Anne Enright - The Gathering

It has a spa. I saw this when I checked in. I went back to the shops in the South Terminal and bought myself some togs. And I bought socks and pants there, too, and a bag to put them all in-quite a nice bag, very unfussy, in that bumpy, hammered leather. And when I was coming back, walking past reception with the flat key in my wallet, I realised that I did not know how to leave.

There are three restaurants, or so the ad in the lift tells me, but I don’t have to go to any one of them. I can order a Caesar salad upstairs-there is always a Caesar salad. I can walk the room-because you can always walk the room, if there is enough space. And in this room there is just enough space to go from the bed over to the window, to the television set on its corner bracket, then over to the desk, which is under a mirror that also reflects the bed. Here, you can pause to look at the information in the leatherette binder, after which, you might move to the trouser press and the box with runners on the top where you are supposed to leave your case, if you have a case-most of the guests in the Gatwick hotels do not; their luggage circulates without them, somewhere up there in the sky. Being in a Gatwick hotel does not mean that you have arrived. On the contrary, it means that you have plenty left to go.

The foyer contains the human contents of a 747 whose engine failed over Kazakhstan. This is their second night on the ground in the wrong country; their clothes are ripe-crying out for a heated trouser press-and their skin is grey. They will think about a bath and settle for a shower, but not yet, because they have nothing clean to wear. They will check the wardrobe and the bedside light, after which, they will sit on the bed, then lie on it, or tug out the tight quilt and climb under it: though after a while we will all roll or crawl or slump across to the forgotten mini-bar, and wonder is it worth the price. Any of it.

This is not England. This is the flying city. This is extra time.

San Miguel, Gordon’s, Coca-Cola, Schweppes. I need something more precise-there is nothing precise enough for me to drink here. I take the overpriced water and swallow until the plastic bottle collapses with a crack. I should go out and get a litre of this stuff. I should go and get a half-wax in the spa. I have the rest of my life to organise. I can’t organise the rest of my life with hairy legs. I wonder is there any way to get into the Clarins shop in the departure lounge where a woman in a white coat does a serious facial in a little back room, though facials always make me look plucked. Still, I have a terrible yearning for a woman in a rasping white coat whose pressing and patting fingers will stick my face back on, where it is in danger of falling away.

I felt very level when I drove to Dublin airport. I felt very sane and full of purpose. I had some idea of seeing Rowan, perhaps, or of walking along the Brighton front one last time. But the minute the plane’s wheels touched down I knew what I had come here to do. Sleep. I needed to sleep. So I just followed a sign that said ‘Hotel’ and it led, as it often does, to a firm bed, a full mini-bar, and a clapped-out television remote control.

And I sleep.

I wake fully dressed, take off my clothes and get in between the cool, tight sheets.

‘I tried to catch you,’ says the man in my dream. ‘But you were in the wrong year.’ It is Michael Weiss. He has swum through decades to get to me, he has fought his way up through layers of time. And when we stand face to face I say, ‘How are you Michael?’ and he says, ‘I’m fine. I’m just fine.’

I wake again and can not tell if the light outside is morning light or afternoon. I jab my thumb into the spongy buttons of the remote to find the time on the TV news. It is half past six in the evening. I have slept for eight hours. I turn to sleep again, then reach in a panic to ring the girls.

Tom answers the phone.

‘Darling. Hi. Where are you?’ Very calm and level.

‘Will you put Rebecca on?’ I say and realise, in the pause that follows, that it is quite within his power to say no.

‘Hello.’ She sounds so much younger than herself.

‘Hello, sweetie.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Are you all right?’ I say. ‘I’ll be home soon.’

‘Oh. OK.’ Quite cheerful. This is not her responsibility. Quite right too.

‘Put your sister on.’

Emily breathes down the line.

‘Hiya,’ I say. ‘Hiya.’

More breathing. It is a protracted business, for Emily, the phone. (‘You’re not here,’ she said to me once. ‘ I am here.’) This time she has figured out what the damn thing is for. Just about.

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, sweetie.’

‘I give you a word,’ she says. ‘And that word is “love”.’

‘Yes,’ I say finally. ‘Yes. That’s a good word to give.’

‘Bye bye!’ And to save me the bother, she slaps down the phone.

Emily. I do not know if the child is brilliant or odd-she can’t make things connect up, somehow, but when they do it is always amazing. So I am not worried about her, I think, before realising that, actually, I am in Gatwick airport. I have run away from my daughter. I have left her behind.

But there is no leaving the girls, they are always with me. I turn in to the covers and feel for the fine hair of Rebecca fanned out on the pillow, where she sometimes likes to curl up beside me; the cat’s gaze of her sister watching from elsewhere in the room. They are so beautiful. Wherever I touch, I can conjure the silk of their hair, and think it a great and quiet victory to have them in the world.

Rebecca Mary and Emily Rose. They stay with me now in my sleep. They are quite patient. They turn away for a while, and let me be.

I wake again, and shower. I put on new pants and leave the old ones in the bin. I discard this other life, and leave the hotel behind.

Outside, I am surprised to find that I am still in an airport, that the dream goes on. I have travelled for so long and I am still here.

Palma

Barcelona

Mombasa

Split

From the departures board, all the places I have never been are beckoning to me like streetwalkers, blank to my desire.

Fuerteventura

Vilnius

Pula

Cork

Such strumpery. The people around me, quite rightly, ignore them and shop instead. I follow them in the glass lift to the next floor, and look in Accessorize for something small for each of the girls, something sparkling or floral. I look at the people queuing at the till, and I wonder are they going home, or are they going far away from the people they love. There are no other journeys. And I think we make for peculiar refugees, running from our own blood, or towards our own blood; pulsing back and forth along ghostly veins that wrap the world in a skein of blood. This is what I am thinking, as I stand in the queue in the Gatwick Village branch of Accessorize with my two pairs of flip-flops, that sport at the plastic cleft a silk orchid for Emily, and for Rebecca a peony rose. I am thinking about the world wrapped in blood, as a ball of string is wrapped in its own string. That if I just follow the line I will find out what it is that I want to know.

Towards or away.

The temptation to go back to the hotel is very strong, but I force myself to sit awhile in the concourse on the departures floor, thinking I might choose a destination by check-in zone, knowing that I am going nowhere, but home.

Nice

Djerba

Edinburgh

Dublin

Where is Djerba, anyway?

And this time the plane will land properly. I just feel it didn’t land properly , the last time I flew into Dublin. Kitty was weeping beside me, and Liam was sitting there accusing me, and the place we touched down in wasn’t the place I used to know. Perhaps none of it was real. I feel like I have spent the last five months up in the air.