Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

‘We’ll be thinking about breakfast,’ said Angelica.

She had calmed again, but to a state of listlessness. She checked her phone.

‘No word from Joe.’

‘What about a walk, Angel?’

‘If he’s broken his tag bounds? If he’s gone to Bolton? That’s trouble, Dad, with a capital T.’

‘Bolton! Frightful place. Full of low-lifes, always has been. What about a walk?

‘A walk? Now? But it’s still dark.’

‘All the better,’ he said.

It was one of the few nights of the northern year there would be no need for a jacket. He held himself beautifully as he walked. He was straight backed and steady as he moved. Nobody walks like Freddie Bliss any more. Angelica loped along beside him, breathless. From a high distance, if you looked back, the house had a jaunty air. The east wing had an attractive lopsided feel, the gale-tormented west was grimly hanging on, and there were shades watching from the windows.

They walked over the rough ground. You’d twist an ankle if you didn’t know it. They went by the pathway along the stretch of trees that led down to the lake. Time was passing. He stopped, suddenly, and put a finger to his lips. By the water, there was a blurred movement, the air and the darkness shifted, and she saw the black and white of them, the striped noses and beady red eyes, and then at once they were everywhere, they wrestled and flipped each other over, they tumbled and righted themselves. Angelica gripped her father’s hand. Angelica held her breath. Cheerfully, with the air of an old familiar, Freddie Bliss addressed the badgers:

‘Good morning!’ he said.

Recovery had been learned. When young, she had taught him again the language of relish.

The shudders and jolts of an old jumbo, pulling back the hours. Across the Hudson Bay we sail and over the Labrador Sea. This is the part we call the feeding of the seals. We come down the aisles, in our frayed uniforms, with our smiles fixed as death’s rictus, and their anxious heads swivel to us, and there are hoarse little barks of delight as we fling out the foil-covered trays. They pull back the foil, burn their fingertips, blow on their fingertips, and steam clouds rise to numb their tired faces. The steam clears to reveal the griddled flesh of what once was fowl, and the annihilated broccoli, and the Nagasaki carrots, and they make small brave noises; they begin.

The eternal question across the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six: isthisthechicken isthisthechicken isthisthe… chicken???

Personally speaking? I would touch nothing bar the salad.

At the top of the rows-of-three, left aisle, just across from my station, in the row with the extra leg room — it is our handsome gift to bestow — there is an elderly couple, bright-eyed with enthusiasm/medication.

‘Tell you that right there looks to me like fresh snow,’ he says.

‘But it’s nearly May already,’ she says.

‘Nothing surprises me about weather anymore,’ he says.

The crushed democracy of the cheap seats — their knees are high and their eyes are hopeful. The piebald mountains rise and dip beneath, there are slopes of black ice and sharp crests and thin blue streams, then an expanse of turfy scrag a rich brown like chocolate.

In the top row-of-six:

The babymamma of a Lithuanian gangster.

A nervous African priest.

A pair of square-jaw corporates in casual flight wear.

A leathery Balkan ponce.

A sour-faced French hottie with the tiniest feet, who wrinkles her photoshop-perfect nose and looks across, irritated, to the row-of-three, where the elderlies maintain commentary:

‘Now check this,’ he says. ‘It’s twenty after three! In the a.m. already! Where we’re going?’

‘Twenty after three!’ she says.

I keep on smiling. He climbs from the seat, steps into the aisle, breathes hard, staggers once, settles, then takes a bag from the overhead, and he sits again, relieved — woo-eeh! — and he breaks out the pill bottles.

‘Put on your eye glasses, Alvin,’ she says.

I picture the pills at work. I picture them thinning the blood and checking arrhythmia. I picture the pills as janitors of liver and spleen, wearing jaunty work caps and polite grimaces, making minimum wage. The snow is banked deeply and the ice fields glisten for as far as you can see.

‘These the ten o’clocks?’ she says.

‘These the tens,’ he says, ‘though now it’s like three. Officially. Where we’re going.’

‘Twenty after!’ she says.

‘Twenty after,’ he says.

‘Put on your eye glasses, Alvin,’ she says.

‘They’re right here on my goddamn face, Rose,’ he says.

It is the moment of the mudwater coffee, and we set forth along the aisles. We pour it from the stained tall silver pots, and they suck that bad stuff down, and a low drone of talkativeness rises across the rows. We hit turbulence. It gets good and jumpy, it gets good and swoony, and they look to us, with small brave smiles.

The fade of a melon sun glows over the vast country, in birthday card tones, and it is all of it primordial and ancient seeming down there: National Geographic. The clouds thicken and we enter them and it all whites out but in places the clouds are patchy, and we’re allowed a quick cold view below, and you cannot but imagine yourself lost down there.

‘DVT is what it is, Rose,’ he says. ‘That’s Deep… Vein… Thrombosis. Travelling clots!’

‘Clots travel?’ she says.

‘Clots hit the brain and you’re dead before they get you to the ground. It don’t matter what age or creed you are. That’s DVT is what it is.’

‘Clots in the brain! Sounds like that’s about it, hon.’

‘Clots in the brain is the last thing we need, trust me.’

‘Deep… Vein?’

‘Thrombosis. But it’s dummies that get DVT, Rose. Dummies that drink on planes and don’t move around none. That’s what you got not to do! Drink and sit there like a sack of shit.’

It is the moment of the wipes. We pick up the trays, with their lurid remains — dig the color of that masala — and we hand out the wipes. We keep on smiling. Transatlantics pull from each demographic, each ethnicity. There are thin English pub girls bronzed from the effluent beaches of the west coast. There are fat Italians, amused Indians, Germans amplifying sternly, irritated Swiss. Put us in a tin can at 28,000 feet and we become so obviously of our breed.

There is a majorly dramatic sound from the internals— Kerrrrrr-unnnchhhh! — like gears changing in God’s pick-up. We look to each other across the aisles — the questioning arch of our savagely plucked eyebrows — but we keep on smiling. We are about done with wipes. We make it back to our stations. We smile. Then the kerrrrrr-unnnchhhh again, but this time deeper sounding, and Mel and Kelvin talk to flight crew.

Flight crew doesn’t tell cabin crew shit unless it has to. There are agitated noises from the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six. There is concern in the seal pens. Kelvin is at the handset: Kelvin pales. Mel is at the handset: Mel gets flushes. The captain now addresses the rows-of-three and the rows-of-six.

He says there is no cause for immediate concern. I like that immediate. The problem, he says, is mechanical. As opposed to? There is an instrument, there is a device, we needn’t worry our pretty heads about what it is precisely, but it’s out by, like, millimetres? By like fractions of millimetres. It needs to be recalibrated. This needs to be done on the ground. We look out the windows and down to the ice fields.

Our captain is a Brit and as he addresses us all, he retains an admirable calm. He says a landing is required, actually, and this will be achieved shortly. He actually says the ‘actually’. He actually says ‘achieved’. We keep on smiling. Our captain is out of a black-and-white war movie. He’s an okay-chaps-let’s-synchronise-our-watches. He’s a chin-up-wren-twill-soon-be-over.