He was a man who went to international conferences and gave talks to distinguished audiences on important topics. He wore sober suits and a homburg hat and carried under his arm a slim black briefcase. Also, he had a very slight Austrian accent that sounded like a lisp, and gave her a tingling along her spine when he held her in his arms and put his face into her hair and murmured endearments, even when the inanity of his words made her shut her eyes and feel embarrassed for him. Paul was a very serious young man who nevertheless could be remarkably silly at times, without meaning to, and without his being aware of it.

Her father had telephoned her late the previous night. The recollection of what he had told her was a small dark cloud of dread hovering over her heart. She had assumed he was drunk – she hoped so, though he hadn’t sounded as if he was. The thing he had called to tell her about was mad, utterly mad.

She sat down on one of the peculiarly uncomfortable tubular metal chairs that were set out in a line, facing the observation window. She had no time for Scandinavian design, however fashionable it was nowadays. Something about the angle the chairs leaned back at made her think of people seated in the front row of a cinema, gazing up mindlessly at a blank screen.

It made her feel slightly dizzy, sitting in front of that unreal- looking big blank square of glass with the mist pressing against it. She stood up. She remembered the sausage rolls, and her stomach seemed to flop over like an ailing fish in a muddy pond.

She heard a faint droning sound outside, and glanced at her watch again. Not quite half eleven. It couldn’t be his flight, not yet. She waited, standing at the window, and presently she saw a plane coming in to land. It looked like a metal dragonfly, as it emerged abruptly out of the mist and skimmed down and alighted in clumsy haste on the runway. The wheels threw up behind them twin parachute-shaped clouds of spray that was whiter than the surrounding mist.

Downstairs, in the bar, a man was loudly sobbing out a verse of Come back to Erin, Mavourneen, Mavourneen. He sounded very drunk. She thought of her father. At least he didn’t sing, drunk or sober. That would be the limit.

The board behind her clattered again.

Chapter 18