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  Patsy sighed. ‘I never could.’

  ‘But of course you couldn’t! You crept round the door like a little blue-eyed innocent. Even I’—she spread her long fingers over the approximate area of her heart—‘feel like old mother wolf beside you. But that, as it were, balances the languages. Get me?’

  Patsy said rather sadly that she did.

  ‘But for all that, if I were a passenger,’ Cynthia said with disarming frankness, ‘I know which of us two I’d rather fly with. You,’ she said, and smiled. And before Patsy had time to say she’d really be no good at all, she was sure, Cynthia went on, ‘And just supposing you are accepted, you couldn’t go on living where you are, could you?’

  Patsy shook her head.

  ‘I’ll have to change too—I have a flat,’ Cynthia said, suddenly and strangely in rather a shy way. ‘In the West End. And I just couldn’t afford it on a stewardess’s pay.’

  Patsy said that she supposed she couldn’t.

  ‘Would you think of trying to get fixed in the same place as me?’ Cynthia asked. ‘Oh, not an expensive place. Just the ordinary sort of bed-sitter that the girls usually live in, they tell me. But it would be nice to have someone else in the same job there too.’

  ‘Of course it would,’ Patsy said gratefully. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  They both lapsed into a companionable silence. Then, startling as a gunshot, though it was no louder than a soft discreet click, the communicating door opened.

  ‘Miss Waring, please,’ a woman’s voice said quietly.

  Cynthia stood up with unruffled composure. One half of her face turned towards Patsy registered unbearable agony, while the other half registered calm and friendly interest. Very slowly, her high heels clicked across the polished light oak floor. Patsy had a glimpse of a large room, a streak of sunlight from the window. ‘Good morning,’ she heard Cynthia Waring say in her sweetest voice, and as someone indicated a chair, ‘Ah, thank you. Glorious—’

  Then, one more, the discreet oak door was closed.

  Fifteen minutes later Patsy was picking up her handbag, and trying to walk with the same amount of calm across that same floor space which suddenly seemed to have become a vast uninhabited sea. As she stepped through the door, she smiled rather shyly at the quiet-looking secretary who held the door open for her, and then at the four people sitting behind a desk, with their backs to the huge sun-filled window.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, much too soon, because her soft voice hardly carried across the room.

  ‘Good morning,’ the four members of the Selection Board called back at her, and the middle-aged lady with her hair in a neat grey bun nodded her head at the empty chair facing them.

  ‘Thank you,’ Patsy said gratefully. She sat very still, clutching her handbag, her feet hugging each other. Then she remembered Cynthia’s posture and tried to cross her ankles.

  ‘So you want to be a stewardess,’ the grey-haired lady said kindly. ‘That’s right, make yourself comfortable,’ as Patsy shuffled her feet towards elegance. ‘What makes you think you might be suitable?’

  ‘Nothing, right now. Nothing at all,’ Patsy would have said, if she’d been able to find her voice, and been able to be perfectly honest.

  It was not the sort of way that Geoff Pollard had put it at all. Then she said quietly and frankly, ‘I don’t know. I mean I don’t know that I would be. But if you like a thing,’ she added desperately, sensing that the Board might well be sharing her doubts, ‘you often are.’

  The grey-haired lady, when Patsy could blink her eyes against the sunlight and look at her properly, had a rather nice mouth. ‘Quite right,’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s quite a point. Anything else?’

  ‘I like travelling. I like talking to people.’

  ‘Sick people?’ A gruff, bouncy little man, sitting at the of the table, cut in suddenly.

  ‘Why, yes,’ Patsy said. ‘They need someone most of all.’

  ‘Frightened people?’ the gruff voice came again.

  ‘Them, too,’ Patsy said truthfully.

  ‘And I see from your application form,’ the grey-haired lady seemed to be giving Patsy time to get the feel of things, ‘that you play tennis and ride. And you love the country?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘And your father’s a land agent and estate manager. I remember visiting on the Hemswell estate—’ She mentioned a few names of people and places.

  Patsy knew them well. Their familiarity put her at her ease. For about two minutes, she held a completely relaxed conversation with the grey-haired lady.

  ‘And now, Mr. Simmons—’ Regretfully, it seemed, the grey-haired lady handed her over to the gruff little man.

  ‘So far, Miss Aylmer,’ he said, stroking his scrubbing-brush moustache, ‘you’ve told us what you’re going to get out of all this. If we appoint you. You like people, sick or frightened,’ and his moustache bristled with disbelief, ‘you like flying, you’d like to travel. But just what does World-Span Aviation get out of it?’

  Patsy thought for a moment. Then she said stoutly, ‘If you appoint me, and when you’ve trained me ... an efficient stewardess.’

  Mr. Simmons looked so astonished with such an answer that he appeared for a moment to lose his voice completely. When he did speak, all he could manage was a hoarse, ‘You next, Miss Mayhew,’ and Patsy was handed on to the only other woman on the Board.

  Miss Mayhew was a different kettle of fish all round. Elegant in blue uniform, about twenty-nine, she was blonde, soignée, with great, grey, rather sleepy eyes in which Patsy seemed to drown to insignificance.

  ‘What,’ she asked in a dreamy voice, ‘is the Capital of Romania?

  Patsy said, ‘Isn’t it Bucharest?’

  Miss Mayhew gave not the slightest indication of having heard her. She said, ‘You have long hours on this job—twenty-four hours at a stretch sometimes, and most of it on your feet. It’s hard work, with more time spent over the galley sink than in entertaining the passengers with polite conversation.’ All the sleepiness had gone out of her eyes as she added, ‘Think you can manage it?’

  ‘Yes ... I think so,’ Patsy said.

  Miss Mayhew’s eyelids appeared to collapse, perhaps from the effort of the past few minutes. ‘How many litres in a gallon?’

  ‘Four and a half,’ Patsy said promptly. ‘And a bit.’

  But Miss Mayhew neither confirmed nor denied it. Instead, she turned to give the man on her left a dazzling red-lipped smile. ‘And now you,, Captain Prentice.’

  Patsy swallowed hard and drew a deep breath, rather like a swimmer before the next difficult plunge. So far, she told herself, she wasn’t doing too badly. With the kind of sixth sense that had always helped her to make friends, she could get the feel of a group of people. And so far, and most surprisingly, she knew they were for her.

  Then the fourth set of seemingly unimportant questions started. They came from the quiet blue-uniformed figure at the extreme right of the table. Patsy screwed up her eyes against the light from the window that fell straight on her face. She glimpsed the lean impassive face, the quiet mouth, the straight dark brows. His arms, folded on the table, seemed to carry too much gold braid for so young a man, and as though he was conscious of it, his voice was slow and measured as though every word was worth ten pounds an ounce.

  For some reason, all the discomfort she had felt on entering the room returned in double measure. For the first time, she was panicky.

  ‘You enjoy flying, Miss Aylmer?’ the deep voice said slowly, but quite pleasantly.

  Now that she really heard it, the question was simple enough. Positively harmless. She was allowing her always quite active imagination to run away with her.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said with relief. ‘Very much.’ Even to herself, Patsy felt that she had over-exaggerated the enthusiasm in her voice. And the sunlight was not too strong for her to see that his very dark eyebrows were momentarily raised.

  ‘Then,’ Captain
Prentice said, with what seemed cruelly deceptive kindliness, ‘you’ve done quite a bit to enjoy it so much?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Patsy started. The man had a way of making you unconsciously agree with him. ‘I mean I’ve...’

  One trip to Paris and another to Spain did not sound very much.

  ‘Yes?’ the voice was still pleasant, as detached and noncommittal as a judge’s.

  Patsy suddenly regretted the clear unpowdered clarity of her cheeks. She could feel her colour rising for all the world, or at least, for all the Selection Board, to see. She screwed up her handkerchief in her clammy hands, and said with a kind of quiet desperate dignity, ‘I have flown. Two trips. One to Paris and one to Spain. I did enjoy them.’

  ‘Splendid!’ A ghost of a smile, more hateful than the faintly lifted eyebrows, moved his lips. Just the faintest breath of a chuckle escaped from the rest of the Selection Board, until now forgotten.

  ‘And you weren’t sick?’

  Patsy said she wasn’t.

  ‘Nor nervous?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘D’you feel that you could cope with an emergency?’ the young man asked. Quite obviously, from the tone of his voice he was certain that she couldn’t.

  ‘I would try,’ Patsy said humbly.

  ‘And that wouldn’t be enough,’ the conversational voice reminded her. ‘The air is no place for people that would try. There aren’t any second chances. You must do!’

  Patsy could feel her chances of success draining out of her like an egg-timer with every minute under this young man’s questioning.

  ‘You know that a stewardess is a member of a crew, under the command of a captain, and that she comes under the same discipline as the men?’

  Patsy nodded.

  ‘And you know that it will mean being away most of the time abroad ... in any country in the world that the Company care to send you?’

  Patsy nodded again.

  ‘And what do your parents think about it?’ He looked through the papers in front of him which contained a copy of the detailed application form that she’d had to complete. ‘You’re their only daughter, aren’t you?’

  ‘The only one at home,’ Patsy said. ‘I have a sister who’s married. And a younger brother at school. But they don’t mind. My father has travelled, and—well, he understands, and Mother does, too—’

  ‘Good,’ he cut her short. ‘But d’you know anything about an airline? Any friends in the business who’ve talked to you about the job?’

  ‘No,’ Patsy said. ‘You see I work with a shipping firm. And I live at home. So there isn’t much chance to get to know anyone in aviation.’

  ‘But’—his eyes were suddenly narrowed—‘I may be quite wrong, and you must tell me if I am—’ Patsy waited breathlessly, her hands clasped in front of her—but didn’t I see you in the restaurant—’ Patsy started guiltily—the staff restaurant.’ There was a slight emphasis on the word staff which shouted ‘Trespasser.’ Patsy flushed—having coffee half an hour or so ago—Patsy felt the very last grain of sand disappear for ever—with one of our Operations Officers?’

  There was a silence in the room. Outside under the pale sunlight, an aircraft started its engines. Mr. Simmons doodled on his blotting paper. The grey-haired lady rustled her papers.

  ‘No reason why you shouldn’t, of course. Very glad you did.’ The conversational voice was faintly amused at its devastation. ‘But if you do know anyone—’

  ‘Yes,’ Patsy said, her voice trembling, not with fear now, but with a healthy glowing anger. ‘I was there having coffee. Not with anybody I knew. Not properly, I mean. With Mr. Pollard. He helped me find the way here. I didn’t know it was the staff restaurant. But it might well have been. And Mr. Pollard bought me a cup of coffee’—and now she didn’t care—‘to cheer me up before I came in here ...’ she heard a muffled noise that must have been a tut-tut of disapproval from the rest of the Board. ‘He was,’ she said warmly, ‘most awfully kind.’

  ‘That’s all, thank you.’ Quite unruffled, Captain Prentice nodded to the grey-haired lady, who appeared to be Chairman of the court.

  ‘Then I think that’s everything we need to ask you, Miss Aylmer. You’ll hear from us in due course. Use this door to go out, would you?’ And she pointed to a door just beside the Board’s table.

  They all watched as Patsy got out of her chair. Their eyes followed her as she walked with dignity towards the allotted exit.

  ‘Thank you, and good morning,’ she said, with her hand on to the door-knob.

  ‘Good morning,’ they said, and as the door closed behind her, she could see their four fearful heads start to move a little closer together.

  ‘Well,’ she said to the empty corridor, ‘that’s that.’

  She wondered what she would say to her mother and father when she got home. ‘Oh, I wasn’t all that keen on it. No, of course I’m not disappointed. Oh, yes, I wanted to get into flying. But there are other jobs too...’

  And of course there were. She couldn’t raise much enthusiasm for any of them right now. But that was because she could see those silver shapes glistening in the sunlight, see the long magic path of the runway, and hear the sonorous thrilling roar of distant engines.

  There was no need this time to ask where to go. She crossed the road, and stood alone below the clearly marked sign with its distinctive painted circle.

  An aircraft’s motors roared out from the far end of the runway. A jet made a whistling streak across the sky. Very faintly, from the passenger reception block, a Tannoy was talking of Paris and Zurich, Rome and Cairo.

  And then suddenly, the noise of aircraft engines and the sound of the Tannoy were drowned by a muttering grunt close by. The silver flash of an airliner just taking off was completely blocked from view. Patsy Aylmer looked up into a familiar square red face that seemed to be smiling down at her in sardonic recognition.

  Out of that selfsame factory-lined, house-enclosed horizon into which it had disappeared, Bus 81 had come back to claim her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was the seventeenth morning of the ‘no letter for Patsy’ month, and it was breakfast time. Mr. Aylmer studied the local farm prices in the morning paper, Mrs. Aylmer read and re-read a postcard from her sister in Bristol, and Timothy, as usual at that time of day, just ate and said nothing.

  ‘You know,’ Patsy said, breaking a piece of toast into small pieces, ‘I did say, didn’t I? He just had no time for me at all.’

  No one had the least difficulty in identifying the subject of Patsy’s remark.

  ‘It’s hard to tell, dear,’ Mrs. Aylmer said, pouring more hot water into the teapot. ‘I should say it would be very difficult to judge under those circumstances.’ Patsy’s mother was well known for her sweet and charitable disposition. All the same, Patsy thought to herself, it was hard to see how Captain Prentice could be judged kindly.

  ‘But I was doing so well up to then,’ she said, spreading the butter absent-mindedly on her toast.

  ‘I imagine that’s what they have four of them for.’ Her father put the paper down for a moment. ‘To get an allround opinion.’ He looked across the table at his slender, auburn-haired daughter, and almost, but not quite, added that it would be difficult, all the same, to see just what the man had taken exception to. ‘And after all,’ he went on, with oblique masculine comfort, ‘that’s the sort of man you’d have in charge of you if you did pass.’

  ‘And I’m not sure,’ Mrs. Aylmer said, finally abandoning the postcard, and folding away her glasses, and glancing warningly at the clock, ‘that I’d be at all happy to let you fly with such—well—’

  ‘Such dictatorial, high-handed, interfering young men,’ Patsy finished for her. ‘That’s what you should have said.’ She gave her mother a quick kiss, and opened the kitchen door. ‘Oh, and just in case a letter did come by the second post...’

  ‘I’ll phone you at the office right away,’ Mrs. Aylmer said, as part of the present morning
ritual.

  But when it did come, the letter came by the morning post. There was something different about the atmosphere that day. Patsy could feel it as soon as she opened the door of the kitchen, where the Aylmer family always had breakfast. And there, to explain the uneasy, waiting silence, was the long buff envelope on the table, with ‘It’s Quicker by Air’ in red letters all the way across the top.

  Patsy blinked at it for a few minutes, telling herself that the longer she waited before opening it, the longer she could still hug around herself a few shreds of hope.

  Patsy swallowed hard and tore open the envelope.

  The first glance told her that there was a date in large type, so it wasn’t, after all, just a curt rejection. Then she read it through from beginning to end. After that, she read it through three more times. Then, in a dream, she smiled at her parents.

  ‘Well, I’m blessed,’ her father said, and pushed his paper down with a great flourish and came round the table to kiss her.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ her mother said tremulously. ‘I’m so glad for you!’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Patsy said. ‘Look, read it, Dad ... and you, Mum. It does really say it, doesn’t it? Appointed as from August 1st. Stewardess Under Training. And subject to a satisfactory medical.’

  She gave a little sigh of mingled delight and disbelief, sat down in her chair, poured herself a cup of tea and drank it.

  ‘Yes, it’s there all right,’ her father said. ‘And it’s addressed to you ... so there doesn’t seem to be the slightest possibility of a mistake.’ He handed the precious letter over to Mrs. Aylmer, who gave a special extra polish to her glasses before allowing them to be focused on it.

  ‘In fact,’ her father went on, ‘the only possibility of a mistake appears to have been yours.’

  Patsy raised her eyebrows good-humouredly. Now that the excitement was all over, she had the relaxed and pleasantly triumphant feeling of a difficult assignment safely accomplished.