A nudge from Bill composes her so far that she turns and faces forward again. He says, ‘It’s only the flight chart. Do you want to see it?’ And since she does not reply he thrusts it forward to bother it about the ears of the people in front until they receive it from his hand.
Lise starts to eat her second snack. ‘You know, Bill,’ she says, ‘I think you were right about that crazy man who moved his seat. He wasn’t my type at all and I wasn’t his type. Just as a matter of interest, I mean, because I didn’t take the slightest notice of him and I’m not looking to pick up strangers. But you mentioned that he wasn’t my type and, of course, let me tell you, if he thought I was going to make up to him he made a mistake.’
‘I’m your type,’ Bill says.
She sips her coffee and looks round, glimpsing through the partition of the seats the man behind her. He stares ahead with glazed and quite unbalanced eyes, those eyes far too wide open to signify anything but some sort of mental distance from reality; he does not see Lise now, as she peers at him, or, if so, he appears to have taken a quick turn beyond caring and beyond embarrassment.
Bill says, ‘Look at me, not at him.’
She turns back to Bill with an agreeable and indulgent smile. The stewardesses come efficiently collecting the trays, cluttering one upon the other. Bill, when their trays are collected, puts up first Lise’s table and then his own. He puts his arm through hers.
‘I’m your type,’ he says, ‘and you’re mine. Are you planning to stay with friends?’
‘No, but I have to meet somebody.’
‘No chance of us meeting some time? How long are you planning to stay in the city?’
‘I have no definite plans,’ she says. ‘But I could meet you for a drink tonight. Just a short drink.’
‘I’m staying at the Metropole,’ he says. ‘Where will you be staying?’
‘Oh, just a small place. Hotel Tomson.’
‘I don’t think I know Hotel Tomson.’
‘It’s quite small. It’s cheap but clean.’
‘Well, at the Metropole,’ Bill says, ‘they don’t ask any questions.
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Lise says, ‘they can ask any questions they like. I’m an idealist.’
‘That’s exactly what I am,’ Bill says. ‘An idealist. You’re not offended, are you? I only meant that if we get acquainted, I think, somehow, I’m your type and you’re my type.’
‘I don’t like crank diets,’ Lise says. ‘I don’t need diets. I’m in good form.’
‘Now, I can’t let that pass, Lise,’ Bill says. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. The macrobiotic system is not just a diet, it’s a way of life.’
She says, ‘I have somebody to meet some time this afternoon or this evening.’
‘What for?’ he says. ‘Is it a boy-friend?’
‘Mind your own business,’ she says.. ‘Stick to your yin and your yang.’
‘Yin and Yang,’ he says, ‘is something that you’ve got to understand. If we could have a little time together, a little peaceful time, in a room, just talking, I could give you some idea of how it works. It’s an idealist’s way of life. I’m hoping to get the young people of Naples interested in it. I should think there would be many young people of Naples interested. We’re opening a macrobiotic restaurant there, you know.’
Lise peers behind her again at the staring, sickly man. ‘A strange type,’ she says.
‘With a room behind the public dining hall, a room for strict observers who are on Regime Seven. Regime Seven is cereals only, very little liquid. You take such a very little liquid that you can pee only three times a day if you’re a man, two if you’re a woman. Regime Seven is a very elevated regime in macrobiotics. You become like a tree. People become what they eat.’
‘Do you become a goat when you eat goat’s cheese?’
‘Yes, you become lean and stringy like a goat. Look at me, I haven’t a spare piece of fat on my body. I’m not an Enlightenment Leader for nothing.’
‘You must have been eating goat’s cheese,’ she says. ‘This man back here is like a tree, have you seen him?’
‘Behind the private room for observers of Regime Seven,’ Bill says, ‘there will be another little room for tranquillity and quiet. It should do well in Naples once we get the youth movement started. It’s to be called the Yin-Yang Young. It does well in Denmark. But middle-aged people take the diet too. In the States many senior citizens are on macrobiotics.’
‘The men in Naples are sexy.’
‘On this diet the Regional Master for Northern Europe recommends one orgasm a day. At least. In the Mediterranean countries we are still researching that aspect.’
‘He’s afraid of me,’ Lise whispers, indicating with a jerk of her head the man behind her. ‘Why is everybody afraid of me?’
‘What do you mean? I’m not afraid of you.’ Bill looks round, impatiently, and as if only to oblige her. He looks away again. ‘Don’t bother with him,’ he says. ‘He’s a mess.
Lise gets up. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘I have to go and wash.’
‘See you come back,’ he says.
She passes across him to the aisle, holding in her hand both her hand-bag and the paperback book she bought at the airport, and as she does so she takes the opportunity to look carefully at the three people in the row behind, the ill-looking man, the plump woman and the young girl, who sit without conversing, as it seems unconnected with each other. Lise stands for a moment in the aisle, raising the arm on which the hand-bag is slung from the wrist, so that the paperback, now held between finger and thumb, is visible. She seems to display it deliberately, as if she is one of those spies one reads about who effect recognition by pre-arranged signals and who verify their contact with another agent by holding a certain paper in a special way.
Bill looks up at her and says, ‘What’s the matter?’
She starts moving forward, at the same time answering Bilclass="underline" ‘The matter?’
‘You won’t need that book,’ Bill says.
She looks at the book in her hand as if wondering where it came from and with a little laugh hesitates by his side long enough to toss it on to her seat before she goes up the plane towards the toilets.
Two people are waiting in line ahead of her. She takes her place abstractedly, standing in fact almost even with the row where her first neighbour, the business man, is sitting. But she does not seem to be aware of him or to care in the slightest that he glances up at her twice, three times, at first apprehensively and then, as she continues to ignore him, less so. He turns a page of his newspaper and folds it conveniently for reading, and reads it without looking at her again, settling further into his seat with the slight sigh of one whose visitor has left and who is at last alone.
It has turned out that the sick-looking man is after all connected with the plump woman and the young girl who sat beside him on the plane. He is coming out of the airport building, now, not infirmly but with an air of serious exhaustion, accompanied by the woman and the girl.
Lise stands a few yards away. By her side is Bill; their luggage is on the pavement beside them. She says, ‘Oh there he is!’ and leaves Bill’s side, running up to the sick-eyed man. ‘Excuse me!’ she says.
He hesitates, and makes an awkward withdrawaclass="underline" two steps backward, and with the steps he seems to withdraw even more his chest, shoulders, legs and face. The plump woman looks at Lise inquiringly while the girl just stands and looks.