By the third lecture on the first day, I began to worry about repeating myself too glibly. You fall into a sort of pattern, answering questions, fending off others, and sometimes you neglect to make the one point you know you should have emphasised. At the end of the second day, however, I was back into the rhythm and as I relaxed on the train to Philadelphia, I could tote up the day's events in my 'brains' and not feel any twinges of omissions. In Philadelphia I had another two days of library dates, luncheons, radio and a newspaper interview with the children's editor of the Sunday paper. Then I was on the plane to Boston.
Boston's a good town for me. I like what the City Fathers have done to refurbish a town which I remember from college days as scruffy and impossibly dowdy. Mind you, they've done little about the clapboard in grey or the wretched mud-brown which they insist on painting residences. I could be blindfolded and suddenly released in the outskirts of Boston and recognise it instantly. Still Boston has lobster dinners and two of my closest college friends so I could anticipate a good time: one working day before the Sunday off with Jean and Pota,
After Boston, there was the pleasure of seeing my most favourite children's librarian, Alma Fairing, in Pittsburgh. Any engagements in that city are spiced with her scintillating wit, association with her marvellous family and gallant husband. If she hadn't been Alma and my favourite librarian…
Once I left Pittsburgh, the tour would descend into 50-minute evening plane trips to the next city, village or hamlet in which I was to speak, dazzle, charm new readers and gratify old friends. By Detroit, I had to list in my 'brains' that my digestion was showing the effects of travel. And I kept arriving at each new hotel to find BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID being shown on TV. 'Who is that guy?' seemed to be the cue line for my entrance to my night's hotel room. The coincidence was a joke which only I could enjoy. It would take too long to explain it all to each successive bellboy. I noted the 'haunting' in my 'brains'.
Chicago was freezing cold with its icy wind about to cut the unwary in two. I'm used to wind in Ireland. I keep saying that I live in hurricane alley with Gale Force 8 and 9 winds a matter of daily occurrence. Chicago's wind has its own ferocity and knife edge. I despise O'Hare airport. And on the way through the security arch, they stopped me for my knitting needles! Chicago was also marred by an odious man who had ogled me through my solitary dinner in the hotel and before I could avoid him, wanted me to join him in the bar 'for drinks… and afters. 'His 'afters' were fully explained by his leer. I made a majestic retreat and then wrote a full description of him into my 'brains'. The next time I needed a sleazy character I'd use him. He'd never recognise himself from an accurate description: that sort never do. When that was inscribed to my satisfaction, I flipped on the TV and got 'Who is that guy?' I flicked it off and phoned Tim. He was in one of his funny moods and no TV show could compare with my son in a high good humour.
Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City rolled past and I had to spend my 50-minute flights making entries in my diary before I forgot relevant and useful details which would make the next tour easier. That is, if there was a next tour. I was seriously doubting that when we took off from Kansas City for Denver.
I phoned Tim every night, to keep my reality, and in Kansas City, I had the oddest sensation that there was something he was dying to tell me, but was held back.
I turned to my knitting on the Denver flight, as much to soothe my travel-logged spirit as to ignore the ominous clouds through which the airplane passed. One thing about air travel, you're apt to see the sun for a while, just so you know what it does look like in wintry March.
Our landing at Denver was not exactly perilous although the snow clung to the viewports. But if you have been flying as much as I had been, you can detect the subtle differences in a bumpy good landing and a skiddy dangerous one. The crew were all smiles as they disembarked us, advising us to wait in the lounge for flight information. As delayed flights are the inevitable consequence of nature's lofty disdain for Progress, I settled myself down in a corner of the lounge with my knitting, to observe my fellow travellers held in durance vile by a blizzard. There was a long queue at the phones. I had no one to call and no urgencies to resolve.
Chapter 03
'Dropped any good stitches lately?' a quiet male voice asked.
I was so startled that I dropped some, gasping, looking up and letting the knitting bag slide from my lap all at the same moment.
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you,' the man said, swiftly bending to pick the bag up off the floor. He began to brush it off, because the floor was dampened by people dripping snow and mud as they prowled restlessly about the airport lounge.
'Not to worry,' I said, holding my hand out to retrieve my belongings. I smiled at him because his face was somewhat familiar although I couldn't place where on God's green earth we'd met. I was reminded of my encounter with the lady in the green velvet pants suit although the positions were reversed. And he was distinguished looking, with his silvered hair and an attractively unsilvered moustache. In my perusal of my fellow travellers, I had noticed him pacing the corridors, waiting impatiently for his turn at the phone, like everyone else stranded unexpectedly in snowbound Denver.
'Is there much damage?' he asked, settling into the seat beside me as he handed back the bag.
'No,' I assured him, laughing at his contrite expression and racking my brain to think where I'd seen him before as I quickly caught up the dropped stitches.
'You do that deftly. I've been admiring your skill for some time now.' He grinned with all the ease of long-established acquaintanceship.
'Have you now?' I demurred. I longed for a chance to pull out my 'brains' and see if I could joggle my faulty memory.
'Yes. I can perceive that this is more than knit-one-purl-one. Ah,' and he'd taken the rib edge of the sweater front and held it out. 'Arran!' He sounded surprised, and fingered the wool. 'And bainan, too.'
'You're Irish?' He'd neither the brogue nor the cultivated English of the well-educated Irish but few American males would know that the oiled wool was called bainan.
'No, but I've travelled there frequently.'
'Do I know you from Dublin then?' I asked, determined to establish his identity.
'Dublin?' Half-way to a frown, his eyebrows paused and his expression cleared. His eyes began to twinkle. They were a kind of serge blue, I noticed in the all too-glaring light of the overhead fluorescents. 'No, we haven't met in Dublin.'
'Please, I've met so many people in the past three weeks, I plead overload.'
'Does it distress you that you can't place our… ah… introduction?'
'Well, yes, sort of. I mean, it's good public relations to remember names and I've a good score so far this trip…'
'I wouldn't want to ruin that.' His eyes twinkled more and a smile tugged at the corners of his well-shaped mouth which the moustache outlined rather than hid. He was enjoying my discomfiture.
'To tell the truth and shame the devil, I can't remember where we met.'
'I'm the anonymous sort,' he said, feigning petulance. I gave him a very severe look for he had a strong face, attractive rather than handsome, but eye-catching with his colouring.
'Not with that hair, those brows and that coffee-strainer.'
He laughed at my acerbic tone, crossing his legs and settling himself more comfortably.
'Maybe if you knit a few rows, it'll all come back. When I first saw you, you were just starting it.'
'You were on the plane from Dublin?'
'No,' and he looked abashed. 'Not from Dublin. But this is surely the front…' for I was obviously dividing to make the neckline.