Thank you, Miss,' the head teacher called to her from his seat, craning round, watching the procedure, watching her.
Disciplined children. The product of the System and the Pioneers, taught at school to conform and to show respect, bobbing their heads with acknowledgment as they passed her on their way to the three rear toilets, and another conveyer- belt expression of gratitude when they came back into the cabin and moved to their seats. Bright faces, scrubbed with soap and short hair for the boys, neat ribbon-tied pigtails for the girls. A few years back, and that's what she had been, not different, not separated – until she had met David, before she had known Isaac and learned the power of a polioeman's pistol, the pistol that was in her hand. They regarded the gun as she passed but were too well-mannered to stare at it, too well-schooled to give it more than a glance.
Eleven years old most of them, twelve a few, and now regimented and able to hide their fear of the gun under the umbrella of childish curiosity. Doing what they had been told to do.
The head teacher was out of his seat and walking towards her holding loosely the hand of a child, leading him and coaxing him towards the gap between the trolley and the galley wall.
He said quietly, a voice that would not embarrass and attract attention. This one, Miss, he has a kidney problem. There is equipment under his clothes, and I must help him.'
She let him pass, scenting the damp perspiration of his body under his suit as he pushed through the narrow entrance that was available. She turned to watch them disappear inside the toilet door, saw the 'Engaged' sign light up, and twisted herself back again, easy and relaxed so that she faced the front, dominating her passengers.
She was not aware of him as he came close to her back, had no sense of his proximity, was concerned only with the woman and the mewling baby who was rising from her seat far to the front. She understood nothing of his plan till his hands were on her.
The baby crying, always that bloody child crying… and then the sudden, panic-stricken fear, coming alive in a single moment. One hand across her mouth and fingers squeezing against her lips so that she could not scream, shovelling the ends with the clipped dirt-tasting nails between her teeth so that she could not bite, and the other hand clawing for her right wrist and seeking to break the grip that held the gun. Had to get the hand from her mouth, had to scream, had to give warning, tumbling through her mind the need to arouse the others who were at the front, and all the time the fingers in her mouth choking at her, denying her air, and the grip on her wrist was vice-tight and closing so that the blood could not pass, her muscles not respond. Others in front of her, coming from their seats, gigantic, looming, fearsome… and she was falling… another of the schoolmasters, one that she took for a farmer, and a boot caught her flush to the bone of the shin causing her to buckle and collapse to the carpet of the aisle.
It was the fall that broke the headmaster's grip on her arm, the jerk with which her body collapsed was not anticipated, the sudden shift of her balance and weight was too great for the pliant fingers, not used to physical action. When she hit the floor the gun exploded in a blast of noise and cordite fumes, and she winced from the flash burn to her chest that seemed to sear a way through the fabric of her dress. Hands all round her now, pummelling and driving to reach under her body to where the gun was, pulling at her thighs, at the slight softness of her breasts, frantic in their haste now that the noise of the discharge bullet had sounded the alarm.
And then there was no one. Liberation. The hands withdrawn. She wiped the hair from her face front and looked up. She saw the feet that were edging back from her, moving away, and tilting her head further. Their hands were on their heads again, faces of guilt and fear, the boys found out, and halfway down the aisle was Isaac with the submachine- gun at his shoulder and far past him and guarding his back was David. Just the droning pull of the engines and the fractional swaying in the air currents of the plane on steady course: no words. The men who had left their seats making their way back, ashamed, caught out, a girl to disarm and they had failed, and now they faced the wrath of the young man with the chill in his eyes. He would not have made the mistakes that she had, and their faces showed their concern at the retribution he would exact, the toll he would take.
Deep throbbing pain in her leg where the man had kicked her, and an aching through her shoulders where a knee had pressured downwards against her spine, and a place on her forehead where there would be a bruise from the impact against the metal stanchion of a seat support.
Interrogation in Isaac's voice, questioning. 'How were they out of their seats?'
Difficult to speak at first, had to get the air back into her pinched lungs.
'They said the children should go to the toilet, they said their was one who needed help, who was ill, that was how they came behind me.'
'Nobody was to move.'
'But they said the children wanted to go..,*
'You were given an instruction. You disobeyed it. You jeopardized the whole of our mission.'
'But the children have to pee, Isaac. It was not.,. how was I to know?'
If they wanted to pee they could have used their knickers. You nearly destroyed everything, the whole plan, and you alone could have destroyed it.' No anger, not the burning in his eyes, but something else. She had never seen him like this before, not with the contempt turning the lines of his mouth and the single reddened patches on the high points of his cheeks, and the hands that were white and bloodless in their grip of the machine-gun.
'Which one was it? Which one attacked you?'
As if in a limbo of loyalties she hesitated, the struggle warring inside her as to whether she should identify the headmaster. What would Isaac do? Would he kill him? Had she the power to sentence the man, to cause his execution?
He was closer to her than to Isaac, with his head bowed, and she could see the bald top of his scalp, and the places where the grey hair still grew, and the places where the revealed skin was blotched and discoloured, and… and he had tried to kill her, that man, that was why he had struggled with her, to kill her and to kill David and Isaac.
' It was the one in the aisle seat, four rows from you, on the left."
'Louder,' said Isaac, but his voice was hushed and low, competing with the aircraft's power.
'Do not be afraid. Do not believe that these people will save you. They'll cut your throat, Rebecca, bleed you like an animal. If they could they would have bludgeoned you to death, if the gun had not fired, and I not come. Which one was it?'
' It was the one in the aisle seat, four rows from you, on the left.' She looked away as Isaac advanced up the aisle between the avenue of passengers, no heads turning to watch him, just the shuffle of his canvas shoes on the carpet.
'Listen to what I say,' Isaac said to the headmaster. His voice as in a conversation, a tone of mutated friendship, bizarre to her, obscene. 'The Germans have prevented us from landing, and the Dutch too. They have driven lorries and army trucks across the runways of their airports to make it impossible for us to land. And now we are going to England. We have fuel to get there and no further, and they will let us land for that reason. But we have not come this far to finish in England: we go to Israel. Perhaps we will have to show the English that we have the will to fly to Israel, that we are not as the Jews were, that we are a new generation, as the "sabras" are. If it is necessary we will shoot you, one by one, to prove to the English that we have determination. If that should happen then I make a promise to you, a promise that I shall keep. If anyone dies on this plane to convince the English of our will then it will be you, you will be the first, you will be the one that we call for.'