Time and Time Again by Elton Ben

Author:Elton, Ben [Elton, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781473508323
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2014-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

26

TRUE TO HER word Bernadette sat apart from Stanton in the waiting room at Zagreb and found a different carriage to him on the Vienna train. Even when they both sat for supper in the dining car she merely raised a glass to him from across the carriage.

Stanton was impressed.

She was right really. It had been obvious from almost the first moment of their conversation that there was a strong mutual attraction and this had been reinforced over a very long lunch. There had been a palpable electricity between them, an excitement that might perhaps have been difficult to maintain over a further eleven hours of close proximity. It would probably have been all right, but then again it could easily not have been. By arranging things as she had, Bernadette had certainly ensured that there would be a new and highly charged frisson to their encounter when they met in Vienna. She was, as his old army mates would have put it, a classy chick.

Eventually, as night fell across Europe, he drifted off to sleep in his seat and didn’t wake up until the train was approaching Vienna.

When he got off the train he found that Bernadette, who had been in a more forward carriage, had already secured a porter and was waiting for him beyond the barrier.

‘Share a taxi?’ she said brightly. ‘You can shove your stuff on top of mine if you like. Although you’d probably better handle the emotional baggage yourself. Wouldn’t want anyone prying into that, would we?’

‘Thanks. I’ll hang on to my actual bags as well, in fact,’ Stanton replied. ‘Old habit.’

‘Suit yourself. Had you thought about where you’re staying?’

‘Well, I’d heard the Hotel Sacher was very good. It’s next to the Opera House, which sounds pretty grand, but when in Vienna, eh?’

‘How extraordinary! That’s where I’m staying myself.’

There wasn’t much of a queue for cabs and soon they were on their way through the deserted streets.

‘Not a soul about. Never is after dark,’ Bernadette remarked. ‘Lovely town in the day but dull as paint at night. The Viennese have to go to bed at ten, did you know? Or they get fined.’

‘Come on, really? Fined?’ Stanton replied. ‘Can’t quite believe that.’

‘Well, as good as. They all live in apartment blocks, you see, and they have to pay a fee to the doorman if they’re late so they all scurry home. Ridiculous, rushing their dinners for which they’ll have paid twenty krone in order to save a handful of heller on the night doorman. Stupid, isn’t it?’

‘You seem to know a bit about the place, Bernie.’

‘I spent a month here as companion to an aunt when I was eighteen. She loved her opera, which I don’t much, but I loved Vienna and I still do. I was also here three years ago for a conference on Women’s Health. It’s the most relaxed capital I’ve ever been in. They go to bed early and rise late, and when they do get up, most of them seem to just sit in coffee houses and talk about theatre.

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