In-flight Entertainment
Pages: 1 2 View on a single page
After all that nonsense at Heathrow, it came as particularly welcome to find himself upgraded to first class. This hadn’t happened to Alan before, and he looked around him with beady pleasure. Business class he was used to, club class and premium economy and what have you, the extra eight inches was a life-saver when you were six foot plus; but not first, until now.
His champagne was in a real glass rather than a plastic facsimile. It made a difference. He had way more room to stretch his legs, and on a nine-hour trip to Chicago that counted for something, especially after a four-hour delay. The big armchairs were ranged in curved couples, like Victorian love seats; his own faced forward, while the old guy opposite had the window seat of this pair, its back to the cockpit. They were near enough to converse if they chose, but thus far hadn’t done so, which suited Alan just fine.
The other first-class passengers were mainly business types like himself, or much older men. No women, unless you counted the air stewardesses. His own stopped and smiled at him fondly, so he took another sparkle-filled glass from her tray. He could get used to this. Yes, really quite old; the passenger just across the aisle from him, for example, he must be eighty if he was a day, and not looking too good on it either. Cabin crew had already had to help him totter down the aisle to the toilet, first one in after the seat belt signs went off, and even now he couldn’t seem to settle; he’d just pressed the button for more attention, Alan couldn’t help but notice.
Yes, he was going to enjoy this flight, he decided, inspecting the menu and the list of films on offer. He was a bit of a film buff. Something retro to start with, something easy to eat by; here it was, just the thing, North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. King prawns on a bed of wild rice with star anise. Already he was aware of his tightening facial skin and sore red eyes, but this could hardly be called an ordeal. It’s being up in the clouds, he thought, as the champagne kicked in; it’s being in transit. I’m where it’s at.
All you needed for the modern world was to know how to work a remote control—when to fast-forward, when to double-click—which was something these older guys simply couldn’t get the hang of. The screen on the swivel arm in front of him showed a shrunken globe with a jewel of an aeroplane—the one he was on—just clear of the tiny triangle which represented the UK, at the start of its journey across the pond. He felt unaccountably moved. The end of the world was nigh, that’s what the Heathrow nutters had been shouting, basically. Global warming, he was sick of the sound of it, he only had to see those words and a wave of boredom engulfed him.
Even his parents had jumped on the bandwagon, wittering on about their carbon footprints the last time he went to see them, complaining about how the lawn needed mowing right through winter now, showing off their new wiggly light bulbs. His mother had sneaked a sticker on to the windscreen of his new Merc SUV—COSTING THE EARTH. He hadn’t noticed, but Penny had been furious when she saw it.
‘Your mother,’ she’d hissed. ‘She’d like us all to go back to saving little bits of string just like her mother did in the war. That does it, I’m not having her over here being holier than thou about our patio heaters.’
The old guy across the aisle was making quite a fuss now; Alan watched his freckled baldy head jerking around and his hands fluttering spasmodically as the air stewardess leaned down to ask him what he wanted. She was nice, that girl, a nice smile and nice teeth; though she wasn’t smiling now, right enough. What a job! You had to hand it to them.
The thing was, as he’d tried to explain to his parents, the science behind these new reports could be quite shaky. There were two sides to every coin, and anyway Planet Earth has a self-regulating mechanism, rather like the economy, and we should leave it to right itself. Mother Nature knows a thing or two, he’d told them, tapping his nose; don’t you worry. And if it does get too hot, America’s going to send giant mirrors into space to deflect some of the sun’s rays back off into the darkness.
‘What about the polar bears?’ his mother had persisted. She’d always preferred animals to humans, as she proudly announced from time to time.
‘Yes, it’s a shame about the polar bears,’ Alan had said, growing exasperated. ‘And the three-toed Amazonian tree frogs. But there you go. It’s the survival of the fittest out there, Mum.’
‘Last time we came to meet you at the airport,’ his father had butted in, apropos of nothing in particular that Alan could see, ‘there was this American family and the kids were all in T-shirts saying DARWIN WAS WRONG.’
Where was the food? He was going to go for the boeuf en croûte rather than the Indonesian fish curry. More of the cabin crew seemed to have converged now on the old man with his fluttering hands. The nice stewardess flashed Alan a smile when he caught her eye, then went back to looking worried. An announcement came out over the sound system for any doctor on board to please come forward. Now, for the first time, Alan’s opposite number in the curving double seat leaned across and spoke to him.
‘I can’t see what’s going on from here,’ he rasped.
‘It’s the old guy in the next seat along,’ hissed Alan. ‘He seems to be in some sort of trouble. Oh, look, here’s someone. Must be a doctor. He’s obviously not best pleased. Now they’re making the seat recline. They’ve got him lying down flat.’
Other heads too were craning to get a look at the drama. The cabin crew stuck determined smiles on their faces and started to do the rounds, taking orders for dinner.
‘Four hours’ delay,’ volunteered Alan, ‘thanks to those jokers at Heathrow. Alan Barr, by the way.’
‘And I’m Jeremy Lees. Yes, those anti-flying protesters. A waste of time.’
‘Complete time-wasters.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Jeremy. ‘What I meant, though, was it was a waste of their time. They’re not going to change anything.’
‘Exactly. It’s nonsense, isn’t it, this global warming stuff. Trying to turn the wheel back. Half the scientists don’t agree with it anyway.’
‘Actually I think you’ll find they do. Ah, red please,’ said Jeremy as the air stewardess offered him wine. ‘What have you got? Merlot or Zinfandel? I’ll try the Zinfandel. Thank you. No, they do agree now, they’ve reached a consensus. I ought to know, I was one of them. No, it’s not nonsense, I’m afraid. The world really is warming up.’
‘Merlot,’ said Alan, rather annoyed. These finger-wagging types were getting everywhere. Even his own firm had been pressured into signing up for some carbon-offsetting scheme recently. £19.50 extra it had cost for this trip to Chicago. Plant a bloody tree. All a big con trick. ‘So how long have we got?’ he demanded with a tinge of belligerence. ‘Cheers.’
‘Your health,’ replied Jeremy, raising his glass in a courtly manner.
‘Well. They were saying thirty years but now it’s looking more like twenty, or even fifteen. Still, that should see me out.’
Old bugger, thought Alan; how self-centred can you get? The children’ll be in their twenties.
‘The thing is, the nearer you get to a mountain, the less of it you see,’ said Jeremy obscurely. ‘Like old people and death.’
Enough of you, thought Alan, nodding at him and donning his headphones. Cary Grant was waiting at a bus stop in the Midwest and in the distance was the little crop-spraying plane buzzing towards him. He hadn’t really noticed it yet. This was the best bit of the film; Alan couldn’t help losing concentration, though, when he noticed from the corner of his eye that his favourite air stewardess was holding a plastic bag of liquid aloft. She was standing just ahead of him in the aisle, while a man who was presumably the passenger-doctor had started to fit a drip. A second stewardess held a torch. Wow, thought Alan; it must be serious. He looked around him again, uneasy. He could see a man playing sudoku, and another forking food into his mouth like there was no tomorrow.
Nobody else seemed bothered.
‘It’s getting serious over there,’ he said, pulling off his headphones and addressing Jeremy in a low voice. From the corner of his eye he could see Cary Grant running for his life.
‘Oh?’ said Jeremy.
‘They’ve rigged up a drip,’ said Alan. ‘It all looks a bit DIY. One of them’s shining a torch. You don’t think they’ll try to, uh, operate?’
‘Extremely unlikely,’ said Jeremy. ‘Not the right conditions for that, really. Think of the litigation, too—it would take a brave doctor these days to operate, particularly in first class to America.’
Alan looked back at the furtive drama playing itself out across the aisle, at the hot, unhappy faces of the participating cabin crew. The doctor pushed down rhythmically, with pauses, straight-armed and grim. CPR, thought Alan, recognizing the process from countless episodes of Casualty and ER.
‘This is your captain speaking,’ came the aircraft sound system. ‘Unfortunately, as some of you are already aware, one of our passengers has been taken ill and needs more help than we can provide on board. Accordingly we have arranged to land at the next available opportunity in order to provide this passenger with the medical attention he needs. We will be landing at Goose Bay in approximately two hours.’
‘Goose Bay!’ said Alan. ‘Where the hell’s that?’
There was a murmur of discomfiture all around him, a general raising of eyebrows, and a barrage of discreet but questioning looks directed at the ongoing life-and-death spectacle.
‘It’s in Labrador,’ said Jeremy.
‘How far is that from Quebec?’ asked Alan. ‘Montreal?’
‘Oh, hundreds of miles,’ said Jeremy. ‘It’s north of Newfoundland. We’ll be up near Greenland, or what’s left of it.’
Alan swore softly to himself. Four hours’ delay at Heathrow, now this. He had to give his presentation in exactly thirteen hours’ time. Great.
‘Anyway, I’ll tell you why there’s no point in us trying to cut back on carbon emissions and all the rest of it,’ he snapped at Jeremy, aware that he was allowing himself to slide into a rage. ‘In a word, pal—China!’
‘China,’ said Jeremy, mildly amused. ‘Yes, yes, the Yellow Peril.’
‘If everyone in China gets on a plane, we’re stuffed,’ said Alan.
‘Agreed. Though do remember they’ve only got four hundred or so airports at the moment, as opposed to five thousand plus in America.’ He turned to the air stewardess at his side. ‘I’ll have the Swiss white chocolate pavé please, with the Tayside raspberry coulis.’
There was a flurry across the aisle and Alan craned his neck to make out the doctor arming himself with some sort of box-like machine. Whump, it went; whump, whump. Pause. Alan saw the old man’s hands fly up in the air and come down again.
‘What’s that?’ he asked the air stewardess with a jerk of his head.
Her eyes were suspiciously watery despite her professional smile. She shook her head and moved away.
‘That’ll be the defibrillator,’ said Jeremy.
Alan realized she had failed to take his pudding order and wondered if he could call her back. Probably not a good idea under the circumstances. Now Cary Grant was climbing up the president’s stone nose. Pudding was the best part of the meal for him. He allowed himself to be distracted by the Mount Rushmore chase sequence for a few minutes and the next time he looked up he saw the doctor shaking his head and rolling down his sleeves. Did that mean...? Apparently it did, because a tartan blanket was being pulled up over what must now be the corpse.
Jeez. It made you think.
‘Jeremy,’ he said after a few seconds, leaning across, ‘er, something’s happened over there I think.’
Jeremy looked up from his book, sharp eyes greatly intensified for a moment by the lenses of his glasses. He peered at Alan.
‘He’s gone, then?’ he said.
‘Incredible,’ said Alan. ‘I don’t believe it. Right beside us.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen it before on aeroplanes,’ said Jeremy. ‘It happens more than you might think, particularly in first class. If they’re taken ill in economy, they’re brought through here because there’s more space. Quite a cause of bad feeling sometimes.’
‘How so?’ asked Alan, shocked.
‘Well, people don’t want to pay out several thousand for a ticket and then find they have to sit beside a dead body all the way to Hong Kong.’
Alan glanced involuntarily at the shape beneath the blanket. Put like that. Hardly ideal. Still, the poor guy.
‘The poor guy,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Looks like he was on his own, too. Far from home and family. Poor guy!’
‘Maybe,’ said Jeremy. ‘Or maybe it was as good a way to go as any, quick, up in the clouds, helped on his way by kind cabin crew. Certainly better than a hospice or a geriatric ward or at home alone in front of Countdown.’
Weirdo, thought Alan. He drew back into his broad-winged chair. It was unsettling, all this. Next thing he felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned round to the enquiring face of the sudoku man sitting across the aisle behind him.
‘Do you think,’ asked the man, ‘do you think we’ll still have to land at Goose Bay now that, er?’
‘That’s a point,’ said Alan.
‘We’re six hours behind schedule as it is,’ said the man, tapping his watch.
‘You’re right.’
‘Because there’s nothing they’ll be able to do for him in Goose Bay.’
‘No,’ said Alan. ‘With the best will in the world.’
‘Exactly.’
When they asked the air stewardess about this a little later, however, she told them that they still would have to land there, as the request had been acted upon by Air Traffic Control: it was all logged in and un-deprogrammable.
Pages: 1 2 View on a single page