Harry didn’t like people fussing over him, but did his best to behave graciously when the steward picked him out as a pet passenger. “He’s such a gentleman,” Bernice gushed. Queer, Harry figured, tamping down his old prejudices because he knew they were not only outdated but wrong. He smiled and said ‘thanks’ earnestly as they deplaned, and the man looked pleased, as if he’d just won the prize on a TV game show.
“That was nice of you, Harry,” Bernice commended.
“No more nice than he was to me,” Harry affirmed.
They shared a smile, tramping down the companionway into the tumult of Heathrow Airport, their carry-on luggage trundling along behind them as they followed the herd toward the arrivals carousels. “The laggards are the first to get eaten,” Harry observed.
“But at least they don’t get trampled to death,” Bernice countered, and they smiled again.
Despite their fatigue after ‘half a day scratching god’s belly’, they were happy. Bernice especially. They’d managed to pack all their things into a single, bulky suitcase, which Harry retrieved with assistance from a young, fit-looking woman who did a bad job pretending the case was almost too heavy for her to haul off the conveyor. He thanked her graciously for her ‘act of chivalry,’ and they shared a laugh before he headed for the gate.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Over here!” Gladys shouted from the other side of the glass partition, which kept greeting friends and family at a distance. She waved like a cheerleader; Bernice’s brother Robert tried hard to look happier than embarrassed under the circumstances. Gladys flung her arms around Bernice’s neck, while Robert and Harry shook hands and slapped each other on the back in a manly hug.
“It’s been so long, far too long,” Gladys quavered, giving Harry a hug, too.
More than twenty years, Harry had reckoned. “It was another century ago,” he sighed, as they continued their reminiscing at the outset of the drive from Heathrow to Eastbourne via the M25. “The 20th century, where most of our lives were lived.”
“You make it sound like it’s all over, Harry,” Robert joked from the driver’s side. “Glady and me, we’re just beginning a new chapter, aren’t we, dear?”
“Oh yes!” she enthused. “We haven’t properly settled into Eastbourne yet, but we do love it. It’s such a delightful change from the shove and grunt of London. And only a couple of hours and a hotel stay away, if we do happen to miss the hurly-burly or want to see a play.”
They drove on in silence, Robert negotiating the corners and cruising past other vehicles breezily. “You must be exhausted, dear,” Gladys consoled after a while. Harry twisted round as best he could to see what was wrong. Bernice looked sad and disoriented. “You all right?” he asked. She nodded. “It’s just that nothing’s as I remembered it,” she lamented. “I have a picture book memory of England, I suppose.”
“Jet lagged,” Robert concluded, switching into the slow lane to let a tailing vehicle pass.
“Why don’t you close your eyes for a bit,” Gladys coaxed. “By the time you wake up, we’ll be off the M-25 and back in the Jolly Old England you know and love.”
Bernice obliged, her head lolled sideways against the doorframe, eyes adjusted like partially closed Venetian blinds, the scenery rushing by in an indistinguishable blur. Gladys seemed satisfied with that, sitting silently beside her. Harry knew Bernice was faking. He hoped she could feel his affirming presence hovering in the air around her like a word unspoken as she drifted into a somnambulistic fog.
Approaching Eastbourne, they skirted its eastern edge through a flat suburban zone where all the houses appeared the same to Harry. Except they got more and more crammed together nearer the coast. He and Robert had exchanged pleasantries on the way, ‘catching up’, as Robert put it, but the whole time Harry had to ward off a sense of claustrophobia, which took hold as they penetrated into the developed, capillary end of their route. They slowed, entering a warren of brick townhouses and apartments that blocked out everything except jagged, slanting views of the sky.
“Welcome,” Gladys invited when they arrived at the door of their two-bedroom, two-bathroom suite with a view of Sovereign Harbour and its crowded docks of luxury vessels. She’d adopted a solicitous air, which made Harry uncomfortable. “Your bedroom’s here,” she pointed to a door to their right. “The bathroom’s straight ahead. Would you like a bite to eat or a lie-down? Make yourself at home. Just leave your luggage in the hall for now.”
“My God, how I’d miss Chemainus if I was ever forced to live in a place like this,” Harry confided when he and Bernice were alone in their room. “I couldn’t live here, Bernie.” Whether out of difference to her brother and sister-in-law, or reluctance to disagree, Bernice didn’t respond to the comment. All she wanted was to sleep. “Perhaps we’ll acclimatize after a day or two, honey,” she said. “After all, we’ve just flown into tomorrow, haven’t we?”
I’ll be happy to fly back into yesterday, Harry thought to himself.