Penny Feeny

    GROUNDED                  He should never have mentioned the chest pains. High blood pressure, a risk of heart failure on the flight deck? It gave them the excuse they were looking for. In any case, the airline was still investigating the other matter: the stowaway suffocated in the baggage hold. He’d already told them all he knew.           Mitchell was used to waiting for clearance. Indefinite ground leave was different, disquieting. Long days yawned before him. His wife, Clare, sighed at his inactivity. She wanted him to replace the patio flags with decking and prune the Leylandii at the end of the garden. The hedge-cutters were malfunctioning, so he took them for repair and neglected to collect them.            During a fine dry spell he started going on long walks. His route dawdled beside the river and traversed a forlorn park, a hangout for deadbeats and asylum seekers. Gaunt youths in clothes too large for them huddled around an old sundial, making furtive exchanges. Nobody would meet his eye. A solitary middle-aged man without dog, briefcase, or tracksuit: how could he fail to be an object of suspicion? He kept his gaze windward, his mind far away.          A sudden squall of bodies, a gale of sour breath, blew around him like turbulence. He was completely unprepared. Kicks in the groin and the back of the knee, fists in the kidneys, the menacing flash of a blade. Blood on his knuckles, dust on his tongue. Sprawled on the ground, trying to protect his head, he was astonished at the speed of the savagery: he’d had no chance to resist or fight back. The loss of his wallet came a poor second to his loss of pride. Through the fury roaring in his head he thought he heard them run off, but when he opened his swelling eye, he saw a pair of trainers level with his chin.          ‘Bastard,’ spat Mitchell.          A hand reached down; a voice said, ‘You need help?’          Mitchell allowed himself to be pulled up. Attempting to focus, he made out a blurred knot of dark-skinned men under a lime tree: refugees, as aimless as himself. They were trying to tune a transistor radio and the medley of languages, the tang of their tobacco, carried him briefly overseas again.          As he swayed on his feet, his rescuer led him to a pair of canvas chairs beneath the tree.  Proffering a bottle of water, he said, ‘I am Sharif. You are not too much hurt?’          Rinsing grains of dirt from his mouth, brushing away humiliation. ‘Just winded. Did you see where they came from?’          ‘No, I’m sorry. I prepare for my game.’ Sharif pointed to a chess set on the small folding table between them. The board was an off-cut of chequered plywood. Some of the pieces had been carved, painted and sanded to satin smoothness; others were still rough with splinters, a handful of the pawns represented by pebbles.            Sharif picked one up and rolled it in his palm. ‘My friend, he make these,’ he explained. ‘But he have not time to finish before they take him away.’            Mitchell had seen deportees bundled into aircraft, shivering with terror at their likely reception. They were over-reacting of course. His sympathies had hardened since the episode of the stowaway; he’d been shocked by his sense of violation. He had no wish to share anything with this man. He handed back the water. ‘Think I’ll get off home.’             Sharif was concerned. ‘You take taxi?’             ‘I’m okay. I can walk.’                 ‘Another time, maybe you like to play chess?’             ‘Maybe.’               He couldn’t hide his bruises from Clare. She’d given up asking how he spent his day, but the colours on his face spoke for him.             ‘Oh heavens! You’ve not been in a fight?’             When they’d first met, his temper flared easily. Now, scaled down, it erupted instead into stomach ulcers, toothache or chest pains.             ‘Mugging,’ he said.             She was shocked. Men accustomed to wearing uniform, striding in polished shoes and flourishing gold braid, did not get mugged - even in civilian clothes. ‘You!’             ‘I guess I looked prosperous. Fucking junkies after a fix.’             She lifted her hand to touch his cheek and he flinched. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’             ‘I’ve had enough of doctors.’             ‘Or the police?’             ‘What’s the point?’ If any one of the snivelling bastards came near him again, he’d cut his balls off.              She pursued him for details. Mitchell was obliged to mention Sharif. Clare, when not clamouring for home improvements, had a soggy centre.                     ‘You should thank him somehow.  Perhaps get him some chocolates or a cake.’              Why did women always think sugar was the solution? ‘He didn’t do anything.’              ‘You just told me he was a Good Samaritan.’              ‘He offered me a hand up and a seat, that’s all.’              ‘Would you have done the same for him?’              ‘Clare, he’s an illegal immigrant. Smuggled himself in here somehow, like the fucking guy who cost me my job.’               She had begun to prepare vegetables. The pointed end of a carrot flew across the kitchen like a missile. ‘You’ve been sacked?’               ‘I didn’t say that.’               ‘Suspended?’               ‘Which would you rather: suspension or angina?’              ‘For Godsake, Mitch. Don’t mess with me.’              ‘They’re going to call me back,’ he said. ‘Like I told you. If I’m rested, if I have a clean bill of health, I can fly.’                Mitchell wasn’t going to be deflected from his routine. He’d keep alert, stay on guard crossing the park. He squared his shoulders as if epaulettes might materialise. He swung his arms with his fists clenched. Within seconds he could catch any hooligan on the jaw. The sundial squatted in a slew of broken glass, beaten cans and spent gum. Dogs trailed leads. Mutilated pigeons pecked at fag ends.  The asylum-seekers lolled languidly under their tree. Mitchell nodded a greeting; he didn’t intend to stop but Sharif hailed him vigorously.            ‘Now you are recovered, I hope.’            ‘I’m fine thanks, yes.’            ‘Please to sit.’            The second chair was empty as if awaiting him. He hesitated. He found it difficult to pretend he was busy. Like them he had nothing to do.            ‘You will join me in a game today?’            Mitchell waved at the rest of the group. ‘What about one of your friends…’            Sharif glanced at them with the benign look of a headmaster surveying his pupils. ‘But is good to find new challenge, no?’ He reached graciously across the board to shake hands.            That table’s going to crumble with woodworm at any minute, thought Mitchell.            Sharif said, ‘Now, you are white. You must begin.’            Mitchell moved a pebble a couple of spaces. Within fifteen minutes his queen was captured, within twenty he’d surrendered his king.