Landing Gear (5 page)

Harriet used the touchscreen to enlarge the most recent photo of Emily. It was painful to look at her, but she’d got used to it, and now it would be more painful not to look. What can I do to help her through this? What can I say, without fucking up everything? Will she want to know me? When the day comes and she learns the true story, will she turn away?

10

“What do you think?”

Young black woman, smartly dressed: “Oh, it’s amazing, isn’t it? The sky—it’s like we’ve arrived in the future or something.”

“What about you, sir?”

Older Asian man, in a suit: “My fifteen-year-old daughter is in the south of France on a language exchange. How on earth am I supposed to get her home? It’s not like she can hire a car and drive to Calais.”

Polish man, thirty-something: “I’m stuck here! I came over to visit my brother. He works at Heathrow, so he now has some extra time to see me, which is good. But London is so expensive. If I have to stay much longer, I’ll have to get a job, like all the other Polish people!”

“And you?”

Older white woman: “I’m loving it. My husband is stranded in Norway, but he’s with friends, so he’s okay. I love the quiet. It’s so peaceful. It would be brilliant if Richmond was like this all the time.”

The interviews were going well; it had been a good idea to come to this part of town, far west, close to Heathrow. Everyone on the high street was in a curiously good mood, despite their stories of children, partners and
colleagues stranded. It was as though the air had cleared finally after a long deluge.

Pensioner, with a walking frame: “I never realized before that the sky is so full of noise. I know that we see and hear and feel the planes most days, but I’m amazed at how accustomed I’d become. I’d be happy if the planes never returned.” Barney videoed the interviews at the same time as recording the sound. After they’d amassed a fair amount of material, Harriet suggested they head over to Richmond Park to record the lack of noise.

Barney laughed. “That’ll make good radio.”

“No, come on,” Harriet said, “you’ll see. It’s a good idea.”

Because the Easter school holidays were still on, the road traffic was very light. In fact, the whole of London felt depopulated. In the park they walked until they found a copse for Harriet to stand in. The sun was shining and the daffodils were out. The trees had that tentative, early-spring look, caught between leaf and blossom. A large flock of bright green West London parakeets settled in one of the oaks. Barney turned his camera on, and what they expected to be silence was, of course, full of sound—birds, the light breeze in the leaves and grass, in the distance a dog barking, a car passing. Harriet found it hard not to smile. She spread her arms and looked up into the sky, which was completely, solidly blue.

“No jet streams,” she said. “Not a single jet stream.”

Back in the studio, they cut together the piece, managing to persuade Steve to give them five minutes instead
of the two he’d said he wanted. They edited a video version as well, to post on the station website.

“This will make you a star, Harriet,” Barney said.

Harriet snorted. “Middle-Aged Woman Happy in Park.”

The piece went out on the five o’clock news. Harriet handled the links and read the news, as always. The presenter, Josh, in his avuncular local radio voice said, “And now, for a piece on the effect of the ash cloud beneath the flight path into Heathrow, over to our very own newsreader, Harriet Smith.” Harriet and Barney stood up and applauded each other as the package went live.

11

When it first sank in that his father was stranded across the Atlantic, Jack was worried. On the news, they talked about the ash cloud dispersing and blowing away. But the volcano kept erupting, spewing clouds of smoke and ice into the atmosphere: it had been erupting continuously for days, and the cloud continued to spread and thicken. There was talk of a second volcano beginning to rumble: it turned out that Iceland was heaving with active volcanoes. Online there were rumours about test planes flying into the cloud and being forced to make emergency landings, the millions of tiny shards of ice in the cloud attacking the engines, stripping the paint off the fuselage. Jack’s father was stuck and Jack had no idea when he might see him again.

Despite all this, or maybe because of it, Jack felt that his moment had arrived. He wasn’t sure why. Probably a hormone-induced fantasy—one among many. Not only was his father stranded across the Atlantic Ocean but his mother was at work for longer hours than normal, from before Jack got up to after he’d retreated to his room at night. He was in his preferred state, unsupervised, on holiday, free to hang out with whoever he wanted, free to go wherever he felt like. School was due to start again tomorrow, and that made this final weekend all the sweeter. Jack
wanted to live his life. That’s one of the bad things about being a kid: you aren’t allowed to live your life. Well, today, he would.

Jack’s mother kept leaving money on the kitchen counter for him to buy takeaway, but he resisted and stuck to eating white bread with chocolate spread, with the occasional orange thrown in to keep him healthy. Instead of buying food, he used the money to buy draw. He gave the money to Ruby, so she could give it to her brother, who would then give the stuff to Ruby, so she could give it to Jack. Overnight, he had become popular. People wanted to hang out with him. Ruby wanted to hang out with him.

Jack was crap at rolling spliffs so Ruby did it, or sometimes Frank, though he was worse at it but better at pretending he knew what he was doing. At Dukes, one of the big mums, shepherding a herd of toddlers, chased Jack and his friends away from the children’s playground where they’d been hanging around the swings smoking, so they flopped down at the other end of the green by the river. It was sunny—the whole of April had been sunny. Jack couldn’t remember ever experiencing such a sunny month. And the sky, well, while they tried to pretend smoking weed had no novelty, was nothing out of the ordinary, they allowed themselves to continue to marvel at the clean plane-less sky.

Jack felt wavy straight away. Before, when he’d had the odd puff here or there off one of Ruby’s tiny, tightly rolled spliffs, he didn’t feel much at all—his feet would
get a bit heavy, and he’d get the beginnings of a headache. It wasn’t like with beer where a single can made him feel hilarious. This was an altogether stranger feeling.

They lay in a row on the grass holding hands—Frank, Ruby, Abdul, Dore and Jack—like those paper doll cutouts they used to make in primary school. Somebody’s dog, off its leash, came running past and sniffed them all over. They didn’t mind. The sky was unbelievably blue.

“We need a party, man,” said Frank, “we need to go to a party.”

“Nobody has parties on Sunday afternoon, Frank,” said Abdul. “Except your parents.”

They all laughed, except they were too lethargic to laugh out loud, so they laughed on the inside. Jack could feel Ruby giggling beside him. Frank’s parents were famous for their Sunday afternoon barbecues where Frank’s large extended family would gather and get drunk. Invitations were coveted by Frank’s friends because of the availability of booze once the adults had had too much to notice.

“No party today,” said Frank. “My parents have taken a vow of chastity—no, that’s not right, what is it?—abstinence. Uncle Ned had an epileptic fit and the doctor told him he’s an alcoholic. So everyone’s having a go at not drinking.”

“Wow,” said Ruby. “How long will that last?”

“Till the doctor apologizes or something.”

“I don’t know that I’d want to go to one of those barbecues if they aren’t drinking,” said Abdul. “It would be weird.”

“I know. My mum poured my dad’s whiskey down the sink. He stood there nodding and sighing. I thought they were going to cry.”

Everyone was quiet again. Jack had lost the power of speech. He couldn’t believe that school was starting again the next day. He wanted to prolong this feeling. He wondered if it was possible to stay wavy permanently.

“There’s a party next Friday,” said Ruby. “At David McDonald’s house.”

David McDonald was much older, at least seventeen, maybe even eighteen. He was famous for being a Big Man at school. He’d never speak to a lowly fourteen-year-old like Jack. But everybody talked to Ruby.

“Can you get us in?” asked Frank.

“I can try,” Ruby said.

12

On Sunday, Harriet spent a chunk of time with Barney at Heathrow Airport. They had to use their press passes to get in; the police were denying access to anyone other than press and airport employees. Heathrow is a vast conglomeration of five terminals, a self-contained world of shopping, catering and security. “Like life itself,” Barney said as they drove from terminal to terminal, “you check in, you eat, you shop, you depart.”

Except now no one was departing, nor arriving; no planes had landed since Thursday. Instead the airport was functioning as a displaced persons camp, the DPs all the non-UK nationals who had nowhere else to go, no money to find other routes home, no money to book into hotels. The airport had become their home. Each terminal had its own forecourt tent city, and the seating areas were packed with people trying to sleep, people who hadn’t slept for days. They were stretched out on top of tables and benches, beneath tables and benches. Harriet saw one family who had turned an airport mobility transport vehicle into their temporary home. In the glossy and sleek new building of Terminal 5, the departure and arrival boards were entirely blank. The taxi ranks were vacant. Everyone had given up shouting. A lone cleaner cleaned. A large man stretched
out across several seats moaned loudly. Somewhere in the sleepless crowd, a baby was crying.

Harriet still hadn’t spoken to Michael, but he’d emailed her several times on Saturday night from his hotel in Buffalo. The time difference and Harriet’s work schedule made it hard for her to find the right moment to call, and by the time she got home at night, sorted out Jack, made something to eat, cleared away Jack’s debris, she was so tired she forgot about Michael. At least Jack would be back at school on Monday, not that Harriet worried about him when he was out with his friends. She knew he was a good boy. She told herself she trusted him, when what she really meant was that she hoped he was all right, he had to be all right. She needed to work. She was in the middle of grabbing her opportunity. It was an unfamiliar manoeuvre, and she needed both hands free.

It was hard to see how it would end: the wind needed to change direction, the volcano needed to stop erupting. The enormous inconvenience of it all was awesome to behold—but it was just that, an enormous inconvenience. No lives had been lost. No one had been blown up. No one had been gunned down. A volcano was erupting, and its ash cloud was drifting over Europe, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The airlines had begun to agitate for changes to the safety regulations. The news was full of stories about desperate people hiring taxis at great expense to drive across Europe, passenger ships to and from New York were booked out, and the government was planning to deploy the navy to repatriate stranded Brits.
In his emails Michael sounded calm; he was going to Toronto to wait it out. Going to Toronto seemed like a good idea; he could stay with his old friend Marina. It would be good for him to spend some time in Canada. They hadn’t been to Vancouver, where he’d grown up, for years, but Harriet knew he liked Toronto. Harriet had never met Marina. It wasn’t like Michael to stay with a friend. But these were exceptional circumstances, exceptional times. Harriet wondered when he’d be able to come home. But she couldn’t let herself worry about that, not yet.

Harriet would go see Mallory Flynn. Harriet had known Mallory since they were first starting out. Mallory had gone on to greater things: hers was one of those career paths that followed a proper trajectory, taking off and achieving ever-greater heights. Unlike Harriet’s. She’d go see Mallory and talk about work. Talk about moving on from local radio, back into—back into what? Harriet wasn’t sure. But once things calmed down at work, that’s what she’d do. She’d go have a drink with Mallory. She’d call in a favour. Except Mallory didn’t owe her any favours. Still, they had known each other a long time, and that had to count for something.

13

Michael phoned Marina from Buffalo on Saturday night.

When she picked up the receiver, she was in the middle of a coughing fit, so he held on while she got it under control. “Hello?” she said, eventually.

“Hello, Marina,” he said, “it’s Michael.”

No reply. He could hear her swallowing heavily, still choking a bit.

“Michael Smith,” he said.

“I know who you are!” She sounded as though she was half-strangled. “Just give me a minute.”

“Okay,” he said. He leaned back against the pillows on the hotel bed. A tune came into his head. He hummed a bit under his breath, then broke out singing: “London calling …” He even did Joe Strummer’s yelp.

“Idiot,” Marina said into the phone. She had her voice back. Unmistakably Marina, low and silky. They saw the Clash together in Vancouver in 1979. The Commodore Ballroom. The crowd was so overexcited and violent that the band stopped playing after four songs. Marina was a proper punk, or at least as proper a punk as possible for an Iranian girl in as non-punk a place as Vancouver. Even then Michael knew the torn T-shirt he was wearing made him look like he was going to grow up to be an actuary,
like someone who tore his T-shirt accidentally and hadn’t had time to go home and change.

“I’m coming to town,” he said.

“How? No planes across the Atlantic.”

“The train! We Europeans often travel by train.”

She sighed. Michael could tell he was annoying her already.

“I was stranded in New York. Nowhere to stay. So I thought I’d come to Toronto. To see you.”

“Are you still a banker?”

She knew what he did, but they liked to annoy each other.

“Yes,” he said, “still a fat cat. Though now I actually am kind of fat. Put on a bit of weight in the last couple of years—just to prepare you, so the shock of seeing me doesn’t kill you.”