Girl on a Plane (12 page)

David has gone to play Monopoly with Alan and Rosemary in first class. I couldn't bear the thought of it. The talk of war has made me feel even more jittery and anxious. All I want to do is cut out and sleep. I don't want to think anymore about anything—​just for a while.

But it's
so
hot. The air hangs heavily in the cabin. The temperature's reached well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside already, and everyone's sweating nonstop. Some people's hair is plastered to their heads like they've just gotten out of the swimming pool. Sweat runs into our eyes all the time, and those in glasses have to wipe them continuously as they steam up in the heat. Eye makeup runs too, so most women have given up wearing any.

The cabin smells of hot plastic, smoky upholstery, and stale sweat. Our clothes stink too, but what can we do? We're all in the same boat—​well, plane. And the thirst is unbearable. My throat's so sore now that my voice has gone all croaky, and it's a real effort to talk.
When
are they going to bring us another water ration? It's got to be soon.

And now, to add to all that, a revolting smell is wafting up the aisle from the toilets. There's been no water to flush them for hours. The last time I went, they were almost overflowing, but that was nothing compared with this. Looks like the captain and Jim are trying to sort something out with Sweaty and the Giant.

A child's walkie-talkie crackles quietly behind me. It's Tim, creeping backwards down the aisle. When he's alongside me, he stops.

“Pooh,” he says, “the toilets
really
stink.”

“I know, it's disgusting. Let's hope they can sort it out soon.”

“Come in, number two,” Tim says into his walkie-talkie. “Do you read me? Am in very stinky situation. Meet me at row five.”

When I do finally manage to snooze, David wakes me, desperate to tell me what's happened while I've been asleep. He's grinning from ear to ear.

“You've missed the funniest thing ever, Anna,” he says.

“What happened?”

“Well, the captain told the hijackers that the sewage pumps aren't working because the engine's switched off, and apparently the tanks weren't emptied in Beirut, so he said they have to empty them now somehow because those toilets are horrendous. He told them the waste chute's at the back of the plane and that they'd have to dig a pit below it and then unscrew the cap. But Sweaty said the captain and Jim should dig the pit. In this heat. They weren't happy about it.”

Tim comes by and stays to listen.

“So Jim and the captain climbed down the ladder and had to dig a pit with these small shovels while all the hijackers watched. It took them a while, and when the pit was big enough, Jim pointed to the sewage stopper and showed Sweaty how he couldn't reach it, and the captain did the same. So finally a tall, lanky guerrilla arrived with this other hijacker, who climbs up on his shoulders. Jim and the captain stand well away from the pit as the two men wobble toward the stopper. When they're underneath it, the man on top reaches up and starts turning the metal rim of the lid holding all the sewage inside the chute. And
whoosh!
Out spurts a great stream of it!”

Tim and David are laughing hysterically. “Totally covered from head to toe in poo!”

“That is
so
disgusting!” Tim grins.

“Yes, they weren't best pleased.” David grins too. “Check out Sweaty's face. They're all so annoyed. When they got back on board, Jim and the captain couldn't stop laughing. They said they knew it would happen all along, and, sure enough . . . ! They were so funny. They sounded just like two naughty school kids.”

The captain has just repeated that unless Leila Khaled, the Palestinian hijacker imprisoned in London, is released by the weekend, the hijackers will blow up our plane. Like we could forget. He says we all need to write to Ted Heath, the prime minister, and the hijackers will send our messages to him.

Apparently we have to be short and sweet. So I've put:

Please release Leila Khaled, imprisoned in London. I want to come home alive. Anna, aged 15.

Tim is sitting next to me, looking at his piece of paper.

“I don't know what to write,” he says. “Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

“The problem is, I don't really get what's happening . . .”

“It's complicated, isn't it?” I say. “But we need the prime minister, Ted Heath, to save us, which he can, if he does what the hijackers say.”

“By letting that woman in London go?”

“Exactly.”

“What happens if he won't?”

“I expect he will,” I lie. “Especially if we write to ask him.”

But inside I doubt he can give in to kidnappers' demands. Don't politicians always say they won't?

“Do you think I should write in capitals?” Tim asks. “Mr. Garnett says my handwriting's hopeless.”

“I think a telegram comes out in capitals anyway, so do it however you like.”

“Oh, OK.” He starts to write. When he's finished, he holds it up for me to see. “Do you think the prime minister will like it?”

PLEASE SAVE US I'M HUNGRY AND SO IS FRED MY TERRAPIN.

TIM XXX

“I think he'll love it.”

Rosemary comes to collect the notes. “That's excellent, Tim,” she says. “Let's hope it does the trick.” Tim looks pleased, then rushes off to finish his game with the twins.

Mr. Newton is listening to the BBC World Service news on his transistor radio. He kept the volume down low at first, but the guards don't seem to mind. In fact they seem pleased to hear how much publicity they're getting. So now a crowd gathers around the Newtons' seats on the hour to listen to the news. I hear Big Ben strike. It reminds me of being in the kitchen at home. I wonder if Marni's listening? She always says that the World Service keeps her sane. Is it keeping her sane now?

I don't need to get up. I can hear it from here. They're talking about a thousand Red Cross meals waiting in Beirut to be transported to the three planes. Well, I wish they'd hurry up. I'm having stomach cramps a lot now, and I've begun to feel dizzy whenever I stand up.

After the news, I slide down into the foot well to sleep, to pass time. But somehow it's more claustrophobic down here now. The bleak forest of black metal seat legs seems more firmly bolted to the floor. Why can't they move, let me have more space, instead of barring me in? But they're not going anywhere. Like me.

Forget the seat legs,
I say to myself.
Close your eyes. Think of something else.
I squeeze my eyes shut and think of the windows, the long line of windows down each side of the plane. But even they feel like a cruel illusion, trick windows that pretend you can look out on the world but don't let you see out properly. They're too high up and too small. And what's out there anyway? A line of hills—​and those tanks.

I give up trying to sleep and climb up onto my seat—​only to feel barricaded in by the rows and rows of other seats. Are they deliberately obscuring my view, like the passengers standing up all around the cabin? I'm desperate for space. I want to look a long way but I'm stuck inside this arch, this tunnel, with too many people squeezing themselves between lines of fixed chairs, between obstacles, turning sideways to pass one another, turning back to pass forward, up and down, up and down the narrow aisle.

And I'm losing any sense of the outside of the plane too, of its nose and its wings and its tail. I try to picture the tail rising majestically behind us, the strange VC10 tail with the engines at the back, but I can't see it. I know the body of the plane is huge, but the space inside seems fragmented into tiny, suffocating little compartments. Compartments that I need to escape.

Now.

Hundreds of miles away in the same desert, and under the same murderous sun, the wind gets up. At first, there are just small flurries and sharp scatterings, but soon the sand is being whipped several feet above the ground. And as the wind builds in strength, huge clouds billow up, armed with billions of stinging grains, and the desert begins to shift.

The ferocious wall of sand fills the sky, growing higher and higher, until it curls over at the top like a gigantic wave. The blood-red tsunami of sand, now many miles wide, gains momentum and races across the desert, toward the plane.

There's little warning.

The sky darkens, and within seconds the storm blots out the sun and plunges the desert into darkness.

The sandstorm bombards the plane, slamming down on it, pounding the windows.

Clouds of red sand pour in through the open door. The clouds thicken, twisting and rolling down the cabin . . .

I hear cries, violent coughing, and shouts as the crew and hijackers struggle to shut the door.

My eyes are stinging. I blink furiously, trying to wash the grit out, but the air is thick with it.

I can't breathe, can't see.

Rosemary runs past. “Cover your face! Hold anything—​blankets,
anything
—​up over your nose and mouth!”

I grab my blanket and hold it over my face, see David and Tim doing the same. Then I duck my head, crouch over.

But I'm suffocating.
Breathe, just a little.
There's no air.

I hear moaning and begin to panic. But then I remember Marni's mantra: “Breathe slowly, in through your nose, out through your mouth.” The blanket smells musty, of old earth.

Breathe. In.

The wind tears at the plane, buffeting it violently.

Out.

I feel it sway, move as if it's a living thing.

Breathe in.
There's the heavy
clunk
of the door being pulled to.

Breathe out.

How can the plane stand up to this?

Breathe in.

How long will it last? I sit hunched while the wind screams and the rampaging storm thunders outside. I imagine the sand covering the wheels, rising up over the guerrillas in their trenches. Will it bury us alive? Entire villages disappear sometimes.

Slowly, slowly, the clouds of sand inside the plane settle a little. The air clears a bit more. People come out from under their blankets and scarves, their sweaters and coats.

I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry, bloated, and thick. I try not to rub my grit-filled eyes and blink instead. But I'm so dehydrated, I can hardly make any tears. Slowly, though, my eyes clear enough for me to see that every inch of everything—​the seats, the carpets, the overhead lockers, the pleats in the curtains—​is coated in a fine layer of red sand. David and Tim are outlined too. A red film covers their hair, their eyebrows, their eyelashes. It lies in every crease of their faces and necks. I wipe it from my ears. It's under my fingernails, in between my toes.

Everyone is wiping their eyes, coughing, brushing themselves down. I sweep the sand off my tray. A little trickles into my empty shoes, set together on the floor. How far has it come? From North Africa? From Bahrain? They say the sands of the Sahara sometimes fall on southern France.

Eventually the storm outside abates, and when they open the door again, I add my name to the captain's list for a turn to look out, to breathe fresh air.

We all carry on clearing up. Someone is complaining about the sand in their whiskey. Tim's gathering it up to wear like soft, red war paint.

“I'll look just like a Kalahari caveman,” he says, smearing it onto his sticky forehead.

When I finally get my turn at the open door, there's a new world outside. Our little piece of desert has changed. The softer sand beyond the trenches and the hard, flat-topped hillocks have disappeared beneath a magnificently ridged dune rippling away into the distance.

So,
I think,
it really is a land of shifting sands, a place without maps, where everything keeps moving.

And nothing remains the same.

I'm standing in the doorway when Mr. Newton lumbers into view, his trousers hitched up a little too high, as usual. He staggers toward me from the aisle, still etched in red sand, sways briefly beside me before collapsing onto the black crew seat.

He's been drinking steadily all day. I can smell the alcohol fumes and his sour sweat.

He leans forward and fixes his tired eyes on me. “Now, li'l lady,” he says, slurring his words and throwing one arm out as if he's trying to get rid of it, “come and sit here, next to me.” He blinks and pats the seat next to him.

“I'm OK, thanks, Mr. Newton,” I say.

“That bastard prime minister going to save us, you think?” Thick saliva gathers at the corners of his mouth as he speaks. To my relief, he doesn't wait for a reply but pulls a packet of cigarettes out of his top pocket, lights one with a trembling hand, and takes a long drag.

He peers up at me again, his eyes bleary. “What do you say your name was?”

“Anna.”

“Ah.” The ash on his cigarette glows and lengthens. “Last days on earth, you know.” He takes another drag. A small, hollow tube of ash falls, breaks up on his dark trousers. “I'm tired,” he says, staggering to his feet and lurching toward the open door.

“Mr. Newton!” I catch him by the arm and look around for help. But no one's paying us any attention. “I'm . . . I'm going back now, Mr. Newton. Why don't you come with me?”

He nods sagely, as if he understands everything there is to know. Then his mouth droops, his face crumples, and two tears slide down his red-veined cheeks.

A hand reaches out and takes his elbow. The Giant.

“Hey!” Mr. Newton shakes him off.

The Giant glances at me, gives me a quick smile, and stands firm. “This way, please.” He nods toward the aisle.