by David Beaty
‘Sometimes. When she’s tired. She’s been rather tired lately.’
‘Perhaps she’s menopausal? My mother is. Oh, it’s awful! She cries a lot. I get cross with her sometimes. But I’m sure you’re very kind to your wife.’
‘I hope I am, Belinda.’
‘You’re bound to be. You’re so calm and collected. Like when I brought your breakfast up to the flight deck … Oh, I was so sorry to spill your coffee like that, Captain Harker! And right over your tunic! When you telephoned me this morning at that crummy Shelton they put us in and told me to come over for a proper cup of coffee at the Plaza, honestly Captain Harker, I nearly wept. I said to myself he is the nicest man I have ever met. Then I didn’t know what to wear. All I could think was … thank goodness I packed my blue dress!’
‘And very pretty you looked in it too,’ he said gently when she paused for breath.
‘Did you really think so?’
‘Not only me. Everyone on Fifth Avenue.’
‘You’re teasing me?’
‘No, I’m not. I was proud to escort such a lovely lady.’
‘It was a lovely day altogether, wasn’t it?’ She sighed and touched his hand. ‘Even the rain was lovely.’
Yes, even the rain, he thought. The same bloody sort of pelting rain that had stopped the Citroën, and exasperated Harriet, had not blighted them. Quite the reverse. He had enjoyed the whole day hugely. Belinda had appeared like a vision of delight in a simple blue cotton dress. She had chattered happily over coffee in the hotel foyer. Oh yes, she had lots of boyfriends, no one as yet whom she wanted to marry. Geordie Griffiths, the Engineer Officer, was keen on her, hadn’t Captain Harker noticed? Very keen. Only he wasn’t well educated, if Captain Harker understood what she meant, and those hands like bricks. Imagine them on you!
Suddenly she had looked at her wrist watch, said Heavens above! She mustn’t take up all Captain Harker’s time and anyway, she had to go shopping. It was always the same, wasn’t it, everyone wanted you to bring something from New York? How about Captain Harker, did he have any shopping to do?
He had immediately said yes. Of course. And she would help him choose something for his wife, his daughter? How kind.
Side by side, then hand in hand they had idled along the sunlit pavements of Fifth Avenue. Saks opened up like Aladdin’s cave. Always hating the chore of shopping before, he now discovered it to be a sensual and emotional delight. It had always fallen to Harriet to take the children to Harrods or Selfridges before Christmas, and now he saw what he had missed. The look of childish greed on Belinda’s face, her pleasure when he bought her the teddy-bear mascot, moved him to a deep inexplicable tenderness. He felt as if it were Jane beside him and that he was being given a second chance. She was indeed in so many ways like Jane, that it was easy to feel he had bought the chocolates and flowers for his absent daughter.
But after a quick lunch of ham on rye and pink milk shakes, a more dangerous feeling crept over him. Belinda spied a beautiful peignoir in an exclusive shop window, all blue bows and frills on some white frothy stuff. It would be lovely for Harriet. Belinda could model it and persuade him how divine it would look.
After that he could no longer persuade himself that he saw her like Jane.
It was spitting with rain when they left the shop, but Belinda tucked her hand into his and suggested they walk. He felt less like her father than a close friend, a contemporary even. She didn’t find him old. Therefore he didn’t feel old. He had no difficulty in hearing every single syllable she said. Miraculously he was young and vigorous again.
But like yesterday’s English rain, the few drops became a drenching downpour. Unlike yesterday, they took it in their stride. They ran, soaked to the skin, but laughing. Poor Belinda’s cotton dress was moulded to her like a second skin, a punishment, she told him, for not wearing a bra, and her blonde hair had darkened and become plastered to her forehead. She kept catching the dribble of rainwater with her pointed little tongue, and gasping because she couldn’t run as fast as he could.
‘A hot shower for you straight away, Miss Chafford,’ he told her, ‘followed by a stiff whisky!’
‘Where?’
‘In my room, of course.’
‘Do you think I should?’
‘Why not?’
She held her head on one side, thinking. Then she sighed.
‘Because, you’re married.’
‘That doesn’t mean I want you to catch a chill.’
‘It isn’t that I’m a prude,’ she said, emerging from the shower and carrying on the conversation as if there had been no break, ‘but you being married is sad.’
He should have said ‘Not for me’. Harriet would have thought that. But he had found Belinda’s whole attitude appealing and childlike. She was a young girl like Jane, yet lacking his daughter’s bloody-mindedness. She had something of Harriet’s womanliness yet she lacked her infuriating desire always to be truthful. While above and beyond those similarities, she was her own vulnerable, affectionate person.
‘I think perhaps I should get dressed now.’ Belinda interrupted his reverie in a reproachful voice.
‘No hurry.’ He sprang up. ‘Have another drink?’
His legs felt weak as he walked across the room to the whisky bottle, already half-empty.
When he returned he found she had got up from the floor, primly arranged the towel like a sarong above her breasts and was over by the window, looking down at the murky streets round Central Park.
It looked like a tank, he thought, full of dirty water and tropical fish. Big taxis cruised like fat yellow goldfish and sleek limousines glittered, black as eels. Blobs of muzzy headlights bobbed here and there between the sad wet weeds of the Central Park trees.
He put his arm round her shoulders. The skin felt firm and soft. Various parts of a woman, he had found, varied in temperature at the same time. The hands could be hot, the face burning, the back cool and refreshing, the bottom ice cold.
His hand moved to her neck, began to edge down under the towel to explore this scientific theory further.
‘Tell me about your wife.’
The hand stopped dead.
‘What d’you want to know?’
‘Is she fair or dark?’
‘Brown hair. Light brown. A bit grey now.’
‘What colour are her eyes?’
‘Grey, very clear.’
‘What is she like?’
‘Like?’ he paused. How can you put in a nutshell someone you’ve lived with for a quarter of a century, someone who’s grown into you, become part of you, and then grows a little away again?
‘Is she smart? Does she dress well? Does she like a good time? Is she good fun?’ Belinda prompted. ‘Or is she the religious type? The booky type? The arty type?’
‘She’s interested in the arts, but she’s not religious. Not any organised religion, that is. But she believes in something …’
‘Something up there?’ Belinda turned her big eyes to the ceiling and giggled.
‘Sort of. Which is more than I do.’
‘Me too. In fact I positively hope there’s no one up there looking down.’ She laughed. ‘What else is your wife?’
But Harriet, like some suddenly exorcised ghost, refused to materialise for his analysis and Belinda’s edification. He couldn’t think of her characteristics. Perhaps they were now so much his own.
He shrugged. ‘I can’t explain her.’
‘Because she doesn’t understand you?’
They were back where the conversation had started. ‘And you don’t understand her?’
Instead of answering, he took a long swig of warm whisky and ginger ale. A cool cheek was laid against his.
‘I understand you, Paul,’ she said. ‘And I think you understand me.’
Suddenly the telephone shrilled out. The room had gone grey as though the fish tank water had seeped in from outside. He groped his way over to the bed, sat on the edge and picked up the recei
ver. ‘It’ll only be Ops about our departure tomorrow.’
But it was Harriet.
He was so surprised that his voice sounded irritable. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
She had never done this before – ever. Not even in the weeks before they knew Jane was all right. With the telephone bills what they were, a transatlantic call seemed to both of them an unwarrantable extravagance. But his daughter had come into his mind, and he asked, ‘Is there some news of Jane. Is that why?’
‘No. At least no more than before you went. She wrote the day before yesterday. She’s well. But you know that.’
‘And you? Are you all right?’ He spoke with underlined patience, as if his questions were arguments demolishing her defences.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘And the house … it hasn’t burned down?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘But you realise it’s three in the morning with you.’
‘Of course I do. But I wanted to know if you’re all right.’ And so low he could hardly hear her, ‘ I felt waves.’
He felt a sudden tenderness blossom through his irritation. She had worried about the row yesterday, because they hadn’t made it up. A cardinal family rule used to be that no one left the house or went to bed in anger. Jane had broken it. In a minor way yesterday, so had he, stalking away from the car at Heathrow Airport, not turning round for the last salute and to blow her a kiss.
‘I’m all right,’ he said gently. ‘No waves.’ He swallowed. ‘And I love you.’
Behind him he heard Belinda make a funny little noise, half a laugh, half a sigh.
‘And I love you. I just wanted to hear your voice. Take care. Sleep well.’
He put down the receiver slowly. As he lay back on the pillow, he suddenly became aware of Belinda’s soft naked body beside his.
Chapter Two
Unusual headwinds delayed the eastbound. Belinda brought his dinner on the flight deck with a very proper, ‘Fresh salmon, Captain Harker’, and a shielded sensuous little smile. He pretended to be busy and waved it away. He didn’t feel like eating anyway.
They were an hour late arriving over Heathrow Airport. Then they were held in the stack, gradually being brought down by thousand-foot levels to land on instruments in visibility just above limits.
The Citroën was drawn up in its usual place by the kerb outside Operations. Harriet was waiting patiently in the front passenger seat. As he came out, he caught a glimpse of her in profile, shoulders sagging, paler than he remembered, older by far, it seemed, than when he’d left her. Then he saw her give a quick uncertain glance at herself in the mirror as she spotted him, a glance which somehow pierced him more sharply than his guilt.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said as he climbed behind the wheel and leaned across to kiss her.
‘I didn’t mind, so long as you came … eventually.’ She said it quite nicely but with a certain soberness as if he might not have come. He felt guilty. The old uncertainties began to stir, and with them an anger against Harriet that was unwarrantable.
She sensed it immediately. Damn it, she always did. She looked sideways at him as he shoved the key in the ignition with irritated force.
‘You’re not angry, are you?’ She touched his left hand as it rested on the wheel.
‘No. Of course I’m not angry. Why should I be?’
Harriet shrugged. ‘My phone call perhaps,’ she suggested as he started up and pulled away from the kerb.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Nice to hear your voice.’
‘You didn’t sound as though it was.’
‘Phones are deceptive.’
‘You sounded quite put out.’
‘I was surprised.’
‘More than surprised.’
‘Anxious perhaps. I tell you, I thought the house had burned down.’ He gave a hollow laugh that deceived neither of them. ‘Or Colin had got his promotion. Or Jane had done something . . something Jane-like.’
‘Jane’s fine.’ Harriet relaxed into a smile. ‘She said she’d come home for her birthday.’
‘Bloody decent of her,’ he said bitterly. ‘Well, I’m not rolling out the red carpet.’ His lips tightened into a thin straight line as he threaded his way through the airport traffic and into the neon-lit tunnel. ‘She’ll get sweet FA from me.’
‘You are angry.’
‘With Jane, yes! Bloody angry! Bloody, bloody angry!’
‘No. With me, too.’
He could feel her studying his profile in the unkind tunnel lights.
‘Not with you, damn it, Harriet! With her!’ He felt himself sweating with anger and discomfort. ‘ That daughter of ours doesn’t know she’s born.’
With a certain relief, he drove out of the tunnel, round the roundabout and headed into the westbound stream. He felt as if he was simultaneously escaping and entering a prison.
‘Here she is,’ he exclaimed, ‘brought up in a loving family. No money problems. No problems, period. And what does she do? She throws it all away!’
‘She feels she has problems.’
‘Well, she hasn’t. Take it from me, Harriet …’ He put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and cut across into the fast lane. I wonder if she ever thinks there are hundreds of girls who would give their eye teeth for loving parents and a stable home like hers.’ His voice for some reason shook slightly. An alien wistfulness had crept into it.
Harriet, ever-perceptive, shot him a searching glance. But she looked away again almost as quickly, and said nothing for a moment. Then with deliberate lightness, ‘ Oh, I don’t know about that!’
About to open his mouth and say ‘Well, I do!’ he stopped himself. He frowned at the road ahead and then said, all heavy-father, ‘ Well, let’s not talk about Jane. Any news of the better half of the family?’
‘Colin?’
‘Yes, Colin.’
‘One letter while you were away. Usual scrappy scrawl.’
‘But he’s all right?’
‘Fine. Doing splendidly. The ship’s in Hong Kong.’
‘Lucky him!’
‘He says he spent most of his time ashore, shopping.’
‘I went shopping,’ Paul began, then stopped. A vision of Belinda and himself, hand in hand, had come into his mind with devastating clarity. It was followed by a vision of Belinda in the blue-bedecked white peignoir. He frowned, leaned forward and fiddled with the air-conditioning until the vision cleared.
‘I bought you a present, darling,’ he said and smiled falsely at the tail-board of a lorry ahead.
‘Oh, Paul! That was sweet of you.’ Harriet was genuinely touched. ‘Especially as you must have been tired and New York hot.’ Even at fifty, Harriet still occasionally blushed. Now a dark rosy colour stole over her cheeks.
‘Bloody hot! Stifling. And wet. But I wasn’t so far from the shops. And I didn’t feel so tired. I do now.’
‘Poor you!’ She smiled at him gently. ‘But you won’t have to go out again for some time.’
Being the Flight Captain, and in his office dealing with the paperwork on the crew and the route, he did less than half the trips of a Line pilot. Of this Harriet approved, because he was at home, even if it was on a nine-to-five office basis.
‘Don’t know about that,’ he warned her, ‘summer schedule.’
‘But you’ve also got a Check in three weeks’ time.’
Harker squinted at the curve coming up on the road ahead. Like all pilots, he hated these regular checks of his flying ability – like having your licence under perpetual potential suspension by the Inquisition. But all he said was, ‘Well, I’ll have to do a trip before then.’
‘Don’t be too eager,’ Harriet pleaded. ‘They won’t pay you any more.’
‘Counting overseas allowances, they do.’
‘And you look as though you could do with a rest.’
He almost said and so do you – something he had learned from past experience nev
er to say to Harriet. Instead he substituted, ‘ It’s the double trip that gets you. Hungry too.’ Suddenly he remembered the shapely, white little hand holding the tray of salmon. ‘Cabin staff were too busy to feed us properly.’
‘Well, lunch is all ready. Then maybe you’d like a nap.’
‘Naps are for old ladies.’ He smiled, but her suggestion irritated him.
‘You’ve often had one after a morning arrival.’
‘But I don’t want one now.’
She shot him another glance. ‘Would you like me to drive?’
‘Of course not! Driving doesn’t tire me. I could drive in my sleep.’
He gave a huge yawn, knowing she would now leave him in peace to digest his uneasy fragmented visions of Belinda – and his uneasier visions of his ageing self – until they reached Maybury and home.
They drove westwards in silence, skirting the Chilterns, then moving closer to the Thames. The red gash of Reading showed up on the left, but beyond were the green fields and gentle slopes of Pangbourne and then the village of Maybury.
The church showed up first, the spire coming up like a sword from the trees. Then they came up to the Wheatsheaf, a red brick Georgian ex-coaching inn where they used to come for a Saturday lunch-time session. Not that there were many Atlanta characters round here. Only the Truscotts, who lived in Thatched Cottage – a typical picturesque survival of olde worlde England that they were passing now.
Like Archie Truscott himself, Paul thought, turning sharp right. Nine years ago, Captain Truscott had tried to become airborne from Tecuma without his take off flap down and, not having the necessary lift, had failed. The aircraft had caught fire and burned out. Twenty-seven crew and passengers had been killed. Archie had been the sole survivor. There had been some matter of an unexpected change of runway that had contributed a disorganising factor to the cause, but the Inquiry verdict was Pilot Error. Paul didn’t know all the details – he doubted if anybody could know them – but Archie would never forget. Suddenly into a quite ordinary conversation he would introduce his ‘twenty-seven ghosts who follow me around everywhere’, to everybody’s embarrassment.
Harker had seen some of the abusive letters Archie had received from complete strangers. He felt terribly sorry for him, terribly sorry for Madge. Even so, he would have preferred it if Atlanta had got him a ground job elsewhere instead of establishing him as a simulator instructor at the training complex the company used. It was bad enough having Madge popping in and out of Elmtrees to chat up Harriet without running the risk of having Archie also materialising for a simulator Check.