Teddy was the only person who treated me the same, rummaging in my duty-free bags for his presents, then pulling them out and shooting us dead.
Time was all dislocated; I’d wake up hungry in the middle of the night; I’d sleep all afternoon. I felt much more removed from home, and out of step, than at JT. Once I got up after lunch and went to West Drayton. When I arrived I realized it was Thursday, and early closing. After California the streets looked cramped, and grey, and amateurish. Standing at the bus stop, I tried to remember how I’d once felt. Over there, in the Wimpy, I’d sat drinking coffee with Sandra – neither of us liked coffee but it felt sophisticated. She’d said, ‘Janice isn’t a virgin. I can tell because she’s had her ears pierced.’
Across the road was the chemist’s. Once I’d seen Gwen’s family’s car parked outside it, and them all sitting there looking at their holiday snaps. Gwen’s Dad had just got them from the chemist’s and none of them could wait until they reached home . . .
And over there, in the launderette, I’d felt faint when Jonathan had passed.
Now I just shivered in the wind and thought: damn buses.
That winter – last winter – I passed my test and bought a car: a Mini. It was for Teddy and me, to make up for all the times I was away. He bounced up and down in it, he was so pleased. Sitting there, I put my arm round him and squeezed.
‘Where shall we go, then?’
He struggled free. ‘You pong.’
‘What?’
‘Your smelly perfume.’
‘Don’t you like it? It’s called “My Love”.’
‘Pongy.’
I sat still; my throat swelled. How could he? I yearned for him; I wanted to hold him close to me, the two of us in my new car. I wanted to show him the world . . . I wanted to press his head into my breast and keep him safe.
I sat quite still, struck by a thought. Slowly, I thought the words over . . .
Is this how Dad had yearned for me?
It’s ridiculous that it had never struck me before. I didn’t want to seduce my brother, of course, but that was unimportant. It was simply that I loved him; dear God, I loved that boy. It was the only pure passion I’d ever had. I loved every inch of him, head to toe, inside and out.
And didn’t I know the damage that could do? Perhaps it was good that I was planning to move away.
‘Everyone else likes the way I smell,’ I said abruptly. ‘You’re an idiot.’
We drove miles up the motorway, past the gravel pits and their cranes reared up, past the Span estates with their young marrieds, Yvonne from school amongst them . . . right out into the country. There were some beautiful, golden days last winter. Teddy sat beside me, just as I’d sat beside Dad, kicking his legs and twiddling the radio. I was the driver now. But Teddy was bolder than I had been; he was the one urging me on. I speeded up. As we drove, I had a rare thought for my Dad. Could he remember our happiness when I was young and sitting in his cab? Or was it all spoilt for him too?
Chapter Twelve
AM-AIR 6 FLIES right around the world: LA, New York, London, Karachi, Singapore . . . It girdles the globe. You fly through twenty-four time zones; you fly faster than the spreading dusk. I signed up for the long hauls if I could; the longer the better. By spring I’d watched Charlie’s Angels in six capital cities. I also had a tan – faint, because of my fair complexion, but unmistakable. I lay beside bright blue pools. Nobody knew that I’d been fat, once. I didn’t have to tell anyone about that; besides, who wanted to know? At some point they usually said, ‘Tell me about yourself’, but their interest was limited. I stayed behind my sunglasses; every now and then I sat up to oil my legs. I still hated my heavy thighs, but nobody knew that either. I turned the pages of magazines; I seldom read books, I didn’t seem to have the concentration. Waiters in monogrammed jackets brought me iced tea; I glanced through menus in their heavy, laminated folders.
Numbed from the sun, I wandered along hotel lobbies. Numbed from the flying, I sat in taxis with lonely men who were far from home. ‘Curry Paradise’, ‘Whisky A Go-Go’, said the signs. ‘All-Nite Topless!’ We stayed stuck in traffic jams, trying to keep a conversation going. It was a relief when they didn’t attempt to talk.
I never dated, as they called it, members of the air crews. After all, I’d see them next day. Besides, they were either gay, and off for their beauty sleep, or else family men scared of the risks.
It was a bad idea, too, to date the passengers. I found this out, to my cost. At each landing we said over the PA, ‘Am-Air hope you enjoyed your flight and look forward to seeing you again.’
And once I did. It happened one Bahrain-Frankfurt flight. I recognized this grey-cropped head in the aisle seat. It was a German cement contractor. Two weeks ago he’d told me all about his mother. Later, in his room, he’d asked me to spank him because he was such a naughty boy. I’d patted him, blushing, disowning my hand. I’d hoped to forget all that.
But here he was, plucking at my sleeve. Being German, he made himself only too clear. Shireen, another flight attendant, was near enough to hear him saying,
‘Why did you not meet me next day, as promised?’
‘I’m sorry. I forgot.’
‘I am waiting in the lounge three hours. I wait in the hotel thinking: where is my English friend?’
I tried to move away.
‘My feelings,’ he said, ‘you hurt my feelings.’
I escaped. Back in the galley Shireen said,
‘Who’s that nut?’
‘Don’t know,’ I mumbled, busying myself with the water jugs.
‘Jesus, don’t we get ’em.’
After that episode I took more care. You can throw the litter out of your car, but it’s not so easy with people. Believe it or not, even in my job they cropped up again. If you’re laying-over in some city, after all, it’s possible to bump into them . . . the main streets and the big hotels, they’re usually in the same small area. Once or twice it happened and I felt gagged, panic-stricken, my past rising up in my throat. I didn’t want to be reminded of my behaviour. Once, in the lift at the Kuala Lumpur Inter-Continental, the doors slid open and some men stepped in. I recognized one of them. He was a tall, ravaged-looking man, vice-president of something or other, he’d told me. If he recognized me now he wasn’t showing it. I looked away, but the lift was all mirrors. Whichever way I turned, there was his profile, splintered into angles; there were his two eyes. The grey cloth of his suit was within touching distance.
‘We’re talking in seven figures here,’ he was saying. They must be going up to the conference suite. ‘We need to make that clear . . .’
Yesterday afternoon he’d been suckling me, his face red and crumpled.
‘. . . there’s no option on this one, gentlemen. Seven figures are the figures we’re talking . . .’
Kneeling there, bowed, his mouth clamped to my nipple. My breasts didn’t belong to me . . . they were bubbies. That’s what I called them. Now he was here, I hated him. I hated us both.
I’d been a flight attendant for nearly six months when I met Ali. We’re talking about last March. He was a passenger, so I had to be careful. He wasn’t.
I have to pause, here. I’ll make myself some coffee.
Bear with me; I’ve nearly finished. When you hear about Ali, you’ll think that I’ve been saving the worst until last.
But believe me, the worst happened long, long before I met him.
Chapter Thirteen
I SAW THE dawn just now. I didn’t realize that I’ve been sitting here so long. I saw it out of the side window, when I went to the kitchen: the sky stained grey, with flat clouds laid across like ink spreading into damp paper.
Here in this room it’s still dark. The mug is warming my knee. I bought this kimono in Bangkok and I’ve worn it for the past week, I haven’t really got up yet.
I don’t know what I should have put in or left out of my story so far. I could have chosen other events, just as random as
these. That time in the cinema with Gwen and her Dad, remember? When I felt so sad. It’s over now, sealed, now I’ve said it. I’ve locked it into the plan of my past, but if I’d stopped and thought, I could have locked in so many others instead. I’m trusting to instinct, telling you the first things that come into my mind. Nobody’s taught me to organize my brain, you see. Except for the odd moment at school, nobody’s bothered.
My first couple of meetings with Ali were as random as anything else. Try to picture me, last spring, as Ali first saw me. My long hair was puffed up and held in place with an alice band; someone once called me a Barbie Doll. I was a big, blonde girl with spiky eyelashes; I probably looked old-fashioned, but then lots of air crew do. You’d never have guessed anything about me. That’s because I was used to small talk, it’s the only type I ever heard. I looked ripe and pink.
I can think quite calmly now, of how I looked. If you’d seen me then, you might have thought me attractive.
Ali thought so, anyway. He was flying from Karachi to Bahrein. Muslims either knock back six Scotches or they drink a glass of water. He asked for water. It was a night flight and he stayed awake in his pool of light. When you’re working at night, there’s a club-like feeling between you and the insomniacs . . . He was reading sheaves of paper; he was very good-looking, and as young as me, with pitted skin. I remember thinking: poor thing, he must’ve had terrible acne.
That’s all I remember. When he disembarked I noticed how slight he was; no taller than me.
I was laying-over. The next night I went to a party. The flat belonged to the boyfriend of a British Airways girl called Cathy; it was crowded, and the air was thick with smoke. English and German men stood around, guffawing; their shirts were stained dark at the armpits. It was mostly men; these parties usually are. They spend the evening comparing booze prices and talking about their next leave. They don’t have much in common, except being stuck in Bahrein.
I ate Twiglets. I must have done this a hundred times; life seemed particularly senseless. This being Bahrein, there was a building site outside the window, the scaffolding criss-crossing the sky, and the winking lights of a plane coming in to land.
Then I noticed the Pakistani. He was standing at the other window, a glass of orange juice in his hand. I’ve always found it awkward, meeting passengers off duty. He looked shy, too.
We chatted a bit; he asked me the usual questions, like did I have permanent jet-lag and which was my favourite city. He didn’t ask me whether I had a boyfriend back home and if he got jealous with me gadding about; at this stage of a party someone usually does, but he was too polite for that. He was the well-mannered, quiet type. He asked me to join him for dinner tomorrow, but I’d be gone by then, so he gave me his card and asked if next time I was in Karachi he could show me around his home city.
‘My home city . . .’ That’s how he talked. Someone had brought him up nicely. ‘I would be honoured’, he said, ‘if you would join me.’
I was imagining holding his pitted face in my hands and pulling him towards me. Believe it or not, I’d never done that to an Oriental before. They’d tried all right, but I’d never been chatted up by one I trusted.
Not that he was chatting me up now. I looked at his card. He was called Ahmed something, but once I got to know him I liked calling him Ali, him being a Pakistani. You know, Ali Baba. Anyway, it’s better that none of you know his real name.
His father ran a shipping firm, he said. He’d joined it and he did a lot of business in the Middle East. He didn’t brag about how sophisticated he was, what a hot shot, which impressed me. He was my age; most of the men I met were older. He talked a lot about his father, and his family; they were obviously close.
‘You live at home?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes. And yourself?’
‘When I’m in England.’
‘The best place . . . I’m right? Home is where the heart is. At least, in my country it is.’ There were damp rings on the glass table. He ran his finger across them. ‘I admire my father very much . . . He’s a wonderful man. I do so hope, Heather . . . that you will meet him.’
I rubbed the table with my damp finger, thinking how I’d describe my own Dad.
I usually threw away cards, but I kept his, with his office and residence addresses. After all, I hadn’t got to know him yet. All we’d done was shake hands in the lobby of my hotel.
Two weeks later I saw him again. It was March; sleet blew into my face as I climbed into my Mini. The yard was slushy from last week’s snow; Dad hadn’t bothered to sweep it. Closing the door, each trip, I closed away England. From now on it would be corridors and lounges, heated and odourless, with no demands on me except the easy, automatic ones. I would know no weather for fourteen hours, until I stepped off the plane. When I arrived there, home would have dissolved away; and when I was back home, all those cities dissolved away too. You can see the appeal of my job.
I saw him in Karachi and he fell in love with me. Actually, the scent was there at our first meeting, though you would hardly have believed it from the conversation. He had dark, liquid eyes; he looked as startled and pure as a woodland creature. I gazed at his slender brown wrists, covered in hair.
He said, ‘I want to show you everything beautiful in my city.’
I wanted to shut my eyes tight. I wanted to slip my hand inside his white shirt and to feel the warm, smooth skin in there. Oh yes, I’d felt like this before, but I wasn’t prepared for the effect upon him.
He’d been brought up so religious, you see. The first place he took me was the Quaid-i-Azam’s Mazar. The Kaidi What? I asked. It’s the tomb of our Founder, he replied, the Founder of Pakistan. His driver took us there in a beige Mercedes. Ali talked about the Muslim State; in front, the driver’s shoulders set themselves squarer, in pride. I sat in the back, within touching distance of Ali. I was heated by the sun, and lust.
The tomb was an ugly modern thing in the middle of a roundabout. He talked about Islam, and what it meant to him. When he couldn’t think of a word he rubbed the side of his nose. I was trying to work out why his scarred skin made him even more attractive. I suppose it stopped him being perfect; it made him vulnerable. He was marked by his youth. On most faces the past doesn’t show . . . most people can cover it up.
His family meant a lot to him. He was the only son. He had two sisters and he was worried about their education. There were endless cousins too, and uncles; his life seemed to be one long series of weddings and family reunions. His upbringing sounded the opposite of mine. That family was the centre of his life . . . Until he met me.
I was just laying-over for two days. We went on a boat-trip with his sisters and some girls from Am-Air; we scarcely talked, alone. The next day I was to meet him at the Gymkhana Club. He’d asked me for a game of tennis but I can’t play tennis, nobody’s taught me, so I said I’d join him later. In fact, I arrived early to get a glimpse of his legs. He was playing with three older men, all of them drenched with sweat. They shouted to each other, laughing, ‘You rascal! . . . You rapscallian!’ His legs were all I’d hoped; the hairs painted on them like seaweed in the current.
Afterwards we all shook hands. Two were uncles and one was his father. We sat at a table, drinking Seven-Up. The men sucked their straws; with their fizzy drinks they looked as innocent as children.
‘Don’t trust him,’ they said proudly, ‘he’s a terrible sport.’
The father put his arm around Ali, fondly. The portly one gave him a mock punch in the ribs. Under the milky sky I felt the old envy rise, catching in my throat. I thought I was immune by now.
They turned to me, from their charmed circle, and were polite.
‘Your parents must be proud of you, jet-setting round the world.’
‘Oh yes,’ I agreed.
‘But I expect you’re glad to get home. To the roast beef of old England . . . Not forgetting the Yorkshire pudding. Your father’s in business?’
Yes: the betting and boozing business.
‘Haulage.’
I said to myself, ‘And pig-breeding.’ Just so I could imagine their faces. You can’t even mention pigs in front of Muslims; they’d probably faint.
‘If he ever travels this way, on his business, we would consider it a great pleasure to show him our city.’
He’s lucky to get farther than Slough. I made these silent replies so often, nowadays, that people were calling me enigmatic.
Ali sent roses to my room, but so far the only moves he’d made had been floral ones. We were in company most of the time, either with crew members – my own temporary and forgettable family – or his retinue of relatives and his driver.
One of us must do something. He was too well-bred for me to know his feelings. Perhaps he thought I was even more well-bred, being English. I’d hoped that my being an air hostess would stop these polite thoughts; most foreigners weren’t troubled with them.
On my last evening he drove me back to the hotel. In the car park he switched off the engine. You know the moment . . . By this time most men are loosened by alcohol, which helps.
At least he smoked. He lit a cigarette.
‘And tomorrow you’ll be gone,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Gone to London.’
Sleeping cars lay on either side; ahead stood stiff rows of flowers, bright in the spotlights.
‘I can’t begin to tell you how happy I’ve been, these last two days . . .’ Smoke wreathed his face. ‘In your company, Heather.’
A silence. Several cars away a door slammed.
‘You must hate this damned smoking.’
‘I don’t mind. I’m used to it.’
‘I can’t . . . Oh, I don’t know what to say.’ He paused. ‘I wish you weren’t leaving.’
‘I’m here now. I’m not gone yet.’
Approaching footsteps. Two men were passing our car; they carried briefcases and they spoke in loud English voices: ‘. . . so she phones up’, said one, ‘to tell me the bloody gerbil’s died.’
We waited, watching them walk into the hotel.
Porky Page 18