As I stepped onto the aeroplane, everything dissolved and shifted around me as if made of mist, and yetthere it was againour seats were taken.
My wife Elizabeth and I were meant to visit relatives in Cambridge. We’d purchased two plane tickets, purposefully leaving one window seat free for the view. I remember choosing the seats with care, since there were three rows in this strange, floating cylindera vessel that hummed with the echo of invisible engines and the faint smell of Earl Grey. I ensured wed sit together with a window at our side, so we could watch the clouds unravel below.
But as I drifted onto the plane, against all reason and expectation, I saw a woman in my seat, and a flaxen-haired boycouldnt have been older than fivein the spot meant for Elizabeth. Our tickets, checked and re-checked, were correct. Yet there she sat, radiant with the air of someone who belongedperhaps the Queen incognito in a woollen cardigan.
Excuse me, I said, my words bouncing off the walls like tennis balls in a dusty old manor, these are our seats.
The woman carried on, quite absorbed in adjusting her sons miniature waistcoat. This wasnt right at all, yet every word I managed seemed to tangle in the air between us. My wife repeated the question, and this time the woman turned, her eyes glassy as old marbles.
My son wanted the window, so here he is. First come, first served. We wont be moving. There are spare seats in the centre rowtake those.
I felt as if time had slipped, like watching a clock tick backwards. Im sorry, but we deliberately bought these seats, I said softly, my voice strange in my ears. Theres no need for a fussplease lets just swap.
She narrowed her eyes, as if sizing me up for a tweed jacket I did not want to wear. Cant you see the childs excited? she said, her tone as chilly as a November morning on the Thames. If I move him, hell get cross. Dont you have children? Youre an adult.
The conversation spiralled around us, thick as fog. My wife and I glanced at each other and, losing our battle against the odd logic of dreams, we drifted to find the stewardwho appeared with a bowtie and a voice gentle as buttered toast. At his soft-chided request, the woman relinquished the seats, grumbling like an old boiler. Her child, however, simply pressed his hand to the window, smudging the glass with ghostly patterns.
Why hadnt she sorted it ahead of time, I wondered, booking her desired seats as we had? The answer seemed to drift away, carried by the shifting winds of this peculiar airborne world.
Thankfully, the matter resolved before it grew into a spectacle. Other passengers, all with the same faces but different hats, nodded encouragingly in my direction. I felt validated for handling things without raising a scandal, as if Id passed some unwritten test of English etiquette.
What baffled me most in this dreamscape wasnt the shifting seats or whispering engines, but why parents sometimes imagined their children were tiny monarchs, entitled to all the window-seats in England. We, too, had children, but never stormed past queues or snatched places from others.
In the end, I was simply relieved that the remainder of our odd, tea-scented journey passed without further incident. I hoped the woman, wherever her path led, would dream next of purchasing her own window seat in advanceleaving others to float serenely through the clouds, undisturbed.
