by Drew Ford
“Oh dear. Well, it can’t be helped.” She let out a breath like a delicate sniff in reverse and said “What’s the situation, do we know?”
“Do we know what the delay is?” Slater called to the barman.
“The way I heard it, some of the crew didn’t show up for work.”
“Let’s hope they’re ill, then,” Melanie said.
This was a decidedly untypical wish, and then Slater understood. “Rather than nervous of flying tonight, you mean.”
“So long as there’s someone who isn’t.”
“Of course I’m not,” Slater said before he grasped that she wasn’t referring to him. As he looked away from a woman who was staring reproachfully at him he felt prompted to ask “How are Tom and Amy?”
“Asleep, I hope.”
“You may as well be too. That’s to say don’t wait till I come home.”
“You know I’ll be waiting even if I’m asleep.” As if she hadn’t changed the subject Melanie said “How’s Eileen now?”
“I think I’ve put her right. I just wonder if any of the staff at the home believe that rubbish. Well, they won’t for much longer.”
“That’ll be strange for them,” Melanie said. “See you however late you are, then.”
“Absolutely, yes. See you then.”
He would have added some endearments if he hadn’t felt overheard in the bar. He ended the call and was pocketing the mobile when a voice behind him said “Anybody here think we’re all stopping at midnight?”
The speaker—a small man who appeared to have concentrated most of his bulk in his stomach—was at a table by himself. A scowl clenched his mottled reddish face, which was decorated with a fading false moustache, a strip of foam from his latest pint of beer. “Don’t be shy if you’re one of that lot,” he urged so vigorously that he left some consonants behind.
Slater supposed his phone call had provoked the outburst. He turned away as other customers lowered their heads or resumed their conversations, but the man wasn’t so easily ignored. “Don’t any of us read the Bible? Me neither, but they’ve told us what they say it says.”
A sinking movement drew Slater’s attention to the window, but it was the reflection of the man’s tankard, not a plane. “The Koran too,” the man said less distinctly, “and the rest of them fairy tales. Shows how much crap they are when that’s all they can agree about.”
Was everyone as embarrassed as Slater? The lack of a response only antagonised the man. “Who’s keeping quiet?” he more or less pronounced. “Don’t tell me there’s none of you here. My lad’s computer says you’re everywhere.”
Slater felt the man’s gaze on the nape of his neck, though he couldn’t tell from the reflection where the fellow was looking. Perhaps the sensation simply proved how much that you took for the external world was happening inside you. It dissipated as the man said “Come to think, they won’t be travelling tonight. They’re all praying the rest of us are wrong, I shouldn’t wonder.”
As the man’s reflection slumped back in its chair Slater finished his drink. He oughtn’t to have any more when he didn’t know how soon he might be driving. He leafed through the magazine, but the names of favourite composers and their works didn’t sound many notes in his head. He shut his eyes to rest them for a moment—at least, that was all he intended, but he was wakened by the man behind him. “It’s here.”
A plane was coasting past the window, with Slater’s heartbeat for its soundtrack. It glided out of sight, and he felt as if he were a member of a chorus all holding their breaths. Certainly he wasn’t alone in breathing aloud when a voice from above invited passengers for John Lennon to the gate. Several people raised a feeble if not ironic cheer, and as the barman called “Safe home” Slater found himself humming a snatch of “Imagine” as a reminiscence of the singer who’d lent the Liverpool airport his name.
While the bar and then the passage to the gate resounded with a prolonged drumroll of luggage, the elevated voice advised passengers to have their boarding cards and passports ready. No doubt the airline was attempting to make up for the delay, since a uniformed woman had already opened the exit to the airfield. “Come straight to me,” she said.
She barely glanced at Slater’s documents before she scanned his boarding card. A boxy corridor reverberated with his luggage and led him out beneath a black sky, in which he imagined more stars were visible than he had time to glimpse. At the top of the steps to the plane a woman in a larger version of the airline uniform looked impatient for the passengers to cross the tarmac. A man in a suit that identified him as a pilot ushered Slater to a seat halfway down the aisle, not the place he’d been assigned. “There’s just a few of you tonight,” the pilot said. “We’re seating you for balance.”
“Thanks for taking the trouble for us.”
“Someone had to. The job’s the job.”
Slater hoisted his suitcase into the overhead locker and was fastening his safety belt as the pilot found a seat for the last passenger to board, the small big-bellied fellow. The larger stewardess oversaw the man’s audibly peevish struggle with his seatbelt while the pilot shut himself in the cockpit, and then there was silence apart from a murmur of music that sounded reluctant to take much shape or to make clear which if any instruments were involved. The steps backed away from the plane as the pilot’s voice set about directing the cabin crew. As soon as the plane began to taxi he apologised for the delay, and then a recorded message prompted the cabin crew to perform their safety mime, which was so familiar that Slater could easily have dreamed it. The small man gave it a loose round of applause while the plane gathered speed, and the tarmac fell away as the plane sailed up into a larger darkness. The wing tilted as if the earth was calling it back, and Slater watched a few illuminated roads dwindle to filaments before the island drifted down the inclined sea into the dark.
He could have been gesturing at the night as he flourished his wristwatch. It would be midnight in not much over a quarter of an hour. Waiting for the slimmer stewardess to wheel a trolley down the aisle used up several minutes, and obtaining a bottle of water took one more. He sucked at the plastic nipple and then picked up his magazine, but leafing through it felt like trying to recapture information. Did he need to stay awake? Wouldn’t it be wiser to catch a little sleep before he had to drive? He closed his eyes and felt the magazine sliding out of his hands until he fumbled it onto the seat beside him. His head drooped and jerked up and sank again, and the low unchanging chord of the engines seemed to expand to meet him. Then they cut out, or rather his consciousness did, and he knew nothing until he came back to himself with a violent lurch.
It felt worse than any panic he’d experienced in his life—worse than the endless minutes he’d once spent searching for baby Tom and lost toddler Amy in the retail park where he worked. He felt as though his innards had dropped out of him, and he was just a shell that ached with emptiness. He wasn’t even seated any longer; he’d plummeted into the dark so violently that it had snatched away his vision along with his ability to breathe. He was utterly alone in the midst of a vast silence unrelieved by so much as a heartbeat. He couldn’t have said whether it lasted for an instant or longer than he had the means to comprehend before he heard a voice. “Just someone expected word you meant,” it said.
Or was it saying that he’d sent someone a worm or that they expected a firmament? He had to struggle to grasp who was speaking, and then he managed to deduce that the pilot was apologising for some unexpected turbulence. As he risked opening his eyes his sight returned, unless the uncontrollable lurch of the aircraft had put out the lights in the cabin at the moment he’d jerked awake. How could the voice be declaring “Police state sees to damned”? No, it was telling the passengers “Please stay seated and keep your belts fastened. Justify caution. No cause for alarm.”
The last words let Slater understand that the pilot had said it only as a precaution. He could have thought the turbulence had dislodged his perceptions,
which might explain why he felt so alone in the cabin. The lights were dimmer than he remembered, and they appeared to be showing him row after row of empty seats. He was absurdly grateful to hear a blurred voice. “Christ, give us a drink.”
The tops of heads rose above half a dozen seats, and Slater glanced around to see faces leaning into the aisle like cards displayed by a cagey player. The stewardess who’d been at the boarding gate appeared from behind a curtain near the cockpit to murmur “We’re only serving water now, sir, and could you please watch your language.”
“Holy water, is it? We’ll be needing more than that if you keep on chucking us about.”
“We’ve started our dissent,” Slater heard her say until he thought about it. A glance at his watch showed him that the time was several minutes after midnight. He’d no idea how much time had passed since the plane had encountered the turbulence, and there was certainly no reason to ask. All that mattered was that they would be landing soon, and he strained his eyes at the blackness that appeared to have become the substance of the window. At first he wasn’t sure that he was seeing tiny lights lying too low for stars, and then the pattern like a distant constellation resolved itself into a set of grids. They were marking airstrips, and he didn’t need the announcement that the plane was about to land.
Perhaps the pilot was resolved to make up for the turbulence, since they touched down as if the plane weighed nothing to speak of. It came to a virtually imperceptible halt while noises almost too undefined to resemble music hovered in the cabin, and then a staircase lumbered out of the dark. The more substantial of the stewardesses opened the door to it, and her colleague waited on the tarmac to point the passengers towards the terminal. Slater made for the entrance so fast he hadn’t time to notice any stars in the black sky, but when he stepped into the extensive bare white room he had to join a queue for the solitary operating immigration booth.
He’d never seen anyone so apparently determined not just to do but to look like their job. The officer’s long face was an all-purpose warning, and jowls resembling a bloodhound’s made it even more morose. He questioned a woman at length before sending her on her way and beckoning the next passenger forward. He was still quizzing her when the man with the prominent stomach began to complain. “What’s the holdup this time? Some of us want to get home.”
The immigration officer sent him an ominous look that only provoked him to raise his voice. “We’re all Brits here, aren’t we? Don’t treat us like we’ve landed somewhere else.”
Before he’d finished speaking two men in identical sombre suits appeared from behind a partition beyond the booths and converged on the protester. “Please come with us,” one said—Slater couldn’t tell which.
“That’s more like. You don’t get anywhere if you don’t kick up a row.”
One official led the way between two empty booths while the other followed close behind the passenger. When they reached the partition the man turned to the queue as if his belly was swinging him around. “You want to kick up as well,” he told them. “Hang on, where are you taking—”
As his escorts ushered him behind the partition, each with a hand on one of his arms, his voice ceased. The only sounds were at the booth. At last the officer handed back the woman’s passport and beckoned Slater with a gesture reminiscent of a fighter summoning an opponent. Slater tried offering a generalised smile along with his passport, but the overture might as well have been invisible. “Name?” the officer said.
“Paul Slater. Derek Paul, if you want the whole thing.”
“Which are you?”
“I was born Derek Paul. Not born it, obviously, but that’s what they called me when they did. I left Derek behind a long time ago.”
“You’ve changed your name.”
“Not officially, no. It’s still in there if you look.”
The officer opened the passport at the identification page and glanced away at last from Slater’s face. “Date of birth.”
“Just had my birthday last week. Twenty-third of April.” Since this apparently wasn’t enough Slater added “Seventy-six.”
“Age.”
For a moment Slater didn’t know, or at least had to remember the date. His answer only made way for another toneless question. “Place of birth.”
“Right here in Liverpool.”
“Citizenship.”
“British.” With a surge of the irritation that had seized the protester in the queue Slater said “Can’t you tell?”
“Date of expiry.”
“Not for a long time yet, I hope.” This went unappreciated too. “The passport, you mean,” he said. “I’m not really sure without looking. Since when were we expected to be?”
If there was any answer in the unwavering pale gaze, it was just an admonition. “Wait a minute,” Slater said with no idea of what he was preventing. “It’s, don’t tell me, no, I see you wouldn’t. It’s, hold on now, yes, it’s next, next March.”
The man shut the passport without another glance. “You are advised to leave sufficient time for the renewal.”
As Slater took hold of the passport he said “Do you mind if I ask what you’re looking for?”
“Why should you want to know that?”
“I don’t suppose I need to. In fact I’m sure I don’t.” Slater was about to risk tugging at the passport—the man’s grasp felt like a confirmation of the warning in his eyes—when he found he was alone in holding it. “Thank you for,” he said and couldn’t leave the word dangling. “Thank you for your time.”
He expected to find a door behind the partition on the far side of the booths, but there was just a blank wall. The partition must cut off any sounds; he couldn’t even hear the interrogation that would be following his. The arrivals hall was deserted, and the shops were blanked out by metal shutters. As he hurried to the exit the high roof seemed to shrink his footsteps until they were no more substantial than their echoes. His reflection was growing on the glass doors when they parted with a gasp like the last of a breath.
Above the lamps that glared down on the car park the sky could almost have been a roof they were set in. No doubt they were helping to render it so black. The multitude of cars appeared to be forgetting their own colours, and if he hadn’t memorised the location of the Astra—section E for Eroica and for the key of the symphony as well, third row like the number of the symphony—he might have panicked. He had to rouse it with the key fob before he was sure that the grey car was his gold one. He rested a hand on its hollow metal pate while he gazed at the sky until he succeeded in conjuring forth a star attended by three other intermittently visible gleams. He found them oddly reassuring, and so were the headlamps once he switched them on, and the dashboard lights that Tom and Amy used to pretend were the lights on the control panel in a cockpit. Some if not all of this felt like a promise of the lights of home.
The barrier raised its arm to point at the sky. Along the empty four-lane road that led away from the airport, the branches of thin trees netted scraps of the blackness. Single-storey blocks of grey corrugated metal flanked the road, and Slater hadn’t previously realised how little the route offered for the mind to grasp. Miles later he came to the first houses, in which every window was as black as the sky. Beyond the houses ranks of headstones stretched away on both sides of the road into the dark, and he couldn’t recall ever having taken so long to leave the cemetery behind. At last the road widened, and soon the grassy strip between the pairs of deserted lanes was as broad as a road itself. The elongated grove that stood on it, and the fields that kept interrupting the parade of unlit houses, had begun to feel as if the land was reminiscing about itself. No doubt the night was giving Slater thoughts like these, along with a sense of isolation.
As he turned along St Peter Street he couldn’t immediately see the house; the trees standing in square plots on the pavements blocked his view. He was nearly home by the time he saw that the windows were full of the sky, like mirrors with nothing to sho
w. He parked beside Melanie’s Viva on the drive and carried his suitcase to the front door rather than risk disturbing anyone with the sound of the wheels. He was finding his keys when the four panes in the door lit up as though he’d triggered an alarm.
He saw Melanie’s silhouette descend into the hall with a flickering movement reminiscent of an old film. Her shape was snagging on the frosted panes, which made her look intermittently atomised. She must mean not to waken the children, since he couldn’t hear her footsteps. The glass tried to recompose her features as she opened the door, and then her large generous face seemed to brighten the night with a smile. She stood on the threshold and hugged him with all her strength, whispering “Is it really you at last, Paul?”
“I can’t imagine who else it’s likely to be,” Slater murmured. She was in just her dressing-gown, which fluttered as a chill wind reminded him of the hour. “Let’s get you inside,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you, do I?”
She tilted her head back without letting go of him, and her glossy black hair trailed over her shoulders as her oval brown eyes seemed to deepen with a question. “How are you going to do that?”
“I’m saying I’m not. You aren’t dressed for out here, that’s all.”
She shook her head, presumably at herself, as they retreated into the hall, and he was managing to shut the door without a sound when Amy called “Is that dad?”
“Is it, mummy?” Tom contributed at once.
As he appeared at the top of the stairs Amy joined him. They looked like sleepy versions of their images that lined the hall and climbed beside the stairs, framed photographs of the family holidaying in half a dozen European countries. Yet again Slater found himself thinking how his and Melanie’s features had been displaced: the nine-year-old boy made his mother’s face male with hair cropped almost as short as he would like, while Amy’s extra pair of years hadn’t altered her resemblance to her father—blue eyes set wide, rounded face except for the prominent chin, small mouth. “Now you’ve seen him you can both go back to sleep,” Melanie said. “You’ve school and rehearsals as well.”