Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

As the blue and silver ‘airbus’ taxied towards the terminus, sliding the sun like melting butter down its smooth back, it occurred to Bosch that the prospect of becoming airborne for the first time in his life was not perhaps so daunting after all.

     For it was not that he was prejudiced against the aeroplane. On the whole it would be true to say that he was mare readily disposed towards all kinds of ships and boats,that he regarded wheeled land-transport as more congenial still, and above all these preferred his’ own two rather extensive feet; but it was not in consequence of any definite aversion that he had never flown before. It was simply that circumstance had not required it of him - neither need nor opportunity had previously arisen.

     And having made the relevant enquiries, located the aerodrome, purchased his ticket and presented himself outside the terminal building at a time consistent with his intention of boarding the morning airbus to the Island, he was surprised to find that however hard he tried he could no longer recall the nature of the need that on this occasion had moved him to take these - for him - unprecedented steps. In fact, he now had the greatest difficulty in even conceiving such a need.

     But he could scarcely disguise from himself the fact that the opportunity had finally arrived. The ticket was in his hand, clamped in the perspiring grip to which he committed all such embarrasingly necessary losables. The print on its reverse informed him categorically that it was NOT TRANSFERABLE - and indicated, furthermore, that by this time he had already forfeited his right of cancellation, If he was not to waste his money, he must board the blue and silver aeroplane at once.

     After the vibration and then the elevation he accommodated the novelty of flight with disappointing speed. To the company that operated the Island airbus service the short and scheduled journey was a mere routine - and for the most part, it must be admitted, this is what it seemed to Bosch.

     During the first few minutes of the flight they passed over the mainland coast, and the sea unfolded in quick succession a number of delicate colours.faithful to its fathom-lines - but, growing disproportionately vaster as they left the land astern, it became at once more uniform and less diverting to the eye.

     Certainly Bosch found some delight in looking down from his small square window on the tiny backs of the gulls which flew and floated far and further still below. Yet it seemed to him this satisfaction was greater only in degree than that which he had already known from the vantage both of sea cliffs and mountain precipices - not to mention of high buildings. Excepting, of course, that in the present case his fixed gaze overtook each successive object of attention - and presently left it behind.

     Not only did the anticipated excitement of his new-found elevation fade more quickly than he ever could have guessed, but the modified perspective it involved became almost at once habitual to him - a fact that may in part explain why for the entire duration of his trip - long after the romance of altitude had paled - he doggedly continued to look down, and so failed to observe soon after take-off the vapoury snail-track high overhead of a jet which inexorably overhauled the airbus.

     And consequently was not at any stage of his flight prompted to speculate how, for example, to a person looking down from one of the round portholes of that jet, the blue and silver biplane in which he sat might appear no larger or swifter-moving than the gulls gliding below now seemed to him - nor how, to one so placed, those gulls themselves might not be visible at all.

     As in the case of the inshore colours and the gulls, it was at first entertaining to pass high above the numerous small craft which at intervals were to be seen traversing the sea’s glittering surface in every conceivable direction. And at various and varying speeds - but these were distinctions which Bosch found difficult and often impossible to appreciate, the speed of the airbus being relatively so great, and the horizontal distances they travelled being so much reduced from his exalted viewpoint, that differences in and between their speeds which were no doubt at sea-level most significant appeared from the air as nothing. Indeed, setting aside the beautiful white wakes which clearly showed these vessels to be under way, it would have been quite easy to imagine them at a standstill.

     And this seeming inertia further detracted from their interest - already diminishing in the square of their number - until it would be true to say that Bosch had come to take them, like other features of his flight, entirely for granted. So that very soon the only occurrence that could be relied upon to command more than his most summary attention was the infrequent looming into his downward and travelling cone of vision of a vessel of quite outstanding size.

     And while it might on this basis seem reasonable to infer that the larger the vessel, the more attention it received, and the longer the interval before Bosch’s brain resumed its previous low level of activity, it remained a fact, even where vessels of exceptional size were concerned, that as the number of such sightings inevitably grew in consequence of his lengthening time aloft and the resultant increase in the area of sea over which he had passed, the amount of attention - proportional to its size - which Bosch accorded any vessel irreversibly diminished.

     And since - it is interesting to note - the greatest vessels were at one and the same time the least numerous, it must be supposed that by the later stages of his flight Bosch’s brain was functioning at a very low level of activity indeed.

     As the blue and silver biplane taxied dustily out of the corner of his eye, his fellow passengers - whose number was to him approximate, whose presence he had ignored throughout the crossing - in their turn quickly relinquished all pretence of confederacy with him and for the most part with each other and, breaking up into units of four, three, two and even one, walked severally towards either the tin-roofed cafeteria along the whitewashed face of which some once-black letters stretched to an imploring REFRESHME... before fading altogether, or like himself towards the exit gate.

     The bright green paintwork which adorned the members of that gate was for some reason - or none at all - one of the first and most insistent phenomena to engage Bosch’s various faculties on his arrival - and subsequently the first thing on the Island to make contact with any part of his person other than the soles of his rather heavy shoes.

     For although the gate stood open wide before him, presenting no obstacle to any reasonably co-ordinated and accurate attempt to pass between its posts, he felt as he swayed towards it an unexpected need to linger in that constricted space, to confirm with inquisitive fingertips what his eyes already told him about the texture of its surfaces. And not only did it prove as knobbly to the touch as he had suspected, but also very hot - a circumstance of which his other senses had offered no premonition whatsoever.

     Once outside the perimeter fence, he found himself standing on the broad and tyre-scrubbed patch of sun-baked earth which appeared to serve the airport as a car park. A number of the other passengers had already - somewhat more expeditely than himself - passed through the gate, and following their footsteps with his gaze he perceived that they were steering now towards a blue-grey painted omnibus which waited nearby.

     Above this ‘bus’ windscreen - bifurcated by a central pillar in a manner which somehow conferred an expression of great sadness on the vehicle’s whole face - the destination board was blank. Behind the windscreen, and to one side of the pillar, sat a man in shirtsleeves, perusing through dark glasses the back page of a newspaper thus revealed to Bosch as an issue - though for what date he could not at that distance discover - of THE ISLANDER.

     For some moments Bosch was troubled by the thought that perhaps he too should make his way towards and ultimately board this enigmatic vehicle. But the longer he reflected, the more uncertain he became as to the wisdom of pursuing such a course. For even assuming he might presently be able to ascertain the bus’s destination, how could he begin to know whether this destination coincided with his Interests, so long as he found himself without the vaguest notion why he had made the crossing in the first place?

     Beyond the bare and dusty patch of ground on which he stood, a pair of flinty ruts struck out across a broad sheep-cropped expanse of green - green slightly yellowed by the summer drought but studded nonetheless with daisies and seapinks - towards a distant gleaming blade of metalled road. Apart from the inert undesignated omnibus-there was between himself and the blue horizon only one vehicle to be seen, and this - a little olive-coloured car parked on the grass - only marginally further removed from him than was the bus. So that after a few moments he had little difficulty in making out beside its open offside door the tall and striking figure of a girl.

     Her face was turned towards him, and the impression for a second crossed his mind that its fine and sunburned features were familiar. Some lively if obscure purpose seemed to inform the eyes and lips. Almost as if - thought Bosch as he advanced - they were engaged in the formation of a wide and unselfconscious smile. At the same time he observed that having raised one of her slender arms she was executing now a succession of sweeping sideways motions above her head. For all the world - he reflected in due course - for all the world as though attempting to attract someone’s attention.

     He was not a little pleased with this comparison. Indeed, the longer he turned it over in his head, the more exuberant became his sense of self-respect - and the more blithely he stepped out along the dusty track.

     Had he continued to look in the girl’s direction it is likely that her demeanous would have continued to intrigue him for some time. But as things turned out the fair, the almost golden hair with which her head was very abundantly endowed derived such a startling brightness from the lucid coastal sunlight that Bosch’s eyes - already strained by looking down on so much glittering sea - grew weary of the sight rather more quickly than might have been the case in duller weather, or with regard to a brunette, and he was soon obliged to seek relief in the more restful yellow-greens beyond. And passing from his vision, she likewise faded quickly from his mind.

     Which by this time was preoccupied by a number of more pressing speculations. For in the short space of his walk across the car park it had occurred to him that, whereas in the recent instance of the gate he had been able by the direct evidence of his senses to assure himself of the uneven texture of its paint - not to mention its high temperature - he had as yet encountered no such assurances of having arrived upon an island at all.

     Whether or not as a result of looking only downwards during his flight - and it was too late now to compare the effect of looking sideways - the coastline he had seen when coming in to land five minutes earlier had given no indication whatsoever of circumscribing a sea-beleaguered tract of land. From all that he observed - the colours of submarine contours, the tideline and the cliffs - it could equally have formed a part of some other mainland coast closely comparable in structure to the one from which he had set out. In fact, upon further reflection, it could well have constituted another and similar part of that selfsame coast.

     The more vigorously Bosch ransacked the recesses of his memory for any shreds of information that related to this question, the more disquieted he became. Every piece of relevant evidence that he was able to unearth seemed to him of the flimsiest and most circumstantial kind. And it was with a shock of positive alarm that he now noted how in the case of the flying schedules he had consulted on Mainland Aerodrome, the case of the airbus ticket he had clutched in such good faith while waiting on the tarmac and the case of the name of a newspaper being held and presumably read by the apparent driver of a blue-grey painted omnibus admitting of no declared and visible destination - in the cases, that is to say, of the three most convincing single clues he could bring to mind there was involved the same uncertain medium of printed matter.

     So unsatisfactory did he consider this unexplained coincidence that he there and then resolved to walk along the coast, keeping as a precaution against deception or mistake - the sea in sight at every step. He reasoned that by following this simple strategy he must sooner or later - according to the length and difficulty of the journey so entailed - arrive back in the vicinity of the airport - if he were in fact upon an island.

     The logic so consummately exemplified in this modest but ingenious plan epitomised for Bosch the ultimate ascendancy of reason over hostile and bewildering circumstance - the contemplation of its beauties quite restored his buoyant mood. And so it was once more with carefree and resilient gait that, whistling, he stepped forth.