But my back felt great.
A lONG WAY DOWN ALREADY
By the time I’d boarded the plane, nearly two hours later, I was starting to relax.
I’d been keeping my head down, expecting a tap on the shoulder from security at any moment, but it seemed there were to be no re-percussions. I stowed my pack in the overhead locker, settled down in the window seat with Sir Ally’s biography on my lap and took a peek out the window. It was a long way down already.
“Glass of champagne, sir?”
I looked up at a smiling hostie with a shock of red hair and a tray of champagne, orange juice and mineral water. I wasn’t usually much of a champagne fan (despite its aphrodisiac effect on Shona), but, as champers was the only available sedative…
“Yes thanks,” I said, selecting the fullest glass on the tray. “Oh and erm… if you don’t mind, I get a bit nervous before a flight, so uh… keep ‘em coming.”
“I quite understand sir,” smiled the hostie, as I skulled the champers and reached for a second.
I hate being called ‘sir’ and I hate being waited upon, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself after the fracas. So, sipping the free champers, I focused on Sir Ally. He’d debuted for Scotland against Australia - another omen? But my mind kept returning to the skinheads in the Qantas Club bathroom. The only positive spin I could put on it was that surely I’d had my fair share of arseholes for the next few months.
“Excuse me. I believe you’re in my seat.”
I glanced up at an imperious young woman who was looking down her well-bred, English nose at me, taking in the trackie dax, T-shirt and trainers and obviously wondering whether this scruffy lout had accidentally wandered up from economy. I pulled my boarding pass from the back of the book where it had been doubling as a bookmark.
“No, sorry love. Seat 4A … that’s me.”
“But I distinctly asked for a window seat!” she insisted. “I always get a window seat!”
Her face flushed pink and white with upper class fury and she looked like she was hyperventilating - building up pressure for a massive tantrum.
“Show us your boarding pass,” I suggested, and she thrust it at me as though demonstrating irrefutable proof that she was in the right.
“That says 4B,” I said, patting the seat next to me. “Plonk yourself down and behave.”
“Outrageous!” seethed the woman, and flounced away with that you’ll-be-in-the-shit-when-I-return-with-the-authorities air which is characteristic of ratbags everywhere.
It’s incredible, I reflected. There is so much misery in the world - wars, terrorism, children with cancer, billionaires buying up football clubs - so much to get the shits about, and pretty Miss Kensington Sterling has to waste all that healthy anger on not getting a window seat. If she’d been remotely civil about it, I’d happily have offered to swap. But fuck her! If she wanted to carry on like the bitch goddess from hell, then call me Satan.
Moments later, she reappeared with a tired-looking hostie - the smiley redhead who had earlier been forcing champagne down my protesting gullet.
“There!” said the girl, pointing at me. “This man is in my seat!”
I held up my boarding pass and winked at the hostie, who took one glance and turned thin-lipped to the fuming passenger.
“Mr Judd is in the seat allocated to him. May I see your boarding pass, Miss Palmer?”
“My boarding pass is incorrect, and so is his. I demand the window seat that was promised to me!”
“Please keep your voice down, Miss Palmer. There’s nothing I can do I’m afraid. The plane is fully booked in first and business class. If you insist on a window, you’ll have to go down to economy.”
This was not at all to Miss Palmer’s liking.
“Go… go down?” she exclaimed, her jaws opening and closing like a baffled guppy. “To economy class? This is a nightmare … an absolute bloody outrage!”
“Please keep your voice down, Miss Palmer,” repeated the hostie. “There’s nothing I, or anyone else, can do I’m afraid.”
I couldn’t help but notice that as she said “anyone else”, her eyes had flicked towards me, and I sighed with resignation.
“Look, Miss Palmer,” I said, scarcely believing I could be doing such a thing, “if it’s that important, you can have my seat.”
The contrast in the faces of the two women was fascinating. Smiley redhead’s expression was a picture of gratitude and relief, while Miss Palmer’s gloating puerile triumph made me wonder what deprivations she’d suffered during her Sloan Square childhood.
I unlocked my seatbelt and vacated the window seat. Then Miss Palmer painstakingly made herself comfortable and called the hostie back as she made her escape.
“Excuse me. I’d like a gin and tonic thank you.”
“I’m sorry Miss Palmer, we don’t serve spirits until after take off. All I can offer you is a glass of champagne.”
Miss Palmer rolled her long suffering eyes.
“What champagne do you have?”
“Ah, it’s Jansz. Quite good I understand.”
“Jansz? That’s Australian isn’t it?”
“Yes. Tasmanian, I believe.”
“Well it’s not champagne then is it! Champagne comes from Champagne… in France!”
“It’s the same thing!” said the hostie, showing just a hint of unprofessional indignation. “And it’s very nice, I assure you.”
“Oh for God’s sake! Alright. I’ll try a glass.”
Miss Palmer’s nostrils flared and her upper lip quivered with disgust as she sipped the Australian champagne. Then, apparently mollified, she said, “It’s alright, I suppose. But I still think it’s false advertising to call it champagne. The correct term is methode champagnois.”
“I’ll let them know,” said the hostie, beating a hasty retreat.
“Typical bloody Australians,” muttered Miss Palmer. “Always trying to get in where they don’t belong.”
I just shook my head and resumed my research into the early career of Sir Ally Bergsen. Almost before I knew it, the plane shuddered backwards and commenced its slow taxi across the runway - beginning, at last, my long delayed journey to the Theatre of Dreams.
UNITED AGAINST THE WORLD
Meanwhile, back in Sydney, Vinnie (The Shiv) Parsons was under the shower in the Qantas Club, cleaning and scouring the last traces of the stinking mess from his eyebrows, nose and behind his ears, his mind filling with wrath and murder.
Pain was an unusual sensation for him. Pain was something he inflicted on others, but didn’t experience himself - other than the torn skin and bruised knuckles that are part and parcel of life in the Blue Fury. And that hardly counted as pain. That was more a form of pleasure to be savoured while the victims were being put back together in a hospital somewhere.
A hospital if they were lucky - dumped in a canal or buried under a building site if they weren’t.
But if injury was unusual, insult was absolutely