some of the unluck. I know Melinda and Scot did - they’ve turned out won404 derfully, so grand. And then, in ‘63, before your thirty-eighth birthday, the multiple sclerosis.
Going home to Scotland as you’d always wanted - me to put Ian’s plans into effect, you to regain your health. But that part not to be. Watching you die. Watching the sweet smile you used to cover the hell inside, so brave and gentle and wise and loving, but going, plateau by plateau. So slowly, yet so fast, so inexorably. By ‘68 in a wheelchair, mind still crystal, voice clear, the rest a shell, out of control and shaking. Then it was ‘70. That Christmas they were at Castle Avisyard. And on the second day of the new year when the others had gone and Melinda and Scot were skiing in Switzerland, she had said, “Andy, my darling, I cannot endure another year, another month, or another day.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“Sorry, but I’ll need help. I need to go and I… I’m ever so sorry that it’s been so long… but I need to go now, Andy. I have to do it myself but I’ll need help. Yes?” “Yes, my darling.”
They had spent a day and a night talking, talking about good things and good times and what he should do for Melinda and Scot, and that she wanted him to marry again, and she told him how wonderful life had been with him and they laughed, one with another, and his tears did not spill till later. He held her palsied hand with the sleeping pills and held her shaking head against his chest, helped her with the glass of water - a little whisky in it for luck - and never let her go until the shaking had stopped. The doctor had said kindly, “I don’t blame her - if I’d been her I would have done it years ago, poor lady.”
Going then to the Shrieking Tree. But shrieking no words, nothing - only tears. “Andy?” “Yes, Kathy?”
Gavallan looked up and he saw it was Genny, McIver by the door, both of them watching him. “Oh, hello, Genny, sorry, I was a million miles away.” He got up. “It - I think it was the Avisyard that set me thinking.” Genny’s eyes widened. “Oh, an Avisyard telex? Not a bird down?” “No, no, thank God, just Imperial Helicopters up to their old tricks.” “Oh, thank God too,” Genny said, openly relieved. She was dressed in a heavy coat and a nice hat. Her large suitcase was in the outer office where Nogger Lane and Charlie Pettikin waited. “Well, Andy,” she said, “unless you override Mr. McIver, I suppose we should go. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Come on, Gen, there’s no n - ” McIver stopped as she imperiously held up her hand.
“Andy,” she said sweetly, “please tell Mr. McIver that battle is joined.” “Gen! Will y - ”
“Joined, by God!” Imperiously she waved Nogger Lane away from her suitcase, picked it up, staggered a little under its weight, and swept out with an even more imperious, “I can carry my own suitcase, thank you very much.” There was a big hole in the air behind her. McIver sighed. Nogger Lane had a hard time keeping the laughter off his face. Gavallan and Charlie Pettikin thought it best to be noncommittal.
“Well, er, no need for you to drive out with us, Charlie,” Gavallan said gruffly.
“I’d still like to, if it’s all right,” Pettikin said, not really wanting to but McIver had asked him privately for support with Genny. “That’s a cute hat, Genny,” he had told her just after a delightful breakfast with Paula. Genny had smiled sweetly. “Don’t you try to butter me up, Charlie Pettikin, or I’ll give you what for too. I’ve had men generally - in fact I’m very pissed off indeed….”
Gavallan put on his parka. He picked up the telex and stuck it into his pocket. “Actually, Charlie,” he said and some of his concern showed now, “if you don’t mind I’d rather you didn’t - I’ve got some unfinished stuff to chat with Mac about.”
“Sure, of course.” Pettikin stuck out his hand and hid the beam. Not going out to the airport would give him a few bonus hours alone with Paula. Paula the Fair, he had thought of her since breakfast even though she was brunette. To McIver he said, “I’ll see you at home.”
“Why not wait here - I want to raise all the bases as soon as it’s dark and we can go back together. I’d like you to hold the fort. Nogger, you can quit.” Nogger Lane beamed and Pettikin cursed silently.
In the car McIver drove, Gavallan was beside him, Genny in the back. “Mac, let’s talk about Iran.”
They went through their options. Each time they came back to the same gloomy conclusion: they had to hope the situation came back to normal, the banks reopened, they got the money owing to them, that their joint venture was exempt and they weren’t nailed.“You just have to keep going, Mac. While we can operate, you’ll have to continue, whatever the problems.” McIver was equally grave. “I know. But how do I operate without money - and what about the lease payments?”
“Somehow I’ll get you operating money. I’ll bring cash from London in a week. I can carry the lease payment on your aircraft and spares for another few months; I may even be able to do the same with the X63s if I can reschedule payments but, well, I hadn’t planned on losing so many contracts to IH - maybe I can get some of them back. Whichever way, it’ll be dicey for a while but not to worry. Hope to God Johnny gets in; just have to get home now, there’s so much to do. …”
McIver narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a car that charged out of a side street, almost went into the joub, and came back onto the roadway again. “Bloody twit! You all right, Gen?” He glanced into the rearview window and winced, seeing her stony face.
Gavallan felt the icy blast too, started to say something to her but thought better of it. Wonder if I could get hold of Ian - perhaps he could guide me out of the abyss - and, thinking of that, reminded him of David MacStruan’s tragic death. So many of them, the Struans, MacStruans, Dunrosses, their enemies the Gornts, Rothwells, Brocks of ancient days, had died violent deaths or vanished - lost at sea - or died in strange accidents. So far Ian’s survived. But how much longer? Not many more times. “I think I’m up to my eighth, Andy,” Dunross had said the last time they met. “What now?”
“Nothing much. Car bomb went off in Beirut just after I’d passed by. Nothing to worry about, I’ve said it before, there’s no pattern. I just happen to have a charmed life.”
“Like Macao?”
Dunross was an enthusiastic racer and had driven in many of the Macao Grand Prix. In ‘65 - the race still amateur then - he had won the race but the right front tire of his E Type blew out at the winning post and shoved him into the barricade and sent him tumbling down the track, other cars taking evading action, one careening into him. They had cut him out of the wreckage, everything intact, unhurt but for his left foot missing. “Like Macao, Andy,” Dunross had said with his strange smile. “Just an accident. Both times.” The other time his engine had exploded but he had been unscathed. Whispers had it that his engine had been tampered with - the finger pointed at his enemy Quillan Gornt, but not publicly.
Quillan’s dead and Ian’s alive, Gavallan thought. So am I. So’s Linbar; that bastard will go on forever…. Christ Almighty, I’m getting morbid and stupid - got to stop it. Mac’s worried enough as it is. Got to figure a way out of the vise. “In an emergency, Mac, I’ll send messages through Talbot, you do the same. I’ll be back in a few days without fail and by then I’ll have answers - meanwhile I’ll base the 125 until further notice - Johnny can be a courier for us. That’s the best I can do for today….” Genny, who had not uttered a word and had politely refused to be drawn into the conversation though she listened attentively, was also more than a little worried. It’s obvious there’s no future for us here, and I’d be quite very glad to leave - provided Duncan comes too. Even so, we can’t just meekly run away with our tails between our legs and let all of Duncan’s work and life’s nest egg be stolen, that’d kill him as certainly as any bullet. Ugh! I do wish he’d do what he’s told - he should have retired last year when the Shah was still in power. Men! Bloody stupid, the whole lot of them! Christ Almighty! What fools men are!
Traffic was very slow now. Twice they had to divert because of barricades erected across the roads - both of them guarded by armed men, not Green Bands, who angrily waved them away. Bodies here and there among the piled refuse, bumed-out cars and one tank. Dogs scavenging. Once there was sudden firing nearby and they took a side street, avoiding a pitched battle between what factions they never found out. A stray bazooka shell plastered a nearby building but without danger to them. McIver eased his way around the burned hulk of a bus, more than ever glad that he had insisted that Genny evacuate Iran. Again he glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw the white face under the hat and his heart went out to her. She’s damn good, he thought proudly, so much guts. Damn good, but so bloody-minded. Hate that bloody hat. Hats don’t suit her. Why the hell won’t she do what she’s told without arguing? Poor old Gen, I’ll be so relieved when she’s not in danger. Near the airport, traffic almost came to a standstill, hundreds of cars crammed with people, many Europeans, men, women, and children, going there on the rumor that the airport had been reopened - enraged Green Bands turning everyone away, crude signs scrawled in Farsi and misspelled English nailed to trees and to walls: AIRPRT FORBIDUN NOW. AIRPRT OPEN MONDAY - - IF TICKUT AND EXIT PURMIT.
It took them half an hour to talk their way through the barrier. It was Genny who finally managed it. Like most of the wives who had to shop and to deal with servants and day-to-day living, she could speak some Farsi -
