Skios

7

It was an example of the ever-renewed triumph of hope over probability, thought Nikki, trying to keep the skin round her mouth and eyes soft and amused. Whenever you were waiting for someone and you didn’t know exactly what they looked like, everyone seemed to be them. Fathers with small children. Grandfathers in ill-judged shorts. Women, even … Fat women … Fatter women still … Just for a moment, as each passenger emerged from the baggage hall and hesitated, not knowing where to go, Nikki tensed very slightly with the onset of charm. Then they would spot a familiar word—“Polkinghorne,” “Whispering Surf”—and they would raise an acknowledging finger and cease to have any possible resemblance to Dr. Norman Wilfred.

More potential Dr. Wilfreds at once took their place. She should have looked at the picture in his CV again before she came out. She tried to recall it. Nothing came to mind. He had looked, well, pretty much as she would have expected him to look.

She felt a little leap of the heart at the sight of one particular candidate, a rumpled young man with muddled, extraordinarily pale blond hair. His soft rueful eyes swept slowly over the waiting drivers and reps. He didn’t look at all as she would have expected him to look. My God, thought Nikki nevertheless, it is him!

Except that it obviously wasn’t.

Except that just possibly …

She went on watching him. The rueful gaze jumped unhurriedly from sign to sign, closer and closer.

For an instant she was eight years old again. If I think hard enough that it’s him, she thought, perhaps it will be.

* * *

“Carling…” “Pleather…” “Spoon…” Oliver looked carefully at the hopefully uplifted names, trying to make each in turn read “Fox.” None obliged. Just as he had feared. As soon as one thing went wrong so did everything else. He was on his own in the world. “Wertheimer…” “Begby…” “Budd…” All these people with solid and convincing names! With someone to meet them, with lives to live, with friends and lovers, with happy days ahead full of laughter at taverna tables. Why was he not Begby? Why was he not Budd? Even as he looked, “Begby” and Begby were shaking hands and laughing.

“Johanssen…” “Cholley…” “Dr. Norman Wilfred…”

He stopped. Dr. Norman Wilfred … Yes. That would have been a good name to have. There was something wholesome and down-to-earth about it that suggested a general practitioner in a country town. Someone with ruddy cheeks and a twinkle in his eye, beloved by his patients. If only he had been called Wilfred. With a name like that he, too, could have been a doctor already. He could have been leading Dr. Wilfred’s decent, useful life, and taking Dr. Wilfred’s well-earned summer holiday — could even now have found himself being met by whoever it was Dr. Wilfred was being met by.

He looked up a little to see who it was.

Oh, yes! he thought, as he took in the soft openness of her eyes, and couldn’t help but smile.

* * *

Oh, no! thought Nikki, as Oliver’s soft melancholy smile rested on her. It is him!

And of course she smiled in her turn.

* * *

Good God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks I’m him!

And all at once he knew it was so. He was Dr. Norman Wilfred. He saw his life as Dr. Norman Wilfred stretching in front of him like the golden pathway into the rising sun. He had no choice but to walk along that pathway, towards the warmth, towards the light.

So he did, pulling his suitcase behind him.

* * *

She watched him approach. He was still smiling. She was still smiling herself, she realized.

“Dr. Wilfred?” she said.

“I cannot tell a lie,” said Oliver. No — said Dr. Wilfred.

* * *

She plainly wanted him to be Dr. Wilfred, he could see. She would probably be disappointed later, of course, when he turned out not to have been Dr. Wilfred after all. But later was later. The immediate priority was not to disappoint her now. In any case, there was some truth in what he had said. He was not good at telling lies, and he never did. Not if he could manage without.

She went on smiling, and the warmth of that smile made her almost as beautiful as he was going to tell her she was, as soon as a suitable opportunity occurred. She tucked her sign away on top of the clipboard she was carrying and shook his hand.

“I’m Nikki,” she said. “The name on all those e-mails.”

“Nikki,” he said. “Of course. Though I couldn’t have guessed from the name that you’d look like this.”

She managed to frown and took the handle of his suitcase. He could see, though, that her frown was a frown in the same way that he was Dr. Wilfred. He felt the familiar jolt of joyous excitement. Here we go again!

“Anyway,” she said, “welcome to Skios.”