Time passed and other passengers fretted and protested as they missed connections and appointments. He missed his meeting; it would be clear to those waiting how and why. He was not even annoyed now and was able to stop composing angry letters of complaint. How little time, in the actual world, did he put aside for contemplation. So he contemplated: he became moved by his own helplessness, and wept a little at the thought of his children doing their homework at the kitchen table or in their rooms, and his wife of three years telling her stepchildren not to worry, their father would be back soon. It was important he saw the kids. They’d go to school in the morning; it would be another two weeks before they came again. And loved, at last, he longed for his wife’s frequent kisses; it occurred to him that the loved and the unloved are a different species.
There was a further announcement, this time from the reassuring voice of the captain. Engineers were busy working on the malfunction, which had closed many airports. Passengers were not to worry, the work was proceeding successfully. It would be about ninety minutes before they landed, and meanwhile passengers were encouraged to relax, enjoy the rest of their flight and choose this airline again.
Bridget fetched Daniel a Bloody Mary and, answering his question, laughed and said she had no idea whether it had been a terrorist cyber-attack or not, but she thought it unlikely. Daniel sat through another movie and thought of his friends having supper; he imagined their houses, their talk, their food and their ignorance of the futility he was experiencing. To prevent himself becoming too maudlin, he took another pill, watched the city grow dim and the lights come on, turned over and tried to sleep. When he awoke, they’d be on the ground and he’d go straight home. The meeting would be rearranged. The world was hell itself, but most misfortunes happened to other people.
It was dark when he woke up at three thirty in the morning, parched, hungry and aching. Despite being at the luxury end of the plane, he felt as though he’d slept on a park bench, and crucifixion would have been preferable. Some passengers were moving about the plane but the staff were absent — asleep, he guessed. He drank some water. This was the longest air delay he’d experienced.
He must have dropped off again, because the next thing he was aware of was some sort of commotion. ‘Hey, what d’you think you’re doing?’ someone said. There were other raised voices behind him, and peals of agreement. ‘Stop him, stop him,’ said someone else. ‘Call the captain!’ What was the man doing?
Daniel turned to look and then rose to get closer.
There was no actual resistance to the uprising which appeared to be going on. A huge man with a large head whom Daniel had noticed earlier at the back of the plane had left his place. His torso barely concealed by a sweat-stained T-shirt, and weakly supported on his little legs, the man had abandoned his seat in the centre of a row and was determinedly moving along the aisle, clutching each headrest as he went, before butting through the curtain and into the segregated area of Business Class. He collapsed into the empty seat behind the footballer, snatched at the control which converted the seat into a bed, rolled over and fell asleep noisily.
The passengers in Daniel’s section — apart from the footballer, who looked at no one — caught one another’s eyes. Daniel looked away: he’d realised that what was horrible was the idea that these formerly anonymous people could become real, and might even begin to matter to him a little. He would have to forfeit his superiority, even his contempt, in exchange for sympathetic exchange with strangers.
‘Well, well,’ he said, looking at the snoring huge man. Without the assistance of the rugged midfielder, who would attempt to move or dispute with him? Who had the authority or will? Bridget and her other colleagues, who had appeared at the scene, merely stood and watched, before returning to the galley. Daniel went back to his seat and stared ahead. It was a turning point: the barricades had been stormed, the Berlin Wall had been breached and nothing would be the same in this prison in the sky. ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Who will help us!’
‘No one!’ said the dog woman. ‘No one cares! We have been forgotten.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Daniel. ‘How could you forget an airplane?’
Bridget leaned over him and said, ‘If you can, get some sleep. We’re going to be up here for a while. It’s proving difficult to find out what’s going on.’
As she spoke he touched her arm, and she didn’t move hers. Since he had married for a second time he’d been faithful to his lover, friend and wife as he’d promised he would. But here, perhaps he could make an exception. He laughed to himself: how foolish all this was making them.
He drank a couple of beers, Bridget covered him up and tucked him in, and he managed to pass out. But eventually, despite his efforts, he had no choice but to wake up. Consciousness was no longer a blessing. Then there was more day, and everything in front of him had shifted.
The galley was crowded with passengers from the back of the plane, who were hunched and concentrated. The area resembled the back door of Daniel’s local supermarket, where beggars would gather around the bins to collect unwanted food. The passengers riffled through drawers and cupboards, pulled out bread rolls, grabbed water bottles, scuffled over fruit and secured whatever food they could grab inside their clothes. He was hungry himself, he realised, but he wasn’t ready yet to fight for an apple.
Daniel opened the blind next to him and saw they were flying higher than before and, possibly, still in a circle. In the distance he glimpsed three other planes but he couldn’t see the ground. It was bright daylight, and even colder in the plane now. His mouth stank of burnt things; his stomach was empty. He found beside him a full bottle of water, which he sipped from surreptitiously and then concealed, for fear someone would see.
He had held on for as long as he could, but it was time for him to go to the toilet again. He attempted to walk to the back of the plane to stretch his legs and see what conditions were like. It took him some time; he tried to step carefully. There were heads, hands and feet scattered everywhere, as if someone had flung them on the floor. People were sleeping in the aisles, freeing space for others to lie on the seats. Daniel tripped and fell into someone who punched him in the side; as he tried to get up, they socked him again. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Look out — I’m a person!’ It was a refugee scene of some despair, a barely living pile of humanity, noisy with groans and complaints. People asked him for food as he passed. Someone lit a cigarette. The ceiling appeared to be dripping but he didn’t understand why.
He was surprised, when he got to the rear of what had become a flying slum, to see that a restroom was free and the door ajar. Pushing it open he realised the toilet was overflowing with excrement. There was even faeces on the walls. He retched, covered his face with his sweater and zigzagged back to Business.
They had been in the plane at least eighteen hours more than expected. Bridget was sitting on her little seat with her head in her hands. The dog woman had covered her head with a blanket, the dog was coughing and whimpering at her feet, and the footballer, who had not removed his cap, sat with his mouth open, unblinking, staring ahead of him. The couple with the baby were asleep. The toilet in the Business section was not unlike the toilet at the other end of the plane. He recalled someone telling him that the measure of a civilisation was how it disposed of its excrement. He held his nose, pulled down his pants and shat on the floor like everyone else, wiping his arse on the in-flight magazine, something he’d always dreamed of doing, and flinging the paper into the rest of the mess.
He found a bottle of perfume on the floor. The gift trolley had been raided. There was nothing left: empty boxes were strewn about, and Daniel, following the example of another passenger, took the wise decision to douse himself in scent.