Most of the passengers were either old, or very young children. Behind Neil was a fragile man of about seventy with a white waxed moustache, standing next to a pasty-faced woman who looked like a Spanish fishwife. She was laden with a heap of parcels and cardboard boxes, while he struggled with an enormous Empire clock. The pendulum stuck out from under the mechanism like a spear. While they were standing still the old man guarded it between his bow-legs, bending slowly down whenever the queue began to move, heaving it up to the level of his knees. Each time he laid it down his face had turned blue about the lips and his old watery eyes would fall on Neil and Mallory with a look of faint shock.
Mallory’s appearance had become fearful, and his bouts of asthmatic coughing were now exploding at regular intervals, between which he kept up a hissing, spluttering conversation. Neil made muddled efforts to follow what he was saying, knowing vaguely that they should be helping the old couple with their luggage. He thought, if I take more than two parcels I may fall over. Mallory’ll have to take the clock.
They were coming close to the desk. Neil looked at his watch and saw that it had stopped at twenty past four. ‘Have you got your card ready?’ Mallory croaked close to his ear. Neil fumbled inside his jacket, got out his passport, numbered card and deportation order.
‘All right for money?’
Neil nodded: ‘I’ve got traveller’s cheques.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ said Mallory, ‘if anything goes wrong and you can’t get away after all, give me a ring at the Miramar.’
Neil focused on him with difficulty and held out a hand; ‘You’ve been very good, Tom. Thanks. Thanks for everything.’ Behind him the old man was again grappling with his monstrous clock. Neil leant down and murmured, ‘Permettez-moi.’ He stood up clasping the edifice to his chest, peering at Mallory’s baroque face: ‘I’ll buy you a drink back in London. Bottle of champagne.’
‘Never touch the stuff, old boy. Gives me wind. You can buy me a bottle of whisky at Raymond’s Revue Bar.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Neil.
Mallory shook him by the arm, and Neil watched him shamble away across the hall, walking like an old man whose limbs are not perfectly co-ordinated.
The CRS guard said, ‘Passeport! Carte de depart!’
Neil lowered the clock and handed over his papers. The man studied them, then passed the deportation order to his colleague, who lifted a telephone, spoke a few inaudible words, nodded and hung up. The first CRS man waved his hand: ‘Ça va, passez!’ The third man stepped up and patted Neil under the elbows, on his hips and between his thighs and knees. Neil remembered that this was how it had all begun: six days ago at the Piraeus, with the puffy-faced policeman frisking him and Van Loon. Only this time it was done more gently, almost as though he were being measured for a suit.
He was still holding the Empire clock. The old man and the fishwife were coming through behind him, ready to be searched. Neil took a step sideways and tripped over the woman’s heap of parcels. His elbow, sank deep into one of the cardboard boxes which was full of crockery. He heard a soft crunch, and the fishwife shrieked something, and the CRS man glared down at him: ‘What’s going on?’
He realized that he must be looking conspicuously drunk. He murmured something about tripping: ‘Lost my balance — fell over the luggage.’ He struggled up, and the little old man grabbed back the clock, touching it all over to make sure it had not been damaged. Neil could hear him muttering to himself, making no effort to thank Neil for his trouble. But Neil felt relieved, his conscience salved; he had carried the old man’s clock, and he was through the CRS checkpoint, walking up the sloping corridor to the departure lounge.
From the tall windows over the airport he could see the Caravelles being nosed slowly round, taking up their positions in line at the end runway. Men in blue-and-white overalls scuttled round the planes with flags, and black-helmeted CRS weaved about on motorcycles, while more CRS foot-patrols stood under the wings and near the doors. A caterpillar convoy of Total oil trucks was winding across the tarmac towards the first Caravelle, ‘La Princess d’Aquitaine’.
The departure lounge was quiet and restful, except for the burbling of a few infants in arms. The bar and the souvenir counter were open, presided over by a handsome middle-aged woman with a gleaming bell of dyed-blonde hair. Neil went to the bar and ordered a black coffee; and wondered whether it would do any good at all buying Caroline a four-ounce bottle of Balenciaga perfume. Next to him a harassed mother with a small girl was pleading with the blonde woman at the counter. The child was pointing at a doll in Kabyle national costume, whining softly and tugging her mother’s sleeve. The blonde woman shook her head: ‘I am sorry, madame, but the company does not give away presents.’
The mother had her purse out and was hunting through some loose change. ‘I’m expecting some money when we get to Paris,’ she muttered.
Neil moved forward and said, with a pronounced slur that seemed to come from behind his left ear, ‘Do you want to borrow some money, madame?’
Both women glanced suspiciously at him. The mother looked embarrassed and the blonde woman’s face hardened as Neil went on, ‘Does your little girl want to buy a doll?’
The mother was confused, tired and pale, glancing at the whining wide-eyed child. Neil took an ironic pleasure in the scene:
