It was all a blur after that, there was a curtain of flames behind him, he could feel them beginning to scorch his seat. The intercom was no longer working but he carried on wrestling with F-Fox to give the rear-gunner a last-ditch chance to get out. The captain was always the last to leave.
And then, when he thought he was resigned to death—quite accepting of it—the instinct for life kicked in and the jaws of death were forced open. He found himself tearing off the twin umbilicals of oxygen and intercom and flinging himself out of his seat and was more or less sucked from F-Fox’s belly through the escape hatch.
The silence of the night sky was stunning after the noise inside the aircraft. He was alone, floating in the dark, the great peaceful dark. The moon was shining benignly on him. Below a river ran like silver, Germany laid out like a map in the moonlight, growing closer and closer as he drifted towards it like a feathery dandelion head.
Above him the fiery form of F-Fox continued to glide on her downward path. Teddy wondered if the rear-gunner was still inside. He shouldn’t have abandoned him. The aircraft found the ground before Teddy did and he watched as it exploded in a glittering starburst of light. He would live, he realized. There would be an afterward after all. He gave thanks to whichever god had stepped in to save him.
2012
All the Way to Bright
“… geofencing… we should want to do because… the new normal… client-agency relationship or on the other hand… as well as near-field communication…”
The man who was speaking had a degree in jargon and a doctorate in nonsense. His words were floating in the air, language devoid of meaning, sucking out the oxygen, making Bertie feel mildly hypoxic. The man speaking, the Nonsense Man, as she thought of him, was called Angus and came “from Scottish stock”—hence the name—although his accent was pure English public school. “Harrow, actually,” and Bertie knew these things because she had been on a date with him, a date procured by that well-known pander, Match.com. Which was why she was now slouched at the back of the room, trying to look as if she wasn’t there.
She had taken an almost instant dislike to him over a dinner at Nopi which, when the bill arrived, he had been more than happy to go Dutch on, thereby failing one of her first requirements of a suitor, which was to behave like a gentleman. She wanted doors opening, meals paid for, flowers. Billets-doux (lovely words, made her think of doves—bill and coo). She wanted to be courted. Gallantry. What a lovely word. Fat chance of any of that. She snorted to herself and the man seated next to her in the “industry seminar” gave her a nervous glance.
“Bertie?” the Nonsense Man had said over dinner. “What kind of name is that?”
“A very good one.” And after a long, rather tedious silence, “Roberta, after my grandmother.” Roberta was Bertie’s middle name, she wasn’t about to give Angus the Moon.
Just the wrong side of sensible, she had gone home with him (classic mistake) to his flat in Battersea, a flat which was all shiny glass surfaces as if it had been designed in the future, and then she had proceeded to have rather disagreeable, drunken sex with him which, naturally, had led to self-loathing and a stealthy dawn exit, a walk of shame along the Thames, to ease her payne. She had been surprised at how many other people were out and about along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes, although Spenser’s nymphs, the Daughters of the Flood, were notable by their absence, unless they were a university team of grunting female rowers, hammering their way through the brown water as if they were being chased by a river monster. What kind of woman got up at six in the morning to row, Bertie wondered? A better woman than her, she supposed.
Spenser handed over to Wordsworth who met her at Westminster Bridge, where, early on a morning late in May, London really was all bright and glittering in the smokeless air, if only for a little while.
She was surprised, to put it mildly, when she looked over the bridge and saw a gilded, swan-necked barge being rowed towards her. As she watched the boat sweep smoothly beneath the bridge, Bertie wondered if perhaps she had time-travelled back to Tudor times.
“Gloriana,” a voice said. She hadn’t noticed the man who had come to stand next to her. “It’s the Queen’s barge,” he said, “for the flotilla. Rehearsing, I expect.” Of course, she thought. The river pageant. London was en fête for the Diamond Jubilee. So many lovely words, Bertie thought—“gilded,” “jubilee,” “flotilla,” “diamond,” “pageant,” “Gloriana.” It was almost too much to bear.
“I thought I’d stepped back in time for a moment,” she said.
“Would you like to?” he asked, sounding like someone who was inviting her to enter a time machine that he had handily parked around the corner.
“Well…” she said.
… Transactional supply-based relationships and commoditization…”