I may have mentioned that I was born into, grew up in, worked, and grew old in the aviation business and have been lucky to have travelled the world But that’s another story.
One of the perks has been discounted flights (staff travel as it is known within the business). Most long haul flights involve some travelling through a long night and this presents a problem; I am a voracious, reader, but on a night flight the cabin lights are dimmed, which made reading awkward, as you sit effectively under a spotlight, you are preventing the other passengers from sleeping; and as you have drummed into you from an early age on staff travel, you Never Draw Attention To Yourself.
So, I started what became a habit of listening to the ghost stories of MR. James, read by the incomparable David Collings.
Sitting in a pool of dim light at 30,000 feet with shadows flickering around you it became quite atmospheric and over the years although they assumed a degree of familiarity, they could still make your flesh tingle. But as those years passed, the shadows became thicker with the passing of friends , and as you sit there nursing a large drink, occasionally they will step out into the light.
I turn as I sense the shade of Tracy Lord, offering me a large Woodford Reserve Bourbon, and my mind flies back to an earlier Christmas Eve at Terminal Four.
I had successfully navigated the gorgons in the staff travel hut and clutching my boarding pass raced through security to get to the bar and have a drink to get over the bad news my wife bad dropped in my lap. She had become cabin crew to see the world, having grown up in a fairly small town and liked it so much she decided to stay. I would go with her on trips occasionally when she was working, after all what wife doesn’t like someone carrying her shopping in Hong Kong or New York and it had been decided that rather sitting at home, gorging myself on sherry and leftover curries that I would come on another Christmas trip with her.
After all, I do love her dearly.
Now by this stage, I was a British Airways Dispatcher, the aristocracy of the ground staff and had a network of professional and social contacts, so the prospect of sitting at the back of the aircraft in economy was a very remote one, but I was more worried about what I had to do before getting on the plane. Cabin crew do what they call back-to-backs, so over a five or six day trip they could fly for example to New York come back to London go back out to New York and then come back to London so they will be put up in a hotel, not just at the destination but overnight when back at Heathrow.
The bad news? One of her colleagues had applied emotional blackmail; she had separated from her husband, and there was a 12-year-old daughter bouncing between them. The husband had plans for Christmas that didn’t involve wives or daughters and was making it her problem to get the child on the plane, which is where it became my problem. I had waited at staff travel for the child too long and had to cut through security, leaving it as late as I possibly could, and sitting in the bar, getting increasingly frantic calls from my wife and her colleague as to the daughter’s whereabouts to which I could only respond, I don’t know.
Eventually, the Bad Father dropped her off and she was run through to me, having arranged with the DO where to pick me up, by which stage I could hear the Last Call announcement over the PA calling my name and this girl‘s name.
I may have mentioned before, when on staff travel it is a Bad Thing to draw attention to yourself and running now, down to the coaching gate with a sulky pre-teen, who was told firmly that there would be no shopping, to receive a lecture from a check-in agent which made my cheeks burn, not used to being on the receiving end of a bollocking from somebody that junior. Then the gate staff all burst out laughing, and from behind a pillar came one of my oldest friends who had put them up to it and who had held a bus, especially for the two of us, but I was still deeply mortified for being the last passengers aboard, got off the bus hugging Julian farewell to mount the steps to see a curious looking Cabin Services Director, and a livid wife hissing ‘where have you been’, her colleague looked at me with a smile and said: ‘My name is Tracy Lord, I’m the CSD and I’ve heard all about you, let’s get you in a seat and fetch you a drink’. I was standing there kneading the santa hat I had whipped off my head like a peasant before his lady (which strictly speaking I was). We came through the door, the girl turned right with the mother without a thank you and I wad ushered to the left to my seat (a very comfortable and exclusive one), and I was told there was time for a pre-takeoff drink, jumped at the offer and being asked if I liked whiskey was told she would bring me something she thought I would like.
Rummaging in my bag for the big bottle of water, I felt a hand on my shoulder as she scratched my shirt for attention; my nostrils were hit with a strong, unctuous, caramel smell, curling around me, like a cat about to make itself comfortable, I looked down at the full tumbler, it’s surface tension reflecting my aghast face.
‘I can’t guzzle all of that in ten minutes!‘
‘Well, if you’re a good boy and manage it, I’ll tell the girls to keep you topped up on the flight‘.
As has often been the case, I felt the spirit of John Wayne goading me on and ten minutes later handed the empty glass back to the cabin crew as they made the last sweep through the cabin before takeoff. My eyes were watering, so I’m not sure whether she was grinning at me or not.
Now, I am no flincher from the glass, but a fifth-of-a-pint of spirits takes a bit of digesting, and being mindful of that injunction about not drawing attention to myself, resolved to ask for a very strong black coffee, when the now definitely grinning hosty reappeared, plunking down the twin of the drink I’d seen off, she tittered: ‘Tracy‘s orders‘. And walked off.
I looked down at the drink, looked up for support, only to hear the mocking laughter of a cowboy saying: ‘You’re in the shit now, Pilgrim‘, just as my eyes lit on that bottle of water, and a crafty grin crept onto my face.
I slid quietly into the toilet behind row four, and poured the water down the sink, and sticking my head in the galley, asked if I could have a coffee, went back to my seat and carefully poured the contents of the glass into the bottle, and congratulated myself for being a model of the Code of the Dispatchers, i.e., if it’s not nailed down, they didn’t want to keep it in the first place.
The lovely lady came with my coffee and did a startled double-take on seeing the empty glass, and it was my turn to give her my biggest cheesy grin and wink.
Bad news. Never, ever, annoy cabin crew. Two minutes later, another full glass appeared as the empty was whisked away. This time her grin had a degree of malevolence to do it and the ‘Enjoy‘, had more than a hint of challenge. Same routine; glug, glug, glug in the bottle. As I sat and enjoyed my coffee, I felt a hand on my shoulder again, as Tracy asked how I was doing, noticed my empty glass, and returned with another, and as we sat there chatting, she told me something of her life. She had a pilot’s license, commuted from South Africa to work and had a gilded life, but, as she sat there on the edge of my seat while she talked, I had the sense that something was not right. Tall, elegant and fair, just like my wife, but unlike her, on her own in what can be be a very lonely, nomadic life that I was getting a sense that was becoming a burden. Not everyone needs a partner, but no one needs to be on their own for too long; something changes in uas all and not for the better. We heard rattling from the galley, indicating the dinner service was nearly ready and she left with a firm injunction to enjoy the drink and not being one to disobey a direct instruction made that glass follow its brothers.
The cabin crew set up my tray and noticing the empty glass asked if I was alright and with direct eye contact and clear voice said everything was fine and might I see the wine list. The look of awe I got make my back straighten and the grin lasted throughout dinner and several glasses of wine.
Table cleared, a very nervous Hosty put another glass for in front of me and the ‘Tracy’s Orders‘, had the air of nervousness about it that you’d expect from someone just finding out a dog isn’t house-broken or indeed, trained at all; my grin definitely had teeth to it this time, and my little growl made her jump.
But all dogs come to heel for one person.
Woodford reserve bourbon; let me tell you, it is a magnificent drink, thick, treacly, you almost felt yourself drawling in a Southern accent, and by this stage in my mind, I was definitely swaggering, and attribute channelled when Big John, had been whispering in my ear, and something my wife had warned me about before.
In the old tales the reader is warned that naming calls, so thinking of my wife, I turned around as my gimlet-eyed beloved thrust, her face into mine, sniffed all around me, and pinched me till I yelped, and then, with a look of surprise, said ‘You’re not even drunk!’
Her panic-stricken colleagues had obviously taken the opportunity of a pause in the service to tell her what had transpired, I reddened, and said ‘I’ve barely touched a drop‘, (more or less true) when from behind her back, she whipped out the virtually empty bottle of spirits, and said ‘Really? How do you explain this?‘ Rumbled, I sheepishly pulled out the quite full water bottle, and my grin froze on my face as she looked at it and then at me in horror.
A long story short, I sank into my seat as her finger got some exercise wagging in front of my face with the warning I was Drawing Attention To Myself and not to tell anyone what I’d done.
The rest of the flight passed snoozing off a big dinner, but I got a bumper of port from Tracy who said the bottle of Woodford must have been popular with the other passengers as it had all gone. My wife, standing behind her, said afterwards with the face I had, I should take up poker.
I remember how I saw her again on other flights over the next year, but that emptiness had grown into something darker and had started to eat at her soul, so that one day I heard, that when at a low ebb, she was hounded downroute by a randy First Officer (who I shall not name here), when being spurned by her became malicious and broke Tracy with cruel comments, she returned to her room and hanged herself, not being discovered until much later.
But how is this a ghost story? As I sit here in that small dim pool of light at thirty thousand feet racing through the night years later, I can still smell that pungent caramel whiskey aroma creeping into my mind as a hand rests on my shoulder as I look at my fully charged glass on the seat tray in front of me, and I turn my head away as a bony finger scratches at my shirt for attention.
There are some faces best not looked on again.
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