At the airfield
by Duncan White

-------------------------------------------------


For sometime I’ve been going to the airfield. It’s a place to go. We all need places to go. I drive an hour over there, park and watch the two-seaters coming in. And taking off.

I don’t have to sit in the car and watch. There’s a cafe with tables and windows so you can see the planes.

It’s an hour’s drive out of town. I have to watch the faces of the drivers either side, read the advertisements hanging over the road, until the countryside unrolls out of London.

A good hour.

It’s a small airfield. I park with the other cars facing out onto the runway.

Get out and walk over to the cafe.

It’s early. I get a seat by the window. I order black coffee and two hard-boiled eggs. Then wait.

Soon a plane is starting up.

Take off is strange. None of it makes sense. Someone once tried to give me the science of it. Something about air density holding against velocity and the gravitational pull.

I don’t remember.

And it wouldn’t matter if I did remember.

I watch out the window as a red plane comes into land. I watched it begin as a speck, then grow and descend, then come in out of the sky and bounce down. 

The engines on the two-seaters are loud.

Someone told me they can get to Spain and back on a tank of fuel. It’s a nice idea, finding Spain like that.

Then an older plane starts up, on the ground this time. It’s yellow but the paintwork is old and chipped. Underneath it’s white.

The yellow plane pulls out of its spot in the line of waiting planes. It taxis past and turns somewhere out of sight before rushing back the way it came.

When the plane lifts there is a silence under the engine. And the plane is up.

I shake my head. Drink the coffee and look around the cafe.

It’s the same half full, and like always it’s only men in there.

A man comes in the door, scans the cafe, and sits in front of me.

‘You mind?’ He said.

I shake my head.

I watch him sit. He’s tall with grey hair. His face is bloated. His eyes are black. He sits and makes himself at home.

I watch him order eggs and bacon with coffee.

Then he looks at me.

‘It’s the window,’ he said. ‘I like this window.’

And it’s true; I’ve picked the best window. With the best view of the take offs and the landing.

‘You like planes?’ He said.

The question makes me smile.

‘Obviously you do,’ he said. ‘Not everybody does.’

‘I like to watch them come in and out.’ I said.

‘We all like to watch.’ He said.

His bacon and eggs arrive and he gulped his coffee.

He lifted his fork.

Outside another engine started up. And a blue single-seater motored past, disappeared, then it collapsed into the sky.

Once it was gone, he began to eat.

‘I come here every week to eat,’ he said.

‘To eat?’ I said.

‘To watch the planes,’ he said. His mouth was full of egg.

He was an ugly man and I watched out the window to see if another plane was coming in.

There wasn’t. The sky was blank and disappointing.

But not for long.

He went on eating. And he watched the sky as well.

A lean good-looking man was passing through the cafe. He said something to the waitress who smiled. He wore a black sweater cut tight. With a white shirt collar and a black tie underneath.

He was a pilot from the airlines on his day off.

Everybody watched him.

He went out the door.

‘He’s here all the time,’ the man at my table said.

I nodded.

‘Lucky bastard.’ He said.

Another plane was coming in. I watched, relieved. Somehow it landed.

‘Beautiful,’ he said.

‘You ever fly?’ I said.

The man looked at me. His mouth stopped working.

He looked older than I’d thought at first.

He looked angry.

‘No.’ He said.

‘Never?’

‘You crazy?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering.’

‘Well, don’t,’ he said. ‘Some people fly. Some people don’t.’

It was a sad thing to say.

I watched out the window.

None of the planes were starting up and none were coming in.

I was sorry. And I drank my coffee down.

And I said I was sorry.

‘I didn’t mean anything.’ I said.

I stood up.

He didn’t look at me.

He watched out the window eating his bacon and egg. He was an ugly man. He was scared of me.

None of the planes were going anywhere. And the other men in the cafe sat looking at the stationed planes. They were waiting.
I got out of there.

I don’t know if it were being afraid to die or being afraid to live that stopped them flying.

Either way, I’d like to fly those planes. But I don’t think I ever will. 


copyright © Duncan White 2001