1001 Nights Cast

Cees moved tentatively with his trolley. He pushed it as if pushing a wheelchair in which he was somehow also sitting. From behind, the airport had a view of a bow-legged, slightly shaky septuagenarian. But it was a view the airport chose not to take, atomized as it was into a Brownian motion of individuals pattering, checking, whistling and grumbling all around him. He stood still, looking vacantly around. The loudspeaker system boomed over his head with gate numbers and late calls. Cees wished he had accepted Geraldine’s offer to come with him right to the desk. She had leaned across the passenger seat to look up at him, worried. But he had shaken his head, and banged the top of the car to signal that she should drive off, and he hadn’t looked back.

A woman in smart blue swung into his line of vision.

‘Could you possibly direct me to the Qantas check-in?’ he said, clearing his throat. The woman stared at him for a moment as though she were trying to remember his face. ‘I don’t actually work here’ she frowned, but then looked at him again, kindly. ‘Actually, I think Qantas is over there, section B.’ She spoke too clearly at him, as though Cees were a small child. He had probably lived in England longer than she had been alive. She turned back to her Blackberry.

Cess couldn’t see where she was pointing. He stumbled off straight ahead. She called after him, ‘To the right, go right!’ Dumbly he did as he was told, nodding, throwing a rictus grin over his shoulder towards the voice. The Qantas desk swam towards him, a doll-faced girl beaming a chipmunk smile at him. He focused on the face, anchoring himself to it. There was no queue.

‘Good morning, sir! You’re bright and early. Sydney?’

‘Yes, I have my ticket. Is this too heavy, my bag?’

‘We’ll just weigh it for you, sir. Could you pop it on the scales for me?’

Cees laboured with the handle, trying to drag the new Samsung suitcase across from the trolley. The wheels caught in the trolley’s restraining hoops, and the handle suddenly popped out and extended, sending him staggering backwards. He grinned sheepishly at the young woman, wiping one hand across his brow.

‘This is the problem with being old, eh?’ But she was already gesturing to one of the heavy-set security men to come and get the job done. She turned back to him, smiled again.

‘Now sir, passport and tickets, please. Would you like the window or the aisle?’

‘Aisle, please –’ She was frowning at the ticket.

‘Sorry, sir, this is an economy ticket. You’ll have to queue up over there.’ She pointed to a vast shuffling caterpillar of people, peppered with erupting boils of screaming children and excess baggage.

‘Couldn’t I just—I don’t feel so good’, he whispered, wilting under her polished crimson smile. She paused, and then leant in towards him. Another smile.

‘No, you’re fine. There’s no one waiting. I can get you a car to take you to the gate if you need it.’

‘Thank you so much, I would be most grateful. How kind, thank you’. The uncertainty in his voice was a compound of blind gratitude and humiliation.

‘That’s all right. All part of the service. Have you ever flown before, sir?’

He stared back in wonderment. Images came to him of a hundred international flights, of gin and tonic on little paper coasters with crimped edges, of plastic trays of BOAC food, of pretty girls leaning over him to arrange pillows.

‘Yes, I’ve flown before’.

On board, he was taken, by the elbow, all the way to his seat. A young Asian man slid his shoulder bag into the overhead locker before Cees could tell him there was a book he wanted. Cees sat down, silent. Next to him was a couple, T-shirts and shorts, on holiday. They kissed, ignoring Cees. He looked away. Geraldine floated through his mind, and then Margit. Dead Margit. The seat was cramped and narrow. His knees rammed the row in front. His eyes closed and his head started to loll forward.

When he woke the lights had been put out, and he urgently needed the toilet. The Asian man in front of him had put back his seat, and Cees could not free himself. He gave the seat an experimental thump with his knees, but the man remained inert. Cees sat and debated with himself. He fumbled with the keypad at his side. A light came on overhead. Another button. A minute screen in front of him flashed into brilliant green and blue life. A map of the world emerged, with a thin red line etched across it. They were over India. The couple next to him stirred and the girl leant forward to look at him, then up at the light. Cees shrugged his shoulders helplessly at her, and she nudged her boyfriend awake. A bleached head swayed towards Cees, asking if he could help.

‘The stewardess, please?’ he whispered.

The boy pressed his own keypad with nimble fingers, and settled down again. Cees waited, packed in his seat. Like the set of shelves his son had brought to the house recently, all done up in, what was it? A pack flat. Something. This world.

Later he woke again, with a start. His brother’s face, long-nosed, with hard metallic eyes, lingered in his mind. He had been dreaming of them both at a racetrack, Anton cheering on a horse that seemed to be galloping madly but standing in one place, turning to clap Cees on the back, mouth open in a frenzied scream. His brother in Sydney. Cees’s eyes were suddenly full, and he dabbed at them with the back of his hand. It had to be done. See him again, ask why. Cees sank further back in his chair. Anton had always been top dog.