Beatrice wasn’t in the seat where he’d left her. For a few seconds he thought she’d lost her nerve and fled the terminal rather than say her last goodbye. He felt a pang of grief. But then he spotted her a few rows further towards the coffee and muffin kiosk. She was on the floor on her hands and knees, her face obscured by loose hair. Hunkered down in front of her, also on its hands and knees, was a child — a fat toddler, whose elasticated trousers bulged with an ill-concealed nappy.
‘Look! I’ve got… ten fingers!’ she was telling the child. ‘Have you got ten fingers?’
The fat toddler slid his hands forward, almost touching Bea’s. She made a show of counting the digits, then said ‘A hundred! No, ten!’ The boy laughed. An older child, a girl, stood shyly back, sucking on her knuckles. She kept looking back at her mother, but the mother was looking neither at her children nor at Beatrice; instead, she was focused on a hand-held gadget.
‘Oh, hi,’ said Beatrice when she saw Peter coming. She brushed her hair off her face, tucked it behind her ears. ‘This is Jason and Gemma. They’re going to Alicante.’
‘We hope,’ said the mother wearily. The gadget made a small beeping noise, having analysed the glucose levels of the woman’s blood.
‘These people have been here since two p.m.,’ explained Beatrice. ‘They’re stressed out.’
‘Never again,’ muttered the woman as she rummaged in a travel pouch for her insulin injections. ‘I swear. They take your money and they don’t give a shit.’
‘Joanne, this is my husband Peter. Peter, this is Joanne.’
Joanne nodded in greeting but was too bound up in her misfortune to make small talk. ‘It all looks dead cheap on the brochure,’ she remarked bitterly, ‘but you pay for it in grief.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that, Joanne,’ counselled Beatrice. ‘You’ll have a lovely time. Nothing bad has actually happened. Just think: if the plane had been scheduled to leave eight hours later, you would’ve been doing the same thing as you’re doing now — waiting, except at home.’
‘These two should be in bed,’ grumbled the woman, baring a roll of abdominal flesh and sticking the needle in.
Jason and Gemma, righteously offended by the allegation that they were sleepy rather than maltreated, looked poised for a fresh set of tantrums. Beatrice got on her hands and knees again. ‘I think I’ve lost my feet,’ she said, peering nearsightedly around the floor. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘They’re here!’ cried little Jason, as she turned away from him. ‘Where?’ she said, spinning back.
‘Thank God,’ said Joanne. ‘Here comes Freddie with the food.’
A hassled-looking fellow with no chin and a porridge-coloured windcheater lumbered into view, several paper bags clutched in each hand.
‘World’s biggest rip-off,’ he announced. ‘They keep you standing there with your little voucher for two quid or whatever. It’s like the dole office. I tell you, in another half an hour, if this lot don’t bloody well — ’
‘Freddie,’ said Beatrice brightly, ‘this is my husband, Peter.’
The man put down his packages and shook Peter’s hand.
‘Your wife’s a bit of an angel, Pete. Is she always taking pity on waifs and strays?’
‘We… we both believe in being friendly,’ said Peter. ‘It costs nothing and it makes life more interesting.’
‘When are we gonna see the sea?’ said Gemma, and yawned.
‘Tomorrow, when you wake up,’ said the mother.
‘Will the nice lady be there?’
‘No, she’s going to America.’
Beatrice motioned the little girl to come and sit against her hip. The toddler had already dropped off to sleep, sprawled against a canvas backpack filled to bursting point. ‘Wires slightly crossed,’ said Beatrice. ‘It’s my husband who’s going, not me.’
‘You stay home with the kids, huh?’
‘We don’t have any,’ said Beatrice. ‘Yet.’
‘Do yourselves a favour,’ sighed the man. ‘Don’t. Just skip it.’
‘Oh, you don’t mean that,’ said Beatrice. And Peter, seeing that the man was about to make an off-hand retort, added: ‘Not really.’
And so the conversation went on. Beatrice and Peter got into rhythm, perfectly united in purpose. They’d done this hundreds of times before. Conversation, genuine unforced conversation, but with the potential to become something much more significant if the moment arose when it was right to mention Jesus. Maybe that moment would come; maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they would just say ‘God bless you’ in parting and that would be it. Not every encounter could be transformative. Some conversations were just amiable exchanges of breath.
Coaxed into this exchange, the two strangers relaxed despite themselves. Within minutes they were even laughing. They were from Merton, they had diabetes and depression respectively, they both worked in a hardware superstore, they’d saved up for this holiday for a year. They were none too bright and not very fascinating. The woman had an unattractive snort and the man stank terribly of musk aftershave. They were human beings, and precious in the eyes of God.
‘My plane is about to board,’ said Peter at last.
Beatrice was still on the floor, the head of a stranger’s child lolling on her thigh. Her eyes were glassy with tears.
‘If I come with you to Security,’ she said, ‘and hold you when you’re about to go through, I won’t be able to cope, I swear. I’ll lose it, I’ll cause a scene. So kiss me goodbye here.’
Peter felt as if his heart was being cleaved in half. What had seemed like a grand adventure in the prayer room now bereaved him like a sacrifice. He clung to the words of the Apostle: Do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
He bent down and Beatrice gave him a quick, rough kiss on the lips, clasping the back of his head with one hand as she did so. He straightened up, dazed. This whole scenario with the strangers — she’d engineered it to happen, he could see that now.
‘I’ll write,’ he promised.
She nodded, and the motion shook the tears out onto her cheeks.
He walked briskly to Departures. Forty minutes later he was up in the sky.
2. He would never see other humans the same way again
The USIC chauffeur emerged from the gas station with a bottle of Tang and a spotless, supernaturally yellow banana. Dazzled by the sun, he scanned the forecourt for his tanked-up limousine and its precious foreign cargo. That cargo was Peter, who was using this fuel stop to stretch his legs and attempt one last call.
‘Excuse me,’ said Peter. ‘Can you help me with this phone?’
The man seemed flummoxed by this request, jerking his hands around to indicate that they were both full. In his dark blue suit, complete with tie, he was overdressed for the Florida heat, and was still suffering some residual stress from the plane’s delayed arrival. It was almost as if he held Peter personally responsible for the turbulent atmospheric conditions over the North Atlantic ocean.
‘What’s the problem with it?’ he said, as he balanced the drink and the banana on the sun-blazed surface of the limousine’s roof.
‘Probably nothing,’ said Peter, squinting down at the gadget in his palm. ‘I probably don’t know how to use it properly.’