A Diverted Flight.


The interior of the aircraft had changed from her last flight of a quarter of a century ago. The seats were smarter for a start. Ursula urgently claimed a beaker of water from a sweet stewardess. She donned eyeshades, tucked her hands under opposing armpits and sang to herself during the terrifying lurch forward and the acceleration that pressed her back in her seat.


A gin and tonic improved things. Perhaps she might lift the eyeshades and summon the courage to look at the floor beneath her and under which, according to the calm antipodean voice of the pilot, were several very imaginable thousand feet of nothing.


A peek from the eye on her window side showed a brilliant blue sky telling her it was unlikely the plane would be struck by lightning. She could dismiss that old dread of seeing the cabin racing with the lightning's violet light, of opening her mouth in a scream and experiencing the agony of fizzing, arcing electricity between the metal fillings of upper and lower molars. She could relax at last.


Beneath the eyeshades she began those recriminations with herself that she had stubbornly put aside over the last few days.


Why had she allowed herself to be hounded into this trip to Milan by Frances? 'Of course he asked you to join him knowing you would refuse. Go on, surprise him!', said Frances. Frances was wrong about David's faithless behaviour, wrong about his assistant Lola. And Ursula herself had been unfair to Lola, too, in those efforts to dismiss the insinuations that a spiteful Frances had made. Yes, with all that red hair and white skin, Lola was quite lovely but it was silly to assert she flaunted surgically puffed-up breasts; there was no valley of silicon that invited eyes and hands. David had been surrounded for all his career by models looking far better than Lola. Lola was a highly skilled pattern-cutter enjoying the business of aiding David in the choosing and commissioning of textiles for the top fashion houses. She certainly wasn't a workaday seamstress mesmerised by David's money and seeing the chance of sharing in a glamorous life.


I should have remembered, Ursula told herself, that it is the job of Frances, of any, of all, fashion journalists to concoct claptrap, to find something to say about which there is rarely anything sensible or intelligent ever, ever to be said.


What a fool to have allowed herself to be persuaded; why had she then rung Frances and said she really wasn't alarmed enough to be dashing off to Milan to check if David's hand was cupping tit or bum at the whoopee's in Milan? David had always sneered at the gap-groined models, their camel walk, their puppet poses and their blank faces, those peculiar young faces belonging to ones who any social worker worth their salt would have taken into care. She'd phoned saying 'Thank you Frances but I will, after all, be staying contentedly in my studio'.


'Well,' Frances had said and then after a short pause, 'As long as you're happy'. Frances had long ago confided to Ursula that she thought David was an attractive man. 'You should keep an eye on him!', she'd warned.


And then, stupidly, for no reason whatsoever she had changed her mind despite the fear of flying.


What I should do, thought Ursula, is turn round for home at Milan airport. She wasn't cut out for those feverish promotions, mixing with those exhibitions of temperament and vanity and sycophancy, desperately searching for something to talk about with the braying publicity folk and funny-voiced hairdressers all vying for attention. They were all aliens, foreigners. And she didn't look the part or dress the part.


The pilot's voice said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are told there's a problem at Milan. I am sorry to say we have been diverted to Venice. On behalf of the airline I apologise for this inconvenience. I'm sure things will be sorted out to your satisfaction in Venice'.


No! Not at all an inconvenience! It would be a blessing. It was, what?, all of twenty years ago that they had taken the train to Venice. It had been the first and only visit, a total delight, proving to be more wonderful than expected. Venice won't have changed. Four days there by herself would banish all these unfounded anxieties generated by Frances. There were palaces, basilicas, galleries, a visit to Torcello they had missed on that long ago visit, all to be feasted upon. Thank you, Frances, I'm indebted to your fantasies after all.


She flourished David's credit card, a company card that she was authorised to share for some obscure tax reasons but had never used ('Do please make use of it, Darling, there's plenty there. Spoil yourself from time to time. Please. Just keep the receipts'). The golden card eased the complicated tasks of cancelling the return flight, the booking of her return home by train and the securing of a room in a much more expensive hotel than her frugal nature preferred. Once unpacked she was off into the coolish late afternoon sun to find a table looking out over the Grand Canal and to watch that busy, bustling, wonderful waterway.


Returning to the hotel Ursula decided to phone Frances and thank her for accidentally spurring her into this uncharacteristic solo adventure and to say how happy she felt at being here in this city. She would repeat that she was as confident about David as she had ever been. It was husband Godfrey who picked up the phone.


Godfrey with his thick throaty voice had always irritated Ursula. She wondered how his patients had born that unctuous tongue. Godfrey would have been the very last psychiatrist she would have trusted; he was so indiscreet, so unprofessional across the dining table. She thought that Godfrey's psychiatric mediation was of the one-size-fits-all variety. She could never imagine him teasing out some subtle, individual path towards a recovery. Why Frances had married him was beyond her.


'Ursula! How are you! Frances has been rushed off to Milan to cover the shows there. She returns in five days time, I think'.


'Nothing important, Godfrey. Must go', a far too abrupt a termination of the call, sure to have Godfrey saying to Frances, 'Strange call from Ursula while you were away in Milan'.


Well now, the editor might have said, 'Frances, an emergency assignment! The Milan Shows. Flight booked in just two hours time. Off you go!'. There may be a 'Guess what, Ursula. What a strange coincidence!' already coiled in her answering machine from Frances. How near to each other were the words 'assignment' and 'assignation'.


Ursula had ignored the technology of the mobile phone but she knew that she could dial home, add the four digit code and hear the machine speak recorded messages. There was nothing on the tape.


It was true, it had always been true; she had known it from near the beginning of their marriage but had hidden it from herself. As likely as not he was in bed with Lola and Frances at the same time. Oh yes! His own damn one-size-fits-all just about fitting everything and anything!


Life had been fine whilst she hadn't faced his philandering. Through the machinations of Frances she had now been forced to acknowledge it, she could no longer take refuge in pretending. Her life would be bearable again only on new terms. She knew, too, she would be able to dictate those terms for the charm of David obscured a weak nature, a cowardly one, she believed. David liked her, not loved her whereas she had loved him to the limit of those boundaries he had slowly, cunningly constructed from the beginning of their marriage.


During those four days in Venice Ursula wondered when anger and revenge would surface. Out of all the introspection had come a sudden enhanced sense of self-worth, a conviction that the new condition of her life should bring not the bitterness, weeping and wailing that had occupied other friends in similar circumstances, but a release from the routines she had chosen. She would put herself first. She had been surprisingly decisive in the last two days. A telephone call to London proved that their jolly bank-manager was keen to facilitate a treasured client's business venture. This friendly chat had also revealed the astonishing health of their joint account and the ease with which these funds could be switched to her own modest money-box. The golden debit card, too, could be, and was, plundered to add to a dazzling high pyramid of gold in her own untouchable account. Ursula recalled that the house was held jointly in their names.


In the number of scenarios for her return she shocked herself at the obscene language she was considering. She tried other versions. 'You look quite exhausted, David. Did you manage to fit everything in? What about Frances the Journalist? She's so very keen to fill as many columns as she can when she has the opportunity. And Lola? Not neglected I hope?'. And the preparation for the call to Frances, 'Did you have a good time, Frances? Did you manage to see much of David? Only a little? Saw only a little what?' And the confrontation,'David, I've made the spare room up for you. I think it's time we both moved on. I'm returning to Venice in a day or so - Oh! I didn't tell you. I spent four days in Venice while you were away. Had a very special time. Found a very special friend'.


From the train's window she saw a low, long cottage that turned into a cowshed at its far end. A man in a beret was leaning in the doorway gazing up at the passing carriages. His wife in a blue apron was banging out a saucepan against a post, chickens about her feet. A dark copse rushed up towards the train and raced away again towing a country house into the middle foreground and then its swimming pool. A woman in a deck-chair reading, a naked young boy standing at the pool edge. She looked at her recently manicured hands and the subtle opalescent sheen of the nail varnish. The man sitting opposite her in the train speeding towards Paris and London smiled and she could see he admired her in the new Missoni outfit. She removed her new, ludicrously expensive sunglasses and smiled back.