by John Samuel
‘Look, are you going to put Natalie on the phone or what?’
‘She’s not here,’ he says, a little distractedly, as if he might be able to see her coming back.
‘Well, I’ll just stay on the line and …’ But he’s already hung up.
For a little while I just sit there in the moulded plastic of my airport seat, staring at the phone. Then I redial the number. I’m not going to be spoken to like that. Except this time it goes straight into voicemail. He must have switched off her phone. I have no idea who this guy is but, mark my words, this is not the last he’ll be hearing from me. I close my eyes tightly in an effort to expunge him and his outrageous behaviour. How dare he come between me and my darling Mary?
I decide to have a wander around to take my mind off things. I still have twenty minutes until I need to check in and I … Wait, did I just call her Mary? I think I might have done. Apologies for that – I’m sure you understand – blood’s running a little high.
But it turns out that wandering around doesn’t help. If anything, it puts me more on edge. Airports are unsettling spaces at the best of times – that perpetual sense of unrealised metamorphosis, everyone about to be somewhere else. It’s like being in the middle part of an equation.
By the time I reach the check-in desk I’m in a pestilent mood.
‘I’m afraid you’ve run out of battery power, sir.’
I am being told this by the youth who is checking me in. He is handing back to me Will’s phone, which has – had – my boarding pass on it.
‘Well isn’t that just perfect,’ I snap at him.
He isn’t quite sure what to say to that. My defunct phone is still in his hand.
‘Sorry?’ he ventures.
‘Give it here.’ I snatch it back from him.
I am aware that I’m now just standing here, giving him (at best) a withering, (more likely) a threatening look, but I can’t seem to help it.
‘Stupid phone,’ I say. ‘Puny batteries, functional obsolescence – these manufacturers have us by the short hairs. Nothing is built to last,’ I warn him darkly.
He tries hard to look interested in this, as well as to seem unperturbed by my general behaviour and (let’s not forget) my bruised and busted face. But it’s a lot to pretend at once and he doesn’t make a brilliant job of it.
‘Oh I see,’ he says, but is then glad to be able to get things back on script with, ‘Do you have some ID please, sir?’
‘Will this do?’ With a flourish I produce Will’s wallet from my jacket. His driving licence is in there somewhere.
Poor kid wobbles in alarm at my admittedly rather sudden movement. I should probably try to put him at his ease – but really, what would be the point? I revert to my glowering, and we conclude our transactions in a profound and nearly unbroken silence.
One good thing happens on the way to departures, though: I come across one of those mobile phone charging stations. It’s a little box with a coin meter that lets you plug in and lock up your phone while it charges. All I need to do is give it a fifteen-minute burst then I’ll be able to try Natalie again (by which time she’ll be finished with whatever unpleasant interlude that idiot man was a part of). When I hook it up, my phone makes an encouraging blip and shows me a picture of a battery being nourished by green electricity.
I then join the herd and slowly make my way through the various checks and procedures that make people feel less worried about someone trying to blow up or seize control of their plane. I divest my pockets of all their jangly contents – coins, keys, a fountain pen I must have filched without realising from the Spyre offices – and through I go. No criminality detected.
It’s not until I’m through the gate, on the plane and in the sky that I realise I’ve left Will’s phone charging in Jersey airport. I’ve been in something of a trance until this point, looking out of the window at the distant furrows on the ocean beneath us, and so my sudden squawk of realisation comes as a shock to those in the seats around me, as does my accompanying slap to the fold-down table in front of me. It sends my snacks and drink flying up in the air, a bit like when there’s a sudden loss of cabin pressure (in this, as with most things, I speak from experience – I have witnessed more plane crashes than I care to remember – when people are suddenly praying en masse like that, and with such fervour, it’s kind of hard not to notice them).
The stewardess rushes over to see what the problem is and it takes me several minutes to persuade her that I am not causing an inflight disturbance. Everyone is so serious about flying these days. Even mildly angry passengers are B Team terrorists.
Anyway, back to my problem. That phone is lost now, along with all the information (and, who knows, maybe even a message from Natalie) that was hibernating in its SIM card. Which means … I’m going to need to dig deep. I’m going to need to really focus and see if I can remember Natalie’s phone number. It was stored in Will’s phone after she called me, so I glimpsed it a couple of times, which should be enough for me to reconstruct it. I’ll just need to loosen up a bit first. I ring the bell above my head several times before the stewardess appears (it seems she’s much harder to summon when you actually want to see her). I ask her for a whisky but she lies and tells me the drinks service has finished. I shake my head in pity for her and wave her away with my hand. I might even say the words Be gone. I certainly think them.
So, first thing to do is take out my borrowed/stolen pen and start jotting down some likely-looking integers. The sick bag is the only blank writing surface I can find in the little pocket next to my knees, so I use that. On a separate sheet (i.e. the sick bag from the pocket of the person next to me), I represent these sets graphically (sometimes I find patterns are easier to see when you plot numbers – it allows their natural shape to emerge). At various points during this exercise, I become aware of the fact that I am humming to myself in the atonal way of someone who is deep in concentration. Perhaps my row companion who occupies the aisle seat next to mine is disturbed by it, she looks as if she may be, but I decide that she’ll just have to learn to live with it. I can’t break my rhythm at this point just for the sake of a little harmless humming. There are other factors too that make it difficult to concentrate, such as the constant feeling of the stewardess’s eyes on me or the leaden muddle of tiredness that is still lurking at the core of this broken body. But I refuse to be defeated by these mundane distractions. I redouble my efforts and hunch back over my work.
It’s an elusive process, finessing a number sequence of this sort (by which I mean one that exists only as a shallow indentation in my subconscious). It’s done on a basis of imperfect retrieval, rather like having looked through your fingers at the sun or something and then just letting the scorch of that image sail past on your retina for a second. The secret to seeing it is to try not to look at it, if that makes any sense.
By the time the wheels are clunking down from the fuselage and I have been told for the second or third time to please put my table in the upright position, sir, I have got what I am confident is the full number. You know when it’s right because it has traces of the thing it represents – in this case that’s the feel of her. I run my fingers across the waxy surface of the sick bag, the tiny pressure points of the numbers caressing my skin, and I get a picture of her, a Braille of her essence, if you like. The same as when you might clasp an item of someone’s clothing to your face and breathe it in. Trace elements – we leave then in everything, even our numbers.
On the ground, I flash through the checks and barriers. When I reach the train station part of the airport, I plug a few pound coins into a payphone and wait to hear the confirmation of her voice at the end of this number of mine.
When it is her who answers and not some odious stranger I feel so jubilant that all I can say is, ‘It’s me.’
And before she has a chance to respond, I dive in with, ‘Did you get what I sent you?’
‘Yes.’ It’s a very cautious yes. A deflating yes. Somethi
ng is wrong. ‘Will, we need to talk.’
There is a scratch of interference on the line, almost like something is in there, scraping its legs against the sheer gut of the cable. And suddenly I understand the reason for her caution. Someone is listening. Some alteration has been made to her phone – that would explain the way it shut off to voicemail before. We are being overheard – she has realised this too and is trying to protect me. She is signalling to me to be careful. I wonder who it might be – maybe it’s more interference from His army of flunkies, hounding me even in my mortal frame.
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell her, ‘I understand everything. I am coming to see you.’
As I say this it dawns on me that she too could be in danger, that the man who answered her phone may not have been known to her. The urgency of this thought affects me like a drug. I could just drop the phone right now and start running to her.
‘You mustn’t worry,’ I assure her, a little hoarsely. ‘Just wait for me at work. You’ll be safe there.’
‘No, Will, you have to listen to me …’ she begins.
‘Not on the phone,’ I say with such mastery that I actually hold up my spare hand in flat-palmed authority. ‘We must speak in person.’
I cannot risk public transport. I cut a warpath through the station and arrive straight at the head of the taxi rank. A few people complain, including one man who looks like he’s employed to ensure that things like this don’t happen, but no one actually tries to stop me. I get into the back of the first cab, give the driver the address of Natalie’s office then snap shut the little dividing window, to leave him in no doubt that the talking part of the journey has ended. I must have time to think.
It is an incomplete silence that follows, punctuated for the first ten minutes or so as we navigate the various roundabouts and slip roads of the airport by that little click that London cabs make when they slow down and start moving again. Click, go, stop; click, go, stop. I suffer a little during this period with worries about Natalie, and indeed myself. About what might have compromised my mission, our mission. Everything (isolated colonies of trading estates and soulless office buildings, interminable rows of parked cars) and everyone (people meeting my eyes with suspicion and malice, from behind the windows of cars and coaches, or shining out from the protective seal of motorcycle helmets) seem to churn in the same conspiracy. But then we break out on to the motorway and begin speeding towards that bright, light office where Natalie waits, surrounded by the computers and the wires and the vast storehouse of expertise that will see our truth sent flashing out into the world. Suddenly the oppression is lifted and in its place comes a surging tide of relief.
Sleep tries hard to push me down, but I push back with all my strength, forcing my eyes open (literally, with my fingers). It takes upwards of ten minutes of fast driving with my window pulled down as far as it will go for me to feel like I have won the battle.
I am awake.
‘What’s that, mate?’ the driver asks over an intercom.
What’s the point of a sliding partition if you’ve got an intercom? Unless it’s for the money. Yes of course it is. It’s for handing over the money.
‘What’s what?’
‘I thought you said something.’
‘No.’
He looks at me in the mirror. He thinks that the damage to my nose was caused by a well-deserved punch. I can see him thinking it.
‘Are you feeling alright?’ There’s not the slightest hint of concern in his voice, except maybe for the interior of his cab.
‘Yes. Are you?’
‘Okay mate, listen: I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re going to need to pay for this fare. You do know that, don’t you?’ (He actually says, ya, not you, as in donchya, but we’d be here all day if I started trying to do accents – it’s hard enough remembering what language I’m supposed to be speaking.)
‘Everyone has to pay,’ he lets me know in a marginally less strident voice, probably trying to make himself sound more reasonable.
‘Don’t you worry,’ I say, all chipper. I have no desire to argue. ‘I’ve got plenty of cash.’
I tap the breast pocket of my jacket and wink at him. Except I’m now feeling so horribly weary, just from this short conversation, that my wink is sabotaged by my eyes rolling into my head, just for a second, and twisting up my cheeks, so I end up doing what is probably more of a stroke/fit face.
By the time I get a visual fix on him again, he’s staring at the road ahead. There’s a traffic jam looming.
‘Bit of a snarl-up,’ I remark. But he has turned off the intercom.
The rest of the journey seems to take an age. It is simply impossible to hold out against sleep for that long. I sink back into the seat, resigned to defeat, and allow my vision to blur into a soft cataract of rest. We slow down, we speed up, we slow down, and so on, as we are jerked along in the faltering fortunes of an enormous traffic jam, which appears in my sleep-defeated mind as an enormous smoking tail stretching out from the city and by turns lashing and dragging through the dirty greenery of the suburbs.
Oh, we’ve stopped.
‘This is it,’ says the intercom voice.
I’m lying down so I can’t see him.
‘What?’ I ask, raising my head slightly. My cheek unpeels itself from the vinyl seat cover. It’s very quiet in here. ‘Why is the engine off?’
‘Because we’ve arrived. This is where you asked me to take you.’ He’s a bit short on patience, this bloke.
I push myself up into a sitting position and peer out of the window. He’s right, we’re kerbside right next to Natalie’s office. Just along there are the steps down to the canal, where this contract of ours was made.
‘So we are.’
He slides back the thing, opening the money channel between us. ‘It’s a hundred and eighteen pounds.’
I glance at the meter.
‘Christ on the cross,’ I say (these little private jokes – we all have them).
‘The meter’s been on the whole way, son. You should’ve said if …’
‘No, no,’ I give a generous wave of my hand, ‘that’s fine.’
I look in Will’s wallet. All told, I count eighty five pounds, plus another three pounds and twenty-seven pence in my trouser pocket. I clear my throat.
‘Well, this is a little embarrassing…’
He says something under his breath, which I don’t quite catch.
After a bit of huffing and puffing, he asks, ‘You work here, do you?’
‘No, not exactly. But perhaps there’s a bank nearby?’ I suggest. That probably sounds a little old-fashioned. ‘A cash point,’ I add, modernising it a bit.
He shakes his head and starts the engine. ‘I’m turning the meter back on for this,’ is all he says.
Natalie is not at her desk.
‘It’s going straight to voicemail,’ the woman in reception tells me. ‘I’ll try again in a few minutes.’
She then looks past me at a cycle courier who is waiting to get something signed.
I move my head so it’s back in her line of vision. ‘No – you haven’t finished dealing with me yet.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sorry,’ I say to her, and then to the guy behind me, ‘and sorry to you too, but I was here first. I’d like you to please try her mobile for me.’
‘We do not keep a list of mobile numbers here, sir.’
She is the second person within as many hours to have called me sir in that same mutedly aggressive way.
‘Well, this is your lucky day, then,’ I tell her, ‘because I happen to have memorised it.’
Once again she looks over my shoulder – not at the cyclist this time but at one of the security guys who has plodded over from the part of the reception where bags are checked and passes are shown.
‘There is no need to be raising your voice, sir.’ His sir is a different kind – it’s like a halfway point between being spoken to and being touched.
‘Was I raising my voice? I certainly didn’t mean to.’
‘Can you please step to one side, sir?’
He puts a hand on my shoulder and starts to pull me. I lock my legs in place.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I tell him, a little louder than I’d intended.
He takes a half step towards me so that we’re toe to toe. His hand is still gripping my shoulder.
‘Are we going to have a problem here?’ he asks, quietly, beyond the hearing of the other few people who are sitting waiting for their various appointments.
‘I said don’t touch me.’ I knock his hand off my shoulder.
A few seconds later I’m outside. He remains standing at the door as I walk away, making sure that I follow his advice and sling my hook.
I spend the rest of the morning wandering from payphone to payphone trying Natalie’s number. Every time it clicks straight into voicemail. I don’t know what to do, so I do what I have always done when I’ve needed to remind myself that I’m not alone. I watch you, and I draw my comfort from your strength. For two millennia, I did this. I eased the loneliness of His disfavour by looking in on the lives of men. For so long I had nothing. Nothing but you.
One woman I see when I’m seated on a bench near some market stalls fills me with such intense emotion that I feel I might burst under the strain of it. She is there with a very old lady who is clearly her mother. The resemblance is unmistakable. The younger woman is already beginning to age in the same way – the stoop that has rounded the mother’s back is already beginning in the daughter’s shoulders; their hands, their eyes, all of it is the same. Their progress from stall to stall is slow because the mother must move cautiously, and even when they stop to look at something, the younger woman takes great care to make sure that nothing is rushed. She does not choose the fruit herself, which would be easier for her, but instead she reaches for an apple and gives it to her mother so that she might turn it over in her hands, or she selects a small piece of yellow-fleshed plum that the man has sliced up on a dish for people to try. The old woman chews it for a long time with her eyes closed, lost in the past, while her daughter waits patiently at her side.
