The Blasphemer

by Nigel Farndale

  Noticing a tingling sensation in his urethra, Daniel looked down and became mesmerized by a creeping dark patch around the crotch of his shorts. The image of his father’s face flashed in his head again. The smell of Mint Imperials. The plane slewed left and right. It was soundless. Powerless. They were no longer at an angle to the horizon.

  Silver shards of glass silently filled the air. The left wing clipped the surface of the water and the plane started its violent cartwheel. This, Daniel thought, is it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE ICE RINK IN FRONT OF THE TEMPERATE HOUSE AT KEW WAS, TO Martha, a sanctuary. When she skated here she could forget about insulin, about her condition, about what made her different from the other girls. With each graceful sweep of her blades she was able to slough it all off. From the moment her parents had driven away to Heathrow two days earlier, she had been lobbying her grandparents to bring her here. Though they always found the botanical gardens too crowded on a Saturday, and resented having to pay for the skating on top of their senior citizen’s admission fee, they could hardly refuse. It was a short distance from their house. But they did qualify their capitulation: they couldn’t stay long. They were worried that Martha’s blood sugar levels would drop if she exerted herself too much in the biting cold. The weather forecast that morning had predicted that this would be one of the coldest November days on record, with temperatures dipping as low as -15 in parts of the north. Even London was expected to be -10 by late afternoon, colder than Moscow. It was afternoon now.

  As Amanda strode off to the cafeteria for two glasses of mulled wine and a mug of hot chocolate, Philip watched his granddaughter describe lazy figures of eight in the ice. Though she was easy to spot in her pink, fur-lined coat, a freezing fog was descending and every time she disappeared behind other skaters at the far side of the rink, Philip’s eyes watered as he strained to see her. His breath was mushrooming visibly in front of him and, though he was wearing a Russian Ushanka with the flaps down, and an Aran sweater under a padded wax jacket, the wind chill was reaching his bones. To try to warm up, he stamped his feet and clapped his hands. Beside him was a Finding Nemo rucksack he was looking after for Martha. Because it was on his deaf side, he could not hear the mobile ringing inside it.

  When Martha scraped to a halt in front of him, sending up a spray of ice, he tried not to show he was shivering. Amanda returned and handed Martha the hot chocolate. The child cupped it in her hands for a few seconds before taking a sip. As it was too hot to drink, she handed it back and, after asking her grandparents to watch, began to spin, bringing in her arms to turn faster, obeying the laws of physics as explained to her by her father. After thirty seconds she slowed down and, with a wobble and a backward glance, set off on another lap, her skates hissing as they bit. When she had not reappeared after a minute, Philip became anxious. He checked his watch. Her next injection was due in half an hour. He began walking stiffly to the other end of the rink. Another skater, he could see, was trying to help Martha to her feet, but she was limp in his arms. Two rink marshals in jesters’ hats appeared and carried her towards the pavilion. By the time Philip was able to shoulder his way in, a small crowd had formed. Martha was having convulsions. ‘She’s with me,’ he said. ‘She’s diabetic.’ He tipped the contents of the rucksack on to the floor, saw some glucose tablets underneath Martha’s velvety toy turtle and put one on her tongue. Her undulations slowed and stopped. Philip held her mouth closed as the tablet dissolved. Flecks of saliva, he could see, had caught on her chapped lips. He pressed two fingers against her wrist and found the thread of her pulse. After a minute her eyes opened. They were dilated but she was soon able to focus them. ‘Did I have another hypo, Grampy?’ she asked blearily. Bubbles of saliva were appearing in the corner of her mouth.

  Philip nodded and gave her a reassuring smile. He found her medical pouch among the scattered items on the floor and deftly administered a dose of insulin. Amanda joined them and gathered up the rest of the contents of the rucksack. The mobile was ringing again. One of the marshals, a man with windburnt cheeks and a pierced tongue, lifted Martha up and led the way to a small first aid room, backing against its swing door to open it. The bells on his hat jingled as he laid her down on a narrow stretcher bed. This made her grin. Amanda looked at the message on the screen of Martha’s iPhone, touched it and held it to her ear. A look of confusion crossed her face. She tapped the message again, held the mobile to Philip’s good ear and said. ‘Listen to this. The message says it’s from Nancy, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COLD WATER WAS PRESSING AGAINST DANIEL’S CHEST AS HE CAME round. He could not work out where he was. When he tried to focus his eyes, he felt a searing pain between them, behind his sockets. Pain. It meant he had passed through death; that he was still alive. He focused on the empty space where the seat in front had been, the seat his head must have slammed against. To get his bearings he turned to Nancy. She was no longer there either. In panic he turned his head to his right and saw her slumped inertly forward in her seat, her profile hidden behind her hair, the water up to her neck. Daniel looked up and immediately his sense of disorientation deepened. The other passengers were upside down, hanging from the ceiling, suspended by their seat belts. The plane must have flipped over. Their double seat must have been wrenched from its bolted moorings and flung through the air to the opposite side of the cabin. Some of the passengers appeared to be screaming – their mouths were open and their faces contorted, but he could not hear their screams. One of them unclipped his belt and fell, landing with a splash in the water. Daniel did not hear the splash either. His ears were deaf with ringing.

  The water.

  It was over his mouth now. In his nostrils. Lungs. As he gasped, he swallowed; as he swallowed he lost his self-control. His balled fist was punching at his seat-belt buckle. He lifted its latch and it unlocked. By pulling his knees up, he was able to free his feet. With his eyes open underwater he could make out a blur of red light above an emergency exit.

  It was now that he climbed over Nancy.

  With a scrum-half’s hand-off that flattened her nose and dragged her lips sideways, he pushed her cheek and jaw into the headrest. It was a reflex, visceral action slowed down by the water; an adrenal moment they would both replay time and again, always with the same damning frame frozen in time.

  In a confusion of elbows, knees and grabbing hands, he half swam, half dragged himself towards the red light and once there, counter-intuitively yanked the lever down rather than up, following a direction arrow. As water was on both sides of the door, it opened easily. His lungs were burning. The urge to breathe was excruciating. Only a sphincter muscle at the top of his windpipe was keeping the water out, the drowning reflex that buys the body a few more seconds. It was enough time to get him to the surface and to suck hard for air. Painful, jagged gasps. A fit of coughing began. Salt water and mucus were stinging his synapses, grating his throat, choking him.

  He looked around. The seaplane was on its back underwater, its floats on the surface, its tail pitched up slightly, its one good engine emitting steam. It had come to rest on a reef of coral.

  Only then did Daniel think of Nancy. Remembered pushing past her as she struggled with her belt. Felt her warm face under the heel of his hand.

  He dived back down. The cabin was almost underwater, the only air pocket in the tail. He refilled his lungs here. Got his bearings. Saw other passengers thrashing around and, as if performing in some grotesque ballet, pushing past each other in slow motion to get to the exit. Susie was trying frantically to open her lap belt like a car seat belt, pressing rather than pulling its latch. Daniel flicked it open for her as he half swam, half walked past. The water was clear enough to make out Nancy’s shape. She was still strapped into their double seat, still struggling to unclip her belt.

  An icy thought came to Daniel as he swam and pulled himself towards her: how was she managing to hold her breath? Now he saw: she
had pulled the hose of an oxygen mask up between her legs from the ceiling – now the floor – and was holding the mask tight against her face. The trickle of air must have been enough. Clever Nancy. Good thinking, Nancy. He felt for her belt and tugged at it, but the clasp had buckled in the impact. And the seat was too heavy to drag across the ceiling. Feeling something sharp against his leg, he reached down. His fingers had closed around a shard of broken glass. It snapped off and, in the same motion, Daniel hooked it under Nancy’s belt and began sawing. A wisp of blood snaked lazily up from his fingers, but the webbing would not give.

  Nancy grabbed Daniel’s right shoulder. He looked up. With the mask on, she looked as she had when he first saw her from the dentist’s chair. She was making a stabbing motion with her fist. Understanding the meaning of this, Daniel lifted the belt as far off her as he could and tried to force the point of the glass through the canvas material. It would not give. He looked around and, though his vision was blurred, he saw a red light winking above a glass case that would have been above the entrance to the cockpit, but was now below it. The light was coming from a long, orange torch mounted on the wall. The glass case, he could see, contained a first aid pouch. He kicked the glass in, unzipped the pouch and rifled through the plasters, rolls of white bandage, safety pins, cotton buds and antiseptic creams, until he found what he was looking for, a pair of scissors. His lungs were crushing him and he had to return to the air pocket. After taking a gulp of air, he swam back across to Nancy. His second attempt to cut through the lap belt left a small rip and, after this, it cut easily. It was Nancy’s turn to push past him, her actions slower in the drag of water. She was, he noticed, holding one arm across her ribcage. They had to climb over a body on the way out and, as he looked down, Daniel realized abstractly that he had lost one of his sandals.

  On the surface, neither could speak. Nancy was coughing. Daniel’s throat was raw from the salt water. Both were drawing splintery breaths. Their life jackets were uninflated. The sea boiled briefly then went still as the remaining engine cut out and the water stopped churning. Two other passengers, the tall black man and the old woman with the rosary and the nosebleed, had also made it out and were bobbing on the surface. Susie appeared, surfacing like a mini-submarine that had blown its buoyancy tanks. She breached the oil-marbled water as far as her narrow hips before flopping back down, her hand still on the ripcord of her life jacket. There were small lacerations on her face, presumably caused by flying glass.

  ‘You all right, Nancy?’ Daniel said between gasps for breath.

  She did not respond.

  ‘Nancy! Listen to me! Look at me! Can you hear me?’ She raised her head and looked at him but her eyes were distant, unfocused. She must be concussed, Daniel thought.

  ‘Nancy?’ he repeated. ‘Nancy? Nancy? Are you all right?’

  This time Nancy looked directly at him, and there was an unfamiliar coldness in her eyes. The print of his hand, the feel of it, still lingered on her face, as it would in her memory.

  A pulse of guilt passed through Daniel. He had to look away. In that moment, he knew nothing could ever be the same between them. ‘I’m going back down to see if I can help the others,’ he said.

  Once inside the plane, he swam towards the tail again where a couple of passengers were standing with their heads in the air pocket. As he stood up, too, he felt hands groping around at his feet. He pulled the passenger up by his dreadlocks, the only thing he could grab hold of. It was Greg, gagging and trying to catch his breath. Their faces were so close they were almost touching.

  ‘Wait here,’ Daniel said, feeling his way along the overhead – underhead – lockers until he found the one with his bag in it. He dragged it back to the air pocket, swimming with one arm, and unzipped it. The fins and snorkel were still on the top, but he had to pull out some clothes to locate his diving mask. ‘Listen. The exit is over there,’ he said, pointing as he put the mask on. ‘You’re going to have to go underwater to get to it. Follow me. You first, Greg.’ At the exit, Daniel pushed Greg towards the surface. He guided the other two passengers to the surface, cupping his hand under the chin of one of them. It was a middle-aged man he hadn’t noticed on the plane. The man was semi-conscious and had a deep gash on his arm.

  Back on the surface, Daniel saw Nancy had inflated her life vest and was helping the old woman with hers, topping it up by blowing into a valve. ‘This one needs mouth-to-mouth, Nancy,’ he said, pushing the middle-aged man towards one of the plane’s upturned floats. Nancy pulled the man towards her, turned him over, pinched his nose and began resuscitating him.

  Daniel dived down again and headed for the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot were dead. Both had their mouths open as if they had died mid-conversation. The windscreen was smashed: that was where the glass had come from. There was a locker that contained a bright orange flare launcher and an open box of what looked like twelve-bore cartridges. Daniel stuffed the flare launcher under his belt, filled his pockets with cartridges and gathered up the antiseptic cream and two sodden rolls of bandage that had sunk to the floor. Back in the cabin he saw a woman was still strapped in her chair, her hair fanning out gracefully around her in the water. Though this passenger was clearly dead, Daniel unclipped her belt and she drifted for a few yards before coming to rest against a man’s body that was trailing blood from a big-mouthed stomach wound. There were plastic bottles, pillows, newspapers and items of clothing floating silently around him. A magazine, too: the National Geographic.

  A creaking sound made him look up. The plane was shifting position. Daniel retrieved his fins from where he had dropped them and swam through the exit door, seconds before the nose of the plane broke away and began sinking down the steep side of the coral. He realized that the plane’s landing floats had buckled in the crash and had been almost completely ripped away from the fuselage. The metal skin of the wing he was nearest to was badly pockmarked. What remained of the plane looked like a missile had hit it.

  Daniel inflated his life vest. He was shaking convulsively and struggling to catch his breath. It took him several attempts to do a head count. There had been thirteen passengers when he had done this during the flight. Now he counted eight. Eight survivors. That meant there were five dead, seven including the pilots. More were alive than not; that was something. Aviation fuel, he now realized, was making the seawater so heavy and sticky it was almost impossible to swim in it. When those passengers not clinging to the upturned floats began swimming towards them, they panicked because of their sudden heaviness; some, their faces having aged years in a few minutes, were clearly in shock, others were sobbing and groaning. Susie, her face tattooed with trickles of blood from her cuts, was blowing the whistle on her life jacket. She looked around, stopped blowing and said to no one in particular: ‘Why didn’t the others get out?’

  Daniel knew the answer. He had read about it. Given the slightest opportunity, certain people will always find a way to safety. They are known as ‘life survivors’ and they make up 8 per cent of the population. Twelve per cent won’t escape under almost any circumstance. They lose the will to live, resign themselves to death, succumb to ‘behavioural inaction’.

  So now I know. I am a life survivor. And life survivors save themselves and leave their loved ones to die.

  ‘You’d better come and hang on to these,’ he said to Susie. Although the upturned floats were big enough for all the passengers to lie on, they were slippery and, because their undersides were a few feet above the surface of the water, they were hard to climb up on. Two passengers managed it, and they helped a couple more get a purchase. The others remained bobbing in the water, their hands on the floats.

  ‘Oughta be a rescue plane on its way,’ the tall black man said, revealing himself to be from the Deep South. ‘I heard the pilots giv’n outa mayday call.’

  Everyone looked up and searched the empty air.

  ‘What happened to the pilots?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Didn’t make it.’ Dan
iel hardly recognized his own voice – he normally hated euphemism. ‘Anyone injured?’

  Several voices answered at once:

  ‘Ma ribs feel bust.’

  ‘Don’t know. Think so. There’s a pain in my knees.’

  ‘Can’t breathe properly.’

  ‘My wrist …’

  Daniel looked at his own hand. The bleeding had more or less stopped, but it was shaking. He also had a headache. Apart from these minor complaints, he appeared to be the only passenger without an injury. He circumnavigated the float so that he was facing Nancy, who was still in the water. Bruises were showing on her face. ‘You OK?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Think I’ve broken my collarbone,’ she whispered.

  Daniel felt helpless, unmanned. Remembering the flares he had recovered, he tried to work out how to fire one off.

  ‘Don’t waste them,’ Nancy said quietly as she checked her watch, a square-faced Longines Daniel had given her for Christmas. ‘It’s going to take a while for a helicopter to get here from the islands.’ She shook her wrist and held the watch to her ear. ‘Must have stopped when we hit the water.’ She took the watch off, leaving an imprint of the strap on her skin, shook it again and strapped it back on.

  Over the next hour and a half, a shadow of silence stole over the survivors, broken by occasional questions.

  ‘What about sharks?’

  ‘Should we fire off a flare now?’

  ‘I’m so cold. Is anyone else cold?’

  ‘There’s a lot of blood in the water. Won’t it attract sharks?’

  ‘I’m a lay preacher,’ the middle-aged man said carefully. ‘If anyone wants to make peace with God, I’ll say a prayer with them.’

  ‘Hey!’ Greg shouted, before anyone could answer. He was pointing at the old woman who had had the rosary beads. She was a hundred feet away, having drifted in the strong current, the light on her vest flashing.