Stitch in Snow

Chapter 03

'Dropped any good stitches lately?' a quiet male voice asked.

I was so startled that I dropped some, gasping, looking up and letting the knitting bag slide from my lap all at the same moment.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you,' the man said, swiftly bending to pick the bag up off the floor. He began to brush it off, because the floor was dampened by people dripping snow and mud as they prowled restlessly about the airport lounge.

'Not to worry,' I said, holding my hand out to retrieve my belongings. I smiled at him because his face was somewhat familiar although I couldn't place where on God's green earth we'd met. I was reminded of my encounter with the lady in the green velvet pants suit although the positions were reversed. And he was distinguished looking, with his silvered hair and an attractively unsilvered moustache. In my perusal of my fellow travellers, I had noticed him pacing the corridors, waiting impatiently for his turn at the phone, like everyone else stranded unexpectedly in snowbound Denver.

'Is there much damage?' he asked, settling into the seat beside me as he handed back the bag.

'No,' I assured him, laughing at his contrite expression and racking my brain to think where I'd seen him before as I quickly caught up the dropped stitches.

'You do that deftly. I've been admiring your skill for some time now.' He grinned with all the ease of long-established acquaintanceship.

'Have you now?' I demurred. I longed for a chance to pull out my 'brains' and see if I could joggle my faulty memory.

'Yes. I can perceive that this is more than knit-one-purl-one. Ah,' and he'd taken the rib edge of the sweater front and held it out. 'Arran!' He sounded surprised, and fingered the wool. 'And bainan, too.'

'You're Irish?' He'd neither the brogue nor the cultivated English of the well-educated Irish but few American males would know that the oiled wool was called bainan.

'No, but I've travelled there frequently.'

'Do I know you from Dublin then?' I asked, determined to establish his identity.

'Dublin?' Half-way to a frown, his eyebrows paused and his expression cleared. His eyes began to twinkle. They were a kind of serge blue, I noticed in the all too-glaring light of the overhead fluorescents. 'No, we haven't met in Dublin.'

'Please, I've met so many people in the past three weeks, I plead overload.'

'Does it distress you that you can't place our… ah… introduction?'

'Well, yes, sort of. I mean, it's good public relations to remember names and I've a good score so far this trip…'

'I wouldn't want to ruin that.' His eyes twinkled more and a smile tugged at the corners of his well-shaped mouth which the moustache outlined rather than hid. He was enjoying my discomfiture.

'To tell the truth and shame the devil, I can't remember where we met.'

'I'm the anonymous sort,' he said, feigning petulance. I gave him a very severe look for he had a strong face, attractive rather than handsome, but eye-catching with his colouring.

'Not with that hair, those brows and that coffee-strainer.'

He laughed at my acerbic tone, crossing his legs and settling himself more comfortably.

'Maybe if you knit a few rows, it'll all come back. When I first saw you, you were just starting it.'

'You were on the plane from Dublin?'

'No,' and he looked abashed. 'Not from Dublin. But this is surely the front…' for I was obviously dividing to make the neckline.

I had to trace back the progress of this sweater. 'I did start the front on the plane from Philadelphia. Were you on the Pittsburgh flight?'

He nodded, as pleased as I was with the recognition. He leaned forward then, extending his hand. 'I'll have to confess: we have never been formally introduced. We seem to have had the same itinerary.'

With relief I shook his hand, my memory now dredging up a tall, faintly familiar man going through the Milwaukee security check just ahead of me.

'I don't think you saw me out of Philadelphia. You were, as usual, knitting. I had the aisle seat in front of you. You were ahead of me going through the security arch in Chicago. Remember? They held you up for the knitting needles.'

'Yes, but what they expected me to be smuggling along with my knitting, I can't guess. Explosives don't come…' and I held up my hands a needle-length apart.

'You don't look the type to be knitting either,' he said unexpectedly. 'Sweetening up the husband with a hand-knit?'

'No husband.'

'Boyfriend?'

'At my age? Unlikely!'

He gave me a mock-wicked smirk. 'No lover?'

I laughed at his incorrigibility. 'No, I do it for commercial reasons only. Knitting, I mean.' At my hurried qualifier, for he had a devilish quick mind and a quicker gleam of humour, he laughed again. Someone trying to nap across the aisle from us grumbled and irritably shifted position.

'No, I knit,' I said in a firm no-nonsense tone, 'because I enjoy working with my hands. I've a friend who runs a small boutique in Enniskerry. She buys anything I'll make for her. Knitting's like a tranquilliser. The RAF pilots were encouraged to knit argyle socks during the War, you know, to relax.'

'I didn't know.' He wasn't teasing me. His attention was focused on my hands because I'd picked up all the dropped stitches and progressed further in the pattern. 'How do you remember when to switch?'

I glanced down at the row. 'The pattern has a simple progression in each stitch.'

'Do you always work the same pattern?'

This was a rather absurd conversation for two intelligent people to be having, when one of them is a man, but it would pass the time in a snowbound airport lounge.

'Rarely. That's one of the joys of knitting Arran: the combinations are infinite.'

I was cabling just then, knitting into the back to twist which isn't as difficult as it looks.

'You must have eyes in your fingers,' he said with exasperation. 'What's this pattern?'

'Lobster claw. This is the Tree of Life: that zigzag is sort of the ups and downs of marriage…' The subtle alteration of his mouth and the slight narrowing of his eyes suggested to me that his marriage was probably in stress just then. 'The real Arran sweater tells a tale: in the west country each family had a distinctive pattern. One way to identify drowned fishermen was by the sweater pattern.'

'Grisly!' He affected a shudder.

I agreed. 'Some patterns are for good luck, too.'

'How many of them were dragged up from the deep six?'

I shrugged and kept on working the pattern, glancing up at the windows against which the snow kept beating as the wind lashed and swirled outside. We'd been grounded for close to two hours and the earlier hysteria of the stranded passengers had now been replaced with resignation. I was in no bind - as yet - because my next lecture date, in Portland, Oregon, was three days away. I had planned to check into the motel in Vancouver, Washington and just rest up because I'd be pretty pushed by the engagements on the West Coast until Easter weekend.

I could just as well lounge around Denver as Vancouver. And it was reasonably obvious that I'd be staying at least overnight in Denver. Since the airlines would have to foot the hotel bill, I couldn't object.

My fellow-traveller and I sat in companionable silence while I worked nine rows, finishing that side of the neck. Then he caught my hand as I turned the sweater to start the right side. I spread the work out and he grinned as he traced the various patterns.

'No mistakes,' he said, teasing me with a mock condescending tone.

'I do make 'em,'

'How do you hide 'em?'

'I don't as a rule. I rip out the work…'

He looked dismayed.

'Oh, once in a while, like in this moss stitch, an irregularity won' t be too noticeable. And sometimes I catch the error in the next row and just drop and redo that stitch…'

The p.a. system gave a high-hum burp and the disembodied voice announced with insincere regret the cancellation of all flights. Would on-going passengers please come to the accommodation desks of their respective airlines?

'I'd expected that,' he said.' Were you going on?'

'Yes, but I've a three-day leeway which I'd intended to take in Portland!'

'With friends?'

'No. I just wanted to be by myself for a bit. Too much talk and rich food, too many parties and too many drinks.'

'Too many faces you can't remember names for?' His eyes twinkled.

'That's unfair. We never were introduced. Which reminds me, I still don't have your name?'

He chuckled, a dirty low-down chuckle. 'I didn't give it!' And he knew perfectly well he hadn't.

I began to get irritated then. After all, he had initiated the conversation, I hadn't.

'Call me Dan…'

'Dan, Dan, the Mystery Man?' I said, laughing to cover my start of surprise. He couldn't know my name: I didn't even have initials on my attache case.

'I don' t know your name.'

'True, you don't, 'and grinned at him, hesitating as he had done but with an honest reason. If I told him my first name, he might well think I was putting him on. I gave myself a mental kick in the pants. One of the fringe liabilities of these lecture tours is that you can acquire an inflated and unreal opinion of yourself, 'fame' and 'public'. Granted my books for children are well known, and considering his twinge at the marriage zig-zag, he might have children who read my books. I was so fed up with being a Visiting Celebrity that I wanted to preserve my anonymity. I gave him my middle name. 'I'm Jane.'

'Jane? Plain Jane? Me Tarzan, you Jane…' He screwed up his face in comic rejection of both cliches. 'No, you're not plain Jane, or Tarzan Jane. I don't even believe you are a Jane. You don't look the type. I'll call you Jenny! On your feet, Jenny.'

I swung my wool Clodagh cloak to my shoulders with a practiced twist of the wrist which he admired with a grin, 'Attache case, yes: knitting bag, no. And neither really go with that cloak… shopping basket more like, little green Riding Hood.'

'You fail to see the subterfuge,' I told him, mock haughty. 'The cloak hides the knitting bag so no one knows my vice.'

'Since when are knitting bags subversive?'

'Since women's lib,' I said in a stage whisper, glancing about as if fearful of being overheard.

'Ah, so!'

As we made our way towards the United Airlines desk, he scowled at the blizzard outside.

'I hope we make it to the hotel,' he said.

'Is it far?'

'Fortunately no, but I'd had half a mind to try to get into town. I've friends here and… someone I want to see…' He shrugged, a combination of irritation,' frustration and worry, and then gave me a smile. 'Best laid plans, huh?'

We joined the line of stranded passengers, most of whom were by now resigned. One grandmotherly type was hand-wringing over progeny waiting for her in Portland, but the clerk soothed her by saying that the airlines would phone her son and explain the case: in the meantime, here was a voucher for the hotel and she'd be called as soon as there was any change in the weather. At the moment the Rockies were in the thrall of a massive cold front and blizzard conditions were covering the north western States.

The man directly in front of me was not so cooperative. In fact I was embarrassed by the harangue he was giving the girl about the thousands of dollars of commissions he was losing, and modern aircraft ought to be safe the way the government was throwing money and his tax dollars into research.

'Excuse me, Mac,' and the man was as startled as I was by Dan's sudden interruption, 'Just let me get my vouchers and you can continue your tirade.'

The girl clerk just stared at Dan, recovered herself and handed him two vouchers.

"See here, Mac,' the salesman began, finding a new victim for his anger, 'you've no idea how…'

'See here, Mac,' Dan replied in the same ranting tone, 'I think you're entirely right to blame the girl since she started the blizzard just to hold you up, but I'm tired of waiting around this place.'

'The airline limousine will take you to the hotel, sir,' the girl said, and then wrote out another voucher for the salesman, passing it to him with a very polite smile.

I didn't see what happened then because Dan hurried me off.

'Sorry about that. Jenny, but that sort of bastard irritates the hell out of me. Now, the baggage claim is thataway.'

Our things were on the appropriately designated carousel and mine conveniently circling as we arrived. I grabbed it off.

'My god, I didn't think a woman could travel with that little luggage!'

I awarded his comment a sour and patronising humph and waited, tapping my foot, to see what he plucked from the moving belt. My chagrin at his modest but expensive leather case was doubled by the fact that the initials were D.J.L. What an incredible coincidence of names. I wondered what the J stood for. Maybe he was Dan-Dan, the mystery man. He was surreptitiously checking for initials on mine, but the identifying mark is the Snark Island Custom Control sticker.

'Snark Island?' he asked, perplexed.

'You haven't heard of it?' I clicked my tongue sympathetically. 'Of course, it is very exclusive.'

'Knitters only?'

He recovered quickly. He pointed towards the exit and the long profile of the hotel limousine and we made for it. As we stepped outside, the wind blasted snow into our faces. When the porter came forward to take our luggage, Dan bent to ask him something which the wind masked from me. The man shook his head emphatically and Dan shrugged, ushering me into the limousine.

'No taxis to town at all,' he said, gloomy and depressed.

Our limousine was full and the driver pulled cautiously from the curb, windshield wipers going full, but only just keeping the glass clear enough for him to see ahead. I'd not been in Denver before and I was not going to see much of it this trip. The drive seemed to take longer than it probably did in objective time. No one said anything, but a soft susurrus of sound suggested to me that the driver was swearing under his breath. I don't blame him: even I could feel he had little traction under the wheels. We skidded only once going about a rotary and one of the women in the back gave a sharp cry. I think we were all relieved to get to the hotel entrance.

The truth came out at the reception desk when the clerk assumed Dan and I were together and tried putting us up in the same room.

'My name is Lovell, not Lowell,' I said, enunciating clearly. 'Jane Lovell.'

'Sorry, miss.'

I let that mistake ride because I didn't wish to get involved with being a widow and Mrs. or Ms. or anything, and stepped aside to let Dan have his go at getting a room.

'You really are Lovell?' Dan asked as with several other strandees we followed a bellboy to the elevators.

'Yes, it is rather close, Mr. Lowell.' '

We'll have a drink on that. Or do you really want to sit in your room and knit?'

'I'd love a drink.' I didn't mean to put the emphasis so plainly on 'drink,' as if I were conscious of a need to specify. I caught the intense look he gave me but before I could stammer an apology, he grinned.

'Or knitting needles at two paces?'

At least he didn't take offence. 'I didn't know you indulged.'

His humour was reflected in the mischievous glint in his eye. 'As often as possible,' he said, speaking through the side of his mouth.

We were in the elevator which was crowded and effectively precluded further banter.

At the ninth floor, the bellboy gestured all of us out. We were parceled off at rooms, bang, bang, bang, down the corridor. We were the last to be installed. The bellboy unlocked both doors, since they were side by each, escorting me into mine.

It was standard modern hotel, with western motif, pleasantly done: TV, large and prominent, a desk, some rather nice western and cowboy prints by Bama on the walls, the outsized bed with a striped spread. I tipped the boy and he backed out of the room with the usual patter about room service. He hadn't quite closed the door when he came back in.

'Sorry. Have to check.' He fumbled with the second door on the far left. 'Maid left it open after all.' He used his pass key, gave me a big grin and departed.

I heard the shutting of the door in Dan's room as I made my way to the bathroom to check my make-up.

I looked as tired as I felt and I'd half a mind to renege on that drink. Remembering his taunt about staying in my room with my knitting, I brushed my hair, washed my hands and face, put on more mascara and lipstick, dabbed on a patch of perfume. A drink, he'd said, and the way I felt, I'd need a drink to get some sleep. I'd forgotten how

dislocated one could get, time-wise, on these barnstorming trips.

There was a knock on the door. 'Look, I…'I started to say 'after second thoughts'…

'You're hungry! That's what's wrong with you. You've got to eat and this is the city for high protein, guaranteed on the hoof steak!' He grabbed my arm and had me half out the door.

'Hey, just a minute…'

'If you bring that knitting, I'll kill you.' He hauled me forcefully into the hall.

'My key.'

'Lord, and your purse if that's where your money is.'

'Isn't this hotel safe?'

'I don't trust any of them these days,' he said in a way that bespoke sad experience.

In the darker lighting of the hall, he looked tired, too, with deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and eyes dark with fatigue. He took my arm again, his hand warm through my wool sleeve, warm and rather comforting.

We had a drink and Dan insisted that what I needed more was the steak: I needn't have the trimmings, he said, but a decent steak would do me the world of good. So much good that he'd talked himself into having one as well. To such humorous persuasiveness it is impossible to say no. And it was very good for my morale to sip bourbon and soda in the company of an attractive man who was determined to amuse me. It was a relief not to have to wax intelligent, giving ponderous answers to self-conscious questions, or probing my unconsciousness for the 'real' reason behind some of my tales. (Funny how audiences refused to accept as a 'real' reason, the need to earn money!)

We took our drinks to the table and after we'd ordered, we both fell silent. And that, too, was unexpectedly pleasant and without strain.

'God, I'm beginning to realise how tired I am,' Dan said as he stretched his long legs out under the table and arched his back against the banquette padding. 'You, too?'

'Me, too.' I rotated my neck against knotted muscles.

The steak was perfect: the trimmings came anyhow, comprised of baked potatoes (I do miss the Idaho in Ireland) with slathers of sour cream and butter and a green salad. The companionable silence continued as we applied ourselves to the meal. Opposite our table was a big picture window and the snow drifted idly down the pane, its progress slowed by an overhang, while beyond the leisurely flakes, the wind whipped the drifts vigorously: the effect was mesmerising and peaceful.

A subdued babble of voices heralded the arrival of another group of snow-bound travellers but the dining room was large. The newcomers were quickly absorbed and our island of solitude preserved.

Dan ordered coffee for us and inquired after my taste in liqueurs. I hesitated and then shrugged: I'd had only the two bourbons and one liqueur was a fitting end to a good dinner. I also didn't wish to end this pleasant companionship.

The brandy was good but I would have liked an open fire, a deep couch and a chance to put my legs up.

'Trite, I know,' Dan said quietly, 'but I would like a roaring log fire, a comfortable couch and some decent music.'

'Great minds we have,' and I grinned at him as I raised my brandy snifter in a toast.

'Well, they do have the roaring log fire and couches in the lounge…'

I thought of the crowded lounge and snorted. 'That's not what I had in mind.'

'Oh?' Deviltry lurked in the glint of his eyes as he leaned towards me, shifting his position so that the length of his body was against me. 'What did you have in mind, my dear?' he asked in a low, suggestive tone.

'Oh, do be…'

'The woman's blushing. Do be… what?'

'Do be realistic.'

'I am,' he said with an exaggerated sigh. 'There is a fire in the lounge as madam wishes, and a comfortable couch, and…'

I caught myself before I made a blunder. He was not, obviously, propositioning me and I shouldn't assume he was for all the cliche he was rehearsing. What had almost made me betray myself was the fact that I must subconsciously have been thinking of him sexually for he was very attractive, and I'd been a long time without any relief. Simply because some 'types' had made offers didn't mean every man would.

'A crowded couch, my friend, and too many disgruntled fellow-travellers whom I'd prefer to avoid. The dinner, your good self, and the brandy,' I raised the glass again, 'have mellowed my mood and calmed my troubled spirit, and I do not wish the enchantment to be dissipated.'

'Nor do I.' He signalled to the waiter and gestured for two more drinks.

'No, really, this is quite enough…'

'I'd prefer to keep you in a mellow mood, Jenny…'

'I appreciate that, Dan, but I won't be much company. I'm all talked out: I'm afraid I can't rise to the occasion.'

'My dear Jenny, I'm the one who's supposed to rise.' He delivered the line with such a straight face that it took me a moment to react. I covered my mouth to dampen my chortle of surprise. I have the most bawdy laugh at times, an embarrassment to escorts and editors who seem to assume that a children's author is necessarily humourless and obtuse.

'No, please, Dan. I'm not much of a drinker.'

'What you need is a good roaring drunk, my friend, and this is the night…'

'Flying with a hangover is not fun…'

'We're flying nowhere tomorrow by the look of that weather. And one more brandy won't make you drunk but you'll sleep the better for it. And you look as if you need that.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'I do, too.' He said it with such quiet intensity that I relented. Something was bothering him and out of sheer human courtesy, I must respond to that need. I know that I hated to drink by myself and hadn't. The least I could do was keep him company in his need.

So we had two more brandies, and then a third set. It was eleven o'clock of a fine blizzardy night when he signalled for the check. I hadn't a clue what was bothering him but I'd two new jokes that I'd have to remember to tell Mairead when I got back home. When he rose, he bowed to me, extending a hand to raise me from the banquet. I was a lot steadier than I'd thought I'd be after those brandies.

'You see, Jenny, I can judge to a nicety what you're capable of drinking.'

'This once.'

'Anytime. You're a good drinking companion.'

We said goodnight formally at our respective doors and I heard him snap on the night latch at the same moment I turned my own. For some reason that gave me satisfaction. But, as I undressed for bed, I was beset with the reluctant wish that he had pushed his luck with me. The real reason I don't drink much is that liquor makes me amorous. And if there's anyone at all reasonably masculine around, I get smarmy. I don't tolerate that condition in myself any more than I like it in other women. I'd gotten involved twice with unsuitable partners because of this tendency and had one helluva time disentangling myself. It would be all right if I didn't pick such lousy specimens of the male sex: men who looked for the maternal type because they were, essentially, immature and wanted a replacement mother figure. I shook my head, washed my face, brushed my teeth and climbed into bed, hoping that Dan-man had been right about four brandies putting me to sleep.

I hadn't opened the window and the snow was driven like pellets against the panes. I don't think I listened very long.