After three weeks in Bahrain and with at least another to go, Dina was tired, very tired.
The hotel was luxurious, the job was going well, she’d be finished on schedule, but she was tired of eating on her own every night and climbing into a huge lonely bed.
She’d been amused to realise that the waiters in the restaurant had mistaken her for a high-class prostitute, cruising the hotel restaurant and bar for a customer. They’d been polite, but cool. Once they’d got it that she was in Bahrain working on an important project their attitude had swiftly changed. Instead of being shunted into a corner table, she was given a table of her own on a raised dais at the side of the dining room where she could people watch whilst she ate her solitary dinner.
This particular evening Dina looked forward to a quiet meal and an early night. She’d talked to her husband, Frank, earlier, catching him before he headed off to bed. She’d pictured him sitting in their living room, gazing out at the rain filled skies, whilst she had looked out on yet another stunning sunset over the city. It had been reassuring to know that he was missing her, just as much as she missed him.
Walking into the restaurant she was surprised to see a man sitting at ‘her’ table. Sighing, she was relieved to see that the table next to him was vacant and swiftly made her way there.
The man exchanged brief smiles with her as they placed their orders with the waiter.
“Hi, are you on your own too?” he asked as they sipped their drinks, waiting for their starters.
“Yes, I’ve been here 3 weeks but I expect to be finished in a week then I can go home.”
“Where’s home, do you mind if I ask?”
“England, I live on the South Coast. I’m here installing a computer system for my company.”
He looked impressed.
“I’m from the States, guess my accent gives that away. I’m here selling Boeing engines to the Arabs. To tell the truth, I should have been at a reception tonight, but I just couldn’t face going. I miss my family and I’m ready to go home. Do you have a family at home?”
Dina told him about her husband and her daughter who would be getting married in the near future. “I know what you mean, I miss my family too. Travel is good, I love my job but you miss out on so much. How many children do you have?”
They chatted a while and he told her about his wife and four sons whilst they ate their starters.
“I tried to keep them separate from my work, we didn’t live on the base. I wanted them to have as normal a life as possible, given what I did. I used to love walking in the woods with them when they were younger.” His voice trailed off.
“Look, I hate eating on my own, do you mind if I join you?”
Dina introduced herself as he moved across to her table. He seemed like a nice enough man, perhaps a decade older than herself, medium height, pleasant face, when he smiled it revealed a gap between his two front teeth. He shook hands with her.
“Nice to meet you Dina. I’m Pete. Do you work away from home a lot?”
“Yes, I’ve worked in a few places round the world. I get looked after well, but it’s funny you never really get used to it. How about you? Does your work take you round the world too?”
“In a manner of speaking. It certainly used to. Not so much now.”
He leaned back in his chair and gave her a quizzical look.
“You’re a very unusual woman Dina.”
Dina’s heart sank. He’d seemed like a really nice family man, was he about to come on to her? How was she going to make an exit without having her main course? Before she could say anything, he continued “most people ask me about the moon.”
“The moon?” she echoed, perplexed.
“You don’t know who I am do you?” he asked with a grin. She shook her head. “I’m Pete Conrad, I was the third man to walk on the moon. Apollo 12. That’s all most people want to talk to me about. It’s kinda why I didn’t want to go to the reception tonight. I find myself saying the same thing over and over. No, it’s not really soft and queasy. Yes, I did say ‘Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me’ for a bet.”
Seeing her raised eyebrows he continued, “An Italian reporter was convinced that Neil was told what to say when he stepped on to the moon. When he said ‘one small step for a man’ he was referring to the step down from the lunar module. Neil’s a lot taller than me, it was a small step for him. I told this reporter what I would say when I stepped down from the module.” He shook his head and grinned “she never did pay me.”
Dina in turn leaned back in her chair as she studied the man sitting across from her. She would never have guessed by his appearance or his manner that he was a world-famous astronaut.
“I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like.”
“It’s incredible. I’d been up on the Gemini programme before Apollo 12. We beat the Russians record for space endurance by 3 days and set the record for the highest orbit of the earth. That was something else. Looking down at the earth from 853 miles high. It was like looking at the globe you see in your classroom. I remember saying to Houston they could relax, the world really was round. I got letters from the Flat Earth Society telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about!” He laughed as he recounted the anecdote.
“It sounds amazing” murmured Dina, fascinated and not wanting to interrupt.
“Yep. Apollo 12 was interesting. The flight was extremely normal for the first 36 seconds, then after that it got very interesting. We got hit by lightning twice, blew some circuits. I told Houston that perhaps we should do more all-weather testing! Anyhow they talked us through fixing the circuits and we went to the moon.” His gaze seemed to be focused faraway as he quietly continued “it’s incredible, almost impossible to describe. You see the earth getting smaller and the moon getting bigger. The stars getting bigger and brighter. The Milky Way, so bright and so very beautiful.”
“It was a blast, I was there with two of my navy pals. We had a lot more wriggle room than Neil had as I’m much smaller.” He was quiet for a moment before he continued with a wistful tone in his voice. “When you’re up there, it’s hard to describe, you realise there’s something so much bigger than all of us down here. It makes you wonder why we can’t all be a lot nicer to each other. It’s difficult to find anything else that challenges you after walking on the moon. One of us got God, another found the bottle.”
“And you? What did you do?”
“Oh I went up to the Skylab, there was a bit of a problem there so we did a couple of walks and got it fixed.”
Dina was astonished, he said it as if it was nothing more than fixing up his car or motorbike.
“Spacewalks?”
“Yeah. I ride my motorbikes now. I love riding fast, it’s exhilarating and gives me a kick. Not quite as exhilarating as going up in a space rocket, but hey, life on earth’s pretty good.”
The rest of the evening passed by quickly and Dina wished Pete goodnight. Her head was full of their conversation. When she got back to her room she couldn’t wait to tell Frank and picked up the phone to call him.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Why are you calling?” he asked her drowsily as he looked at the alarm clock.
“Frank, you’ll never guess who I just had dinner with.”
“I don’t bloody care who you had dinner with” came the swift reply “it’s 4 o clock in the morning. Bugger off and let me get back to sleep.”
Dina never saw Pete Conrad again, and tucked the memory of her dinner with him away in the back of her mind.
She was reminded of it some 15 years later as she was scanning through the news headlines Third man to walk on the moon dies in motorbike accident.
“Look Frank,” she showed him the newspaper “it’s the astronaut I had dinner with remember, when I was in Bahrain, he’s died.”
Although they’d only been strangers who had shared one evening together, she’d never forgotten him and how he wished we could all be nicer to each other.
Dina remembered how he’d talked of something so much bigger than all of us and she wondered if he was somewhere high above the earth, looking down, maybe thinking ‘This is familiar, I’ve been up here before.’