“GET UP YOU SON OF A BITCH. GET UP AND WALK OR I’LL LEAVE YOU HERE, I SWEAR I WILL . . .”
Kate sprung awake. It was the giant’s voice, hoarse with emotion. “UP YOU LAZY BLEEDER, UP. YOUR EYEBALLS’LL BE AS HARD AS MARBLES . . .”
Suddenly, horribly, he reared out of his seat, and began to walk down the plane. He walked all hunched over, his right shoulder high, his right arm half curled over his closed eyes; his massive body straining as though fighting a terrible wind. He went to his knees, and the whole aircraft seemed to shake.
The four men at the card table watched, horrified, silent; the stewardess ran for a steward. Then the dwarf was beside him, whispering urgently, “Ross. Ross. It’s all right. You’re out now. It’s all right. Ross, wake up.”
The giant’s head came up, and his huge body relaxed. “Oh hell,” he said.
“You had a dream, Colin,” said Job.
“God,” said the giant, “but my hand hurts, Job, my left . . .”
“Of course it does,” said Job soothingly. He took Ross by his stiff arm and lifted him awkwardly to his feet. He led the giant back towards his seat. The steward and the stewardess came in at a run; they both came over.
“You all right?” asked the steward, suspiciously.
“Fine now, thank you,” said the giant, but he stumbled. Job grunted as he took the full weight, and suddenly Kate found herself out of her seat and at Ross’s right hand, helping them. For some reason she noticed he was still wearing his black kid gloves.
“Get him a whisky, please,” she told the steward, and he vanished. She looked up into the big man’s face and saw his eyes were on her. He had a long face, with an impossibly determined chin jutting below a deeply etched mouth; but it was his eyes which claimed her. Job was talking to her but she wasn’t listening: his eyes were incredibly deep, still clouded by the pain of his dream, but cold in their depths, diamond hard and unforgiving. They tugged at something deep inside her, quickened her pulse, almost brought colour to her cheeks. Then she and Job were lowering him into his seat, and his deep rich voice was washing over her sleep-fuddled senses.
“Thank you very much, miss. I . . .” The heavy black brows moved over the beak of his nose.
They were so close that she might have kissed him without difficulty.
“That’s quite all right,” said Kate, her voice a whisper. His eyes were clear now, gazing into hers. He drew breath to say something.
“Your whisky, sir,” said the steward behind her.
Kate straightened, her mind in a turmoil. She went back and sat down. She found she was shaking. Ross, his name was: Colin Ross. But what had he done that made him dream so?
iii
The sound of the engines died away. The ground was suddenly there, close enough to touch, rushing past the plane’s belly. One wing went down slightly. Kate’s heart thudded once in her breast: all this way, only to crash now, she thought as the 747 curtseyed across the runway.
Thump. Leap. THUMP.
They were down on the ground.
Kate sat back in her chair, really frightened now about what her father would say. Oxford was half a world away. What if he didn’t want her, what if he just took one look and sent her to where she had always been – as far away as possible? No, he couldn’t do that. There were the letters from Jon Thompson and Professor Brownlow. They would support her. They would make him see. He couldn’t send her away again. Not today. After all, it was her . . . Kate realised then that it was her birthday. Today, June 21st, she was twenty-five. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. It somehow made everything worse, today being her birthday. She felt tears on her cheeks.
“Are you all right, miss?” The deep English voice of her giant, Colin Ross. She looked up at him. Today he didn’t look so huge. His face was white and strained, but his eyes were concerned. His right hand was pulling restlessly at a black glove on his left. She nodded, feeling foolish.
Ross frowned. “I’d like to thank you for your help last night,” he said. His voice was so deep it gave her goosepimples.
“It was all right. It was nothing,” she said.
“Look, I’d like to help if I can . . .”
“No. Really. It’s nothing . . .” Abruptly, she wanted him away. He was confusing her. She didn’t want his help, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Then the dwarf was behind him with his coat. Job looked bigger now. She began to wonder if everything she had heard last night was a dream. She closed her eyes and turned away.
The doors opened.
When she looked again, they were gone; and she was pleased and disappointed both at once. She quickly put to rights the minimal ravages the night had made on her severe hairstyle and basic makeup, gave herself a long hard stare in her compact mirror, treated herself to a thorough mental dressing-down, walked last through the empty plane, smiled at the perfect hostess and got off with an aplomb she was still far from feeling.
She walked purposefully across to the crowded concourse, back straight, head high, heart throbbing almost painfully, through the tall swing doors and into the arrivals lounge. Her father was nowhere to be seen. She looked around. There were crowds of people, none looking even faintly like him, none waiting for any more arrivals. No one even slightly interested in her. She was alone. No one here, no one to help. Now that the worst had happened, and she was alone ten thousand miles away from home, her panic left her, and her mind began to function with some of the logic and clarity which had earned her her First Class Honours degree. She made her way to the information desk. There were no messages for Elizabeth Edwards.
If there were no messages, then there must be someone waiting for her. She spoke quietly and with authority, and seconds later the Tannoy boomed out, “Will Doctor C. J. Warren, Doctor C. J. Warren, or anyone meeting Elizabeth Edwards, passenger arriving on North West Orient Airlines flight 283 from Chicago, Washington and New York, please attend the information desk in the Main Concourse . . .”
The last of Kate’s usually considerable composure returned as the message was repeated; returned only to slip treacherously away as she saw him shoving his way through the crowd with the belligerent energy of a tug in high seas. The puff of grey hair was exactly as it had been in her most recent picture of him: from the front of Time magazine; the pebble glasses not quite masking the piercing blue eyes she had inherited from him, the horrible pipe, the shapeless jacket, all as she remembered them. Only he was shorter than she, even allowing for her medium-high eminently sensible heels. There was a lump in her throat which became painful at the first whiff of his foul tobacco.
His eyes swept over her and on down the information desk. There was no one else near it, so he came towards her. As his hand went up to remove his pipe, her reserve broke and she threw her arms around his neck.
“Daddy!”
He stiffened, pulled away, his face a mask of surprise, then he gave a great whoop of joy which turned every head in the airport, and hugged her like a bear.
“Katherine, Katherine, where did you spring from? Well now, just you wait here for a moment, I’ve another woman to find. I could swear she just tannoyed me. Edwards, that was it. Edwards. Now where in the world can she have gone?”
“Daddy . . .”
“Tannoyed me. Just heard it. Told me to come here. Perhaps there’s a message, perhaps that’s it. Miss? MISS?” To the girl behind the information desk.
“Daddy, I must speak to you, I . . .”