Broken Places (27 page)

‘Mum, look at that man’s hair!’ a voice behind him shrilled. ‘It’s nearly the same colour as Pippa’s carrot puree.’

‘Ssssh, Katy, don’t be rude.’

Eric swivelled round to see three small fry in the row behind – the girl who’d spoken, her younger brother and a babe-in-arms (Pippa,
presumably
), together with their harassed-looking mother. He smiled at them through gritted teeth; bracing himself for more comments on his
appearance
– his rash, for instance: ‘nearly the same colour as tomato soup’.

However, the next assault was physical in nature, as, the minute he sat down, one of the kids began kicking the back of his seat, jarring him quite painfully with each repeated thump. But before he could object, he was overtaken by a monstrous sneeze that seemed to echo through the plane.

‘Terribly sorry,’ he muttered to his neighbours. ‘Do excuse me. I’ve gone down with a cold.’

‘You shouldn’t fly with a cold,’ the fat man remarked, with obvious
disapproval. ‘You could rupture an eardrum and, believe me, mate, that’s the most god-awful pain! And it can leave you permanently deaf.’

‘Really?’ Eric muttered, almost wishing he were deaf already, so he didn’t have to listen to yet more flight-induced disasters.

‘Yeah. A friend of mine flew with a bad cold and never really recovered. He’s suffered with balance problems ever since – even spent two weeks in hospital.’

Hospital, thought Eric, was where
he
should be, right now. All his bodily functions had gone into manic overdrive. His heart-rate had reached danger-levels and, at any moment, would simply shudder to a stop. He prayed it would happen before take-off, so he could be whisked to the safety of a morgue on
this
side of the Atlantic. He was also sweating so profusely, he might have been sitting in a sauna rather than in an air-conditioned plane. Nor could he shift his mind from
airline-carnage
. In addition to Jeremy’s atrocities and the unspeakable catastrophes depicted in
The Week
, he’d also read lurid reports of two plane-crashes, this very Monday, occurring within minutes of each other: the first in Montana, the second in Tokyo. And the latter crash had been caused partly by strong winds – exactly the same type of wind forecast for today.

He cast an anxious glance at the Muslim, who was sitting preternaturally still. Wasn’t that suspicious in itself? If he were a notorious gangster, wanted by the police, naturally he’d want to avoid attention.

‘Please fasten your seat-belt, sir.’ A passing stewardess had stopped at the end of their row and was gesturing to his lap.

‘Er, yes, of course.’ How did the damned thing do up? It appeared to have only one end, unless he was sitting on the other, which would account for the pain in his buttock.

‘Though you might be more comfortable, sir, if you took off your coat.’

Only then did he notice that no one else was wearing coats. No wonder he was suffocating – although even stark naked he’d be sweating. He
struggled
to his feet. It wasn’t easy to remove a coat in such a restricted space, but, fortunately, the stewardess relieved him of the garment and stowed it safely in the overhead locker. She even leaned across and helped him with his seat-belt, clearly realizing what a greenhorn he was. Could he really be the only person on a 300-seater plane who had never flown before? Certainly, everyone in his line of sight appeared enviably at home, so he
used the ruse he had relied on in Security, and copied what they were doing: extracting earphones, eye-mask and some glossy magazine or other from the pocket on the seat in front.

And it was not the only reading matter, since a steward was now coming down the aisle, distributing copies of the
Daily Mail
. He waved his away with a vehement ‘No thanks!’ These last few days, every time he’d so much as glanced at a paper, some new horror caught his eye; not least an article (in the
Mail
, no less) about the debauchery of airline staff. Yes, Jeremy was right. Apparently, the stewards were often drugged or drunk on duty, or having it away in the toilets with each other.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking …’

Was
he
drunk, Eric wondered, or maybe stoned out of his mind, or
shagging
his co-pilot?

‘Welcome aboard this Airbus A330 to Minneapolis St Paul. Our flying time is just over nine hours, and we shall be cruising at …’

As Eric tried to shift his mind from dissipation to the details of the flight, another sneeze tickled in his nose and exploded in a resounding ‘
Atishooooooo
!’, despite his frantic efforts to abort it. Sneezing with an allergy might be frustrating and inconvenient, but sneezing with a cold rendered him a genuine source of infection – as his neighbour lost no time in pointing out.

‘Bloody hell!’ the bloke exclaimed. ‘You should be home in bed, mate, not spreading your germs to us poor sods.’

‘I really do apologize. I assure you I wouldn’t fly unless it was absolutely necessary.’

‘What, is someone ill or dying, then?’

Eric nodded.
He
was ill and dying, so it wasn’t exactly a lie, Anyway, he had to appease this fellow, otherwise he might be subject to twenty-stone of furious attack.

‘Very sorry to hear that. My name’s Phil, by the way.’

‘Oh, hi … I’m Eric.’

He prayed no more conversation would ensue. Chitchat was impossible in his present state of mind and, besides, he might somehow start confessing all his terrors and then be duly mortified. He’d discerned long ago that other people regarded fear as fundamentally selfish; a narcissistic focus on one’s own footling little qualms, rather than a wider concern for the ills of all mankind. Although shamed by such accusations, he was also well aware that he
did
care about humanity;
did
make constant efforts to shift his
attention from his pusillanimous self, yet it made not a shred of difference. In fact, he suspected Mandy was right. Somehow his mother’s own
desperation
had been imprinted on his every cell from the moment he drew breath, so that nothing he could do ever dented his sense of vulnerability at being cast adrift in such a capricious world.

However, to avoid any risk of further exchanges with his (probably
fearless
) neighbour, he buried himself in the magazine,
High Life
, which seemed full of celebrity interviews and advertisements for luxury trinkets. But who in their right mind would want to read about Angelina Jolie’s love-life, or decide between a Rolex watch and a pair of Gucci sunglasses when death stared them in the face?

‘Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Cooper, with an update. I’m sorry to announce there will be a further delay to your flight, because we’re waiting for a replacement part to …’

Eric clutched Phil’s arm so hard, he left red marks.

‘Steady on! What’s up, mate?’

All colour had drained from Eric’s face. ‘Didn’t you hear what he said? A piece must have fallen off the plane.’

‘Don’t be daft! He said a replacement part for the in-flight entertainment system.’

Eric barely heard. In his mind, he was watching the plane break up in
mid-air
, as other parts slowly came adrift and the whole thing crashed to earth.

‘You know, for the movies and TV and stuff.’ Phil gestured to the tiny screen in front of him.

‘Oh … I see.’ He had assumed those little screens were some security device, scanning every passenger throughout the duration of the journey. After all, if the authorities were so Big-Brother-like, the idea made perfect sense.

The baby behind him suddenly started screaming – a wail of profound despair, entirely appropriate in the circumstances. Shouldn’t everyone be crying, when, any minute, they would meet their doom? Take-off and landing were the most dangerous of all procedures, according to reports. Indeed, one of Monday’s crashes had occurred when the plane was landing, and there had been countless other disasters as planes tried – and failed – to take off.

‘Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen. I’m afraid it’s taking a little longer than we anticipated to replace the missing part.’

Patience? The kids were kicking the back of his seat again; the infant was
still shrieking and his knees were jammed uncomfortably against the seat in front. In fact, he was developing cramp in his thighs, although he almost welcomed any new and different pain, as a distraction from the risk of death-by-terror.

He was also increasingly uneasy about the Muslim’s almost creepy
stillness
. She
was
a female (as he’d realized from her hands and from the presence of, presumably, her husband – a hirsute and swarthy bloke, slumped glumly on her other side); none the less, there was something distinctly unsettling about her total silence and rigidity, as if she were made of stone, not flesh. Attempting to be friendly, he flashed her a nervous smile, but the problem with a niqab was that you had no idea if its occupant was smiling back. Unlikely, judging by the hostile eyes. If only he was sitting next to some gorgeous, sympathetic woman – a Mandy-clone, who would let him hold her hand; bury his face in the shelter of her breasts.

‘Hello again, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Cooper speaking. I’m glad to report that we now have the aircraft doors closed, which means we’re in the system to depart….’

Eric gripped the arms of his seat, fixing on that one word: ‘depart’. His overwhelming instinct was to leap up from his seat, tear along the aisle and demand to be let out. Only the thought of Christine’s scorn, Dwight’s fury and Erica’s distress kept him buckled down.

And now a female voice was speaking. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is to remind you that all mobile phones and electronic devices must be switched off before departure.’

Departure. There it was again. No word in the whole lexicon could induce such sickening dread. Yet, although he was primed for catastrophe – every cell of his body on the highest possible alert – there was a strong sense of anticlimax, since nothing actually happened; no revving of the engines; no sudden movement forward; only a ripping sound from Phil as he tore open a giant-sized bag of crisps.

‘Here, mate, help yourself.’

‘Er, no thanks.’ The smell of grease and vinegar only added to his
discomfort
. Any minute he’d throw up.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Cooper again. I’m extremely sorry to announce a further delay. We are, in fact, fully ready for departure, but our pushback tractor has disappeared, so I’m afraid we’ll have to wait till it arrives.’

What the hell was a pushback tractor, and how could it ‘disappear’?
Perhaps this flight was fated and everything that could go wrong
would
go wrong, finally ending in apocalypse. The omens were certainly bad. The baby’s wails had become a screeching caterwaul that split his head apart. And the kids behind were not only kicking his seat but quarrelling and fighting; their slaps and shrieks providing a noxious descant to the jaunty music now playing over the speakers. And, on top of everything else, the cramp in his thigh was spreading down his leg in stabbing jolts of pain. He needed desperately to get up and walk about, but the way he felt at present he would probably never walk again, but spend his future as a quaking blob – not that he could count on there
being
any future. And, once they were airborne, he certainly wouldn’t dare to move a muscle, for fear of overbalancing the plane. If passengers began milling around, the strain on the aircraft might prove just too great. For all he knew, the cabin floor might be fragile, especially with great hulks like Phil putting it at extra risk.

He glanced at one of the stewards as he came striding down the aisle. He looked anxious, didn’t he, as if something grave was preying on his mind? Perhaps all the staff knew full well that flight IW 103 was fatally imperilled, but, of course, were forbidden to divulge such fears. And the weather itself would give additional cause for concern. Heavy rain had been forecast all day, and might well become torrential and, once they were over Greenland, there would be no end to the hazards: sleet, snow, ice, fog, thunder, lightning—

Another announcement interrupted his thoughts – not the captain this time, but a different male voice, sounding inappropriately upbeat. ‘I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Andy, your senior flight attendant. I wish you all a pleasant flight and—’

A pleasant flight! Another oxymoron and one so patently absurd, it was all he could do not to yell out an objection.

‘In a moment,’ the cheery voice continued, ‘the crew will be
demonstrating
the safety procedures used aboard this Airbus A330 aircraft. Do please give them your full attention.’

He watched nervously as a couple of stewardesses took up positions in the aisles and began performing some sort of dumb-show, while a recorded voice spelt out horrors so unfathomable, he all but retched again, in panic.

‘If the cabin air-supply fails, masks like these will drop down from the panel above your head….’

‘Your life-jacket is located under your seat. In the event of a landing on water….’

‘Do not inflate your life-jacket until you are outside the aircraft …’

‘A light and a whistle are attached for attracting attention….’

Even if he stoppered his ears, he couldn’t avoid this catalogue of
disasters
, since they were illustrated, in grotesque detail, on the little screen in front of him: people struggling into life-jackets, putting on masks, or – more hideous still – sliding down an escape-chute. Only now did he realize that Jeremy was actually a hero – the way he had helped his fellow passengers down a highly dangerous ladder, whereas
he
, the pitiful coward, could never, ever, go within a mile of an escape-chute. Where would those poor hapless victims land: in the heaving waves of the merciless Atlantic, or impaled on the peaks of some barren, snow-bound mountain-range?

He shut his eyes; tried to blank out the warnings; felt an overpowering desire to take up the foetal position – become nothing but an embryo, with an undeveloped brain, devoid of any feelings whatsoever.