On the Way Back

by Montague Kobbé

  I hold her tight, I bend with her, and suddenly, in the distance, a pair of eyes shine in the middle of the dark room. That loose silver dress is something else. Her thin legs make her look svelte, her delicate movement carries something more than elegance with it, something lustful. I know that girl. I’ve seen her before, but between the distance and the darkness I can’t make out who she is. My dancing partner has noticed my distraction. She’s bent forward, holding her knees with her hands and thrusting herself backward. And yet I can’t take my eyes from that other face. I do know you. Of course I know you. I bet a wild instinct lies beneath that exuberant body. Why don’t we go somewhere else, somewhere quieter. Meanwhile, I will see you again.

  * * *

  The night was long and I had nightmares after I got back from dropping her off at Stoney Ground. I feared her eyes in the morning and it turns out I dreamed of them all night. I was in a forest being watched by thousands of birds, all of which looked away, and I tried to catch them watching me but they never faced me, and I tried to chase them but they weren’t scared, and that made me scared. But all that is gone now, because now I have four gold stripes on the epaulets on my shoulders and four gold rings on the sleeves of my jacket, and they make me untouchable.

  Eight passengers at the back get an especially cordial treatment because this is Dragon Wings’s inaugural flight. I was chosen to do the honors out of the pool of four pilots as a reward for my “effort and commitment.” Not that I give a shit, but it is nice to be in control of a commercial flight once again. To be the skipper, the captain, the law. Clayton J. Lloyd control, this is Dragon Wings flight 100 to Juliana Airport, requesting permission for takeoff. The traffic of private jets hasn’t really started yet and we are the first scheduled departure of the day. Anguilla has a long runway, Juliana’s is even longer, and the flight time is around seven minutes. Literally up and down. This couldn’t be easier. Gentle push forward of the left throttle, turn right, and the empty runway opens up in front. Full throttle, forty knots, sixty, eighty, liftoff, and the most outrageous fantasy in the history of this never-never land comes true.

  PART IV

  I

  The end of Dragon Wings was ordained long before a Beechcraft Queen Air painted in the wrong shade of turquoise—slightly too blue, not green enough, too deep—took off from Clayton J. Lloyd International Airport on the morning of December 1 to take eight passengers to Princess Juliana International Airport, seven minutes away, across the channel, on the Dutch side of the neighboring island of St. Martin. Dragon Wings would only exist as long as Dragon Jones remained in the company, but it had been an integral part of Glenallen Rawlingson’s scheme from the very moment he agreed to buy a 21 percent stake in the business eventually to rid it, and possibly even the island, of the Joneses—senior, junior, and, if necessary, also in-law—in order to gain complete control of the airline.

  The conditions SamB had imposed to join Dragon Wings initially seemed to hinder Glenallen Rawlingson’s prospects, but after closer consideration he understood that the occasion presented him instead with the perfect opportunity to secure control of the board of directors without raising much suspicion: Glenallen knew that the Joneses would agree to anything within reason to get the candidate they wanted as their chief pilot, including parting not only with the 7.5 percent share demanded by SamB but also an additional 7.5 percent which would simply be transferred from Sheila’s stock to his. Just like that, the Joneses were relinquishing 15 percent of a company in which Glenallen already owned 21 percent. All he had to do now was get SamB on his side and together the two of them would have the power to block any initiative proposed by the Joneses: the path to seizing the Anguillan flag carrier from the hands of these foreigners had already been outlined. It was a path in which SamB played a prominent role, and the time had come to start traveling it.

  But Glenallen Rawlingson was not the only person in Anguilla plotting against the Joneses and their airline; secretly and manifestly against the wishes of his sister, Bacchus Stewart had begun devising a plan to ensure the downfall of the future airline from the very moment he realized he would be forced in his capacity as director of the Indigenous Bank of Anguilla to support the venture. Bacchus had plainly refused to enter into a partnership with the Rawlingsons and he had made so much clear to Gwendolyn on a visit just a day or two after he had read back to front the proposal Sheila Rawlingson had left at Auntie Gwen’s house in Island Harbour. Is for dat you de strong man in de bank, you know. You ain’ got to do nuttin’ for youself if you kyan do it t’rough de bank. Dem white folks love playin’ ’roun’ wit’ odder people money, you know. Go ahead. Give ’em plenty money from de bank: dem goan go spen’ it all an’ come back for some more. Tzaz, dat when you get dem good, boy, and Auntie Gwen’s words got lost in a cackle that was part laughter, part cough. Gwendolyn’s plan was consistent with the way things had worked at the Stewarts’ bank before the Caribbean Central Bank had intervened and merged it with the Bank of the Leeward Islands, but Bacchus knew that given the present circumstances he would not have the same liberty of action he had enjoyed at the Anguilla Home and Trust Bank. Uncannily, Bacchus Stewart had not even had to raise the issue at the meeting of the board of directors of the Indigenous Bank of Anguilla, because Glenallen Rawlingson had done so instead, and not only that but he had also proposed to back the financing of their aircrafts with secure loans. For once, Bacchus seconded Glenallen’s motion, and for all practical purposes in Anguilla, a motion that enjoyed the support of the Stewarts and the Rawlingsons was a motion that was approved pretty much automatically. The Rawlingsons and their pitiful little airline had walked right into Bacchus’s trap, and he hadn’t even had to deploy it.

  Yet, all through the month of December neither Glenallen Rawlingson’s nor Bacchus Stewart’s mischievous plots gained much relevance, because, all predictions to the contrary, it was the Joneses who laughed first. Dragon Wings’s aggressive strategy to break into the regional market saw the company slogan (With Dragon Wings paradise is just one hop away) printed everywhere, from newspapers, to placards, to magazines all over the Leeward Islands, but it was the price war triggered by their schedule of daily flights to/from each of their five destinations which earned the airline the favor of most passengers. The slow start at the beginning of December turned out to be the ideal introduction for Nathaniel and his crew into the practical issues surrounding the business. Occasional miscommunication, double bookings, and technical glitches proved inconsequential because the relevant flights were half-empty anyway, and solutions were available. Pretty, distinctive, small, and cheap, Dragon Wings was the sort of operation that everyone was willing to forgive, and soon enough even some of the regional newspapers engaged the airline to distribute their product abroad. If Dragon Wings’s attempt to take the region by storm had posed a palpable danger of overexposure, heading into the most important week of the year in Anguilla it seemed as if the gamble was paying off.

  The peak of the high season in the Caribbean spans the fortnight between Christmas Eve and Epiphany. That’s the period during which the core of the yearly income is generated, certainly in the tourist industry—and tourism is just about the only major industry there is in Anguilla. Dragon Wings faced the same challenges as the rest of such industry during this period: for twelve consecutive days Dragon Wings faced the organizational challenge of catering to the most demanding clientele imaginable, of providing efficient service, of adapting to the constraints of a tight schedule, of turning a makeshift airline into a smooth operation. The team at Dragon Wings was not experienced enough to foresee or prevent the problems that would arise, nor had they worked together long enough to achieve the coordination necessary to run a business from a handful of different locations. In fact, Dragon Wings was in no way prepared to face the peak of the high season in the Caribbean, so when the Jones family nucleus and their associates encountered the same challenges as the rest of the tourist industry in Anguilla, the shortcomings of th
eir organization inevitably became exposed.

  But the Joneses had resilience and commitment and luck, and the problems that arose were not all that serious, and delays were to be expected from a brand-new operation. So December came and went, and by the end of the first month in business, Dragon Wings averaged a seat occupancy of close to 70 percent, and though punctuality was rather low (on the 80 percent range), most flights had only been slightly delayed, and passenger satisfaction seemed acceptable, and passenger yield remained high. Thus, regardless of separate plans to ensure the failure of Dragon Wings, the Joneses managed to turn the challenges brought by the peak of the high season in Anguilla into their first taste of success. Little did anyone know how sparing success would be in providing them with a second tasting, but later on, when it was all over, it would be clear to Dragon and Nathaniel that no matter how lofty, when weighed against the resources and experience at their disposal, their ambition had been disproportionate—indeed, foolishly so.

  II

  Despite the improvisations that had characterized the setting up of the airline during the weeks previous to December 1, things had gotten off to a good start in all areas: SamB’s expert eye had proven spotless in his choice of pilots, both of whom were able and responsible. His awareness of human limitations, on the other hand, seemed more amiss when Lauretta Williams, the Jamaican stewardess with the long legs and thin ankles, showed up at the offices of Dragon Wings in the Business Center one morning—dark rings crawling around her eyes, hair wildly unkempt—asking when she would finally get a day off. She had been assisting the passengers on the afternoon flight to/from Antigua for the past ten days in a row, and was yet to meet the person who would share such responsibility with her. The reason she had not yet met the person who would share her job on the flights to Antigua and any other journeys that required a hostess was because such person was yet to be employed. It would still be many days until Lauretta Williams could finally take a day off. When she did, she took five all at once, and spent two of them sleeping. Yet her complaint did not go unheard. Instead, it opened the second phase of recruitment at Dragon Wings, this time not so much an overwhelming flood as a steady flow.

  SamB’s expert eye had proven spotless in his choice of pilots, and Dragon Jones’s natural instinct for human behavior had once again revealed itself because only two of the twenty-two people Dragon had hired during the flurry that had been the recruitment process at Dragon Wings during the month of October had had to be dismissed. Added to these two replacements, the airline was looking to expand by two members the team at Juliana and to engage the engineers who had once served under Leyland Airways to complement the team of ECCAA-authorized engineers at Clayton J. Lloyd International Airport in Anguilla. This was the natural rate of growth for an airline which had been put together quickly and inexpertly by a group of people who had become associates more by the doings of chance than by thoughtful calculation. This was the natural rate of growth for a small airline which had shown more promise during its first few weeks of life than anyone could rightfully have expected.

  As it turned out, this was all the growth Dragon Wings could have withstood, but the board of directors could/would/did not understand this, because Nathaniel Jones was more interested in building the small empire he had originally envisioned than he was in making a profitable business, and Sheila Rawlingson-Jones rediscovered her desire to distance herself from the enterprise she had once opposed so fiercely and which in time had become the only connection between her and the (white, old) man she began to suspect she no longer loved, and Glenallen Rawlingson was desperate to promote any sort of activity that would jeopardize the stability of the corporation to deploy his plan of conspiracy. So on January 17, when Samuel Bedingford put forward his ambitious plan of expansion for the airline, and he explained how this whole venture has been focusing on the wrong targets from the start, and he highlighted the impracticalities of building a heterogeneous fleet of planes, and the Trislander was a good option when there was nothing else available but this is an opportunity to upgrade and correct the mistakes that were made in the early stages of the assembling of this airline; in short, when SamB proposed to take the aggressive strategy that Dragon Wings had adopted to break into the regional market one bullyish step further by putting the Trislander back on the market and joining the bid for two of Air Tampa’s Short 330s, Nathaniel’s first reaction was not outrage but rather curiosity: How exactly do you propose we finance two aircrafts that together will cost us over three-quarters of a million dollars?

  The answer to that question rolled off Glenallen Rawlingson’s tongue without him so much as having to formulate the words in his mind before speaking them: Considerin’ our current liquid assets, de initial success of de operation, and de cost of de aircraft, it would not be unreasonable to request further support from the Indigenous Bank of Anguilla.

  The only one squarely against the idea was Dragon, who advocated for a more conservative strategy: Six weeks into our operation is not the time to upgrade, Sam. Right now, what we need to do is consolidate.

  But consolidation was not as popular as expansion, and we might never again get the opportunity to purchase a plane so fit for our operation, and, This will effectively launch us into the prolific French Antilles market, and, How can our profitability be hampered by flights to St. Barths, French St. Martin, Guadeloupe, and Martinique?

  Two months into the life of Dragon Wings and a few days into the lull that in January follows the peak of the high season, the airline’s board of directors resolved that instead of concentrating on the successful management of its already considerably large area of operation, instead of gathering data from its performance in December and analyzing it to source the origin of the various difficulties encountered, instead of focusing on the development of a flawless, professional service, the company would explore the possibility of purchasing at least one if not two Short 330s—There’s no point in doing this by halves, if we’re going ahead with it we have to do it all the way—from Air Tampa, stretching its resources to the limit in order to adopt a policy of expansion that entailed forming additional teams of employees, mediating with individual governments simultaneously, and negotiating route concessions.

  III

  I walk into the friendly, familiar environment of The Old Mill and am greeted by its ever-smiling owner. You would think we’re family by the welcome I get in this place every time I come here. The dining room is small and generally cozy but there is hardly anyone here tonight, and tonight I need company. I’ll just eat at the bar, if that’s alright. Tex-Mex, pizza, barbecue grill (Anguilla’s national dish): the usual reliable, simple stuff.

  Boy, you lookin’ rough, man. You workin’ too hard! Angie, the bartender at The Old Mill, is all smiles, always joking, constantly on everyone’s case. I enjoy exchanging a few pleasantries with her, even if they are always the same jokes, always the same tongue-in-cheek abuse. But my nerves are soothed by this simple chitchat and a cheap laugh works wonders while she fixes my rum-and-Coke, and the first sip tingles the taste buds on my tongue and all of a sudden the world of problems just recedes a little and I can breathe again.

  This is the first night I have been able to take “off” since December 1. Work has been relentless since our opening flight and there is no sign of things slowing down. Suddenly, leaving the office at eight p.m. to go straight to the Mill for dinner has become an early night. I haven’t been to the beach in three months, I haven’t played golf in four. I think I was probably slightly more tan when I arrived from London last May than I am at the moment. This is not what I expected from work in paradise.

  Two couples—white, sunburned tourists—walk in and sit in the dining area. They are just about the only people here, and the room becomes a bit sinister. At the bar, two of the usual suspects sit in their corners, like every night, staring into nothing, saying nothing, simply stirring their drinks with religious devotion. I have eaten my meal and prepare to join them in the
ir ritual when, out of nowhere, Sheila Rawlingson walks through the door. Our eyes lock, we’ve made contact, and though she looks uncomfortable she has no alternative—she is almost forced by circumstance to approach me at the bar.

  I wish Sheila wasn’t here tonight. This is my first night off in weeks and now there is a sense of inevitability about our conversation drifting into Dragon Wings. We both pretend to be surprised to find the other here, we both pretend to be glad, but soon enough there is nothing else to talk about. You here wit’ SamB? SamB is not in the rotation to fly tomorrow, but I’ve hardly been out with him since he joined us at the airline.

  Nah, SamB and I aren’t on the best of terms right now. He didn’t take kindly to me not backing his plan of expansion for Dragon Wings last week. Even at that stage it was plain to see that SamB and I no longer enjoyed the same relationship as before, but something snapped with that vote that cannot be undone, something I hadn’t seen coming up to that point. It’s true that the Business Center and the airport lounge were the only places I had seen him in weeks, but the main reason for this was that work was hectic. Or so I thought.