.
Well, I did what all good mums do.
I watched on the Internet as details of the Teenager’s flight were announced, watching as the words slowly changed from ‘Gate Open’ to ‘Boarding’ to ‘Final Call’ to ‘Taxied’ and then to ‘Take Off’.
Then I scurried over to Beijing’s arrivals board to see when they expected this plane to land, simply to have it verified by their bold statements on the web page that yes the plane was still safely up in the air somewhere and on its way.
Exhausting!
I missed the information about the Teenager’s flight which took off ten days later. I was confused about the hours to add on, or take away, and the flight was already safely in the air by the time I’d negotiated my way to the Hong Kong airport website.
Everyone knows that planes are kept airborne only by people whittling and worrying about them; and that their flight through the atmosphere owes absolutely nothing whatsoever to so-called aerodynamics.
All of which explains why I woke up at three-thirty in the morning and set to work whittling and worrying yet again about said plane.
At four-thirty, I was watching the web page again for the word, ‘Expected’ to transmogrify into the blessed word, ‘Landed’.
Work done, I fell asleep while the World Service radio continued to burble soporifically on dull obscure themes.
The plane had landed half an hour earlier than listed on the itinerary details; details which I remembered also stated that they expected to be back at the school at eight in the morning.
I woke with a start at seven. Radio 4 was burbling light heartedly.
Had I missed a call?
I scurried downstairs to check if The Teenager had telephoned, to give an ETA.
There was a strange number on the telephone, a mobile number that I did not recognise; someone and not The Teenager had been trying to call. What had happened? I imagine a thousand scenarios and panicked.
I tried to ring The Strange Number and The Teenager but neither number connected. I dressed quickly and tried the number again.
Nothing!
Then it rang.
Instantly, drove to pick him up from the school.
The car park was empty.
Other parents had already collected their offspring. The coaches had been and gone; only a few teenagers were left waiting with a tired and disgruntled teacher like unwanted sales goods on an almost empty shelf.
‘Where were you?’ he demanded. ‘It said on the itinerary that we would arrive sometime before seven and eight. Where were you?’
‘Asleep,’ I confessed.
‘I’ve been waiting ages,’ he said.
‘I tried to ring,’ I explained.
‘Oh, I heard it,’ he explains witheringly. ‘You rang just as I was getting off the coach, so I switched it off,’ he said.
‘Ah!’ I replied.
‘You weren’t there,’ he says again.
‘Sorry, old chap!’
‘You’re going to be put in the cheapest nursing home now, for that!’ he tells me, and he means it.
‘The cheapest?’
He nods grimly.
I can already imagine my fate: the blank walls; the mis-matched slippers; the windows that will probably overlook the glue factory; the impatient carers; my false teeth falling from my lop-sided mouth and landing out of reach upon the thread-bare carpet; the smell of urine and dead cats; and the blank stares of other hapless residents. Residents who were probably once guilty too of being late to pick up their child after a school trip!
I imagine my internment in this room for the forgotten and shudder.
‘So you won’t be visiting me?’
He gives me a, ‘What do you think?’ expression.
‘Ah,’ I say, as I go off to practise my slow-shuffle walk and examine the deeper lines around my eyes grateful that that was the last school trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment