Advertise for Treasure by David Williams

Author:David Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Twelve

‘We had the advantage of the early start,’ said Emily Gaunt enthusiastically to Mildred Pitts. ‘Still only half past nine at home.’

‘They were seated together in a stationary hotel minibus at Athens Airport. Miss Gaunt had been purposely impressing the benefit of their dawn departure since the two had met at Victoria Station to catch the 5.30 train to Gatwick Airport. At the beginning, Miss Pitts had not been much conscious of the compensations latent in her having risen at four.

‘If we’d taken the other tour, we shouldn’t have been here till six in the evening, with the two-hour time difference. That’s the whole day gone, really,’ she now advised, much to Miss Gaunt’s inward satisfaction. ‘It’s quite warm, isn’t it, Emily?’ Miss Pitts continued, peering at the directional ventilators in the luggage rack above their heads. ‘Not working yet,’ she almost whispered as though loath to instigate a round of protest – or to induce a sense of impending asphyxia in others similar to the one she was experiencing herself.

‘They’ll start with the engine, I expect,’ offered Miss Gaunt. Air travel made Mildred chatter, even after landing: something to do with nervous tension. ‘Why don’t you open that window a bit more?’

‘It won’t. They only go half way.’ Even so, Miss Pitts rearranged the packages on her lap so that she could lean forward and give the glass panel another push.

It was a pity about Mildred’s plastic carrier bags. There was one from the Gatwick Duty Free shop, another that advertised Marks & Spencer, and a more substantial affair in pink, incongruously provided by ‘The Under-25 Store’ and containing Miss Pitts’s needlepoint. Miss Gaunt had never brought herself to mention the matter – not directly – in all the years the two had holidayed together, but these inevitable appendages gave their possessor the appearance of a dumpy and overburdened refugee. This effect was heightened, in Miss Gaunt’s view, by the tour company’s label Mildred insisted on attaching to her plastic raincoat for fear she might ever be parted from that singularly unattractive if utilitarian garment.

‘They only go half way,’ boomed the elderly, red-faced, military-looking man with the white moustache. He was in the seat in front.

The two maiden ladies nodded their thanks for his confirmation.

‘It’s boiling in here,’ said the military man’s ample, jolly wife. She produced a fan from her handbag.

‘Of course, it’s half past eleven local time,’ offered Miss Pitts, but quietly to her companion.

‘What? Yes. Changed your watches have you?’ asked the military man. He consulted his own. ‘Twenty-five to,’ he went on. ‘Been on Greek time since last night. Best way to acclimatize.’

‘Ask them why we’re waiting, Bill,’ urged his wife. ‘We’re missing the best of the day.’

The bus had seats for twenty, but so far only eleven passengers. ‘Bill’ heaved himself into the gangway, made for the door at the front, but became involved in a kind of quadrille with a young couple and their small boy who was fully equipped for instant snorkelling.

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