The Grin of the Dark

Her voice is alarmingly low and hoarse. It must be a symptom of her cold, but I could imagine she's a fat man in a flowered dress, even when the man in front calls 'What's up, grandmother?'

'Feller here making out we're immigrants.'

'He wants to be careful.'

'Must be one himself if he can't tell where we're from,' says the mother.

'You don't know what they do to their brains when they're abroad,' the grandmother remarks.

I feel as if I'm trapped in a witless comedy routine that makes the cabin feel cramped and airless. I glance at her neighbour, but he's facing the window as fully as he can. 'I didn't mean you were foreigners,' I tell the troupe.

'Then you want to say what you mean,' the father advises.

'I was going to say, while we're talking – '

'We aren't,' says the mother.

If the oldster contradicts her, it's only by asking me 'You're not from our country, are you? Don't sound like it.'

'Of course I am,' I protest and am suddenly aware that I've no idea how my voice sounds to anyone else – perhaps nothing like the one I hear inside my head. 'Is Lester English enough for you?'

'That's never a Leicester accent.'

'Lester. My name. Ell ee ess tee ee ar. Simon Lester.'

I must have spoken louder than I thought, because a steward with a drinks trolley stares at me. 'Don't let it bother you,' the father says.

'You watch that instead,' says the mother. 'It'll take your mind off.'

I sit forward to see that the boy is intent on a miniature screen. He's holding a mobile phone, but what is it showing? I have to release my seat belt and crane over his seat to distinguish the monochrome image. My guess is that it's a muted pop video, intercutting riot footage with glimpses of a vintage comedy, so brief that they border on the subliminal. Then the steward leaves his trolley and marches at me, his hat waving like a limp windsock. 'Can you fasten your seat belt, sir,' he exhorts. 'The captain hasn't switched the sign off.'

I sit and grope for the metal tongue of the belt. Somehow it has strayed beneath my neighbour's spongy thigh. When I tug it free, the woman unleashes a squeal that turns into a convulsive sneeze. 'What's he doing to you, mother?' her daughter cries.

'I'm just doing as I'm told,' I protest.

As the steward frowns at me while maintaining his smile, Tim's father says 'He's been talking like we're refugees, like we've got no business here.'

'And he keeps going on about Leicester,' the grandmother complains. 'Seems to forget it's full of immigrants. Wouldn't surprise me if he was one, the way he talks.'

I've had extravagantly more than enough. 'Speaking of the captain, didn't he say mobiles had to be switched off?'

'He's only watching,' the boy's mother objects.

'He's on the Internet if I'm not mistaken.'

The steward peers at the mobile with rather less enthusiasm than he showed for reproving me. 'You need to keep that off on the plane, son.'

The boy jerks his entire body to signify his displeasure, almost thumping me in the face with the back of the seat as he pokes a button before folding the phone in half. He's quiet for a very few seconds, and then he says 'Isn't it going too slow to stay up?'

'Now look what you've done,' his grandmother accuses me.

Tim's father twists around. 'What's he up to now, mother?'

'Nothing. Not another thing. I'm not even here,' I say and shut my eyes tight.

I'm determined not to open them or move in any other way until we're on the ground. I only have to hold my mind alert so that I don't dream of being elsewhere. I wish I hadn't added my last remark. When the drinks trolley arrives beside me I'm tempted to accept a coffee, but I suspect the nurse may have drugged it. I try to remain absolutely still as he hands brimming plastic cups across me to my fellow patients in S Ward, because I'm afraid of being scalded if anyone distracts him or unbalances him. The cups pass so close I can feel the heat on my eyeballs. By the time he moves on I know perfectly well that I'm not an inmate or surrounded by them, but I'm much less certain that my neighbour is a woman. Isn't the way Tim's parents address her one attempt too many to convince me? If I looked closely, might I see that the person whose puffy arm is pressed against mine is wearing a wig? I have to clench my fists so as not to grab the mop of grey hair and attempt to remove it. I'm nervously grateful when the captain announces that we've begun our descent to Heathrow until the boy in charge of my cell declares 'They've gone again. We won't stay up.'

The wings are indeed flickering in and out of existence like an imperfect transmission on the screens of the windows. Of course clouds keep engulfing them, but each time they reappear they look almost imperceptibly fatter. Is ice gathering on them? I dread hearing an emergency announced – I can visualise the chaos in which the family would involve me – and I grow yet more apprehensive as I see lights sailing up towards the wings. I wanted to be home for Mark's school play, but suppose they've reopened the airport prematurely? Suppose the plane skids out of control? I close my eyes as the lights surge upward and the cabin shudders with a thud. The plane slows so abruptly that I'm certain it will flip upside down – I don't need the boy's wail to tell me. Then the violent roar of the engine subsides, and the captain has to appeal to the passengers to resume their seats while the plane crawls towards the terminal.

As it halts at last, nearly everyone competes to be the winner at standing up. Rather than wait for minutes on my feet I remain seated, though I'm at least as anxious to be inside the terminal. Mark's play isn't for hours, but I need to phone my bank. When a steward wrestles the door open I struggle to my feet. Well after she notices my efforts the mother says 'Let him out, Tim.'

The boy raises the seat a very few inches. 'That should have been upright on our way down,' I realise too late. I grab the seat and lever myself up, only for it to give way and dump me where I came from. 'Do it properly,' the woman says, and I have the infuriating notion that she's talking to me. The boy jerks the seat erect with a violence that might be expressing my rage, and I'm sidling to join the sluggish parade to the exit when my arm is seized in a soft but tenacious grip. 'Lend us a hand, son,' the grandmother growls.

Apparently she wants help in standing up. Her other neighbour is so intent on the window that he might almost be a bulky dummy. I suffer her to cling to my arm as she labours to rise, but it isn't enough. Her grin stretches wide with her exertions, and a trickle that looks thick enough for glue runs down her forehead. I contort myself in the trap between the seats and take hold of her free arm. I'm afraid to grasp it too firmly, because my fingers seem to sink deeper than I like. Nevertheless I lift her in order to make my escape, and her face wobbles up towards mine, grinning wider still. I lurch into the aisle and let go of her arm. It's too easy to imagine that the rubbery flesh is about to pop like the sagging balloon it resembles.

Has the boy been tearing up his copy of the in-flight magazine because he couldn't use his mobile? As I shuffle to the exit I glimpse words on the yellowed scraps of paper at his feet: crown, come, hack, judge, guilty, riot... I mumble thanks to the festively bedecked staff and am rewarded with grins surely more identical than they need be. I tramp up the passage to the immigration desks, where I'm surprised to find the four are overtaking me in an adjacent queue; I would have expected the grandmother to slow them down. 'English,' I can't help calling to them as I exhibit my passport. 'English.'

They look as unimpressed as the immigration officer, who spends so long in comparing me with my photograph that I'm about to declare that we're the same person when he hands my passport back. I sprint along sections of crawling walkway to the baggage hall and stake out the end of the carousel. The conveyor belt waits for the last passenger before it twitches and creeps forward. The first suitcase isn't mine, nor are its motley followers, each of which brushes or shakes dangling strips of plastic like a clown's version of hair out of its boxy face. There's a pause while an unclaimed shapeless package lumbers offstage, and then the next procession is led out by my suitcase. As it blunders abreast of me I lug it off the belt and pull up the expanding handle to wheel it away. Or rather, I attempt to, but the handle has been snapped off.