Chapter 7 #2
Given the forecast, I hadn’t wanted Matt to fly home from Albury airport where he was based, but he’d been adamant.
He had to reassure Katrina that even though he’d thought she was on the pill (because that’s what she’d told him) and they’d only hooked up for a weekend, he’d support whatever decision she made—to terminate the pregnancy or to keep the baby.
Matt had already transferred money to her bank account so she could have access to whatever medical and other assistance she needed.
I knew he was stressed and would want to go to Katrina, but I wanted to see him too.
Mum, who was helping a friend at the salon that night, dropped me off at the airfield and I waited in the carpark adjacent to the runway, where Matt’s car was parked.
As the wind picked up and sheets of lightning flashed through the clouds, I walked up and down to keep warm.
I imagined I’d say hello to Matt and give him a hug, and he could drop me home on the way to Katrina’s place.
I’d been waiting twenty minutes when, through thickening clouds, I saw the lights of the twin engine plane. Like a bird, yet not. The sleeves of my fleece were pulled down over my hands but they were still freezing.
Seats 16 C B A. Two more steps. Seats 18 C B A. The woman who was having trouble storing her case is standing in the aisle waiting for the person who’ll be seated in Seat 18A to sit down first. That’s me, I remind myself. My smile must be stiff but when my eyes meet the woman’s, she smiles back.
‘No point sitting when you have to get up again.’ She has white hair and is dressed from head to toe in earthy greens and browns. She must be in her seventies and looks very fit.
I shuffle along the seats to the window, take out my pillow and kick my backpack under the seat in front.
The woman takes out a smartphone, an aqua-coloured glasses case and a guidebook.
She puts on her glasses and fastens her seatbelt.
When I buckle my belt, the strap is firm against my hips and the metal is heavy in my lap, but I try not to think about that. What will I think about instead?
A Kosciusko National Park Guidebook. There are four images on the cover of the woman’s book.
A mountain range with snow on the peaks.
Native flowers—kangaroo paw, banksia, orchids.
Hardy snow gums with twisted grey and white trunks reaching out of the mist. An eagle in full flight.
The woman adjusts her glasses and looks at me, but I can’t take my eyes from her book.
‘I’m preparing for a hike,’ she explains.
‘You’ll find wedge-tailed eagles in the Selwyn area of Kosciusko.’ My words trip over each other. ‘Eagles prefer open woodlands.’
‘Have you seen them? How marvellous.’
‘I did field work at Kosciusko a few years ago.’
‘Are you a vet?’
‘An ornithologist.’
I should ask where the woman will hike and how long she’ll be away.
I should ask her if she’s camping or staying in a lodge.
Half a minute ago, I couldn’t stop talking, but my words have dried up.
There’s an announcement from the captain welcoming us to the plane and introducing the cabin crew.
The flight attendant closest to me is the woman who pinged my boarding pass before sending me down the tunnel.
I could get off this plane right now and go back the way I came.
They’d have to unload my bag, because I could not only be frightened and cowardly (and possibly unhinged by imagining I could do this in the first place) but a terrorist. Taking my bag off the plane would take time and the other passengers would be cursing because I’d made them late for their business appointments and birthday parties and treks in national parks but—
‘Where do you work?’ the woman asks.
‘I was at Dubbo zoo until a month ago.’
‘It’s years since I’ve been there.’
I stare at the flight attendant, who is walking up and down the aisle, checking the overhead lockers are closed, but then he sits down too.
The engines are whirring and clunking and roaring and the plane starts to move.
I thread my hands into my sleeves as the plane taxis, then free them again.
I take the sick bag from the pocket and put it back.
I close my eyes and hug my pillow tightly to my chest but then I’m too hot, so I let it fall onto my lap.
What if I’d done that when the attendant was checking that our seatbelts were done up?
Would she have asked me to lift my pillow to check my belt was fastened correctly, or would she have assumed that it was?
If the latter, that doesn’t bode well for aircraft safety.
The woman sitting next to me continues to read.
Maybe she thinks I’m not friendly, but by the time the plane tips up its nose and flies into the air, I don’t care what anybody else in the whole world thinks.
I focus on breathing in and out but not too fast, because then I’ll hyperventilate, which is what happened when I flew with Beau.
I count to a hundred and count back again.
But more time must pass than that, because a flight attendant is standing in the aisle with a big box on wheels, which means we must be at the stage of the flight where people can unclip their seatbelts and move around the plane.
‘Tea, coffee, soft drink?’ the attendant asks. ‘A chicken or vegetable wrap?’
I say, ‘No, thank you,’ in a voice I don’t recognise.
The woman with the book pats her tray. ‘White tea and a chicken wrap please.’
I’m suddenly cold, freezing cold. Numb from my toes to the top of my head.
Even so, my brain continues to thump like there’s a marching band performing, only it’s not musicians with smiling faces and twirling batons but a coven of demons with twisted Machiavellian faces heating pitchforks in a furnace.
The engines are even louder than they were.
A grinding, thumping dissonance turned up so loud I can’t hear anything else.
Think of something else. That’s another of Rani’s tips. I don’t want to look out of the window, so I look to my right and the woman with the book.
A wedge-tailed eagle is the largest raptor, or bird of prey, in Australia. Genus Aquila. Species audax. Family Accipitridae. Order Accipitriformes. Class Aves. Subphylum Vertebrata. Phylum Chordata. Kingdom Animalia.
In my head, the words get faster and faster.
The eagle prefers open wooded territory and will choose the highest tree in which to nest and rear its young.
The eagle’s feathers darken as they age.
Females are larger than males. The wingspan of an adult wedge-tailed eagle is over two metres.
An eagle can fly to an altitude of over two thousand metres.
Matt always told me he could fly like a bird, but when I saw him in the sky that night, I knew what he’d said was a lie. A bird wouldn’t catch alight and burn a path through the trees and explode on the ground.
A bird wouldn’t scream my name.