Arrivals & Departures

by Leslie Thomas

  Charles was left in the car with Mrs Collingwood. ‘I hope you’ll be better soon, madam,’ he said inadequately.

  ‘I make quick recoveries,’ she assured him. She eyed him conspiratorially. ‘You’ll need to make an excuse to the hotel,’ she said. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘The Excelsior, madam,’ he replied a touch loftily.

  ‘Right. You’d better say I died.’

  His eyebrows went up. His creased chin swung around. ‘Madam?’ he said in a shocked tone.

  ‘Tell them I died,’ she repeated with a wink. ‘I died on the way from the airport. They won’t blame you, will they?’

  ‘No, madam,’ he said weakly. He was relieved to see Arthur emerging from the inn and giving him the thumbs-up sign. Rona followed with a woman in a flowered blouse. Rona opened the rear door. ‘Mother, they have a room. In fact they have two.’ She turned to the other woman. ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I think she had better see a doctor.’ She said to her mother: ‘This is Mrs Turner, she’s the …’

  ‘Landlady,’ provided Mrs Turner. ‘I’m Dilys. Everybody calls me Dilys.’

  With undisguised relief Charles was hurriedly taking the luggage from the boot. Arthur relieved him of one of the smaller cases and stood ready to assist Mrs Collingwood from the rear of the car. ‘It’s okay,’ the old lady said reassuringly. ‘Already I feel much better.’

  She half closed her eyes as they went into the dim bar. There was a youth with his hair in a pigtail frowning over a comic book behind the bar and a grey-haired woman polishing beer glasses. She looked up curiously as they entered and wished them good morning in a country voice that surprised the London men.

  ‘It’s good. It’s real good,’ enthused Mrs Collingwood. She was helped up the turning stairs. ‘This place must be older than me.’

  ‘Seventeen sixty,’ said Dilys. ‘Mind how you go.’ She called over her shoulder: ‘Randy, bring up the cases. Now.’

  They reached the landing and Dilys opened a thick door. They walked into a long, beamed room with three windows and a large quilted bed. ‘It’s our best room,’ she said.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Rona. ‘Isn’t it, Mother? Wonderful.’

  The boy called Randy puffed up the narrow stairs with the cases. ‘What a neat idea,’ said Pearl Collingwood looking at his pigtail. ‘The Chinese used to do that.’ She moved towards the nearest window. The lattice was open and while her daughter, the landlady and the boy watched curiously, she opened it wider and sniffed out over a garden set with summer flowers, with a square lawn and a bench. She could see the grey stone back of the church and some great yews. There were red roofs beyond. A roar came from the direction of the airport. ‘I’m afraid it’s noisy when the wind is in the wrong direction,’ apologised Dilys. ‘When it’s the other way we occasionally get a whiff from the sewage farm.’

  ‘It’s just fine,’ Mrs Collingwood assured her without turning round. Her daughter was regarding her with great uncertainty. But Mrs Collingwood was smiling out across the garden, to the church and beyond. ‘Just fine,’ she repeated almost to herself.

  Two

  At ten o’clock that morning the Boston flight came home and half an hour later Bramwell Broad was at the crews’ Immigration desk, halfway along a line of stewards and stewardesses. Even after the journey they remained well pressed and sharp seamed, but for the most part low eyed and unspeaking. The queue’s easy process through the formalities was observed with envy by American passengers shuffling tiredly in the extended chains of non-European arrivals. Bramwell was a long rather than a tall man with a rink of bald tanned skin on the top and front of his head, fringed by fair, short hair. His face was humorous, inclined to the sardonic, and his eyes drifted. He made a tired face at the neat, blonde stewardess behind him. They had not met on the flight.

  Bramwell told harmless lies; juggled with his age which was thirty-five, and often amended his marital status. According to his story, he had been given his name after Bramwell Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, while an inmate of an orphanage, which was touching but fiction. His real name was Sidney and he had not been fully orphaned until he had attained his thirties. To his friends and to Lettie, his young Filipino wife, he was Bram.

  Staff immigration procedure was perfunctory but as Broad passed his passport across the desk, a photograph of a comely young woman naked to the knees slipped out. The checking officer handed it back as if it had been a receipt or a business card. ‘My mother,’ Broad said smiling.

  ‘Hurry home to her,’ advised the official flatly. He sighed as though he had glimpsed a world he could not know and phlegmatically reached for the next passport in the mundane line. The stewardess who owned it had glanced over Broad’s shoulder as he was concealing the frank picture. ‘Like the socks,’ she remarked quietly.

  When they climbed onto the crew bus for the car park he found her standing next to him. All the seats were occupied. ‘It’s nice to carry around pictures of your family,’ she said.

  ‘Then you never forget,’ he said piously. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Barbara Poppins,’ she said. Then to forestall him: ‘No relation.’

  She glanced out at the airport traffic. They were held up at the entrance to the tunnel. The air was misty with fumes.

  He could not recall having seen her in Boston. Her fair hair curled about a round face. There were rings of weariness below her eyes and a touch of pink at the end of her nose. ‘I didn’t see you on the stopover,’ he said.

  ‘I went to bed,’ she shrugged. ‘I nearly always do, unless I have a friend in the crew and we go out somewhere. Room service and television, that’s me.’

  Once on the ground people who flew aeroplanes to the distant places of the earth usually lapsed into everyday domestic talk for, despite their wanderings, or perhaps because of them, they were domestic people. ‘Do you have to go far?’ he asked.

  ‘The Grand Union Canal,’ she said. He eyed her oddly. ‘It’s no distance. I live on a houseboat. You?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he answered. ‘Bedmansworth.’

  The bus had edged through the tunnel. Another airport bus was crawling in the opposite direction full of crew. Somebody waved quickly and a steward seated by the window responded. ‘That was Bertie Sweet,’ he said to the steward next to. him. ‘Remember Bertie Sweet, don’t you?’ His friend said he remembered. ‘Two-faced,’ he sniffed.

  Once out of the tunnel the bus turned left, mounted the short hill and heavily negotiated two roundabouts. On the main road beyond the perimeter fence, morning traffic was thick, going towards Hammersmith and London. On the other side an Air India Boeing took off for Bombay.

  They left the bus in the staff car park and Broad stood fumbling with his Vauxhall keys at the door of a silver Mercedes until Barbara had walked out of sight towards the end of the long rank of cars. In a few moments she drove by in a red Sierra and stopped. ‘Having trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘There must be something wrong with the door-lock,’ he said leaning against the Mercedes. ‘Can’t get the key to fit.’

  ‘Try the Vauxhall,’ she suggested, revving her own car.

  ‘That’s what I have been trying,’ he flustered. He inserted the key into the commonplace car’s lock and pretended to turn it only with difficulty.

  ‘There,’ she said when he had achieved it. ‘It fits after all.’ Concorde took off from the parallel runway, its white belly flying away like a discus. Its roar stemmed their conversation. When it had almost gone Broad checked his watch.

  ‘On time,’ Barbara said nodding at the white fleck in the sky. She smiled at Bramwell. ‘Goodbye then. Love to your mother.’ She drove away and his eyes followed the car until it turned at the distant gate. He muttered after the vanished Concorde for its noise had prevented him suggesting that they should meet again. Sighing, he climbed into the Vauxhall, started the reluctant engine and, as he backed out, poked his tongue at the Mercedes.

  He drove
home leaving the main route and going into the flat and damaged half-country that surrounded Heathrow; Airportland, the strange, ragged place of shabby farms, ugly fields, clogged streams, rubbish tips, donkeys, houses, cows and sheep, stone deaf to the shattering roar of aeroplanes.

  Bedwell Park Mansions Estate was halfway between Bedfont and Stanwell, on the borders of the village of Bedmansworth. Its detached houses, alike as cogs, staggered over the flat tops of two hills. At that time of the day its roads were almost empty of inhabitants; men and most of the wives were at work, children in school. In one tilted garden a parked pram was apparently ready to roll down the sloping lawn, and from the front window a young woman stared out like a resentful prisoner. She looked at his car as though it were an event, and Bramwell wondered who she was and what she did all the lonely day. He drove down one gentle, neo-Georgian hill and up another until he reached his own house. His neighbour, Mrs Hilditch, watched him from her window. They rarely spoke. Her husband was in Thailand and seldom came home.

  Three years before, when he had first brought Lettie to England, his newly-purchased wife would have wanted to haul him off to bed at once, no matter how weary he was, squealing with laughter, pulling his clothes off as they stumbled upstairs, her breasts nosing from her robe as if to see what all the excitement was about. But these days they usually waited until evening.

  She opened the Georgian-style door; she was in a bright native sarong, which she often wore for his returns home, a touch of the Tropics in Middlesex. One of her Doris Day tapes was playing and she had Radio One tuned in at the same time. Discord did not worry her for she had been brought up amidst the unremitting cacophony of Manila. She smiled and said what she always said: ‘Welcome to our house. I have waited for you alone.’ They embraced and kissed extravagantly. It was as though he had been voyaging far away in an outrigger.

  It was long into the afternoon before Pearl Collingwood stirred from her weary sleep and, lying in the large old bed, gazed, at first inquisitively, at the black and bowed beams of the ceiling. ‘I’m here,’ she eventually assured herself. ‘I got to England.’ The old lady lay back with a crackly smile. There was a knock at the door, a second knock, for it was the first which had roused her. She called and a thin, hurrying woman came in, the woman who had been polishing glasses when they arrived.

  She was wearing a pinafore. ‘I’m Mrs Durie,’ she announced floating a tray on one hand, around the bed. ‘I’m Dilys’s mother. You like tea, don’t you? Some of them don’t.’ She glanced in a concerned way at the woman now propped up in the bed. ‘Americans, I mean.’

  ‘I love it,’ Mrs Collingwood assured her amiably. ‘When I’m in England I always have tea. I feel much better now.’

  ‘It’s Prince George’s birthday today,’ confided Mrs Durie easing the cosy from the pot. She leaned forward solicitously. ‘I’m glad you feel better. Shall I pour?’

  ‘Sure, do, please,’ said the American. She watched the tea curving strongly into the cup. ‘Prince George,’ she echoed. ‘Well, well. Will there be celebrations?’

  The inquiry patently took Mrs Durie by surprise. ‘Oh, he’s dead,’ she said. ‘Dead since nineteen thirty-six. January twentieth. It’s just his birthday.’

  Mrs Collingwood accepted the enlightenment with a smile and a nod. She tasted the tea to which Mrs Durie had added milk and sugar and decided she liked it. ‘You know a whole lot about history?’ she ventured. ‘You study it?’

  ‘British royal families,’ corrected the Englishwoman. ‘Only about them. Prince George became King George the Fifth, you know. I ought to go on television by rights.’

  She fussed out of the room needlessly dusting a chairback with a flick of a napkin. Sipping the tea, Pearl Collingwood watched the filtered sun on the lace curtains. The window was a little open and she could hear afternoon birds. There was another knock and her daughter came in. ‘Oh fine, you’ve got your tea. They seem really nice people. Is it too strong, Mother?’ She regarded the old lady quizzically: ‘You seem much better.’

  ‘The tea is just fine,’ responded the old lady ‘And so am I.’ She lifted the cup. ‘Here’s to King George the Fifth.’ She added uncertainly: ‘It’s his birthday. Or was.’

  Accustomed to her parent’s swift turns of conversation, Rona merely said: ‘I’ll ring the hotel. I’ll tell them we’ll check in tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ said the old lady assertively, waving her tea cup. ‘We’re staying right here.’

  ‘Here!’ Rona exclaimed. Pearl pretended not to notice her daughter’s astonishment. ‘But … Mother … we can’t … we’re supposed to be visiting London. This isn’t London.’

  ‘I know that perfectly well,’ said the older woman primly, stretching to peer towards the window. The curtains moved in the air, a truck rattled below, children’s voices called. ‘But this will be just fine. I want to stay here. I like it.’

  Gradually Rona sat on the side of the bed. ‘But they may not be able to accommodate us for long …’

  ‘And why not? It’s a hotel, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s an inn, Mother. A pub. And what do I tell the hotel in London?’

  ‘Tell them I’m dead,’ replied the old woman briskly. ‘Say I passed on at the airport. People are always dying at airports. Maybe they’ll refund our deposit. They have to give a refund if I’ve died.’

  Rona began to laugh through her fingers. ‘You’re quite sure of this?’ she said touching the old lady’s brown hand. ‘We’re at least fifteen miles from London here.’

  Pearl Collingwood swirled the tea around her cup. ‘London won’t go away,’ she insisted. ‘Will you let me have some more of this tea.’

  Her daughter laughed outright. She poured the tea and her mother added the sugar and milk. ‘You’re crazy,’ Rona said.

  ‘Always have been,’ agreed her mother, her chin firm. ‘Always will be. Too late to change now.’

  Still intrigued and smiling, Rona went to the window. Summer light drifted through the dusty trees indenting the street with the shapes of its shadowy old houses. A brewer’s truck was delivering barrels outside the Swan, the men rolling them with muscular care down the ramp, calling instructions and warnings to each other. Her mother got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She was wearing a long lace nightgown. Her lively head appeared around the door. ‘You can get to places from here,’ she said encouragingly. ‘We can go places. We can still visit.’

  Her head withdrew, the door closed again, and Rona returned to her view from the window. Her life had been bitter of late. Her husband had left her for a woman eleven years older. Not many men did that. She had returned to their home in San Francisco one afternoon to find his businesslike note and had sat for two hours in a chair while the room grew dark around her. She remained motionless, knowing at the conclusion of what had seemed an ordinary day that she had not only lost a man she had relied upon and loved, but that she had lost herself also. As she sat there it was almost as though she could see herself drifting out of sight. Now this place, this distant half-village, with planes going to and from the world, roaring above its roofs, might be as good as anywhere to be. What was the difference?

  She could hear her mother running the bathwater; she called out to her and then returned to her own room. She had slept for two hours that afternoon but the edgy weariness of the journey still lay on her. She bathed again, dressed and went to knock on her mother’s door. Pearl Collingwood called and Rona found her sitting next to the window, looking out.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ Pearl said looking over her shoulder. ‘Time to meet the natives.’

  They went down the elbowed staircase. The room below was deserted except for a man in a plum-coloured pullover behind the bar, reading a newspaper propped against the beer handles. His rough face accentuated his eyes, light as boiled sweets. He greeted them genially and placed two glasses of sherry on the bar. ‘Dilys tells me that you’ve decided to stay with us for a while,’ he said. ‘Why no
t? It’s not so crowded as London.’ A plane sounded overhead and his eyes went up. ‘Although London’s quieter.’

  They laughed and thanked him and sat behind a thick round table near the bar. Mrs Collingwood tapped it firmly as though testing its strength or age. ‘Plenty of room here,’ she said surveying the heavy chairs and tables. Rona followed her eyes around; some of the corners were dark as cupboards. On the wall were old cider bottles, a bug-eyed fish in a case, some pictures and prints, faint and discoloured, a dartboard surmounted by a shelf on which a trophy in the shape of an aeroplane stood.

  ‘Monday,’ explained the landlord waving his hand as if introducing the unoccupied chairs. ‘They watch telly. And the darts team’s playing away. I’m the captain but I have to be in the bar tonight. That’s the Heathrow and District Cup we’ve just won. My name’s Jim, by the way.’

  ‘Dilys is your wife,’ said Rona.

  ‘Right you are. And …’ His eyes flicked for a fraction to the ceiling. ‘… Dilys’s mother is my mother-in-law.’

  ‘Mrs Durie. She’s hot on royalty,’ said the old lady. ‘She told me about Prince George’s birthday. He became King George the Fifth.’

  ‘Knows them all. She knows King Kong’s birthday,’ he sighed. ‘Then we’ve got a boy, you saw him, I think. Randolph, Randy he’s called. Wears a pigtail like a Chinese. He’s useless. Like a lot of kids these days. No job and no intention of getting one if he can help it.’

  ‘He doesn’t contribute,’ said Pearl as if she understood.

  ‘Only to the unemployment figures,’ he said.

  Mrs Collingwood began studying a shabby framed map a little askew on the wall behind the bar. She stood up, put on her glasses and read slowly aloud: ‘The County of Middlesex.’

  Jim Turner paused in mid-pull of the beer handle then filled the half-pint tankard. ‘Last me the night, that will,’ he assured them. ‘Right till closing time.’ He turned to look at the map and he too studied it intently as if he had scarcely noticed it before. Setting down his tankard he wiped the bar cloth over the framed glass. ‘No such place now,’ he informed them. ‘Middlesex doesn’t exist though everybody still calls it that.’ He peered closer. ‘Nineteen forty-nine, it says. Since then they’ve done away with a lot of places, changed the boundaries. Put bits of this with bits of that. Some places just vanished.’ He fluttered his hand across the map as if to make it disappear.