The topic of Chatterbox for December is waiting fulfilled. I couldn’t find a suitable scene on that subject in any of my in-progress or in-planning-stages manuscripts; and since I gather this really ought to be a Christmas Chatterbox anyway, and I figured it would satisfy my usual December impulse to write something Christmasy—in short (as Mr. Micawber would say), I have been inveigled into writing a piece of flash fiction again.
A few remarks. First, I find that I really love writing about winter weather. That’s writing something I do know, and it comes so easily! Second, I’m a bit fascinated with old-time aviation stories—I’m pretty sure reading Nevil Shute has helped with that. My lack of technical knowledge has kept me from venturing any writing of my own on that subject, however. I’ve tried to edge around anything too technical in this piece, and I hope I haven’t made any really egregious mistakes. And once again, this turned out much longer than I thought it would be. So long that I’ve put a decent portion of it beyond a click-here-to-read-the-rest jump break, to keep it from entirely swallowing up my blog. I am apparently unable to cram the passage of two hours into anything less than two thousand words.
Ted Grandy twisted the dial on the radio, in an unsuccessful attempt to tune the static out of the Christmas music coming faintly through. He shook his head. The storm was playing havoc with the radio tonight.
Outside the brittle ice-frosted windows of the tiny office all was a dim stormy shade of blue, the silent line of empty barracks and hangars half obscured by the blowing snow. Further out, the runway lights gleamed faintly on the edge of a wide expanse of field, the only thing that looked a bit like Christmas out there tonight.
As Ted slid off his headset and turned away from the desk he noticed there was someone in the narrow, bare semblance of a waiting-room that adjoined the office. It was a girl in a plain gray coat, with a dark-green scarf folded inside the collar. She was walking up and down the room, her hands folded under her arms as if they were cold—and they probably were; that room was always an echoing icebox. Ted wondered how long she had been there—he had not heard the car or taxi that must have brought her, with this wind. He glanced at the clock, which said five minutes past ten, and then opened the half-glass communicating door a little and leaned out. “Miss, would you like to wait in here? It’s not much warmer, but there’s a heater.”
The girl turned and looked at him for a second, without unfolding her arms. “Thank you,” she said, and walked slowly toward the doorway.
Ted held the door open for her and shut it once she was inside, the small evergreen wreath on the outside of the door swinging precariously on its nail with the motion. There was not much room to move about in the office, with the desk, the radio equipment, the heater and some filing cabinets crowding close, but the closeness and the bright electric light seemed to add to the impression of warmth that was mostly an illusion to begin with.
The girl sat down in the single swivel chair that Ted pulled out from the desk for her, and folded her gloved hands in her lap. She was an ordinary-looking girl with dark-brown hair, rather pretty. She sat quietly, but her eyes strayed to the frosted window over the desk with the fine-grained blowing snow sliding past the pane.
Ted, with a slight furrow of curiosity in his forehead, glanced at the clock again. “There isn’t another passenger flight until two o’clock, you know,” he offered tentatively—wanting to be helpful, and yet not wanting to come across as patronizing or prying if the girl was not there at this hour by a mistake.
“Yes, I know.”
There did not seem to be anything to say to that, so Ted said nothing for a minute. The girl looked up at him. She seemed quietly tense, as if she was waiting for something and nervous about it—a look in her eyes as if she was a little withdrawn inside herself, not wanting anyone to come near. But it would have been difficult not to be put at ease by the young radio operator, with his pleasant freckled face and very un-regulation sweater over his uniform, and she smiled very slightly, though without seeming to relax.
She said, “Are there—any other flights coming in here before then?”
“None scheduled,” said Ted, boosting himself comfortably onto the edge of the desk. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if some were diverted here, if they can’t make where they were heading in this storm. Happens a lot.” He folded his arms and glanced through the window into the dark. “I was an operator here when it was a training base during the war. They wouldn’t take me as a flyer—eyesight,” he added almost apologetically. “I’ve done a lot of night shifts here. It’s lonesome now, but back then there were always planes going in and out, day and night. I got so that I could tell most of them by the sound of their engines.”
“So did I,” said the girl unexpectedly. “I lived over at Iverson, two miles from here. Sometimes I’d lie awake on stormy nights like this and count them…going out, and coming in.”
She looked down at the floor. Again Ted could not think of anything to say in reply, so for a little while it was quiet in the office. Ted picked up his headset and turned his attention to the radio for a few minutes.
When he turned back again, the girl had taken off her gloves and stretched out her hands toward the heater, and Ted was somehow a little startled to see that on her left hand was a small glinting engagement ring and gold wedding band. He felt a little uncomfortable, not because he had said or done anything wrong, but because he could not help wondering about her now. He wondered what she was doing alone here, waiting for a two o’clock flight in such a remote, lonely place, and why she was so quiet—whether she was going somewhere clandestinely, or meeting someone she should not be.
The clock ticked steadily for half an hour; the girl sat looking at the dark snow-buffeted window and Ted tilted his head with one hand clamped over the headset, concentrating on the radio. He had tuned out the station playing Christmas music and was straining after a signal from another airfield.
After a while longer he put down the headset and shook his head. The window rattled a little as the wind whipped at it with a whistling sound, and the girl looked up at the clock. She leaned forward a little in her chair and spoke. “May I use the telephone for a moment?”
“Sure, go ahead,” said Ted. He slid off the desk, and made some semblance of moving out of earshot, though in reality he could only go a couple of paces. He stood with his back to her and flipped through a pile of Saturday Evening Posts and movie magazines on a shelf as if looking for something, though he already knew all the issues there. He heard the clicking and whirring of the telephone dial, and then a pause as she waited for the answer.
“Hello,” came her voice, soft and low.
Ted tried not to listen, but could not help it in the small room. “Yes, it’s me.” A pause. “No, not yet.”
She listened for a moment, then spoke again, in a low, level voice, almost without feeling. “No, I won’t,” she said. “This is the only place.” A slightly longer pause, as if someone on the other end was arguing earnestly, and when she answered there was a slight unsteadiness in her voice—quieter, as though it might break at any moment. “All right,” she said. “If…if he doesn’t…Yes, I’ll come then.”
The telephone receiver clicked quietly. Ted stood a moment longer imagining himself absorbed in the magazine in his hands, and then turned around with a quick questioning glance as if he had not known she was done with the phone yet. The girl was standing by the desk, the fingertips of her hand with the wedding-ring resting on it, the other hand holding her bunched gloves; staring out the window into the storm.
After a decent interval, Ted wandered over and leaned against the desk, and the girl turned away from the window and sat down again in the swivel chair. He flipped a page or two, and glanced up at her. “Want something to read while you wait? There’s some magazines over here.”
“No, thank you,” she said, shaking her head with a very slight, tired smile. She folded her hands in her lap again, and Ted saw with a little twist of unease that she was pinching her rings between her right thumb and forefinger, twisting them slowly back and forth on her hand.
It was nearly eleven. Ted tried the radio again, but there was nothing to improve his spirits there. Two planes were reported missing in the storm, a small private plane and a military transport. The transport had not been heard from for six hours.
At ten minutes past eleven he put down the headset with a slight grimace. “That passenger flight has been delayed an hour and a half,” he said to the girl. “Are you still sure you want to wait for it?”
He thought he saw her draw a slight breath, straightening her shoulders back. “I won’t be,” she said. “Someone will be coming to pick me up at midnight.”
Another half-hour passed. The clock ticked on, the little electric heater whirred. The girl had slid down tiredly in the chair, her elbow resting on the wooden arm and her head in her hand. Ted was still listening at the radio, trying to decipher signals through the interference of the storm.
He became aware of a rumbling, not coming through the headset, but from above the office. The girl slowly sat up straight, looking up toward the ceiling; her lips parted, her hand gripped the arm of the chair. The roar of heavy twin engines was slowly building through the obscuring sound of the storm, coming in from somewhere overhead. Ted stared upward, then jerked the radio headset off. “What the…”
He squinted through the window toward the runway lights. As he watched, the huge black spread-winged shape of a big transport plane came down through the gloom, lights winking, and touched down on the snow-shrouded runway at the edge of the field.
“That must be the one!” he exclaimed, forgetting that he had not mentioned anything to the girl about missing aircraft. “Gosh, they’re sure off course. Wonder how they found this airfield.”
He turned around and found that the girl had risen from her chair and was putting her gloves on, already moving toward the door. She almost did not seem to have heard him. When she spoke there was a queer tight quiver in her voice which could have been either high-strung tension or some sort of relief. “I’m going now,” she said; “thank you…for letting me stay in here.”
Ted looked at the clock; the hands stood almost at midnight. Her ride must be here—though he wondered irrelevantly that she had heard the car pulling up over the roar of the plane’s engines. “No trouble,” he said, smiling. “Merry Christmas.”
He turned to peer through the iced window again. He could see the small black figures of the men who had descended from the plane and were walking toward the buildings.
Ted turned to open the communicating door into the waiting-room, ready to greet them. He paused in surprise as he saw that the girl was still there, standing near the other end of the empty room with her hands twisted together and her eyes fixed on the outer door. At just that moment it opened to admit a swirl of wind along with the plane’s crewmen, their jackets and headgear pasted with snow from their walk through the storm to the building. The foremost halted with a half-exclamation—and then he took one step forward and gathered the girl into his arms.
The other crewmen, highly interested, but courteous, edged around them one by one and packed themselves into the office.
“What a night!” said the co-pilot, pulling off his cap to reveal tousled hair standing wildly on end. “Storm drove us miles off our course. Our radio’s been giving us trouble for hours, so they’ve probably got search-parties out. But our pilot”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“trained here during the war, so he brought us down here somehow. Said it’s not the first time he’s landed here in a snowstorm.”
Read previous Chatterboxes here.
Abby E. says
This was simply lovely, music to this writer's ears! I love how you made you characters so real that we want to know them more! What a splendid snippet! A hearty well done!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Abby, thank you so much! I had slightly mixed feelings about this piece when I posted it, so it's music to my ears to hear that it pleased you so much! 🙂
Bree Holloway says
Oo. Your winter descriptions are so real; I want to read more. <3