She looked at her wristwatch, and was astonished at the short space of time which had elapsed since she had last looked at it, outside the Common Room upstairs.
Julian would still be arguing the toss with the short swarthy don, Tom.
Professor Crowe ought to be downstairs by now.
Mrs Simmonds would be typing Mr Henderson's afternoon letters - and probably Mr Cavendish's letters too, in gratitude for her deliverance from the unspeakable Marilyn.
Gary would be dreaming of rescuing Marilyn from the Comanches.
O'Leary would be -
Mustn't think of O'Leary.
* * *
On the wall in front of her there were three shelves.
On the shelves there were eighteen briefcases, an untidy little pile of type-written papers, a copy of the
Eighteen briefcases plus one -
And, for a bet, those papers, that
Everything brought her back to that sodding briefcase -
Why didn't Colonel Butler give the word? What was delaying him?
She must think of something else. Anything else.
The short wall on her left was made up mostly of frosted glass through which she could see only vague shapes and colours - that was bad, all that glass -
The wall on her right was even more alarming: between two vending machines there was a full-length mirror in which a young woman wearing an MA gown and her best Jaeger suit was staring transfixed at her, white-faced and frightened out of her wits -
She turned away hastily from the image before it had time to scream at her.
Behind her was a double line of coat-hooks and a scatter of coats, ending in an open doorway through which she could see a gleaming white tile wall. That was obviously the source of the lavendery smell which had hit her as she entered the cloakroom: if she had ever had any curiosity about the furniture of a men's lavatory she now had the chance of satisfying it in perfect safety.
Except that she didn't have any curiosity left about anything, least of all about men's lavatories, even when they smelt of lavender -
The perfect inaccuracy of the words struck her: they were so perfectly and utterly ridiculous that she didn't know whether to laugh or to cry at them.
It would be more appropriate to laugh. After all, not even the three old ladies in the rugby club song could rival her predicament - they hadn't been trapped in a gentleman's lavatory -
Only she was desperately afraid that once she had started to laugh she would never be able to stop.
'Loud - ' The word again came out as a husky croak ' -
'We're ready to go. Over.'
A moment ago she had been begging him to give the word, but she felt differently now. Being left alone suddenly seemed preferable.
'I repeat - we're ready to go. Do you read me? Over.'
Well, at least he sounded a bit more like his old irascible self.
'I read you loud and clear - ' In fact he was probably thinking
' - I thought you'd never ask, that's all. Over.'
Pause. Evidently Colonel Butler wasn't accustomed to cheek from flibbertygibbet young girls.
'Right...' The distortion cheated her of any absolute certainty that Marilyn had scored a point. 'Off you go then. And good luck. Over and out.'
Just like that:
But he was right all the same, thought Frances: there was no point in thinking about it - thinking would just make it more difficult. The only way to do it was not to think about it, simply to do it.
* * *
She settled the strap of her handbag comfortably in the crook of her left arm, put down the walkie-talkie on the shelf beside the type-written papers, scooped up the same papers and the
