ANNE WEALE - Sleepless Nights

The aircraft was taking off. It was smaller than the previous one and not as full. When the pre-lunch drinks trolley came round and Sarah asked for a gin and tonic, the stewardess explained apologetically that this was a ‘dry’ flight.

‘Just the tonic, then, please.’

Neal had the same but asked for two extra glasses. Why became clear a little later when the trolley had moved on and he bent down to retrieve the plastic carrier shoved under the sheet in front of him when he sat down.

‘My laptop and my liquor supply,’ he explained, showing her its contents, a black portable computer and a half bottle of gin.

‘Aren’t you afraid your laptop will be damaged without proper protection?’

‘It’s a lot less likely to be stolen. Those fancy padded bags that businessmen flaunt are like women’s handbags. They shout a message to thieves—“Here it is...come and get it!” I noticed in the airport that you had a small shoulder bag as well as your backpack. I bet you’re not carrying anything vital in it.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she agreed. Naomi had given her a zipped cotton bag on a loop which went over her belt. The bag slipped under her skirt and lay snugly against the side of her tummy. It held most of her money, her credit card and a copy of her passport.

Neal filled both the extra glasses with a generous measure of gin, placed one on her tray and topped it up with tonic. Then he did the same with his. ‘Om mani padme hum,’ he said, raising his glass.

She didn’t have to ask him what the words meant. They were a Buddhist mantra meaning ‘The jewel at the heart of the lotus’. She was interested in Buddhism, having a personal reason for hoping that death was not an end but, as Buddhists believed, the threshold of another lifetime on the long journey to enlightenment.

Neal didn’t miss the expression that flickered across her face. He wondered if she disapproved of him using the mantra as a toast. Or if the words had reminded her of something she didn’t want to remember.

During lunch he tried to draw her out about her job. But she didn’t want to be drawn and he turned the conversation to books, his yardstick for judging whether a woman would be an interesting companion when they weren’t making love.

Sarah scored high. She had read every travel book he mentioned and some he had missed. It turned out they had both recently re-read James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, a big best-seller in the Thirties and one of the few novels to put a new word, Shangri-la, into the language.

‘My grandfather gave it to me for my twelfth birthday,’ said Neal. ‘When did you first read it?’

Her lovely smile lit up her face. ‘The Christmas before my fifteenth birthday. I used to spend my pocket money in a second-hand bookshop. Mr King, the old man who owned it, gave me Lost Horizon as a present because I was the youngest of his “regulars”.’ Her smile faded, replaced by a look of remembered anguish. “He died of bronchitis that winter and the shop never reopened. I missed him terribly.’

After a pause, she added, ‘When I discussed the book with him, Mr King said there might really be a place like Shangri-la...a secret valley in the mountains where people lived to great ages and were fulfilled and contented. For a while I believed him. But if such a place had existed, it would have been seen by now on a satellite photograph. Still, it’s a lovely idea.’

‘My grandfather says that Shangri-la does exist,’ said Neal. ‘But not as it is in the book...a mysterious, inaccessible place somewhere on the great plateau of central Asia. According to him Shangri-la’s in the mind. It’s possible for everyone to find it, but not many do.’

‘How old is your grandfather?’

‘Ninety next year, but still amazingly active and up to date... spends a lot of his time surfing the Web and e-mailing other old men whose minds are still in good shape.’

She laughed. ‘Good for him.’

But she didn’t volunteer any information about her family, he noticed. Given the smallest encouragement, most people talked non-stop about themselves. A recent example had been the elderly woman who had sat next to him on the Underground from central London to the airport. Starting from a comment about the size of his pack, she had gone on to tell him the medical details of her husband’s last illness followed by a detailed character assassination of her only son’s second wife.

In contrast to that woman’s garrulity, Sarah was telling him nothing about her family background. There had to be a reason for her unusual reserve.

After lunch, the Nepalese woman turned to Sarah and murmured, ‘Penny.’

It wasn’t hard to guess what she meant. Sarah turned to Neal. ‘My neighbour wants to go to the washroom.’

He rose, stepping into the aisle, and she followed. While the Nepalese woman went to the nearest bathroom, they stayed on their feet, glad to stand up for a while.

‘I wonder if that’s the limit of her English vocabulary... Pepsi and penny?’ said Sarah, remembering the woman’s response when the stewardess had asked if she wanted a drink before lunch. ‘My grasp of Nepali isn’t much better...only about ten words.’

‘Nowadays not many tourists bother to mug up any,’ Neal said dryly. ‘I always try to learn a smattering of the language before I go somewhere new.’

Looming over her in the narrow space between the rows of seats, he seemed even taller and broader than he’d looked when she first saw him. It was unusual, she thought, to find physical power allied to an intellectual turn of mind. It turned out the book she had seen him reading was a collection of essays by Edmund Burke.

Shortly after they resumed their seats, a small child, aged about three and of indeterminate sex, started running up and down the aisle. After a while it suddenly lost its bearings and began to howl, ‘Dadee...Dadee...’

Perhaps the toddler’s father was catching up on some lost sleep and wasn’t aware that his offspring was in a panic. Daddy failed to materialise and all the cabin crew seemed to be taking a break.

As Sarah heard the wails coming closer to where she was sitting, she was about to leap up when Neal forestalled her. Scooping the little thing up and holding it under its armpits, he started to walk down the aisle, saying something quietly reassuring and holding it aloft.

Sarah moved into his seat to watch him. thinking inconsequentially that he looked very good from the rear, wide shoulders tapering down to narrow male hips and a taut and sexy backside.

Then, far down near the front of the cabin, she saw him restoring the child to its parent. Quickly she returned to her own seat, faintly surprised that he alone, of all the people in the nearby aisle seats, had taken action to stop the frightened bawling. For the first time it struck her that he might be married with children of his own.

‘You dealt with that very expertly,’ she said, when he came back.

‘I have a nephew that size.’ After a pause he added, ‘My preference is for children you can hand back to their parents when you’ve had enough of them. Journalism and domesticity don’t go well together.’

‘I suppose not,’ she agreed, wondering if that was a warning. If so, it was bordering on arrogance to consider one necessary at this stage of their acquaintance.

On the other hand he was definitely as close to Naomi’s mythical ten-out-of-ten gorgeous male as she was ever likely to meet. Maybe experience had taught him to make it plain from the outset that anything he had to offer would be strictly short term and no strings.

The movie was followed by afternoon tea. Sarah’s first intimation that they were approaching Nepal was when the woman beside her leant forward to peer out of the window. This meant that Sarah could see very little which was terribly disappointing. Had she had the window seat herself, she would have made a point of keeping well back to allow her neighbours to share the first sight of the famous mountains. Still, it was the little woman’s country they were approaching, she reminded herself, and who had more right to gaze on those amazing summits than a returning Nepalese?