Air Babylon

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  ‘Only a couple,’ the drunk confirms, nodding. ‘Of bottles!’ he adds with a huge childish snigger.

  ‘Yeah,’ grins his friend. ‘He’s emigrating!’

  ‘Not today he’s not,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ says the pin-stripe drunk. ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘I’m afraid I can. You’re under the influence of alcohol, and as it stands you are too drunk to fly.’

  ‘I’m not!’ he declares, throwing his loose arms around in indignation. ‘Who are you to tell me that I’m too pissed to fly?’

  ‘I’m the duty airport manager and it’s one of the many aspects of my job to see that passengers are fit to fly. You, sir, I’m afraid, are not.’

  ‘I’m fit,’ he says, winking at his friend. ‘I box three times a week.’

  ‘You may well be fit, sir, but sadly not fit to fly.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ he says. ‘Of course I am. I’ve got to fly. I’m emigrating.’

  We always have one or two over-enthusiastic emigrators a week. They arrive at the airport accompanied by a group of pals, sink a few jars in departures, and before they know it they are too pissed to fly. Their mates, instead of witnessing their last glorious send-off, end up having to accompany them on an ignominious journey home. So this bloke is not exactly exceptional.

  ‘Listen, sir,’ I say. ‘If you can walk in a straight line and prove to me that you aren’t as drunk as you appear to be then I shall let you fly.’

  Debbie shoots me a look. I smile gently back at her. It’s obvious that this bloke is so plastered he can’t even piss straight, let alone walk in a straight line.

  ‘You’re on!’ he says, going to tap the side of this nose but missing.

  ‘From here to the end of the check-in,’ I say.

  He inhales. He clenches his fists. He chews the side of his mouth with determination. The concentration is pathetic. His friend is willing him on – the last thing he wants to do is take his mate home again. He starts off, one foot slowly in front of the other. He gets halfway and stops, trying to control a wobble.

  ‘Keep going,’ I say.

  He carries on, suddenly looking quite steady. Shit. I am now worried that the drunk bastard is going to prove me wrong and I’ll have to fly him all the way to Singapore. Will and determination drive him on. I look at Debbie. She pulls an ‘I-told-you-so’ face. This is not looking good. How can someone this drunk be able to walk this straight? He makes it to the end of check-in, spins around to punch the air and immediately stumbles backwards and disappears behind a pile of seven heavy suitcases a large Nigerian woman and her three small children have lined up on the floor. He lies there, legs in the air, applauding himself and laughing, still convinced he has made the flight.

  I walk towards the scene and end up standing over him, shaking my head.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not leaving the country today, sir.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he shrugs.

  ‘Back home.’

  ‘I’ve sold that.’

  ‘A hotel then?’ I suggest

  ‘You can come back to mine,’ says his friend.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ says the drunk, gathering himself on the floor.

  ‘Remember,’ I tell him, ‘a little less celebrating and we’ll see you on Monday.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he replies sarcastically. ‘Next time I’m not flying Shithole Airways, I’m getting myself a decent airline.’

  His friend starts to laugh. ‘Come along, Justin. Let’s get you home.’

  As Justin and his drunken pal stagger off in the direction of the taxi rank, I find myself apologizing to the Nigerian woman in the queue, saying that we don’t normally infringe on the Lagos flight, it’s usually the other way round. I’m all laughing and engaged; she looks neither entertained nor interested. She has three children to look after and a whole house to move halfway across the world. Justin falling over her luggage is just another inconvenience to be endured.

  I walk back to the other end of check-in. Our Singapore queue is beginning to die down a bit, only standing about five to seven deep at the desks now. It’s time to converge a couple of queues and open up the Dubai flight.

  ‘Not long to go now,’ says Andy, rubbing his hands together with excitement. ‘In just over two hours it’ll be you and me with gin and tonic in our hands.’

  ‘Sounds great.’ I smile.

  ‘And Susan.’ He winks.

  My smile tightens. As if I could forget about that.

  6–7 PM

  I SLIP INTO the back office for five minutes to have a quick look through the passenger list for the Dubai flight, just to check if we have any VIPs, problem passengers, or anyone I should be vaguely aware of. The rain seems to have abated a bit. It’s only dripping gently through the ceiling and into the three buckets and the baking tray that we’ve lined up in the office. The whole place smells of damp and that very particular rusty metal aroma that you get from leaks and polluted water that’s travelled through the insides of a building. I think about making myself a quick cup of coffee, but all the spoons are dirty and crusted with half-dissolved powder, and the industrial-size tin of Nescafe we have back here looks a little hard on top, as if it’s been contaminated with rainwater. So I decide against it.

  It seems like we’ve got a few notables coming today. There’s some Arab sheikh who has a star by his name, which denotes that a certain amount of buttering up is required. Secondly, it looks like we’ve got a boy band flying with us this evening. My heart sinks. Andy will get all giddy, so will the girls, and I will undoubtedly never have heard of them. It says here that their PR has phoned ahead and requested that they go into the Chelsea suite. What a load of old bollocks, I think, running a line through the request. What is the point of having an extra-selective VIP area if any old Tom, Dick or talent-show winner can go in there? It says that they are travelling over to entertain the troops in Iraq as part of a ten-day tour of the region. Well, at least that’s something for them to look forward to. After months in the desert, being shot at and avoiding suicide bombers, five nice dancing boys. I bet they’re thrilled.

  There’s also a note in the paperwork that I must have missed earlier, or actually just haven’t had the chance to see. It’s about updating our EPIC press pack and asking for volunteers. Manned 24/7 by a skeletal staff, EPIC, or the Emergency Procedure Information Centre, is what the world’s media would turn to in the event of a plane crash or an onboard terrorist bomb blast. They have press packs on all the world’s aircraft, airlines, their history, their turnover, a summary of their company reports, plus photographs and footage of flights in happier times. It is an extraordinary set-up that each airline contributes to. Located deliberately off-site, it has banks of computer and television screens and looks like something out of NASA. I have, fortunately, only ever had one friend who has had the occasion to use it, when he was working for Kenya Airways and their KQ 431 Abidjan flight crashed in January 2000. I remember him telling me not only what hell it was trying to co-ordinate everything, but also that one of the weirdest questions the media asked when he was managing the nightmare was how many white faces they could get in front of camera. He was, I think quite rightly, rather appalled. I make a note to myself to sort out the EPIC packs when we get back from Dubai and to see if I can get some of our lot to join the voluntary BA staff who man the place. I suppose I could even do it myself. It’s not as if I have anything else going on in my life.

  I walk back out to the check-in. All the girls seem to be coping fine. We still have two cleaning up the Singapore flight and the other two, plus Dave who is on first/club, dealing with the Dubai flight. Andy, while supposedly supervising, is grinning and bouncing around looking very upbeat indeed. It’s actually quite sweet to see a grown man that excited about his own birthday.

  I smile as I walk past and give him a tap on the back.

  ‘What?’ he says, turning round.

  ‘Not long now.’

  ‘I know,’ he says.
‘And Fun Five are on our flight!’ He rubs his hands and raises his eyebrows. ‘Dave’s checking them in right now. And guess who’s going to escort them through to the first-class lounge!’

  ‘They don’t have first-class tickets,’ I say.

  ‘I know, but who’s counting? It won’t hurt anyone, now will it?’

  I pause for a second. ‘I suppose not.’ It would seem churlish to turn him down. After all, what really is the difference between the first- and club-class lounges? Colder air con? A fatter sofa? A better class of sandwich? A more expensive brand of champagne? Speedier internet access? A shower and a massage, maybe, but who has got time for that when they’re about to leave the country? Anyway, it’s all sitting there so it may as well be used. I have to say, I’m not someone who is terribly precious when it comes to the lounges. There are some duty airport managers working for other airlines who, even if they upgrade someone like a journalist writing about the flight, or someone they’ve bumped up from economy, won’t allow them into the lounge. Personally, I think it’s pathetic. Their reasoning is that they haven’t paid for the flight so they are not entitled to the perks.

  ‘Anyway,’ adds Andy, ‘how else are we going to keep them away from their fans?’

  ‘How else indeed,’ I agree, looking around for a screaming rabble. ‘They look overrun.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I’ll have you know they are very popular. Their music’s excellent.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ says Chanel, leaning over her desk.

  ‘Yes?’ I say, turning round.

  ‘Would you mind if I went and asked the band for an autograph?’

  Andy’s face beams triumphantly.

  ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Go right ahead. I’ll take over from you.’

  ‘Thanks ever so much,’ she says, smoothing down her yellow blonde hair as she comes out from behind the check-in. ‘It’s for my six-year-old niece,’ she adds. ‘She’ll never forgive me if she found out that Fun Five had been through and I didn’t try to get their signatures. She’s got their posters all over her bedroom.’

  ‘A super fan?’ I ask.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Rather like Andy here.’

  Chanel looks puzzled; her painted eyebrows curl into a frown. Andy flicks me the Vs and walks off down the other end of check-in towards the band. Chanel follows, and I take her place behind check-in. I look down to find her computer showing a message: ‘Does anyone have a baby I can put this rude stressed bastard next to?’ I think it’s come from Debbie, because Cathy and Trisha are still dealing with the last three passengers before closing the Singapore flight and Dave is handling first/club.

  ‘How rude exactly?’ I type.

  The message comes back immediately: ‘Upgrade request, bulkhead request and now the I’ve-got-long-legs rude.’

  I look across at Debbie. She is smiling away, grinning through her hangover, pretending to be helpful. She is concentrating so hard on keeping her service-industry smile in place that I don’t think she has noticed it’s me she’s dealing with now, not Chanel, who is currently flirting with the boy band at the end of the row. I check out the passenger in front of her. He is slouched on the counter looking bored and surly, like he can’t believe he has been kept waiting, and that the service here is so goddamn bad. I suddenly feel a bit sorry for Debbie, sitting there, right at the coalface, having to keep it together all day while drunks, hysterical women, cantankerous bastards and poisonous children all do their worst.

  ‘No can do on the kid front. But see I have one big fat bastard coming up. Put them together?’ I type and send.

  ‘Good one,’ comes the return.

  I look up the seating plan and find a row of four in the middle of the plane. ‘Suggest 30D aisle for my fat bloke and 30E middle middle for rude boy?’

  ‘Done,’ comes the reply.

  As I check in the couple in front of me I can hear her spinning the tale next door.

  ‘The plane is very full today, sir.’ She is smiling away. ‘What with it being nearly half term.’

  ‘Half term?’ he questions. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Don’t you have children, sir?’

  ‘Do I look old enough to have kids?’

  ‘No, sir.’ She laughs. ‘Of course not.’ And of course Debbie knows this already. Half term. I smile. I wonder how many times she has used that one on some unsuspecting bachelor. ‘So I have done my best with your seat, sir,’ she says, handing him a boarding card. ‘Have a good flight.’

  ‘Cheers,’ he says, picking up his holdall. ‘See you around.’

  Debbie turns to grin conspiratorially at Chanel and finds me. ‘Oh,’ she says, her eyes and mouth round with surprise. ‘It’s you. I thought . . .’

  ‘I know what you thought,’ I say.

  She doesn’t know what to say. She stares at me blankly and then turns. ‘Good evening, sir,’ she says as another passenger slaps down his passport and tickets. ‘Dubai?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ he replies.

  I check in my passenger of exceptional girth, placing him next to the irate rude boy, and hand back over to Chanel. Over at the Singapore check-in, both Cathy and Trisha are shutting up and changing over when a hysterical woman arrives, all hair, bags and paper. She is politely told that the flight closed some ten minutes ago and she promptly bursts into tears. Now, I have been around long enough in the job to learn that there are tears, and then there are tears. And these are clearly of the crocodile variety. There is an awful lot of noise and very little water. In fact, the woman is wailing so loudly you would have thought she was at a funeral of a dearly beloved, recently departed relative, rather than at an airport check-in desk. Trisha is handling it well. She can be quite a tough customer herself, although perhaps not quite tough enough today.

  ‘Is there some problem here?’ I ask.

  ‘She won’t let me on the plane!’ the woman wails, her mouth wide open, revealing a significant amount of dentistry.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re too late,’ I say.

  ‘But it’s still here!’ she cries, wiping away a very dry tear for good measure.

  ‘It’s actually boarding,’ I explain, ‘so no matter how fast you run, or how light your bags, there is no way we can clear security in time to get you on board.’

  ‘But I have to be there!’ she wails some more.

  ‘Madam,’ I suddenly snap, ‘no matter how loud you cry, or how long you weep, you will not be allowed on this plane.’

  ‘Well, fuck all of you,’ she says through a determined, thin mouth, and picking up her bag she marches across the terminal.

  I am just about to launch into an explanation about drama-queen tears to a rather stunned-looking Trisha when I spot the arrival of my Arab sheikh. He is standing at the first-class check-in with what look like a couple of wives. Dave is giving him the benefit of his full white smile, but I can tell the man looks a little pissed off at not being meeted and greeted with the full flunky entourage.

  ‘Sir!’ I say, rushing towards him, my arm outstretched before me. ‘How lovely to see you again.’

  ‘There you are,’ he says in perfect English. ‘I was just asking where exactly you were.’

  ‘I was dealing with a slight problem at the other end.’ I point behind me. ‘But now I am all yours. Why don’t you give me your passports and tickets,’ I continue without drawing breath, ‘and I shall check you in myself. Just the three of you today?’

  ‘Yes,’ replies the sheikh, pleased that normal service has been resumed. ‘I am travelling light.’

  I laugh a little too loudly and a little too long, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Well, he is one of the few big spenders we have who regularly uses our airline. I give the sheikh a fixed smile while making sure that Dave puts him in 1A and 1B and gives 2A and 2B to his wives.

  Dave looks a little white when I request the seats. ‘I’ve given them away,’ he mutters.

  ‘What?’ I turn round to smile at the sheikh t
o reassure him that all is well. I then turn back and whisper to Dave, ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’

  ‘Andy,’ he says feebly.

  ‘Andy what?’ I hiss out of the corner of my ever-smiling mouth.

  ‘He requested them for Fun Five.’

  ‘But they only have club tickets!’

  ‘I know, but Andy said that we don’t have many first-class passengers today so to upgrade them.’ He’s beginning to look flustered, running his hand over his bald patch.

  ‘Think about it,’ I hiss again. ‘This is a well-established flight that goes to Dubai twice a week, in the Gulf States. How likely is it that we would have problems selling first-class tickets? It’s not exactly air miles territory, is it? Like bloody Orlando, bloody Florida?’

  ‘It is increasingly a holiday destination,’ tries Dave.

  ‘Don’t answer back,’ I say wearily. ‘Just get the boy band out of first and give me my front-row seats.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, still looking flustered.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I add, ‘I’ll sort Andy. Give me the new Fun Five boarding passes and I’ll give them to Andy in the lounge.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ asks the sheikh, approaching stealthily from behind.

  ‘Absolutely. Of course. I was just making sure that you got your usual seats.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiles. ‘Very good. Will you be escorting me through today?’

  ‘Absolutely. I know it’s normally Andy, but today you have me.’

  ‘Good,’ says the sheikh. ‘I have a little business to attend to, but my wives would like to go shopping.’

  ‘Great,’ I say. My face smiles but my heart sinks. Where’s Andy when I need him? ‘Shopping . . .’ I nod and smile some more. ‘Every man’s dream.’

  Dave hands over the boarding passes for the sheikh and his wives, as well as those for Fun Five. The sheikh wafts off in a puff of white robes, and I am left with his two wives. Dressed head to foot in black chadors, with only their dark eyes visible, they stand and stare at me like a couple of shadows, awaiting my suggestions.

  ‘So,’ I say, rubbing my hands together, ‘where would you like to start?’ Neither of them replies. It is immediately apparent that they don’t speak any English. ‘Um, Gucci?’