ANNE WEALE - Sleepless Nights

Yesterday, in England, it had been cold and wet, a foretaste of approaching winter. Here, in Qatar, an oil-rich desert state on the Persian Gulf, even at this early hour it was already as warm as a summer heatwave in Europe.

Her only luggage was a small backpack. When it had been through the security X-ray machine, she slung it over one shoulder and went in search of the women’s room. She wanted a more leisurely freshen-up than had been possible with so many passengers waiting outside the aircraft’s cramped washroom.

Her reflection in the mirror behind the hand basins was startlingly different from the image she was accustomed to seeing in her bedroom mirror at home. Bulldozed into changing her hair colour as well as its style, and advised what to wear and what to pack by Naomi, who had also lent her some clothes, Sarah wasn’t yet used to her new image. Or to the feel of the trekking boots on her feet.

She had worn them for part of every day for the past month. But they still felt heavy and clumpy. And what could look more incongruous than a pair of thick-soled boots below the swirling hem of an ankle-length floral skirt in vivid Impressionist colours?

Naomi had assured her that where Sarah was going such an outfit was commonplace. No one would look twice at it, let alone stare in astonishment.

Uncrushable, easily washable long skirts had replaced the thick tweed skirts preferred by the intrepid Victorian lady travellers of a hundred years earlier.

On her top half Sarah was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt. Under it was a T-shirt belonging to her friend. Embroidered on the chest was the name of a mountainous route Naomi had trekked with a boyfriend during her gap year between school and college.

Sarah took off both shirts. If any Arab ladies came into the washroom, she hoped it wouldn’t offend them to see her stripped down to her comfortable sports bra. Already she had been in transit for a total of twelve hours on her body clock. A proper wash would refresh her for the second stage of the journey.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing only the faded blue T-shirt and feeling surprisingly wide awake despite her sleepless night, she returned to the lounge. Several important-looking Arabs in immaculately-laundered white robes and traditional red and white head-dresses were walking about, but most people were in western dress ranging from business suits to clean or scruffy jeans.

Sarah found the departure gate for her next flight and looked for a vacant seat near it. As she sat down she was aware of her fellow travellers looking her over with the speculative curiosity of people expecting to spend the next week or two in the company of strangers.

Only one person wasn’t eyeing her. The man in the seat directly opposite hers was deep in a book.

With a bookworm’s instinctive interest in other people’s choice of reading, Sarah tried to make out the title. That he was reading rather than gawking at her earned him points in her estimation.

Then she noticed he had other things beside the book to recommend him. Tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, he was wearing a khaki shirt and trousers with reinforced knees and lots of extra zipped pockets. As he had no luggage with him, apart from a plastic bag from the duty free shop at Heathrow airport, she concluded he was carrying all his vital belongings on his person, with most of his baggage going in the aircraft’s hold, to be reclaimed when they landed.

His lean and muscular build suggested he might be a climber heading for the snow-bound peaks of the Himalaya. Mountaineering and trekking were two of the reasons why foreigners visited the kingdom of Nepal and its romantic-sounding capital, Kathmandu.

Sarah had already noticed that most of the male transit passengers were in need of a shave. But not the man with the book. As darkly-tanned as those of a desert Arab, his cheeks and chin showed no trace of stubble. Everything about him looked spruce from the polished sheen of his boots to the scrubbed-clean fingernails on the strong brown hand holding the paperback.

He looked, she thought, as if he would smell good. Not from expensive lotions, but in the natural way that clean babies and sun-dried laundry smelled good.

As she was thinking this, and noting the way his thick black hair sprang from a high broad forehead, he glanced up and caught her studying him.

Her instinct was to look away but she found that she couldn’t. Something about the steely grey gaze focused on her made it impossible to avert her eyes. For several seconds their glances seemed to be locked. Then, a slight smile curling his mouth, he looked her over as closely and appreciatively as she had inspected him.

‘If you meet a truly gorgeous guy out there...’ The memory of Naomi’s advice echoed in Sarah’s mind.

It was actually the memory of her friend’s salty humour, rather than the admonition, that made her begin to smile. Then with a mental ‘Why not?’ she gave him her friendliest beam before sharing it with some of the people sitting alongside him.

All of them responded with smiles or nods. In fact her initiative seemed to act as an ice-breaker. First the woman next to her asked which tour group she was with and then all the people around them began chatting to each other. All except the man with the book. He continued reading.

When the flight to Kathmandu was called, Neal Kennedy went on reading. Long experience of air travel had taught him not to join the first rush to the departure gate. Even though the shuttle buses on Arab airports were exceptionally spacious, the first two or three buses would be crowded, the last one half-empty. The trip across the tarmac to the aircraft would offer a chance to talk to the attractive woman opposite.

But when he closed the book and looked up, he was surprised to find she had already gone through. Judging by her outfit, he had taken her for someone who knew the ropes as well as he did. Travelling in boots was one of the hallmarks of the wised-up trekker. Any other equipment that went astray in transit was replaceable. A worn-in pair of top quality boots wasn’t.

He had noticed her when they came off the flight from London. She had been ahead of him at the security check. He’d watched her walking away towards the washrooms and liked her back view. But maybe seen from the front...

Then he’d forgotten about her until, a while later, he’d glanced up and found her looking him over. Her front view had confirmed his earlier impression of a figure that matched up to everything he liked about women’s bodies. Slim but not too slim, all the parts well-proportioned and set off by a graceful posture. Probably influenced by his mother, a leading osteopath, he had a built-in aversion to people who abused their bones by slouching and slumping.

The woman in the colourful skirt wasn’t a beauty or even outstandingly pretty. But she had intelligent brown eyes and an irresistible smile of real warmth. He remembered from way back his father telling him that girls with brains in their heads and generous natures were the ones to look out for.

Aged about sixteen then, he hadn’t paid much attention. What do parents know about life? was a fairly standard teenage attitude.

In the intervening twenty years he’d learned that his parents were two of the sanest, wisest people he was ever likely to meet. He and his brother and sisters had grown up with the increasingly rare advantage of parents who loved each other and had the kind of marriage that would last as long as they lived.

Between their generation and his, western society had undergone a cultural earthquake. Values and lifestyles had changed. Many people, including himself, thought marriage was on the way out. These days his brother Chris’s disastrous marriage seemed more typical than his parents’. Observing his brother’s experience and its aftermath, Neal had decided he wasn’t going down that road.