55. At the Grand International
They landed at Dubai in darkness, taxiing up to the cathedral of light and glass that was the terminal building. The cabin attendant who had lent Irene the uniform came to discuss its return, suggesting that it could be left at her hotel to be picked up by the airline the following day. Irene agreed to this and gave the name and address of her hotel, the Grand International. She felt a certain thrill in revealing the identity of the hotel; to say “I’m staying at the Grand International” had a ring to it which was rather different from saying that one was staying at a bed and breakfast.
She was pleased that the business class passengers were allowed out first; this enabled her to avoid being confronted with her detractors from the economy class cabin, some of whom she had noticed in the distance, glaring at her resentfully. Once inside the terminal, she followed the signs to immigration, through which she passed surprisingly quickly. It occurred to her that this was because of the uniform—and that explained, too, she decided, the smiles and nods of greeting she got from aircrew who walked past her.
One woman in an Emirates outfit even stopped and asked her whether she was going off duty and which run she had been on. Irene thought that explaining might be too complicated and could also possibly arouse suspicion, and so she simply said, “Glasgow. And it was very busy.”
“Yes,” said the other attendant, who sounded Australian. “I’ve just come in from Melbourne. I can’t wait to crash.”
Irene smiled. “That’s an odd thing for an airline person to say.”
The attendant looked at her. “Excuse me?”
“You said you couldn’t wait to crash.”
“That’s right. I’m keeping my eyelids open with matchsticks.”
Irene nodded. “It doesn’t matter.” And she thought: how literal can you get! Really!
They went their separate ways as Irene found the carousel on which her suitcase was due to emerge. After forty minutes, when all the other passengers had collected their cases, Irene found herself standing at a now-static luggage belt without her luggage.
She reported the matter at the appropriate desk. Computers were consulted and an explanation given. “That case never left Glasgow, I’m afraid. Sorry.”
Irene bit her lip. She had no clothes now—just the Emirates uniform.
“When will it arrive then?”
The clerk looked again at the screen. He glanced at her, as if assessing her likely reaction, and then returned to read the screen. “I’m afraid it’s in Helsinki.”
Irene gave a cry. “Helsinki!”
The clerk looked apologetic. “In fact, it’s left Helsinki. Something’s just come up to say that it’s left Helsinki.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Irene. “When does it get here?”
The clerk bit his lip. “Well, that’s a bit of a problem. They seem to have put it on a flight for Buenos Aires. I can’t understand why, but that’s where it seems to be heading. Via Amsterdam, that is.”
Irene was silent.
“I know it’s really awkward,” said the clerk. “It’s not the airline’s fault. It’s the baggage handlers. You know what they’re like.”
“Do I?” said Irene, through clenched teeth.
“Yes. I sometimes think that they do this sort of thing to prevent themselves from getting bored.”
“I see.”
The clerk reached for a form. “I’ll put in a tracer. Where are you staying?”
“The Grand International,” hissed Irene.
“A nice place,” said the clerk. “They look after your luggage there.” And then he added, somewhat apologetically, “If you have any, that is.”
The lost luggage report filed, Irene followed the taxi sign and was soon ensconced in an air-conditioned car heading for the Grand International. She was struggling to maintain such equanimity as she had left. She was determined to enjoy herself, and this meant that she would not let these setbacks depress her. No, she told herself. I am above all that. Here I am in Dubai by myself. No husband. No children. No grey skies. No rain.
She looked out of the window. High modern buildings reached into the sky—needles of light. Traffic sped past—important-looking cars with shaded windows; refrigerated trucks; a sleek prowling police car with blue lights and a nagging siren.
“You go to a very good hotel,” said the driver suddenly. “The Grand International is very good.”
Irene smiled. “Yes, certainly. Very nice.”
The driver watched her in his rear-view mirror. “First time in Dubai?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Irene. “My first time in Dubai.”
“You are very welcome,” said the driver.
“Thank you.”
He looked at her in the mirror again. “And your husband? You have left him at your place?”
“Yes. He’s in Scotland.”
The driver nodded. “Scotland. That is good. He let you come by yourself?”
Irene pursed her lips. “My husband does not control me,” she said. “I can do what I like.”
The driver shook his head. “Very bad,” he said. “Tell me: why are you wearing an Emirates uniform if it’s your first time in Dubai? Does your husband know about that?”
Irene met his eyes in the mirror and gave him a discouraging look. “Mind your own business,” she said.
The driver shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just that the police ask us to report anything suspicious. I think you are maybe a bit suspicious.”
“I most certainly am not,” said Irene sharply. “Now just drive to the Grand International, if you don’t mind.”
They were not far from the hotel, and the driver soon swung the car onto a slip-road that led to the front of a towering glass hotel.
“The Grand International,” he announced.
Irene paid him off and entered the hotel lobby. At least they were expecting her at reception, and were sympathetic about the lost suitcase. “Suitcases always turn up in the end,” they said. “Very few disappear altogether.”
She was shown to her room, a spacious bedroom on the thirty-second floor. She eyed the marble bathroom longingly while the porter explained the controls of the large television set and the automatic coffee maker. She was tired from the journey and wanted only to sink into a luxurious bath and then throw herself down on the king-size bed with its inviting crisp sheets and pillows. She was still feeling positive.
Everything—absolutely everything—had gone wrong, but at least that meant that nothing further could happen to mar her trip. Surely that was the way it worked. If things started badly, then the odds were that they would get better. She remembered her husband. He was a statistician. Surely he would agree with that.
56. Pat Thinks, and Is Almost Run Over
The euphoria that Pat felt after the telephone call from Michael had not worn off. She had made her way back to the flat dreamily, hardly noticing where she was going and almost being run over as a result at the edge of the Meadows, the expanse of grass and trees that divided the Old Town, where she studied, from South Edinburgh, where she lived. She had been standing at the Dick Vet corner, looking up at the monstrously ugly building that the university had placed next to the comfortable old Veterinary College—a mistake from a period when such mistakes were made with impunity. Now, of course, it was an embarrassment—a reminder of architectural arrogance and aesthetic shortcomings. Her studies in fine art had had the desired effect, and Pat, who had walked past that building as a schoolgirl and thought nothing of it, now experienced real discomfort at its modernist brutality. Such buildings, she thought, were acts of aggression, which is surely what Michael would think of it. He obviously understood beauty, because he was an artist who made beautiful things, and she would soon see the wonderful table he’d been working on …
She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what the table would look like. It would look like … She stopped, and realised that she knew nothing about tables—nothing at all. What if
he asked her to comment on it, to say how she felt it fitted in with other tables, how it related to French tables, for instance; what could she say? She wanted to impress him, to make him think that she knew about the things that he appreciated, and all she knew about tables was that they generally had four legs, except where they had one, or sometimes three. Were there any two-legged tables …
“Watch out!”
The car that had almost run her over had skidded to a halt. The driver, winding down his window, looked at Pat with disbelief.
“I’m so sorry,” he called out. “But you were about to cross the road with your eyes closed!”
Pat put a hand to her mouth, her heart thumping with shock. “I’m sorry too,” she stuttered. “I was thinking. I’m really sorry.”
The driver shook his head. “I almost hit you,” he said. “It was that close.”
“I was thinking,” said Pat. “I know it sounds really stupid, but I was thinking.”
The driver smiled with relief. “Well, as long as you’re all right. That’s the important thing.”
Pat returned his smile. “And you? Are you all right? That’s important too.”
“I’m fine,” said the driver. “It was you I was worried about.”
“And I was worried about you,” said Pat. “Are you quite sure you’re all right?”
“No, don’t worry about me,” said the driver. “And it would appear that both of us are fine. That’s ultimately what matters, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” said Pat. “I’d agree with that, I think.”
The driver waved. “Well, so long,” he called out. “Sweet dreams—but not while you’re crossing the road!”
Pat watched him drive off and thought: that’s the nice thing about Edinburgh. These little encounters—traffic altercations—were so civilised, so courteous. She would tell her father about that; he was always interested in examples of civic decency. He would like this story, although he would be worried, no doubt, at the thought that she had almost been run over.
Dr. Macgregor, in fact, was particularly interested in the way people behaved in their cars. Although one never saw it in Edinburgh, in other places driving behaviour was astonishingly aggressive. People who would normally never dream of shouting at others, or intimidating them, seemed to think that they could do this with impunity once they got behind the wheel of a car. On foot, amongst fellow pedestrians, one would never scowl or swear at somebody who made some minor navigational error—perhaps took a step to the side, thus putting himself in one’s course and requiring a correction of direction on one’s part—but if this happened on the road, it was a different matter. There would be soundings of horns and aggressive gestures and the like, as if the error were an act of extreme and unforgivable hostility or in effect a declaration of war. Why did people behave like that? Were there deep wells of antagonism within them that yearned for release, and found their expression in the driving of a vehicle? Perhaps it was something to do with personal space, he had suggested. The strong sense of being enclosed that came with being in a car seemed to remove social and psychological restraints. It was as if within the car one were invisible, and this invisibility conferred some sort of power, some invincibility.
Pat continued her journey, soon forgetting about her narrow escape and thinking, instead, of her future. Earlier that day she had felt that she had little to look forward to. Graduation, which was imminent, would be the end of the life she had been accustomed to leading for so long. That, in itself, was not something she should worry about, she felt, but the problem was that she had had no sense of what lay beyond. But then there had been that encounter in the Elephant House, and now everything seemed, quite suddenly, to be completely changed. What did Yeats say? “Changed, changed utterly … a terrible beauty is born.”
She had learned that poem at school without really liking it or understanding it. Now it spoke to her. It did not matter that Yeats was talking about the higher purpose of political commitment; it was surely the same. Passion was passion, whatever its direction; it gripped the soul in much the same way. Now she had a purpose. Michael. He was her destiny, and she was going to meet him in a couple of hours at the Canny Man’s in Morningside Road. She shook her head at the mystery of it. Everything was now subservient to her feelings for him. Everything. How absurd! How ridiculous that another person can come into one’s life like that and make everything else seem unimportant and immaterial. Where did this come from? Not from the mind, surely, because the mind took it as its business to reason with you—wherever that you was located. Were we mad to behave like that? Or simply human?
57. At the Canny Man’s
Pat returned to her flat and, being in a mood to do something, but not knowing what it should be, washed her hair. Afterwards, as she sat on the floor of her bedroom using her hairdryer with its cord that was too short to allow her to stand or sit on a chair, she came to a realisation that was as shocking as it was surprising: This is the first time I have ever been in love.
Those newly in love, of course, are the easiest victims of self-delusion. This time, they tell themselves, it is quite different from the last time. Of course, they are often wrong; love, as the folk-wisdom has it, has the ability to blind us to the obvious—and the obvious, for many, is that love, even if it is not exactly a recurrent infection, visits us more than once. And yet even if this is true, a new love may indeed be stronger, more absorbing, than an old one, just as a new cold may be more severe than the cold we had six months ago. This was probably the case now with Pat. It was not the first time altogether that she had fallen for somebody; but it was the first time that her fall had been so intense, so complete, and so utterly intoxicating.
At last she was ready, and went out of the flat, fumbling with her key with nervous, uncooperative fingers. Lovestruck fingers, she thought to herself, and smiled. Everything now seemed precious: the simple act of locking the door behind her became significant because she did not want anything to happen that would threaten this sudden heightened preciousness of life. None of us—or very few of us, perhaps—wants to die, and this desire to survive becomes all the stronger when we are suddenly given something that we have longed for, never thought we would get, and now, unexpectedly, possess. We want to prolong the moment, to secure it. We know in our bones that what we have in this life we have on loan only, and the term of the loan will always be finite. We know that suddenly the referee’s whistle will be blown and that will be the end. But now, at least for the moment, we have it, and want it to last for as long as possible.
It was a fifteen-minute walk to the Canny Man’s and she had left it too late to arrive in time. This did not worry her, though: she did not want to be early as this could give the impression that she was keen to see Michael. Which she was, of course, but she did not want him to know—or at least not to know just yet. A few days earlier she had picked up a magazine in a friend’s flat and opened it at the problem page, the page to which we all so guiltily gravitate. One of the letters was from a young woman who was seeking advice about a romance that she feared she had killed in its infancy through her being too quick to return a young man’s call. “He seemed surprised that I had called him only an hour after our first meeting,” she said. “I could hear the change in his tone, as he cooled off. Was I wrong to call him so soon?” And the agony aunt, with all the patience and understanding of one who has seen all human folly, had gently replied that one should never appear too eager. “It’s something to do with men’s psychology,” she wrote. “They are programmed to pursue. That’s what they feel they have to do. And if we make the pursuit too easy, or, worse still, do the pursuing ourselves, then they’ll lose interest and we’ll have only ourselves to blame.” Pat had taken all this to heart; one ignored the advice of agony aunts at one’s peril—and if one did, of course, one would only have oneself to blame.
Pat’s arrival in the Canny Man’s was well timed, as Michael was already there when she came through the side entran
ce. He saw her immediately, and slipped off his bar stool to greet her. He reached out, took her hand, but only held it briefly before dropping it. It was just right, she felt, for a first date on the evening of the day on which they had met. A kiss would have been too much—too affected; this brief touching was far better.
She felt her knees weaken, and for a moment it seemed to her that there was a danger that they would not support her.
“You haven’t been waiting too long, I hope.”
He shook his head. “Five minutes. Maybe ten.”
She felt her breathing becoming shallower. What if I faint? What would the agony aunt have to say about that? Whatever you do, don’t faint on your first date—just don’t! And if you do, you’ll have only yourself to blame …
He ordered her a drink. Handing it to her, he said: “I’m glad you came. I thought you might not.”
She was surprised. “Why? Why wouldn’t I come?”
He shrugged. “People sometimes have better things to do than meet me,” he said. “I would have understood.”
The remark seemed unduly self-deprecatory, but she did not think so much about this aspect of it as of the attractive lilt in his voice.
“Surely not,” she said. “People will want to see you …”
He raised an eyebrow, and then smiled. She was not sure whether he was serious. “You think so …”
She was about to reply, but she had become aware of somebody entering the bar behind her. She half-turned round, and glanced towards the door. A moment later she turned back to face Michael, but then she realised what she had seen, and swung back again.
“Somebody you know?” asked Michael.
Pat said nothing. Her eyes had met the eyes of the man who had just walked through the door, and for a few moments the gaze of each of them was locked on the other.
Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers Page 20