Broken Places (28 page)

But, Christ! The plane was moving – and moving backwards, not forwards, which meant something must be seriously amiss. If any aircraft took off backwards, the result would be catastrophe.

Then, suddenly, it stopped, having travelled only fifty yards. His fists were clenched so tightly, the nails were clawing into his palms, simply from the tension of not knowing what was going on. Would they depart or wouldn’t they? Centuries had passed since he first got on the plane, yet they seemed no further forward on their journey.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, in preparation for departure, please ensure your tray-tables are stowed, your seat-backs are in the upright position and your seat-belts are securely fastened. Cabin-crew, take your seats for take-off.’

Could this be it? Or just another false alarm? Certainly, the plane was creeping forwards, but with tantalizing slowness; just inching along, as if the engines had failed and it was already losing power. Perhaps the long delay had made the pilot so edgy, he had muddled the controls.

Then, all at once, it gathered speed and began hurtling along the runway at such a petrifying rate, he grabbed hold of Phil and clung on to him in extremes of panic, ignoring the bloke’s protests; ignoring everything but the rattling, roaring, shaking sensations vibrating through his body. And, suddenly, the plane lifted off, with a horrendous sort of lurch and shudder, and he braced himself for death; whispering a farewell to his daughter; hoping desperately she would remember him, for ever. They were climbing now – higher, higher, higher – but any second they would go into a nosedive and crash-land on the tarmac. As he waited for that terrifying impact, he
lost all remaining vestige of control; became a dribbling, trembling, sobbing wreck; his sole resource to merge himself with Phil; blunt his fear in that anaesthetizing bulk.

Furiously, Phil pushed him off, shoving him back in his seat, with
undisguised
aggression. ‘I could have you up for assault, you know, manhandling me like that! What’s the
matter
with you, you snivelling piece of shit?’

Eric scarcely heard; was in some sort of coma; deaf and dumb and
paralysed
. Somewhere, far away, though, things were going on – announcements, movements, voices – but indistinct and vague. He remained crouched down in his seat; catatonic, drugged; no longer part of the sentient world.

Only a painful jabbing in his arm brought him slowly back to
consciousness
. With supreme effort, he forced his eyelids open, to see Phil’s big, blubbery face looming close to his.

‘Look, sorry I was rude, mate. You took me by surprise. Are you OK, or should I call for help?’

Still confused, Eric glanced around him, then, gradually and gropingly, registered the miraculous fact that the plane was in the air still; hadn’t plummeted to earth and hit the ground. He looked along the rows of heads; all 300 totally unscathed; no flames, no charred remains, no sickening wreckage scattered far and wide. Somehow, they had overcome extinction. And, even more miraculous, he was
flying
– actually flying. How could he have failed to realize how astounding the experience was; how you left behind the dingy earth and soared up to this celestial realm; defying gravity and casting off all normal human limitations. Man had longed to fly since he first crawled from the slime, and now he, Eric Victor Parkhill, had achieved it, at long last; had cheated death, survived – and been spared for just one reason, so that he could fly again, again.

Snapping his seat-belt open, he squeezed past Phil, with a torrent of apologies, and began tearing down the aisle to the rear end of the plane, making for a window where he could actually see out, with no passengers or seats beside it.

Without the slightest tremor, he pressed his face against the glass. There, before him, lay a majestic bank of cloud, as dazzling-white as snowdrifts, and gilded by the sun. The rain had vanished; the grey, sullen skies had gone; replaced by shimmering light. He was like God, on the first day of creation, beholding the beauty of His universe. These clouds were pristine, unpolluted by any taint or stain; newly-hatched, new-born.

As he watched, the snowdrifts slowly transformed themselves into a
tranquil sea of cloud, with foamy, swan-white breakers rolling gently in. He felt no fear – no fear of sea, or water; no fear of anything. Which meant he, too, had been reborn. And, suddenly, he realized that dawn would just be breaking in Seattle, so he was flying from light to light; overcoming
darkness
, including his own personal dark night.

Wonderingly, he continued gazing at the shining stretch of undefiled cloud-ocean, and – not caring who might hear – let out a whoop of sheer, ecstatic triumph.

The taxi-driver stopped again and peered out through his window at the street-sign. Clearly, he was lost, having been proceeding – or rather
not
proceeding – in aimless sort of circles for the last twenty minutes or more. Why, thought, Eric wearily, had he turned down Christine’s offer to meet him at the airport? Any awkwardness or bitterness at being driven by his ex was as nothing in comparison with this slow, frustrating journey. And it would have cost him not a cent, whereas the cab-fare would be astronomical. He had certainly never realized how far out Christine lived. The bright lights and stylish tower-blocks of Seattle had long since been left behind and he was now in prosperous suburbia, cruising around a maze of streets that all looked much the same, although the houses themselves were distinctive, sharing only a sense of spaciousness and style.

Let me get out and walk, he longed to shout, as they rounded yet another corner that seemed to lead to nowhere. But the driver spoke no English and all communication, so far, had been limited to the fellow’s curses (completely indecipherable, but clear in their intent) each time they took a wrong turning. Besides, he would cope no better on his own; traipsing around in the dark and cold, looking for 6521, 82nd Avenue South-East – surely the most soulless address on record. And why so many housenumbers? Surely there couldn’t be 6520 other dwellings in Dwight and Christine’s street? Obviously, the system was quite different from the English one and, indeed, never had English street-names seemed so comforting and friendly: Pudding Lane, Parson’s Green, Puddle Dock, Peartree Gardens – and those were just the Ps. Yet England seemed achingly remote, as if it had been expunged from the map, or simply sunk beneath the sea. Indeed, he felt as if he’d been banished to a limbo where no one else existed save him and the small, swarthy bloke sitting in the driver’s seat,
because, although lights were on in all the houses, there was no sense of any human life, and almost no traffic on the roads.

He started as the driver let out a sudden shout. Despair, or jubilation? Eric couldn’t tell. All he knew was that they’d stopped once more, right beside a street-sign that said ‘81st Avenue South-East’. Which meant 82nd Avenue must, presumably, be close. The guy was consulting a map, but his cartographic skills appeared to be no better than his English. When he got home –
if
he got home – Eric vowed to hug every single cab-driver in London, to congratulate them personally on their skills, their expertise.

He rummaged in his flight-bag for the least soggy of his Kleenex; now reduced to re-using the old, wet, crumpled ones. Yet, although his nose was streaming, at least the sneezing had stopped and, in his present mood, he was grateful for the smallest of small mercies.

Having blown his nose till it was sore, he settled back against the seat and closed his eyes. According to his body-clock, it was four o’clock in the morning and all he craved was the oblivion of sleep. Counting his journey to Heathrow and this trip from Tacoma airport, he’d been travelling for sixteen hours – or sixty, or 600. Time had lost all meaning and, although he’d set his watch to Seattle time and knew at some vague conscious level that it was getting on for ten in the evening, all calendars and clocks no longer made much sense.

He had almost succeeded in dozing off when another yell roused him from his torpor. Even without a common language, he could tell it was a victory-call. The excited driver had his head stuck out of the window and was gesticulating wildly at the sign: 82nd Avenue South-East. Success! Now it was simply a matter of finding number 6521 – although ‘simply’ wasn’t quite the word, since the street was frustratingly long and it was difficult in the murky-dark to make out any house numbers at all.

Yet, once they’d finally pulled up outside the house, and he’d handed over a veritable king’s ransom, his overwhelming instinct was to get back into the cab and spend the entire night (morning?) continuing to meander round the streets. Because, faced with this self-important house, with its columned porch and general air of grandeur, he felt himself visibly shrink in status and importance. How could Erica ever come and stay with him, in his cramped and poky flat, when she was used to such palatial surroundings?

Hoisting his flight-bag over his shoulder, he forced himself to walk up to the front door; noting the extensive garden, with its shrubs and flowerbeds and clumps of stately conifers, and becoming more and more miserably
aware of his crumpled clothes, his pimply rash and his red and swollen nose. He prayed that Erica would open the door. At least his darling daughter would be less critical than Dwight; might even be glad to see her dad, after so long an absence.

‘Eric, for heaven’s sakes! We’ve been worried sick, wondering where you’d got to. We expected you two hours ago. Couldn’t you have rung?’

Not exactly the warmest of welcomes and, indeed, as he stared at his
ex-wife
, he was overwhelmed with a maelstrom of emotions: love, hate, regret, resentment, embarrassment and grief. This was the woman he had married, bedded, worshipped, lost. Yet she seemed to be a stranger: slimmer and more glamorous than ever he remembered her, as if she’d been remodelled and revamped. The girl he’d met more than twenty years ago had been plumpish, darkish, prettyish and shortish. But all those ‘ishes’ had been outlawed, and this new streamlined version was emphatically thin,
fashionably
stylish, and now had dramatically black hair. She even looked as if she’d grown three inches, in her high heels and pencil skirt and general air of sophistication.

‘What happened?’ she demanded, ushering him in, with, he felt, very little grace. ‘We’ve been waiting for you to call all afternoon.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘My mobile doesn’t work outside the UK.’ That itself was a point against him. Any serious traveller would own the most expensive model, fully operational in every country from Tibet to Timbuktu.

‘But couldn’t you have rung from Minneapolis?’

‘No, there wasn’t a spare moment – and I mean that literally. The first flight was delayed and it was touch and go whether I’d make my
connection
or not. I had to queue for hours in Customs and Immigration and the queue hardly seemed to move at all, yet time was ticking on and …’ When he’d finally reached the desk, he’d been interrogated and fingerprinted by a sinister armed officer, who’d then photographed the iris of his eye and continued to question him relentlessly. Far from being welcomed into America, they had made him feel a cross between a leper and a terrorist. ‘I only caught the flight by the skin of my teeth and if I’d stopped to find a phone, I’d still be stuck there, overnight! Then I was delayed again at Seattle. They lost my luggage, would you believe, which meant hanging around for ages in yet another queue, then filling in these forms and—’

‘Gosh, what bad luck!’ Christine sounded slightly kinder, at last. ‘Did they find it in the end?’

He shook his head. ‘They reckon it was left behind at Minneapolis, or maybe it never left Heathrow. No one seemed to know.’ The news had been a shock, almost visceral in its impact. Losing his possessions had increased his sense of being an alien or refugee, stripped of all he owned.
Half-expecting
to be issued with a set of prison clothing, he had received instead a so-called overnight kit, containing a toothbrush, basic toiletries and what he assumed was nightwear; the latter comprising a gigantic T-shirt, big enough for a behemoth and blazoned with InterWest logo, and a pair of pants so minuscule they would have left an elf indecent.

‘That’s rotten,’ Christine said, with what seemed like genuine sympathy. ‘But not to worry – Dwight can lend you pyjamas and shirts and anything else you need.’

‘Thanks,’ said Eric, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Since Dwight was six-foot-six to his own five-foot-ten, he would be obliged to trail around with flapping trouser-bottoms and with his hands engulfed by the
shirtsleeves
. ‘Then, to cap it all, the taxi driver didn’t seem to know the way and—’

‘Was he black?’ Christine interrupted.

‘No,’ he said, wondering if his once-liberal wife had suddenly become a racist. ‘Mixed race, I’d guess.’

‘Well, any shade of black or brown, they hate coming out to Mercer Island. No blacks or Asians live round here, you see, so they resent it as a white preserve. But what I’m dying to know, Eric, is how you coped with the flight itself? I mean, all these years you’ve refused to fly, telling me it was literally impossible, and now you’ve actually done it! Was it as bad as you feared?’

‘No,’ he muttered, unwilling to discuss the matter, which he had been mulling over for the last six or seven hours. His brief moment of euphoria, when he’d become like God surveying His creation, had soon been swamped by fear again, once they ran into bouts of turbulence.

‘Told you so!’ Christine exclaimed, unable to desist from crowing. ‘All that fuss you made, for heaven’s sake, and quite unnecessarily, it seems.’

‘Told you so’ was itself grounds for a divorce, and too simplistic anyway. In fact, his mind was in a turmoil on the subject, lurching between pride in his achievement at having overcome a phobia, and deep dread at the prospect of having to board another plane. Admittedly, none of Jeremy’s horrors had materialized, and here he was alive and in one piece, yet the thought of hurtling through the air again in an aluminium coffin brought him out in a cold sweat. But, no point trying to explain – least of all to
Christine. She had always felt at home in the world, firmly rooted and secure, so how could she understand his ever-present sense of the
precariousness
of life itself?

‘Actually,’ he remarked, ‘I think flying’s a gigantic con; almost like a form of cattle-transport. I mean, there you are, a captive victim, stiff and cramped and achy and pinned down in your seat, and they keep plying you with booze and playing soppy movies, to lull you into thinking that the
experience
is pleasurable and—’

He broke off in embarrassment as Dwight swept into the room, looking maddeningly suave in dove-grey trousers and a soft suede cardigan the colour of wet sand.

‘Welcome to Seattle!’ he said, extending a well-manicured hand.

Eric proffered his own clammy, snot-smeared hand, which was all but crushed to pulp in Dwight’s pincer-strong handshake. ‘I really do apologize,’ Eric said, fumbling for a Kleenex, as his nose began to run again. ‘I’ve gone down with this rotten cold, and I’m just hoping you don’t catch my germs.’ He imagined Dwight and Christine coughing, sneezing, snuffling throughout their marriage ceremony, and realized to his shame that he wouldn’t give a damn.

‘I’m never ill,’ Dwight said dismissively, as if illness were a form of moral weakness. ‘I just don’t have the time to waste, lying around in bed.’

Feeling doubly reproved, Eric followed him into the sitting-room, trying not to gawp at its sheer size and splendour – not one sofa but three, all in spotless white leather; a huge black dining table, with a dozen matching chairs, and great splodgy black-and-white oil-paintings echoing the colour scheme.

‘What a lovely house,’ he murmured, feeling a mixture of awe and envy. Each of those paintings probably cost more than the annual rent on his flat.

‘Yes,’ said Christine, arranging herself decoratively on one of the three sofas, ‘we had it totally remodelled, inside and out – which took some doing, I can tell you! We were never on our own, what with the architect and project manager practically taking up residence, then a load of design consultants trooping in, along with colour-psychologists and various other experts they co-opted in their turn.’

What, he thought, was a colour-psychologist and how had he managed all his life without one?

‘We were awash in samples, swatches and colour charts, until the place looked like a shop! And every single step of the way, there were decisions to be made. Even the shade of white for the walls in here became a major
issue. I wanted a slightly creamier tone, but they told me that was passé and brought me so many different varieties of ultra-trendy whites, I began to go cross-eyed! And, even when they’d finished, we still weren’t home and dry, because then it was the turn of the landscape gardeners – six of them in all. They transformed the yard from a wilderness, but – my God! – the fuss they made. I almost went insane!’

Eric swallowed. ‘What a hassle,’ he said lamely, glad he didn’t share the problems of the rich. Stella was
his
design consultant – told him off if he teamed a blue shirt with a green sweater. And he was still perplexed by how white could be ‘ultra-trendy’. Surely white was white.

‘Oh, you haven’t heard the half of it. You see, just when we thought—’

‘Hold on,’ he said, before she could elaborate further on loft-conversions or lighting consultants or the latest input from some
feng shui
expert. ‘Where’s Erica, for goodness’ sake? I hope she hasn’t gone to bed already. I just can’t wait to see her!’

He noticed Dwight and Christine exchange a glance. ‘I’m afraid she’s not here,’ Christine said, defensively.

‘Not here? But I’ve just travelled three thousand miles to be with her!’

‘You’ll see her in the morning, Eric. She’s staying the night with a schoolfriend.’

‘But
why
?’ he asked, suspiciously. Were they deliberately keeping her away from him?

‘Because – well, it’s complicated.’

What sort of answer was that? ‘Couldn’t we fetch her back – now I’m here, I mean? I know it’s late, but—’

‘No, the house is in May Creek, which is a good twenty miles, there and back, and I don’t fancy trekking all that way at ten o’clock at night. Her friend’s one of the few kids who live off-island but still attend the school. They made a special case for her, because her father works for a Mercer Island company and drives her in each day. And, anyway, they plan to move and should be our near-neighbours by the summer. But at present they’re—’

‘Forget the geography,’ Dwight interrupted. ‘We should be dealing with the important issues.’ He turned to Eric; a new edge to his voice. ‘I know you’re tired, but we need to put you in the picture – and this evening, if you
don’t
mind.’