A World of Other People Read Online Free PDF Page A

Unmistakably so, all agree, without need of speech. Just a raised eyebrow, here and there, to indicate as much. And with the naming of the sound the situation clarifies itself. For it is the drone of a large engine — not a motor car or bus or even a fire truck. But an engine large enough to gradually fill the silent sky. An aeroplane is heading right for them. And, immediately, it is a disturbing sound. Foreboding. Almost biblical. A sky full of bombers, at this moment, might be less disturbing.But one plane is like a lone rider. A lone horseman on a white horse. In simply being alone it announces that it doesn’t need company. Or support. It is, this aloneness says, a force unto itself.
    And as the sound nears it becomes all the more threatening. Not because it might be an enemy plane — lost or a lone raider about to randomly drop its load where it will. No, not because of any conventional threat, any known threat, but because of its mystery. And as the sound gathers, the tableau tenses. Tenses, but remains in formation. Frozen in gesture. Frozen to the spot, everyone exactly where they were a minute ago when the sound first announced itself.
    And then, in a rush, it is upon them. Or so it seems. A scarcely audible, faint wave of sound one minute; reverberating, deafening waves of sound the next. One minute their world one of hushed houses settled down for the night; the next everything woken by the sound of this single engine. And the plane itself, locked in distant low cloud one minute, then bursting forth onto a stage-set city, floodlit by a full, chandelier moon.
    For it is then that the sound becomes sight. That the dark shape of a bomber becomes visible just beyondthe park opposite, somewhere above the Museum. And because over the last year these watchers, the regulars, have become expert at distinguishing one bomber from another, they know the name of this one. It is one of theirs. A Wellington. Become lost in the clouds and flying low. One engine glowing in the night. And it is at this moment, when sound becomes sight, that this living tableau breaks formation, that this tableau of watchers frozen in mid-gesture wakes, it seems, from mesmerised paralysis, and rushes to the railing. Everyone leaning forward. Eyes intent on the horizon and the oncoming plane, growing larger and louder by the second, just above the tree-tops as it crosses the square, one engine aflame. Heading straight towards them.
    And as the watchers lean over the railing, straining towards the dark, flaming object in the sky, its mystery is not diminished but compounded. I am a moment, it says. One you will never forget. Of all the formations, the waves of bombers in the sky, that you have seen and will see from your rooftop, I am the one moment you will never forget. I am the lone bomber that broke from the low cloud and entered the still, moonlit night of your watch. Until now, anuneventful watch that craved something instead of hours of endless nothing. And I am that something.
    You won’t forget me, it says, like beauty momentarily glimpsed before disappearing into the crowd. For there is now a terrifying beauty to the plane as it passes directly in front of them, no more than a few hundred feet above the rooftop. The watchers, straining at the railing, transfixed by the spectacle. The flames flickering over and about the engine casing. The crew just visible from this distance, the pilot concentrating on the road ahead, oblivious, it seems, of the watchers below. And there, on the side of the plane, painted onto the fuselage, bold and distinct in the clear moonlight, its emblem. A white dove. A white dove, just ascending or descending. It almost feels close enough to touch. Within the grasp of an outstretched hand. To the point that nobody needs their binoculars. All eyes are fixed on the plane.
    And, it seems to Iris, no one is more mesmerised by the spectacle than Mr Eliot himself. His eyes are wide, his face almost glowing as the bomber