Girl on a Plane Page 4

  A tall, pale woman in a gingham dress across the aisle and a little way back calls for help. Her daughter has just been sick all over her front. The smell of it filters down the aisle. We hold our noses, pull our tops over our faces, and then giggle hysterically, it’s so awful.

  Rosemary comes to mop it up with tissues, disinfectant, and water. I definitely couldn’t do her job. Unfortunately the combination of disinfectant and vomit makes the smell worse.

  The baby continues to scream, though I think I’m getting used to it now. I can almost block it out. The Giant lumbers down and escorts the mother and baby to a bulkhead seat at the front, where he says there’s a bassinet. He still looks as though nothing fazes him, like this hijacking is all in a day’s work.

  I’m desperate to stretch my legs and am trying hard not to think about how claustrophobic it is in here. At last Celia beckons to David for his turn to go to the toilet. I’m next!

  While he’s away from his seat, I watch the Arab family opposite us. The man wears an immaculate long white robe, a thawb, with crisp ironed creases down the sleeves. His wife is entirely in black. I can’t see her face, just the edge of a soft gold bangle as she tends to their little son. She has her arm around him while she reads to him. His fat little legs waggle with delight. Seeing her tenderness toward him reminds me of home, and another wave of homesickness washes over me. What I’d do to be with my family, to have their arms around me. I’m missing them so badly, it hurts. It’s not ordinary sadness, going-back-to-school sadness, but a draggingly deep sorrow that I’ve never felt before.

  David comes back, and at last it’s my turn to get up and walk about. I follow Celia, glancing down the plane at all the disembodied heads turning, chatting, smoking. Some stare morosely ahead. An older couple gulps back whiskey in unison. Two boys, who look like twins in identical maroon and gray school blazers, crouch up on their seats and pass toys over the top to those behind them. The bomber sits dead still, wearing his sinister dark glasses. His suitcase sticks slightly out into the aisle. Those sitting nearest him seem more subdued than the others. Sweaty’s standing right at the back, holding his gun, a picture of unease.

  I move to the front, passing the two girls with blond hair from the line at the airport. They are both a bit older than I am and are wearing floral miniskirts and matching tops. One’s braiding the other one’s hair. They look up as I go by, and I feel their eyes on my back. I pass the baby crying in the bassinet, his face screwed up in outrage, pink and gasping. His mother strokes his head, looking glazed, as if she’s completely given up trying to quiet him.

  I walk past the two new hijackers sitting at the front, in first class, deep in conversation and eating lunch from airline trays. Then I squeeze past the Giant, at the front with his gun trained on the cabin.

  Reaching the toilet, I close the door on them all and lock it. In the mirror, under the strip lighting, I’m shocked to be confronted by this tired girl with worried gray eyes and mussed-up hair. I stare at her. She seems different—​older, careworn.

  I try combing my hair with my fingers but soon give up. It’s too tangled to make much difference. How stupid not to bring a hairbrush. I splash water on my face and dry it on the paper towels. And it feels really good. I use the toilet, wash my hands and my armpits with soap and water and dry them too. I think about scooping up some of the water, but it says Not Drinking Water, so I don’t risk it. It’s such a relief to be alone, though even in here I can still hear the baby’s plaintive cries. I wonder how long I can stay without Celia badgering me. I try stretching my arms and jiggling my feet about as though I’m warming up for a diving competition. It’s too cramped, but it’s my space, just for this moment, and I like it.

  What if something happens, though? What if I hear shots or someone tries to overpower the hijackers? What if everyone’s rescued but me?

  My face looks terrible.

  Help me, then, I say to the girl in the glass.

  She stares back. Mute.

  Marni would say, Anna, I think you need to have a good cry. She says crying’s good for you. Bottling things up isn’t.

  The girl in the mirror’s definitely bottled up.

  Cry, then, I say to her. But her face is set in stone, her eyes hard and dark and haunted.

  You have no feeling, I say. And it’s true. I feel numb, empty.

  Suddenly there’s a brisk rat-a-tat-tat on the door. “Hello? Time to finish up.” Celia’s impatient.

  Finish up. Finish up where? Good question, I say to the reflection in the glass. Then I unlatch the door.

  On my way back down the aisle, I notice that the girl with red-blond hair in first class has moved to sit beside the bald cigar-smoking man. He’s complaining in a loud voice to the steward about not being offered a double gin, under the circumstances.

  I squeeze past Rosemary, tending to the baby. He’s really letting rip now, his lungs fit to burst. His mother stands by helplessly, looking even more wrung out. Rosemary’s pouring some liquid painkiller into his bottle.

  After Tim’s been to the toilet and we’re all sitting back down, Rosemary brings around a tray full of small plastic glasses of water, one for each of us. Before I can stop him, Tim tops Fred’s water up with his.

  “Tim! You need that!” I cry.

  “But . . . it’s just . . . I was worried . . .” His face crumples.

  “You’re probably right,” I say quickly. “Fred needed more too. Here, have some of mine.”

  With Sweaty at the back, the Giant at the front, the bomber in the middle, and the two new hijackers sitting in first class, the plane takes off again. I glance at my watch. Two thirty. There’s that moment of weightlessness and then the lurch as my stomach hits the ceiling.

  I look through Tim’s window at the hazy shapes below getting smaller and smaller. The plane circles over the airport, stops climbing so steeply, and levels out.

  “We’re not going so high,” I say.

  “No.” David’s face is resigned. “Looks like they really are taking us to their Revolutionary Airstrip after all.”

  “And I was hoping for a miracle,” I say.

  “Well”—​Tim leans forward to look at us—​“we’re still all in one piece.” David and I smile at each other, surprised, then look back at him. “What?” he says, frowning. “It’s what my dad says.”

  “And it’s perfect,” I say. He looks pleased.

  At last the baby’s cries gradually begin to subside into sobs, then snuffles, then silence as he sleeps. And the plane continues droning on and on in the wrong direction.

  8

  1530h

  The captain has just come onto the intercom to tell us that we’re still flying south from Beirut, down the Mediterranean coast. Tim and I look out the window, but there’s nothing but sea on this side.

  “What about a game of cards, you two?” David slaps a pack down on my table. “Can you play whist?” He starts to shuffle, slicing the cards around, arcing and flipping them together, looking worryingly expert.

  He explains the rules to us and then deals. I look at my hand, trying to remember what he’s just said, but I can’t focus properly. My brain just hasn’t taken it in.

  David starts winning one trick after another.

  “You’ve played this a lot, haven’t you?” I say.

  “Yep.” He grins and trumps me again. When he wins the game, he shuffles and deals once more.

  I look at my new cards. “David, you can’t have shuffled them properly.”

  “What’s the matter? Bad hand?”

  “Yes. Again.”

  His tricks pile up.

  Tim looks despondent. “I’ve only managed to win one trick!”

  “It’s because he keeps changing the rules,” I say, leaning the other way, trying to steal a look at David’s cards.

  “Hey!” He moves them out into the aisle where I can’t see. “Typical!”

  “Typical cheat,” I say, putting down a feeble two of clubs. “We
’ll play cheat next, Tim. Then we can all do it.”

  “Would this be because I’m winning?” David asks airily. And then, when he does win: “I don’t expect you want another game?”

  I shake my head. “No, thanks.”

  While David gathers up the cards and packs them away, Tim gets his Etch A Sketch out again.

  “I’m going to draw you, Anna, and then you, David,” he says.

  And soon the wobbly lines of an unflattering portrait appear on the screen. “Really!” I cry. “Look at the size of my nose!”

  “Sorry.” Tim tips the Etch A Sketch up to clear the screen and starts again.

  “What about that?” he says.

  “Much better. Though my chin’s a bit on the witchy side.”

  David leans over to look. “No, I’d say that’s quite accurate.”

  Suddenly the intercom crackles overhead, and we all tense.

  “. . . do you mean?” The captain’s voice is full of anger. “Look, if you can’t give me better coordinates than that, we’ll never find it! We’ve been going up and down, searching for your bloody Revolutionary Airstrip, for nearly an hour now. There’s a bloody big piece of desert down there and a lot of sea, and we’re running out of fuel. You’ve got to give me a more accurate positioning!” We hear another voice in the background, then the captain shouts, “I don’t care! I have the safety of my passengers to consider, never mind landing this aircraft in the middle of the bloody desert. Now, get me better coordinates, before we run out of fuel and come down anyway.”

  Come down anyway. The terrible words sink in.

  David avoids meeting my eyes. Tim looks fixedly out the window. I can’t take much more of this. I think of the fuel burning up, the plane’s tanks getting emptier and emptier as we carry on, going nowhere. I stare down at my tray, lying neatly folded in two, the metal ring for the drink I do not have lying uppermost. We played cards on this tray. No one’s playing now. Nothing’s funny anymore.

  It seems like an eternity before the captain comes back on the intercom, officially this time, to announce that the crew has located the Revolutionary Airstrip and that he is going to attempt a landing. The hijackers, he says, have assured him that the ground is in good condition.

  “I hope he knows what he’s doing,” David mutters.

  9

  1645h

  The two stewardesses come through the cabin to make sure that cigarettes are extinguished, seat belts fastened, chair backs upright, and trays put away. They also spend time reassuring us that we’ll make it down safely, but then they ask us to look at the brace position on the cards in our seat pockets in case of an emergency landing.

  On her way back up to the front, Rosemary stops to talk to the two blond girls. “It’ll be OK,” I hear her say. “Really. They’ve assured the captain that it is possible to land a VC Ten there.”

  “But it’s desert,” the older one, in the outside seat, says. Rosemary crouches down, puts her arm around her, and talks quietly and intently for a minute. Then Celia comes and nods toward the front. It’s time for them to be seated.

  Are these my last moments on earth? I feel an overpowering disbelief. They can’t be. This can’t be it. Was that all? My life. Was that it? What was the last thing I said to Marni? Why didn’t I hug Dad longer? Will the boys forget about me as they get older? My heart is thumping so loudly that I move my arm away from David in case he can feel it.

  Tim has gone very quiet. He’s looking out the window, clasping Fred’s tin tightly on his lap.

  “Tim, do you think maybe you should put Fred down on the floor? He might be safer there when we land. You could even wedge the tin between your feet.”

  “All right.” I can see he’s reluctant to let go of him.

  “He’ll be better down there. Honestly.”

  The plane starts to descend very steeply, and the baby in the bassinet starts screaming again. Rosemary gets up and passes the mother, Sarah, a plastic cup with a lid. The water sloshing inside the pale-blue plastic reminds me again of how thirsty I am.

  I hear the wing flaps moving out and down, ready for landing. The baby’s cries subside. There’s an eerie hush in the cabin as the wheels lower. I peer out Tim’s window. Sand the color of pale tea stretches to the horizon. Can you really land a huge, heavy plane on sand?

  Down, down we go.

  I close my eyes, willing the captain to land safely. Praying we will make it. Go on! You can do it.

  Come on! Come on!

  No one speaks. We’re all desperately praying for a safe landing. I hold my breath, waiting for the impact.

  Down, down, closer and closer. We coast in midair, then . . . crunch! The back wheels hit the ground, the nose lowers, and the plane jolts violently as the front wheel touches down. The engines reverse in a blasting roar, and the great body of the plane shudders and shakes under the stress. Huge clouds of red sand roll up on either side of the cabin, obscuring the view. We’re level but bumping, lurching and sliding, braking and slowing some more, taxiing in a storm of red sand. I lean forward and stare out the window, waiting for the dust to disperse. It’s another world.

  We career along, slowing little by little, and gradually shapes begin to appear through the billowing red clouds: the wheel of a Jeep, a leg hanging down, the muzzle of a gun, a scarfed head. And as the sand thins, I see a row of Jeeps with machine guns mounted on them traveling alongside us at exactly the same speed at which we’re moving. The Jeeps are covered in people, hanging off the sides, holding on to the canopies, sitting on the hoods, standing at the back of the vehicles—​all waving guns over their heads, laughing, cheering, men, women, and teenagers, some in khaki, others in camouflage gear. All of them wear black berets or keffiyehs, black and white checked scarves that protect them from the dust, and all eyes are on the plane. I feel as if I’m in some kind of dream. And for a brief, peculiar moment, that I’m the only person on this plane. That they are all looking only at me.

  And I can’t believe we landed without crashing.

  A sense of uneasy relief sweeps through the cabin. A safe landing, but what’s next? What about the armed guerrillas outside?

  We taxi to a halt. The Giant, Sweaty, and the steward go to open the door nearest the cockpit. I hear shouts—​“Al ham du lilla, or “thank God”; “Ahlan wasaklan,” or “welcome”—​and instructions in Arabic that I don’t understand. All the energy and excitement feels odd when we sit here in rows, in shock, like sitting ducks.

  Tim picks up Fred’s tin and opens it.

  “Look, Anna.” He’s smiling. “He’s all right!”

  I peer in. “He even looks like he enjoyed the landing.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen and children,” the captain says over the intercom. “Well, that was interesting—​but we did it!” The relief in his voice makes him sound younger. “You can now undo your seat belts, but please remain seated—​just for a little longer, until we have talked to the hijackers on the ground. Thank you very much.”

  Rosemary seems to be helping to open the door nearest the cockpit.

  “Hold on, Alan,” I hear her call to the chief steward. “I think they want us to undo the emergency rope so they can fix it to that wooden ladder. They’re shouting up for it.”

  “OK, here it comes. Tie it to that Jeep!” Alan shouts down.

  Once the rope and wooden ladder are in place, more guerrillas pour on board. They take turns looking down the aisle at us, at their captives, and their faces register a kind of astonishment, then pride and delight. Two new ones walk down and station themselves at the back of the plane.

  There’s a disturbance behind me. I crane my neck to see. The man with the bomb briefcase is slowly walking up the aisle toward us, still wearing his sunglasses. His steps are measured, deliberate. When he passes by, the passengers lean slightly away from him, as though he’s contaminated. And as he gets closer to me, I see that the briefcase is on a long chain handcuffed to his wrist. He has dark stubble on his wide, cr
eased face, and his mouth turns up at the edges in a permanent half smile. His small ears stand out like mollusks from his shaved head. I can smell his acidic after-shave long after he’s gone.

  When he reaches the front, he immediately disappears into the cockpit. The captain, his two copilots, and the navigator are quickly ejected, and the door is closed firmly behind them.

  They stand displaced, out of context, at the front of the plane. The captain’s jaw is set, his mouth grim. He has thick white hair, a long face, and an authoritative air. He stands tall and dignified, his arms loose at his sides.

  “I cannot agree to turning off the engines,” he says to the two hijackers who boarded at Beirut. “If I do, there’ll be no air-conditioning or pumps for water, and the toilets will fail.”

  But the hijackers insist. “If the engines aren’t shut down,” the woman says clearly in good English, “you might try to escape.”

  “Get this thing in the air without you noticing?” the captain says. “Nonsense! You do know that once the power’s off, you can’t start it up again.” He looks in frustration at the navigator, who shakes his head in disbelief.

  “You’ll really regret it,” the navigator says in a Scottish accent. “How the hell are you going to look after all these people without toilets or water? Without air-conditioning, in these temperatures?”

  But the hijackers won’t budge. In fact, they force the two men back into the cockpit to switch everything off. The copilots are told to sit down in the empty first class seats at the front.

  Suddenly all the neon lights in the ceiling recesses over the aisle go off, all the No Smoking signs disappear, and the air-conditioning shuts down. The little hose sending out a wonderful stream of cold air above my head stops. I put my hand up to check. Nothing. I try the light switch. Dead.