‘It’s OK,’ she finally said, and wriggled from under him, clammy with sweat. ‘It’s OK’.
They were at Heathrow in plenty of time. The check-in lady gave Peter’s passport the once-over. ‘Travelling one-way to Orlando, Florida, yes?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ he said. She asked him if he had any suitcases to check in. He swung a sports bag and a rucksack onto the belt. It came across as dodgy somehow. But the logistics of his journey were too complicated and uncertain for a return booking. He wished Beatrice weren’t standing next to him, listening to these confirmations of his imminent departure into thin air; wished she’d been spared hearing the word ‘one-way’.
And then, of course, once he was handed his boarding pass, there was more time to fill before he would actually be allowed on the plane. Side by side, he and Beatrice meandered away from the check-in desks, a little dazzled by the excessive light and monstrous scale of the terminal. Was it the fluorescent glare that made Beatrice’s face look drawn and anxious? Peter put his arm around the small of her back. She smiled up at him reassuringly, but he was not reassured. WHY NOT START YOUR HOLIDAY UPSTAIRS? the billboards leered. WITH OUR EVER-EXPANDING SHOPPING OPPORTUNITIES, YOU MAY NOT WANT TO LEAVE!
At this hour of evening, the airport was not too crowded, but there were still plenty of people trundling luggage and browsing in the shops. Peter and Beatrice took their seats near an information screen, to await the number of his departure gate. They joined hands, not looking at each other, looking instead at the dozens of would-be passengers filing past. A gaggle of pretty young girls, dressed like pole dancers at the start of a shift, emerged from a duty-free store burdened with shopping bags. They tottered along in high heels, scarcely able to carry their multiple prizes. Peter leaned towards Beatrice’s face and murmured:
‘Why would anybody want to go on a flight so heavily laden? And then when they get to wherever they’re going, they’ll buy even more stuff. And look: they can barely walk.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe this is a display put on specially for us. The sheer impracticality of it all – right down to the ridiculous shoes. It lets everyone know these girls are so rich they don’t have to worry about the real world. Their wealth makes them like a different creature, an exotic thing that doesn’t have to function like a human.’
Bea shook her head. ‘These girls aren’t rich,’ she said. ‘Rich people don’t travel in packs. And rich females don’t walk as if they’re not used to high heels. These girls are just young and they enjoy shopping. They’re having an adventure. They’re showing off to each other, not to us. We’re invisible to them.’
Peter watched the girls stagger towards Starbucks. Their buttocks quivered inside their wrinkled skirts and their voices became raucous, betraying regional accents. Bea was right.
He sighed, squeezed her hand. What was he going to do without her, out in the field? How would he cope, not being able to discuss his perceptions? She was the one who stopped him coming out with claptrap, curbed his tendency to construct grand theories that encompassed everything. She brought him down to earth. Having her by his side on this mission would have been worth a million dollars.
But it was costing a great deal more than a million dollars to send him alone, and USIC was footing the bill.
‘Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?’
‘We ate at home.’
‘A chocolate bar or something?’
She smiled but looked tired. ‘I’m fine. Honestly.’
‘I feel so bad about letting you down.’
‘Letting me down?’
‘You know . . . In the car. It feels unfair, unfinished, and today of all days . . . I hate to leave you like this.’
‘It’ll be awful,’ she said. ‘But not because of that.’
‘The angle, the unfamiliar angle made me . . . ’
‘Please, Peter, there’s no need for this. I’m not keeping a score-card or a balance sheet. We made love. That’s enough for me.’
‘I feel I’ve . . . ’
She stopped his mouth with her finger, then kissed him. ‘You’re the best man in the world.’ She kissed him again, on the forehead. ‘If you’re going to do postmortems, I’m sure there’ll be much better reasons on this mission.’
His brow furrowed against her lips. What did she mean by ‘postmortems’? Was she just referring to the inevitability of encountering obstacles and setbacks? Or was she convinced that the mission as a whole would end in failure? In death?
He stood up; she stood up with him. They held each other tight. A large party of tourists poured into the hall, fresh from a coach and keen to travel to the sun. Surging towards their appointed gate, the babbling revellers split into two streams, flowing around Peter and Bea. When they’d all gone and the hall was relatively quiet again, a voice through the PA said: ‘Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Unattended items will be removed and may be destroyed.’
‘Do you have some sort of . . . instinct my mission will fail?’ he asked her.
She shook her head, bumping his jaw with her skull.
‘You don’t feel God’s hand in this?’ he persisted.
She nodded.
‘Do you think He would send me all the way to – ’
‘Please, Peter. Don’t talk.’ Her voice was husky. ‘We’ve covered all this ground so many times. It’s pointless now. We’ve just got to have faith.’
They sat back down, tried to make themselves comfortable in the chairs. She laid her head on his shoulder. He thought about history, the hidden human anxieties behind momentous events. The tiny trivial things that were probably bothering Einstein or Darwin or Newton as they formulated their theories: arguments with the landlady, maybe, or concern over a blocked fireplace. The pilots who bombed Dresden, fretting over a phrase in a letter from back home: What did she mean by that? Or what about Columbus, when he was sailing towards the New Land . . . who knows what was on his mind? The last words spoken to him by an old friend, perhaps, a person not even remembered in history books . . .
‘Have you decided,’ said Bea, ‘what your first words will be?’
‘First words?’
‘To them. When you meet them.’
He tried to think. ‘It’ll depend . . . ’ he said uneasily. ‘I have no idea what I’m going to find. God will guide me. He’ll give me the words I need.’
‘But when you imagine it . . . the meeting . . . what picture comes to your mind?’
He stared straight ahead. An airport employee dressed in overalls with bright yellow reflective sashes was unlocking a door labelled KEEP LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. ‘I don’t picture it in advance,’ he said. ‘You know what I’m like. I can’t live through stuff until it happens. And anyway, the way things really turn out is always different from what we might imagine.’
She sighed. ‘I have a picture. A mental picture.’
‘Tell me.’