Chapter 15: The Stowaway

Chapter 15: The Stowaway

It was almost an hour since Tanya had left Mel. She remembered his words: ‘It will give me an excuse to come and see you again.’

She knew that he had to go to a party with his wife, but she hoped that he would come and see her before he left.

The ‘excuse’ that he had spoken of was his interest in the message received by Tanya while in the coffee shop. The stowaway was with Tanya now. A little old lady from San Diego. She was wearing a black dress, and looked like somebody’s grandmother on her way to church.

‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’ Tanya asked her.

‘Oh yes, my dear. Quite a few times.’

She sat there looking quite untroubled by her conscience, Tanya wondered if many people realized how many stowaways there were on planes these days. Probably not. Airlines tried to keep quiet about it.

The old lady’s name was Mrs Ada Quonsett, and she would certainly have reached New York if she had not made one mistake. She had told her secret to another passenger, who had told an air hostess.

‘All right,’ Tanya said. ‘I think you’d better tell me all about it.’

‘Well you see,’ the old lady began, ‘My husband’s dead, and I have a married daughter in New York. Sometimes I get lonely, and I want to visit her. So I go to Los Angeles and get on a plane to New York.’

‘Without a ticket?’

Mrs Quonsett looked surprised. ‘Oh my dear, I couldn’t possibly afford a ticket. It’s difficult enough for me to find the money to get to Los Angeles on the bus.’

‘Do you pay for the bus ticket?’

‘Oh, yes. They always check the tickets on the bus.’

‘Why don’t you fly from San Diego?’ Tanya asked.

‘I’m afraid, my dear, they know me there.’

‘You mean you’ve been caught at San Diego?’

‘Yes,’ the old lady said quietly.

‘Have you been a stowaway on many different airlines?’

‘Oh yes, but I like Trans America best.’

Tanya wanted to laugh. She could hardly believe her ears. ‘Why do you like Trans America, Mrs Quonsett?’ she asked.

‘Well, they’re always so nice to me in New York. After I’ve stayed with my daughter for a week or two and I want to go home, I go to the airline offices and tell them.’

‘You tell them the truth? That you came to New York as a stowaway?’

‘Yes, my dear, of course.’

Tanya was amazed. ‘And what happens then?’

The old lady looked surprised. ‘Nothing happens. They send me home. Sometimes they get a bit angry and tell me not to do it again, but that isn’t much, is it?’

‘No,’ Tanya said, ‘it certainly isn’t.’

The really unbelievable thing, she thought, was that it was all true. Airlines knew that it often happened. They also knew that it cost more to delay a flight in order to check the passengers than to allow an occasional stowaway to travel free.

‘You’re nice,’ Mrs Quonsett said. ‘You’re a lot younger than most of the airline people I’ve met. You must be about twenty- eight.’

‘Thirty-seven.’ Tanya said sharply.

‘Well, you look very young. Perhaps it’s because you’re married.’

‘Stop it,’ Tanya told her. ‘It isn’t going to help you.’

‘But you are married.’

‘I was. I’m not now.’

‘What a pity. You could have beautiful children with red hair like your own.’

Red, Tanya thought, not grey - the grey that she had noticed that morning. She had a child, anyway. Her daughter was at home now, sleeping.

‘You’ve broken the law,’ she told Mrs Quonsett. ‘I suppose you realize that you could be charged?’

‘But I won’t, will I?’ replied the old lady, smiling. ‘The airline won’t do anything. They never do.’

Tanya knew that it was true.

‘You’ve had a lot of free travel from Trans America, Mrs Quonsett,’ she said. ‘Now I’d like you to help us a little.’

‘I’ll be glad to if I can.’

She asked Mrs Quonsett to tell her how she got on to flights without a ticket. The old lady knew a surprising number of tricks.

When she had finished, Tanya said: ‘You seem to have thought of everything!’

‘My husband taught me to be thorough,’ Mrs Quonsett replied. ‘He was a teacher, and an extremely thorough man himself.’

The telephone rang. It was the Transport Manager.

‘Have you spoken to the old woman yet?’ he asked Tanya.

‘Yes. She’s with me now.’

‘Did she tell you anything useful?’

‘Yes, I’ll send you a report. And I need a ticket to Los Angeles for her. We’ll send her back tonight.’

‘I hate to put her before all the honest passengers,’ the manager said,’ but I suppose we’ll have to.’

The old lady had one more important thing to tell Tanya.

‘It’s best not to take a direct flight,’ she said. ‘They get rather full, and then they give all the passengers seat numbers. It’s better to take an indirect flight.’

‘What do you do at stops?’

‘I pretend to be asleep. Usually they don’t trouble me.’

‘But this time you were found.’

‘Only because of that man who was sitting next to me.’ Mrs Quonsett said bitterly. ‘I told him that it was a secret, but he told an air hostess. You can’t trust anyone these days.’

‘Mrs Quonsett,’ Tanya said. ‘I expect you heard what I said on the phone a few minutes ago. We’re sending you back to Los Angeles tonight.’

‘Yes, my dear, I thought you would. Just let me go and get a cup of tea first, and I’ll be ready to go.’

‘Oh no!’ Tanya shook her head. ‘You’re not going anywhere alone.’

She asked a young agent called Peter Coakley to stay with Mrs Quonsett until her flight left.

‘Don’t let her get away from you for a second,’ she told him. ‘And be careful! She’s full of little tricks.’

The old lady took Peter Coakley’s arm. ‘You’re rather like my daughter’s husband,’ she said. ‘He’s a good-looking young man, too, but older than you of course. What nice people work for Trans America!’ She looked at Tanya. ‘Some of them are nice, I mean,’ she said.

Tanya felt sure that she had not seen the last of Mrs Ada Quonsett. Then she started to think about Mel Bakersfeld again, and wondered if he would come and see her.