'He's only watching,' the boy's mother objects.
'He's on the Internet if I'm not mistaken.'
The steward peers at the mobile with rather less enthusiasm than he showed for reproving me. 'You need to keep that off on the plane, son.'
The boy jerks his entire body to signify his displeasure, almost thumping me in the face with the back of the seat as he pokes a button before folding the phone in half. He's quiet for a very few seconds, and then he says 'Isn't it going too slow to stay up?'
'Now look what you've done,' his grandmother accuses me.
Tim's father twists around. 'What's he up to now, mother?'
'Nothing. Not another thing. I'm not even here,' I say and shut my eyes tight.
I'm determined not to open them or move in any other way until we're on the ground. I only have to hold my mind alert so that I don't dream of being elsewhere. I wish I hadn't added my last remark. When the drinks trolley arrives beside me I'm tempted to accept a coffee, but I suspect the nurse may have drugged it. I try to remain absolutely still as he hands brimming plastic cups across me to my fellow patients in S Ward, because I'm afraid of being scalded if anyone distracts him or unbalances him. The cups pass so close I can feel the heat on my eyeballs. By the time he moves on I know perfectly well that I'm not an inmate or surrounded by them, but I'm much less certain that my neighbour is a woman. Isn't the way Tim's parents address her one attempt too many to convince me? If I looked closely, might I see that the person whose puffy arm is pressed against mine is wearing a wig? I have to clench my fists so as not to grab the mop of grey hair and attempt to remove it. I'm nervously grateful when the captain announces that we've begun our descent to Heathrow until the boy in charge of my cell declares 'They've gone again. We won't stay up.'
The wings are indeed flickering in and out of existence like an imperfect transmission on the screens of the windows. Of course clouds keep engulfing them, but each time they reappear they look almost imperceptibly fatter. Is ice gathering on them? I dread hearing an emergency announced – I can visualise the chaos in which the family would involve me – and I grow yet more apprehensive as I see lights sailing up towards the wings. I wanted to be home for Mark's school play, but suppose they've reopened the airport prematurely? Suppose the plane skids out of control? I close my eyes as the lights surge upward and the cabin shudders with a thud. The plane slows so abruptly that I'm certain it will flip upside down – I don't need the boy's wail to tell me. Then the violent roar of the engine subsides, and the captain has to appeal to the passengers to resume their seats while the plane crawls towards the terminal.
As it halts at last, nearly everyone competes to be the winner at standing up. Rather than wait for minutes on my feet I remain seated, though I'm at least as anxious to be inside the terminal. Mark's play isn't for hours, but I need to phone my bank. When a steward wrestles the door open I struggle to my feet. Well after she notices my efforts the mother says 'Let him out, Tim.'
The boy raises the seat a very few inches. 'That should have been upright on our way down,' I realise too late. I grab the seat and lever myself up, only for it to give way and dump me where I came from. 'Do it properly,' the woman says, and I have the infuriating notion that she's talking to me. The boy jerks the seat erect with a violence that might be expressing my rage, and I'm sidling to join the sluggish parade to the exit when my arm is seized in a soft but tenacious grip. 'Lend us a hand, son,' the grandmother growls.
Apparently she wants help in standing up. Her other neighbour is so intent on the window that he might almost be a bulky dummy. I suffer her to cling to my arm as she labours to rise, but it isn't enough. Her grin stretches wide with her exertions, and a trickle that looks thick enough for glue runs down her forehead. I contort myself in the trap between the seats and take hold of her free arm. I'm afraid to grasp it too firmly, because my fingers seem to sink deeper than I like. Nevertheless I lift her in order to make my escape, and her face wobbles up towards mine, grinning wider still. I lurch into the aisle and let go of her arm. It's too easy to imagine that the rubbery flesh is about to pop like the sagging balloon it resembles.
Has the boy been tearing up his copy of the in-flight magazine because he couldn't use his mobile? As I shuffle to the exit I glimpse words on the yellowed scraps of paper at his feet: crown, come, hack, judge, guilty, riot... I mumble thanks to the festively bedecked staff and am rewarded with grins surely more identical than they need be. I tramp up the passage to the immigration desks, where I'm surprised to find the four are overtaking me in an adjacent queue; I would have expected the grandmother to slow them down. 'English,' I can't help calling to them as I exhibit my passport. 'English.'
They look as unimpressed as the immigration officer, who spends so long in comparing me with my photograph that I'm about to declare that we're the same person when he hands my passport back. I sprint along sections of crawling walkway to the baggage hall and stake out the end of the carousel. The conveyor belt waits for the last passenger before it twitches and creeps forward. The first suitcase isn't mine, nor are its motley followers, each of which brushes or shakes dangling strips of plastic like a clown's version of hair out of its boxy face. There's a pause while an unclaimed shapeless package lumbers offstage, and then the next procession is led out by my suitcase. As it blunders abreast of me I lug it off the belt and pull up the expanding handle to wheel it away. Or rather, I attempt to, but the handle has been snapped off.
'Well, thank you,' I say loudly. 'That's really useful. Thanks so much.' I raise my voice further as I notice the family watching me from across the carousel. Is the amused fat man with them? Was he the skulker by the window on the plane? 'Some fool behind the scenes buggered up my luggage,' I inform anyone who ought to hear.
I'm not inviting a response. It comes as more than a surprise when a head pokes through the plastic strips, especially since it isn't human. Before I can react the large grey dog sails along the belt, trailing its leash, and rears up to plant its considerable weight on my chest. 'Good boy. Good dog,' I try saying as I topple backwards.
I sprawl on my back with the animal on top of me. 'Down, Fido. Off now, Rover,' I command with all the authority I can summon, but the dog is busy snuffling at my clothes. The family of five all grin at me as they wheel away their luggage; Tim looks positively triumphant. As I struggle to flounder from beneath the dog a uniformed man recaptures its leash while his colleague not so much helps as hauls me to my feet. 'You'll have to come with us, sir,' he says and tightens his grip on my arm.
THIRTY-THREE - SOLEMN TRIO
Might they have let me go if I hadn't tried to insist on making a phone call? They kept saying they weren't the police, to which I could only retort that they shouldn't act as if they were. Once I'd had enough of that routine I was reduced to peering at my watch until the mime attracted the attention of one of the uniformed men. At least, I thought it did, although he homed in on my other wrist. 'Show me that, please, sir.'
No doubt I shouldn't have attempted to joke. 'Haven't you seen enough of me?' I said, since they'd taken my clothes as well as the suitcase.
He frowned at the remark and then at my wrist. His even bulkier colleague joined in as a preamble to asking 'What's your explanation for this, sir?'
'I hurt it on the handle of my case before some bloody fool broke it. Maybe it's infected. I'd better see a doctor.'
'That isn't an infection, sir. We've seen things like it before.'
The reddened remnants of a circle with a gleeful face inside it did indeed resemble something else – a brand? I was about to ask what they thought it recalled when the lesser but more sharply voiced man said 'Is that your explanation, sir?'
'If you mean the clown, all right, I know you do, I got it here.'
Both men seemed to grow instantly heavier, and so did the larger one's voice. 'Here.'
'Not here as in here here. Up the road. In London.'
'Where exactly, sir?'
Perhaps my jet lag was doing some of the talking. 'They called it St Pancreas,' I said.
The men's frowns stiffened almost imperceptibly, and the lesser hulk glanced at the sheet he'd filled in. 'Are you sure you've given us your correct address, sir?'
'Of course I'm sure,' I declared, not far short of an undefined panic until I grasped the point. 'Yes, I live near there. I know it isn't really called that. It may have been a joke. Not mine.'
