Strangers in Company Read Online Free

“Oh,
really
, Mrs. Frenche, you must know I don’t.” And, with a lookMarian would learn to know all too well, “Anyway, what about you? Have you got the prescription for yours?”
    â€œOh—” Marian was dumbstruck. The situation was slipping hopelessly out of her control, and she could feel only sympathy for Mr. Cairnthorpe when they came on him, standing helplessly among a red-labelled crowd in the lobby. Other tours seemed to be marching resolutely away in all directions. Only Cairnthorpe, quite evidently, had not the slightest idea what to do.
    â€œSomeone is to meet us here,” he was explaining it, obviously, for the second time, to a large, anxious lady in a floppy hat, presumably acquired in a moment of madness on a previous holiday. Hovering behind her was the only young man of the party, unmistakably her son, though features sullen in her plump face were surprisingly handsome in his young one, even shadowed as it was with lack of sleep and an incipient beard.
    â€œFancy!” Stella had noticed him, too, but not, by the sound of it, with approval.
    â€œLadies and gentlemen.” Cairnthorpe managed to raise his voice above the growing hubbub of anxious questions. “We’re sure to be met. Let’s all keep together, please, and wait here.”
    They murmured a little, tiredly, but stood around him, exhausted, quiescent. “Insufficiently briefed,” said a brisk Civil Service, female voice behind Marian, and wondering if Mr. Cairnthorpe had heard, she found herself thinking about their fellow tourists. She looked at the tired faces, extra-pale in the garish light of the lobby. Mostly women, of course. A few middle-aged men here and there, most of them very much occupied with wives. A honeymoon couple, and, “poor things” she was thinking, when an unmistakably American voice spoke up from the far side of the group.
    â€œIt looks to me as if everyone else has gone outside.” Marian could not see the speaker, but he sounded as tired as she felt. “Shouldn’t we?”
    â€œWell?” Cairnthorpe hesitated and was lost. The party moved of its own volition towards the doors and he couldonly follow, muttering something unintelligible, but, Marian was afraid, with the word “Americans” in it.
    It was good to be out in cool, retsinated air again and better still to see a row of buses lined up with their backs to the airport steps. It was perceptibly lighter now, and Marian could see the immaculate golden coiffure of the uniformed girl who came briskly forward to meet them. “There you are at last.… I was beginning to wonder.… Oh!” She had picked out Cairnthorpe from the crowd.
    â€œI’m a stand-in, I’m afraid.” Not for the first time, Marian felt sorry for him as he launched into the now-familiar explanation. But beside her, Stella twitched with impatience and muttered something under her breath.

Chapter Two
    Full dawn broke as the coach hauled its exhausted load of passengers towards the city. There was a sudden, excited babble: “There. There it is.” One clear voice: “It’s just like the postcards.” Marian had missed seeing the Acropolis. She closed her eyes again, beyond caring, then opened them as the microphone at the front of the coach rasped into life. The blonde Greek girl who had taken charge of them was standing up, swaying gracefully to the movement of the coach. She spoke clearly, in her accented, fluent English. There was a small change of plan.… Mercury Tours was so sorry, but the hotel advertised was not yet open.… They were going to a better one, the Alexander, in Alexander Avenue.… Very quiet, very select, very restful.
    â€œWhich means several miles from the city centre.” A voice Marian had heard before, the one that had found Cairnthorpe “insufficiently briefed.”
    â€œI knew it was a mistake to come on the first tour of the