“Look,” said Fatty to Betty. “The volunteer. How good of him. Now we can get on our way.”
But the volunteer had now half-turned round and was pointing in Fatty’s direction. He said something to the official, who nodded and started to make his way over to Fatty.
“Excuse me, sir,” the official said. “It has been suggested to us that you might care to volunteer.”
“Good idea!” muttered somebody from a seat behind, to be greeted with a glare from Betty.
“Me?” said Fatty indignantly. “Why me?”
The airline official looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, sir, it appears that you are the … the largest of the passengers and that the most weight would be saved if you were to stay behind. The aircraft really is very full and is up against the weight limit for our fuel load. Almost over it, in fact. If you stayed we would probably be all right. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for the aircraft not making it off the runway, would you?”
Fatty’s eyes opened wide with outrage. He glanced sideways at Betty, now glaring at the official with an anger matching that of her husband.
“How dare you suggest such a thing!” Fatty exploded. “How dare you pick on me like this!”
The official held up his hands. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I don’t mean to give offence. I was merely being practical.”
“So it’s practical to insult your passengers, is it?” blurted out Betty. “Is that the way you treat all stout people, may I ask?”
The official backed away. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Let’s leave it. I had no idea you people would be so hypersensitive about being so …”
He glanced behind him. One of his colleagues was signalling from the desk.
“Ah,” he said. “They’ve sorted it out. Somebody else has taken up the offer. Please excuse me.”
Fatty settled back in his seat.
“I can’t recall when I was last so insulted,” he muttered to Betty. “I’m going to write to the airline about this.”
“You have every right to do just that,” agreed Betty, reaching across to touch Fatty on his still-offended arm. “Still, let’s not allow it to spoil our holiday. Things will be different in Ireland.”
3
BECAUSE OF THE FULLNESS OF the flight and the vagaries of the seat allocation system, Fatty and Betty were separated from one another. Fatty was placed in the front row of the economy cabin, while Betty was seated ten rows behind him, lost in the sea of faces that a large aircraft so quickly becomes. Fatty craned his neck to get a glimpse of his wife, and she waved cheerfully to him before they both settled. Then the procedures of departure began, and they were soon heading north-east, climbing up over Texas, on the very reverse bearing to that pursued by Corny P. O’Leary those many years ago.
Fatty felt uncomfortable. The seats in the economy class of passenger jets are designed for the average frame, and often badly designed at that. Fatty was far from average, tending, in his words, to the generously proportioned. Although he just managed to squeeze between the armrests of the middle seat in which he was placed, the passengers on either side of him found that their own space was substantially encroached upon by various parts of Fatty. His elbows, which were stout in the extreme, were touching the sides of each neighbour, digging into their chests. His legs, which again were well covered, were pressed hard against the thighs of each, and every time that Fatty breathed in, the other passengers felt a great pressure against their own chests, requiring them to exhale as he inspired, and vice versa.
It was clearly going to be an impossible trip, and it was not long before the two affected passengers were exchanging surreptitious glances.
“Going to Ireland?” Fatty addressed the man on his right cheerfully.
“Well, that’s where this plane’s going …” began his travelling companion, but then Fatty breathed in and the rest of his sentence was cut short.
“And you?” asked Fatty conversationally, turning to the woman on his left. “Have you been to Ireland before?”
She tried to speak, but failed, being virtually winded. She looked imploringly at the man beyond Fatty who nodded in sympathy and reached for the call button to summon help. When the cabin attendant arrived, Fatty’s neighbour rose from his seat, pushing hard on Fatty’s elbow to allow him to do so, and engaged in an earnest, whispered conversation with the attendant.
The attendant appreciated the situation and sought to reassure the distressed passenger. Making her way forward, she found the purser, who discreetly peered at the source of the problem.
“The only free seat is up in First Class,” the purser said. “We were keeping places for a couple of VIPs who called off at the last moment. Move him up there. That’ll give the others some room.”
Fatty was delighted. It was a small First Class cabin, with only ten seats, each of which occupied the space of at least two economy seats. In the middle of the cabin was a large, fixed table on which a flower arrangement was secured, along with a row of bottles of wine. Fatty, who had a good eye for these matters, could tell at a glance that while these included the very best California offerings there were also some outstanding French estates and vintages.
He accepted a glass of champagne and settled into his new seat. It was kind of them to invite him into First Class, he thought; they were probably trying to make amends for the insult which had been offered him before boarding. Well, he was not one to bear a grudge, and he would overlook all that in the face of such a fulsome apology. He turned to look out of the window. It was a moonlit night, and they were over a sea of cloud; by pressing his face against the window he could just make out a field of stars above. How exhilarating it was to fly in such comfort, suspended between the silver-white of the clouds and the darkness above; and to be in the First Class cabin too – a tiny cocoon of Waterford crystal glasses, excellent wines and luxury foods, all kept in midair suspension by the very finest American technology.
Fatty looked into his glass of champagne, which was almost empty, and thought of the wines that lay ahead of him when they brought him his sumptuous First Class meal, served on real porcelain. Would they offer him a Mouton Rothschild Premier Grand Cru? If not, it would be something close enough to that in quality. He thought for a moment of Betty, languishing in her narrow economy seat; it was such a pity she could not join him in First Class. Still, she would not appreciate fine wines quite as much as he would and she would be happy enough with those cheap plastic bottles they served back there.
As he was reflecting, the attendant brought him his tray. Fatty looked down at it, and then looked up at the attendant in mute incomprehension. Before him was a small, compartmentalised dinner tray of economy food (prawn cocktail; lasagne; chocolate mousse), all crammed together, with an upturned plastic beaker for the quarter bottle of Napa Valley Chardonnay which he had been unilaterally allocated.
It took him a few moments to recover his speech. Then he said indignantly: “Excuse me, but this is First Class. I’d like to see the menu, if you don’t mind.”
The attendant pursed her lips. “Sorry, sir, but you’re actually an economy passenger. You’ve just been allocated here for seating purposes.”
Fatty gasped. “But that’s not fair!” he protested. “The food goes with the seat. You can’t expect me to sit here and watch everybody else have all that fine food while you serve me this … this fodder.”
The attendant was unperturbed. “Those are the rules, sir. I’m very sorry. May I recommend our frequent flyer programme that allows you to build up points that can be used for upgrading tickets? I’ll get you the leaflet if you wish.”
Fatty pushed the tray away from him. “I’m not hungry,” he said peevishly. “Take it away. And I don’t want your leaflet either.”
An hour or so later, when the other passengers were preparing for their Stilton and port, Fatty succumbed to the gnawing pains of hunger that had been becoming ever more insistent since he rejected his meal. Rising to his feet,
he made his way toward the washroom; that, at least, they would allow me to use, he thought. But he did not reach it; noticing that the attendants were busy with an elderly passenger at the front of the cabin who was having difficulty adjusting his seat, Fatty walked past the washroom and into the galley. There, laid out temptingly on their separate plates, were several slices of choice roast beef and half a smoked salmon. Wasting no time, he seized the salmon and tore off a large section, which he stuffed into his mouth. Then, snatching an open bottle of wine – and it was Mouton Rothschild after all – he took a deep swig. Then there was time for more smoked salmon and a quick slice or two of roast beef.
“Mr. O’Leary?” It was the unhelpful attendant.
Fatty spun round, his mouth full of illicit food.
“That’s First Class food, Mr. O’Leary,” said the attendant severely. “You have no right to eat it.”
Fatty tried to mumble an explanation, wanting to say that he was hungry and that he had not asked to be transferred to First Class and that it was quite invidious to make a distinction between himself and the others. But the explanation, had he managed it, would have fallen on deaf ears, as the attendant had by now summoned the First Class purser and they were discussing the case in low tones. Fatty heard a few phrases as he munched on the last morsels in his mouth.
“Put him back there … Bring those other two up and put them here … Not the sort …”
His fate was revealed to him as tactfully as possible. He was to move back to his original seat and his two former neighbours would be transferred to First Class.
“Well at least you should warn them that they won’t be getting any of the benefits,” Fatty said sarcastically as he gathered his belongings for his ignominious return. But in that respect he was wrong. Twenty minutes later, when Fatty returned to retrieve his copy of Antique Furniture Review, inadvertently left in the First Class cabin, he saw his two former companions enjoying a full First Class meal, laid out before them on sparkling white porcelain. And each, he noticed, had a full glass of Mouton Rothschild.
Fatty returned to his seat, smarting at the injustice. Why should they be given treatment that had been denied him? What was it about them that made them worthy of a First Class meal while he was so cruelly and insensitively deprived? He looked out of his narrow economy window; the stars seemed to have disappeared and he could no longer see the clouds. And at that melancholy moment, the answer came to him. There was only one explanation, he thought. They were thin.
4
IRELAND CO-OPERATED, AT LEAST IN respect of its weather. At the moment that Fatty O’Leary’s plane touched down on the runway of Shannon Airport, the morning sun burst through the clouds in glorious shafts of light, bathing the surrounding landscape with gold. Fatty did not mention to Betty the humiliations of the flight; it did not seem appropriate to mar with thoughts of recrimination this long-awaited moment of homecoming – for that is how Fatty viewed his first, tentative steps on Irish soil – a return home after a mere two generations of absence. So to Betty’s questions as to whether he had been comfortable and whether he had enjoyed his dinner, he merely replied in the positive; it had all, he said, gone very quickly.
For whatever reason he immediately felt different, like a man with little or no past – a man poised on the brink of some immense self-discovery. Even in these first few minutes, it seemed to him as if something portentous was going to happen and that a new future was about to reveal itself. Of course it was just an airport, like any other, but the world beyond it was certainly different from the north Texas plains surrounding the terminal at Dallas: through a large plateglass window he could already glimpse, in the distance beyond the low hills, the presumed green turf of those Ur’Learys.
Waiting for their luggage to appear on the carousel, the passengers stood in that odd half-intimacy of those who have been brought together for a journey, who recognise one another, dimly, but who are now once again becoming strangers. Suddenly the bags began to emerge from the mouth of some subterranean hall, as if being pushed up from the caverns of Lethe itself. Fatty spotted Betty’s distinctive blue suitcase, and hauled it onto a trolley. Then came a succession of other bags, some similar in appearance to Fatty’s, but none of them actually his.
“Perhaps there’s a second load,” said Betty helpfully, but Fatty, with sinking heart, knew that there never was a second consignment of suitcases. If a suitcase failed to appear, it was lost.
He sought out a man in uniform, who listened sympathetically before directing him to a small office. This, like an office of lost souls, had the air of a place of no hope. A chart was produced, with pictures of ownerless archetypical suitcases, like a police notice featuring delinquent or dangerous luggage; if suitcases could scowl, then these did. Fatty identified one that looked similar to his.
“It’s a green suitcase with a black handle,” he said. “And there’s a label on it saying CORNELIUS O’LEARY, Fayetteville, Arkansas.”
The official wrote this down on a form, shaking his head slightly.
“That’s a very common type of suitcase, that is,” he said. “Those ones often go missing.”
Fatty raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see how the type of suitcase affects the chance of losing it,” he said.
The official laughed. “Don’t you believe it,” he retorted. “In my line of work, you get a feeling for suitcases. And I’m telling you, your sort of suitcase goes missing: the number of suitcases like that I’ve had to try to trace, I couldn’t begin to tell you. Where they all go I have no idea. Don’t ask me.”
Fatty was silent for a moment. This was a man who clearly knew the errant ways of suitcases. “You mean they never turn up?”
The official looked at him with rheumy eyes, his manner becoming more sympathetic as he realised that bad news would have to be broken. “I’m afraid that’s a distinct possibility, sir. Still, if you tell me where you’re staying, we’ll deliver it to you if it ever turns up. What was in it by the way?”
“All my clothes,” said Fatty miserably. “Everything I need.”
The official shook his head. “Now that’s a terrible thing,” he said.
He tore off a strip of paper and handed it to Fatty. “That’s your receipt,” he said. “If you wish to make any enquiries, you must quote that number. That’s a missing suitcase number.”
Fatty pocketed his receipt and returned to Betty. He told her of what had happened and for a few moments they stood disconsolately, as if defeated by this fresh setback. Ireland, which had seemed so rich in possibilities, now seemed like anywhere else: a place littered with snares and disappointments, a place where suitcases disappeared without trace.
“It’s not the end of the world,” said Betty eventually. “We’ll go the hotel. We’ll be able to wash and dry the clothes you’re wearing while you have a rest. Then we’ll go out and buy you some clothes to be getting on with.” She paused. “Donegal tweeds, maybe.”
Betty’s ability to remain calm in a crisis was one of the qualities that most endeared her to Fatty. Her suggestion seemed to make a situation of dire discomfort quite bearable, and with a renewed sense that the trip could work out well, Fatty accompanied his wife to their hired car and set off on the relatively short journey to their destination. The weather still held, and his spirits rose as they left the airport and drove off along the winding road to Balinderry, on the southern side of Lough Derg.
They had booked themselves into Mountpenny House, a country house hotel that Fatty had read about in a guide to the fine Irish hotels. “On the shores of Lough Derg,” the guide had enthused, “within yards of the lapping waters of this great, Shannon-fed lake, stands an oasis of tranquillity in a timeless countryside. Once a shooting lodge, its great rooms still echo to the sound of a thousand long-lost conversations over a log fire. And in the dining room, where those weekend guests of old sat down to a breakfast of generous plates of kedgeree from silver platters, or tackled broad, well-smoked kippers, today’s guest
s do just the same …”
“Oh,” Fatty had said to Betty. “Did you see that? Kedgeree and kippers!”
For a moment he had pictured himself in some imagined Mountpenny House, engaged in conversation with a couple of other guests – perhaps literati from Dublin, who would quote from Shaw as intimately as if they knew him, and who would ask Fatty about Fayetteville and the theatre there, and Fatty would reply with a trenchant comment about the latest play. (What was the latest play? Fatty wondered. Was it something by Tennessee Williams, or was it Edward Albee? Were Williams and Albee dead? There was a presumption that dramatists were dead if they were at all well known, but one could never be sure.) And then, the bons mots still hanging in the air, together they would proceed to dinner, laughing as they made their way along the corridor. At the table Fatty would regale his new Irish friends with stories of commodes and washstands, and there would be a fire in the grate casting its light on the heavy silver cutlery and the glistening crystal.
Now they were making their way up the driveway of the real Mountpenny House, through a thick wood that pressed in on either side. After half a mile of this, the wood gave way to a clearing and there, surrounded by lawns that rolled down to the lough-side, was the house itself. It was exactly what they had been promised in that effusive brochure, and more.
“This is the place,” said Fatty proudly. “There’s no doubt about it.”
They parked the car and Fatty carried the single suitcase in through the front door. Inside, a comfortable hall, furnished with boot-scrapers and pictures of horses, gave the visitor the impression that this was indeed what it appeared to be – a country house that happened to take visitors. On the table, on which there stood open a large, leather-covered visitors’ book, there was an old brass bell button, which Fatty pushed tentatively. Somewhere in the kitchen, they heard a ringing sound.