Six Day Week

Monday, Airplane

The pleasant image that Troy had conjured of Italy was rapidly dispelled once the Alps were crossed. The black clouds beneath might have been the shrouds of hell as the big Italian jet slowly descended towards Rome. Soon wispy fingers were reaching up, curling about the wings, racing through the white-hot furnace of the turbines and degenerating a smooth ride into a scramble of slews and bumps and lurches.

Outside, visibility dropped to nothing and rain snaked across the windows. Menacing flashes momentarily lightening the gloom warned of a storm up ahead, and yet the pilot did not deviate from his course by so much as a degree.

Italians might be lousy soldiers but their aviators, like then-Grand Prix drivers, were fearless to the point of foolhardiness. Where a British aircrew would plot and plan and feel out a still-air path, these Latins pushed on towards the approach path with absolute imperturbability. It was one of the paradoxes of the race.

Troy supposed they must know what they were about and reached for the briefcase at his feet as they raced through the eye of the storm. Hair-raising balls of fire appeared and died at the windows, and savage surges of current shook the machine as if it was in the grip of a terrestial terrier.

Two black-robed nuns across the aisle continued to read their small prayer books as if they were preparing for sacrament in one of Rome's multitude of convents. But the plumpish fellow in the seat ahead of them who stank of some cheap after-shave lotion had already committed his soul to the Devil.

Plumpish? That was an inadequate description. When two hundred and fifty pounds of human blubber is compressed into a five foot frame something must give. His head was set so square and low down on his shoulders that he appeared to have been born without a neck; but the narrow strip of skin which served to attach the two members was the colour of beetroot and moist with droplets of sweat that glistened under the wan cabin lights. One pudgy hand gripped the green arm-rest at his side so tightly that white blobs showed at the knuckles. The other was placed occasionally and fearfully against the roof of the fuselage as if, during the height of the turbulence, he was attempting to assist the engines by pressing upwards with all his strength against the forces of nature. At last he called for a Ramazzotti from a drinks trolley making its way back down the aisle to the galley, and when it was handed to him he gulped the dark liquid like a nomad in the Gobi desert who had suddenly stumbled across a champagne waterfall.

It was only when he came to his feet, a moment later, that Troy realised just how gross he was. His immense belly was monstrous with fat and he groped with great difficulty to the washroom, wiping his face as he went to soak up visible signs of the physical effort upon his body.

Troy soon lost interest in the animal problems of Mister Obese and drew from his briefcase the wad of paper that MacLachlan had pressed into his hands as he had left the Globe with an office driver for London Airport.

Here was further evidence of MacLachlan's competence as foreign editor. Despite the frenzied demands of the day he had nevertheless remembered to send one of his assistants to the library for the clippings on the Roman scene over the last few years, and he had had them photo-copied and placed in date order. Together they amounted to a short history of modern Italy.

They commenced with reports on the death of Signor Togliatti, the well-loved Communist leader of the 1960s. Troy, reading them through quickly, was astounded at the popular support the man had commanded. Apparently the funeral cortege was on the scale of that usually mounted for a European monarch, and it had been so well attended that it had taken two hours for the procession to pass a point. Someone had placed a value of £30,000 on the defiant red wreaths -- roses, carnations, cannas and even white blooms which had been dyed scarlet. That was a measure of the size and solidity of the Italian Communist Party, noted at the time to be the largest in the Western world.