Walking on Air

by Christina Jones

  He finally elbowed his way out of Woolworths and stood beside the fibre-optic fountain, buffeted by people, ticking off his mental shopping list. It seemed intact. A child with a runny nose suddenly appeared alongside and sang two lines of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ at him in a threatening manner.

  ‘Bugger off.’

  ‘That ain’t festive.’ The child gave a powerful sniff. ‘You’re supposed to give me money.’

  ‘And you’re supposed to sing the whole thing, outside my front door, with a lantern, then wish me Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Do what?’ The sniffing was halted.

  ‘It’s traditional,’ Jonah sighed. ‘And then I give you a mince pie and –’

  ‘I don’t want a frigging mince pie!’ The child looked askance. ‘I want money.’

  ‘So do I,’ Jonah said cheerfully, moving away. ‘Happy Christmas!’

  ‘Tight bastard,’ the child spat venomously, before turning his choral mugging to another unwary passer-by.

  Jonah, still grinning, hurried towards the multistorey, his head once more in the clouds.

  The second Shorts and the Skyvan could be purchased towards the autumn, and then the Sullivanair expansion could begin. In the meantime, with Barnaby’s help and the Slingsby repairs underway, he could be up and running as an instructor by the summer, and now – with this amazing plan for the Stearman – when he could find a wingwalker, of course . . .

  He stopped and glanced at his watch. Shit. He was late. He had a scheduled flight at five o’clock, and he still had to drive back to his flat, wrap the presents, and get them to the post office in Whiteacres. Today was the final day for posting parcels. As always, he’d left everything until the last minute.

  He looked down at the collection of bulging carrier bags. He had wrapping paper, robin and holly Sellotape, and some appalling gift tags – the last on the shelves – of snowmen with squinty lascivious eyes. If the post office in Amberley Hill sold industrial-sized sheets of brown paper he supposed he could bundle everything up into one parcel, address it to his older sister, and let her play Santa’s elves or whatever it was his nephews and nieces believed in. Smiling at the brilliant simplicity of his scheme, he thrust his way through the mittens and bootees of the Evergreen Lunch Club who were trying to get into Mulligan’s, and headed for the post office.

  Wrapping twenty presents on a shelf which was six inches wide and varnished to death was, Jonah discovered, even more difficult than executing a tail slide. Eventually he managed it, and triumphantly tottered off to join the queue. Sadly, the queue snaked three times round the barriers and out of the door. Jesus! He’d never be back at Whiteacres in time for the flight to East Midlands Airport.

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ He tapped the black PVC shoulder of the woman in front of him. ‘I know this is a bit of a cheek, but I wondered –’

  She swung round and looked at him, her face turning almost as pink as the candyfloss plaits clipped on top of her head. ‘What? Oh – er – hi . . .’

  ‘Um – hi . . .’ Jonah frowned. Did he know her? No, he was sure he’d never seen her before. She looked like a Madonna, long-faced and soulful, and the pink plaits were strangely out of place with that sort of mournful beauty. ‘Yeah – um – sorry, but I’m really pressed for time and I wondered if I gave you my parcel and twenty pounds – um – whether you’d post it for me, please?’

  ‘What?’ The large eyes widened, then she smiled, the smile softening the angular features. ‘No sweat, doll. I’d be pleased to. Oh, but what about the change? It won’t cost twenty quid. Where shall I send the change to?’

  ‘Don’t bother – no, really. I’m just so grateful.’ Jonah paused. He seemed to have said something wrong. The smile had disappeared. ‘Put it in your favourite charity box – or have a drink on me. Whatever. And thanks again. You’re a life-saver . . .’

  As he elbowed through the queue, he turned to smile his thanks again. The Madonna in the pink plaits was staring at him, still unsmiling, cuddling his poorly wrapped parcel against her like a child.

  He’d filed his flight plan with the air-traffic controllers beneath a festoon of multicoloured streamers and hopeful mistletoe, and belted across the tarmac to the taxi way just as it was getting dark. He and Vinny had done the cockpit checks, exchanged the expected banter with Kev on the ground, and were teasing Pam unmercifully about today’s passengers.

  ‘Elvis impersonators – they should be all about the right age for you.’ Vinny sat back in his seat. ‘Mind you, the real one was dead before I was even born.’

  ‘Oh, me too.’ Jonah winked at Pam. ‘I don’t remember anything before the Rubettes.’

  Vinny raised his eyebrows. ‘Who? God, I didn’t realise you were that old – even Duran Duran were before my time.’

  Pam cuffed them both cheerfully round the ear. ‘And none of them could hold a candle to Elvis – so there. And don’t knock it. A whole planeload of beefy men in leather jackets will set me up for Christmas just nicely.’

  Vinny and Jonah groaned in unison. ‘Don’t use the C word!’

  ‘Oops, sorry.’ Pam looked anything but contrite. ‘I keep forgetting that some of us sad buggers will not be rushing into the bosom of our families for seasonal cheer. Now, are we ready for loading?’

  They were. Jonah stood up, set his cap to the right angle, dusted off the navy and gold jacket, and walked into the cosily lit cabin. It was very hard to keep a straight face.

  Three balding, pudgy middle-aged men were sitting in the back row, all struggling to cover their off-white flesh with dazzling rhinestone catsuits.

  ‘Not taking off yet, are we, Captain?’ One of them looked up at Jonah. ‘Only me an’ Ron are having a bit of trouble.’

  Trouble? With what? Jonah was pretty sure he didn’t want to know in case it involved lending a hand to shove a lot of corpulent male body into Lycra. He smiled in what he hoped what an authoritative manner. ‘No, not yet. You’ve got plenty of time to get – er – ready.’

  ‘Great.’ Ron, presumably, beamed back. ‘Can’t do nothing with the glue you see, not at speed.’

  Jesus. Jonah stared straight ahead. OK, so they were partially naked. And glue sniffing. So what? They’d paid well for Sullivanair’s hospitality. They’d have to be fully dressed again by the time he disgorged them at East Midlands, wouldn’t they? And anyway, where the hell were the rest of the party? Twenty-eight there were supposed to be. Could there possibly be twenty-five would-be Presleys lost in a time warp between the departure lounge and the Shorts? God – but the smell of glue was becoming increasingly strong. He’d be flying himself before long.

  ‘About twenty minutes to take off, gentlemen. And I really must advise against the adhesive. It could cause an explosion.’ Well, he thought, it might. All solvents were risky. The Elvises looked suitably chastened anyway. He tried to soften the blow. ‘Are the rest of your party – um – getting changed in the airport building or something?’

  They nodded, obediently screwing the tops back on their glue nozzles. ‘Weren’t room for all of us in the Gents, see. And some people can get a bit – well – sniffy about this sort of thing.’

  Jonah could well imagine. He leaned on the front seat, trying not to look at Pam, who was organising the drinks and peanuts in the tiny galley. Her shoulders were shaking. It would be fatal for Sullivanair if they caught each other’s eye and fell about screaming with laughter. Jonah concentrated instead on the silver, green and purple interior. With the December darkness rushing in from outside, and all the overseat lights on, the inside of the Shorts looked welcoming and snug. It was a pity, he thought, that he couldn’t spend Christmas in here. It certainly felt more homely than his flat.

  Jonah risked looking again at his three struggling passengers, wondering if he should nip across to the departures lounge and round up the rest of the party. God Almighty! He blinked, realising now what the glue had been for. Two of the three balding pates had been covered with luxuriant black glossy wigs. Th
e third was still busily gluing slinky jet sideburns on to his sagging cheeks. Mercifully the greying chests had been covered. To a man, his passengers were now sealed into their skin-tight white satin jump suits. The rhinestone dazzle nearly blinded him. He bit his lip and stared at the floor. Please God, he prayed, don’t let Vinny come through now.

  Ron gave an ear-splitting shriek. ‘Oh, bugger! Me bloody sideboard’s got stuck to me plectrum. Give us a hand, Nev.’

  There was a communal back seat chuckle as Nev got to grips with the sideburns, the plectrum and the recalcitrant wig. Fascinated, Jonah watched as the unfortunate Ron was niftily turned into a third corpulent Elvis Presley.

  ‘That’s got it!’ the fattest Elvis yelled merrily through a rigidly curled lip. ‘I reckon we’re all ready to rock’n’roll!’

  ‘Ah,’ Nev agreed, holding on to his sideburns. ‘Just get the other boys on board and we’ll be off for the biggest Presley night of the year. Derby here we come!’

  Jonah coughed, remembering that if he gave them a good trip they may well book again and hasten the expansion of Sullivanair. ‘I hope you have a good time and enjoy yourselves. Oh – and is this the rest of your party just coming across the tarmac?’

  The three rhinestone cowboys turned to the tiny windows, peered into the darkness, and then whooped with glee. White satin flares flapped against chubby calves, and three heads of black oil slick nodded in ecstatic welcome. It was faintly bizarre, Jonah thought, to watch Elvis in all his stages clamber up the steps and storm down the aisle towards him. Pam, her greeting smile firmly in place, looked equally stunned as she was passed by several more white jump suits, a plethora of sprayed-on jeans and gingham shirts from the hee-haw era, three leather jackets with the collars turned up a la Jailhouse Rock, and a Julian Clary clone in full GI regalia.

  ‘Clint . . .’ Ron followed Jonah’s startled eyes. ‘Does the uniform a treat, doesn’t he?’

  He did, Jonah had to admit. It was a pity about the lilac eyeshadow.

  Still not looking at Pam, he made his swift speech of greeting and returned to the cockpit.

  ‘Fire her up,’ he said tersely to Vinny. ‘I think Pam’s got more than she bargained for back there . . .’

  They were cruising through the darkness somewhere above Oxfordshire, the dashboard lights like hundreds of multicoloured stars, and with Pam lustily joining in ‘The Girl of My Best Friend’ from the cabin behind them, when Jonah told Vinny about the plans for the Stearman.

  ‘Wingwalking?’ Vinny nearly spilled his coffee. ‘Christ! Count me in!’

  ‘As a wingwalker? Wouldn’t have thought it was your style.’

  ‘As a pilot!’ Vinny inhaled expressively. ‘Have you seen those birds that wingwalk professionally? The Utterly Butterly Barnstormers? My God – they’re sensational! And so beautiful! What I wouldn’t give to be the pilot in their Stearman . . .’

  Jonah chuckled and checked the radio. He’d seen the Utterly Butterlys, too. He’d also been frantically jealous. ‘I’m not aiming for that – at least, not yet. They’re world class . . . but eventually, who knows? No, what I thought was just one plane and one wingwalker to start with – and maybe put on some sort of display at Whiteacres in the summer.’

  Always supposing Claire and Aerobatic Archie hadn’t bought it up by then, of course.

  ‘What? A show? Like Biggin Hill?’

  Jonah shook his head as they banked onto the East Midlands flight path. ‘No – more like an air pageant. The sort of thing they did between the wars. I’ll have to give it some thought over Christmas and come up with a game plan for the Whiteacres Aviation Incs.’

  Vinny scratched his head. ‘And who’s going to be your aerobabe, then? Estelle?’

  ‘She’s too tall.’ Jonah smiled in the darkness. ‘No, I’m going to get Billie Pascoe to do it.’

  ‘Billie from the warehouse?’ Vinny whistled just as the songsters in the cabin started on Heartbreak Hotel’. ‘You lucky bastard! Can you imagine her wearing a bodysuit?’

  Strangely, Jonah thought, as he picked up his headset, he could. The image was surprisingly disturbing. He twiddled with a few knobs and concentrated on the headings.

  Vinny lobbed his coffee cup over his shoulder. ‘Has she said yes, then? Billie Pascoe?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’ Jonah stared ahead into the black sky. ‘But I know she will.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Christmas Eve in Amberley Hill. Granite skies and a chill wind, but no sign of snow. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow seemed in pretty short supply too. Instead, brazen lights looped the Spicer Centre, and Woolworths was surreptitiously doing a window display for Valentine cards. Last-minute shoppers prepared to take a gamble were hovering around Waitrose, waiting for the turkey reductions.

  Billie wriggled round in one of Follicles and Cuticles’ lilac bucket seats and stopped staring out of the window. Everyone looked so miserable. Why did people find Christmas so bloody depressing? She felt a little glimmer of excitement snake into her stomach. This year, she was going home to be spoiled and pampered and teased. For the first time since she’d left Devon for London, she’d have a proper Christmas, and infantile or not, she was really looking forward to it.

  Last Christmas she’d spent at the flat with Miranda and her then current man and about forty of her closest family. They’d all got roaring drunk and talked about dead people and played incomprehensible board games and Billie hadn’t slept for two days. The Christmas before that had been even worse, of course. She’d been with Kieran Squires.

  Well, she’d had enough of purdah. It was definitely the right time of the year to shake off the past and stride forward into . . . Billie sucked in her breath. Into what, exactly? Come New Year’s Eve, what would she be promising herself? A new everything. She grinned to herself, then stopped as several ladies in tight rollers sitting beneath the dryers opposite peered at her in suspicion.

  She turned the grin into a grimace and scratched her neck. The unfamiliar false nails raked at the skin and made her wince. Tendrils of damp hair were poking out irritatingly from beneath a violet towel. It was, of course, very kind of Miranda to give her a special makeover as a Christmas present on one of the busiest days of the year, but Billie felt that she’d rather have had a diary and a pair of gloves. Miranda’s specials were notoriously risky.

  ‘You’ll look stunning, doll. Trust me.’ Miranda, in her usual gothic black with newly dyed scarlet plaits, drifted past on her way to rescue a perm. ‘I just wish you’d let us have a go at a colour rinse as well. Blondes are pretty passé this year. It’s all drop-dead red. Reuben absolutely adores my plum and bilberry.’ She gave an impatient sigh. ‘Yes, all right Mrs Burgess. I heard you. No, the smell of burning isn’t you. Yes, I’m just coming . . .’

  Billie squirmed a bit more. She’d already had not only the nail extensions, but also a facial, and her legs waxed. Eyelash dyeing and eyebrow shaping were yet to come, but first Kitty, Miranda’s ace assistant, was going to do a cut and restyle on Billie’s rather tousled hair. It was all very girlie and rather intimidating. Not to mention wildly outlandish for a Christmas to be spent on a smallholding just north of Dartmoor.

  Still, it all helped to lighten her mood. Reuben’s visit to her warehouse, as well as Jonah’s ludicrous suggestion that she should wingwalk, and the fact that Whiteacres would be under new ownership in a month’s time, were things she definitely didn’t want to think about until after Christmas.

  Fortunately, Miranda hadn’t mentioned Reuben too much recently. She had been far too downcast by the fact that she now knew, as a result of the post office encounter, that Joseph the Dreamboat was a married man. Miranda had apparently been shocked to her root-ends when he’d tapped her on the shoulder, turning round, recognising him, and thinking that Christmas had come early.

  She and Billie had had a long fuzzy conversation into the small hours, nursing wine glasses and watching Granada Men and Motors, speculating on why Mr Drop-Dead Gorgeous s
hould have been sending his Christmas presents home. Miranda had said, hopefully, that it may mean he was separated, because otherwise he’d simply have put them in the boot of his car when he drove home for the festivities, surely? Billie had leaned across the sofa and refilled the glasses and giggled at Miranda’s optimism, pointing out that real life wasn’t like a Steve Martin film where the hero arrives home on Christmas Eve to a chocolate box family waiting in an evergreen-clad hallway, his arms laden with presents all gift wrapped and bow-tied by Bloomingdale’s.

  Miranda had snorted and thrown a cushion at her head.

  Emerging, and mopping up the worst of the Shiraz spillage, Billie continued by saying that it definitely reinforced her notion that Joseph was a fishing tackle rep, and that once he’d got flies and floats and maggot boxes from floor to ceiling there simply wouldn’t be room in his Vauxhall Vectra for anything further, and that he probably wouldn’t want the kiddies’ gifts reeking of dried plaice anyway, would he?

  Miranda had got quite sniffy and pointed out that plaice was a sea fish, and if Joseph was selling fishing tackle he’d hardly be carrying fish, would he? Billie, who had far too much Shiraz by this time, said the plaice were probably examples of what his tackle could hook and then the whole thing had got rather rude.

  Still, Miranda had sighed as they’d staggered towards the bedrooms, at least she knew what his name was – the parcel had been addressed to Mrs Bellamy. Joseph Bellamy, they had both decided, sounded very Upstairs Downstairs, then they’d parted in the hall and Billie had remembered too late to ask where the parcel had been addressed to. Hopefully, she’d thought, pulling on her Piglet nightie, it was the Outer Hebrides: any closer and Miranda would be spending Christmas camped on his doorstep.

  So, that was the end of Joseph the Gorgeous – which, sadly, only left Reuben in the frame. Billie thought she was probably even more disappointed than Miranda.