(1989) Dreamer (4 page)

The anger that was rising inside her went flat, as if it had been lanced, and she felt a sharp pang of guilt. She sat down on the dining chair, feeling limp, as something uncomfortable echoed from her own childhood.

She thought about her own childhood and how life had dumped on her then. She thought about her marriage and her happiness and the forgetting that had
happened. Perhaps she had forgotten too much? Maybe it wasn’t only children that could feel neglected and unwanted. Maybe adults could too. Maybe that’s why it had happened.

‘Something’s wrong.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Something.’

Sam heard the voices, low, murmuring, muted, like a snatch of conversation from across the room at a cocktail party, and stiffened. She turned around, craning her neck over the back of her seat, trying to see where they had come from, but the man and the woman behind her were asleep. She listened, but could hear only the sound of the aircraft’s engines: a distant churning, like a dishwasher. Then the cycle changed, and she felt the plane begin to sink down into the cloud below.

Flying never normally bothered her, but suddenly she felt nervous. She stared uneasily at the trails of rain that streaked the window, and the swirling grey beyond. Landing. Her hands felt clammy with perspiration, and she realised she was shivering.

She wanted to put the clock back, not be on the plane at all. Stupid, unnecessary trip, she thought. Richard was right, she was jumping on and off too many planes. She wished she had not jumped on this one. Bucket seats; trying to save Ken money. Charter airlines took risks, someone told her. Calm down, Sam, she said to herself. Calm down.

There was a ping, and the ‘No Smoking’ sign lit up on the panel in front of her. Then another bell, higher
pitched, faintly musical, like the gong of an elevator announcing its arrival. Beng-bong. The sound irritated her.

‘This is Captain Walker.’ His matey voice irritated her as well. There was a hum and a screech and a loud click. ‘We’ve started our descent and expect to be on the apron in about twenty-five minutes. The weather in Sofia is cold – one degree Celsius and it’s snowing. We hope you have enjoyed your flight with us and that you have a pleasant stay in Bulgaria. On behalf of us all, I’d like to thank you for flying Chartair, and hope you choose to fly with us again.’ His voice was tired, clipped ex-RAF English. He was having to make the effort to sound friendly, and not as if it was just another charter flight, which it was; not as if he was tired and bored with dumping another load of cheap tourists in another cheap resort.

A little girl’s head popped over the seat back in front of her. ‘Hallo,’ she said.

‘Hallo,’ Sam replied.

The girl’s head disappeared and she heard giggling. ‘I said hallo to the lady behind!’

Perspiration was trickling down Sam’s face and she felt sick. She unbuckled her belt, slid across the empty seats beside her and walked unsteadily along the aisle which was sloping away from her, down towards the toilets, pushing against the seat backs to prevent herself from running forwards, waiting to be challenged by a stewardess, but they were busy stowing the duty frees and had not noticed her.

She reached the front of the aeroplane, still shaking, and was surprised to see the door to the flight deck was open. She stared through at the orange dials of the instruments and the captain and the first officer, in their white shirts, in their seats.

The first officer turned his head towards the captain, and she could hear him speak, clearly.

‘Derek,’ he said, ‘there is definitely something wrong.’

The captain flicked a switch beside him, and spoke loudly and dearly. ‘This is Chartair Six-Two-Four. Confirm we are on initial approach.’

A voice crackled back, sharp, tinny, with a precise, broken English accent. ‘Chartair Six-Two-Four. This is Sofia tower. We confirm initial approach. Runway Two-One. We have visibility of only two hundred metres – check your landing minima.’

‘Sofia tower. Chartair Six-Two-Four. Confirming runway Two-One.’

The captain leaned forward in his seat and adjusted a dial on the instrument panel. The first officer stared around. She could see the worry on his face, could feel his fear, as if it were a blanket of ice.

The microphone crackled again, and she heard the voice, more urgent. ‘Chartair Six-Two-Four. We have you identified on radar. You are too low. I say again too low. Climb to seven thousand feet immediately.’

‘We are at seven thousand feet,’ said the captain calmly, a trace of weariness in his voice as if the man in the tower had become infected with the same irrational fear as the first officer.

‘We have you identified on radar,’ said the controller. ‘You are at four thousand five hundred. Check your altimeter setting.’ His voice rose in excitement and panic. ‘Climb. Climb immediately! Discontinue your approach. I say again, discontinue your approach!’

‘I have seven thousand reading on both altimeters. Please check your radar.’ There was irritability creeping through the calm.

‘Climb, Derek,’ the first officer shouted. ‘The mountains, for Chrissake. Fucking climb!’

‘We’re clear. The mountains are five thousand ceiling.’

There was a sharp click and the toilet door in front of her opened. A man stood there, in a black hood with slits for his eyes and mouth.

She reeled back, and he clamped a black leather-gloved hand over her mouth, cracking her head back hard against the bulkhead. She smelled the leather of the glove, new fresh leather, flung her head violently away, tried to scream, tried to back away, felt a lever behind her jamming into her back; then the black leather glove came over her face again and she ducked, heard a tremendous bang and the hissing of air, then suddenly she was out of the aircraft, spinning wildly in the turbulence, and the deafening howling of the freezing wind and the engines, spinning through a crazed icy vortex, falling, falling, falling through a blackness that seemed to go on for ever.

Then she was free of it, floating in the cold grey cloud as if it was water. She could push her arms and move through it. She went further away, swimming effortlessly, until she could see the silver Boeing in the distance, cloud swirling around it like tendrils of weed as it flew into the dark grey shape that loomed upwards in front of it, a shape that was barely discernible from the cloud.

At first there was silence. The aircraft seemed to go on for a long time into the solid wall of the mountain, and she wondered for a moment whether it was her imagination, or just a strangely shaped cloud. Then the tail section flew away and began to cartwheel downwards. It bounced up for an instant off a ridge, and something began to spray out of it, like champagne, and float down behind it. Luggage, she realised with a sickening feeling.

It bounced again, rose up, and did a half-turn in slow
motion. The stream of suitcases that followed bounced in the same place, deflecting in the same way, except some of them burst open leaving a wake of fluttering clothes.

A solitary passenger, strapped in his seat, flew up through the clothes, followed by another, then a third, their limbs shaking about like toys emptying from a child’s cupboard as they plummeted back down.

There was a boom, and a ball of flame rose high up above. A fiercely blazing object joined the dance down the mountainside, showering sparks into the greyness all around it. An engine. It ploughed into the snow below her, hissing. Near it she could see the tail section, a stubby dark silhouette resting on the white snow, the top of the tail fin bent over at a right angle, the word ‘Chartair’ clearly visible, and part of the emblem of a prancing tiger and letters next to it G.Z.T.A.E.

And then there was a silence that frightened her. The cloud swirled around her, until she could no longer see the ground, until she could no longer tell whether she was lying face down or up. Panic began to grip her. She wanted to see Nicky, to hold him, squeeze him. She wanted to hug Richard, tell him she was sorry, tell him she forgave him, tell him she was sorry she had worked so damned hard. ‘Where are you?’ She turned her body over, then over again, trying to break away from the cold grey tendrils that were entwined around her. ‘Let me go. Please let me go and see them. Just five minutes. Please. That’s all. Five minutes.’

They tightened around her.

‘Let me go!’

The air was getting warmer now, stifling; it was getting harder to breathe. ‘Let me go!’ she screamed, punching out with her fists, swirling, twisting.

She felt a cool breeze on her face.

‘Bugs?’

Richard’s voice, she thought, puzzled.

‘Bugs?’

She saw a flat pool of light, and Richard standing near her in a striped shirt and paisley boxer shorts.

Different. The light was different. A dial blinked at her, orange like the dial of the aircraft, 0500. 0500. 0501.

‘OK, Bugs?’

Richard was standing over her.

‘OK Bugs?’ he said again.

She nodded. ‘Yes – I—’

He frowned, then struggled with the floppy arm of his shirt, and she heard the pop as the cufflink pierced the starch. Gold links with his initials on one side and his family crest on the other. Her wedding present to him. They’d come in a small wine-coloured box, and cost £216. Odd, the details you could remember. She stared at the reclining nude on the wall, at her face in the mirror above the bed, at the light streaming in from the bathroom door.

‘A dream,’ she said. ‘I was having a dream.’

‘You were making a horrible sound, really horrible.’ He turned away toward the wall mirror, and knotted his tie. As he pulled it tight, she felt something pull tight around her own throat. Dread seeped through her, hung around her, filled the room. The black hood with the slits came out of the door at her and the black leather glove clamped over her mouth. She shivered.

Richard struggled into his trousers, disentangled his red braces and pulled on his silver armbands. She had loved to watch him dress when they had first started sleeping together. He was fastidious about his clothes. Shirts with double cuffs; trousers with buttons for braces. Proper trousers, he called them. She wanted to
hold him suddenly, to hug him, feel him, to make sure he was real, still there; that her world was intact.

And then the revulsion as she remembered and she shrank back in the bed away from him, and shook with a sudden spasm of – fear?

‘What were you dreaming about?’

‘It – I – nothing. Just a nightmare.’

You’re afraid to tell it, she thought.

Afraid that if you tell it—

‘Must dash.’ He leaned down to kiss her, and she smelled the coconut shampoo in his damp hair, his sweet Paco Rabanne aftershave and the strong trace of last night’s garlic through the minty toothpaste on his breath. She felt a soft wet kiss on her cheek.

‘Busy day?’ she said, wanting him to stay just a moment longer.

‘Japan. I reckon Tokyo’s about to start going bonkers.’

‘Don’t be late. It would be nice if you could help me get things ready tonight.’

‘Oh Christ, yah. Our dinner party.’

‘It’s for your clients, Richard.’

‘I’ll be back in good time.’

The front door opened, then slammed shut. She dosed her eyes but opened them again, afraid of going back to sleep. She looked at the clock again. 0509. In a quarter of an hour he would be at his desk, chatting to Tokyo. Dealing. The Nikkei Dow. Gambling on equities, warrants, options, futures, currencies. So many variables. So many imponderables. He’d got angry with her once when she told him his job was like being a croupier in a high-tech casino.

The door opened and Nicky came padding sleepily in.

‘Hallo, Tiger. You’re up early.’

‘I can’t sleep.’

She put her hand out and tousled his hair. Soft, real. He shied away just a fraction, then put his head under her hand again for more.

‘Give Mummy a kiss.’

Damp. It felt like a miniature version of Richard’s. ‘Why can’t you sleep, Tiger?’

‘I had a nightmare.’

‘What was it about?’

‘It was about a horrible man. A monster.’

She sat up and hugged him. ‘That’s because I told you a story about one, isn’t it?’

He nodded solemnly. He was a serious child sometimes. Always thinking things through.

‘He ate me.’

She stared at the forlorn expression on his face. ‘I bet you tasted good.’

He stamped his foot on the carpet. ‘Don’t. That’s not funny.’

‘Mummy’s got to get ready. Want to sleep in our bed?’

‘No.’ He wandered off, shuffling his slippers across the floor. As he went, she saw the aircraft sliding silently into the solid wall of the mountain. The tail section cartwheeling down. The luggage spewing out. The boom, and the ball of flame. She slipped unsteadily out of bed and walked to the bathroom, shivering, from the images, from the chill air, from the dark cloud of foreboding that hung over her.

A bad dream, that’s all. Forget it.

She heard the thump of the engines of a launch going by, up river; deep, steady, rhythmic.

Then realised it wasn’t a launch at all. It was her own heartbeat.

Sam sat in the reception of Urquhart Simeon Mcpherson, holding the Castaway story board on the sofa beside her, watching Ken pacing restlessly up and down, hands sunk into the pockets of his battered leather coat over his denim jacket and blue jeans, his black boots immaculately shiny: his uniform. Scruffy clothes, but always immaculate boots.

Two girls came in through the door chatting, nodded at the receptionist and went down a corridor. A helmeted despatch rider with ‘Rand Riders’ printed on his back waded in and thrust a package over the counter; he stood waiting for the signature, bandy-legged in his body-hugging leathers, like an insect from outer space.

Ken sat on the arm of the sofa, above her. ‘You all right?’

‘Fine,’ she said.

‘You look a bit tense.’

‘I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘Waiting like this always feels like being back at school. Waiting to see teacher.’

He pulled a pack of Marlboro from his jacket pocket, and shook out a cigarette. He clicked his battered Zippo and inhaled deeply, then ran a hand through his hair.