Dick Francis - In the Frame

‘No exaggeration,’ Jik murmured.

‘Tell her it’s O.K. to pass on that news, if anyone enquires. Tell her You’re leaving for Melbourne, pay all our bills, confirm your bookings on the afternoon flight, and cancel mine, and make a normal exit to the airport bus.’

‘But what about you?’ Sarah said. ‘When will you be fit to go?’

‘With you,’ I said. ‘If between you you can think of some unobtrusive way of getting a bandaged mummy on to an aeroplane without anyone noticing.’

‘Jesus,’ Jik said. He looked delighted. ‘I’ll do that.’

‘Telephone the airport and book a seat for me under a different name.’

‘Right.’

‘Buy me a shirt and some trousers. Mine are in the dustbin.’

‘It shall be done.’

‘And reckon all the time that you may be watched.’

‘Put on sad faces, do you mean?’ Sarah said.

I grinned. ‘I’d be honoured.’

‘And after we get to Melbourne, what then?’ Jik said.

I chewed my lip. ‘I think we’ll have to go back to the Hilton. All our clothes are there, not to mention my passport and money. We don’t know if Wexford and Greene ever knew we were staying there, so it may well be a hundred per cent safe. And anyway, where else in Melbourne are we likely to get beds on the night before the Melbourne Cup?’

‘If you get thrown out of the Hilton’s windows, you won’t be alive to tell the tale,’ he said cheerfully.

‘They don’t open far enough,’ I said. ‘It’s impossible.’

‘How reassuring.’

‘And tomorrow,’ Sarah said. ‘What about tomorrow?’

Hesitantly, with a pause or two, I outlined what I had in mind for Cup day. When I had finished, they were both silent.

‘So now,’ I said. ‘Do you want to go home?’

Sarah stood up. ‘We’ll talk it over,’ she said soberly. ‘We’ll come back and let you know.’

Jik stood also, but I knew from the jut of his beard which way he’d vote. It had been he who’d chosen the bad-weather routes we’d taken into the Atlantic and the North Sea. At heart he was more reckless than I.

They came back at two o’clock lugging a large fruit-shop carrier with a bottle of scotch and a pineapple sticking out of the top.

‘Provisions for hospitalised friend,’ said Jik, whisking them out and putting them on the end of the bed. ‘How do you feel?’

‘With every nerve ending.’

‘You don’t say. Well, Sarah says we go ahead.’

I looked searchingly at her face. Her dark eyes stared steadily back, giving assent without joy. There was no antagonism, but no excitement. She was committed, but from determination, not conviction.

‘O.K.,’ I said.

‘Item,’ said Jik, busy with the carrier, ‘One pair of medium grey trousers. One light blue cotton shirt.’

‘Great.’

‘You won’t be wearing those, though, until you get to Melbourne. For leaving Alice Springs, we bought something else.’

I saw the amusement in both their faces. I said with misgiving, ‘What else?’

With rising glee they laid out what they had brought for my unobtrusive exit from Alice Springs.

Which was how I came to stroll around the little airport, in the time-gap between signing in and boarding, with the full attention of everyone in the place. Wearing faded jeans cut-off and busily frayed at mid-calf. No socks. Flip-flop rope-soled sandals. A brilliant orange, red and magenta poncho-type garment which hung loosely over both arms like a cape from shoulders to crutch. A sloppy white T-shirt underneath. A large pair of sunglasses. Artificial suntan on every bit of skin. And to top it all, a large straw sunhat with a two inch raffia fringe round the brim, the sort of hat in favour out in the bush for keeping flies away. Flies were the torment of Australia. The brushing-away-of-flies movement of the right hand was known as The Great Australian Salute.

On this hat there was a tourist-type hat-band, bright and distinctly legible. It said ‘I Climbed Ayers Rock’.

Accompanying all this jazz I carried the Trans-Australian airline bag Sarah had bought on the way up. Inside it, the garments of sanity and discretion.

‘No one,’ Jik had said with satisfaction, laying out my wardrobe, ‘will guess you’re a walking stretcher case, if you’re wearing these.’

‘More like a nut case.’

‘Not far out,’ Sarah said dryly.

They were both at the airport, sitting down and looking glum, when I arrived. They gave me a flickering glance and gazed thereafter at the floor, both of them, they told me later, fighting off terrible fits of giggles at seeing all that finery on the march.

I walked composedly down to the postcard stand and waited there on my feet, for truth to tell it was more comfortable than sitting. Most of the postcards seemed to be endless views of the huge crouching orange monolith out in the desert: Ayers Rock at dawn, at sunset, and every five minutes in between.

Alternatively with inspecting the merchandise I took stock of the room. About fifty prospective passengers, highly assorted. Some airline groundstaff, calm and unhurried. A couple of aborigines with shadowed eyes and patient black faces, waiting for the airport bus back to dreamtime. Air-conditioning doing fine, but everyone inside still moving with the slow walk of life out in the sun.

No one remotely threatening.

The flight was called. The assorted passengers, including Jik and Sarah, stood up, picked up their hand luggage and straggled out to the tarmac.

It was then, and then only, that I saw him.

The man who had come towards me on the balcony to throw me over.

I was almost sure at once, and then certain. He had been sitting among the waiting passengers, reading a newspaper which he was now folding up. He stood still, watching Jik and Sarah present their boarding passes at the door and go through to the tarmac. His eyes followed them right across to the aircraft. When they’d filed up the steps and vanished, he peeled off and made a bee-line in my direction.

My heart lurched painfully. I absolutely could not run.

He looked just the same. Exactly the same. Young, strong, purposeful, as well-co-ordinated as a cat. Coming towards me.

As Jik would have said, Jesus .

He didn’t even give me a glance. Three yards before he reached me he came to a stop beside a wall telephone, and fished in his pocket for coins.

My feet didn’t want to move. I was still sure he would see me, look at me carefully, recognise me... and do something I would regret. I could feel the sweat prickling under the bandages.

‘Last call for flight to Adelaide and Melbourne.’

I would have to, I thought. Have to walk past him to get to the door.

I unstuck my feet. Walked. Waiting with every awful step to hear his voice shouting after me. Or even worse, his heavy hand.

I got to the door, presented the boarding pass, made it out on to the tarmac.

Couldn’t resist glancing back. I could see him through the glass, earnestly telephoning, and not even looking my way.

The walk to the aircraft was all the same quite far enough. God help us all, I thought, if the slightest fright is going to leave me so weak.

I had a window seat near the rear of the aircraft, and spent the first part of the journey in the same sort of fascination as on the way up, watching the empty red miles of the ancient land roll away underneath. A desert with water underneath it in most places; with huge lakes and many rock pools. A desert which could carry dormant seeds for years in its burning dust, and bloom like a garden when it rained. A place of pulverising heat, harsh and unforgiving, and in scattered places, beautiful.

GABA, I thought. I found it awesome, but it didn’t move me in terms of paint.