Girl on a Plane Read online

  The twins nod their identically tousled heads.

  “I’m nearly at the special certificate,” he says to me. “You have to fly fifty thousand miles with BOAC for that.” He leans over to me and whispers, “The twins aren’t quite there yet.” Then he continues, “It’s really annoying, though, because we need to log this flight, but it’s stuck on the ground.”

  “Well, we may not always be,” I say. “And then I’m sure they’ll count it.”

  “The twins are lending me their Slinky later,” he says. “We’re going to ask the Giant if we can see if it’ll flip down the wooden ladder.” I leave them to discuss this and wander back toward David.

  He’s reading one of Tim’s comics. He says he’s just been to the front to try to talk to the blond sisters, but they made it quite clear they weren’t interested by half ignoring him and going on about the much older guys they knew and their incredibly flashy cars.

  “Serves you right,” I say, secretly pleased—​not that I fancy him, of course. “They’re way out of your league.” He looks at me morosely.

  I leave him in the doldrums and walk up the plane, beginning to feel restless again. I squeeze past Mrs. Newton, trying to cadge a last drink off Alan and Celia, who are sipping gin, by the look of it. Alan leans forward, his elbow crooked, his hand on his thigh, pretending to listen intently to Mrs. Newton’s request, occasionally running his hand through his hair as if to reassure himself it’s still there. The captain and Jim, nursing whiskeys, sit nearby, looking amused.

  On my way back I stop by the emergency door, about two-thirds of the way down. I can see the wing quite clearly from here. And there’s the moon! It’s wonderful: huge, smooth, and silvery calm, my connection to the outside world, to all the space and air out there. It quiets me somehow, so I stay moon bathing for a while.

  Then I go back to pacing the wing from the aisle. Eight big paces, so very wide. No wonder you walk over it to get off in an emergency. There’s a high ridge running across the wide, backwards slope, and I can see the edges of the three flaps on the top surface, the ones that flip up to slow you down when you’re about to land. I wonder what the pointed bits sticking out under the wing are for—​maybe to help the wind fly over it? Wasn’t that what we learned in physics, that the wind traveling over the wing is what causes a plane to take off ? That wing flew me. Wants to fly me again.

  A small group crowds around Mr. Newton’s radio to listen to the evening news. I stop too.

  “The head of the International Red Cross mission in the Middle East yesterday denied that the Palestinians were subjecting their skyjacked hostages to ‘mental and psychological torture.’ Speaking from Amman, he said that the guerrillas had a ‘very friendly and humane attitude.’ However, he said, ‘There are reports of the children being taught war songs and being given automatic weapons to play with.’ ”

  Where on earth did they get that from? I wonder. Do they just make things up, or is that what’s happening on one of the other planes?

  I give up on the news and walk the plane some more, discovering that there are exactly fifteen strides from my seat through first class to the open front door. One for every year of my life. I pass Rosemary, playing peekaboo with the baby in the bassinet, who breaks into peals of giggles every time she reveals her face. Farther back, Mrs. Green has her arm around Susan’s thin shoulders. She’s wearing a new dress and is wrapped in her mother’s blue cardigan.

  There’s a conversation about films going on between the two blond sisters and Maria. They all have glasses of booze in their hands and are smoking. Maria has wide-set eyes and a slightly disgruntled expression. She must be about their age, eighteen or nineteen, but the other two seem to be only just tolerating her. She tilts her head to one side as she listens, appearing to agree with everything they say.

  When I’m sitting back down, Tim and the twins file past. “We’ve decided to ask the captain,” Tim says, “if he’ll sign our Junior Jet Club logbooks, even though we haven’t arrived in England yet.”

  “Good luck,” I say. “I hope it works.”

  “May I join you, your ladyship?” David says, before sliding down beside me.

  “For you, sir—​anything.”

  “You are too gracious.” But then, without warning, he’s serious. “That was awful, seeing you all taken off this afternoon for the photo. Not knowing what was going on.”

  “No, it wasn’t good.”

  “I thought they were going to shoot you or something.” He smiles suddenly. “Be odd without you there across the aisle.”

  “Well, you may have to put up with me here for a little longer,” I say lightly. “There’s not much chance of a change in the seating plan.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” he says. “You and I are in a kind of limbo here. We don’t get included in all the adult stuff going on in first class, because we’re not counted as adults, but we’re not looked after like the younger children either. Basically we’re not seen and we’re not heard.”

  “I know,” I commiserate. “And we weren’t even given a children’s coloring pack to play with.”

  “Exactly. It’s not fair. I feel like drawing the first-class curtain on the whole lot of them.”

  “You know what?” I sigh dramatically. “We’ll just have to grow up.”

  “I am trying,” he replies. “Do you think if I keep wandering through the adult zone, something might rub off on me?”

  “Unlikely,” I say, “but give it a go.”

  He gets up, and I watch him walk through first class toward the open doorway. Sweaty leans against the cockpit door. “No!” he shouts, waving his gun at David. “Back! Go back!”

  David faces Sweaty, his fists clenched, looking as though he’d like to hit him hard in the face. Instead he turns and walks back down the aisle.

  I don’t want him to know I’ve witnessed that, so I open Wuthering Heights and force myself to focus on it. Read properly, I say to myself. Hear the words in your head. Get absorbed. It’ll take you away from here.

  “As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes.”

  How cruel!

  Why is everyone so cruel? Sweaty, Lady Macbeth.

  What if I witness something awful here, something really awful, happening to any one of these living, breathing people? I’ll never escape the memory of it, will I, even if I do survive?

  It’ll be etched on my brain forever.

  I need Marni’s letter.

  I need it now.

  I reach down and take it from my shoe, open the envelope, and smooth the page out.

  My darling Anna,

  By now you’ll be safely back at school (without any hitches, I hope). I imagine you’ve unpacked your case, with your friends all about you, swapping tales of the summer.

  The boys are about to fly back, and then Dad and I will be home by the end of the week. What an extraordinary thought. At least we’ll all be in the same country for a change. How good that will be!

  By the time you come home, there’ll be a lovely (I promise) newly painted (ditto) room all ready for you, the walls that blue you mentioned. As soon as I see the new house, I’ll give you the lowdown on it. Let’s hope we get a decent bit of a garden this time.

  Enjoy your term, my treasure. I know you will. Work hard, play hard—and wear those new shoes with pride! I’ll call you on Sunday, as usual. Until then, my precious girl, missing you and loving you to distraction,

  Marni xxx

  I hear Marni’s voice and feel calm again. It was written to me, just to me, and I feel the power of that. I run my eyes over the familiar curves and flourishes of her strong handwriting: the firmly crossed t’s, the purposeful uprights, straight as her back, and the running rush of her final signature, as if it isn’t herself sh
e cares about at all.

  I see her sitting at the kitchen table, where she writes every week to her sisters, my aunts, Birdie in Cornwall and Diana in north London. She’s concentrating, with a slightly clenched jaw and pursed lips, and the finger she’s guiding the pen with has a skewed nail that got stuck in the laundry mangle when she was a child. I bury my face in that letter and quietly sob.

  32

  Bahrain—​2200h

  Marni is leaving Bahrain on another plane, carrying her and the rest of the family home to the UK. It flies up over the southern tip of the island, away over the deserts of Saudi Arabia, high above the fuselage of Anna’s plane, thousands of feet below.

  Inside it, Marni, with her two boys slumped on either side, sits awake, thinking of her missing child. Her precious girl, all on her own.

  And, even though Marni doesn’t exactly believe in God, she prays to whatever or whoever is the fount of all goodness. She prays, as she has never prayed before, that her daughter is still alive. Then she prays for strength to face the days to come. And, though she draws some comfort from it, fear still rages in her chest. She thinks of her own mother, of the prayer she said every night, printed on a yellowing card decorated with faded flowers. Something about the shadows lengthening, the busy world being hushed, the fever of life being over . . . What words. That was it. Grant us a safe lodging and peace at the last. And the ancient words calm her turmoil.

  She repeats them to herself and breathes more quietly, grateful for the time to think, to process the terrible day. And as she does so, image after image rises up. Of Anna by Lake Naivasha in Kenya, in a drooping diaper on a lawn strewn with red hibiscus flowers. As a toddler, sitting on the high wooden bed in Hong Kong, with the black mamba snake hissing under it, sitting obediently, so quiet and still, while Marni slammed the wooden bar down and down on its head. She smiles, thinking of Anna’s hopeless expression, having stitched her blue school dress to her sampler, and of how the chlorine in the pool in Aden turned her blond hair a fluorescent green. She sees her on the farm in Cornwall, at her grandfather’s feet, learning to whistle through new front teeth. And she thinks of her in water, always in water—​swimming, diving, and water-skiing—​and on that last day on the roof and when they went shoe shopping. Is she wearing the new shoes now?

  Anna, my darling girl, I’m here. I’m here with you.

  Outside the window she sees the blurred moon.

  Can you see it too, Anna?

  Can you? Are you looking?

  The night wears on. The plane flies over the smooth Mediterranean Sea, over the snow-capped Alps, over the fields of France, to the small island lying on the edge of Europe.

  As dawn breaks, Marni looks down at the fields and hedgerows, at the glinting reservoirs, at the cows and the sheep, at the extraordinary greenness of it all. And when she sees the roads silvered by recent rain, and the light trails of traffic on the ring road, she weeps to be home.

  33

  Revolutionary Airstrip, Jordan—​2200h

  Just after the lamps are turned low, David and I watch Maria putting on her pink lipstick, straightening her dress, and then sneaking off down the plane. We watch her disappear into the dark, where we can see Sweaty’s flashlight flickering.

  I’m amazed, horrified. “She was flirting with him earlier,” I say. “It was gross. She’s mad, going back there on her own.”

  “Right under everyone’s noses,” David says, incredulous. “And what on earth does she see in Sweaty?”

  “Not much in the dark,” I say. “Maybe that helps.”

  “You know she told Tim that she doesn’t speak a word of Arabic.”

  “I doubt if they’re conversing.” I smile.

  He laughs quietly, then shakes his head. “Does she really think that flirting with him will keep her alive? Make him save her? Mark my words, it’ll end in tears . . .” I like him saying that. It reminds me of Dad.

  Mr. Newton’s radio, which has been burbling on low, suddenly rises in volume. It’s the news. Apparently President Nixon is ordering a task force from the U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean to within striking distance of Jordan. The newscaster says Nixon is thinking of sending in the marines but is considering whether it might endanger our lives.

  “God, slight understatement,” David says.

  “For Christ’s sake, turn that thing off and let us sleep!” someone shouts.

  “Are you crazy?” someone shouts back. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening out there?”

  And that’s when Lady Mac arrives, which quiets everyone, including the radio.

  She raises her head as she enters, stares disdainfully at the captain and crew sitting in the front seats, then narrows her eyes to peer down the plane. She waits as Sweaty rushes up from the back, turning up the lamps as he goes. Her two guards stare blankly out at him. Why are the sleeves of her shirt rolled up? What does it mean?

  There’s a deathly hush, and then she begins to pace, moving her head from side to side like a snake, her eyes flat and opaque.

  This time she hardly raises her voice. “You are all going to die,” she says, and pauses. “Detonators have been attached to the explosives, so now we can blow you up at the press of a button.” As she passes by, almost brushing my shoulder, I’m aware of the black hairs on her forearm, the small scar on her top lip. “And if your prime minister doesn’t do as we say, we will do it.” She raises her voice. “The execution deadline is midday on Saturday. He has just thirty-eight hours to decide”—​she pauses before continuing—​“and then we will either blow you up or shoot you one by one.”

  I go numb. The captain gets to his feet. I stare fixedly at the place where his hair touches the top of his ear. “I’d like to speak,” he says.

  Her lips curl. “I said sit down!” She nods at the guards and turns her back on him. He’s pushed down into his seat at gunpoint.

  She’s wired and pacing again, coming this way.

  And that’s when I realize it. Her eyes, the windows to her soul, are dead.

  Don’t look! Don’t look in there. I drop my head.

  Marni! I think quickly. Marni, what are you and Dad and the boys doing right now? Where are you? I really need to see you, to speak to you. It’s awful here, awful. I want to see you, to tell you . . . I’m still alive, Marni. I’m still . . . I’m OK, really, I am, Marni. I’m still alive.

  34

  Friday, September 11, 1970

  0300h

  I wake with a start in the middle of the night. It’s very cold, but I’m not freezing, like last night, as I’m wrapped in my school coat as well as my blanket. I’m down in the foot well, and David is asleep above, stretched across my three seats. I wonder how he got there. I didn’t hear him arrive. Tim is fast asleep, curled up under his blanket on the seats opposite us.

  I hear a strange noise from the back of the plane and raise my head to listen. My hips are numb from being pressed against the chair frame. My arm’s still asleep. I rub it and feel the fizzing prickle of pins and needles. There it is again, a noise like someone moaning through a shut mouth. Is someone having a nightmare? And again. No, it’s like a whimpering dog, soft and in pain.

  “David,” I hiss, shaking him. He groans. “David. Listen,” I whisper.

  “What?”

  “At the back.” We listen like guard dogs, our ears shifting every time there’s the slightest creak. There’s a muffled cry and scuffling, running footsteps, then Maria rushes past. People stir, turn over. Some shuffle to their feet, stretch, and sit down again. One or two get up and use the toilets.

  The captain stands briefly at the front, outlined by the gray light filtering through the doorway. He kneels down next to Maria, who’s sobbing, heaving. He tries to quiet her, but the noise goes on and on. She’s inconsolable.

  “My God,” David says. “What’s happened to her? What’s Sweaty done?” The sobbing subsides little by little. Silence of a sort streams back. I lie down, feeling a thick dread. Poor Maria
, poor, desperate Maria.

  “Are you OK?” David asks. His hand reaches down, touches my shoulder, covered by the blanket. He leaves it there, and I find comfort in the warmth of it, in the soft pads of his fingers.

  I stay awake for a long while, listening to his breathing gradually becoming regular. His hand loosens and slides off me as he fades into sleep.

  My mind is calmer now. I think of the moon, fading in the sky outside, the stars disappearing into the milkiness of dawn. I think of the day, the reporters, the luggage, the photo, the explosives, the song, the cigarettes and booze, and the wonderful piece of bread. I think about Tim’s singing, but I refuse to think about Lady Mac; I refuse to let her in.

  35

  0400h

  I’m dreaming, restless . . . standing at the open back door . . . the night air is cold on my face. Someone below grabs my ankles, drags me out. I cry, fall. Down, down. Sweaty pushes me into the black, moonless desert at gunpoint. I’m kneeling on the floor in a camouflaged tent. Lady Mac’s eyes glitter. She jabs her finger at me. “Whose fault is it that we have no land?” she shouts. “Tell me! TELL ME!” She circles. “You WILL tell me or you will DIE.” She grabs my ponytail, drags my head back and up, thrusts her face in at me, makes me look into her eyes. And all I see in there is my own death.

  I wake shaking, breathing in deep, ragged shudders.

  “Anna. Anna.” Someone is patting my shoulder. I try to come to.

  “You were crying out,” David says.

  I’m alarmed. What have I said? “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Sounded like you were calling for someone,” he says. “Sounded like Marmite or something.”

  “My mother. Marni,” I say. “I call her Marni.” I like saying her name here.

  “Marni,” he says. “Why Marni?”

  “ ‘From the sea.’ It means ‘from the sea.’ ” I feel drugged.