She went to the kitchen and booted the laptop and the whoosh and the whumpf as it took life was so familiar, a reassurance. She went to eBay and increased her bid for some ochre-coloured tiles reclaimed from the palace of a Carpathian count. She went to her usual chatroom and flirted a little with a reformed arsonist from the Black Country. He had been coming on fruity these past nights: she would have to dampen his ardour. She was spoken for. She checked her mail: nothing much. She took strangely, then: she was at once in the damp and green of anxiety.
In the dining room, Freddie Bliss stood by the bay window and spoke to the last of the night.
‘The immediate concern was footwear,’ he said. ‘Boots, plain as. A stout pair of boots can save a man. And under the circumstances, we knew that, with the what-you-call-it coming… what do you call it? In winter? The shortest day? What do you call it?’
He turned to an empty room, and smiled.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Never mind. I know! Solstice.’
He set to writing some notes. He still had a supply of the letterhead paper from Bliss Antiques, which had gone out of business in 1975. If the television people finished up early, Angelica might manage a trip to the village. Freddie didn’t go so much now. He sent down notes instead. He wrote one for the video man.
‘Please,’ it said, ‘nothing else with this Tom Hanks person,’ and the name was twice underlined.
Angelica returned. She appeared to be having trouble breathing.
‘You look gaunt, darling.’
‘I’ve got NIGHT FEAR!’ she cried.
She picked up the mallet and slapped at the wall. This was the wall that divided the pantry from the dining room. The plaster crumbled, willingly enough, but the brickwork was stubborn. Angelica was fagged out—she hadn’t the strength for large-scale destruction at this hour. She was determined, however, to keep busy.
‘This old rad,’ she said, ‘how long since we’ve had heat out of it?’
Freddie Bliss considered the rusty, leak-stained radiator and thought for a moment.
‘The sixties?’ he tried.
‘Right,’ said Angelica, and fetched the claw hammer.
Freddie Bliss made some fresh drinks. He always kept a little of the good stuff back for late on. The fizz of the tonic quieted by the dash of the gin. The glass clouding up as the limes cut in. Poetry, and Angelica, panting, attempted to wrench the rad from the wall. She got it part ways out, and then stopped.
‘What’s this?’
‘What’s what, Angel?’
She yanked up a clutch handbag, so old to be almost fashionable, its grey leather softened and cracked with age.
‘Must be one of your mother’s. It must have fallen down there. Show!’
She opened the bag and spread its contents on the dining-room table. Freddie Bliss was rapt with attention: he was half thinking there might be an old tenner forgotten. But it was mostly photographs, from the war years and before. Training at Carlisle. The weekend trips home before shipping out. Arm in arm in a pub, the pair of them shining with youth and love, in the autumn of 1942. There were a few of his letters home, those that had got through, with lines of neat Xs for kisses. There was the notification of dishonourable discharge from His Majesty’s Forces.
‘Why has she got all this here?’
‘It’s what she’d have hidden on me,’ said Freddie Bliss.
‘Why not just burn the stuff?’
‘It’s important,’ he said, and he shrugged. ‘But it doesn’t matter now.’
It didn’t matter. Enough time had passed. These were the remnants of another life, and he could look on that life as a stranger would. Angelica sobbed.
‘Courage, dear,’ he said.
‘Courage!’
‘I never had any,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve shown some, I really do. But not me. Ambrose Poll? Yes. Charlie Bamber? Charlie absolutely dripped with the stuff. But Freddie Bliss? No. I scampered!’
He moved through the woods. This was Italy, 1943. He had a flame of colour in his cheeks, and the ice had formed into a webbing between the black bones of the trees. The sun through the ice made a palatial blue light, and he winced. At each crack of the ice, he jumped from his skin. He had lost his coat. In the panic of his flight, everything had got thrown in the air. His old boots had split open. He felt the cold come in. His fingertips blackened with bite. There were moments he thought he had passed over. He had to fight hard to distinguish himself as a living thing, among the trees and the ice, beneath the sky. His vision started to blur. His fear went. He fell down in the snow. Smiling, he lifted his head from the ground. In the near distance, the whites and blues of winter were disturbed by a shape that had a smokiness to it, a dark shimmering, and he crawled to it and found that it was a horse. It had been slit along its belly and it lay dead in the snow but it had its heat still. He lay with it. He huddled as close to it as he could get. He scolded himself. He said you shan’t, oh you can’t, and then he did. He put his hands into the wound and dug them deep. He forced his arms in, past the elbows. The organ heat saved him but his mind became unseated. He became weightless, untethered. It was as if he had stepped off a plane.
He confronted the lifeless gin in his hand. The limes were no use. They were past their best and shrivelled quickly in the alcohol. They spoiled the drink with a sour green tinge. There would have to be a note for the grocer.
‘We’d go down The Philly,’ he said. ‘Every single night, we’d be on the tiles. She insisted. We’d go down The Chophouse. She’d bloody well drag me! I’d whimper! I was rattling, Angel! I wasn’t right for donkey’s! But she’d say get this into you, sweetness. Chin up now!’
‘We’ll be thinking about breakfast,’ said Angelica.
She had calmed again, but to a state of listlessness. She checked her phone.
‘No word from Joe.’
‘What about a walk, Angel?’
‘If he’s broken his tag bounds? If he’s gone to Bolton? That’s trouble, Dad, with a capital T.’
‘Bolton! Frightful place. Full of low-lifes, always has been. What about a walk?
‘A walk? Now? But it’s still dark.’
‘All the better,’ he said.
It was one of the few nights of the northern year there would be no need for a jacket. He held himself beautifully as he walked. He was straight backed and steady as he moved. Nobody walks like Freddie Bliss any more. Angelica loped along beside him, breathless. From a high distance, if you looked back, the house had a jaunty air. The east wing had an attractive lopsided feel, the gale-tormented west was grimly hanging on, and there were shades watching from the windows.
They walked over the rough ground. You’d twist an ankle if you didn’t know it. They went by the pathway along the stretch of trees that led down to the lake. Time was passing. He stopped, suddenly, and put a finger to his lips. By the water, there was a blurred movement, the air and the darkness shifted, and she saw the black and white of them, the striped noses and beady red eyes, and then at once they were everywhere, they wrestled and flipped each other over, they tumbled and righted themselves. Angelica gripped her father’s hand. Angelica held her breath. Cheerfully, with the air of an old familiar, Freddie Bliss addressed the badgers:
‘Good morning!’ he said.
Recovery had been learned. When young, she had taught him again the language of relish.
The Penguins
The shudders and jolts of an old jumbo, pulling back the hours. Across the Hudson Bay we sail and over the Labrador Sea. This is the part we call the feeding of the seals. We come down the aisles, in our frayed uniforms, with our smiles fixed as death’s rictus, and their anxious heads swivel to us, and there are hoarse little barks of delight as we fling out the foil-covered trays. They pull back the foil, burn their fingertips, blow on their fingertips, and steam clouds rise to numb their tired faces. The steam clears to reveal the griddled flesh of what once was fowl, and the annihilated broccoli, and the Nagasaki carrots, and they
make small brave noises; they begin.
The eternal question across the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six: isthisthechicken isthisthechicken isthisthe… chicken???
Personally speaking? I would touch nothing bar the salad.
At the top of the rows-of-three, left aisle, just across from my station, in the row with the extra leg room—it is our handsome gift to bestow—there is an elderly couple, bright-eyed with enthusiasm/medication.
‘Tell you that right there looks to me like fresh snow,’ he says.
‘But it’s nearly May already,’ she says.
‘Nothing surprises me about weather anymore,’ he says.
The crushed democracy of the cheap seats—their knees are high and their eyes are hopeful. The piebald mountains rise and dip beneath, there are slopes of black ice and sharp crests and thin blue streams, then an expanse of turfy scrag a rich brown like chocolate.
In the top row-of-six:
The babymamma of a Lithuanian gangster.
A nervous African priest.
A pair of square-jaw corporates in casual flight wear.
A leathery Balkan ponce.
A sour-faced French hottie with the tiniest feet, who wrinkles her photoshop-perfect nose and looks across, irritated, to the row-of-three, where the elderlies maintain commentary:
‘Now check this,’ he says. ‘It’s twenty after three! In the a.m. already! Where we’re going?’
‘Twenty after three!’ she says.
I keep on smiling. He climbs from the seat, steps into the aisle, breathes hard, staggers once, settles, then takes a bag from the overhead, and he sits again, relieved—woo-eeh!—and he breaks out the pill bottles.
‘Put on your eye glasses, Alvin,’ she says.
I picture the pills at work. I picture them thinning the blood and checking arrhythmia. I picture the pills as janitors of liver and spleen, wearing jaunty work caps and polite grimaces, making minimum wage. The snow is banked deeply and the ice fields glisten for as far as you can see.
‘These the ten o’clocks?’ she says.
‘These the tens,’ he says, ‘though now it’s like three. Officially. Where we’re going.’
‘Twenty after!’ she says.
‘Twenty after,’ he says.
‘Put on your eye glasses, Alvin,’ she says.
‘They’re right here on my goddamn face, Rose,’ he says.
It is the moment of the mudwater coffee, and we set forth along the aisles. We pour it from the stained tall silver pots, and they suck that bad stuff down, and a low drone of talkativeness rises across the rows. We hit turbulence. It gets good and jumpy, it gets good and swoony, and they look to us, with small brave smiles.
The fade of a melon sun glows over the vast country, in birthday card tones, and it is all of it primordial and ancient seeming down there: National Geographic. The clouds thicken and we enter them and it all whites out but in places the clouds are patchy, and we’re allowed a quick cold view below, and you cannot but imagine yourself lost down there.
‘DVT is what it is, Rose,’ he says. ‘That’s Deep… Vein… Thrombosis. Travelling clots!’
‘Clots travel?’ she says.
‘Clots hit the brain and you’re dead before they get you to the ground. It don’t matter what age or creed you are. That’s DVT is what it is.’
‘Clots in the brain! Sounds like that’s about it, hon.’
‘Clots in the brain is the last thing we need, trust me.’
‘Deep… Vein?’
‘Thrombosis. But it’s dummies that get DVT, Rose. Dummies that drink on planes and don’t move around none. That’s what you got not to do! Drink and sit there like a sack of shit.’
It is the moment of the wipes. We pick up the trays, with their lurid remains—dig the color of that masala—and we hand out the wipes. We keep on smiling. Transatlantics pull from each demographic, each ethnicity. There are thin English pub girls bronzed from the effluent beaches of the west coast. There are fat Italians, amused Indians, Germans amplifying sternly, irritated Swiss. Put us in a tin can at 28,000 feet and we become so obviously of our breed.
There is a majorly dramatic sound from the internals—Kerrrrrr-unnnchhhh!—like gears changing in God’s pick-up. We look to each other across the aisles—the questioning arch of our savagely plucked eyebrows—but we keep on smiling. We are about done with wipes. We make it back to our stations. We smile. Then the kerrrrrr-unnnchhhh again, but this time deeper sounding, and Mel and Kelvin talk to flight crew.
Flight crew doesn’t tell cabin crew shit unless it has to. There are agitated noises from the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six. There is concern in the seal pens. Kelvin is at the handset: Kelvin pales. Mel is at the handset: Mel gets flushes. The captain now addresses the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six.
He says there is no cause for immediate concern. I like that immediate. The problem, he says, is mechanical. As opposed to? There is an instrument, there is a device, we needn’t worry our pretty heads about what it is precisely, but it’s out by, like, millimetres? By like fractions of millimetres. It needs to be recalibrated. This needs to be done on the ground. We look out the windows and down to the ice fields.
Our captain is a Brit and as he addresses us all, he retains an admirable calm. He says a landing is required, actually, and this will be achieved shortly. He actually says the ‘actually’. He actually says ‘achieved’. We keep on smiling. Our captain is out of a black-and-white war movie. He’s an okay-chaps-let’s-synchronise-our-watches. He’s a chin-up-wren-twill-soon-be-over.
Seat belts on, seat backs up, tables clipped. The ice below us is apparently Greenland ice. The passengers remain pretty calm. They are somewhat inured to in-flight dramatics now—they’ve seen it all a thousand times. Stabiliser hormones seep, rivers of feel-good juices flow, and everybody is real smug about how well they’re holding up.
Then, out of nowhere, a heavy-set man with big hair three seats from the top of cheap gets a flash of realism and he screams out. He shouts at us all, he shouts that he always knew death would come for him in this way, and at this time!
It takes just one shitbird to freak out and now the whole plane gets The Fear. Mel and Kelvin launch into action. They forcibly quieten the fat fuck with an injection. We keep trank spikes for this purpose but we don’t advertise the fact. Mel and Kelvin work out.
The plane descends, much more sharply than usual. We eat up huge gulps of air. We are light-headed and we keep on smiling. When the captain said a landing, I guess everybody pictured some snowy little airport for Greenlanders. But there is no airport. There is an ice field. Technically, we call this C.D.I.T.—controlled descent into terrain.
He brings the plane down smoothly. It is a perfect manouevre, flawless, there is hardly a bump. The rows-of-three and the rows-of-six all applaud with great vigour, there are whoops and hollers, but the applause fades quickly as we look out the windows. Visibly the windows fog up with freeze, like in timelapse photography. Mel and Kelvin call a cabin crew huddle.
There has been information from flight crew. We have to get off the plane. We have to use the emergency slides. We have got to keep the people moving. We have got to keep the people warm. First task is we hand out brandy miniatures for calm. We take to the aisles.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I cannot drink this stuff,’ says a corporate. ‘I react against spirits. It’s, like, a peptic thing?’
‘Drink the fucking brandy,’ I say.
I keep on smiling.
The rumours start. There are rumours of an engine fire. There is a rumour of potential explosions. There are rumours of Middle Easterns with dart guns. The emergency slides go down. We slide from the plane. This is not so bad, if you aren’t Alvin or Rose, if you do not have hips of titanium. We scuttle from the plane and slip across the ice in a fretful, hard-breathing slapstick. The cold is almost comical: you’re-kidding-me cold. We shepherd everybody together in the lee of this like… shale outcrop? Like I know a shale
outcrop from shit, but the words have come into my head for some reason… shale outcrop.
We are all together on the ice, a true democracy: flight crew, cabin crew, cheap seats, business. We tell them to wear the life jackets for warmth. We hand out smother blankets too. It is almost summer here. The captain makes a brief speech. He says radio contact has been achieved, actually. He says help will be along very very soon.
Then Kelvin makes a speech. This is Kelvin’s Big Moment. This is what it has all been leading up to and Kelvin, he glows. Cabin crew, we all regard Kelvin with awe now. Kelvin has demonstrated The Stuff. His tone is light-hearted and downhome. He says, folks, believe it or not, there is official strategy in these situations. He says, you’ve seen those documentary shows on Discovery Channel about penguins in the Arctic? He says in winter, the penguins form enormous concentric circles, they circle together on the ice, they circle endlessly, move their little feet from side to side, like a revolving chorus line. Folks, says Kelvin, this is how the penguins keep warm and alive! And, basically, folks, this is what we got to do now.
We form on the ice into concentric circles. We move about, we rotate, we get the hang of the penguin stuff real easy, in fact, and it works, it keeps us a couple of degree fractions above blue-veined death. We flap our arms. The way the circles work mean you rotate in and out of many conversations. The talk spins slowly around.
‘I mean that’s a whole heap of tundra, you know what I’m saying? I mean what does real estate go for out here?’
‘Yeah we could make like rudimentary ploughs and settle the place.’
‘Now you’re farmin’!’
‘The nearest town I suppose is… what, Upernavik?’
‘Party town?’
‘And this is summer, right?’
‘I would have to say that I’m anti-pastoral, essentially. Clouds, skies, mountains? Piece of shit.’