Chapter 9

“Is it just yourself?” the young pimply check-in guy enquired.

I looked around me as if I expected someone else to appear.

“Yes,” I responded. “I’m travelling alone.”

He looked down at my bump and back up at me.

“Will I give you an emergency-exit seat? Are you fit and healthy?”

“Yes, yes, thank you, I am,” I lied.

I slid into my seat in the emergency-exit row by the window.

They have a look on this low-cost airline, I thought. The boys are skinny and sallow-skinned and their hair is so gelled that it stands up, dead straight. Their male waists are a size zero. They are overzealous and super-beautiful as if constantly posing for the annual charity calendar. There is now a low-cost speak too that is used on all flights and for all announcements. There are no full stops or commas, not even a breath of air is taken – any pausing is simply time-wasting. All the sentences flow into each other: the announcements are one long unintelligible sentence.

“God, Ruby, wouldn’t you hate to think what might happen during an emergency?” I whispered to her. “When they all reverted to their native languages chaos would ensue and they would all fix their hair for the emergency landing. You know, the sales pitch would probably still go on – no doubt the emergency drill would include selling smokeless cigarettes to calm the customers as the plane nose-dived. Well, Ruby, this is the only way to get to Liverpool so we don’t have much of a choice and if it’s any consolation you’re on a one-way ticket.”

Over the last couple of days I had become an expert at avoiding all types of eye contact. Once you do it a few times, it becomes quite easy. You don’t want to be blatantly rude either. There is an art to it. You look over someone. It’s as though you’re looking at their face, but you are in fact looking at the top of the back of their head but from the front. You see just beyond them. Eye contact can open up a series of uncomfortable questions, eye contact can tell too much.

I put on my head phones and closed my eyes. I dozed off, feeling tired after our early-morning outing.

I woke having slept for only fifteen minutes though it felt like I had been sleeping for hours. I sat up and looked around, afraid I had been dribbling or snoring or both.

Her squinty eyes and cold-steel gaze felt as though they were going to pierce every bone of my body. She glared out of the corners of her eyes. The small wiry woman frowned at my stomach, then at my face, then moved on to my eyes and then back down at my bulge. Her watery dull-brown eyes and her mean lips were invading my space. She had wavy dull-brown hair and plum-coloured lipstick that was plastered just outside the outline of her lips. She was dressed in a light beige suit with a plain off-white blouse. A remarkably unspectacular outfit, I thought. Her outfit matched her personality, as I was about to find out, devoid of colour and life.

I closed my eyes to avoid engaging with her but I was too late: eye contact had been stolen from me by her. She was in. I had made another fatal mistake.

“Off to Liverpool then?” she chirped.

“Yes,” I replied, trying to shut off the conversation.

“For just a couple of days? Meeting someone, are you?”

“Yes,” I replied to her second and third questions. “Yes, I am meeting people there.”

Yes-No answers were not going to deter this woman. She seemed like a professional. I suspected that she was an expert at sucking information from vulnerable bodies. The parasitic type. My mother’s words rang in my ears – she always told us, “Have respect for your elders”, “Be polite” and her favourite was “It is nice to be nice.”

“Oh, that will be nice. Have you ever been to Liverpool before? Great city, you know, lots of shopping, lovely restaurants and some great disco bars too. Or so they tell me. They say that the nightlife is the best – well, you would easily know by the tiny little skirts that they wear – so short and you know they even wear them in the middle of winter – it’s a wonder that they don’t get pneumonia. I’d say half of them have kidney infections except they are so cold and drunk they don’t even know it.” She appeared relieved now that she had got that rant out of the way.

I fixed my gaze just above her head, pursed my lips and nodded my head. “I know,” I replied. I could think of nothing more to say.

“I suppose you won’t see much of the nightlife in your condition!” She giggled to herself aloud, as though not including me in our conversation. “You can’t keep going for long these days, I suppose? But still, even in your condition it’s nice to get a break, isn’t it? So where did you say you were staying?”

“I’m going to a conference – an IT conference.” I hoped that by providing all the essential information in a single statement she would be both satisfied and disappointed with my story.

“Oh, I see, that will be nice, won’t it?” Either she was softening a little or more likely she hadn’t got the faintest idea what the IT bit meant – I mean, how could an IT conference be nice – nicely dull perhaps!

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going with Ruby.” The words were out and the ball was back in her court now – not what I wanted.

I fixed my eyes on the white tissue paper on the headrest of the seat directly in front of me. I dug my nails firmly into the palm of my hand, and blinked. Maybe she did see the tears well up in my eyes – because the questioning eased. Maybe she did have a gentle heart and just a bad manner. I gave her half a smile.

“Ruby . . . that’s a strange name,” she continued after a while. “I mean, would it not be a bit odd to be called after jewelry? I am never sure about that name and it’s becoming very common these days . . . Ruby . . . Ruby . . .” Her voice petered out.

The plane rattled as we touched down in Liverpool Airport, an announcement about arriving before landing time filled the aircraft, and the air stewards fixed their hair. We ground to a screeching halt. Ruby and I were jolted forward and then back. The rubbish was collected in a fierce hurry. Mobiles were switched on before the seatbelt sign was off, so there was another near-unintelligible announcement scolding the bold passengers. Then the fumbling of looking for bags overhead and under seats began.

The miserable lady with the mean lips and the thin frame sprang out of her seat and grabbed her frayed brown suitcase from overhead. Then she turned her head ever so slightly to the left and muttered “God bless”.

“Bye now,” I replied. “Have a nice time in Liverpool.”

“Huh!” was the extent of her response, offended no doubt that I had not even enquired about the reason for her visit.

“Let’s wait until all these people go,” I whispered to my little girl. She was very still now.

I looked out the small window. The sky was grey and threatening, the fields were lush. I sat still on my seat.

“Ruby, we have arrived – we’re in Liverpool. Both here for our first time – on a girls’ outing in Liverpool – not the type that you would ordinarily choose but, as they say, or as your grandmother would say, ‘You have to make the best of a very bad lot’.”

I didn’t know anything really about the city. I had no connection with it. I had no views on it one way or the other. I was here as a means to an end. It was not the city that perplexed me, but rather the day that lay ahead.

I felt as if was already bedtime. My body was aching and my mind exhausted. The whirlwind tour of my life had left me dog tired . . . and her exhausted or so it seemed. I hoped that she had enjoyed it.

“You can do this, Afric, the worst is over, the waiting is done, just a few more hours and it will be fine. It will be fine, in the end,” I whispered to myself.

The plane was almost empty by now. The suits with gadgets stuck to their ears had quickly evacuated the area. Two grey frail-looking ladies, both in wheelchairs, sat there looking vulnerable. I hoped someone kind and gentle would come to get them soon – they looked totally bewildered by all the chaos surrounding them. A mother was wrestling with her son who was howling his head off because he wanted to take the seat belt with him. His frustrated mother was not even bothering to explain why he couldn’t. Both he and she were red in the face, him with rage, and her with embarrassment. It was not a good day for them.

My little angel had just woken and I could feel a very faint movement just below my belly button.

“Ruby, time for us two to get moving, to lull you back to sleep. Please don’t kick, not today of all days – please, please don’t kick your mum any more – it makes me so sad, so sad. Shh, baby, it will all be over soon, very soon, quiet now, go back to sleep for your mummy.” I placed my left hand on my rounded stomach. “Shh, my little girl, go back to sleep now.”

I stood up and waddled down the narrow aisle of the plane, to the back exit.

In front of me was a beautifully made-up air stewardess. Her eye-shadow was the same two-tone colour as her uniform: matching pale-blue and turquoise-green. Her nails were also two tones: white and pale pink. She looked like a perfect pretty happy little doll. She smiled a mass-produced smile, one that all departing passengers were subjected to. “Have a nice day, now.” She rattled it off at me in the same way that they tell you to ‘mind the gap,’ but really they’re not too bothered if you do or if you don’t. They were just words without meaning.

I squeezed my eyes tight, very tight, then opened them and stepped out onto the steps of the plane. I took a deep gulp of Liverpudlian air. My left hand grasped the hand-rail of the steps. I slowly descended onto the tarmac, my right hand caressing my protruding bump. Thankfully she had fallen asleep again. It was only 14:20.

“Ruby, say hello and goodbye to Liverpool,” I muttered.

The tide was out on the Mersey, the riverbed was bleak, desolate and lifeless, and it was a dreary drizzly grey day. Apt, I thought, for my angel’s second last day on earth.