Walking on Air

by Christina Jones

  And then suddenly Kieran was throwing open the door and leaping out into the darkness and disappearing.

  ‘Looks like he’s changed his mind,’ Reuben had said laconically over his shoulder. ‘Probably be at home with the wife and kids before daybreak. So? Where do you want to go?’

  And Billie hadn’t known. Because there was nowhere to go. She didn’t even know where she was. Everything she owned was in the little flat in Notting Hill – and that belonged to Kieran. She’d never go there again . . . And because she was crying for being a fool . . .

  ‘OK then.’ Reuben had started the cab again. ‘Bit of a nasty night to be hanging around. I’ll drop you off at the Four Pillars for tonight until you get yourself sorted out.

  And he had, and then she’d still sat there in the back of that cab outside the hotel because all her money was in Kieran’s car . . . and Reuben had given her a fifty-pound note which she’d thrown back at him in disgust because she thought he was paying for her to spend the night with him. He’d laughed, nastily, and stomped out of the cab and into the hotel and came back saying he’d paid for a single room and full board for two days and he’d be back to see her in the morning.

  She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t even undressed. She had no clothes. No toothbrush. No self-respect.

  She hadn’t even eaten the breakfast that Reuben had paid for because she felt so sick. Then Reuben had turned up, and, convinced that he was going to be in charge of a call-girl racket or something equally squalid, she’d refused to see him.

  So he’d come up to her room, with a pair of jeans and an oversized sweater and a pair of trainers which were too small, and said if she’d like to work off her debt – and if she had a driving licence – he was short of cabbies . . .

  Billie sniffed at the memory. She’d been so bloody grateful. And scared. It was just before Christmas, and she’d already told her parents she’d be working and staying in London – she’d simply imagined she and Kieran would be spending it together . . . She couldn’t go home . . . Not to her parents, or Devon, or the Argus. She’d chucked that up simply to be with Kieran, telling everyone that she’d decided to be a nanny for a few months, just for a change . . . Her parents had been sorry to see her go, but proud of her for striking out in a different direction in London . . .

  She simply couldn’t live with herself, couldn’t accept what she’d become. What an idiot she’d been.

  So she’d agreed to work for Reuben until after Christmas, and he’d agreed to pay her bill at the Four Pillars, which would be deducted from her wages, until she’d sorted out what she wanted to do. Then days into the new year she’d seen Miranda’s advert for a flat-share and Amberley Hill had become her home and Reuben her employer and tormentor, because he knew.

  ‘Here!’ There was a sharp rap on the Granada’s window. ‘This isn’t a car park, right?’

  Startled, Billie opened the window. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said it isn’t a car park. Or are you a customer?’

  Billie blinked at the couple standing threateningly beside the Granada. Very New Age, with matching noserings and tattooed Celtic bands on their wedding fingers, they burrowed deep into the necks of their hand-crocheted ponchos and stared at her with suspicion. She opened the door and scrabbled out onto the sizzling concrete. The air rushed hotly into her throat. ‘Neither. That is, I’m not parking and I’m not a customer. I’m Billie Pascoe – I’ve just taken over this unit.’

  The male half of the couple blew a gap in a matching set of wispy moustache and beard, and parted his straggly hair. ‘Cool! We’d heard it’d been let – Sylv said – but we didn’t know who to.’ He grinned suddenly through the hair and held out his hand. ‘I’m Zia. Short for Zachariah, only it’s pretty run-of-the-mill to be Zach these days, so don’t make the mistake, right?’

  ‘Yes. No. Er – right.’ Billie shook hands. Zia seemed to emanate patchouli from his pores.

  ‘And this is Isla, my wife. It’s cool to be married, right?’

  Billie nodded again. ‘Right.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’re from number four, and Sylv says she’d heard from Fred’n’Dick at unit one that you’re into fashion. And if that’s right then we want you to stop, right? We don’t want no competition just next door, right?’

  ‘Right – er – no, wrong.’ Billie leaned against the door then leaped away again before the metal welded to her skin. ‘Look, it’s really nice to meet you – but I’m not into anything, least of all fashion. I promise I won’t be competition at all. I’m probably going to be doing something with cars.’

  ‘Not resprays?’ Isla had emerged from her layers, looking scandalised. ‘Nothing that would taint our stock?’

  ‘No. More – um – luxury limousines. Nothing even remotely to do with fashion. Or anything smelly.’

  ‘That’s cool then,’ Zia grinned. ‘You just having a look?’

  ‘Yes – I haven’t got the keys yet. But I’m really looking forward to moving in and painting and, well, just getting started. It’s all a bit of a mess in there.’

  ‘They all are to start with. It’s the worst time,’ Isla agreed. ‘You’ll be fine when you’re up and running. Do you want to come and see our place?’

  Billie didn’t particularly. She had the feeling that it would probably be a little goldmine like Sylvia’s. She was going to be a thorn between two ferociously flourishing floribundas. Zia and Isla, however, proved very persuasive, and following them into their warehouse, Billie found herself completely bedazzled by ingenuity for the second time.

  Zi-Zi’s – ‘Our initials, right?’ Zia explained proudly – was stacked practically to the ceiling with clothes. Not any old clothes, though. Oh, no. Zi-Zi’s was no jumble sale. Zia and Isla, they told her, travelled the country, buying unwanted clothes at house clearance sales, at charity bazaars in villages, from second-hand clothes shops, in fact from anywhere where anyone might once have worn something unusual or original.

  They got very good leads, right, Zia said, from the obituary columns in the broadsheets. Not like they were grave-robbing or nothing, right? But usually you found the grieving relatives were only too pleased to have the job taken away from them. Sad business, sorting out the clothes and that.

  They always went for genuine period stuff, Isla said quickly, apparently not as comfortable as her husband with this particular source of material. As old as they could get if possible, but they never turned down anything. Today is tomorrow’s yesterday, right?

  ‘Then,’ Zia explained, ‘we clean them ourselves – real delicate work, no solvents, right – and repair them, right

  Isla is magic with a needle – and sort them into decades. See . . .’

  Billie saw. There were outfits from Victorian times, roaring twenties Charleston dresses, forties austerity, fifties New Look, sixties hippy, and then on to more familiar recent fashions.

  Isla indicated a massive pile of cardboard containers stacked practically to the ceiling. ‘This is our overspill area. We’re terribly overcrowded because we’re hanging on to all the eighties power suits and the nineties stuff for a while. It won’t be long before there’s a revival, though.’

  Billie blinked at the row upon row of clothes; at the sumptuous array of colours and fabrics. It was a shopaholic’s nirvana. ‘And then, what? Do you sell them? Open up the shed and have like a huge rummage sale or something?’

  They smiled gently at such naivety.

  ‘Well, yes, some we sell. But not from here. The ambience wouldn’t be right. We’ve got stalls in a couple of the London antique markets, but no, the bulk of our business comes from hiring to wardrobe departments. Television, theatre – there’s a nonstop demand and a huge purse, especially from the independent television companies. Costume drama, period pieces – we dress ’em all. We just saw the niche and went for it, right?’

  Billie sighed heavily. Sylvia had found a gap in the market: Zia and Isla had slotted into a niche. And what the hell was she going to do? Wai
t for the right moment, the right opportunity, to come along? She might as well be waiting for the entrepreneurial equivalent of Godot.

  Chapter Four

  Profit and loss. Not enough of the former and far too much of the latter. Yawning, Jonah Sullivan switched off his computer in the empty office and pushed his chair away from the desk. The letters from the bank, all unanswered from the beginning of the month and neatly stacked to make them look less intimidating, kept drawing his eye. He scooped them up and thrust them out of sight at the bottom of the in-tray. It didn’t make him feel any better. Reaching over the mountain of paperwork he removed the latest stem missive and, making half a dozen neat creases, launched the vellum Concorde across the office.

  It landed with a satisfying clunk against the radiator. Grinning, Jonah went to retrieve it and gave it a second flight. This time it nose-dived into the waste-paper bin.

  Jonah regarded the crash-landing cynically, then fishing the paper plane from the bin, smoothed out the creases and added it to the pile on the desk. Estelle, Sullivanair’s secretary, PA and resident lifesaver, would deal with it when she came in later. She had a fudging answer held on file, especially for the bank. She only ever needed to alter the date.

  Two years he’d been running the business; two years, in which, according to the bank’s latest letter, he should be showing a healthy return on their investment. Two years in which, allowing for the massive rent and overheads and his first mad splurge on stock, Sullivanair should at least be breaking even.

  Jonah walked to the window and leaned his hands on the sill. Whiteacres Airport spread mistily in front of him, a mass of dying grass and cracked concrete in the pearly light of a late June morning. He loved it. All of it. True, it had been allowed to run to seed a bit, and the row of towering warehouses on the perimeter gave it a bit of a slum-clearance air, but it had given him his break; and he’d fondly imagined it would make him his fortune. It looked more likely now, unless the bank gave him more time, that it would bankrupt him.

  Long gone were the days when he’d thought he’d rival Ryanair – and any mention of EasyJet made him laugh at the irony. It was fine for Stelios Haji-Ioannou to buy thirty million pounds’ worth of planes at a time – he’d no doubt been blessed with the Greek equivalent of silver spoons and golden handshakes. Not for Stelios the RAF redundancy payoff, the remortgage on the family home, and a bank loan loaded with interest.

  Not, Jonah acknowledged sadly, that Sullivanair was ever likely to be in the same league as EasyJet: A single fifteen-year-old Shorts 330 doing private hire flights to small British airfields, and a Slingsby T67 Firefly, which went nowhere, were hardly comparable . . . But if this new scheme got underway, if the bank would just give him a few more months to realise Sullivanair’s potential, then it may well be a different story.

  Peeling off a handful of Post-it notes, he scribbled enigmatic messages and dabbed them in a yellow rash round the outside of the computer screen.

  ‘Thanks for doing a couple of extra hours today. Much appreciated – as always. Hope you had a great weekend. Mine was best forgotten so don’t ask.’

  ‘If the bank ring while I’m flying tell them I’m lost in space. That should please them. They seem to think I’ve got the same budget as NASA.’

  ‘I probably won’t be back in today. Once I’ve dropped off in Norwich, I’ll fly straight back, and meet up with Barnaby.’

  And buy the Stearman . . . maybe? Jonah laughed at the self-delusion. He knew there was no maybe about it. Even if Barnaby told him that the Boeing Stearman biplane was a heap of mouldering scrap he knew he’d buy it. It was the plane he’d always wanted. They didn’t become available very often – and never in England. Barnaby had apparently tracked down this one in the depths of Kentucky. Sod it. He’d always taken risks. His lifeblood was stirred by danger, by the excitement of uncertainties. He wouldn’t be a pilot, would he, if he didn’t thrive on thrills?

  And there was the old adage about speculating and accumulating – one had to come before the other. If the bank would just get off his back for five minutes, he could buy a second Shorts, and with two planes doing short-hauls he was pretty sure that the Sullivanair charter flights would be making a healthy profit by the end of the year. All he needed was to get the Slingsby operational and have it up and running as a pilot-trainer – then he’d have two strings to his bow. It was just that the money he’d salted away for a partial repayment of the bank loan, the purchase of another passenger plane, and the Slingsby repairs would be what he’d be using to buy the Stearman . . .

  He scribbled a final note. ‘If Claire should ring – tell her I’m orbiting in the stratosphere for the next six weeks at least.’ He grinned. Estelle would enjoy that bit. There was absolutely no love lost between the two women. ‘And don’t mention a word about Barnaby or the Stearman.’

  Pretty certain that he’d covered all eventualities, Jonah carefully checked in the mirror that his navy-blue uniform was relatively wrinkle-free, wishing, not for the first time, that he could just take the controls in his jeans and flying jacket. Ramming his peaked cap on to his head, he inspected his reflection again and winced. It was hardly Brian Trubshaw.

  The airfield was practically deserted at this hour. The small single-engined planes belonging to the Aeroclub were still covered with their waterproofs, and nothing larger was due in until later in the morning. Jonah, with his fifteen passengers all one-way bound for Norfolk, was the only pilot crossing the tarmac towards the air-traffic control tower. Still, it only June, not yet peak holiday time, hardly the busiest time of the year at Whiteacres . . .

  He shivered, a mixture of elation and anticipation, as he filed his flight plan with the controllers in the tower. The Stearman – his dream plane – was almost a reality. He could see it, restored in all its glory, its silver, purple and emerald-green livery matching that of the Shorts and the Slingsby. God – it would almost be a Sullivanair fleet!

  Jonah knew he was grinning inanely and stopped, concentrating on the more mundane but essential tasks of informing the ATC of his intended destination and route, estimated time of arrival in Norwich, and the Shorts’ SOB – aerospeak for souls on board: passengers and crew needed to be accounted for in case of an emergency. Then he leaped down the stairs three at a time and out of the building.

  The Shorts had been hauled from the hangar and Jonah spent a proud moment just staring. True, it wasn’t the prettiest plane in the world, being stubby-bodied and pointy-nosed, and its twin turboprops gave it a somewhat dated appearance. But it was steady, reliable, flew like a bird – and had Sullivan air emblazoned all over it.

  ‘Christ!’ Vinny, Jonah’s copilot, paused in his exterior checks and raised his eyebrows at Jonah as he walked towards the plane. ‘Something’s made you happy. Who is she?’

  Jonah again reined in his ear-to-ear beam. Vinny was unbelievably indiscreet and would immediately tell the entire aviation world about the Stearman via the shortwave radio. ‘It’s not a she. I’m just totally ecstatic about having to fly to East Anglia.’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Vinny resumed his walk round, making sure that there was nothing hanging off the Shorts, nothing loose, nothing dripping, no sinister puddles developing on the tarmac. ‘A half-empty planeload on a one-way ticket doesn’t usually make you smile. I’ll put money on it being a woman.’ The prospect of the Stearman was a million times better than any woman, Jonah thought as hauled himself up the half-dozen steps and into the plane. Steady, reliable – and faithful. Claire, his ex-wife, had been none of those things. Give him a plane any day. Planes didn’t break your heart.

  The empty Shorts, with its silver interior, offered thirty passengers seats in pairs on one side of the offset aisle, with a single row on the other, all immaculately upholstered in green and purple. When there were no passengers, Jonah and Vinny unbolted the seats and turned the plane into a cargo carrier. It had paid a lot of bills.

  Pam, the stewardess, was bent double in the minuscule gall
ey, unpacking cardboard boxes. There was no on-board catering as such – the Sullivanair flights w ere far too brief – but Jonah had always made sure that his passengers enjoyed a gratis drink and some sort of prepacked snack. Pam continually grumbled that she felt a marked affinity with cinema usherettes when she swayed between the seats doling out miniature bottles and cans and little Cellophane packages.

  ‘We’ve got a hell of a lot of peanuts in this load,’ Pam straightened up. ‘I thought we were going back to boiled sweets and gingernuts? Jesus, Jonah,’ she pulled a face, ‘you’ve done a deal on them, haven’t you?’

  ‘A bit,’ Jonah didn’t meet her eye. ‘Well, they were practically on their sell-by date. I got them for a song. And anyway, people got a bit sniffy about half a pint of gin accompanied by two ginger biscuits, as I remember.’

  ‘People’ll get a hell of a lot sniffier about stale peanuts,’ Pam chucked a dozen packets into a basket, ‘not to mention salmonella or listeria. And who exactly am I catering for today, then? Please tell me it’s something exciting.’

  ‘Fifteen middle-management trainees wasting their summer break on going to Norfolk for a bonding session. One of those paint-throwing things . . .’ Jonah shrugged. ‘And we’re flying back empty’. I’m collecting them in five days. Pretty mundane, I’m afraid. But Estelle took a booking from some Elvis Presley impersonators for later in the year – they might cheer you up.’

  ‘I hope so. At my age I don’t get that many offers’.

  Jonah laughed as he headed for the front of the plane. Old enough to be his mother, Pam had been a stewardess for over thirty years, having been rigorously trained in the good old days of BO AC. She’d fitted into Sullivanair’s far more relaxed regime with ease.