris, but all the
sleepers have been taken, but I've managed to get you a first class seat. The
train leaves at nine thirty.'

'Thanks.' Cassie picked up her case again and
walked out into the cold air to get a taxi to take her back into London.

She spent the hours on the train in reading a
novel that she'd bought at the bookstall in the station. She had also had a
meal in the restaurant there because there was no buffet car on the train, so
at least she wasn't hungry, only extremely bored as the high-speed train
scorched through the night, past towns whose inhabitants were snugly tucked up
in bed or seated in front of the fire, watching television. Cassie pictured
them in her imagination and heartily envied them, her only comfort that she
would be with Simon in just a few more hours.

Towards midnight it grew colder, despite the
heating, and when she lifted up the blind she saw that it was snowing, large
driving flakes that pelted the windows of the swiftly moving train. They
stopped only three times on the way up, at Birmingham, Manchester and Carlisle,
close to the Scottish border.

At the latter station Cassie got up to
stretch her legs and noted gloomily that the snow was already quite deep,
clinging to the roofs and blowing into drifts at every exposed corner. But at
least there was no fog here, although that didn't necessarily mean that there
wouldn't be any further north in Glasgow, of course, but Cassie lived in hope.

And she was right; there wasn't any fog when
she finally arrived in Glasgow in the early hours of the morning, just snow, a
blinding, raging blizzard of snow that had taken every taxi off the streets and
left them white and deserted, so that it looked more like Moscow in the depths
of winter than anything else. Cassie took one look at it and hurried back into
the station to find a phone. First she tried the airport, only to be told that
conditions in the north-west were even worse than in Glasgow and that
nothing-planes or helicopters— would be taking off until the blizzard stopped.
Next she tried to phone Simon, but had to go through the operator and there was
a great deal of delay and wrong connections until she finally got through to
him.

'Cassie?' he exclaimed in sleepy surprise
when he heard her voice, then, on a sharper note, `What is it? What's
happened?'

`The plane couldn't take off because there
was fog in Glasgow, so I took a train,' she explained. 'But now there's snow
here and I can't get out to the site.'
            

 'Took a train? D'you mean to say you're in
Glasgow?'

'Yes, of course. Where did you think I was?'

'Back home at the flat. The company's
representative at Heathrow phoned me to say you wouldn't be arriving by plane,
but I'd no idea you'd come up by train.'
            

'You weren't waiting up for me, then?' Cassie
demanded, her mental picture of Simon pacing the floor with worry beginning to
fragment.

'No, I was in bed.'

'In bed! While I was sitting up in that damn
cold train for hours and hours? And now I'm stuck in this rotten station at
three o'clock in the morning with a blizzard raging outside, and no planes and
no taxis and nowhere to go!' Her voice rose in shrill anger. 'Added to which
I'm not dressed for a damn blizzard and I'm freezing!' Which was an
exaggeration, because she was wearing a brown padded cotton jacket over her
tweed suit, but her feet in a pair of the latest high-heeled leather boots were
definitely beginning to feel the cold, as were her hands and nose.

Simon, recognising the note of extreme
tiredness and near-panic in her voice, was immediately soothing and
businesslike. 'Exactly where are you?'

'I told you, in Glasgow Station, and there
aren't any taxis and I…'

'Okay, so here's what you do,' Simon
interrupted tersely. 'You go and find the waiting-room and stay there until
someone comes for you. I'll phone the hotel that Mullaine's uses—the one we
stayed in last time, remember?-and get them to send a car for you.'
   

`And what happens if I get attacked or mugged
or something while I'm waiting?' she demanded indignantly.

Even over the miles of line she could hear
the laughter in Simon's voice. 'Just turn round and tell them what you think of
Scotland in general and Glasgow in particular; they'll soon turn round and
run.'

'Simon!' But even through her indignation she
saw the funny side of it and had to laugh. 'Oh, darling,' she sighed, 'I'm
sorry, only it's been such a rotten night. What shall I do, try to get a helicopter
later on this morning?'

'No, you sit tight at the hotel. I'll try and
get to you.'

'All right. But do hurry, darling. I miss
you.'    

'Don't worry,' he answered softly. 'If
there's any way of getting through this to you, I'll make it.'
    But the wintry conditions decreed otherwise and, after
several abortive and frustrating attempts to reach Glasgow, Simon had to give
up.