Tony Parsons - Departures - Seven Stories from Heathrow

‘Beautiful,’ Jazz said.

‘Yes,’ Tim said.

They were polo ponies from Argentina, thoroughbreds crossed with local Criollo horses. Everyone outside the cargo terminal stopped what they were doing for a few seconds to watch the horses being loaded onto the lorries. And they were indeed beautiful.

Although to Tim Brady of the Heathrow Animal Reception Centre, they were no more beautiful than a white lion cub, or a monitor lizard, or a pair of runaway rattlesnakes.

Tim didn’t know much about cars, but he knew that the car he pulled his Nissan Micra alongside in the ARC car park was a Porsche. Or perhaps a Ferrari. Or maybe a Maserati.

He looked at it with vague interest as he carried the pillowcase inside.

He could see the man and woman in the waiting area, talking urgently to each other. They were both tall, tanned and wearing dark glasses. From the same privileged world, if not the same generation. The man was perhaps fifteen years older than the woman, who for some reason did not look like any other woman that Tim Brady had ever seen in his life.

One of Tim’s colleagues, a girl called Wanda who was wonderful with reptiles, was suddenly in his face, grinning wildly and talking in a mad whisper.

‘It’s her,’ Wanda said. ‘Don’t you recognize her?’

‘No,’ said Tim.

Wanda waved her hands.

‘Can’t you see? It’s her! She was in that film – what was it? Jane Eyre? Jane Austen? Gosford Park? Finsbury Park? Where there’s the man and he gets his trousers wet – or is it his shirt? – and then there’s the misunderstanding, but they sort it all out. You know.’

But he didn’t know. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Wanda was talking about. He shook his head, absent-mindedly fingering the top of the pillowcase.

‘Well, she hasn’t got a bonnet on, has she?’ Wanda said. ‘That’s why you don’t recognize her. She’s not in all the kit.’

Wanda looked over at the glamorous couple – the thin, fabulous young woman, who was apparently famous too, apart from everything else, and the rich-looking, serious-looking older man. Wanda’s smile disappeared.

‘They’ve been waiting for you,’ she said. ‘They’re not very happy. About waiting. But you said that you had to be the one who talked to them.’

‘I did?’

Wanda nodded. ‘It was their dog,’ she said. ‘The one that died.’

‘Ah,’ he said, understanding now, handing her the pillowcase. Inside it, life seemed to stir and slither and sigh. ‘Crotalus oreganus,’ he said. ‘Two of them. Be careful.’

Wanda grinned. ‘Rattlesnakes?’ she said. ‘Cool.’

She took the pillowcase and disappeared.

Tim drew in a deep breath, held it and let it go. But it didn’t really make him feel any better. He went through to the waiting area and the couple looked up at him.

‘Are you the guy that’s going to talk to us?’ said the man, standing up. His shirt had perhaps one or possibly two too many buttons undone and Tim could see a small forest of silverish hairs on the man’s tanned chest.

‘Yes, I am,’ Tim said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m—’

The man shook his head and laughed, ignoring Tim’s hand. Tim slowly withdrew it.

‘Cut to the chase, buddy,’ the man said. Tim thought that he sounded very American – possibly more American than anyone Tim had ever met in his life. ‘What happened to my fiancée’s dog?’ the man demanded. ‘You lose it? Did it wind up in Frankfurt?’ He turned to the young woman. ‘I told you that’s the problem,’ he said, triumphant. ‘I told you. These dumb-ass schmucks have lost your dog and now we get their pathetic excuses and lame apologies.’

The young woman took off her sunglasses. She had the bluest eyes that Tim had ever seen and the sight of those eyes gave him a stab of real sadness. This was a terrible thing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, addressing the young woman and not the older man. ‘Your dog – Finn, a Golden Retriever, three years old – did not survive the journey from Los Angeles. He died here – this morning – but it was the flight that killed him.’

There was silence in the room.

Somewhere in the distance there was the clop-clop sound of horses’ hooves.

And then the man erupted.

‘Dead?’ he said, and the young woman physically recoiled at the word. ‘The dog – the dog is dead? Is that what you’re telling us, buddy? That the dog is actually dead?’

‘Yes.’ Tim half-shook his head. ‘Believe me, I know that this is distressing and shocking news . . .’

The man slumped back in his chair and stared up at Tim in disbelief. The young woman’s mouth was open and she seemed to be struggling to breathe.

‘You killed the dog,’ the man said. ‘You killed the dog!’

‘Finn,’ the young woman said, the sudden flash of anger choked with tears that welled just below the surface. ‘His name is – was – Finn. Please stop calling him the dog.’

The man was suddenly calm.

‘I’m going to sue you, little man,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Tim. ‘And I am going to sue the airline. And then I am going to sue everybody else. But first – I’m going to sue the damn airline. They flew him across with the cargo, right?’ the man demanded. ‘Checked him in with the damn cargo as if he was a bag of golf clubs.’

‘It is not the fault of the airline,’ Tim said. ‘They have strict rules about heating, lighting and ventilation for transporting dogs. And they follow them rigorously. That’s not the reason why Finn is dead.’

‘Who’s your boss?’ the man said. ‘I want to talk to your boss. I’m going to sue him too. Who is the man that runs this joint?’

‘That would be me,’ Tim said.

‘What are you, exactly?’ the man said.

‘I’m an Animal Health Inspector,’ Tim said.

The man laughed harshly.

‘Let me tell you, buddy – you’re doing a lousy job.’

Tim saw that the blue eyes were upon him.

‘Then, if the airlines are so careful, why did Finn die?’ she said.

Tim saw two things at once. That she was English, despite the mild, mid-Atlantic drawl that had been grafted on top. And that she was holding something.

A worn old dog lead with a silver name-tag. It moved through her long fingers like a rosary.

Tim sat down beside her so that she was now between him and the man. Tim could no longer see the man, only hear him. He appeared to be having a chat with himself.

‘I don’t believe this,’ the man was saying. ‘She loved that damn mutt.’

‘We get one hundred animals pass through here every day,’ Tim told her quietly. He wanted her to understand. He needed her to know. ‘Every animal that you can think of, and plenty you can’t. Racehorses and cheetahs and Komodo dragons. Poisonous scorpions and domestic pets. Animals that are shipped in and animals that are smuggled in and animals that hide in someone’s suitcase or in a crate of fruit. Ten thousand dogs a year. Six thousand cats. Ferrets . . .’ He paused, unsure of the latest statistics on ferrets. Then he ploughed on. ‘Ferrets galore. Thirty-five million fish. We accept every animal. And this – this now – this with you – what we are doing now – this is the absolute worst part of my job.’

The young woman nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. Her face did look familiar. He thought perhaps he had seen it once in a dream. ‘But what happened to Finn?’

‘Finn was too heavily sedated,’ Tim said. ‘I’m sure that the vet who sedated him was trying to be kind – trying to spare Finn some of the distress of being transported from Los Angeles to London. But the cargo hold of an aircraft is pressurized at nine thousand feet and what would be a normal dose on land has three times the effect in the air – just as a glass of wine hits you harder on a plane than it does on the ground. It put too great a strain on his heart.’