With half an hour before my plane number came up, I had two cups of coffee and a sandwich, then strolled to the newspaper counter and bought a copy of The Financial Times. My legs and shoulders were aching from too much weight. It was still not ten in the morning, and due to the cups of poisonous coffee, I had to go to the lavatory. I was far too clever to take my coat off before sitting down, knowing that I’d find it hard to get it on again. At the same time all was not well, because when I had finished, I couldn’t get up. The coat hung around me like a cloak of rock. In one way I didn’t want to get up, but to sit there and muse in my own stink till someone found me, or until I recovered my determination and picked myself to pieces, bar by bar, when I’d walk away from the airport and vanish for ever — as far as the man in the iron lung was concerned. But having followed this line through to the stupid and bitter end, I began to consider how it might be better if I got upright and went on my way. After all, I was being trusted with a big job, and if I muffed it William Hay would get his face bashed in and get sent back to being plain Bill Straw on the run from all the right-thinking criminals in society.
I stayed a minute on my knees, hand resting on the rim of the toilet. It was hard to move from this position, but at least I was mobile, because even if I got no more upright than this I’d be able to shuffle across the departure hall and up the plane steps on my knees, giving out that I was on a pilgrimage to my favourite saint’s shrine at Lourdes where I was hoping to get my mother cured of a fatal illness. No, that wouldn’t do, so I crawled around the wall and back again. This hadn’t been part of the training, though I saw now that it should have been, and would have to get the syllabus amended when I got back, if I got back, if ever I came out of jail. I was on top of the toilet now, and by a quick but risky flip backwards my feet hit the ground in the right place, and I was shaken but standing, just as the number of my plane was announced as departing from Gate Number Thirteen. I fastened my trousers, then the coat, picked up my briefcase, and was on my way to the pressurized unknown.
The plane sagged as I stepped on board — or I thought it did, and the heat of the jungle hung over me as soon as I sat down in that long stuffy plane. I’d often wondered whether I’d be afraid of going off the earth in this way, but now I was too exhausted to care. I had no reactions at all, except a heavy pressure pushing me back towards the seat — something I didn’t need because I was well bedded there already. The plane went straight into the clouds, followed the white carpet all the way. I’d got by a window, and a young girl sat next to me. Her elbow pushed into my ribs by accident, then sprang back at the touch of solid iron that she met. The central heating must have been full on, because she took off her coat, then her jacket. A bracelet hung from her wrist, but there were no rings on her fingers. There was a bump under the plane, as if we were climbing a hill, and her hand clutched the seat. It was only now, five miles off the earth, that I wondered what it would be like leaving it.
My luggage allowance was wrapped around me like solid gold armour, and I was naturally led to wonder whether such padding would be any good if the aeroplane crashed on landing. Certainly, if the wings I could see out of my window were ripped off, it wouldn’t help me. We’d go down like a stone, and maybe my weight would even pull it a bit faster, and later my body would be found twenty feet under the earth, a knickerbocker glory all wrapped up in the golden handshake.
At six miles up I noticed an ordinary housefly loose in this lovely immaculate jet. Such a scruffy little surviving bastard was a sign of reassurance, made me laugh at it, something more homely and normal than myself and the eighty others lined up and down. That fly will go far, I thought, having passed the survival test this far up, the only real eleven-plus of any life. The stewardess was selling drinks a few seats away, and swayed, grabbing an overhead rack when the plane banked sharply. Again the girl by my side gripped the armrest. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘A bit.’ She half turned her face to me, and I wondered whether other people bumped into chance meetings as often as I did. It struck me for the first time that society was formed so that they would, and nobody could escape because we were all part of a warp and weft that fitted into one homely worldwide rag. ‘I’ve flown dozens of times,’ I said, the wheels always oiled by a good old-fashioned lie.
‘So have I. But I can’t get used to it. I don’t know why.’
‘There’s only one cure,’ I told her. ‘Talk. And drink. Be with somebody you can talk to — about anything, it doesn’t matter — and have a couple of brandies, or glasses of champagne.’ I called the stewardess: ‘Half a bottle of dry, love. All right?’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled, and I felt how pleasant travelling was. It took the weight off me, back and front. I had seen her before, but only from a distance, and I doubt that she had seen me, and if she had it hadn’t been long enough for future recognition. ‘I was your father’s chauffeur,’ I said, ‘until I got a better job.’
‘I hate to be recognized,’ she said stonily. ‘It embarrasses me.’
‘Sorry. I only told you I knew you in case you might recognize me first. Then you might be annoyed. Cheers I’
She drank the whole glass: ‘This was a good idea, anyway.’
‘Here’s to you, Miss Moggerhanger.’ I said Polly under my breath, for I’d seen her black smouldering hair wrinkling from always too far away, as she rode a horse to the stable when she was back from riding, her plum-coloured shirt or jumper jumping nicely as she jogged along. Or she’d be dressed in a smart suit as she got demurely into somebody’s E-type for a fashionable night in town. I felt very good, as if my head had no top to it, but couldn’t have said whether meeting Polly Moggerhanger was a lucky day in my life or not. Since I’d had nothing to do with it, it wasn’t for me to say.
‘I thought I could get into a plane at least and not be recognized,’ she pouted, ‘but there’s no damned hope even of that.’
‘It’s no use worrying,’ I said, watching the colour get to her cheeks as she gobbled back the rest of the drink. The stewardess was coming with trays of lunch, but I ordered more champagne. ‘Helps the food to float down,’ I said. I was beginning to feel better from it myself, but only now remembered William’s sternest warning: ‘Don’t drink, not alcohol. Not a drop. It’s fatal. Don’t bloody-well countenance such a thing going between your lips, Michael.’ He’d repeated it over the weeks of preparation, and I’d agreed to never, never, never touch it, because I didn’t need it and didn’t like it. One, I suppose, would have been all right, especially since there was a meal to go with it, but two of those little champagne landmines at thirty thousand feet and eleven in the morning put the cobwebs back in front of my eyes, notwithstanding the fact that the ice had been broken with a pretty young woman talking easily by my side. There’s no doubt that the Moët Chandon helped her, for while we were smoking our cigarettes I held her hand, and she made no brisk move to get it away.