Skylark (14 page)

Ann's bedroom, with its pale blue walls, dark blue carpet, and Renoir prints, was
pleasant but much more businesslike. The small kitchen sported blond wood and white tiles, and
appliances that had clearly never known the touch of human hands. We had been a little
disappointed to discover that the fixtures in the bathroom were Best British, rather than French.
There was, of course, no shower.

According to Daphne, the firm manufactured ultra-modern explosives. For mining and
construction, she had assured me with great earnestness. We were to pay her the rent if we had to
stay on another week, but we'd have to keep a log of our telephone calls. She would deal with the
French.

When Ann finally hung up it was still only half past seven. There was no point in trying
to reach Jay. He was somewhere between Los Angeles and Dallas, so I subtracted five hours
instead of eight and called my parents. Dad hadn't yet received the parcel, but he promised to
have the document translated as soon as it arrived.

I could tell my mother was not best pleased that Dame Elizabeth had felt obliged to
trudge down the stairs to the basement flat. Without exactly reproaching me, Ma indicated that
she meant to call her friend and atone.

Both parents were relieved I had not been arrested. Possibly they hadn't believed I
would be. I told them they should have sat through the interrogation. They noted our new
telephone number and promised to call again later in the week.

When I hung up, Ann was heating steak-and-kidney pies in the tiny Krupp oven, and
puzzling over the directions, which were translated from the German. I made a salad.

"I'm a trial to my parents," I announced, rinsing lettuce.

"All children are a trial to their parents, honey." She took two futuristic black plates
from the dish cupboard. "Beau is thinking of marrying an ichthyologist."

"You don't like fish?" I whirled the lettuce in the drier.

"I like fish fine, and little Amy would be a nice child if she didn't wear three pairs of
earrings at once, but neither of them has any money, and Beau is only a junior. I refuse to
support a grandchild."

"Amy's pregnant?"

"Heavens, how you do go on. However, they'll probably decide having a baby and going
to school at the same time is a fun thing to do. I had Beau my second year in graduate school, so
I don't favor the idea. Besides I'm too young to be a grandmother." She clattered the cutlery.

I portioned the salad makings between two bowls and topped them with oil and vinegar
dressing. "How's your other son?"

"Tommy's too caught up in the perils of being a freshman to cause trouble now. Give
him six months."

We chatted amicably about her offspring and my parents, ate, and watched the telly for
an hour. Fortunately the news didn't feature us.

I went in to my plum velvet bed early, because I meant to take off for Gatwick by nine.
The trains ran from Victoria every fifteen minutes, but the trip took an hour, and Jay was due in
at eleven fifteen. I wanted to be in place waiting for him.

As I left the flat the next morning I heard Ann's alarm going off. She planned to spend
the day at the British Museum, she had said, and not to wait dinner for her. I think she was being
tactful, though there was less need now that we had so much luxurious room in the flat.

I dressed in black tailored pants and a teal sweater with a crocheted collar, because Jay
had told me the sweater deepened the color my eyes. It was raining a little, so I also wore the tan
raincoat and the garish scarf. And flats. My feet still felt the effects of wearing pumps.

Victoria swarmed with commuters, but most of them seemed to be heading the opposite
direction. The handful of passengers in my Gatwick-bound car were silent, engrossed in their
newspapers. I had bought an
Independent
and the
Telegraph
. Once we crossed
the Thames, there was nothing to see, unless Clapham Junction may be considered scenic. I had
plowed through the
Independent
and was searching for the
Telegraph
's report
on the murder of Miss Beale when we pulled into Gatwick station. Since the
Independent
article was a perfunctory update I abandoned both newspapers. No news is
good news.

I took the elevator up to the airport--the train runs beneath it--and strolled to the airline
ticketing section to look at the monitors that showed arrivals and departures.

All airports are interchangeable, and Gatwick was more generic than most. Passengers
with their luggage heaped on metal carts stood in long lines for each airline's security check.
Large white signs with heavy black print advised passengers to keep their bags and parcels with
them at all times, and to report unattended parcels at once.

I wondered whether the signs and security checks had been posted before the Lockerbie
disaster. This was my first trip abroad since my marriage. The usual x-ray routine was in place
near Departures, but I didn't remember the signs, or the brisk airline personnel inspecting
passports and opening bags as passengers checked in, from my earlier experiences. When I had
left San Francisco International, however, the airlines had taken similar precautions with
overseas passengers. Travel was getting more and more paranoid.

No one at Gatwick seemed to object to the checking process, but the stark signs made
me edgy. I verified that Jay's flight was due five minutes early and drifted through to the
reception area. I had come nearly an hour before the plane would land, so I took my time
inspecting the layout.

The huge tiled room where friends and relatives awaited incoming passengers had
almost no amenities except loos and a shop selling newspapers and magazines. The amplified
announcements on the P.A. system echoed unpleasantly. There was no place to sit. I decided to
ride the escalator up and buy a cup of coffee.

The second floor was a zoo. Magazine concessions, the large duty-free store, and shops
selling the doodads passengers forget to pack surrounded a dull lobby. Passengers waiting to
board hunkered in the dull seats. Back the other way, the cafeteria was clearly too small for the
volume of customers. The lines for breakfast snaked along by steam tables and liquid dispensers.
There was no restaurant in the usual sense of the word.

I chugged through the shortest cafeteria line and bought a pot of tea on the theory that
the tea couldn't be as awful as the coffee looked. I wandered around the no-smoking section and
finally perched on a stool by a high counter with five other people sitting in a row like birds on a
telephone wire. The Formica-covered tables were either occupied or littered with trays, dirty
dishes, and cups.

School-leavers in maroon and gold uniforms moved among the crud, working without
urgency. Children howled or romped, depending on their temperaments. Parents growled.
Businessmen snapped newspapers open and gulped tea. Everywhere, bags and baggage carts and
parcels sat on the sticky floor. Nobody was going to leave a bag unattended, even for a
minute.

Wishing I'd kept my copy of the
Telegraph
, I drank tea and waited. The P.A.
rattled out announcements in English, French, and German. In San Francisco the alternate
languages were Japanese and Spanish. I felt very far from home, and my edginess moved rapidly
toward impatience. I wanted to see Jay.

After a last acrid sip, I rose, bused my teapot and cup on the nearest debris-laden table,
and went back down to the waiting area.

A brass rail at chest height topped the glass partition that separated incoming passengers
from the people meeting them. I positioned myself about halfway down, between a Pakistani
family and a couple of men waiting for business associates. My station gave me a clear view of
the arrival corridor.

It was easy to tell when one of the jumbo jets unloaded. The passengers' luggage all bore
the same airport tags, and people carried the same kinds of souvenirs and sporting gear. It was
early in the season for large groups of touring families but the right time for seniors. Some of the
elderly passengers looked as if they might collapse in the gangway, though I thought the distance
from plane to reception area had to be less grueling than the endless tiled corridors at Heathrow.
Gatwick was a much smaller airport.

Jay's flight was announced. My heartbeat quickened, then smoothed for the long wait.
He had to go through customs. After what seemed like an hour but was more like twenty
minutes, I saw a clump of mixed businessmen and tourists straggling out with DFW, and LAX,
the connecting flight, on their luggage tags.

I saw Jay well before he saw me, and I waved and called his name, modulating my voice
so as not to annoy my British compeers at the rail. They don't like outbursts of public emotion.
Jay didn't hear me, of course. He plodded on. He was frowning a little, and his shoulder sagged
under the weight of his battered grey garment bag. He wore jeans, a sage-green pullover and the
tweed jacket I had bought him as a joke when he became a professor, and he looked so American
a lump rose to my throat. I waved again. This time he saw me.

His eyes widened a little, but his expression didn't change. He veered toward me without
pausing, and almost careened into a family of English tourists with Disneyland balloons tied to
their luggage cart. Jay is inclined to come straight to the point.

When he reached the rail he dropped the bag on the floor. I suppose I was babbling
greetings. He didn't say anything. He took my head in both hands and gave me a long unEnglish
kiss on the mouth, and I made a discovery.

"You have the shakes."

"Right. Get me out of here."

I pointed toward the end of the rail. "I'll meet you there."

I dashed through the waiting crowd. I had only seen Jay in that state once before, and
the circumstances had been unpleasant. I elbowed my way past a woman with an artificial smile.
She was holding up a sign identifying her to a tour group.

I hugged Jay again. "When did it hit you?"

"After customs." He was speaking through clenched teeth.

At least he hadn't shaken all the way from Dallas to London. I took the garment bag
from him, slung it over my left shoulder, and put my right arm around his waist. "Come on."

As we threaded through the crowd and made our way past Departures to the main exit, I
reflected on what Jay had just gone through. I could feel his body trembling against my arm. He
didn't say anything. Neither did I. There was nothing to say.

We slithered through the patient lines of departing passengers and made for the exit to
the train depot. I had not thought to buy him a ticket when I arrived.

"Wait right here," I muttered as we reached the ticket queue. I dropped the bag.

"Okay."

I forged into the line behind a kid with a monumental backpack and bought Jay a ticket.
That done, I led him through the turnstile and down the elevator to the train level. We boarded a
waiting train and sat quietly for five minutes until the train gave a small lurch and set into
motion. I could feel Jay trembling beside me, but the shaking was less violent than in the
airport.

Once the train left Gatwick for open country I said, "Better?"

"Yes. I'm tired." He wriggled his shoulders against the seat-back.

I let out a long sigh. "Then lean against me and nap. We're an hour from Victoria. Are
you okay?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

He squeezed my hand. "I think I may see my thirty-ninth birthday after all." Jay would
turn thirty-nine in May. For some reason thirty-nine was bothering him more than
thirty-eight.

"I'm relieved to hear it."

The shaking eased. A Britrail employee pushed a cart through, flogging crisps and
fish-paste sandwiches.

Jay gave a drowsy snort of laughter. "Jesus, what a trip. Remind me to tell you what it's
like to spend four hours at Dallas airport. G'night, Lark." It was broad daylight.

"I love you," I said. He fell asleep as I spoke. At a guess--what with final exams, flying,
worrying about flying, and worrying about me--he hadn't slept in thirty-six hours.

When the conductor came to check tickets I handed him mine and Jay's. The man, rosy
and just this side of plump, gave me a beaming smile. Jay didn't stir. The other passengers
regarded me with smiling benevolence, as if I had kept him up with nonstop sex all weekend. I
wished that had been the case.

When we pulled into Victoria Station I shook Jay awake. It took a while. Everyone had
left the car by the time I got him on his feet and retrieved the bag. We queued for a taxi.

"You're not under arrest." He yawned.

The woman standing beside me gave me a startled glance and looked away. I felt my
face go hot. "Not yet."

Jay stretched, and peered past the double line-up of waiting taxis. "Holy shit, they do use
those red buses."

I smiled. "And the black taxis, too."

"And it's raining."

"All the time."

"I expect we'll get used to it after a year or so."

"Year!"

"It'll take at least that long to get me back on a plane."

"That's okay. I'll abandon you," I said lightly. The woman beside me climbed into a taxi.
I could see her peering back at us as her cab pulled away.

I explained to the waiting driver where we wanted to go, and we got in. The cab pulled
out into the stream of traffic heading for the roundabout in front of Buckingham Palace. Traffic
was heavy but no more so than usual. I settled back and began giving Jay a recap of the past day
and a half, notably our new flat, my interrogation, and Milos's disappearance.

Jay made a small choking sound.

I stared.

He was grinning. "Look at those damned cars. The ones in front of us."

I looked. "What about them?"

"They're booming along with a neatly strapped-in passenger and no driver."

I sighed. British cars, naturally, reverse the position of driver and front seat passenger.
Until they get used to the idea, the illusion of driverless vehicles causes Americans and other
right-minded people to do a double take.