Landed by Tim Pears

Author:Tim Pears [Pears, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Modern
ISBN: 9780434020072
Publisher: Windsor
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Holly stands up. ‘I’m going to the toilet,’ she says. Owen begins to gesture in the right direction, to save Holly walking towards the driver’s cab, but she cuts him short with a smile. ‘I know, Daddy.’ She sways past his right shoulder.

Josh gazes out of the window. Back gardens, divided by fences, like the frames of a film. He looks like he is asleep with his eyes open. Utterly still. Spellbound by nothing. In a trance, Owen thinks, like the stupor he himself achieves with alcohol. Perhaps the wish to enter it has nothing to do with circumstances: a narcoleptic tendency, a genetic need.

They pass a small breaker’s yard where parts of disparate cars are neatly stacked: bumpers here, tyres there, doors of different colours. A square, with green shrubs and green metal benches, no one in it. The train passes beneath overhead motorways, the pillars that support them like cloisters coiling through the city. In the centre, a new tower block, with the words SKY LIVING FOR SALE. Holly has been gone too long.

‘I’m going to look for your sister,’ Owen says, standing up. A nod of acknowledgement from his son.

Owen makes his way to the end of the carriage. The toilet is engaged, so he waits outside. After a minute the door slides open. A middle-aged woman emerges. He continues on along the train, scrutinising every seat. He checks each toilet, waiting, if it is occupied, until a stranger emerges. The train stops once or twice, people get on. When he reaches the rear of the train he realises that he must have missed her; in all probability she’ll be back in her seat by now.

Returning in the opposite direction, it seems like there are many more passengers in each carriage than when he came through just now. That, Owen reckons, is what happens when you are searching for one particular person: you don’t notice everyone else. Lurching in the same direction as the speeding train feels faster than did walking towards the back of the train, against its momentum.

After a while Owen starts to count the carriages he passes through. He begins to suspect that it is taking longer to get back to his seat at the front of the train: there are more carriages than there were just now. No sooner does Owen dismiss this absurd thought from his mind than it is replaced by another.

People are looking at him. Not in the idle way that everyone does at someone swaying down the centre aisle, but with a distinct, knowing gaze. He isn’t sure how or when exactly it happens, but at some point Owen realises that they know where Holly is. At first him, that man in the suit, on the mobile phone, the way he watches Owen come towards him, as if reporting on his progress to someone on the other end of the line. Then her, an elderly lady lifting her gaze lazily towards him in his panic, on her thin lips a contemptuous smirk.

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