but I have checked his past. He is a family man, his wife has recently passed away. He comes with a good reputation and he has a job to do here for eight weeks and he will be gone. He arrives on about the eighteenth so we will have to prepare for this. I will only be here for about five days until he settles in but he and I will have to share the room. Because of this, I think that we should put another ceiling fan in this room.
More expense Jalal, we must be careful with our budget.
The finances are my problem Madan. Well tomorrow morning we will have to start early, straight after breakfast we will go to the office and start planning and in the afternoon we will go into Jaunpur to buy a few things in preparation for Mr. Wilson’s arrival.
Yes Jalal and I will have to prepare myself for a lot of cooking he said in his head.
10.
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