Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘You don’t work too hard, Bob. That’s what I like about you. Get some high-pressure team of kids working to build something up and they all work too hard. They work themselves dry – they start to make mistakes. I’ve seen it happen, Bob.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Erskine. I mean, in many ways I admire you more than anyone I’ve ever . . .’

  ‘Sure. I just mention it to keep in mind. Nothing will be moving for a year or so yet.’

  When Bob woke Tessa up to take her home he remembered that he had spent almost his last shilling in insisting on paying the bill at the night-club. He asked Morris if he could borrow some money for the cab fare. Morris, still leaning impassively back in his armchair, tossed him a fiver.

  ‘An advance against salary, Bob,’ he said.

  There was one particular travel poster on the wall of the lounge at Schiphol Airport which became imprinted on Dyson’s memory as the evening wore on. It was of a girl in a swimming-costume, frozen in the very moment of stepping off the side of a swimming-pool. It irritated Dyson. She had already stepped right out into unsupported space, and was looking down at the water beneath her with a slightly anxious smile of anticipation on her face. And there, in mid-air, she remained suspended. She was there at six, when it was still generally believed that the Scandinavian party they were all waiting for was somewhere en route between Paris and Amsterdam. She was there at seven, when the French journalists, who were beginning to emerge as the leaders of opinion in the expedition, put the story about that the Scandinavians had by an error been flown not to Amsterdam but back to Copenhagen. At eight o’clock, when the French announced that the Scandinavians’ plane had crashed, the poor girl had still not got so much as a toe into the water. The anticipation in her anxious smile was as keen as ever at nine, when the French declared that the Scandinavians had landed at Brussels and were coming on by train. It had still not faded at ten, when all the various nationalities present abandoned interest in their Scandinavian colleagues, and instead rose and mobbed Starfield as he hurried anxiously between telephone and cable office, and threatened to petition their respective governments for the revocation of all Magic Carpet’s licences and landing rights if he did not immediately arrange everyone hotels in Amsterdam for the night.

  They took off soon after ten o’clock the following morning, without the Scandinavians, in another turbo-prop, larger and even more visibly secondhand than the first one. A small panel fell out of the internal trim in front of Mounce and Dyson just after take-off, and swung back and forth on the end of a piece of wire. Mounce, who had subsided into an early-morning liverish bitterness again, watched it sourly.

  ‘This stinking plane’s never going to get to the Middle East,’ he snarled. ‘It looks about a hundred years old.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ snarled Dyson, who was also a little hung-over. ‘It’s a jet!’

  ‘It’s got stinking straight wings, John!’

  ‘All right – it’s got straight wings! What’s wrong with straight wings, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Because they mean it’s just a cartload of old scrap-iron! It’s obsolete!’

  ‘Obsolete? How can it be obsolete when it’s jet-propelled?’

  ‘For God’s sake, John – stinking jets have been around for a hundred stinking years. They were new when you were a kid – but that’s a long stinking time ago now.’

  Dyson was right though; the old plane did not break down. The loose panel swung and danced on the end of its wire, but the plane whined on across Europe unaffected.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Dyson. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to worry about. I should be doing the worrying – I’ve got to be back in London on Friday for a television programme, on which I may say my whole future career depends.’

  Mid-morning drinks were brought round; then pre-lunch drinks; then a sandwich lunch with lunch drinks, followed by after-lunch drinks. Everyone began to cheer up – even Starfield, who came working his way down the cabin, cheerfully saying a word here and a word there. ‘All right, folks? Everyone happy, boys and girls?’

  ‘We do still reckon on getting back to London by Thursday night, do we?’ Dyson asked him.

  ‘There’s a lad here worried about getting back already!’ cried Starfield jovially to everyone around. He turned back to Dyson and patted his shoulder reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, boy,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you back on time, never you fear.’

  After the fifth lot of drinks Mounce began to take some sort of interest in the scenery. ‘Rome,’ he said, gazing vaguely earthwards out of the window. ‘I’d like to take a look at Rome. Did you see Dolce Vita, John? Lot of crap, really. One or two quite juicy bits, though . . .’

  Dyson tried to look out of the window over Mounce’s shoulder, to see if they were in fact passing over Rome. But Mounce seemed to be reviewing the European scene at large. ‘I wouldn’t mind taking a gander at Hamburg, for that matter,’ he said dreamily. ‘See some of those old judies wrestling in mud . . . Or Beirut. Old Jimmy Knowles on the Express was telling me about Beirut. He said it was fantastic. “You lika leetle girl, sahib? I breenga you leetle seester for one half-­dollar.” All that kind of crap.’

  There was a gap between after-lunch drinks and mid-­afternoon drinks, however, during which Mounce began to subside a little into melancholy.

  ‘I didn’t know this stinking flight was going to take as long as this,’ he complained. ‘What time are we supposed to be getting there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dyson.

  ‘It’s nearly half past two already! I thought we were supposed to be travelling in a proper plane, not some snotty old wreck out of the Science Museum with straight wings. Is that the Persian Gulf down there now?’

  Dyson craned over and looked out of the window. They were flying over a deep blue sea studded with islands.

  ‘I don’t think there are that many islands in the Persian Gulf,’ said Dyson doubtfully. ‘I think that must be the Aegean.’

  ‘The Aegean?’ said Mounce indignantly. ‘The one next to Greece? Don’t talk crap, John! We’ve been flying for hours. This is a plane, not a horse-and-cart.’

  More drinks were served, and more again. Just after four o’clock they began to descend. Starfield appeared at the front of the cabin, and pressed his palms together.

  ‘In just ten minutes’ time, boys and girls,’ he began, ‘we shall be landing to refuel at Beirut.’

  He paused, as if expecting the same sort of reaction as the announcement about Amsterdam had caused. None came; everyone took the news in silence. Dyson wondered if everyone but himself and Mounce had known already that they were only just over halfway, or whether, like himself, they were too stunned to speak, or whether, like Mounce, they were too boozed to take it in. Starfield himself seemed to be slightly taken aback by the lack of response. The glasses slipped down his nose disbelievingly.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, pushing them back nervously, ‘drinks will be served in the transit lounge, compliments of Magic Carpet. Thank you.’

  Jannie hated it when John was away. He was away so rarely that she always forgot what it was like, and looked forward to it, thinking that she would be somehow free and able to get things done. She had a vague picture of herself, absolved from the necessity to cook proper dinners and to sit late over them talking about what Gareth Holmroyd had said to Harry Stearns­ and what latest outrage Reg Mounce or Erskine Morris had committed, reading good books instead, making clothes for the children, putting up the hems of her dresses, rearranging the living-room furniture, and thinking how she could earn some money to clear off their overdraft. But in fact she did none of these things. There was much less extra time created than she had imagined. And what there was she wasted. She couldn’t settle to anything when she was alone in the house for the evening. She picked up a book; it bored her. She looked at the pile of mending, and thought, why do it now, when I’ve got an evening to myself for once? She trie
d to think about money-making jobs and activities, and her mind wandered immediately on to what she would do with the money once she had made it. In the end she turned on the television, to watch it for half an hour and settle her mind, and sat in front of it all evening with a growing sense of waste and guilt which seemed to make it not easier but more difficult from one moment to the next to get up and switch it off, until at last the BBC took the decision for her by closing down for the night. She didn’t even manage to get to bed early. After the television had stopped she sat about glancing at the daily papers, half-reading items which had already been made out-of-date by the news programme she had seen on television that evening. She trailed dismally to bed at a quarter to one, leaden tired, and hating herself for her feebleness. She had been going to wash her hair; she hadn’t even done that! In bed she couldn’t get to sleep. She kept turning towards the side on which John usually lay to put her arm round him for comfort. It was not only the bed that was empty. The whole room – the whole house – seemed filled with an unnatural quietness. In the morning she got up tired, shouted at the boys, and subsided before the television in the evening feeling even worse.

  She felt somehow ashamed that having the boys about the house wasn’t enough, and rather frightened to realize how dependent she had become on John’s company. Living alone had seemed natural enough when she was single. But it wasn’t natural – it was an acquired skill, and she had lost it. She thought with amazement about women whose husbands went away for weeks at a time on business trips – or for years at a time, on war service or to prison. How could the prospect of such separation be borne? The idea occurred to her while she was washing up, and came to her with such force that she stopped and gazed helplessly out of the window for some minutes, the mop and a plate trailing motionless in her hands. One forgot for years at a time, living in a round of only small anxieties and only small resentments, what ranges of human suffering there were – suffering beyond one’s experience, beyond even one’s imagination. She was appalled at the world of desolation she had stumbled on, and ashamed that she had thought about it only because she herself had been left on her own for four days. Four days! It was grotesque that on the basis of four days’ separation she should presume to feel for the separated in general. And yet . . . Was this how her mother had felt when Father died? This frightening bleakness, as of unfamiliar country when the light began to go on a winter’s afternoon? This grey filter coming down over one’s senses, draining the colour and the savour out of things? This sudden awareness of oneself? When one was happy, one scarcely knew one was there. One was just a mathematical point at which rays of light from the rest of the universe converged. And then the balance of things was disturbed, and suddenly one became aware of the complex spiritual machinery which kept one going. It was like noticing one’s heartbeats. The fragility of the whole mechanism became painfully apparent.

  A grey, gritty smell crept into her nostrils, of smoke blowing down from chimneys along bleak terraced streets in some desolate city where she was a stranger.

  She began to wash up again, tears brimming in her eyes – for herself, for others. She promised herself that she wouldn’t forget how she had felt. She would do something about the world’s miseries – about her mother, about everyone abandoned and separated. But even as she made the promise she knew that the moment John came home she would forget about her feelings entirely; would never mention them even to him. She would do nothing about her mother or anyone else – nothing, at any rate, without ungenerous reservations, nothing from a heart as open as for these few short moments it had been.

  She remained in a curious mood all day, on a knife-edge between tears, and exaltation at her readiness for tears. When she fetched Damian from nursery-school she took him to the recreation-­ground and played with him in a strange, wild way. She threw him up in the air and swung him round and kept laughing. Every time he stopped playing and became thoughtful, as if about to recount an incident from the life of Jack, she clapped her hands and chased him off on another game. The sudden intensity of all this fun unnerved him slightly. He became overexcited, then querulous, and finally so tearful that she had to take him home.

  It occurred to her during the afternoon that the odd strand of excitement which was woven into her mood might have something to do with Bob. She at once felt guilty for even thinking such a ridiculous thought, which somehow seemed to discredit her feelings about John’s absence, and about separation in general. She also felt more excited still. She immediately began to imagine getting a babysitter, and going out for dinner with Bob in some small restaurant in Soho. They would have wine – a whole bottle between them – and talk about this and that. Not about anything very deep or significant. They’d just gossip – but easily and intimately. They’d tell each other how they felt about things. She had feelings about everything today. She longed to tell them. She thought of Bob leaning on the table listening, looking at her with his mild, familiar eyes.

  She had her hand on the phone to ring him at the office and suggest dinner when she remembered Tessa. How awful that she hadn’t thought of her before! She bit her lip, shocked at herself. But after she had got used to the idea she began to think that it would be almost as good even with Tessa there. She would invite them both to dinner at the house. She saw herself being astonishingly kind to Tessa – astonishing Tessa, astonishing Bob, and even astonishing herself. They would all talk together with great ease and openness. Tessa, who was always so shy and unforthcoming with her, would start to feel secure in her friendship. All three of them could be friends, close friends. She wanted to be very close to Bob and Tessa. She wanted John to be close to them, too, of course.

  She rang Bob, but even while she was waiting to get through her excitement ebbed, and she realized how awkward it might turn out to be, if Tessa didn’t warm to her any more than she had on previous occasions. And when Bob answered he sounded preoccupied; he said Erskine was waiting for him to finish some job in hand. She talked about a house which she thought Tessa ought to see, then couldn’t think of anything else to say, and in the end didn’t invite him at all.

  She watched the television again all evening, in fact, doing The Times crossword simultaneously to persuade herself that she was not being entirely supine. Once she thought she heard rubbish being thrown over the wall. Probably; the garden was full of rubbish now. She would make an effort and clear it all up. She’d do it tomorrow. No, she’d do it when John came home. She’d be able to start getting things done again when John came home.

  At Beirut the Magic Carpet party’s advance bogged down and stuck. The Scandinavians had got there ahead of them, and left again already. But the main party was unable to follow. According to Starfield there was a minor technical fault in the plane which would be rectified within the hour. But the hour passed and another hour followed it, and they were still in the transit lounge drinking down the compliments of Magic Carpet. They would be taking off very soon indeed, Starfield assured them. The warm Mediterranean dusk thickened outside the windows. The landing lights glowed brighter and brighter as the sky faded – red on the approaches, blue on the runways, green on the taxi-ways, like some dream vision of the jewelled Orient. It was the French who forced Starfield to get them all into hotels for the night; the rest were too reduced by alcohol and travel weariness to argue. It took a great deal of argument. Starfield threatened them that the plane would take off as soon as it was ready, and that anyone not aboard it would have to get himself repatriated at his own expense. He pleaded with them, begging them to consider that they had consumed some £5,000 worth of Magic Carpet’s hospitality already. He swore he would report them all to their respective Press Councils for infamous professional conduct. He beseeched them to consider his own position. But the French were adamant, and in the end Starfield found hotels for everyone. Which was just as well, because when they got back to the airport next morning they found they were no nearer taking off than they had been the night before.

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nbsp; It turned out that the fault the aircraft had developed was not a technical one; it was financial. At some time in the past the aircraft’s operators had failed to pay a bill for landing dues at Beirut, and now the Lebanese authorities had distrained upon the aircraft, and impounded it until the bill was settled. At first Starfield denied this. But as the day grew hotter, and the drinks at the bar, compliments of Magic Carpet, flowed more and more like water, he shifted his ground slightly, and denied only that the debt was in any way the responsibility of Magic Carpet. It had been incurred, he said, by Nederlandse Zonnenvaart Luchtbedrijs, of Amsterdam, the company from which the plane was chartered, and he implored them to be patient, because they would be taking off just as soon as N.Z.L. had paid the necessary sum into the Lebanese Government’s account. He spent the morning hurrying from telephone to cable office to police headquarters, and just before lunchtime was able to report that N.Z.L. disclaimed all knowledge of the debt. Apparently they didn’t even own the aircraft. They were operating it on long-term charter from another company, Overland en Overzee N.V. of Rotterdam. It had become uncomfortably hot in the lounge; Starfield mopped his brow, and pressed his palms together, and then had to mop the palms, explaining all this to the journalists. (But he had already cabled O & O, he assured them hoarsely, and he expected the matter to be settled within minutes.

  It was only halfway through his seventh lager that Dyson realized he was sitting exactly opposite a poster with the girl from Schiphol on it. She was still just stepping out from the side of the swimming-pool into empty air; she still had the same anxious smile on her face; and she had still not got her toes wet. He got up and moved to another seat, so that he had his back to her. It brought him face to face with Mounce instead.

  ‘I mean,’ said Mounce, chinking the ice about in a large glass of whisky, ‘it’ll all have simmered down by the time this lot’s finished, won’t it?’