by Joan Barfoot
Lila supposes he has to speak as if these things will actually occur.
Who knows, perhaps they will.
Tom will have to leave behind not only the bag stored beside hers overhead, but his precious briefcase with his precious letter. Still, if they were to land safely, he wouldn’t need it, would he? He wouldn’t even want it, explosive, haunting evidence.
People stick all kinds of things into carry-on luggage, now waiting above to roam bullet-like around the cabin. Random injury or death may come from inside, just as well as outside. At least this isn’t a hijacking; although if it were, there’d be a dramatic focus instead of this terrifying empty waiting. People could try talking to a hijacker, however unbalanced and unpredictable. There’s no arguing with metal, or fire, or air, or, for that matter, fate.
“Again, we regret the loss of your belongings, but we are otherwise doing well and have every confidence in a safe arrival. You can expect to be not only on the ground, but sorted out and relaxing, in well under an hour.” That brings hopeful gasps—so soon! As if safety is merely a matter of time.
“We are continuing our descent to lower altitudes and again require you to remain sitting with your seatbelts fastened. The aircraft is experiencing some decreased stability due to wing damage, as well as fluctuations in air pressure. We are doing everything possible to compensate, but there may be occasional discomfort as a result, and we ask you not to be alarmed.”
The voice brightens. “And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, we are just now reaching the coastline and from here on will be flying over southern England. For your information, we’re advised there are mild temperatures and a light rain awaiting us on our arrival. See you at Heathrow!”
And on that cheery note, the sound system clicks off.
How has the high-pitched pilot been occupying himself while the co-pilot speaks? Do his fingers fly from button to button and lever to lever as he dodges disaster? Did he grin or grimace at the sight, at last, of coastline? He must be concerned about the landing, if they get that far. Lila knows she is.
She now sees him less as a scrawny man than a wiry one. The mellifluous Frank McLean she imagines as broad-shouldered, broad-chested, slim-hipped, long-legged, blandly handsome. Those two men, along with whoever else may form a cockpit crew on a plane like this—are there others, or only computers?—must, like Sheila and the other flight attendants, have been looking forward to something at the end of the day. Lila hopes it’s something wonderfully compelling.
“Looks good,” Tom says. “Don’t you think?”
Well, just how does it look? Impulsively, Lila half stands, reaches across the window seat to the shade, lifts it slightly, peers out. “Jesus, Tom.”
The world out there is almost entirely, beautifully, gloriously dark. The remaining tracings of light are from faded sun, faint clouds. Not fire. The wing is somewhat charred and cracked and curled, but “My god,” she says, turning towards him, “it’s out.”
He regards her with wild hope. She can smell his slightly acrid sweat, and it seems to her the scent of being alive.
Neither of them speaks further, and blinds are still down, the movie still running, but once again news spreads mysteriously. Around the grey cabin, faces light up and voices brighten. A few shades are lifted on this side of the plane, and on the other side a group of people move into the aisle and dance in a cramped circle, holding hands and whooping. Sheila, on this side, frowns at that side.
Again the whole space overflows with too much raw emotion. Fear and hope jostle, poking out in bursts of wild raucous laughter and sobs. Imagine living! Lila is dazzled. She feels like an angel—a benevolent, weightless, silver-winged creature floating above all previous understanding.
Surely they are each bound to feel, from now on, every second of being alive. They’ll be like old fabulous paintings, crusted with grime, restored to their glowing, mysteriously intended, original brightness. What a surprise, what a shock!
She stretches and arches, and even her scalp feels alive, even the soles of her feet. “I think,” Tom says, “I’m going to have a heart attack from the relief.”
“Please,” Sheila is calling, “keep your seats.” As if, Lila thinks, their collective helium joy could lift and tilt the plane off its frail course.
There is some slight weight, though, in the air and in Sheila’s voice. Lila tilts her head to listen for something rumbling beneath the tears and jubilation.
What a lovely word, jubilation: all bells and laughter.
“Maybe,” Tom glances at his watch, “in a couple of hours we’ll be in the hotel bar drinking champagne. Or in bed drinking champagne. Celebrating being alive. Making a toast to going on, same as ever. Do you think?”
What she hears coming out of her mouth is, “I hope not.”
Another surprise.
No time to think what she meant, Christ, the plane is dipping, its joints seem to shudder, it veers to the right, and down. “Jesus!” Tom cries, and Lila cries at the same instant, “No!” and they reach for each other. In Tom’s eyes, Lila sees a renewal of terror; he must see the same in hers. There are dreadful sounds all around them.
They are going to die now, together, in grim, fleshy, bone-crushing catastrophe—Sarah, Adele, Jimmy the Web and Mel, Susie and her mother, the big guy by the emergency exit, Tom, herself—all locked spinning in an awful, intimate orgy of death. How fragile skin is, after holding everything together for so long.
Lila’s eyes fly upward to where oxygen masks are waiting, but not descending. Perhaps they’re useless anyway, or would only prolong the torment. In all the flights she has taken, she has never actually handled an oxygen mask. Nor has she been in a dark cabin with only those lines on the aisles to follow to safety—how does she know if they actually show up, or if they would be discernible beneath stampeding feet? And even if it’s possible to get to an emergency exit, shove past the big man, push open the door, what then? A step into cold, diminishing space.
The plane is slipping, dropping, tipping, sliding sideways, like a car hitting ice. Lila faces head on into nothing—what a strange, breath-holding day, now a pinpoint of a moment.
She isn’t afraid, exactly. She does feel in whole, intimate sympathy with this machine, this apparatus, this great, struggling metal being. Any shift of vibration under her feet, any alteration of pitch to her ears—it’s like listening during those three terrible days to little Sam’s heartbeats, taking any tiny movement or change as a sign of life, or of death. She feels the plane straining, the striving beat of its remaining engines, the tenderness of its skin. Like herself, it is a container for everything essential and perishable.
She urges it on with a kind of love for its brave, stubborn effort: go, go, you can do it. She wants to rock in her seat in encouragement, but also doesn’t want to make it take into account any small, unbalancing movement.
It levels out, steadies, takes a deep breath. So does she. She pats an armrest, taps a foot: good plane, nice going, keep trying, you’ll make it, hang in there.
Other people are swearing, praying, battling as if the plane is their enemy. Rebelling against the nature of the beast. Never mind, she tells it. Keep your eye on desire.
Tom turns awkwardly, generously, towards her; puts a hand on her face, the other on her arm, constrained by his seatbelt. “Almost there. Nearly safe.” His long fingers are light on her cheek, and the faint brown hairs on the back of his other hand are light also. He is very kind, especially considering his fears at the end of even ordinary flights.
She has been delighted by his hands, and intimately fond of the dustings, wherever they occur on him, of fine hairs. He has strong bones, especially sturdy at the wrists. There have been times she has dug her fingers into his flesh to find his skeleton, feel his structure, determine its soundness.
How arduously he has laboured on occasion to have everything. Everyone.
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Do the words “arduous” and “ardour” have a common root?
Pay attention to the plane, suffering and determined, shuddering and trembling, trying so hard. It needs every strength she can give, and she has a great deal, it turns out: no end of passions, desires and hopes. Her enormous, thwarted will, and enormous, thwarted love.
It takes another dip and a swerve, but feels as if it has a better grip on itself. Tom’s arm tightens. “Lila, I love you. Okay? If something happens, I love you.” And if it does not?
“I know,” she tells him.
These downward lurches must be bringing them closer and closer to the ground. After all, the ocean may have been a softer, more forgiving destination. People below, are they looking up, wondering? Are their attentions caught by a roaring much too near? Does the grinding make their teeth ache? How about the moans and screams, do they carry in the air, to the earth?
Or it’s dark, and raining a bit, and most people have gone indoors for the evening. They’re relaxing around fireplaces, television sets, kitchen tables. They’ve turned up lights, and children are laughing and squabbling, grown-ups are cooking or washing up and chatting over their various days, or quarrelling or gossiping or falling silent. Do they feel a sudden chill? A darkness? An unfamiliar kind of quiet? A shiver they can’t put their fingers on?
It’s hard to imagine that the rampaging emotions up here aren’t leaking out, causing their own kind of lightning and an ominous thundering in the hearts of people passed over.
It would be gone quickly. Then, Lila imagines lights briefly looking brighter, and voices sounding clearer; figures more sharply perceived and more acutely considered. There is a brief, unaccountable moment in which people can see. An arm goes around a shoulder; a child is lifted into the air and embraced; people smile, expressions soften, eyes grow kind.
Or with a sudden pure vision a knife finally enters a belly that is no longer bearable.
“Lila,” Tom says. His eyes look clear of feeling. She touches his hand but with her free hand strokes the armrest: dear plane, brave plane, stay up, do well. It rears and shudders, throwing Tom into her shoulder. “We must be close.”
“I think so.”
There ought to be so much to say.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” The deep voice returns, and on the screen the movie skids to a ragged, quivering halt.
“We are now approaching Heathrow.” There are scattered cheers, but also a further urgent tightening of belly muscles, shoulders, calves, biceps, backs. “Since this is being considered an emergency landing, we have been given priority and assistance. As you know, among our concerns is the damaged wing, which creates a number of difficulties, some of them quite minor.” Some of them evidently major, as well, and by and large undefined.
“As a precaution, we are asking you to assume emergency landing position, which your flight attendants will demonstrate again and help you with. It’s important everyone follow all instructions quickly and without discussion.
“When we’re on the ground and have come to a halt, you will leave in orderly fashion through the emergency exits, which open automatically into slides to the tarmac. It is essential to proceed calmly.” The big man by the nearest exit is sitting very straight and listening hard.
It’s difficult to believe this is happening. Lila shakes her head, but it will not clear.
“Under no circumstances from this point may you leave your seat or undo your seatbelts. Parents must ensure their children are securely fastened and that they also follow all emergency instructions. We regret this has been a difficult flight, and wish to thank you all for your continuing co-operation. We have every confidence of achieving a safe landing within the next few minutes, and the next time you hear my voice, we’ll be saying hello in a bright and comfortable airport lounge.”
This is said in such a determinedly cheerful and confident tone, some people break into applause. As if they’re already safe; or as if the outcome amounts only to some clever balancing trick. Still, they have done well, to this critical point. Nothing actually brutal has occurred as far as Lila can tell, and it will soon be over.
Now that the moment has come, she misses the waiting. After all, she shouldn’t have complained about it; this immediate judgment, fate, event, is surely harder than mere suspension.
She has been wrong about a number of things.
“I feel sick,” Tom moans.
“Take deep breaths. Close your eyes.”
Not quite yet. First they watch Sheila show them once more how to position their bodies: heads down, hands gripping ankles, if possible. Lila wraps her purse strap over her shoulder and around her body, the purse itself tight under her left arm. Women aren’t like men, with all their essentials in pockets. Her purse contains money, passport, identification, the essentials of her existence. She hopes other women are taking the same care to preserve the necessities.
The heads-down posture must be quite a strain for the large or unfit. Lila is pleased by her own flexibility.
“That’s better,” says Tom. “You okay?”
“Yes. Thanks.” It’s hard to talk or even breathe properly, bent double like this, but there must be something to say. Something profound, or summarizing. “I don’t regret us, you know,” is what comes out. “I’m entirely grateful.”
“I know. Me too.”
There is still his letter. There is time only for small, sad, upside-down smiles before the plane takes an awful dive, then a terrible leap, and their heads hit the seats in front of them, hard. Lila hears a child, probably Susie, wailing close by.
They are diving steeply and also dancing in the air. When the plane tips to the left, Tom tips into her and she is aware of his shoulder and arm touching her. When he rights himself, she misses him and extends a hand. He reaches out and takes it.
There’ll be no warning of ground. She is rigid in anticipation. Tom must be petrified. She can feel the hard bones of his fingers. The skeleton of the plane trembles, its skin bubbles. It’s doing its best, and so is she.
Metal is cracking and screeching, the plane’s heart is breaking around them. Leaning into soft, long-ago, smooth red velvet, she can only see darkness ahead.
She is flung hard into the air, and the seatbelt grabs at her hips. Her hand flies free of Tom’s. The grinding is ear-splitting.
Again she is thrown upward, Tom flying and bouncing beside her, their heads bashing the seatbacks ahead. The plane is shrieking. She could stay bent and blind this way forever, if that’s what it takes. Other people’s screaming is terrifying, but Lila is silent, beyond jolting breaths. Her body feels as if it’s breaking and shaking apart, and it hurts, she hates pain, and here they go, tossed up again. And again, more gently this time.
And again, more gently, and again. Until it stops, and everything is abruptly quiet; perfectly still.
ten
Graceless and flailing, Lila hurtles through a long darkness into high, flaring sunlight.
She hurts, in her heart and her head.
The sudden light stabs. She shakes her head, and bits of knowledge fly upwards, sideways, falling disordered here and there.
The radiance isn’t sunshine at all, it’s the shocking white lights of a great many cameras. Lenses dance on shoulders straining over barriers all around.
She rolls upright with the help of the outstretched hand of a stranger. Good thing she wore slacks. It must be too late to cover her face, but she tucks her head momentarily anyway into the shoulder of her yellow-rain-slickered rescuer, who folds a grey woolly blanket around her and steers her gently, relentlessly forward.
These colours! His slicker is such a brilliant golden yellow, and so shiny, Lila thinks she can see her own blurred reflection. And those red and white whirling lights—are colours always this vivid, and she’s just never noticed?
Looking down, she sees even the t
armac is glittering, pitted by small holes in which black shiny rain gathers.
It ought to be smoother. It doesn’t look safe.
The moment must be very noisy, she can see people’s mouths open, apparently shouting, and a good deal of running about. Maybe it’s the trucks and ambulances that create this rhythmic underbeat, thud-thumping in tune with her heart. Otherwise sound is distant, a kind of buzz and whir, like rain.
It is raining. Well, they’re in England, what else? The grey woolly blanket is getting colder and damper—why is she wrapped up in it, while her rescuer gets a bright slicker? And why are they walking? Wouldn’t you think there’d be vehicles to ride in, wherever they’re going? Besides those ambulances, she means, and fire trucks.
She could have hidden in an ambulance if she had managed to break something, like a leg.
It looks as if some people did break parts of themselves. There are stretchers, and here and there the men and women carting them about break into a run. The cameras zoom in on them, which is all to the good.
There will be order and patterns in what is occurring, she just can’t discern what they are. After that long period of suspension and waiting, events are now going too fast. Not being able to hear properly makes the confusion hard to unravel, as well.
She must be a mess; everyone else is.
They are caught now, she and Tom, wherever he is, in the glare of this happy outcome.
She doesn’t much care, and if she did, it wouldn’t make any difference.
What will he do with that precious letter of his; will it do him much good? She giggles and the arm around her loosens, then tightens, as if it is nervous.
She bets the man it belongs to has no idea what fear is.
She, on the other hand, must now be in a whole new category: people who know what fear is and what it can do. Is that something to be proud of?
It’s certainly different, anyway. She feels herself grinning, and snuffles merrily into her protector’s bright shoulder.
