The Waiting Place Read online

  Chapter Two

  the Departed

  Great, -we were picking up speed, taxiing down the runway and I was off on my way home again.

  Granted, the flight was three quarters of an hour late leaving and the plane fit to burst with add-on passengers like myself who had been diverted from our original, more direct flight-path, but I was hopeful the pilots could make up enough lost time on the two hour-twenty journey south so that we’d all make our connections. I said a sotto voce ‘Hurrah’ for favourable breezes and fast flying.

  As I had boarded, found my seat and stowed my carry-on bag I had recognised several passengers from the night before -including a young couple seated across from me who now caught my eye and gave me a smiling thumbs-up of shared camaraderie upon take-off. In the row ahead of me was a mother and teenage daughter duo whom I recognised from the early-morning bus and a woman with two small children - a baby and a toddler barely able to walk-who had mentioned while we had been waiting for the previous evening’s coach that she was off to visit family in Mandurah, a satellite town south of Perth.

  Once airborne, I drank my complimentary cup of overly strong tea and nibbled on a packaged biscuit, thinking the day was definitely looking up.

  Flanagan, pass the catnip m’ boyo. Mommy’s coming home!

  Huh, so much for that idea, I reflected despondently, trotting up to the deserted departure gate of my ongoing Perth flight ..a flight which had obviously ‘on-gone’ sans any additions from our late-arriving Brisbane-Melbourne flight, which sadly, had not managed to catch up any time at all on the journey southwards. If anything, we’d lost a few minutes.

  The way I was feeling right now, I couldn’t wait to fill in my next customer-satisfaction questionnaire. It would not be pretty. After last night and this morning’s experiences, Virgin Australian planes and pilots were rapidly losing my vote of confidence.

  With this thought in mind, I watched the now familiar scene of a straggling line-up of disappointed passengers as they surrounded the desk, reminding me of a pack of wolves circling their prey for the final kill. I felt particularly sorry for the harried sleep-deprived mother; balancing her crying baby strapped to her chest with a grizzly toddler hanging off one hand, who herself burst into tears upon realisation that we would not be leaving Melbourne airport anytime soon.

  Catching the mood, the airline staff sent to deal with us kept themselves firmly tucked behind the desk, as if the solid counter could protect them from the advancing hoards.

  Wise move, I thought sourly, -you’ll need all the protection you can get from this lot. There wasn’t a smiling face to be seen. More than one passenger showed signs of being ready to mutiny and there were loud expressions of discontent. By now, I was inclined to agree, though I kept my mouth shut. My complaints added to the fray were not going to get us anywhere and the howling baby was making enough of a din without additional decibels.

  New tickets were distributed as quickly as the staff were able. Hearing how long we would have to wait, one or two disgruntled passengers promptly demanded to return back the way they had come but going back to Brisbane really was not an option for me. It could be worse, I thought, it wasn’t as if we were stranded on the far side of the black stump with no flights arriving or departing for several days. This was Melbourne after all. Then I made the fatal mistake of glancing down at my re-issued ticket.

  I felt as if I’d just lost the lottery.

  My flight was due to leave at five-thirty in the evening…

  …which, from checking my watch and performing a bit of simple mathematics was in precisely eight and a quarter hours’ time,

  …which would mean another endlessly long day of sitting around in an airport.

  I could scarcely believe my bad luck. I certainly did not want to go sight-seeing for the day in metropolitan Melbourne -not that it wasn’t a perfectly nice city, but I’d seen enough cities of late to be saturated with playing tourist- so what in Hades was I supposed to do for all that time? Thinking of Hades put me in mind of all sorts of less than enjoyable waiting places -like Purgatory, or Tartarus and the Abyss. Feeling as if I’d been consigned to wait with all those departed but trapped lost souls and ethereals, I could feel my spirits sinking lower and lower.

  I wandered disconsolately away from the departure-gate desk, dragging my carry-on behind me, heading back past happy travellers making their way through security to their own departure gates.

  Woohoo for you, I thought, eying them resentfully.

  They were the fortuitous departed. I was not.

  Put this in perspective, I ordered myself sternly as I trudged along the endless corridor back to the ‘waiting place’. Attempting to cheer myself up, I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to look at events in a more Dr Seuss kind of way, a-la ‘Oh The Places You’ll Go’. It wasn’t working terribly well.

  I was growing tired of this see-saw of emotions. Dashed hopes, Jekyll and Hyde. Angel on my right shoulder, demon on my left.

  I was becoming punch-drunk with lack of sleep, I decided. It never brought out the best in me. I was an eight-hours-minimum sleep kind-of-girl, any less and it was ‘watch out world’. I could see that flash-point rapidly approaching.

  Time for a cure…

  …time for coffee.

  …and chocolate. LOTS of chocolate.

  I turned my thoughts back to Dr Seuss and ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go’, his little book of cleverly rhyming couplets that dealt with life’s highs and lows with his trademark good humour and wisdom. Either the thought of the waiting place’s wonderful cartoon characters, standing in line for the loo, or the coffee-chocolate combination brought a smile back to my face. Even over-used as it was as a kind of default gift, for any graduation event ranging from completing kindergarten to qualifying summa cum laude from some prestigious tertiary institute, Seuss’ book still had some lovely and relevant verses that had been penned to fit almost any life event.

  I thought of Dr Seuss’ waiting place. I’d certainly been in that waiting place a number of times -waiting for everything from snow and rain to do (or not do) their thing to call-backs from publishers and event organisers, and I knew from experience that it needn’t necessarily be all bad. I recited the lines to myself as I walked along -there was even a reference to ‘waiting for a plane to go’ -well, that was indubitably applicable for my current situation.

  So I reminded myself once more, …I had nowhere to rush to that couldn’t wait; no sad funeral to attend, no family to miss seeing, no important meetings to grace my presence with …and unlike that poor exhausted mum (thankfully) no fractious little ones to take care of.

  Single professional woman, alone, no kids. With just one awfully large feline. As I walked along I tried to make acronyms out of them but the best I could come up with was SPANK or WOLF. Neither was inspiring.

  “Bravo for you,” Was that the angel or the devil talking?

  Single middle-aged professional woman, I amended slightly, acknowledging that at forty-one years of age my child-bearing days were all but gone.

  Definitively Alone. No. Kids. So did that make me a MAANK? Sounded too much like a MONK …I did not like that thought. Monks were supposed to be celibate.

  No different to me really.

  …Now where had that thought come from?

  It was that damn pitchfork-wielding demon again, poking his little cocktail-sized fork where it wasn’t wanted.

  Sure, it was just me and the mega-cat, but I was more than happy with my lifestyle choices.

  I had a successful career.

  One I enjoyed tremendously.

  I was doing very well, thank you. I owned my own home, mortgage free. A sweet little cottage with a white picket fence in leafy Subiaco, where white picket fences were near-endemic. I’d spent the better part of a year living with noise and dust while I’d renovated -but now the only noise I had to put up with was the early-morning cacophony of chorusing parrots and other assorted avian creatures greeting the Perth
dawn. I didn’t mind it in the least -in fact, I rather enjoyed the wake-up call.

  The morning dawn-chorus was one of the wonders of living within spitting distance of the open expanses of King’s Park, -where I walked most mornings. The walking was essential in a job that required daily trial recipes and taste-testing, even on my rangy five foot eight frame. Granted, I was taller than average but at my age and stage of life I could pile on the pounds like anyone else. I hated the notion of going to a gym -the mere thought of participating in choreographed classes or working out on large pieces of machinery caused me heart palpitations so I made do with walking and swimming -not at nearby Cottesloe beach either, mind you …the beach might look lovely on postcards but I preferred to leave the big, blue, wet Indian Ocean to the sharks and the stingers while I swam lengths in my local municipal pool.

  I had good friends and no enemies - well, none I knew of, anyway. So what if there weren’t any lovers in my life right now -or, pretty much, ever- I amended.

  Bugger this, I thought, -I was getting tired of my innate honesty making addendums every time I tried to make my life sound more perfect that it was. I walked on.

  I was making my way along the corridor, purposely striding fast enough to keep up with those slothful souls fudging the walk by strolling along the intermittent travellators, one moment feeling sorry for my situation, the next, reminding myself that things could be a lot worse …all the while feeling as if the angel on my right shoulder and the little red pitchfork-bearing demon on my left were both vying for bragging rights.

  It was all starting to become a little too weird.

  And why was the angel wearing a pristine all-white cheer-leaders outfit -complete with a large golden capital A emblazoned across the chest of her rather tight knit top? Seemingly bored with the way the conversation was going, she did a couple of back-flips along my shoulder, fluttering back into position with the use of her large feathered wings when she misjudged the landing on the second tumble. Unperturbed, she touched down once more and sank into deep splits before rising to complete a back-bend. I was immediately envious of her flexibility. Little show-off. Surely angels should show more humility.

  I shook my head.

  Gymnastics displays by an imaginary angelic Barbie doll with wings. What was I thinking?

  To pull myself back to reality I purposefully remembered the nightmare flight I had once had into Heathrow that was my personal yardstick to measure all other sub-perfect flights against.

  On that fateful occasion, my long-haul plane had been on its final approach to Heathrow airport after a lengthy twelve hour flight from Singapore, with the plane’s wheels all but down in anticipation of a landing in thick fog. When, without so much as a by-your-leave, some crazed flight controller in the Heathrow tower had decided that we were to be suddenly diverted to Schiphol airport -sending us across the Channel to Holland of all places -to suffer six horrendous hours of sitting in our plane on the tarmac, like so many sardines going bad in a smelly tin can, toilets overflowing and not even a decent movie to watch. So much for ‘tulips in Amsterdam’ I had thought at the time -it being my first introduction to the Netherlands. Then, to add to our misery, the fog hadn’t deigned to lift while we sat and waited and we had been flown back to the UK, redirected via Manchester International, then driven by coach all the way south to Heathrow. This was nothing in comparison, I thought, -a mere stroll in the proverbial park.

  So far, ..the demon on my left shoulder pointed out gleefully,…I wasn’t home yet, he added spitefully, strutting the length of my shoulder while twirling the fork around his head like some drum major’s baton.

  To combat this negativity, in true Pollyanna style, the angel came back with a volley of positive hope and good vibes. I was going to make the best of this day, she spoke in a vigorous sing-song voice.

  Where had those pom-poms she was waving come from?

  She executed a quick high kick that would have done a Rockette proud before continuing, … I would head for the Virgin lounge and make good use of that free pass I had in my wallet that had come with my new Silver velocity card and I would have a wonderfully relaxing day of leisure…she looked as if she was about to break into a ra-ra chant any moment now.

  …which was kind of appropriate, the demon interrupted her, chirping dryly, since I practically was one, a Virgin, …Duh -he sneered, when I stared vacantly in bemusement -the angel glared across and he stuck out his tongue out at her, crossing his eyes and thumbing his nose with his free hand for good measure.

  “Bugger off!” -I muttered forcefully, causing an oncoming passing traveller to take a quick sideways step to put some distance between themselves and me. I put a hand over over my mouth and shrugged apologetically -“Oops, so sorry,”…

  …and if I was a little surprised at the angel’s gleeful reaction to my use of profanity I let it pass. As she clapped her tiny hands in approval I raised a hand to my left shoulder and mentally flicked the little red dude off his perch, sending him flying onto his tiny red rump -to sprawl, spitting and scowling on the polished tile floor of the corridor.

  I didn’t care if it left a bruise …and I did not look back.

  I was on my way to the lounge. And no one or nothing, short of Armageddon was kicking me out of there until my flight was due to leave.

  Of that I was absolutely determined.