‘STREWTH!’ THE AUSTRALIAN pilot had the joystick back as far as it would go but you could still hear the plane’s undercarriage brush the top branches of the trees. A moment later they were clear and the pilot had relaxed enough to remove his baseball hat and wipe his sweating forehead with it, just as he had when he’d landed the plane before. ‘That was fucken close, mate. I’m bloody glad I won’t be doing that again.’
‘Why not?’ William asked as he peered out of the window beside him at the shrinking island below. Another minute and they’d be so far away he wouldn’t be able to make out the insults his interference had inflicted upon its emerald beauty.
‘Because I like fucken living too much, that’s why. I’ve told them I’m not doing this run any more. Fucken runway’s too short. Let some other poor bastard get killed taking Coke to a load of one-legged Abos. Have you seen the size of those people? You take two or three of them to the big island and it’s a fucken miracle if the bloody plane can even get off the ground let alone over the fucken trees.’
They were over the coastline now. There was the village, with the New Globe Playhouse rising magnificently out of the ramshackle collection of huts and concrete-block houses around it; there was the Captain Cook, shiny white and finished now, and that SUV was probably Tr’boa’s taxi. There was the shitting beach where this morning he had taken what was almost certainly his last ever alfresco dump unless he ever went back to the Long Island shore and ate another carry-out pizza. There was a solitary fishing boat, Lintoa of course, getting in the day’s catch before turning superstar for the evening’s performance of Hamlet. And there, below now, as the plane followed the shoreline, there was Lucy’s house where no doubt she and his daughter, rightly named Perdita because she was surely lost to him for ever now, might look up from their recitation of two times two is be four and think of him. Not that two twos always did make four, of course. Sometimes, no matter how you computed things, the answer came out odd. He thought how right, how even, how symmetrical it would be if he and Lucy could be together. Impossible to believe now that only a few hours ago he had sat on that very porch below, eating breakfast with her and the new man in her life and Managua . . .
William clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Stop!’ he cried. ‘Turn the plane around, we have to go back!’ What a fool he was! Why hadn’t he thought before? Of course there was nothing between Lucy and Dr Gold!
‘What?’ said the Australian. ‘Are you serious, mate?’
‘I’m a fool,’ William said aloud. The Australian gave him a strange, worried glance. William began laughing. The pilot looked alarmed.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter, mate?’
‘Breakfast!’ shrieked William.
‘Breakfast? Listen mate, we don’t do breakfast on these flights. I got some biscuits somewhere . . .’
‘No, not me, them!’
The pilot glanced quickly at his instruments as though afraid to take his eyes off William. He shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate, I just don’t get it.’
‘They were eating breakfast together!’ William cried.
The plane dipped and then righted itself as the Australian, looking positively scared now, stopped staring at William and concentrated his efforts on flying.
William didn’t notice the man’s fearful expression. He was thinking about how Dr Gold had been eating breakfast with Lucy when he and Managua arrived. They hadn’t made any attempt to hide it. There had been no frisbeeing of plates through windows, no desperate whisperings about egg yolk staining facial hair. And Lucy was always so respectful of the island’s traditions. She would never have offended Managua by openly flouting them. Eating breakfast with Gold could mean only one thing. There must be some other explanation of why he had spent the night in her house. It couldn’t be sex. She wasn’t sleeping with him!
‘Turn the plane round!’ William cried again.
‘Now listen here, mate . . .’
‘I said, turn the plane round. I want to go back!’
The pilot laughed. ‘You’re fucken joking, mate. There’s no way I’m going back there. Whatever it is you’ve forgotten, you can just fucken send for it later.’
‘I haven’t forgotten anything, I just changed my mind.’
‘Too late for that, mate, you’ll just have to wait for next week’s flight.’
‘I can’t. I’m desperate. I want to go back now.’
‘No way. No way I’m doing an extra landing and take-off.’ He gunned the engine to indicate that not only was he not going back, he was getting away faster.
William leaned over and grabbed the steering mechanism. He tried to turn it and the plane lurched.
‘What the fuck—’ The pilot smacked him in the face with his fist. William slumped back into his seat. ‘Haven’t you had enough of people hijacking planes lately, mate? I could have you locked up for life for trying a trick like that.’
William rubbed his cheek. ‘I’m sorry. Please, won’t you turn around? I really do need to be back there today.’
‘No way. Nothing on fucken earth would make me chance that runway two more times. Nothing.’
‘I’ll give you a thousand dollars.’
‘Make it two.’
‘Cash?’
‘Yes.’ Of course William hadn’t got anywhere near two thousand dollars on him, but he’d worry about that when they were on the ground. Purnu must have that much from all his business affairs. He’d surely lend it to William at a suitably exorbitant rate of interest. He hoped so. He couldn’t imagine being able to buy this guy off with yams.