The Grin of the Dark

THIRTY-TWO - I'M IN MOTION

I know where I am now. I'm really on my way home. If the Frugojet staff at the departure gate are wearing red pointed floppy hats, that simply proves it's real. The drug is losing its hold on my mind; in fact, it must have worn off hours ago. I didn't actually see Tubby's flattened face crawl across the floor of my room, even if I can't forget how the cold puffy substance felt under my bare foot. I seemed to feel the cheek quivering with gelatinous mirth, but it has to have been the drug.

I couldn't convince myself then. I almost fell headlong in my haste to switch on the light and to avoid anything that shouldn't be on the floor. I grabbed my toiletries and threw them in my suitcase before realising I'd left it open while I was in the cupboard that did duty as a bathroom. I pawed fearfully through the contents and shook my clothes to establish that they weren't harbouring an intruder. As soon as I was dressed I hauled the case out of the room and barely prevented it from tumbling me head first down the precipice of the stairs.

The receptionist or night porter or whatever occupation had been compressed into his spindly form was at the desk. 'I have not called you yet,' he said, no doubt thinking that I didn't trust his promise or possibly his English. I mumbled to the effect that I preferred not to risk hurrying down those stairs, and slumped in a chair, jamming my wrist through the extended plastic handle to keep my luggage safe. He looked affronted by the gesture, and I could only pray that he wouldn't leave me on my own.

At some stage he did. I kept nodding off even though it took me back to the hotel room, where I crouched on the bed in an attempt to stay clear of the faces that swarmed from beneath it. They glided snail-like up and down the walls or poised themselves on the ceiling as if they were preparing to drop on me, a prospect that made them grin more widely still. When I lurched awake and found the counter unattended, I grew afraid of seeing the replacement's face. The next time I regained consciousness, however, the squeezed man was back. 'They are coming for you now,' he said with no expression at all.

The van had barely enough space for my luggage and me. The seven passengers stared hard at me as I clambered in, and the woman beside me edged away, waving one wrinkled hand like a farewell she wished she could make. As the burly driver slid the door shut he gave me a grin so secret I couldn't tell whether I was expected to share it. All the way to the airport I clung to a handhold on the door. I was ensuring that I didn't loll against my neighbour, but I felt as if I was clutching at the moment so that the room infested with Tubby's face didn't recapture my mind.

It can't now. The departure hall is loud with announcements, and every row of seats around the departure gate features children squabbling or wailing or both. To help keep me awake I have the twinges of my wrist, which I must have scraped on the handle of my suitcase. Nobody appears to understand the new delay, including the Frugojet staff, but one of them is reaching for a microphone. She lets go of it to do up the top button of her blouse, on which FRUGO is emblazoned in increasingly large capitals apparently emitted by the rear of a toy jet, and then she picks up the microphone, producing a magnified clunk and an electronic squeal. 'Thank you for your patience,' she says. 'Flight FRU 2012 to London Heathrow is now ready to board.'

This receives a standing ovation not far short of hysteria. She halts the stampede to the gate by inviting the disabled and anyone burdened with small children to board first. Families with larger children take advantage of this as well. Her invitation to all remaining passengers to board is as good as redundant, since everyone stays crowded around the gate. The protracted seconds her colleague takes to check my boarding card and passport make me feel as if time is congealing around me again. As I tramp down the temporary corridor it shivers in the wind. I grin at the pilot, since a pointed red hat trimmed with white is drooping on his head. Once the crowd lets me reach the first empty aisle seat I sit next to a woman who sneezes in greeting. Neither this nor her girth augurs well for the journey, but passengers are pushing by me, and changing my seat would be impolite.

At last everyone's seated, having crammed the magically capacious lockers with items bigger than the cabin is supposed to accept. By this time I've examined the contents of the pocket on the seat a child has tilted within inches of my face. I ask him if he really needs so much space, but either he and his mother are deaf or they're ignorant of English. I feel as if I'm in the cheap seats. The pocket contains a vomit bag stuffed with sweet papers, a dog-eared copy of the airline's magazine Flies in which the margins are full of incomprehensible scribbles, and an extensively chewed safety instruction card. The tooth marks look unappealingly fresh, but a steward gestures me to hold onto it. It's time for the safety demonstration.

I want to believe he's serious, but the wagging of his red hat that would barely fit a pixie doesn't help. Nor does his grin, which is too close to fixed. I could imagine that he's using it to communicate with his colleague behind me. He enacts the action of the seat belt with a relish that suggests he's binding a captive and only reluctantly letting them go. He stretches his arms so wide to indicate the emergency exits that he might be parodying a crucifixion, especially when his fingers wriggle in the air. He drops into such a sudden crouch to point at the emergency lighting concealed in the floor that the boy in front of me flinches, jolting the seat nearly into my face. Of course the steward doesn't actually fancy that he's using an oxygen mask to hang a victim, but there's no mistaking his imperfectly suppressed mirth when the recorded voice to which he's miming warns passengers not to inflate their life-jackets inside the aircraft. Is he tempted to yank the toggle on his jacket and block the aisle with his ballooning self?

During the performance the plane has crawled backwards and then forwards while my neighbour sneezes into a succession of tissues pulled out of a box. At first the tarry darkness outside the dwarfish windows seems to retard the wings, and then they slice through it as they gather speed. I feel the ground vanish, and the windows turn blank as dead screens. 'They've gone,' the boy cries in front of me. 'The wings have fallen off.'

'It's just the clouds, Tim,' his mother assures him.

'We're up above them now,' says the man beside her. 'See, we've got wings again.'

'I thought you didn't speak English.'

Though I only mutter this, my neighbour retorts 'Who says? No fools in this family.'

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.

'Well, thank you,' I say loudly. 'That's really useful. Thanks so much.' I raise my voice further as I notice the family watching me from across the carousel. Is the amused fat man with them? Was he the skulker by the window on the plane? 'Some fool behind the scenes buggered up my luggage,' I inform anyone who ought to hear.

I'm not inviting a response. It comes as more than a surprise when a head pokes through the plastic strips, especially since it isn't human. Before I can react the large grey dog sails along the belt, trailing its leash, and rears up to plant its considerable weight on my chest. 'Good boy. Good dog,' I try saying as I topple backwards.

I sprawl on my back with the animal on top of me. 'Down, Fido. Off now, Rover,' I command with all the authority I can summon, but the dog is busy snuffling at my clothes. The family of five all grin at me as they wheel away their luggage; Tim looks positively triumphant. As I struggle to flounder from beneath the dog a uniformed man recaptures its leash while his colleague not so much helps as hauls me to my feet. 'You'll have to come with us, sir,' he says and tightens his grip on my arm.