Getting a Life

by Helen Simpson

  “Heads in the sand,” nods Carol’s husband, Terry. “We’re talking global economic meltdown.”

  “Worse than that,” says Cassie. “A thousand times worse.”

  “Steve not back from the Philippines yet?” asks Terry, acknowledging her presence.

  “He’s up there right at this moment,” sighs Cassie, pointing at the sky.

  “Let’s hope air traffic control has sorted itself out before next year,” Greg chuckles knowingly. “Because it’s set to be the busiest year in aviation history.” He rubs his hands together and grins. “Just make sure you’re not partying under the flight path on New Year’s Eve. Take it from me.”

  “They’re saying there’ll be record levels of suicide attempts on the thirty-first of December,” muses Greg. “Seems a funny time to do it.”

  “I reckon they’re including the doom-and-gloom merchants in those statistics,” says Terry. “Like the ones camping out in the Himalayas. I mean, you’re going to look a right plonker when the end of the world doesn’t come, aren’t you, so the only logical thing then is to top yourself.”

  “You can’t afford to worry about these things,” says Greg. “Listen, we’re due a sunstorm next year, which is when the U.S. tracking system goes down. Completely useless. Perfect opportunity for a nuclear attack. Germ warfare. Let’s hope the bad boys haven’t figured that one out.”

  He takes a big gulp of lager and shrugs.

  “Too late,” says Cassie obscurely, mournfully. She knows anything she says now is mere babbling into the wind.

  “Cheer up, Cassandra,” Terry chides. “It may never happen.”

  Cassie looks over to where her boys are laughing and playing.

  “That’s the trouble,” she insists. “It will. Any minute now.”

  On board British Airways flight 666 from Manila the air is exhausted after thirteen hours of being recycled. It has been in and out of every lung on board and is now damply laden with droplet infection.

  Steven is gray-faced and crumbling with jet lag. He rubs his eyes, his whole face, and the tired flesh moves back and forth in folds. Bloody wild-goose chase, he says to himself, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes till they creak. Now he is nearly home, and glad that it’s a Saturday. He’ll be able to catch up on sleep. There has been a child nearby who has been crying for much of the journey, troubled by a recurrence of the sinusitis contracted earlier in summer while on a transatlantic flight to Disneyland with his father, who is from Boston, then back to his mother, who is English but works in Hong Kong, where she met and married his father. Although now they are divorced.

  The weary pretty air hostess smiles at Steven with just that quality of sympathetic tenderness he wishes Cassie would show him more often.

  “Would you like a drink, sir?”

  As she searches her trolley for a miniature Glenfiddich, she thinks ahead to this evening, when she and her husband must have sex. Her next set of IVF injections is due next week; she only hopes the airline won’t mess her flights around again or that’s another month wasted. She’ll be forty-one in October, and she’s been doing this job for twenty years.

  The pilot meanwhile rubs his eyes and takes a message from air traffic control. This descent to Heathrow has become a regular white-knuckle ride since they reduced the distance between incoming aircraft to a mere mile. A little bit of a holding delay here to fit into the landing sequence, he says suavely into the microphone. The planes are stacked up now, and with all that confusion between West Drayton and Swanwick recently too, he can’t remember feeling as jittery as this on a routine flight in his entire career.

  The sky darkens like a tyrant’s face, from ordinary pallor into deep fierce violet-gray. There is yellow lightning, the forked flicker of a monstrous snake’s tongue, then a grandiloquent roll of thunder like the tattoo before an execution. Above the general steam and vapor scowls a rainbow arch of refracted brilliance.

  The aircraft continue to follow the trajectory of this arch on their descent to Heathrow, and now they fly one after the other into an ominously gigantic boxer’s ear of a cloud. Lost in this vaporous mass, British Airways flight 666 from Manila follows an instruction from the arrivals controller until it finds itself fifty feet vertically and a hundred feet horizontally from a Virgin Express Boeing 737 acting on a contradictory instruction. Then both pilots become aware of the danger at the same time, and the incident almost becomes another near-miss for investigation by the Department of Transport. But not quite.

  There is a noise like the crack of doom. The enormous cloud lights up as though targeted by a celestial flamethrower. Over in West Drayton a man in air traffic control has a heart attack which leads directly to the midair conflagration of a dozen more incoming flights.

  Now aircraft like stingray are plunging, yellow eyes aglare, roaring and screaming as they explode into the glass houses at Kew Gardens and decimate the placid domestic streets surrounding. Steven joins his wife and children, but only in a manner of speaking. Piecemeal. Planes plough into the Hogarth roundabout at Chiswick and put an end to the permanent crawl of the South Circular. A row of double-fronted villas in Castelnau is flattened like a pack of cards, then rises in flames, joined by adjacent avenues of blazing red-brick houses. Mortlake is obliterated and Worple Way razed to the ground. East Sheen is utterly laid waste.

  Fire consumes the sky and falls to earth in flaming comets and limbs and molten fragments of fuselage, where for two days and nights it will devour flesh and grass and much else besides in a terrible and unnatural firestorm for miles around southwest London.

  And of course that—as Cassie would say were she still in one piece—that is only the beginning.

  BURNS AND THE BANKERS

  They were sitting down at last. There were over a thousand of them. All that breath and flesh meant the air beneath the chandeliers had very soon climbed to blood heat despite the dark sparkle of frost outside on Park Lane. An immense prosperous hum filled the hotel ballroom, as if all the worker bees of the British Isles were met to celebrate industriousness.

  Nicola Beaumont used her tartan-ribboned menu to fan herself. The invitation had said six-thirty, so she had dashed straight from Ludgate Hill, having changed in literally two minutes in the Ladies’, after a meeting with Counsel which had stretched out far too long; at the end of a day which had started with an eight o’ clock meeting; with heels, earrings and lipstick going on in the back of the cab here; only to find that they were expected to stand around drinking alcohol for over an hour. And she’d somehow forgotten to prepare herself for the inevitable Caledonian overkill, all these sporrans and dirks and coy talk of the lassies.

  Big Dougal was down from Edinburgh for the occasion, she’d noted, encircled by a servile coterie of younger men. She had been standing near enough to hear fragments of the anecdote with which he was, as he would no doubt have put it, regaling them. “. . . And that young gentleman, desirous of purchasing a property not a million miles away from the aforementioned office in Dumfries, then found himself embroiled in negotiations of a not entirely, shall we say, salubrious nature . . .”

  Oh what windbags the Scots are, thought Nicola, she always forgot in between, but what blowhard old windbags they are really. Look at these young men smiling like stiff-necked nut-crackers, the ricti of servile mirth baring their teeth. It was a terrible thing, ambition; or, as Dougie would doubtless have put it, the desire for advancement. She herself had climbed the greasy pole a while back, she had been a full partner for six years now, so that slavish part of it was behind her, thank heavens; although of course the business of winning and pleasing clients was ongoing. That was why she was here now holding a tumbler of whiskey—how she hated whiskey, the stink of it, the rubbish they talked about it. But this was an important anniversary year for the Federation of Caledonian Bankers and they had decided to mark it by bringing together senior staff, clients and professional advisers for a mega-Burns night.

  She turned towards another grou
p. Here, a lawyer she knew who had recently been made a partner at Clarence Sweets was talking to the head leasing partner at Iddon Featherstone, each with a black-tied husband at her elbow.

  “But is he good with them at weekends?” the Clarence Sweets woman was eagerly demanding. “Hands on, I mean.”

  “Oh yes, he takes them swimming,” said the head leasing partner. “Out on their bikes.” She shrugged. “Though of course he’s usually working at weekends.”

  The husbands under discussion gazed into their tumblers of whiskey like wordless children. Each of the four standing there had that day crammed twelve hours’ worth of work into ten in order to attend this banquet, and the whiskey was hitting stomachs which had long since forgotten the snatched midday sandwich.

  No, I do not want to compare nightmare journey times to the Suzuki session, thought Nicola, whose four-year-old twins went to the same violin teacher as the Clarence Sweets woman’s daughter, somewhere out in Surrey, every Saturday. She scanned the packed room and caught sight of her husband, Charlie, on the other side, arriving late. He was looking stockier than ever. All that flying he’d had to do in the last year hadn’t helped, she thought; six or seven times a month recently, including Japan and Australia. Not good for the waistline. Not good for the heart.

  By the time she’d threaded her way across through the crowd, Torquil Cameron had got his mitts on Charlie. That was sharp of him, to remember him from Goodwood.

  “A-ha,” smiled Torquil above his frilly jabot, then he bowed from the hips in that way men do in kilts, the better to show off his pleats, the swing of them. “Delighted you could be here, Nicola. As you can see, I’ve located your other half for you. Now I don’t think you’ve met my own good lady wife, Jean.” Jean stood by him, the color of a brick, free of makeup, in her fifties and a girlish white ballgown with a plaid sash athwart her bosom. She smiled at Nicola, who was wearing a black crepe trouser suit, and her eyes showed disapproval mixed with shyness and fear.

  “So, Nicola!” boomed Torquil. “When was it exactly, the last time we had the pleasure of seeing you up in Auld Reekie?”

  “Oh, not long ago, I think,” smiled Nicola, wondering why he had to be so ponderous. “It was October, wasn’t it? There was that day of meetings about the Yellow Target business. You took us all out for a good lunch at the Witchery, I seem to remember.”

  “That’s right, that’s right!” crowed Torquil as though delighted and relieved. He turned to Charlie. “You’ll be looking forward to your haggis then?” he inquired. Charlie smiled wanly.

  Following this welcome there had been an interminable stretch of time during which the thousand guests drifted slow as plankton past the seating plan and from there down the huge staircase into the ballroom.

  “The things I do for you,” Charlie had muttered as they shuffled down the stairs.

  “I sat through Die mostincrediblyboringold Meistersinger only last week for your lot,” she had reminded him. “Four hours.”

  “This’ll be longer.”

  “And Orpheus and Eurydice the week before.”

  “That was short.”

  “You’ll be all right,” she had said crossly. “Lots of whiskey.”

  “Did Harry make it into the team, d’you know?”

  “As a reserve.”

  Charlie had given a vexed snort.

  “That boy. He’s perfectly capable of it. He just doesn’t try.”

  “He said he missed the shot which would have got him a place. Just bad luck. He’s very disappointed.”

  “So he should be.”

  Their lives were both so busy that times of idleness alone together like this, on the staircase in a queue, were few and far between. They had over the years developed a breezy shorthand for talking about their four children, for exchanging vital information and intimate views as economically as possible, rather like a couple of fighter pilots crewing the same Mosquito.

  Nicola had an extraordinarily retentive memory, which was invaluable not only in the practice of law but also at this sort of event, as she could memorize the seating plan and prime herself to ask the right questions about the various sporting activities and children of the clients involved. She was excellent on names and faces. So, as she and Charlie had made their slow way down, her mental picture had been as follows: The table was bristling with slim silver vases of orchids and bottles of wine standing ready uncorked before forests of glasses and napkins pleated into white cockades and even little silver-plated quaichs, each one engraved with a guest’s name, the date and the crest of the Caledonian Banking Federation.

  “Well, Iain,” said Nicola to the man seated on her left. “This is all very impressive.”

  “And it hasn’t even started yet,” said Iain. “Here, let me pour you a glass. White or red? Have you been to a Burns Night before? No, well, there are a lot of speeches, I can warn you, so you’ll be glad of a glass in front of you.”

  “Cheers,” said Nicola, who knew this man slightly and liked him, his sharpness and frankness.

  “Slanjiva,” he replied, or something like it.

  She was aware of Donald Forfar on her right, a strong thickset presence, the sort of build that looked good in a kilt. Whereas tall lean men like Iain Buchanan were far better off in jeans. She was about to turn and introduce herself but then Iain was tapping her arm.

  “Here’s Torquil Cameron now,” he said, directing her gaze towards the top table on its platform hundreds of meters away from them. “He’ll be giving the welcome and he’ll take his time because he’s a big balloon, but then he’ll say grace and we can all get started.”

  “Oh good,” said Nicola.

  It was very hot. She picked up the menu to fan herself, and her mind stretched back through the packed day. Every minute had been spoken for. Her chargeable hours were on target so far this year, but it was a constant battle. She hadn’t managed a full half hour with the children this morning; it couldn’t be helped but it made her feel a bit sick considering she was out tonight again for the second time this week and it was only Wednesday. Jade was so sarcastic these days but she liked the benefits, the good school, the nice holidays. She, Nicola, would make up that twenty-minute shortfall, she would squeeze it in somehow tomorrow.

  She took a sip of wine and immediately the alcohol rose up behind her face to somewhere at eyebrow level, and she thought, That’s hit the spot. The one thing all us hardworking and often successful people can’t have, she realized as she gazed around her at the sea of heated faces, is TIME. She took another sip and felt a number of tiny muscles in her shoulders relax like a sigh. That’s it, she decided. Water from now on or I’ll never last.

  It made her crisp with irritation, that she could have arrived half an hour later and no harm done. But that’s the deal, she reminded herself. She had always to be thinking ahead. That was what she had to do. She was unable to sit inside the minute; it was a joke in their family that she couldn’t sit still. She had a beautiful house and she was never in it. She knew what the children were doing at every hour of the day, and she wasn’t there. She kept it all up in the air, she never lost her grip. So much so that it would be positively dangerous for her to relax. If she were to let go, it didn’t bear thinking about, the fallout.

  The waiters were moving in massed ranks across the floor, bearing soup to the tables while Torquil Cameron carried on. He was paying lip service to Burns now.

  “And where, ladies and gentlemen,” boomed Torquil Cameron, “where would we be without poetry?”

  Nicola caught Charlie’s eye across the table and smothered a giggle. She glanced at other faces and saw the pained expressions of piety, as though God had been mentioned, or cancer.

  The moment passed. Poetry! thought Nicola. That’s all we need. Doubtless some Scot would start spouting Burns later and it was in dialect if she remembered rightly. Wee sleekit cowrin timrous beastie. As the man boomed on, she became aware of an unfamiliar feeling: boredom. Of course one ought to be able to
make these dead patches of time work for one. She had friends who recommended meditation techniques for just such occasions. Om, wasn’t it. Or was it visualize a beach. Which reminded her, she must get that check off to Better Villas ASAP.

  At last the big balloon had finished. Now he was announcing grace, and they all had to bow their heads over their soup bowls.

  Some hae meat that canna eat,

  And some wad eat that want it;

  But we hae meat, and we can eat,

  And sae the Lord be thankit.

  Then the hubbub started up again and there was the chinking of a thousand spoons as they tackled their Cullen skink.

  Nicola glanced around their table. She realized with relief that, so great was the noise, she would not be obliged to talk to anyone beyond Iain Buchanan on her left and this other man on her right. Iain’s wife, Susan, directly opposite, was giving Charlie the sparrow’s bright look askance while he smiled falsely back. Susan was smart and chirpy, as Nicola remembered, but not very deep. Also she was a full-time mother of the sort who drew their skirts away when Nicola approached, while exuding a neediness to freeze the cockles of your heart. This man Iain on her left was working all the hours of the day and night, Nicola happened to know, as he badly wanted to be made deputy head of the branch, and that move was still a good year off.

  On the other side of Charlie was Deborah Mahon, a vaguely smiling woman of fifty-five or fifty-six, who had not earned any money for over thirty years. She had had a front-of-house job in the bank for a little while before she got married, back in the mists of time, when she was still in her decorative early twenties, and since then had stayed indoors to look after her husband and three demanding, confident and ambitious daughters, the youngest of whom had just started university.

  Nicola knew how the talk went at this kind of mixed do with spouses. The men would address the women beside them with bored chivalry, feeding them brief obvious questions about their children or their house or their little part-time jobs, and then the women would chat on, working away at keeping the conversational bonfire alight, pulling more than their weight in an exchange which really was nineteen to the dozen. But she herself was not one of these women. She had a foot in both camps. Not only had she borne four children but she also earned as much as her husband and more than Iain Buchanan. So she would be able to talk with the men about money and the new Japanese restaurant near Gracechurch Street and—barring sport, of course—things that really interested them. Still she wore high heels and earrings and noticed that this man on her right, Donald Forfar, was quite appealing in a solid saturnine sort of way.