Midland

by James Flint

  ‘Our half-brother,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘And what’s this place of his like?’

  ‘Oh it’s unbelievable,’ said Sean, pleased to have finally got Mia’s attention. ‘It’s in the middle of a national park – there are no roads or anything. To get there you have to either go by boat or get a lift on one of these big-wheel trucks that drive you in over this incredible dune sea.’

  ‘Wow. Caitlin – how come you’ve never told me about this?’

  ‘I’ve never been,’ Caitlin said quietly.

  ‘I’ve only been once,’ Sean said hurriedly. ‘Jamie and Dad don’t exactly get on, so, you know, it’s been a bit difficult. It’s best not to mention anything about it to our parents. Anyway, it’s amazing there – they have surfing, parascending, diving, all that stuff. And the beach is beautiful. You guys should really come and see it. Jamie won’t charge us to stay at the Club, and if you can pay for the connecting flights in Brazil, I reckon I can get three returns to Rio on my Airmiles. It’d be a pretty cheap holiday.’

  ‘Are you even serious?’ said Mia, her eyes wide. ‘You would do that?’

  ‘Sure. I get loads of points because of all the flying I do for work. To be honest I’d welcome the chance to spend them on something fun.’

  Mia squealed and hugged Caitlin. ‘But that is like, huge! Caitlin, your brother totally rocks. Oh my God, oh my God. This could be so fucking cool! We’ve got to go, come on Caitlin, we’ve got to!’

  But Caitlin didn’t look so keen. ‘I don’t know … I really wouldn’t want Dad to find out.’

  Sean put his hand on her shoulder. ‘He won’t know. Why would he know? I’ll set it all up. There’s no reason for either of us to tell him, and Mia’s hardly going to say anything, are you Mia?’

  Mia smiled her best smile – which was indeed a good one, reaching parts of Sean that smiles did not generally reach. ‘My lips are sealed.’

  —————

  The plan was for them all to meet at Heathrow, but Sean’s Airmiles had only stretched to Economy seats and he’d reckoned without Alex and Freddie booking themselves into First Class. Alex texted him to say they’d gone straight to the executive lounge when they’d arrived at the airport and would come and say hi after take-off.

  The 777 was approaching the Canaries by the time the two bankers had finished their meal. With the darkening Atlantic sliding past below them like a sheet of hammered tungsten they rinsed down the last of the Sauternes they’d had with dessert, agreed it weathered the pressurised cabin better than the Beychevelle they’d drunk with the lamb, and decided they felt sufficiently fortified for a foray into the realm beyond the blue concertina curtains.

  ‘Bet you’re glad I insisted on First now, Wold,’ Freddie hummed as they descended through Club World and World Traveller Plus into the claustrophobic confines of Economy.

  ‘The lamb was good, but I’m not sure it was worth an extra grand apiece.’

  ‘It’s not about the lamb, you monkey – it’s about the fact that down here you can’t even breathe.’ And he had a point: the amount of available light and air did seem to diminish the closer they got to the back of the plane. ‘I mean, just check out the pong from those bogs. That’s what the extra wad buys you. The chance to swap that for the scent of a decent Bordeaux. And a good night’s sleep, of course. Given that we’re going to be slumming it for the next few days, I say we should get in the creature comforts while we can.’

  A hand and then a head appeared a few rows down. ‘There they are,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s go and say hello.’

  Sean and the two girls were slotted into a bank of three seats by the window. Caitlin looked good, Alex thought. It was funny to think that when he’d last seen her she’d still been at school. Now she must be nearly thirty, the fronds at the corners of her eyes and slightly papery quality of her complexion giving him the impression that she was capable and driven. Long production days combined with lots of late nights, probably. Classic media girl.

  Mia, on the other hand, looked like she got plenty of sleep. She caught Alex’s eye immediately, and he was encouraged by the fact that she showed a keen interest in things at the front of the plane.

  ‘Oh man, I’ve never travelled First. Do you have, like, a bar and all that?’

  ‘That’s only in 747s,’ Alex said. ‘In the double-decker bit on top.’

  ‘But we do have a gay Brazilian flight attendant called Erico, who brings us free drinks whenever we want,’ Freddie informed her, loudly enough for anyone in the surrounding seats to hear.

  ‘Yeah. Which is better than a bar.’

  ‘Except when he asks if we need more nuts,’ quipped Freddie weakly, but no more quietly.

  ‘And you get those weird pod seats, right?’ Mia asked. ‘That you can lie down in?’

  ‘Yep. We get those.’

  ‘Oh wow. That must be so cool. I never get any rest in these ones. They’re so damn uncomfortable.’ She checked herself, and touched Sean on the arm. ‘Not that I’m ungrateful or anything. Sean got us these flights on his Airmiles. How generous was that?’

  Sean looked sheepish and Alex clocked that here he had a competitor for Mia’s affections. He looked over at Freddie, who had been paying Caitlin the same kind of attention that he’d been giving her friend.

  ‘Hey Fred. There were some empty seats when we came through, were there not? What say we see if we can score these guys an upgrade?’

  Freddie grinned. ‘Got to be worth a try.’

  ‘All right. Hang on.’ Alex squeezed past his friend and disappeared back up the aisle. About five minutes later he returned, a pained expression on his face.

  ‘No joy?’

  ‘Well sort of. They’ll do it, but they’ve only got two slots.’

  ‘In Traveller Plus?’

  ‘In Club World.’

  The girl’s faces lit up. ‘Club World?’ said Mia. ‘That’s like business class, right?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. You get to lie down. And you get decent food and free drinks and all that shit.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Caitlin said. ‘That would be fantastic.’

  ‘You don’t get Erico, though. He’s just for our benefit,’ said Freddie, trying to squeeze a little more juice from his joke.

  ‘And Sean would have to stay here,’ said Alex ruefully. ‘On his own.’

  Both girls looked at Sean, who shrugged. ‘Hey, I’m not going to stop you,’ he said. ‘If you guys go up front I can sack out across these three seats. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so sweet. Thanks Seanie.’ Mia threw her slender arms around his neck and gave him a hug. The brush of her breast on his arm and the pressure of her cheekbone against the soft flesh of his jaw set his heart racing, and for the next few minutes it felt like his small sacrifice had been worth it. But then she was gone, and Caitlin was gone, and three economy seats side by side still didn’t make much of a bed for a man of his size, and he spent most of the night restlessly surfing the inflight entertainment channels and feeling that in some intangible way he’d been robbed.

  —————

  By the time they landed at Galeão International Caitlin was in a terrible state. From her seat in Club World she’d led the others in a frontal assault on the cocktail list, and now she sat on an aluminium bench in the baggage hall with her head in her hands, sipping at a corrugated plastic bottle of mineral water while Sean retrieved her cases.

  ‘That upgrade was wasted on you,’ he sniped, not altogether pleased by her behaviour. ‘I think we’re going to have to get you a wheelchair if we want to make our connection.’

  ‘Make that four wheelchairs,’ said Alex, who was also feeling none too good.

  ‘Better yet, get a courtesy cart,’ said Freddie. ‘Then you can just chauffeur the lot of us.’

  The fact that the person with the worst seat had emerged from the flight in the best condition confirmed Sean’s long-held suspicion that a surfeit of luxury was actively bad for you. Blin
kered by sunglasses and incapable of conversation, his companions wandered along behind him as he led the way upstairs to the check-in desks, where they queued silently beneath the airport’s dense white latticework of metal roof trusses before trailing back through security, along to the domestic gates, and onto the flight to Fortaleza. They all passed out before the plane left the ground and continued to sleep for the duration of the journey, leaving Sean alone with his book, a worn copy of Judy Leden’s Flying with Condors, and the enticing permutations of the Brazilian coastline, intermittently visible between the frothy puffs of white cumulus that hung outside his window.

  Their next baggage-hall experience was a more upbeat affair. The four casualties had been rejuvenated by their naps and this time proved capable of collecting their own things and making their way to the terminal restaurant without undue assistance. Here they sat and guzzled Cokes and pizzas while Sean negotiated a price for a minibus to take them on the next leg of their journey: a five-hour drive up the CE-085 highway through a flat, rather unremarkable landscape of open scrub punctuated by tatty palm groves, linear villages, and herds of angular, heat-bothered cattle. The girls soon fell back to sleep while Alex and Sean read and Freddie engaged the driver in conversation using a combination of Portuguese, Spanish, English and internationally recognised hand movements, which seemed to work fine as long as the discussion didn’t stray beyond the confines of football, women and politics.

  Eventually, stiff-kneed and more or less on schedule, they pulled off the road and drew up beside a simple wooden-framed building clad with corrugated iron and shaded by a stand of susurrating eucalyptus trees, in front of which slouched a couple of geriatric flatbed trucks baked to the colour of dust and rigged with oversized tyres and crude passenger benches. The driver unloaded their bags and piled them up in the dirt and Alex paid him while the others wandered into the hut in search of help and cold drinks.

  A few cans of Guaraná (‘Well that tastes like shit’ – Freddie) and a couple of cigarettes later they were off again, this time perched on the back of the marginally more lively-looking of the two lorries. As it nosed down a dirt track that led away from the highway the sense of anticipation they’d lost somewhere outside of Fortaleza began to return. And rightly so: just a few minutes later they crested a small rise and all of a sudden there lay before them an entirely new landscape of pillowy dunes rimmed by the blue crust of the sea.

  ‘What do you think, Cait?’ Sean asked his sister, as the truck fishtailed over the sand.

  ‘Yeah. Amazing,’ she said, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Still a bit hungover.’

  ‘Worried about seeing Jamie?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  She shivered slightly, though the breeze coming off the ocean was warm and welcome after the stultified confines of the minibus. Sean slipped his arm round her shoulders and gave her a brotherly hug.

  ‘Don’t be. He’s just the same. A bit more chill, if anything. It’ll be fine. We’re going to have a really fun time.’

  —————

  The blistered red globe of the sun was perching on the horizon behind them by the time they had bounced around the base of la Duna do Por do Sol, wound their way through the sandy tracks that served the small beach town as streets, and drawn up outside the Club Vayu, their throats parched and their faces rimed with grit. A gaggle of teenage boys materialised from among the thatched cabins and screens of hibiscus to help with their bags, which they ferried between the two impressive palms that formed the Club’s entrance and dumped in a heap on the wooden boardwalk that connected its various buildings. The group followed, bantering with the kids and fending off their requests to swap T-shirts until a lean, dreadlocked man dressed in a rash vest and Bermuda shorts came out and shooed the children away.

  ‘Hey! Sean. You made it.’

  ‘Luggie! Hi! Good to see you.’

  They hugged.

  ‘So – who are these guys?’

  ‘Alex, Mia, Caitlin, Freddie. Everyone, this is Luggie.’

  ‘All right! Welcome to Club Vayu! This’ – Luggie indicated the slim weather-beaten woman with bright eyes who had just crossed from the bar area carrying a stack of clean laundry, a naked toddler in tow – ‘is Bea. And that’s Finn. Finn’s the one who doesn’t like clothes. You want anything done around here, best ask Bea. Not Finn. Or me!’

  ‘That’s about right,’ smiled Bea, putting down her load on the reception desk and smoothing off her turquoise sarong.

  ‘Amazing place you’ve got here,’ said Mia, shaking her hand. ‘I can’t believe you guys built it from nothing.’

  ‘Well it took a while,’ said Bea, in a tone that suggested it was too early to say whether or not the project had been a success.

  ‘A little slice of paradise, huh?’ chuckled the rather more upbeat Luggie. ‘Wait till you get a proper look around, it’ll blow your mind.’

  ‘How was your trip?’ Bea asked.

  ‘The last bit was the best,’ said Freddie. ‘I love the way you throw in that free spinal massage.’

  The two hosts looked blank for a second, and then Luggie got it.

  ‘Ha, sorry, it’s a little bumpy isn’t it? Well, it’s all part of the experience. I’m just finishing up with a class, so why don’t you guys get settled in? Bea will do the formalities, and I’ll see you in the bar for a cold one in an hour or so.’

  ‘Is Jamie around?’ Sean asked, as Luggie turned to go.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Not right now. He’s in Fortaleza, sorting supplies for the party.’ Luggie flashed another grin. ‘He should be back tomorrow some time. He said to say hi.’

  —————

  The Club Vayu bar and restaurant was built from carnauba wood and roofed with a thick gunmetal-grey cap of thatch plaited from the tree’s long leaves. Open on three sides, it was a fine place to sit and enjoy a caipirinha while the sun set behind la Duna do Por do Sol and slowly turned the ocean to brass. Sean, Caitlin, Alex and Mia were doing just that when Luggie arrived and pulled up a chair.

  ‘Where’s your friend?’ he asked, after they’d chatted for a few minutes and he’d noticed that Freddie was missing.

  ‘He’s got a bad stomach,’ Alex explained.

  ‘Something he ate?’

  ‘He’s blaming the pizza we had for lunch at the airport.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. The café there is notorious. I hope he recovers soon, because I’ve got a suggestion for you guys. We thought in the morning we’d give you a proper tour of the area. From up there.’

  ‘From the roof?’ said Mia, following the direction of Luggie’s pointed finger.

  ‘A little higher than that. Paragliders. It’s one of the activities we offer. Anyone ever been paragliding before?’

  All except Sean shook their heads.

  ‘I’ve done a parachute jump,’ Alex said.

  ‘Well this is sort of the same. Except better.’

  Mia looked worried. ‘Won’t we need some kind of training?’

  ‘No – it’s easy. We just strap you in and chuck you off. You’ll pick it up as you go.’

  ‘I think he’s kidding, Mia,’ Sean said, seeing the look of horror on her face.

  ‘I am indeed kidding,’ Luggie laughed. ‘Of course we don’t do that. We fly tandem.’ He nodded his head in the direction of la Duna, now a giant absence looming in the twilight at the other end of the beach. ‘We go from up there, catch the thermals, circle over the sand dunes and then swing out over the bay. It’s totally epic. I took Sean up last him he came. How was it, Sean-o?’

  ‘It was truly impressive. You’ve got to do it.’

  ‘You can count me in,’ said Caitlin. ‘I’m up for it.’

  Sean glanced at his sister, pleased to see she’d perked up.

  ‘Ditto,’ said Alex. ‘This is what we’re here for. What d’you reckon Mia? You game?’

  Mia gripped her knees and grimaced. ‘Arrrgh!
I’m not so sure. It sounds a bit scary to me! Maybe I’ll just watch.’

  ‘Come on,’ Sean encouraged. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’

  ‘Hey, there’s no pressure,’ Luggie said. ‘You can walk up with us tomorrow; we’ll take a wing up for you so if you feel like going, you can. And if you don’t like the look of it you can just walk back down again, no sweat at all.’

  —————

  Although Freddie appeared at breakfast the next morning his stomach was still feeling ginger, so he passed on the excursion and instead installed himself in a hammock at the top of the beach while the others received a brief flight tutorial from Luggie. They then hefted the backpacks containing the gliders round to the front of the club and hitched a ride with one of the taxi trucks to the base of the dune.

  Joined now by three other instructors, the group began to work its way up the great sweeping ridge that led all the way to the summit. The soft sand and the heavy equipment made for hard going and the hike took more than an hour; by the time they reached the crest the sun was well on its way to its zenith and they were suffering under its glare.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll cool off fast enough once we get airborne,’ Luggie said, breaking out some bottles of water and a couple of Ziploc bags filled with trail mix.

  ‘It’s quite a view,’ Alex observed. And it was: they were high enough now to see the entire peninsula, revealed as a dun D-shape freckled with dunes, Rosaventos itself a livid green buffer speckled with the signature colours and forms – blue polythene sheeting, orange gas canisters, whitewashed walls, terracotta tiles – of Anthropocenic humanity.

  Sean was gazing inland. ‘Look – there’s the truck. Right at the edge of the dune sea. There’s the highway, see, and those trees – that must be where the taxi dropped us off.’

  ‘I’m not sure I fancy walking back,’ said Mia. ‘The sand’s already too hot to sit on.’

  ‘Ha – all part of the plan,’ Luggie said. ‘Once you’re up here, you realise that the best way down is to jump.’