Authors: Rachel Ingalls
She picked up the receiver again and punched the buttons for the Stones’ number. The Stones were their friends but it was a business friendship, not personal. A personal friendship might be like marriage, whereas this particular business friendship was like having a lover who lied and cheated and was unfaithful with friends and enemies, yet who managed to remain so attractive and charming in other ways, so desirable, that one didn’t want to break off the affair. They liked the Stones and they didn’t trust them an inch. Several times Pete
and Marcie Stone had tried to poach customers away from them. They were, Beth believed, the kind of people her grandmother had once described to her: they’d come to dinner and try to hire your cook out from under you. Once or twice Alan had done things back to them, just to show that he and Beth weren’t pushovers. There was no point in ending the friendship, as long as the others kept within bounds; Marcie and Pete had shown that they could be useful people to know. On the other hand, one more outrageous stunt like the one with Mr Pettifer, and Alan and Beth would cut them adrift.
She got Marcie at the other end of the line. They talked about the new airline prices and Beth asked about the two-
thousand-dollar
offer.
Marcie said, ‘It’s news to me. But I’ll ask around.’
‘I was thinking: it might be nice to get away for a week anyhow. We could check out the places they never bother to tell us about.’
‘Hey, I got news about that. I had a customer drop in. Two of them – husband and wife.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Honest to God. Five years in the travel business and these are the first people that ever came back to tell us what the trip was like. When you see them again, they never stop to talk – they just ask how much it’s going to cost to go somewhere else. Nobody’s ever got a spare minute. God, they were so nice. I nearly cried. They said they just wanted to thank us, because they’d had such a good time.’
‘I hope you asked them a lot of questions.’
‘I certainly did. And there were a few changes I thought I’d pass on to you: opening times at a couple of country houses, restaurant hours – that kind of thing. It was the south of England, including London, and over to Paris and Rome.’
‘We’d love any information,’ Beth said. She thought Marcie must be feeling guilty about wangling Mr Pettifer’s little list away from him.
‘Okay. I’ll send you a copy of what we’ve got. And if you’re taking a trip, let us know what you find out, hm?’
‘Sure,’ Beth promised. ‘Unless we have such a good time that we just never come back.’
After she’d hung up, she thought,
I’ve
said
something
like
that
before:
today,
at
lunch.
When
I
was
talking
to
Faye.
Rosa brought some hazelnut cookies with the coffee. The delicatessen was giving them away as a special, introductory offer. She had a big bag of them and she was chewing on one as she came in. Beth said, ‘Don’t let them near me.’ Rosa tried to break her down, but she wouldn’t be tempted. She concentrated on work until closing time.
*
She sat in the rush-hour traffic with Alan and blanked out a little, while he complained about Meyerson’s. They were always
having trouble with the brochure, but they never did anything about it. There weren’t any other printers around who could do a good job. It was specialized work. Their only consolation was that half of the other agencies in the vicinity used Meyerson’s, so they were all in the same boat.
When he’d talked everything out of his system and then done the paraphrase, Beth told him about her afternoon phone call.
He’d been thinking all day about a trip, he said. ‘I think we should go anyway. Cassie could take over for a while. She’s always said she’d be happy to.’
‘But it might not be a good time for her.’
‘I don’t want Pete and Marcie in there, not for a hundred peace-offerings.’
‘Why don’t we just close for a week? We could send out a leaflet to everybody.’
Alan thought the idea was impossible. Cassie was related to his brother-in-law and was trustworthy. She and Rosa could keep things running: he thought so until they got through the traffic, reached home and sat down to cocktails. He thought so until well into the first bourbon; but by the end of his second drink, he’d changed his mind. ‘We’ll wait a week,’ he suggested, ‘to find out if we’ve won the prize.’
‘Nobody wins those prizes.’
‘We’ll see.’
He made the airline reservations for two on the transatlantic flight; it left in the evening and arrived in England early in the morning, London time, which would still be night for them. He bought himself a new suitcase. She tapped out a letter on the computer, printed out stacks of copies and gave them to Rosa. Then she had a quick word with the people next door, before running in to town to buy a new raincoat. While she was hanging the coat up in the front hall closet, she saw Alan’s suitcase and decided that it was just the kind of thing she needed. The next morning she went out and bought one, to find on her return that he – having admired her new raincoat on its hanger – had gone shopping again and had found a coat just like it for himself. ‘We
ought to have done everything together‚’ she told him. ‘We’d have saved a lot of time.’
He said, ‘I’m looking forward to this. We should have taken a trip a long time ago. I think I was in a rut.’
‘And I was in something worse. I didn’t realize until a few days back. I’d lost hope.’
‘About what?’
‘I’ll tell you when we’re away from everything.’
‘Let me take you away from all this,’ he said, throwing an arm around her.
The day before they were set to fly out, a check came through from the prize people. There were no stipulations, no strings attached.
‘See?’ he said. ‘I was right.’
The check was issued by an organization called
United
Holdings
and
Travel
Co.
They’d never heard of it. Beth picked up the brochure that came with the letter of congratulation. She flipped through the pages, saying, ‘I’d like to know who their printers are. Look at the quality of the pictures. Isn’t that incredible – color reproduction like that? This is as good as one of those art magazines.’ She reached the section where, at last, they found the catch. She read out the passage:
Prizewinners
who
apply
for
the
Finborg
weekend
will
automatically
receive
a
further
one
thousand
dollars.
‘It’s in the letter, too,’ Alan said. ‘You agree to go there, all the expenses are paid, they give you the round-trip ticket from whatever city you name, and you’ve got a luxury weekend in this top-notch castle full of swimming pools and gourmet cooking. It’s a promotional gimmick. I guess they’ve just converted it.’
‘Our clients aren’t in that league. I suppose we wouldn’t have to tell anyone that. Just turn up and have a ball.’
‘We aren’t going to have the time, unless I change the plane tickets. We have to tell these United people right now.’
‘For an extra thousand?’ she said. ‘And it might be interesting. If all the other people they wrote to are travel agents, we could learn a lot.’
‘That’s a point‚’ he said. ‘Okay.’
*
They stayed up all night, writing memos and leaving messages, taking things out of their suitcases and putting them back again. When, the next evening, they were finally on the plane, they both felt slugged. He wanted to order some drinks, to relax.
‘You can’t be serious,’ she told him. ‘That dehydrates you. It’ll make you feel terrible. And they say jet-lag hits you a lot worse if you drink. That’s what I read in that body book.’
‘Well, my body book says a little drink never hurt anyone.’ He ordered a double for himself. She stuck to water. They came out nearly equal, because she’d been tired to begin with and she always fretted more than he did.
They landed in the morning, had an hour’s sleep, made themselves get up and go sightseeing, and ate their evening meal early. Already they were glad they had come. Beth kept saying, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t everything beautiful?’ He said yes; he was more interested in seeing what was happening to her than in looking at the sights. He’d been worried about her for a long time. Her friend, Faye, was all right but the other one, Ella, was certifiable: she had a bad influence on Beth. Ella had turned into some sort of religious or ESP fanatic. She’d tried to make Beth believe totally crazy things, such as that it was possible to go through walls by concentrating on an imaginary black dot in front of your eyes. She’d told Beth to meditate and to sing certain notes and melodic phrases and to go on diets. Luckily Beth couldn’t prevent herself from nibbling potato chips, wasn’t able to carry a tune for long and fell asleep as soon as she relaxed; she hadn’t needed all that. One look at her now would have convinced anyone: what she’d needed was a break. She’d even become flirtatious.
‘It’s like our honeymoon‚’ she said.
‘Without the mosquitoes‚’ he reminded her.
‘But, darling, that was the best part.’ She made a face at him. The phrase was from a family joke – something to do with the part of a lobster you weren’t supposed to eat because it could kill you.
‘The second-best‚’ he said, leaning over from the other side of the table to catch hold of her hand.
They spent the weekend in London, then they visited the two Devon hotels on their list, looked in at the Stratford guesthouse and did the Stonehenge trip. On the fifth day they felt tired, but that was simply the reaction they called ‘traveler’s dip’: everyone had at least one day of it. After that, you straightened out.
*
The temperature dropped as they boarded the plane. Beth wondered if she should have brought an extra sweater with her; she’d had her shopping-spree clothes sent back home.
‘Cold,’ Alan said, lifting his head. ‘Scandinavia, here we come.’ He settled down to read, while Beth shut her eyes and tried to doze. She didn’t like flying. What she used to tell her clients was that it was exactly like a bus ride, only safer; but, naturally, that wasn’t quite true: even if you could adjust the
air-conditioning
nozzles so that they didn’t shoot jets of air straight on to your head, the pressure made a difference. It did
something
to the fluid in all the sinus passages. It gave you a headache. That was funny, she thought: the travel agent who didn’t like to travel.
She went right under for a few minutes. Alan had to touch her shoulder to wake her up. They were beginning the descent.
She got her handbag from under the seat in front of her, redid her lipstick and combed her hair. She pulled her seat belt tighter. At the same instant the plane braked suddenly, unnaturally; everyone was tossed forward. A steward’s voice, omitting the usual, ‘Ladies and gentlemen’, spoke loudly over the address system, saying, ‘Fasten your safety belts, please. We’re
experiencing
some turbulence.’ Although there was no indication of what it could be, everyone knew: something had gone seriously wrong. This wasn’t a small or incidental disturbance. There were murmurs of distress among the passengers. Several people had been thrown against the seats and had hurt their heads or broken the glasses they were wearing. And they were frightened.
The engines of the plane began to roar. Beth wanted to reach for Alan’s hand, but she knew he wouldn’t like it. She was
relieved and pleased when, without saying anything, he placed his hand lightly over hers.
The noise stopped, but they seemed to be falling fast. All at once they were plunging, rushing. A man’s voice, abruptly, announced, ‘Attention, all passengers. Prepare for an
emergency
landing.’ The rest of the message was cut off as the plane screamed. Many of the passengers too were shrieking, crying, moaning. Beth and Alan looked at each other. His hand gripped hers. Her lips moved. She said, into the uproar, that she loved him. He said something back, which she couldn’t lip-read; it might have been
Thanks
for
everything,
Happy
landings,
or
We
should
have
drunk
our
duty-free
bottle.
The plane crashed.
She was still trying to undo her belt while he was up from his seat and out into the aisle, pushing a space clear for both of them. The air was bitter with smoke. Everyone was yelling and fighting. Fire fanned towards them from the rear of the aircraft. She kicked herself free of the seat in front of her. She scrambled to her feet. Alan had gone. The thrashing crowd had carried him away from her. She could just see him, a long way off. He turned back. He was shouting. She tried to get into the aisle, but it was no use. She held her arms out to him. There was an explosion. High flames shot up from the seats near the front exits. Across a wave of fire she saw him, looking back at her. A fierce heat blasted the left side of her face, her shoulder and hand. She jumped back. She couldn’t protect herself: the flames were everywhere. She knew it was too late.
She woke up. Alan was standing in the aisle. He was getting the coats down from the overhead locker. They had landed. The other passengers were collecting their belongings.
‘Okay?’ he said. She nodded, unbuckling her seat belt. She was too shaken to speak. She never wanted to talk about the dream. She didn’t even want to go over it in her mind. It had made her feel sick in a way that was worse than anything she could remember, even the nightmares of childhood. She kept herself busy with her flight bag and shoulder bag until everyone began to move down the aisle. Alan said, ‘All we have to do now is find that other plane.’
They put their carry-on luggage on a trolley they found in the airport building. Beth stayed with it while Alan went to
investigate
. Now that she felt calmer, she would have liked to tell him something about the dream – only a hint, to get rid of it herself by sharing it; but she had the feeling that to mention it at all would bring bad luck. It might turn something into a reality that, so far, was only thought.