Arrivals & Departures

by Leslie Thomas

  This morning Richardson had a meeting, then lunch and afterwards the flight to Istanbul. He would not be back that evening although he had told Adele he might. What she could never comprehend was that, although he had spent all his working life in the airline business, he retained a sense of novelty and excitement – what she called his Biggles complex – with it all, the tennis-ball size of the world, the airiness of passing from city to city, frontier to frontier, climate to climate, with oceans, deserts, ice-caps, great mountains, reduced to interesting and remote tableaux. Journey begat journey and flight followed flight but he still kept, unembarrassed, that grain of the excitement – the uncertainty, the risk, the fear, of the first time he was airborne.

  His job was more encompassing than most in an industry of compartments; he was responsible for his company’s services, the comfort it provided or lack of it, the efficiency, resilience, attitudes of its crews, particularly its cabin crews, their problems, the satisfaction of its passengers, confined for hours in a flying tunnel. It was also his function to persuade them that his airline was best, that it would transport them, feed them, care for them and calm their fears. It was his lot to listen patiently to complaints about in-flight movies, the dearth of chamber music on the audio system, the accents of the cabin staff – to allay fears that the flight would be late or never get there at all, the tail having fallen off. Disturbing, perhaps extraterrestrial, lights were seen to travel so mysteriously alongside the aircraft, and the explanation that they were on the tips of the wings was often unaccepted. He had read complaints that the engines were too loud, that the ground was too far out of sight, that none of the windows would open, that children should be sent to play outside.

  That morning’s meeting was a routine discussion on medical facilities aboard aircraft, the training of crew in advanced first aid, instructions to pilots on diverting in urgent cases, and the covert propping up and disguise of inconveniently dead bodies.

  No passenger ever passed away in mid-air whatever his appearance to the contrary; crowded planes were sensitive areas and no place to die. A recently dead man looked much like a sleeping man and a carefully rigged blanket camouflaged the truth. Edward Richardson had once had to deal with complaints from a woman who awoke to find a moribund stranger slumped across her. A steward had been cautioned for taping a glass of scotch to a deceased hand, a subterfuge referred to, in the report, as scotch-taping. The non-recognition of death whilst airborne was acknowledged throughout all airlines, occasioned by the massive legal complications arising from it happening in foreign airspace, over frontiers, above oceans, between tray meals.

  Richardson went to his own airport office and left his travelling bureau, a laptop desk in a black leather case, and his overnight bag there. He always travelled light, if possible without check-in baggage. Five per cent of all airline luggage went astray.

  His office window peered over the top tier of a car park and then onto Number One Runway. From habit he looked out to see what business was taking place. The hourly British Airways shuttle was poised to leave for Edinburgh; a bulkier plane had just galloped along the runway like a getaway horse: Cathay Pacific, twelve hours non-stop to Hong Kong. There were three planes in the taxi-way queue, the shamrock, like a white hand, of Aer Lingus, another British Airways flight and the KLM City Hopper on the ‘coffee break’ trip to Amsterdam.

  He remembered an air traffic controllers’ strike when no planes could land or leave, and he had gazed out with disbelief at the huge place, the familiar, animated amphitheatre, lying empty and windswept as a prairie.

  On his office walls were photographs which showed Heathrow Airport in 1948, like an army camp, ranks of saggy tents, passengers stepping across guy ropes, a brave Union Jack flying so that no one should be in any doubt in which country they had arrived, interiors showing desks on rough floors like stalls in a country show.

  He put his case on the desk. From the adjoining storeroom he could hear Harriet, his secretary, making coffee.

  ‘Harri,’ he called. ‘’Morning. I have to go to Istanbul.’

  ‘I saw,’ she called back. ‘They rush you around like a dodgem car, don’t they.’

  She came in, tall and narrow, so much so that the tray she carried looked like an aircraft’s wings, her big cockpit glasses adding to the illusion. She blinked through them. ‘You’d think they might have caught you in Bahrain, then you could have gone straight there.’ She put the tray on the desk, a coffee pot, two cups and a small plate of biscuits. Her arms, extended, were thin as rods, her dress without a curve.

  ‘It’s the job,’ he said. Why did women repeat each others’ complaints? It was almost as if she had been discussing it with Adele. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. Trouble in the office there.’

  ‘That Ray Francis has gone off with a Turkish delight,’ she said promptly. ‘I heard. The flight is at fifteen hundred, you’re at the Imperial Hotel, Paddy Bush will meet you.’ She leaned forward confidingly: ‘I’ve got a new bike.’

  Her face was flushed and pleased as he looked up from his coffee. ‘Oh, good. I’m glad,’ he said. ‘Is it the one you wanted?’

  ‘It’s a Muddy Fox mountain bike. I’m going to come to work on it tomorrow.’

  ‘Watch yourself in the tunnel.’

  ‘I’m not worried. There’s others.’ He knew she wanted to ask him something. ‘Would you mind if I came in cycling shorts? Just for the summer.’

  He laughed. ‘As long as the British Airports Authority doesn’t,’ he said. ‘You’d better check. They’ve probably got regulations forbidding it.’

  ‘I’ll change when I get here,’ she promised seriously. ‘Obviously I won’t wear them all day. But I’d like to go for a decent spin before coming in.’

  She took her coffee back to her own desk on the far side of the room. A landing aircraft crossed the roof. Richardson went through the papers on his desk. ‘You’ve got the medical meeting at eleven,’ Harriet reminded. ‘And Mr Grainger at twelve thirty.’

  He sighed: ‘Yes, I know. I’m just sorting out the stuff.’

  ‘Mr Francis went off with somebody before.’

  ‘He was on leave then. This time he’s supposed to be in charge of the station.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind going to Istanbul,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you? You could fly for ten per cent.’

  She looked affronted. ‘Cycle, I mean,’ she said. She nodded at the ceiling as another plane crossed the building. ‘Not in one of those things.’

  ‘You’d be tired when you got there,’ he pointed out good humouredly. Sometimes he had difficulty in equating her girlishness with the excellence of her work.

  ‘I suppose I would,’ she conceded. ‘And then there’d be all the way back. It would take months. I think I’ll stick to Suffolk.’

  Richardson rose and put his papers in his case. ‘Suffolk’s flatter,’ he smiled at her. ‘Almost as smooth as flying.’

  He went through the door and down the stairs, checking through the punch-in security system, and out into the noise and the smell, a mixture of dust, gasoline and, today, a whiff from the sludge farm, the everyday scent of the airport.

  Traffic curled around the knotted roads as busily as in any city. There were signs, indicators, warnings, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and one-way pointers. He passed the chapel, well visited, although not as much so as the pre-flight insurance bureaux, and the statue of Alcock and Brown, the first Atlantic aviators looking out from their plinth at the amazing and eventful new world they had begun. Entering a box of a building, he fed his name and identification number into another security system.

  The six other participants of the meeting were already seated when he arrived but he glanced at the wall clock and saw that he was before time so did not apologise. There were two medical men, one a doctor he had met before in dramatic circumstances, one a salesman supplying emergency medical equipment, and four commercial managers from other airlines. He knew everyone except the e
quipment expert.

  The doctor, Horace Snow, a Scot, nodded recognition. They had met when two drug smugglers had died in a plane delayed an hour by hydraulic failure on the runway during a fierce July heatwave the year before. The men had literally exploded when the cocaine-filled condoms concealed within their bodies had burst as the temperature in the cabin rose.

  ‘Not so exciting today,’ Snow whispered as Richardson sat down next to him. ‘Methods of dealing with unexpected births at thirty thousand feet – the complications legal and practical of a surprise extra passenger. Do you issue another ticket?’

  The room was another which gave broad views of the activity on the runways. Edward could never resist a glance at a departing airliner. Air New Zealand was arriving from Auckland; Alitalia was ready to take off for Milan. The eyes of the other airline men were straying in the same direction. Snow, the chairman of the meeting, observed laconically in his mild Scots: ‘The sun’s a trifle strong this morning.’ He rose and pulled the lattice curtains.

  ‘The fascination never seems to leave you flying people,’ he observed to Edward Richardson as they walked out after the meeting. ‘You stare at aeroplanes like children.’ They went towards Snow’s office and surgery. ‘Sailors are like that. Sailors can never resist a ship. Looking at her, recognising who she is, where she’s bound. God, years ago there was an old chap who was my patient.’ He grinned from memory as they walked. ‘A sea captain. He required that he be wheeled down to the sea, with his nurse, a man behind the chair, and me, so that he could take one more look at it before he died. He passed away right there on the front at Brighton. Watching the waves. It was a terrible day, cold, pouring, blowing, the gulls could scarcely fly, and the sea coming up right over the top chucking shingle across the road. He loved it. Died sniffing the ozone.’ He laughed and shook his head as he walked. ‘The rest of us very nearly died too. Come in and have a dram.’

  The surgery was adjacent to Snow’s office and through the glass door Richardson could see an Indian youth sitting on a bed while a nurse examined his leg. Snow said: ‘Won’t be a minute’ and went into the surgery. Richardson looked around the walls of the office. There were scores of Tchaikovsky’s music, Swan Lake, Eugene Onegin, Romeo and Juliet; a Victorian photograph of a man with burning eyes and another, a modern studio picture of a poised and handsome woman in evening dress and holding a sheaf of music.

  Snow returned. ‘One of the cleaners,’ he said nodding towards the surgery. ‘Only started yesterday. In India last week. Slipped on the toilet floor. He’s very bright. It’s a shame they have to start off in the lavatories.’ He paused. ‘Looking at my relics?’

  He went to his drinks cabinet. His movements were slower than his speech. He was short and old-fashioned looking with a dusty suit and a handkerchief sagging from his top pocket. ‘What will you have?’ he asked. ‘Scotch? Going to Istanbul you may need a scotch.’

  ‘I also have a meeting with Hardy Grainger,’ sighed Richardson. ‘So it had better be a small one. With water, thanks.’

  ‘Istanbul and Grainger,’ mused Snow passing him the glass. He poured a larger one for himself. ‘It’s my afternoon off,’ he said adding: ‘Istanbul and Grainger is a heady combination.’

  They lifted their glasses. ‘Istanbul,’ mused the doctor. ‘I only get as far as Fulham these days. That’s where I live. Not bad for the airport, even if I never fly anywhere.’ He drank his scotch quickly and poured another. Richardson declined. ‘I attend the Tchaikovsky Festival in Moscow every year and that’s about it,’ said Snow. ‘It’s my holiday.’

  ‘You’re a fervent admirer,’ observed Richardson nodding at the music scores and the framed photograph of the fierce man.

  ‘Tchai,’ said Snow fondly. ‘That’s him. Ah, Tchai … there never was another to touch him. Not for romance.’ He moved to the photograph of the woman. She had a fine neck and her dress fell from beautiful shoulders. ‘Freda Carlsen,’ he mused. ‘Violinist. One of the greatest when it came to Tchai. To hear her play the concerto …’ He made the pretence of running a bow across his crooked arm. ‘A foretaste of paradise.’

  ‘You know her personally?’

  ‘I was married to her,’ replied Snow sadly. ‘She said she would marry me for one year only. And she did exactly that. She went away with someone else, the timpanist of the City of Minneapolis Orchestra. A strange pair, violin and drums. They died in a boating accident a few years ago…. In a lake in Norway.’

  ‘A sad story,’ said Richardson awkwardly.

  ‘It still is for me,’ said the doctor. The nurse came to the glass door and smiled professionally at Richardson. ‘Do you want to see this young man, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘He’s going off for the rest of the day but he’ll be at work tomorrow.’

  Snow excused himself and went into the other room. Richardson saw him pat the Indian on the shoulder as the boy left. ‘Makes you wonder what they think of it all,’ he said when he returned. He shook his head. ‘Cleaning out the bogs of a cold country.’

  Hardy Grainger’s secretary Moira had the perpetual expression of someone expecting the worst, and still worse to follow. She made short darts around her outer office, her eyes mouselike, her voice hushed. It was said that she had put aside the chance of a good marriage because it would have meant leaving Grainger.

  ‘He’s had a morning,’ she said warningly to Edward Richardson. Her eyes came up with all their worry. ‘Although he’s coped very well. So far.’

  ‘Let’s hope he keeps coping,’ Richardson smiled at her. He sat in the middle of a row of three chairs and picked up Skyport, the Heathrow newspaper. There was an interview with the catering manager of Terminal Two; the new contractors reported the initial success of the wheelchair concession; a stewardess wished to share her canal barge home with another and a masseuse was advertising her whereabouts ‘Near Stains’. His eyebrows went up. Moira said: ‘It’s very good, that Skyport don’t you think, Mr Richardson? Tells you everything that’s going on.’

  ‘It seems to,’ he agreed. The phone rang on the desk and Moira picked it up. ‘He’ll see you now,’ she said with an air of cautious relief.

  ‘Is he still coping?’

  ‘So far today he’s been managing well. But he’s had a morning, as I said.’

  She went at a walking fidget before him, opened the door, and announced him, an unnecessary formality. Grainger appeared to be trying to stare through the top of his desk. His slow eyes came up. ‘Sit down, Edward,’ he sighed. ‘It’s been a morning.’

  Richardson said he expected it had. The desk top was bare of papers. Grainger almost sulked as he picked up a file from his basket. ‘What’s this bloody fool Francis been up to for God’s sake?’

  ‘Running off with a Turkish lady,’ replied Richardson succinctly. He did not know anyone who liked Grainger.

  ‘I know that.’ The words were almost snapped. He glared at the paper he had taken from the file. ‘What the hell’s Batman got to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Richardson honestly. ‘I only heard about the business last night. When I got back from Bahrain.’ He made it a separate last sentence but Grainger did not comment. He was staring at the report.

  ‘Oh, it’s where she lives. Batman is a town in Turkey.’ As if anxious to prove it he went to a giant world map which occupied a whole wall and eventually pointed. ‘There it is. Silly name for a town.’ He glanced over his shoulder and seemed disappointed that Richardson had not risen to confirm his discovery. He returned to the desk. ‘Whatever’s wrong with the fellow?’ he asked.

  Richardson said he did not know but that he was going to Istanbul that afternoon to find out. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, I hope with a clearer picture.’

  ‘Can’t imagine Francis with a Turk,’ said Grainger. He looked up. ‘Does his wife know, do you think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. She’s in Cheltenham, I believe. But she may be not unfamiliar with the general pattern.’

  Grainger sighed. �
��How do we get people like this in charge of an overseas station in the first place?’

  ‘Francis is an excellent manager,’ Richardson pointed out. ‘He’s just inclined to …’

  ‘Put himself about?’

  ‘I was going to say “fall in love”. He’s serious about it.’

  ‘And I’m serious about our representation there.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Grainger rose from behind the desk. ‘Let me know what happens,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ repeated Richardson. He went towards the door.

  ‘There,’ said Grainger as though not to be denied. He found Turkey on the map. ‘Batman, see.’ Richardson saw. ‘It’s miles from Istanbul,’ continued Grainger. ‘How did he manage to meet a woman from there?’

  Edward Richardson was still trying to sort out the logic in the question when Grainger surprisingly shook his hand fiercely. ‘Bahrain to London to Istanbul,’ muttered Grainger thoughtfully as though checking a timetable. ‘You haven’t been head-hunted have you, Edward?’ he inquired earnestly. His dull eyes looked directly into Richardson’s.

  ‘I’ve had interest,’ admitted Richardson carefully. ‘But I haven’t responded to it.’

  ‘Good, good. We couldn’t afford to lose you.’ He modified it. ‘People like you. Loyalty is a great thing. And there’s your pension.’

  Richardson could not avoid a laugh. ‘There’s always that,’ he agreed.

  Grainger walked from the door with him. Moira looked startled and began unnecessarily tidying her desk. ‘Let me know as soon as you can,’ said Grainger. He put his hand familiarly on Richardson’s arm. ‘Try and sort that idiot out. Love, indeed!’

  The Boeing crossed from Europe into Asia Minor with a tempestuous sunset flung across the Bosphorus, the sea below brooding red, the lights of Istanbul beginning to show. The airliner went inland a little towards mountains already black, and then turned again towards the sea, the city and the airport.

  Edward Richardson had often thought that there were few places on earth that did not look better from the air. That late afternoon he had been treated to a god’s-eye view of Greek islands, white stones in burning blue, before that the Italian coast sculpted to the shape of a sea horse; and now the extravagant evening of the Golden Horn. Cities, even flat, gridded cities like Los Angeles, were given a grand aspect from a height; slums became neat, dockyards were transformed into havens, concrete highways were cut into ribbons. He had seen the mud delta of a river spread like a dancer’s shining skirt, villages of shacks clinging romantically to the sides of evening hills, red-light districts blinking like fairyland. From above a desert, its dangers obviated, looked benign as a carpet; the intimidating icecap sparkled like candy; mountains became mounds and oceans shallow and stormless.