Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

by Douglas Lindsay

  Why wasn't I on the plane?

  As the dog walkers approached I bent down and quickly removed my socks, stuffed them together in my hand. I stepped away from the gentle incoming waves so that my trousers wouldn't get any wetter.

  'Morning,' said one of them. The other smiled.

  'Have you got the time?' I asked.

  Check of the watch. 'Just after eleven,' she said.

  I smiled and nodded a thank you. They started to walk past.

  'Sorry, don't mean to sound weird. Could you tell me the date?'

  She hesitated.

  'It's the seventeenth of June,' said the other.

  Weirdly that seemed right. At least, within the bizarre narrative in which I found myself. I had somehow been transported from the crashing plane to the beach in Nairn. That, in itself, seemed utterly bizarre. However, within that, I had been imagining being at the beach in June, not December, so having made the leap – in time and space? – it made sense.

  'Thank you,' I said to their backs, as they walked off, their golden retriever skipping in and out of the sea.

  Time and space. That made me think. Which June? I looked around. Was there any kind of clue to be had from the beach? The only readily distinguishable changing features were the sand banks, but I couldn't tell the difference from year to year. I could just tell that it never quite looked the same.

  I watched the dog walkers go and decided not to shout after them to ask what year it was. Do that and I would be getting into standing-naked-in-a-crowd territory.

  I walked towards the town. At the end of the beach, just over the sand dunes, there is a caravan park, with a large administration building with a shop and café. I headed there in a daze, no longer trying to think about the situation, as it was so utterly inexplicable.

  Like the time those two hooded crows turned up in the loft. There really was no way for a bird to get into the loft. No gaps in the eves, no window left open. I checked everywhere. We'd lived in that house for over five years, and at no other time had anything ever got in that shouldn't have. It was a bright loft, a couple of large windows, easy to see into corners. There was nowhere to get in, and yet one afternoon, out of nowhere, two crows had turned up. There had been no rational explanation, so I'd stopped thinking about it.

  I walked along the beach until I reached the pier, and then took the path through the dunes that led to the shop. I moved slowly, my clothes started to dry in the heat of the sun. My legs didn't feel entirely steady, as if the entire seashore was rocking and swaying like the plane. At this end of the beach, nearest the town, there were a lot of people around.

  I went into the shop, smiled at the woman behind the counter who completely ignored me, and had a quick look at the newspaper headlines. I didn't even need to check the date. I recognised it straight away. The story was about the government minister who'd had to resign because he'd been sucked into a paedophile case. This report was from when he was still strenuously denying the accusations. It was early on in the story's life.

  I stood looking at this, knowing how it would develop. Knowing that proof would emerge, knowing that he would be arrested and charged, knowing that he would be released on bail and that he would hang himself in his own kitchen, little more than a month later.

  I hadn't just thought myself off a plane, I had travelled back six months.

  I found myself staring at the shop assistant, without really looking at her.

  'Do you want anything?' she said.

  I shook my head, walked out of the shop, and went into the café next door. I stood behind a family of four, two noisy kids, who were getting something to go.

  'What can I get for you?' asked the woman. The barista. Would she think of herself as a barista, in a small café in a caravan park in the north of Scotland?

  I was staring at the menu board, reading it without thinking. Flat white. Americano. Cappuccino. Espresso. Latte. The usual suspects.

  'Flat white,' I said.

  I invariably ask for a flat white. It sounds kind of dull, but it's how you measure the barista. Get fifty people to make you a flat white, and you'll get fifty variations. Today, however, the words just tripped off my tongue. I wasn't thinking.

  I had counted my money on the way along the beach. I had twenty pounds, and four hundred dollars in notes.

  'Anything to eat?' she asked.

  I looked at the pastries. I couldn't think. So I didn't say anything, and she made the coffee.

  *

  The corridor didn't seem to have an end. How long could it take to walk to the end of a corridor? How big could a building be?

  I think I knew the explanation before I got the actual proof of it. The thought had been burbling away somewhere out of reach, but not far out of reach, as if it had been held in a bubble just outside my head.

  At some point I realised that one of the doors up ahead was open, and I instantly knew that it was the door to my cell. I was walking in a circle. A large circle.

  How long had I been walking? It felt like twenty minutes. How long could you walk in twenty minutes? A mile? Two miles? Admittedly I wasn't going very quickly, and on further admission, I had no idea whether I'd been walking for twenty minutes or two minutes or two hours. The corridor was so dull and featureless that time vanished, sucked into the grey of the walls.

  I tried to think of what they say about time. What do physicists say about time? About it not being a constant. Does it even exist? Something about time moving slower in space. I never understood. One of those things that I'd always known, and more than likely had at some point confidently stated in a discussion. Oh yes, time moves slower in space. But what did I know? I had no idea if, how or why time moved slower in space. And anyway, I wasn't in space, I was in a large building which I took to be in America. And that was all.

  I got back to my door. I looked in the room. As far as I could tell it was my room, but then the only other room I'd so far looked into was exactly the same. I came back out into the corridor. Looked left, looked right. How many doors had I walked past? I had no idea. I hadn't been counting.

  Was it possible that there had been some kind of exit door or a lift door perhaps in the left hand wall that I had missed? Or was one of these interminable, dull doors on the right hand side – what I took to be, but was not absolutely sure, the inner wall of the circle – also the way out?

  Only one way to find out. I had to check, and I had to be prepared for a lot of blank, soulless faces staring at me as I looked in on them. Perhaps I would see worse.

  The thought of the kinds of things I might come across flashed into my head, and was almost enough to make me return to my room, but I forced myself on. I was awake now, wide awake, for the first time since I'd been brought here. They'd let me sleep, now I had to go on and do whatever it was that they were wanting me to do.

  I paused, deep breath, then I walked the short distance along the corridor to the next room and opened the door. There was a man sitting blankly at the desk, his arms resting hopelessly, his head bowed. He looked up.

  His hair had been shaved short, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes dark. Moustache, hadn't shaved for a few days. It was the same man I had walked in on previously, but I could have sworn it wasn't the same room.

  He said nothing, yet there was almost something about him that implied he'd been expecting me to look in on him again. We looked at each other for a while. I had spoken to him before and he had ignored me. This time there didn't seem to be anything worth saying.

  I closed the door and looked at the next one along the line, in the direction away from my cell. I felt a little more nervous now, which was odd, because all I'd done was walk in on someone I'd walked in on before.

  I hesitated outside the door, and then pulled it open with a quick movement. There was no one at the desk. I thought the room was empty, then I noticed the figure in the far corner. Another man, lying in a bundle, pressed up against the wall as if he was pushing himself as far away from the door
as possible.

  There was a slight movement of his head, and he seemed to notice me. Suddenly he sprang up, so that he was standing, although he did not advance. He was younger than me, his skin dark. He had several weeks' growth of beard.

  'Who are you?' he said. The words were blurted out. He was dressed in the same type of overalls I was wearing. His eyes were wild.

  'I'm just a guy,' I said. 'Trying to get out.'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'I'm...'

  I turned and indicated the corridor.

  'The doors are open, there are no guards... I'm just looking to see if there's any way to get out of here. Wherever here is.'

  'What d'you mean there are no guards?'

  'Come and look.'

  I said it, but I didn't really want him to. I didn't want a partner. Didn't want him latching onto me. I'd been on my own since this whole absurd thing had started. I didn't need anyone else.

  He didn't say anything. I could see he was going through the same mental contortions that I'd experienced in the past however long. However long it was that I'd been there.

  'Close the door,' he said suddenly. 'Get out. Don't let them see you in here.'

  He looked hurriedly at the mirror. I didn't need an invitation. His nervous paranoia was much more worrying than the dull acceptance of defeat from next door.

  I closed the door and paused. Two down. How many to go? There were three more before I'd get to the bathroom, and that would include the door behind which I'd previously found the hollow-cheeked, unshaven man.

  Deep breath, the next door. Somehow I wasn't surprised to find that it was the bathroom. Two doors early. I closed the door again and looked back at where my open door was. Three doors along.

  My cell. Hollow-cheeked man. Dark-skinned, nervous man. Toilet.

  I ran the order over in my head a few times. I was going to have to remember it. I was getting confused, which was barely surprising given the repetition and the blank grey canvas of walls and doors.

  My cell. Hollow-cheeked man. Dark-skinned, nervous man. Toilet.

  I opened the next door. There was a guy sitting at the desk, his head bowed over his arms. At the sound of the door, he lifted his head. It was the unshaven, hollow-cheeked man, but this time he was wearing a dirty, ancient suit, faded brown or maybe even purple, although once again it was hard to tell.

  I stared at him. His dark, dead eyes looked through me. I glanced along the corridor at my open door, and the closed door next to it where I'd so recently walked in on him.

  'How?' was all I could say to express my total confusion.

  I really didn't know what to read into his gaze. Everything was so bleak about him, his appearance so desolate. How long had he been here for him to descend into this? How soon would this be me? Was it me already? I didn't feel like it, not after a decent night's sleep, and it was impossible not to think that this man was as wretched in humour as he was in appearance.

  'I don't understand,' I said. Suddenly I felt I had to stand here until I got an answer. My cell. Hollow-cheeked man. Dark-skinned nervous man. Toilet. Was that about to play out in a loop?

  It couldn't be that. My cell was back there. I hadn't come across it again. Yet I couldn't continually stick my head into this man's cell without engaging him. I had to get something from him.

  'I don't understand,' I repeated.

  He made a slight movement of his hand.

  'Come in and sit down,' he said. 'Close the door.'

  I recognised his voice. I wasn't expecting that.

  13

  I sat in the café in Nairn, looking out the window at the bright late morning. I could see the waves on the Moray Firth and the hills of the Black Isle beyond. The boat at the mouth of the Cromarty Firth was slowly moving away. There were a couple of oil rigs in place behind it. There isn't oil around here; the Cromarty Firth is used as an oil rig hospital.

  I watched the glacial movement across the water and tried to put everything into place. How had I got here, and what was I going to do now?

  The answer to the first question seemed straightforward. I had thought myself off the plane. It had been crashing, I had imagined being somewhere else, and then, by who knew what means, I had ended up where I'd hoped to be. Nairn beach in June.

  Was that rational? Was thinking yourself somewhere else on the planet the kind of thing that regularly happened in life? No, of course not. But I had always had some sort of belief in the power of the mind, and its extraordinary untapped potential. I'd never investigated it though, and this seemed way beyond the kind of thing that one might imagine the mind being able to achieve.

  Nevertheless, although it might seem peculiar, I sat in that café in Nairn, looking out at the sea and sky, and the fact that I had thought myself off a plane almost seemed natural.

  I did briefly wonder if I was actually alive. Death was possible. Perhaps I'd died on the plane and this was some kind of other me, walking around the seafront of my fondest memories. This was heaven. I was in heaven. If I was in heaven, then where were Brin and Baggins? Obviously they were not yet dead, so I was just going to have to wait for them. Well, how about my mum and dad? There was no sign of them.

  Somehow, though, I knew this wasn't an afterlife. It didn't feel like it. There was nothing strange about it. This was life in the middle of June, as it had been six months earlier. Except, it was no longer my six months earlier, it was my now.

  And so I dismissed thoughts of why or how I was there and accepted it for what it was. The real problem, I suddenly realised, was what I was going to do with the next six months. And what would I do when those six months came to an end?

  'Is everything all right for you, sir?' asked the waitress.

  I hadn't seen her before. I stared at her, because my thoughts were still elsewhere and I hadn't really heard what she'd said. She smiled and waved a hand in front of my face. I noticed that in her other hand she had one of those coffee jugs that you see waitresses carrying around for refills in American diners.

  'Would you care for a refill?' she said.

  I nodded. 'Thanks.'

  Right enough, she had an American accent. Maybe that was why she was offering a refill. It came with her nationality, rather than being house policy.

  She poured the coffee. There was a jug of milk on the table.

  'Working here for the summer?' I asked.

  'Sure am,' she said. 'Just got here.'

  'Where're you from?'

  'Ann Arbor,' she said. 'Well, that's where I go to college...'

  'Michigan State?'

  She smiled, and took the unusual step of sitting down.

  'Yeah, you know it?'

  'Heard of it. I'd still take a while to find it on a map.'

  'What's your story?' she asked.

  'How d'you mean?'

  'Well, you have the look of the family man, yet you're sitting here at a family resort without a family, and you look kinda lost. Most guys, you know, fathers, husbands, give them a little break on a family holiday and they look like they're in heaven. They kick back, they relax, they enjoy the peace. But you... you look like you're not supposed to be here. But you are. And you're not wearing any shoes.'

  I glanced around the café. The woman was still behind the bar, raking around, filling the time. There were no other customers.

  'It'll start filling up in about half an hour,' she said.

  'I was just on a plane,' I said. The words were there, surprising me. But then, what did it matter whether she believed me?

  'You flew into Inverness?' she asked, then she quickly shook her head. 'No, that's not it.'

  'I was on a plane to LA,' I said. 'It went down. Hit a storm, and it was going down. Crashing. I was terrified. I... there's nothing you can do on a crashing plane... what can you do? You just sit there. So I imagined I was here. It was all I could do.'

  'And now you are here.'

  'So it appears.'

  'You got off the plane as it was hittin
g the ground?'

  'I think so.'

  'Hmm...' she said. She seemed to take this with complete credulity. 'Unusual,' she added.

  'I would have thought.'

  'You think you might be dead?'

  I shrugged. I'd already talked myself out of that.

  She shook her head. 'You seem to be pretty alive to me.' And then she surprised me by stating exactly what had just gone through my head. 'So what are you going to do? If you go along to the authorities then they're going to wonder why you weren't on the plane. In fact, they're going to assume that you never got on the plane in the first place, even though you were supposed to be, and... and they might well surmise that you had something to do with the plane crashing.'

  Just as I'd been thinking, sitting here looking out the window at the sea and the sky.

  'Yes,' I said. 'But it's more complicated than that.'

  'Ooh,' she said, 'that's kinda interesting. Go on.'

  'The plane doesn't crash for another six months.'

  She stared across the table. Weirdly, this seemed more of a shock to her than the fact that I'd thought myself off the plane in the first place.

  'Wow,' she said eventually.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'That is a whole different kettle of potatoes. Thrown back in time. Neat. So you know what's going to happen in the next six months?'

  I hadn't thought about that. I'd just been thinking about myself.

  'I suppose so,' I said.

  'You can change events,' she said.

  'I'm not changing anything,' I said. 'I can't mess with... you know... space-time.'

  ''Scuse me there, pet,' said a voice, and we both looked over to see that there was now someone sitting at another table. Six people in fact.

  'Sorry,' she said, 'Gotta go. Let's talk after work. I get off at five.'

  *

  Perhaps it wasn't so weird that I'd recognised the voice and not the face. The eyes were vacant, the face much thinner than previously. I think, however, that the principal thing it points to was that the voice was all-important. His appearance had never mattered; his looks had always had that ambiguous quality, as if you could never pin down exactly who he was or what he looked liked. What had mattered was what he said.