Many a sudden change takes place on a spring day.
Irish Proverb
The grey rain bled horizontally across the thick stained Perspex of the Boeing's windows and collected in one long pool at the side. Each droplet vibrated individually with the throb of the aircraft's engines, whilst wraith-like slivers of clouds tugged at the barrel of the fuselage and slithered over the monstrous wings.
Inside the pressurised cabin, the surface was also moisture-coated, a thin film having condensed from the steam of the boy's soup. Between the interior and exterior panes lay no-man's land, a vacuum of space sealed off from the atmosphere and all its corruptive elements - double-glazed oblivion.
Another wave of air buffeted the huge machine and it jerked once like an angry dog and then settled. A couple of elderly ladies three rows ahead of the boy cackled to one another that they hoped it wasn't 'as blowy down there as it is up here', proceeding to flag down a passing male-steward for 'some more tea, please, oh and a little extra milk as I like mine nice and weak'.
The boy bent over his soup and began to spoon the piping hot stew into his mouth. It felt fine in his belly and he paused to break a cheese cracker in half and brush the crumbs absent-mindedly onto the floor.
They seemed to be descending now, for he could feel it in his stomach and within seconds they had broken out of the suffocating bank of stratus cloud and into blinding sunlight that glinted on the metal of the wing tips. With a twinge of adolescent excitement, the boy pressed his nose to the Perspex and squinted down to catch a glimpse of the land below. Then the aircraft banked sharply and all he could view were the gunmetal cloud banks above.
Disappointed, he resumed eating and was soon finished. A pretty young flight-attendant leaned over to clear his plate and asked if he would like anything more to drink. The boy told her that he had ordered a red wine and she said not to worry, that another steward was handling the wine. The boy said 'Okay then,' and grinned at her. She flashed back a wide toothy smile and carried on with her rounds, leaving the boy musing over whether she had found him attractive. He was at the stage when he was aware that, at the very least, a certain percentage of girls did like him and that correspondingly his fate was not to be shunned perpetually by the opposite sex. However, he remained a touch shy and awkward amongst women and feared that every one he met could palpably detect that in him.
'Sir, your wine.' An arm and a glass entered his peripheral vision. He had been staring unseeing out of the window, lost in thought and realised he had not heard her the first time.
'Oh, sorry,' he stammered and accepted the glass from her. As she withdrew her hand he watched her long nail-glossed fingers uncurl and she left him feeling clumsy and slow.
The Boeing's course levelled out again and now the boy could clearly discern the land that lay beneath them. It was dark and green and opaque and white, a mottled canvas of a painter at work and the boy thought that it might be Newfoundland. If he concentrated hard, he could make out individual conifer trees, their tips thrust defiantly up at the heavens, their boughs heavy with snow. The vast countryside was smattered with the mirrored surface of numerous little lakes and pools, their waters eddying and rippling with the discharge of thousands of streams and minuscule tributaries which supplied them with their life blood. As far as the boy could see, there were no shacks or dwellings of any type built on the land. It appeared entirely unexposed to the contaminating touch of man. They were however, still considerably far north, the boy told himself and this was probably too remote an area for development of any sort - be it logging or whatever else. Indeed, it could be Greenland for all he knew.
The aircraft dropped further then and the landscape opened itself up fully. There were great, rounded grassy knolls strewn with boulder outcrops, bereft of trees as if some medieval giant had clipped their flanks with his open razor. Plumes of snowflakes spewed off the highest crags into the frigid air that had conceived them. The boy felt in awe at the complete beatific isolation of the scene and shuddered involuntarily at the thought of the big Boeing's soft underbelly catching itself on one of those unpleasantly sharp granite towers.
Settling his head back in the padded rest again, he thought of the place where he was now going and the one he had so recently left. Pondering where he might be and what he would be doing a year from now, he felt elated and freer than he had ever felt before in his entire life.
