Читать книгу Lucky You - John Duke - Страница 12

As he checked in his green backpack and red rolling case he was telling himself that what he was doing was OK. Yes, the letter gave him her blessing. He sensed that he felt a little bit like a new man, one who noticed people around him, one who felt like having a conversation with them and even the shock of seeing Eleanor at the departure gate didn’t diminish this surprising new energy. When the time came he resolved to walk through those electronic doors without looking back and he managed that easily. Of course he was sure that Eleanor was very disappointed when he did this but why did she bother to come in the first place he asked himself? When he entered the immigration hall he felt suddenly empowered even more so because he was going to India. He was going to India to work.

Fifteen minutes earlier he couldn’t believe his eyes. He had just bought a magazine and he was watching and waiting for the queue at the entrance to customs to become smaller. It did seem strange that there was no sign of her at the apartment when he left for the airport in the morning. And yes last night she had asked what time his flight to KL was leaving. This morning her door stayed shut as he passed number three. If he was honest he was a little disappointed then.

Eliot, surprise, surprise!

He heard himself say bloody hell, you have to be joking. One of those dresses, a sunflower pattern, the finger thin belt, sensible shoes, the pearl necklace, just been to the hairdresser and bright red lipstick. She was dressed up even for Eleanor. A huge red smile as she waved at Eliot, a small package in that hand. Eliot heard himself say something stupid.

What are you doing here?

Well she couldn’t help it could she? He needed someone to see him off and she had a little present for him. A diary. I have written my email address inside the front cover.He must write in the diary every day so that she could share in his adventure and talk to him about it when he returned. Be careful what you eat and never let your passport out of your sight. I’d better get going Eleanor, still have to get through customs you know. And thanks for the diary. Then the hesitation, maybe in Eleanor, hope. Eliot put out his hand and as their hands touched she leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. In a whirl of unease they shook hands again and Eliot joined the queue without turning back and as he disappeared he heard her voice.

Safe travels Eliot. I will be praying for you. See you when you get back.

An unseen wave and a smile framed with bright red lipstick.

When he sat in the boarding lounge with his backpack at his feet, at first he felt like he had escaped. But slowly it crept over him that he could have been a little more gracious, a little bit more friendly. She had made the effort and he hadn’t. Still, time to move on. His well-worn security blanket that had protected him from the air conditioning in airports all over Asia rested on his knees and he tapped his passport and boarding pass in his top pocket. He reached out for his back pack, unzipped the front pocket and removed his new diary from the brown paper bag. Ok he would keep a diary. Inside the cover of the diary was the email address. Edobson @gmail .com. and the words, safe travel, best wishes, Eleanor x. Perhaps he could send her an email when he settled in India.

He put the diary back. The new energy was still there. He hadn’t felt this way since before Marion had died, it must be that going somewhere was making him feel important again. He had a good idea of the challenges in front of him, he thought of what Special had said, about all of the things that could go wrong, especially travelling on your own. But generally things didn’t go wrong. Experience had shown him that. He knew what Special was saying and it was equally true that some people were just born lucky. He smiled to himself and realised that this smile was something that was starting to happen more often. He looked around the departure lounge. From behind him a voice was asking him a question.

Excuse me is this seat taken?

A young woman. How does a man decide that a woman is very attractive? Eliot had stopped thinking about that, he thought that he had lost what you needed to think about this but yes she was unquestionably attractive. Tall and blond. She stood with her legs crossed leaning slightly forward as if she knew that this would help get the answer she wanted. Whatever friendly vibes she exuded it worked and the next moment he wanted to say something more than just yes and he did and what he said was dumb. But if she felt that way she gave nothing away.

Yes certainly …….you off to KL then?

She smiled a most engaging smile, with her mouth and her eyes, put her backpack down on the carpet and sat down next to Eliot in a manner that suggested that she thought that talking to him would be just fine, that she was saying just because you are old, certainly doesn’t mean I won’t sit and talk with you.

Yep. I am. You and me both I guess. Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting at gate forty nine.

She smiled. Her smile was so engaging it made Eliot blush and he had to look away so he looked down at her feet in sandals and the freshly pink painted toenails and then when he had recovered back up at her neck and shiny fair hair in a ponytail. Why did he feel a little guilty? He thought that Marion’s letter told him he shouldn’t feel guilty.

Later, when he fastened his seat belt in his aisle seat beside a Chinses couple who smiled at him nicely because they couldn’t speak English, he was agitated in a way that he hadn’t been for a long time, since when he first met Marion and then all the firsts that they had shared together. He realised that after Marion’s death he had crawled into a cave and curled up but then a young woman had roused him. He followed her down the aisle of the plane, followed her with his eyes until he said this is my seat. Her seat was way down the back of the plane. She had a shoulder bag in one hand and a backpack in her other, her boarding pass clamped between her teeth. She turned and gave him a kind of a wave and on she went. He put his bag in the overhead compartment and sat down.

I hope you don’t mind me asking but are you travelling for holiday or work?

Work, I’m going onto Payakumbuh in West Sumatra. You know Payakumbuh?

Yep. I do. In the mountains behind Padang. So what job are you going to do over you there?

Wow! You’re the first person who I have met who knows where Payakumbuh is. I’m a nurse, a midwife and I work for Red Cross. I am going to work for a year or maybe two in the maternity section of the hospital there. They’ve been having a few problems, a strangely high infant moratlity rate over the past few years. I’m supposed to identify whether it’s down to, bad practice or some other less easily identifiable factor……Oh, I’m rabbiting on, aren’t I, sorry, my name is Carol.

I’m Eliot, nice to meet you.

He thought that she was attractive in every kind of way. He looked at her and then quickly away. He felt elevated by her presence. She could do this for someone. An open face. A ponytail that gave you her neck, her blue eyes, her roundness, her smile, her manner and the way that she spoke. She talked a lot and as she spoke it was if these words were especially for him, yet so natural too. Yes, she liked to talk, that was obvious but Eliot knew that one would love her for it. She kept talking.

She wanted to be a nurse ever since she was sixteen, ever since her mother sat her down one day to tell her a story. Her mother was a nurse in the Vietnam War, serving at a hospital in Long Xuyen, a couple of hundred miles from Saigon. She dealt with the horrors of the Viet Cong’s Tet offensive. Her mother told her lots of interesting things about the war like how she had to sign a declaration saying she’d take the pill to avoid pregnancy if she were captured and raped. She kept silent about her service, so did the government.

One day her mother just opened up to her and said that she was so proud to have been a nurse and that you couldn’t do a better thing. In war and peace nurses were heroes her mother said, so how could I do anything else? She said that she thought back to all those Christmas presents, the nurse’s cap with the red cross on the front, the nurses scrub and the stethoscope. Her mother was hoping and she was thrilled when Carol got this job.

Carol’s eyes met Eliot’s.

Oh, I’m so sorry Eliot, I talk too much, I know that, so what is taking you to KL?

The friendly, familiar tone of her voice and the sound of his name tightened his chest and he could hardly believe it

I’m on my way to Uttar Pradesh, in India. To work in a school.

Sounds exciting and challenging.

For both of us. So you are from Melbourne?

Yes, I work out of the Red Cross office in Melbourne but I’m originally from Shepparton .

Really, I grew up in Benalla.

They talked, Carol most of the time, until the call to board and it was so easy. About the common experience of growing up in the bush and all it did to you and then the move to the big smoke as Eliot’s father always called it. And about what they did in Melbourne. Their talk, unfolded very naturally as if they had known each other for years.

Carol was interrupted mid-sentence and they looked at their boarding passes and saw that were at different ends of the plane and Carol said that their luggage would be in transit but they agreed that they would make sure to say goodbye at the other end. Hullo and goodbye.

Eight hours later the co-pilot was telling the cabin crew to be seated for landing and that it was eleven am in Kuala Lumpur now and the temperature was thirty degrees Celsius. Thank you for flying with Air Asia, we hope to see you again. Enjoy your stay. Eliot stepped out into KLIA2 and he was thinking about Carol and as he was he had that uncanny feeling you get when someone is looking at you when you are not looking at them and a smile had hit Eliot from behind. There was Carol, she was waving at him. Closer her blue eyes made him a little flustered because he knew that how he felt would be obvious to her when he did not have that instant to mask it. He was about to have an accident.

I didn’t think I would see you again …….to say goodbye.

I was always going to find you to say goodbye Eliot. I’m sure that we have time to buy a coffee, don’t we?

As he turned to walk beside Carol, his right foot struck the wheel of someone’s trolley, his big toe took the impact. He knelt down in the pain and his big toenail was angled upwards and already his foot was sticky with blood on his thong.

Oh dear, Carol said.

She reached into her shoulderbag and pulled out a small packet of tissues and Eliot told her where his first aid was. She found the Elastoplast and some hydrogen peroxide. She knelt down before him. Her hands were slender and steady. She doused and cleaned the toe in hydrogen peroxide and enclosed the wobbly toenail both ways with the Elastoplast. Eliot felt an intimacy in these few moments, that made it difficult, that somehow compromised everything he would say to her before they parted. Being close to her was kind of excruciating

Thank you Carol. I really appreciate it........ I hope that you will let me buy you a coffee now?

While they waited for their coffee, she let out her hair and retied it in a ponytail and there was a transitional beauty that Eliot wanted to respond to in some way. If only he knew how .She was the most natural person. He quickly glanced at her breasts and immediately he wished that he hadn’t because obviously women know these things and what would be her judgement? Carol noticed of course, because his guilt was written all over his face and broadcast by his eyes and she thought that some older men were silly, they should know better, but they couldn’t help themselves. A man travelling alone with a wedding ring on his finger but no mention of a wife. She smiled to herself. And that ponytail?

He needed to talk, about how she was lucky that her mother had instilled in her the desire to be a nurse, how the pregnant women in Payakumbuh were blessed that she was coming to make them safe and happy and he was sure that her mother would be very proud of her. Would her mother come out to West Sumatra to visit Carol? In her turn she said that she was nervous about her new job, about being on her own, about being lonely, not having anyone to talk to. But what the hell, a challenge is good for you and I need a changeshe said.

tranterC@gmail.com.

They promised to stay in contact. Coffees were emptied and the time had come.Carol looked at her phone and said that it was almost time to check in and Eliot said that he still had quite a wait . She collected her backpack hanging on the back of a chair and stood up. The table separated them and then it didn’t and Eliot was uncertain, he wanted to put his arms around her but instead he took her hand and shook it and then gently leant forward and kissed her on the cheek.

I am very fortunate to have met you. I will send you an email when I get settled and hopefully we will meet again one day.

I hope so too Eliot. Look after your toe.

Eliot watched her walk away and he waved to her but she had other things on her mind now. She was beautiful and as he washed his hands, Eliot looked at himself in the mirror and saw what she saw and he smiled to himself. Ok, he was a silly old fool to be spluttering and blushing in the presence of an attractive young woman, maybe he should be embarrassed, but behaving this way meant that he had crawled out of his cave.