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‘You’re not,’ said David, hanging onto the shreds of his temper with difficulty. ‘If you’re not chatting up complete strangers, you’re tarting yourself up, combing your hair, admiring yourself in your mirror, or fossicking around in that bag, and then, when you’ve exhausted all those intellectual activities, you sit there and make that extremely irritating noise with your fingers!’
Claudia looked huffy. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I don’t want you to do anything! Why can’t you just sit quietly?’
‘I hate just sitting,’ she said sulkily. ‘I’ve got a very low boredom threshold. I’ve got to do something.’
‘Why don’t you try thinking?’ David suggested with an unpleasant look. ‘That ought to be a novel experience for you. The effort of using your brain ought to keep you occupied for a good five minutes!’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Claudia, very much on her dignity.
‘You amaze me!’ He shook his head in mock admiration. ‘And what have you been thinking about?’
‘Well, mostly I’ve been wondering how Patrick came to give a job to anyone quite so arrogant and unpleasant,’ she pretended to confide.
David looked at her for a moment. ‘What makes you think Patrick gave me a job?’
‘I know he’s the senior engineer on the project, so if you’re involved with the negotiations you must report to him, and if he knew how badly you represent GKS I don’t think he’d be very pleased. Patrick may seem very easygoing,’ she swept on, ‘but I’ve known him a long time, and I can tell you that if he felt that you were giving the wrong impression of GKS he would want to do something about it.’
‘You don’t think he’ll sack me before the meetings, do you?’
There was a look in David’s eye that Claudia didn’t quite like, and she tossed her head. ‘I would have thought that depended on you,’ she said tartly.
‘So if I’m nice to you for the rest of the journey he might let me stay?’
‘I wouldn’t want to put you to so much effort,’ she snapped. ‘Being nice obviously doesn’t come naturally!’
‘That rather depends on who I have to be nice to,’ said David, but before Claudia could frame a suitably crushing retort her attention was caught by a spluttering noise from the silver wing stretching out from below the window.
‘You know, I’m sure there’s something wrong with that engine,’ she said worriedly. ‘It keeps making funny noises.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said David. ‘What could possibly be wrong with it?’
‘I don’t know!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know anything about engines.’
‘Then what makes you think you know whether it’s making a funny noise or not?’ He made a great show of leaning forward and cupping a hand to his ear. ‘It sounds fine to me.’
‘That’s what they always say,’ said Claudia darkly. ‘It’s just like a disaster film. They always start off showing people doing ordinary things, just like us.’
‘There’s nothing ordinary about the way you’ve been behaving since you got on the plane,’ David put in, but she ignored him.
‘They’re all having cups of coffee and chatting, and none of them realise that something terrible is about to happen—but they’re all right because they’ve got Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise or some other hunk to spring into action and save them, and all I’ve got is a paper-pushing engineer whose only advice is to sit still and keep quiet!’
David had been listening to her with mounting exasperation. ‘I have never met anybody who could whip themselves up into a frenzy about absolutely nothing before!’
‘It’s not nothing! I’m telling you, there’s something wrong, I can feel it!’
‘For the last time,’ said David between his teeth, ‘there is nothing the matter with the engine!’
With that the engine spluttered and cut out, and the plane veered sharply to one side. Immediately there was a babble of panic-stricken voices in Arabic as the other passengers were caught unawares by the sudden deceleration.
Instinctively, Claudia clutched at David’s hand. He winced as her fingers dug into his flesh, her eyes wide and dark with terror as he enfolded her hand in a warm, strong clasp to forestall any hysterics. ‘There’s no need to panic,’ he said firmly. ‘The pilot’s bringing the plane round now. Everything’s under control.’
The plane had straightened, and the pilot opened the throttle to increase the power to the remaining engine so that it picked up speed once more. There was a burst of Arabic over the intercom and to Claudia, not understanding a word, it sounded terrifying. David was listening closely, and she noted with detached surprise that he spoke Arabic.
‘What’s he saying?’ she whispered.
‘He says there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve lost an engine, but there’s no problem about flying with one engine, so he’s going to head for the nearest airstrip as a precaution and try and sort out the problem there.’ David’s voice was calm, infinitely reassuring. ‘Now you can relax and say “I told you so”.’
Claudia moistened her lips. ‘I don’t think I’ll relax until I’ve got two feet firmly on the ground,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I’ll say it then.’
Afterwards David told her that it had only taken twenty minutes for the pilot to make a long, straight approach and land at a dusty airstrip in the middle of the desert, but for Claudia it seemed that they sat there for an eternity. David kept talking in the same quiet, steady voice, and she clutched at the immeasurable reassurance of his cool presence without hearing a word that he was saying. All she could think about was how much time she had wasted agonising about turning thirty when she might never make it after all.
When the undercarriage went down with a clunk, she jerked and braced herself for an emergency landing, but in the end the plane touched down so lightly that it was only when the screaming engines quieted and they turned to taxi slowly back down the runway that Claudia let herself believe that they had landed safely. Closing her eyes and letting out a long breath, she slumped back in her seat.
When she opened them again, the plane had stopped. Outside, the heat wavered over the tarmac and bounced off the silver wings. There were a couple of prefabricated buildings, a ramshackle control tower and a few dusty buildings straggling along the road that led off into the heat haze.
Claudia licked her lips and tried her voice very cautiously. ‘Where are we?’
‘A place called Al Mishrah,’ said David, looking out of the window with a jaundiced eye. ‘There used to be a big gas terminal here, hence the airport, but it’s disused now and they only get the occasional flight serving what’s left of the town.’
‘Not your ideal stopover, then,’ said Claudia with an effort.
The corner of David’s mouth lifted as if in acknowledgement of her feeble attempt at a joke. ‘You could say that.’
‘Wh-what happens now?’
He sighed. ‘On past experience of Shofrar, I’d say nothing much.’
He was right. Some of the other passengers were standing up, shouting and gesticulating, but it was several minutes before a set of steps were produced and wheeled across the tarmac towards the waiting plane. It was suffocatingly hot, and Claudia longed for some fresh air, but as soon as the door swung open the smell of fuel rolled on a wave of heat through the cabin, and she wrinkled her nose in distaste.
Immediately there was a scrum of passengers pushing to get out, but there seemed little point in hurrying, and it was not until the first crush had subsided that David turned to Claudia. ‘Do you feel OK now?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘In that case, do you think I could have my hand back?’
‘Oh!’ Claudia dropped his hand as if it had stung her and her cheeks flamed with mortification. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, flustered. ‘I didn’t realise; that is...I forgot...’
‘It’s all right.’ David’s cool voice broke across her embarrassed stutterings as he tucked his report back into his briefcase and stood up.
Claudia hesitated, cringing at the thought that she had sat for so long clinging to his hand like a little girl. He must think she was absolutely pathetic, but she could hardly ignore his patience. ‘You’ve been very kind,’ she said a little stiffly. ‘Thank you.’
David was conscious of a feeling of surprise as he followed her down the aisle. He had expected her to take any attention as her due and he was disconcerted to find how pleased he was that he had misjudged her.
Inside the prefabricated hut that obviously served as a terminal it was hardly much cooler than outside. A single ceiling fan slapped at the air without enthusiasm and the room resonated with the aggrieved clamour of angry passengers. David and Claudia sat on orange plastic chairs that were cracked and dusty with neglect and waited.
At first Claudia was too relieved to find herself alive and back on solid ground again to fret much at the lack of action and she was content just to sit next to David, intimidated more than she wanted to admit by the heat and the glare and this dingy building where nothing seemed to work and she had no idea what was going on.
Claudia didn’t like feeling out of control, and she was uncomfortably aware that, arrogant and unpleasant as David might be, his cool, contained presence was immeasurably reassuring.
The long minutes ticked slowly by. Claudia sat and looked at a poster advertising what she guessed to be some kind of soft drink that had faded in the harsh light to a pale, washed-out blue. Flies zoomed through the oppressive heat and buzzed frantically near her ears until she waved them away in disgust, and she could feel the plastic, sticky and uncomfortable through her thin trousers.
As her impatience grew, she shifted irritably in the chair and glanced at her watch for the umpteenth time. They had been sitting there for nearly an hour. ‘What’s happening?’ she burst out at last.
David, who had just been thinking that a severe fright considerably improved her, sighed. He might have known that she wouldn’t be able to sit still and silent much longer. ‘The pilot and a couple of local ground crew are looking at the engine. We’re waiting for him to come back and tell us what’s going to happen—’ He broke off as a stir of expectation marked the entrance of the harassed-looking pilot. ‘Ah, here he is now.’
Claudia jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s go and see what’s going on!’
‘I’ll go and talk to him,’ said David firmly. ‘You wait here.’
She opened her mouth to object, but something in his face made her close it again, and subside back onto her seat.
She watched David as he walked over to the pilot. He was tall and lean, and he moved easily, with a sort of balanced, economical grace that made her think queerly of a cat, or an athlete focusing on the race ahead. The other men seemed to recognise the authority of his presence, for they parted instinctively to let him through.
Claudia could only see his back as he stood talking to the pilot, but judging by the other man’s frustrated gestures and the reactions of those listening the news was not good, and David’s expression was grim when he turned at last and made his way back to her.
‘The plane’s being taken out of service,’ he said as he came up. ‘They’re going to divert the next flight to pick us up.’
‘Oh, well, that’s something, I suppose,’ said Claudia, who had been expecting much worse. ‘When’s it arriving?’
‘Not for another two days.’
‘Two days?’ She stared at him in gathering wrath as his words sank in. ‘Two days?’
David shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed with frustration. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hearing, anyway,’ he said.
‘But...but they can’t expect us to spend two days in this dump!’
‘There’s some kind of hotel in the town, apparently, probably left over from the boom days, so it’s likely to be a bit run-down.’
‘I don’t care if they’ve got the Ritz,’ snapped Claudia. ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow and I’m not staying here! Why can’t they send another plane now?’
‘Shofrar isn’t geared up for tourism. This is just a small internal airline, and all their other planes have got scheduled flights of their own.’
‘Great!’ Claudia leapt to her feet and began pacing up and down with her arms folded. ‘There must be something we can do! What about a bus?’
‘I think it’s highly unlikely that there would be much of a service between here and Telama’an. We’ve had to divert way off course to land here.’
‘All right, a taxi, then?’
‘This isn’t Piccadilly, Claudia. You can’t just flag down a taxi and ask it to drive you off into the desert. There aren’t even any metal roads around here.’
‘What, then?’ she demanded impatiently. ‘How can you just stand there and do nothing?’
David looked down his nose. He much preferred her when she was scared. ‘I can’t see that working myself up into a frenzy, as you seem to do at the slightest provocation, would magically produce a plane,’ he said repressively.
‘You mean you’re not going to do anything?’ said Claudia in disgust. ‘What about your meeting? I thought you wanted to get to Telaa’an as much as I do!’
‘I’ve got every intention of getting there as soon as possible,’ he said with a cool look. ‘If you were prepared to shut up and just listen for a change, you would have heard me say that I was going to try and get hold of a vehicle. I doubt very much if there will be anything suitable to hire, but it might be possible to buy something.’
‘Buy a car?’ She looked at him blankly. ‘But—’
‘But what?’
‘Well...’ She hesitated. ‘You can’t just set out across the desert in a car, can you?’
‘You can if you know what you’re doing,’ said David. ‘And fortunately I do. I’ve spent some time in Shofrar, and I’m quite capable of getting myself to Telama’an.’
Had there been a stress on that ‘myself? Claudia fiddled with her ring and wished she hadn’t been quite so forthright in her opinion of him earlier on. ‘Um...I haven’t got very much money with me,’ she said awkwardly. ‘But if you would give me a lift I’m sure Patrick would give you half the cost, and then I’d be able to pay him back when I got to London. I’d be very grateful.’
She looked at him pleadingly. ‘Please,’ she added.
She really did have extraordinary eyes, David found himself thinking. They were somewhere between blue and grey, a deep, soft, smoky colour, like twilight over the hills, the kind of eyes a man could lose himself in, the kind of eyes that could make him forget to breathe.
He dragged his gaze away. Claudia was everything he disliked in a girl. She was silly and superficial. She had irritated and exasperated and deliberately provoked him, and he knew perfectly well that he would be ready to murder her long before they reached Telama’an. Just because she had beautiful eyes that played odd tricks with his breathing, it was no reason to take her with him. If he had any sense, he would just say no.
‘Oh, all right,’ he said irritably. ‘But no complaining! It’ll be a hard trip and if I have to listen to any moaning you can get out and walk!’
‘Thank you!’ Claudia’s face lit up with a smile that stopped the breath in David’s throat. He hadn’t seen her smile before and he was taken aback to discover how it illuminated her face and deepened the blue in her eyes. ‘You won’t regret it,’ she promised. ‘I won’t say a word,’ she offered generously. ‘I’ll do whatever you say.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it!’ David thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and scowled at the poster on the wall, infuriated by his own reaction. Damn it, the last thing he needed right now was to start noticing how much younger and warmer and lovelier she looked when she smiled. The meeting in Telama’an was vital to the future of the firm and it was that he should be concentrating on, not pretty eyes or unexpected smiles!
‘I’ll go and see what I can find out,’ he added in a brusque voice. ‘Stay there.’
‘All right.’ Claudia was too relieved at his agreement to object to his tone. For a nasty moment there she had thought he was going to refuse, and she couldn’t really have blamed him. They hadn’t exactly got off on the right foot. She was determined to be nice to him from now on, though.
She waited obediently until David returned, but as soon as she saw his face she knew that he hadn’t had any success. ‘I’ve had a word with a few people,’ he said. ‘It might be possible to fix something up, but I can’t do anything until we get into town. Apparently they’re trying to arrange some kind of bus, so in the meantime we’re just going to have to wait.’
‘I seem to have spent this entire trip waiting,’ sighed Claudia, and he glared at her, still resentful of the effect her smile had had on him.
‘I thought you weren’t going to complain!’
‘That wasn’t a complaint, it was a comment,’ she muttered, but lapsed into a sullen silence rather than get into an argument with him. She had promised to be nice, and she wouldn’t put it past him to leave her behind after all!
Sighing, she crossed her legs in an effort to get comfortable, then uncrossed them when it didn’t work. A few moments later, she tried crossing them the other way.
‘For God’s sake, stop fidgeting!’ hissed David.
Claudia opened her mouth to tell him she was bored and uncomfortable, but thought better of it. ‘I’ve got cramp in my leg,’ she said placatingly. ‘I’ll just walk around a bit.’
She wandered over to the window and stood for a while watching the luggage being unloaded off the plane onto a decrepit trolley. As she watched, she saw Amil, the man who had been sitting across the aisle from her, walk purposefully over and pick out a bag. He looked like a man who knew where he was going, and Claudia waved at him as he came back through the terminal.
‘Aren’t you waiting for the bus?’
‘I am fortunate in having family contacts here,’ he explained. ‘I need to be in Telama’an by tomorrow, so one of my relatives has brought me out a car. If I set out now, I think I will be able to make it in time.’
‘Oh, you are lucky!’ sighed Claudia enviously. ‘It looks as if we’re going to be here for ages yet.’
