Appliance Page 6

  Kathy gave a little shake of her head. She looked down again. She was going to lean forward and slip her arms around his waist and hug him. At least, she was considering it, she imagined doing it, the movement of it, the feel of it. But Frank suddenly laughed, loudly, and drew away from her.

  ‘Oh, but I gave them quite a shock!’ He went back and seated himself at the kitchen table. His eyes were shining as he recounted his tale. ‘When I came out. When they opened the door, oh, you should have seen their faces. There was blood everywhere! Over my lips, my chest. All down my front, in fact. I was a little disoriented, of course, a little dizzy, so I hadn’t noticed. And I was trying my best in that moment to counter the dizziness, to hold myself upright. That’s all I was really thinking about. Just trying to stay standing up. Of course, as it turned out, it was only a nosebleed. That’s all. You know how I used to get them? When I was younger? A sign of good health, we always said. Just life overflowing. But they didn’t know that. Blood is blood, after all. They thought it was due to some terrible accident. But nope, nothing worse than a nosebleed. I guess it must have been the excitement. I was so nervous when I went in. I couldn’t help it. But I’ve got a lot of blood. Yes. A lot of blood. Enough to spare a little.’

  The kettle was rumbling. Its whistle was starting to sound. Kathy switched it off at the wall but made no further move to make the tea.

  ‘And they checked you over?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Thoroughly? Ran all their tests and such?’

  ‘Yes!’ Frank beamed again. ‘I’m fine. Really. Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘And—you have to go back soon?’

  Frank frowned, but the smile stayed. ‘You know I do.’

  ‘To go through again.’

  ‘That’s the plan. This was just the first test. It wouldn’t be much of an experiment to run the procedure only once.’

  ‘But you don’t have to, do you? You could say no. You could say you didn’t feel well. They wouldn’t make you do it if you told them that. They couldn’t.’

  Frank looked at her quizzically. ‘But I do feel well. That is, I certainly don’t feel unwell. And I couldn’t exactly lie—’

  ‘I don’t want you going through any more.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘But honey, you know I have to. I must.’ Frank came forward once again and put his hands on Kathy’s hips. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to them if I didn’t. They’ve invested so much in me. In us. I don’t want you to be worried, but I can’t refuse them. How would you suppose I—’

  ‘When do you go?’ There was a quiet urgency in Kathy’s voice, a nervous quivering. She swallowed. ‘Go through again, I mean.’

  ‘It’s not scheduled for another week.’ Frank considered this. ‘Could be sooner, I suppose. I can check. But why? What’s got you so spooked?’

  ‘I—I don’t know. It was just—’ Kathy turned about. She stared at the kitchen tiles. Their gleaming white. ‘It’s probably nothing.’ She reached out towards the wall socket and flicked the switch back on. In an instant the kettle began its rapid reboil. ‘It probably won’t make a difference.’ Soon the whistle once more began to sound. ‘It can probably wait.’

  4. Trial & Error

  THE FENCE was twelve feet high. Its fine vertical shafts were of galvanised steel. Springy loops of razor wire ran along its top.

  Opposite the fence a steep earth bank descended into a concrete gully. Scrubby trees and brambles grew along the bank’s near side; the concrete cracked in places by the slow steady push of new roots.

  Beyond the bank, beyond the strip of woodland and the coils of thorny undergrowth, was a housing estate. From here two children, a boy and a girl, made their easy quiet way towards the fence.

  It was early-morning bright. The air was still cold from a cloudless night. The children walked in single file along a worn path, winding their way through the trees and between the brambles, their cheap canvas shoes quickly dirtied by loose earth. They took particular care scrambling one at a time down the steep bank because of what they carried with them, something that even a small fall could ruin, something delicate that they passed from one to the other and then back as the safety of the gully was reached.

  The fence may have been too high and dangerous to climb but its foundations had long been neglected. In places the concrete had crumbled away altogether, and at the point the children were aiming for there was a hole, a narrow tunnel, burrowed at first by rabbits then widened over the years by larger animals. The children crawled carefully through with their delicate burden, emerging on the edge of the disused airfield, brushing crumbs of soil from their clothes, a toy aeroplane held lightly in the girl’s hands, its wings lifting restlessly in the cool morning breeze.

  The girl’s name was Anita. She was older than the boy by a year. She was taller too. Her hair was long and black and very fine and blew about her face as the two of them stood considering the empty field.

  The boy was Lochan. His hair would have looked and acted the same had it not been cut so short that it stuck out straight, brush-like. He stood now with his hands in his pockets, listening to the sounds from the airport buildings at the field’s far side, the traffic noise beyond, the intermittent rattle and clang from construction work, the momentary fragments of shouting voices and warning alarms that carried on the wind.

  Both children stared especially hard at the tall grey control tower with its wraparound turret of angled windows. They squinted, watching for any signs of movement, for a glimpse of small shadowy stick figures behind the blue-green glass. But there was nothing. And so they stepped forward across the wet grass, on towards the nearest runway strip, a hundred yards or so from the fenceline.

  The toy plane bobbed in Anita’s hands, catching on any updraught. It was a simple spindly thing, with a slender balsa wood dowel for a fuselage and wings of painted polystyrene foam. Two fixed wheels on fine stiff wire made up the landing gear. A long black rubber band spanned the machine’s underside from a hook at its tail to the large red plastic propeller at its nose. The propeller caught the wind too, twitching in the current but halted from turning all the way round by a gentle tension in the band.

  The concrete runway was broken. Yellow-flowered weeds pushed through the cracks. Rabbits stalked the verges in search of dandelions, but scattered as the two children approached.

  Anita knelt, holding the plane low, and began winding the propeller with her finger, tilting her head to one side to keep her hair from tangling in the simple mechanism.

  ‘You should have brought a clip, or scrunchie, or something.’ Lochan leaned forward, watching the winding procedure keenly, watching the waves form and narrow along the length of the rubber.

  ‘I know.’ Anita did not look up. ‘I already checked. I only have the spare band for this.’

  ‘What about a piece of string?’

  ‘Do you have a piece of string?’

  Lochan thought for a moment. ‘I’ve a shoelace? Oh, wait.’ He pushed his hand into his pocket and brought out a square of folded fabric. ‘How about this?’

  Anita paused in her winding and looked at the pale blue cotton handkerchief as it was unfolded in front of her.

  ‘Is it clean?’

  ‘I don’t use it.’ Lochan held it out to her. ‘Always carry. Never use.’

  ‘Okay—you do it though.’ Anita went back to her winding. ‘Just not too tight, yeah?’

  Lochan went to stand behind her, bowing slightly as he gathered up her hair, drawing in the loose strands that fell forward around her ears. He felt Anita flinch and twitch her head back as he tied the handkerchief into a simple raggedy knot he was sure wouldn’t slip, but she didn’t say anything.

  Standing straight again, happy with his handiwork as the loose ponytail flopped onto Anita’s neck, Lochan gazed once more towards the airport buildings. The new day’s activity had already increased. The traffic noise was louder, horns sounded and engines reverberated from the dark ti
ers of multistorey car parks.

  It was another such car park they were constructing at the other end of the airport. There were cranes. There were dull deep clangs as though from giant items clumsily dropped. There was a sound as of heavy chains being shaken together. Beyond all this Lochan could see the glint of cars moving slowly along the dual carriageway.

  ‘That’s probably enough.’ Anita held up the toy plane, the band now tightly spiralled beneath its central shaft. ‘What do you think?’

  Lochan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only tried it in my bedroom. Got it moving. But it bumped the wall too quick. Never actually flew.’

  Anita placed the machine on the concrete, holding both body and propeller still before her sudden release, then moving quickly back to give the plane space. The whirring force of the red plastic got the plane going soon enough and it hopped and bumbled at a fair speed along the cracked runway. It showed a definite lightness as it tried to catch the low wind, but there was no clear sign of lift and it came to a stop again after a dozen or so yards.

  The children said nothing. They ambled over to retrieve it. They inspected it, turning it over, checking its wheels. Then Lochan set to winding it. He tried twirling his finger very fast around the propeller but he kept slipping and the blades would whirr back and undo his efforts. He realised now why Anita had taken so long. Slow and steady was by far the best approach. The rubber band curled into waves and the waves closed upon one another to form a tight rubber tube, a double helix in which the power for flight resided. When ugly little knots began to form on top of that perfection Lochan stopped. There was no sense in overdoing it.

  The wind had dropped. Anita tested the air with a wetted fingertip. This time they tried sending it directly into the breeze. Again it bumped along on its spindly wheels. But this time there was lift. For a moment it rose clear from the ground and wobbled a little on the air before landing softly once more and exhausting the last of its wound-up energy.

  Anita laughed and clapped her hand over her mouth. Lochan was grinning. They both ran to collect their machine from its first successful flight.

  ‘It needs more power somehow.’ Anita examined the loose length of rubber.

  Lochan nodded eagerly. ‘Could we use both bands together?’

  ‘Don’t think so. They’d tangle or something. And besides, if they both broke we’d have nothing.’

  She began winding at once.

  Lochan saw no reason to disagree. They could only work with what they had. They could only inch forward bit by bit. Pushing too hard might end in disaster.

  There was another loud bang from the construction site, followed by muffled shouts. Lochan looked up at the control tower. It seemed now a lot more imposing than before. He glanced back to the hole in the fence. He felt very exposed. But nothing had happened. There had been no shouts for them to clear off. Even the rabbits had returned silently to the soft grass at the edges of the old runway.

  ‘It used to be illegal to be out on airfields without permission.’

  ‘I know.’ Anita’s eyes stayed fixed upon the propeller. ‘Probably still is. You know, private land and that.’

  ‘And if you were caught running, unauthorised, they could shoot you.’

  Anita nodded. ‘My dad told me that too.’

  ‘Do you think they did it from the tower?’

  Anita shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘But did they have, like, a gunman up there? Was it someone’s job, do you think?’

  Anita paused momentarily and stared into the sky. It was very blue. No hint of clouds. No birds either.

  ‘Well, it’d be down to the security team, for sure.’ She went back to her winding. ‘Not the air traffic controllers themselves.’

  ‘And did your dad—did he ever have to? Did he even carry a gun?’

  ‘Don’t think so. He never said. I don’t think it was like that. Not for what he was doing. And it’s not like that now. It’s all just checks and stuff. Still important though.’

  ‘I know. Like in case someone tries to take a bomb through.’

  ‘Yeah. Although that couldn’t actually happen. Not really. I asked but Dad says it’s impossible. Mum too. Even if someone were to get that far. Like, right inside? It just—couldn’t happen. I don’t really get why.’

  Lochan nodded. He looked down the long length of the runway. It seemed to slope up slightly at the far end, like a gently curving ramp. Unless that was just his eyes playing tricks. It was such a long way off.

  ‘All this empty space. Bit of a waste, don’t you think? You know, it just sitting here. They should put in a bike park. Or cricket pitches.’

  ‘Probably not allowed. Security risk and all.’

  ‘What, like a cricket ball coming through the terminal window?’

  ‘Well, yeah, maybe.’ Anita looked up at him seriously, but her finger kept dutifully turning the propeller. She’d got the feel of it now. She could keep the same neat circle going. Not too close to the middle, not too near the tip of the blades. ‘More likely just people. Too many, too near the buildings. Everything has to be watched, you see? Monitored. They probably do know we’re out here right now.’

  ‘Yeah. I guess so.’

  ‘Yeah, and they probably don’t really care because, you know, we’re just two kids and they’ll have these giant binoculars and they’ll be able to see we’re not a threat. Not a security risk.’

  ‘And then anyway what would they even—’ Lochan gripped Anita’s wrist suddenly. ‘Hey, careful! You’ll overwind it!’

  Anita glanced down and saw the knots, the small ugly black knots from where the rubber band had started to double up on itself. But in her hands the tension in the machine felt like it could take a lot more. She continued winding, smiling slyly at Lochan as she did so.

  ‘Oh, so that’s the trick!’ The boy looked on excitedly. ‘We were too gentle with it. It just needs more. More, more, more!’

  The knots began to form at random points along the band, but they slowly filled up its full length, and soon they didn’t look ugly at all. There was a regularity to them, each forming in the very same stress-pattern as the next, till eventually the entire band looked like just another spiral, double-wound. A spiral upon a spiral. As though it had at last reached the configuration it had always meant to assume.

  Anita placed the taut machine carefully on the ground, glancing up often and making tiny adjustments to the plane’s forward angle. She was neat in her release, taking both hands away sharply, but whether from the strength of the breeze in that moment or perhaps from having too much power, the plane didn’t fly. It bounced for a while over the uneven ground, toppled forward onto its propeller and, twisting itself round and flopping onto its back, buzzed angrily as it tried to release the energy still stored in its band.

  Lochan dashed over and stuck his finger into the plastic blades of the propeller to stop it spinning. It only stung a little. The machine became still and silent, wholly compliant.

  ‘It’s this rough ground.’ Anita stubbed the sole of her shoe against the runway. ‘Would’ve been fine for jumbo jets and their big rubbery wheels. Would’ve seemed smooth to them.’

  Lochan nodded. He’d already begun the long process of winding again. ‘Like an ant crawling over sand.’

  ‘Like a what?’

  ‘You know, like sand on a beach would for us feel fine and smooth and soft and all that, but for an ant or some tiny beetle or whatever it’d be like crawling over tough rocky terrain. Just like our little plane over all these bumps.’

  ‘Oh right, yeah—like that.’

  The winding continued.

  Anita looked on attentively, watching Lochan’s slowly twirling finger and the rubber band’s gradual bunching, as though this was the most crucial aspect of it all, as though Lochan might somehow get this part wrong and how simply everything depended on this calm yet meticulous preparation.

  But Lochan didn’t look at what he was doing, instead he glanced vaguely
upward, gazing out over the airfield. The morning was growing warm with the sun. The dew shone silver on the wide expanses of grass and glittered as the droplets slowly evaporated, each one diminishing, leaving a rich green beneath.

  ‘I used to think they’d sell it.’ The boy stared wide-eyed into the middle distance. ‘So much land. They could put houses on it. Loads of them. Think of all the people that could live here. All together.’

  ‘They won’t though.’ Anita itched to take over the winding from Lochan. It wasn’t that he was doing it badly, she just felt she could do it better. ‘Dad says it’ll go to make more buildings, eventually. Terminals. Car parks. That sort of thing. Anything of benefit to the travelport.’

  ‘New facilities.’ Lochan nodded, still staring dreamily ahead. ‘A hotel, maybe. For anyone all set to travel.’ He looked up at Anita. ‘Would you ever use it?’

  ‘Well, no. I live just over there.’

  ‘Not a hotel. The travelport itself. The network.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anita considered this briefly. ‘No. Can’t afford it.’ She sniffed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. ‘And anyway, nowhere to go.’

  ‘But your mum and your dad work there.’

  ‘So? Doesn’t mean we get free tickets.’

  ‘It can’t be that expensive, can it? I mean, what does it really cost? Like, how much energy does it use up?’

  Anita shrugged. ‘Dad says the price will get lower, eventually. But with all the new equipment, and all the precautions, etc. It’s supposed to be real quick and that, but the queues are horrendous. Mum never stops.’

  ‘Is it true you have to be naked? To go through, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s true.’ Anita nodded. ‘That’s what Mum does. She looks after people before they get sent. Explains how it works. Safety measures. What to expect. All that stuff. She has to repeat those same things, over and over, all day long. Even to people who use it regularly. You know, business folk. It’s the law. She finds it so so boring. And still she has to go on smiling. All day long. But, yeah, I know what you mean, I wouldn’t like that part either, having to be naked in front of strangers.’