nine
It happened on the following morning: I caught the elongated drone of jet engines whining down into gear, Pratt & Whitney PW 4062 twin turbofans, slowing down into an elongated yowl, like a yawn. I looked up to see the Boeing 767-200s hanging there in the grey sky above me like a still life, motionless — a nanosecond of beauty before it began to move again. It was a sight I have never tired of seeing, only this time it made me feel dizzy, like I was about to fall from a ladder, or how I imagined it to be walking over an unsafe bridge without a handrail. Everything, including me, was in the grip of gravity, everything was being pulled down downwards a dense centre, towards our centre, while this Boeing 767-200s, hanging up there in the grey sky above me, seemed, if only for a fleeting moment at least, to be purposely defying all that. It was odd that such a plane — basically, a hunk of metal — should be up there above me as the American Airlines’ Boeing 767-200s were usually used for American internal flights only, from Boston to L.A. — that sort of thing. It was as if it was lost, or had been blown off course, caught, a lone twin engine staggering across the Atlantic, all 48.51 metres of it. Again, I thought of each plane hitting the first and then the second tower of the World Trade Center all those years ago: the first, a Boeing 767-223ER, crashed into the north tower killing all ninety-two people on board, the second, a Boeing 767–222 crashed into the south tower, killing all sixty-five people on board. I wondered how many people were sitting on board the Boeing 767-200s above me. I wondered who they might be, what they could see. The whole of London was a sprawling mass below. I wondered what they might have been thinking about, at that moment, up above me. I wondered if they could feel gravity’s pull — like I could.
My moment with the Boeing 767-200s was broken by its twin engines slowing down again, both engines as big as those used on 747s, howling across the grey sky. Things began to start moving again, as the bulk of the aircraft floated across my line of vision, arching, banking above the city and the canal. I watched as it continued across the grey sky, like I had done so many times before, as it followed the Thames below, westwards towards Heathrow. Its fuselage looked like a shark — they always do — the grey sky like the water’s surface up above it, the shark heading towards its prey. The pilots in the cockpit monitoring each movement and each minute reaction to the air currents and thermal pockets up there, preparing for their landing procedures, the same routine acted out each day, each flight, simulated and real, above the skies of London — a continued defeat of gravity.
Pretty soon another plane, an Airbus A320, appeared where the first had floated into view, above the city, slightly to the left of the previous plane’s flight path. I watched this one, too. It felt like I could do this all day long, until the flight paths changed for the evening. I wasn’t sure if anyone else felt quite like this, but I really hoped there was someone who did. The thought, the same thought, of spotting a plane at that precise moment: the moment it is free, stationary, free from gravity’s centrifugal pull.
It made me feel like laughing — that those fearful of flying, unaware of this continuous victory, unaware that they are, in fact, part of something spectacular, within something remarkable, were captured everyday in the sky by people like me, if there are any, down below, wishing they were up there, with them.
It felt peculiar wanting to laugh to myself, on my own, my body beginning to shake.
It felt really strange.
ten
For some reason I knew she wasn’t going to appear at the bench that day, but I waited patiently for her anyway, all day long. I sat there and watched the two swans. I watched the male take off and land over and over again. He did this maybe eight or nine times during the course of the day. It was, at times, an impossible-looking procedure, and there were moments — his mate watching too — when I thought that he wasn’t going to make it, and sometimes I felt like the stretch of canal wasn’t long enough for the feat. At about the second take-off I noticed, directly ahead of me, the man in the whitewashed office block watching the swans, too. He was wearing his grey cardigan again, with a bright red tie and white shirt. He was sitting, his chair turned to face the canal, away from his desk, looking directly at the swans. He seemed transfixed. He watched, along with me, as the male swan, again, prepared for take-off.
I was concerned. The dredgers still hadn’t come and I was worried that the swan might injure itself on a discarded beer can, or, distressingly, the dumped scooter lurking underneath the water’s surface, as it raced across the canal, ready to take to the air. The dredgers should have been there long ago. It was getting quite messy out there, things needed to be shifted, to be taken away.
I continued to watch the swan each time it prepared for take-off. Before he finally took to the air he would gracefully float, paddling towards the far end of the whitewashed office block, away to the right of the bench, down the canal, away from me and the man, about thirty metres or so towards Wenlock Basin. There he would turn to face the rusting iron bridge in the distance to my left. Here it would almost look like he was mentally preparing for the feat that awaited him: staring straight ahead, like an athlete readying himself for the long jump, before slowly beginning to move forwards, quickening his pace, half lifting himself out from the murky water, impressively, with extreme determination, somewhat at odds with his natural stoic self. He must have weighed about fifteen kilos out of the water. He, the cob, was big. I watched as he gained speed, passing directly by me, almost running, his huge, white wings spread out, flapping. The feathers splayed, like an aircraft’s slats and flaps, and then, his feet still frantically running, though almost as if in slow motion, the swan lifted into the air, after passing underneath the rusting iron bridge. Instinctively missing any of the assorted debris in his path. I watched him gain height, tucking in his legs snugly, and bank back towards the bridge and bench, high above, heading west, following the canal. It was a magnificent sight — like watching the Boeing 767-200s bank across the London sky. I felt that something great had been accomplished. I wanted to shout to him, to congratulate him on his feat. It felt like something more important than life or death.
It was an awkward procedure: the three of us — me, the man in the whitewashed office block, and the swan’s mate — watching this beautiful creature lifting itself out of the murky water and up, away from us, into the air. It seemed to take an age, and at one point during take-off, before it eventually became airborne, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. But it did; I saw it with my own eyes: the swan, its beautiful white wings exercising each muscle at full stretch, arched, flapping, lifting its bulk into the air, slowly, forcibly, with concentration, like its sole being depended on it, a complete dislocation with the earth, with the ground beneath my feet.
I looked over to the whitewashed office block. The man was looking up at the swan, too, and although the swan was now out of my line of vision it was obvious that he could still see it. The man remained there, his chair facing the canal, looking up at the swan until it disappeared from his own line of vision, then he turned around, wheeling his chair back to his desk to resume his tasks.