by Tony Parsons
It was an Airbus 380 coming in from Dubai – a double-decker, four-engined, wide-bodied liner, the largest passenger aircraft in the world. And when Spike thought about it later, there was no good reason for what happened.
Weather conditions were perfect. Visibility was good. The runway was dry. But the Airbus landed heavily, and Spike heard the plane’s twenty-two wheels shriek with protest, and he saw the nose tyres burst in an explosion of rubber.
‘That plane!’ said the window cleaner.
‘Drink your tea,’ Spike told him quietly, as he hit the big red crash button connecting Air Traffic Control to the two fire stations, the police and the Star Centre. ‘Airbus 380 on north runway with burst nose-wheel tyres,’ he said.
His voice betrayed no emotion, but huge chunks of rubber were strewn across the runway and already Spike could see the orange lights of the vehicles from Airside Ops rushing to the scene.
‘I’m holding everything at the stand,’ Ian said from the other side of the tower. ‘Give me everything you’ve got, Spike.’
And that was how they did it.
Ian immediately stopped all departures from moving. Spike put his arrivals into a holding pattern and then began diverting them to the clear runway where Ian landed them. Although its front wheels were shot, the Airbus still had twenty more and Earl told the pilot to follow the greens as he guided him to an emergency stand.
Airside Ops had men and equipment on the runway in minutes, including a sweeper to clear shards of rubber that could be fatal if sucked into a jet engine at 1000 centigrade. But there was a huge slab of rubber the size of a man that they could not lift. Then, as Spike watched, one of the Airside Ops team slung it over his shoulder and carried it from the runway.
The fire rigs and the ambulances were standing by, but they were not needed. When Airside Ops had the runway clear of foreign object debris, Ian started moving his departures and Spike was ready for arrivals. The entire drama lasted for five minutes. No flights were delayed.
There was an SAS flight coming in from Stockholm that had been circling the airport. Spike could see it lazily drifting across the sky.
‘SK525, you are now clear to land,’ Spike said. And then – although he hated to digress from the polite efficiency of Air Traffic Control, he felt that he should add something. ‘And thank you for your patience, SK525.’
‘No problem,’ came a woman’s voice. Perfect English but with the faintest accent. ‘We’re just getting some sightseeing up here,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?’
Spike laughed.
‘Yes, it is, SK525,’ he said. ‘A beautiful day.’
And Spike wondered what she looked like.
He glanced over at Ian and watched him effortlessly get a perfect line on departures. One aircraft took off, climbed and banked to the right, then one took off, climbed and flew straight ahead, then one took off, climbed and banked to the left. One right, one straight ahead, one left. One right, one straight ahead, one left. It was lovely work. The calm ordering of the planes gave Spike a warm feeling – like when his pen was parallel to the side of his desk, or when all the cans in the cupboard of his flat were as carefully lined up as tin soldiers.
‘Clear for take-off, runway twenty-seven left,’ Ian said calmly, and Spike realized that he had learned his tone of chilled serenity from this man.
‘Ian?’
‘What?’
‘Thanks,’ Spike said.
Ian smiled. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. The older man peered at him above his reading glasses. ‘I’ve seen burst nose-wheel tyres a hundred times.’
Spike had seen them once.
And suddenly Spike understood that the biggest problem of all with Pushing Tin was that they were all in their own little worlds – as individual and alone as boxers. But the best watch in ATC would always have a mix of quick-thinking kids and old men who had seen it all and loved all the old bands like The Smiths.
Spike looked at the window cleaner.
‘I wouldn’t trade what I do for the world,’ Spike said, feeling the need for a summing up. ‘But this job is not for everyone. Even good controllers don’t always settle at Heathrow. They come from some quiet little backwater, like Luton or Stansted, and they just can’t stand the pace. But if you’re serious, I can tell you how to go about getting a controller licence.’
Dan smiled shyly. ‘Actually, what I really want to be is a pilot.’
Spike stared at him. ‘A pilot?’ he said.
He heard Ian laugh behind him.
‘To be up above the clouds, looking down on the world in all its glory,’ Dan said, his eyes getting a dreamy, faraway look. ‘To walk through the airport in my uniform and have everyone look at me …’ He held up his teacup. ‘Any chance of a biscuit?’
‘No,’ Spike said, his voice suddenly coated with the thick ice that he used when some American pilot was reluctant to follow the greens. ‘No chance of a biscuit.’
When Earl had taken the window cleaner away, Ian came and stood next to Spike. For a while they said nothing, just watched the lights of the aircraft in the distance, and when Ian spoke he did not take his eyes from the sky.
‘He would never have made it anyway,’ Ian said. ‘He was a bit old.’
About the Author
Tony Parsons is the author of Man and Boy, winner of the Book of the Year prize. His subsequent novels – One For My Baby, Man and Wife, The Family Way, Stories We Could Tell, My Favourite Wife, Starting Over and Men from the Boys – were all bestsellers. He has written a Quick Read for World Book Day to support emergent readers, Beyond the Bounty, and has also spent a week as Heathrow’s writer-in-residence. Departures, his first collection of short stories, is the result.
Praise for Tony Parsons
‘It’s a remarkable novel, compellingly told’
Mirror
‘Tony Parsons gets inside the heads and hearts of modern men’
The Times
‘Funny, serious, tender and honest … Tony Parsons is writing about the genuine dilemmas of modern life’
Sunday Express
‘Parsons has taken as his specialist subject contemporary emotional issues which almost every other male writer has ignored’
Guardian
‘With an intelligent dry humour, Parsons manages to astutely cut right to the heart of family life’
Woman and Home
‘As usual life gets worse before it gets better, making for exactly the sort of cathartic emotional rollercoaster read we’ve come to expect from Parsons’
Glamour
‘Parsons’ storytelling is superb and in his depiction of the complex father/son relationship makes this a funny, insightful and unforgettable book’
She
By the same author
Man and Boy
One For My Baby
Man and Wife
The Family Way
Stories We Could Tell
My Favourite Wife
Starting Over
Men from the Boys
Tony Parsons on Life, Death and Breakfast (non-fiction)
Beyond the Bounty (Quick Read)
Departures – Seven stories from Heathrow (short stories)
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Tony Parsons 2012
Tony Parsons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPub
Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 732801 7
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