Maggie Gee: Where are the Snows

I was a little tipsy; I stared at him, the detailed clarity of his face printed on a haze of faceless strangers. Only he and I were real, I knew. Christopher and me, a world of two.

As the plane climbed and the earth receded he pressed his clinking glass against mine. ‘Christopher and Alexandra for ever,’ he said, and his other arm encircled my body, his hand under my jacket gently stroked my left breast, rubbing the silk against my nipple.

‘Alexandra and Christopher,’ I breathed.

And we were away. We had got away. Stepping across into another life, flying away into our dream. This was where it started, the fairy tale. This was where the happy ever after begins.

In the old life we would never have considered making love in an aeroplane. It was something people only did in novels: childless, carefree, fictional people. But this was the new time, fairy tale time.

We could go anywhere, do anything. And so the thought flew into our heads through the blind and brilliant blue of the window.

Alcohol and chance helped it to grow. Our seats were in the very front row of the plane, by the window, and the flight to Hungary was only half full, dotted about with businessmen and people in cheap, outmoded clothes who were probably Hungarian, poor things. The steward and stewardess were less than officious. The ice-cubes in our glasses stayed stranded.

‘Maybe they’re up to something back there.’ They had both disappeared into their little galley way back in the rear of the plane.

‘I wish we were up to something.’ We were kissing idly; no one could see us, though in the row of seats just behind and across, two stolid businessmen discussed aluminium. I pushed up the arm between our two seats. The kisses opened, became less idle.

Open kisses are curious things. Two little animals, wet and warm, tumble out of their caves and fall on each other, sliding and rubbing, naked, juicy, and everything between them is melting, easy, so they send out a message to the bigger animals: this is delicious. You do it too.

The longer we kissed, the louder the message.

Christopher took and squeezed my hand and brushed it across the front of his body. I felt what he wanted me to feel.

‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to wait… Christopher, we’ve been married twelve years!’ For Christopher’s hand was between my knees, nosing dog-like up under my skirt. I was weak with laughter, weak with gin, weakening as lust ran through my body, rushing faster than alcohol.

Things were confusing; things were confused; drink, desire, a dazzle of sun flaring through the low windows of the plane. On other seats there were only shadows, whereas we were urgent, we were real. In this new life we had only just met, we were only just meeting, 40,000 feet up, flying together near the dangerous sun, soaring way over the storybook clouds.

Christopher draped his beige spy trenchcoat over the gap between the backs of our seats, then his other hand was inside my thighs. His face was familiar, flushed and intent. I forgot where we were, I forgot who I was, I pressed myself down upon his hand, I licked his cheek, I half-closed my eyes.

Almost too late we heard the stewardess’s snappish offers of drinks approaching again, and the hurried tinkle of money and glasses. Swearing, Christopher removed his hand, I turned towards the window, his body cupped mine, he tugged the coat down to cover us up and with one accord we feigned sighing sleep, though my cheeks were hot, and our sighing excessive. The stewardess asked sternly for our orders, but when we said nothing her voice receded.

I half-opened my eyes into dazzling sun. Christopher’s breath was loud in my ear. We were making spoons. We were making love. The enormous blue looked in at us. We were flying together, drunk with light. His finger slipped inside again. Not his finger. Oh not his finger.

I was due to menstruate next day, but he didn’t know, only I knew that; he was an idiot who wanted to make babies, he was an idiot who loved me. I pushed down over him. I took him in. Miles below was a silver fleece of clouds, miles below that a tiny planet existed only for our pleasure. ‘More,’ I sighed. ‘Yes. Oh yes.’ We moved very slowly, then slowly faster.

Hot skin of the seat on my own hot skin, the blazing sun, we were burning, swelling, I squeezed my lids as I started to come, there was only a bright red greedy blindness, then the sun burst through me as I was transfigured, gasping, impaled in thin blue air, staring amazed at a tiny plane which passed below us, diamond-edged, as I shook with Christopher’s dying moments.

We died together. We dozed. We dressed, furtive and sleepy, then dozed again.

Till the chimes awoke us; time to fasten our seat-belts. We cocked a cautious ear behind us; the two grey men were talking tin.

‘What if we just made a baby?’ Chris asked. His tone was playful, but it wasn’t a joke.

I didn’t disillusion him. Let him dream.

We circled Hungary, in fairy-tale time.

My name is Mary Brown. I know it’s dull, but I’m fond of it. Actually Brown is my husband’s name, but before I married him I was a Smith, so you see I hadn’t a thing to lose.

— I prefer Brown to Smith. It seems more solid, and I like solid things. Having been brought up in a feckless family, I’m not very drawn to drama… at any rate, I used not to be drawn to drama. I’m not so sure of myself as I was.

A lot of things have changed in the seven or eight years since Christopher and Alexandra went away. I’ve suddenly started to think about ageing; my husband Matthew is younger than me, but I never used to think about my age. I still can’t believe that I’ve stopped having periods and can’t have any more children… my own children are enormous strangers who’ve learned to say ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ at last.

I was always what people call ‘a good mother’. Matthew used to say I was a good wife. When I was young I was told I was a very good student, with composition my forte. I sometimes wonder where my goodness has gone…

But I don’t think about myself much. When I compare my life to other people’s it’s lacking in stature, or substance, or I am, playing a bit part in my own life. So I don’t have a story of my own to tell. I can only tell you about my friends…

Alexandra and Christopher. Because they’re not here their names have somehow acquired a melancholy ring. Yet when they first came to live in Islington, and the four of us made friends — almost too quickly — just the sound of their names on the phone cheered us up. ‘Mary? It’s Alex. You’ve got to come round.’

They were very soon our best friends. Always dropping in, always cheerful and reckless. Especially at first, before Penelope killed herself. They seemed to grow younger as their kids grew up. We had two as well, so that was a link.

Chris and Alex’s two — not really Alex’s, of course, Chris’s children by his first wife Penelope — would have been around six and eight when they first came to live across the road from us. They were just married, and besotted with each other. For over ten years we were as thick as thieves.

Although my husband never admitted it, he was a little in love with Alex. It wasn’t her fault, she seemed awfully young, and a lot of men must have fallen for her… I couldn’t dislike her for her beautiful face, though I sometimes felt she was a dreadful mother. After a while they were simply there. We saw them so often she became like a sister.

Now they write to us from extraordinary places. The first year or so we heard every other week; we were keeping an eye on their children for them. Then naturally the cards slackened off. No complaints, it was kind of them to think of us at all. But we must have been becoming less real to them, getting smaller, the wrong end of the telescope.