Strangers in Company (2 page)

“But if you don't want to get involved?” Marian had a strong feeling that she ought to go herself, but the whisky, or the tranquilliser, or both, had loosened her
defences against the accumulated exhaustion of the last few weeks. She was not sure she was capable of getting up. The double had been a mistake, she thought muzzily, but a well-meant one.

And, “Don't worry, I shan't.” Stella hitched the bright patchwork bag over her shoulder. “Back in a moment.”

Left blessedly alone, Marian allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for a moment. Instantly, she was lost in a whirling dizziness, a mad kaleidoscope of the last weeks. The letter from Mark.… No cheque.… The twins.… Don't think about the twins. Miss Oakland: “You'll find you earn the high pay.”

But was she? With an immense effort, she opened her eyes, to find Stella bending over her. “You look flaked out, you poor thing.” A note of real sympathy in her voice. “And it's bad news, of course. There's an hour's delay. ‘Operational difficulties.' We'll be lucky if it's only that. Here.” She bent, with her swift efficiency of movement, and pushed her small overnight bag towards Marian. “Put your feet on that. Try and get some sleep. You're all in.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.” Talk about the blind leading the blind. She made a great effort. “What's the courier like?”

“Useless,” said Stella Marten succinctly. Her laugh was harsher than usual, and somewhere, deep down, Marian registered a tiny half-conscious alarm signal. “It's his first tour,” Stella went on. “The regular man hasn't turned up. I never did find out why. This one took over at an hour's notice. The schoolmarms are ‘ever so sorry for him'.” She picked her scarlet cotton raincoat off the back of her chair and draped it carefully over Marian's legs. “Try and get some sleep, Mrs. Frenche. You're going to need it. God knows when we'll get to Athens. Don't worry. I'll wake you when the flight's finally called. If it ever is.”

Once again, her tone sent that unexpected alarm tingling way down in Marian's consciousness. But she was too tired to pay attention. “I wish you'd call me Marian,” she said, and slept.

Someone was shaking her. Viola? Sebastian? No. Reality
flooded back as she sat up and ran shaky fingers through her short, brindled hair.

“Lord, you were dead to the world.” Stella was smiling down at her. “I hate to wake you, but our flight's actually been called. They're all milling through Gate Twelve and I reckon by the time you're ready to move, the worst will be over. But how do you feel?”

“Much better, thanks.” It was true. The short, deep sleep had done her more good than nights of endless half-sleep, half-wakeful tossing. “But I must look like hell.”

“You don't, you know. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Lady Olivier?” She laughed. “Joan Plowright, I mean, not Vivien Leigh. I don't quite see you as Scarlet O'Hara.” She yawned. “Come on, you look fine, and anyway, who's going to notice at this godawful hour of the night? We're nearly two hours late now. You've been out cold the whole time.”

Marian laughed as she picked up her small zip-topped case. “A fine chaperone I make. Just as well Miss Oakland's not here to see. Thanks for watching over me.”

“No trouble.” An odd expression in that so far unreadable face? Hard to tell.… And no time to be thinking about it, while they gathered together their possessions. As it was, they were the last through Gate Twelve and walked along the endless echoing Gatwick corridor well behind the rest of the party.

“They've been fraternising like mad.” Stella cast a darkling look forward. “Of course there are lots of other tours using this plane, but our labels are so ghastly unmistakable.”

Marian yawned uncontrollably. “What time is it?”

“Two in the morning. We'll just about get to Athens for breakfast. How I hate night flights.” The sentences came out jerkily, and Marian remembered that curious, unidentifiable feeling of something wrong that she had had before she fell asleep. Oh, well, night was the time for imagining things.

The last to board the plane, they were greeted with
unceremonious briskness by an exhausted-looking stewardess.

“Back there. The two empty seats.” She turned away to put a coat in the luggage rack and remove a heavy-looking case. “On the floor, please.”

“Sounds like the end of a long, horrible day.” Stella, leading the way, had found the two vacant seats in one of the inevitable rows of three. The one by the window was already occupied by the blond young courier, who was on his feet at once, offering to change seats. But, “No, thanks.” Stella sat down firmly in the middle seat of the row. “There's nothing to see anyway,” she pointed out, rising again to throw her red raincoat and Marian's brown one expertly up into the rack, while he made ineffective attempts at helping her, hamstrung by the fact that he was cramped under the overhang.

“There.” She turned her back on him to tuck her small bag and Marian's under the seats in front. “Something to put our feet on. I bet no one's ever asked a woman to design a plane. Have you ever flown the Atlantic?”

“No.” The knife turned in the wound. “I saw my children off, the other day. Of course, I didn't get near the plane.”

“Just as bad as this one.” To Marian's relief, Stella showed not the slightest interest in the fact of her children. “Nowhere to put your feet, and the minute you get almost settled, the seat in front falls back on you with a crash.” She fastened her seat belt with a quick, irritable movement of the hands, then turned the other way as the courier asked her the same question for the third time.

“Did you get through in the end?” he had been asking.

“Through? Oh—on the telephone you mean. No, my friend must have been out.” She turned from him dismissively. “I thought I might as well say good-bye,” she explained to Marian.

“Yes.” The disastrous affair? She smiled wryly to herself, remembering how grateful she had been for Stella's watching over her while she slept. The courier's question
implied, surely, a considerable number of attempts to make the call. Oh, well, poor Stella.…

Fatigue was coming over her again, wave on wave of it, in the synthetic air of the plane. She fastened her seat belt, leaned back and closed her eyes.

“My name's Cairnthorpe.” The young courier was trying again with Stella. “I'm your courier, heaven help me.”

“On a Mercury Classical Tour? Shouldn't you be invoking Zeus?”

“Oh, well.” He was delighted to have got a real answer out of her. “Strictly speaking, that's the guide's job. We pick him up in Athens on Monday. Tomorrow, I mean.” He looked at his watch as if it would tell him the day of the week. “Mind you,” he went on. “The delay was lucky for me. I wouldn't have made it otherwise. And what a chance!”

“Why?” Stella sounded so profoundly uninterested that Marian suddenly realised this was the question she had wanted to ask.

“Oh, didn't you know?” He was young enough to assume that everyone must be interested in his affairs. “I only took over at the eleventh hour. Literally. The other man was knocked down by a car,” he explained and then added a perfunctory “poor fellow.”

“Killed?” asked Stella.

“Oh, I hope not. That would make me feel bad, wouldn't it? They didn't know, when they telephoned me. Just that he was badly hurt, and could I take over? Well—it was a rush, but of course I could. It's the chance I've been waiting for. I've been on standby for these tours ever since I came down—left the university,” he explained kindly, and Marian, on the far side, was aware of the ripple of irritation that ran through Stella. “I teach, you know.” He was well away now. “Classics, of course. But it doesn't run to Greek holidays. I've not been there since I was up—at Oxford,” he explained again.

“I've heard of it.” Stella closed the conversation.

After that, it was just the usual, exhausting night flight, with bright-voiced, weary hostesses doling out duty-free
goods and cut-price drinks across the furious, semi-recumbent bodies of the passengers who wanted, more than anything, to sleep. There were, at some point, plastic sandwiches and coffee in plastic mugs. Marian, rousing enough to refuse them, heard Stella do the same and heard the courier—Cairngorm was it?—accept his enthusiastically. “Missed my dinner,” he tried to explain to Stella, who ignored him, sleeping ostentatiously.

Behind them, the group of teachers they had seen at Gatwick were celebrating their reunion by a long, elaborate, whispered conversation about what had happened to whom since they had last met. Listening, because she could not help it, Marian decided that they had been at Teachers' Training College together; that this was an annual occasion; that they were very nice girls.… Thinking this, at last, she slept.…

Stella was shaking her again. At least, this time, recognised at once as Stella. “Athens, Mrs. F. Rise and shine.”

“Oh, God,” said Marian. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Not much!” She gestured sideways with her head. “Should I wake him, do you think?” Beyond her, Mr. Cairnthorpe slept like a child.

The NO SMOKING and FASTEN SEAT BELTS signs were on. “Yes, I should think so. He's to take charge of us, I suppose.”

“So do I.” Stella met her smile for smile, but her face was grey, as if, Marian thought, she had not slept at all, but had spent all the hours of the flight brooding about the young man who had not been at home. She dug Mr. Cairnthorpe ruthlessly in the ribs. “We're here.”

“Oh … thanks.” Struggling up from sleep, he looked younger than ever, and Marian's heart sank. Certainly Stella, so far, seemed normal enough, but suppose the “nervous exhaustion” were to manifest itself in some drastic way, what use in the world would this very young man be? None, she told herself, and once again Miss Oakland's voice echoed in her head. “You'll earn your high pay.”

The plane touched, bounced just a little, then touched
again and was bumpily earthborne. “Not a large airport,” said Stella, unfastening her seat belt.

A hostess swooped. “Please keep your seat belts fastened, and remain seated until the plane is stationary.”

“Oh—” Stella bit off the next word, but Marian could feel the rage seething in her as she refastened the belt. Trouble at school.… Trouble with authority? So what would happen when authority was represented by poor Mr. Cairnthorpe?

But, surprisingly, Stella was laughing. “Don't look so anxious! At least I didn't
say
it.”

“My imagination's boggling just the same.”

“Poor Mrs. F.” Stella delved in her bag, produced a comb and began a rather slapdash attack on her shaggy hair. “Do you wish you were safe in bed in England?”

“I certainly wish I was in bed.” The plane had stopped at last, and Marian turned resolutely from the thought of the cold little house, the twins' bedrooms so empty, so unnaturally tidy. “I don't much care where.”

“They've opened the doors,” said Mr. Cairnthorpe hopefully.

“Have they?” Stella got out her compact. “Oh, God! My face!” She delved unsuccessfully in her bag for a while, her right shoulder hunched against her restless neighbour, finally producing a pair of tweezers and fastidiously removed one straggling hair from an eyebrow. “That's better.” The compact again, for a long, considering look.

Marian had had enough. “Well, I'm on my way.” She stood up, dropped Stella's red coat in her lap, picked up her own brown one and small bag and inserted herself neatly in a gap in the queue. The twins, she thought, would have been amazed. And, equally amazing, Stella had got all her paraphernalia stowed away and was following close behind.

“Cruelty to children?” Her voice was at once mocking and, Marian thought, apologetic.

“Something like that.” Cairnthorpe, she saw, was pushing his way towards the other exit. So much for any
hope of him as an ally. But at least, she thought, he had the gumption to resent being baited.

Outside, the dark, warm air smelled of pines. Stella drew a deep breath. “Retsina,” she said. “Delicious.”

“You've been here before?” Marian was surprised. Nothing Miss Oakland had said had suggested this.

“Lord, yes. On a cruise. With them. Ghastly, but I loved it. That's why I held out for this, don't you see? It takes you to all the places you don't get to on a cruise.”

“Yes.” It made sense. And yet— “It's funny,” she said. “I could have sworn Miss Oakland said.…”

“Oh, Miss Oakland! Why should she know? All she had to do was hire you, after all. Someone like you,” she amended.

Marian laughed. “My lucky day. Look! It's almost dawn.” The faintest suggestion of light in the sky emphasised the dark loom of mountains.

“Yes. We shan't see the Acropolis floodlit after all. Have you ever been to Greece, Mrs. Frenche?”

“No. Never.” She had wanted to come for their honeymoon, but Mark had had an engagement at the last moment, too good a one to be missed, as all Mark's engagements were, and Marian had found herself simply tagging along, allowed a slightly dubious recognition by Mark's fan club. It should have warned her, she thought now, looking back on the whole disaster of that time. Too late, of course. Anyway, she had been blinded by the glamour of it all, by the illusory Mark she adored, and who said, when he had a moment to spare, that he adored her, too. “You're my star,” he would say, with one of those butterfly kisses of his, and she was his slave.

But they had reached the lighted terminal building, and the smell of pines was lost in the smell of airport. Following the crowd, they found the formalities blessedly swift. “One good thing about travelling at night,” said Stella, as they emerged on the other side of the controls. “They're all too tired to search you for drugs.” And then, aware of Marian's swift, anxious glance. “Oh,
really
, Mrs. Frenche, you must know I don't.” And, with a look
Marian would learn to know all too well, “Anyway, what about you? Have you got the prescription for yours?”