Flight (28 page)

‘I suppose I thought that things would sort of evolve. Like you yourself said, when we were at the empty house. You and me, it's something real, something else, quite separate, absolutely nothing to do with…'

‘Go on, you can say her name, can't you?'

‘Nothing to do with Marina. With Marina and me.'

‘Why didn't you tell me, at the beginning?'

‘It was too soon, and then it was too late. And you never asked.'

‘That's an absolutely terrible thing to say, you can't get away with that.'

‘I'm not trying to get away with anything,' said Martagon.

‘I never asked because I trusted you. Of course I assumed that there must have been someone, before. That's normal. But I never imagined … until Tom put me wise. Just last week. I didn't want to believe him. When I asked you not to go to France this last time it was like saying, prove to me that it's not true. Didn't you understand that?'

‘Not at the time. I did wonder, afterwards. Julie, I am so ashamed, so very sorry.'

‘Don't say you're sorry. It doesn't help.'

They walked on again in silence for several minutes. Martagon just had to look at his watch.

‘Why don't you say anything?' she asked.

‘I don't know what to say.'

‘You see, all this time with you, I was getting quite good at being happy,' said Julie. ‘It was a new thing for me, ordinary happiness. Not like when I was seeing Tom. That was all over the top. And I found I was happier when I was happy, if you see what I mean. Some people aren't, they're really only happy when they're unhappy. It suits them. It doesn't suit me, not any more. But I keep being pushed right back into being unhappy again.'

‘You're very good at being happy,' said Martagon. ‘We have been happy together, in our way which is no one else's way.'

He wanted to talk to her about the little unit that they made, she and Fasil and himself, and how precious and comforting it still seemed to him, but could not find the words. He knew he could not expect Julie, at her age, to have Nancy Mulhouse's stoic philosophy.

‘You'll be happy again,' he told her. ‘You probably think you won't, but you will. You and I can be happy again, too. In time. Differently. We will reconfigure.'

He really meant all that. He didn't say that he was sure she would like Marina when she got to know her. He wasn't at all sure it was true. He wanted to say only what was true. He felt responsible now, and careful, as if he were easing a piece of heavy engineering, fuelled with dangerous emotions, into its casing.

It was not so easy.

‘I don't think so,' said Julie, in response to his little speech. ‘Because we won't be seeing each other. I never want to set eyes on you again.'

He did not want this at all. Julie was part of the fabric of his life. Fasil too. He took her hand. She did not take it away, but let it lie inertly in his. After a few seconds he let her hand go.

‘Remember our deal?' he said. ‘That you would always be there for me? That I would always be there for you?'

‘There is no deal. There never really was.'

Time was passing.

‘Let's just leave it for now. You're coming to the airport opening tomorrow with Giles and Amanda, I'll see you there. We'll find time afterwards, and talk again. Properly.'

‘I'm not going. I told them already. And I told them why.'

That hurt. He looked at his watch, quite openly. ‘I have to go.'

‘Plane to catch, Martagon?'

‘Yup … What will you do?'

‘That's none of your business now.'

‘Will you go back to Hailu?'

‘That's none of your business either.'

‘What will you do right now, after we leave here?'

‘None of your business. Though, actually, I'll probably go for a walk. A very long walk.'

She adjusted her little backpack on her shoulders, pulling at the straps.

‘Give my love to Fasil.'

‘What do you care about Fasil? You've let him down, too, you know.'

‘I care a lot about Fasil. I care about you, too. I always will.'

She interrupted him before he finished the sentence. There were tears glittering in her eyes now. ‘Just don't say it, Martagon. Don't say it. I don't want to hear it.'

She turned aside and ran from him, lightly and fast, not through the wrought-iron gates but in the opposite direction, back through the rose gardens and towards the wide open area of the park. He watched her disappear, her backpack bobbing behind her.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, knowing she could not hear. ‘I'm so sorry.'

*   *   *

Martagon just missed one Gatwick Express train at Victoria. It was drawing out as he reached the platform. If he had found a cab two minutes earlier he would have caught it. He had to wait fifteen minutes for the next. No problem. He still had time. Just.

At Gatwick, the electronic sign announced that the next shuttle to the North Terminal would arrive in eight minutes. Eight minutes! So slack, so inefficient. They should be non-stop, one every minute. Thank goodness he had picked up his ticket earlier.

When at last he got to the check-in there was no queue. Thank God again. Phew.

The woman at the desk took his ticket, set it down in front of her, and worked at her keyboard, looking at the screen. ‘I'm sorry, sir, this flight has closed.'

Martagon looked at his watch.

‘But it doesn't leave for nearly half an hour. And I've only got hand luggage.'

‘I'm sorry, sir, the flight is already closed.'

‘The plane's still on the tarmac, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is, sir, but the flight is closed.'

‘Then just phone through to the gate and say I'm on my way.'

‘I'm sorry, sir, the flight is closed.'

‘But I have a ticket. A seat.'

‘There were stand-by passengers. We've filled the flight now. I'm sorry, sir, but we have to do that, we do get a lot of no-shows.'

Martagon took a deep breath. He mustn't shout at her. It wasn't her fault, after all. ‘OK, OK, so get me on the next one.'

She resumed clicking on her keyboard and looking at the screen. ‘I'm sorry, sir, all our flights are fully booked for the rest of today. I could get you on a flight early tomorrow morning.'

‘Try the other airlines.'

More clicking. More clicking. Martagon began to sweat.

‘There's a Sabena from Heathrow to Brussels at sixteen twenty with a connection to Marseille, but you won't catch that.'

More clicking. More clicking. She found a later Sabena flight via Brussels from Heathrow and he reserved the place. Business class only available. £398. Good God.

It took about an hour by the special bus, once he found the bus and once it started, between Gatwick and Heathrow. Martagon sat through the journey in a stupor.

The Brussels flight took off on time. Martagon had an aisle seat, next to an English couple – in their late fifties, he judged. The wife, in the window-seat, had a newspaper. She held it over her own lap and her husband's, and the two leaned in to one another, arms and thighs pressed together, so that they could both read it at the same time. They were rather stout. Neither was particularly good-looking. Their clothes were tidy and dull. The easy warmth of their companionship was palpable. It was like sitting next to an old-fashioned double radiator.

No love dramas for them, thought Martagon, no longings to be other than they are, to be rich and famous, to be somewhere else. No betrayals, no anguish other than the anguish endemic to the ordinary trajectory of life. Which for each individual is not ordinary but unique. They had married each other and become more and more married over the years. Perhaps I am getting it wrong, but I don't think so.

Chatting with the couple did not disillusion him. They were going to Brussels to visit their son, who would be meeting them at the airport. He was an MEP. They were travelling business class as a treat. They hadn't had a holiday abroad for years. They were really looking forward to seeing the grandchildren again. They lived in Wantage, and their name was Carter.

‘Wantage. Where there's a statue of King Alfred,' said Martagon, remembering the newspaper reports of Arthur's accident.

‘That's right. King Alfred was born in Wantage,' Mr Carter said, with pride. ‘He was King of Wessex. He drove the Danes out of London in the year eight sixty-eight. He was a great scholar as well. That's why he's called Alfred the Great.'

Martagon thought Mr Carter might be a teacher, or in local government.

‘You must know the town, then,' said Mrs Carter, leaning over. ‘Do you know the Bear Hotel? On the square, where King Alfred is. We have lovely countryside around too, we do a lot of walking, on the downs. Do you know White Horse Hill?'

Martagon had to confess that he had never even been to Wantage. ‘I had a friend who lived near there, but he died.'

‘Ah.'

Conversation died too, and Martagon sat back and closed his eyes. The Carters were really nice. Decent, unpretentious, unjudgemental, alert, contented, provincial. Enough money for their needs but not rich. ‘Centred', as Tom Scree would say.
English,
like King Alfred and the Berkshire downs. There were millions of English people like them. A true tribe, however mixed genetically with invading Danes, not to mention Normans. His Dorset clients were just examples of the London chattering classes, transposed. The Carters loved their England. It went without saying.

I love England too, but I never really got the chance. Or, rather, I never gave England a chance.

The plane was beginning its descent. The Carters folded away the newspaper and began fussing with their passports.

*   *   *

‘Goodbye, goodbye! Have a great time!' He waved to the Carters. Goodbye, England.

Martagon's connection to Marseille was delayed. Technical problems.

He bought
The Economist
and read it mindlessly from cover to cover. Battered and shamed by the past few days, he now had no thoughts, no reactions. Almost, no feelings. Time passed. It struck him that he ought to ring Marina and tell her he would be late for their special dinner. Seriously late.

He tried to call her number on his mobile phone. It didn't work. He hadn't recharged it for days. He found the public phones. The first one he tried was out of order. As he was trying another one he heard his flight being called – the ‘final call'. He must have missed the previous announcement. He daren't risk screwing this flight up. She would know he was on his way. He would call her from Marseille.

*   *   *

When the plane touched down at Marignane there was a maddening wait before the cabin doors were opened. Martagon strode fast, almost ran, to the exit hall, struggling with the painting and the computer case.

The first thing to do was to rent a car.

All the car-rental kiosks were closed. Every one of them.

I don't believe it.

An official told him that his flight was the last one in for the evening, and pointed out where he could collect his key and rental documents if he had prebooked.

He hadn't prebooked, he never had before. But, then, maybe he had never flown in at this hour.

He waited for a taxi, and when he reached the top of the queue he clumsily explained his predicament to the driver. He had to rent a car. Any car. Tonight, now. The driver looked dubious, then trundled off, round the airport access roads and into the industrial outskirts of Marseille. It seemed to take an age. The first garage they stopped at was closed. So was the second.

The driver pondered. He then sped off towards the centre of the city, stopping in a back-street. The forecourt of this third garage was dark, but there was a light on in the office. Someone was still there.

With the cab-driver's help Martagon negotiated, for a silly price, paid in cash, the rental of the garage-owner's nephew's car, left with him while the nephew was
en vacances
with his wife and family in Orlando, Florida.

A digression then ensued while the driver and the garage-man, who were well acquainted, held a lively and well-informed discussion about the respective merits of the Paris Disneyland and the Florida one. Martagon, who had been to neither, and only understood half of what they were saying, stood by.

The nephew's car, parked at the back of the premises, turned out to be an old grey Opel Kadett, which looked as if it had led a hard life. There were rusted dents in the bodywork, and splashes of dried-on mud. But it was a car.

The garage-man went into his office to search for the ignition key. Martagon paid off the cab-driver, and shook hands with him cordially. The taxi disappeared at speed.

The garage-man shunted various other cars out of the way in order to make space for the Opel to get out. The Opel then failed to start. The garage-man sloped off to look for jump-leads. While he was gone, Martagon used the telephone in his office to call Marina. The number was engaged.

The garage-man got the Opel going, and left the engine running. Martagon threw the wrapped painting and his computer case into the passenger seat, shook hands with the garage-man, and drove off.

He had no idea where he was, and it took him a good half-hour to navigate through the maze of streets, and to get on course for the northbound autoroute. But he was, now, at last, on his way. Only about an hour to go.

It was not until he was rattling along the autoroute that he asked himself why on earth he hadn't told the taxi, straight off, to take him all the way to Cabrières d'Aigues. It was so obvious. It would have been money well spent. The painful session with Julie, and the nightmare of his journey back to Marina, had caused his brain to go into neutral in order to avoid flipping altogether. He hadn't been thinking well. He hadn't been thinking at all. His eyes stung, he felt a bit sick. He hadn't slept properly for about a week, he hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours.