Honestly, I was so childish. I was just itching for a chance to say some- thing mean. I thought I might like to experiment with a Joan Collins-type voice. You know, all posh and scary, my words sounding like pieces of ice dropping into a glass. And say something like, "I really wouldn't bother trying to talk to me. I'm in a very bad mood, and I'm not sure how long I can be polite to you."
But apart from giving me a vague "Sorry" as he fumbled around my hips for his seat belt, he totally ignored me. He just opened up his impress- ive-looking leather briefcase and in no time at all had his nose buried in a Catherine Cookson novel. I'm sure you know it. It's the one about the ille- gitimate
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girl with the wine-colored birthmark, whose cousin falls in love with her, who gets scourged with a riding crop by her stepmother and raped when she is thirteen by the lord from the Big Hall and, while escaping from him, gets her foot caught in a rabbit trap and has to have it amputated and the wound cauterized by a red-hot poker while her screams echo throughout the slag heaps.
Or is that all of them?
Anyway, the man was far more interested in Catherine Cookson than he was in me and that made me a bit fidgety. I was dying to exercise my bad mood. Limber up, as it were, for the real nastiness that I'd be involved in later. But nothing doing.
And then I felt ashamed of myself and tried to strike up a conversation with him, smiling above and beyond the call of duty at him when he passed me my food tray, gently offering to open his little container of milk for him when he ran into difficulties, giving him my mint to bring home to his little girl, even thought he ate his own--that kind of thing.
He turned out to be a lovely man. We discussed the book he was reading. I recommended a couple of other writers to him. And by the time we landed at Heathrow, we were on first-name terms. We shook each other's hand, said that it had been a pleasure to meet each other and warmly wished each other a safe onward journey.
Then I was on my own again. On my own with my thoughts and fears and anger.
Apart from the ninety billion other people in Heathrow I was completely alone in London.
Now if this was a film instead of a book, you'd be shown shots of red buses and black cabs passing the houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and policemen with funny hats directing traffic outside Buckingham Palace and smiling girls in very short skirts standing underneath a "Welcome to Carnaby street" sign.
But as this is a book, you'll just have to use your imagination.
Heathrow was, well...it was busy. That's one way of putting it.
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It was totally crazy.
I couldn't believe that there were so many people. It was like a Renais- sance painting of the Day of Judgment come to life.
Or like the opening ceremony at the Olympics.
People of all nationalities, with all manner of exotic outfits, rushed past me, speaking every language under the sun.
Why was everyone in such a hurry?
And the noise was deafening. Announcements over the loudspeaker. Small boys lost. Grown men lost. Expensive luggage lost. Patience lost. Tempers lost. Marbles lost. You name it and there was a good chance that it was lost.
I had forgotten that London was like this. There was a time when I would operate at this kind of speed with the greatest of ease. But I was now on Dublin tempo so I had slowed down and kicked back and chilled out. I stood in the arrivals area, terrified, looking like a hick from the sticks, feeling overwhelmed by the number of people, feebly apologizing as people bumped into me and tisked loudly at me.
Then I pulled myself together. This was only London, after all.
I mean, I could have been somewhere really scary.
Like Limerick, for example. Sorry, no, only joking.
And everywhere I looked, everywhere, were small clusters of businessmen. Standing around in their nasty suits, either waiting for their bags or waiting for a flight, their briefcases that were probably full of porn mags by their feet.
They were all drinking beer, out-glad-handing each other, determinedly exuding "nice-guyness" and bonhomie, having competitions to see who could laugh the most uproariously and who could make the most dispar- aging remark about his wife or the most vulgar remark about any of the women at the conference they had just been to or were just about to go to. "I wouldn't throw her out of the bed for farting" and "Nah, her tits are too small" and "Everyone's had her, even the guys in the mailroom" drifted over to me from the various groups.
I wonder what the collective noun for a group of businessmen is? Surely there's got to be one.
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A conference of businessmen? A briefcase of businessmen? A meeting of businessmen? A polyester of businessmen? A pinstripe of businessmen?
It's no good. None of those words really conveys the nastiness of the little groups. How about an insincerity of businessmen? A disloyalty of business- men? An infidelity of businessmen?
I caught a man from one of the groups leering over at me. I looked away hastily. He turned back to the four or five men he was with and said something. There was a big burst of laughter and they all started bending and stretching and craning their necks to get a good look at me.
The bastards! I wanted to kill them!
And they were all so unattractive and nondescript. How dare they be so arrogant about me? Or any woman, for that matter. They should be grateful that any woman would touch them with a stick. Fuck them! I thought furiously.
Time to leave.
I had no bags to collect. I wasn't planning on staying long enough to need them. So at least I was spared the carousel hell.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, set my jaw firmly and started to push through the arrivals area. I was heading in the direction of the subway station, determinedly making my way through all the other human beings, like an Amazon explorer hacking his way through dense under- growth.
I finally got to the station. Japan was obviously holding its national census there. After waiting for what seemed like several years while the sons of Nippon figured out how to operate the ticket machines--I thought they were all supposed to be technological wizards?--I bought myself a ticket and boarded a train for central London. Funds didn't run to a taxi. The train was full and every nation on earth had a representative on it.
I don't need to go to an Emergency Council meeting of the United Na- tions. I've already been there.
The journey was so crowded and uncomfortable and unpleasant that in a way it was a godsend. Even if I hadn't already been feeling totally hom- icidal before I got on the