The Atlantic Sky Read online

  ‘How?’ she smiled.

  ‘A mistake in summing up of character,’ her father replied. ‘The character of the captain on the Selection Board.’

  But even at such a moment, Patsy was not to be melted. She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Dad. You weren’t there. I know I wasn’t wrong. He was ...’

  ‘All right, all right,’ her father held up his hand soothingly. ‘You’ve told us,’ he added drily. ‘Many times.’

  ‘And the more I think of him, the worse he becomes,’ Patsy said, just to emphasize that her opinion remained unchanged.

  ‘All the same,’ her father said mildly, ‘you passed, didn’t you?’

  Patsy agreed that she had. She digested the fact for a few seconds, then she said sturdily, ‘The others must have overruled him. That’s all I can say.’

  Mr. Aylmer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well,’ he said pacifically, ‘I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting this Captain Prentice, and I don’t suppose I ever shall. But from what you’ve told me’—he stood up and folded his paper—‘one thing I can be sure of.’

  ‘And what’s that, Dad?’

  Mr. Aylmer patted his daughter’s shoulder gently. ‘The Captain Prentices of this world just don’t get themselves overruled. Not by two ladies and a man. Not by twice that number. Not’—he said, kissing his wife and walking over towards the door to the hall—‘by anyone.’

  And maybe, Patsy discovered a fortnight later, her father was right. For the very first morning she was with World-Span, as she was herded with a crowd of similarly shy and eager-looking girls, from the Admin Building to the Training School, from Catering Block to Passport Section, she heard the name of Prentice many times. And in contexts suggesting that he ruled over rather than was overruled.

  Captain Prentice, it appeared, was in charge of all air-crew training. Captain Prentice had a large hand in who flew where, who with, and when. Captain Prentice liked a hundred per cent efficiency. No, Patsy was wrong, not just liked it, insisted on it. Captain Prentice wouldn’t like this or he would like that.

  One thing he liked was that all aircrew should live within a few miles of the airport. Easier in case of sudden calls, cheaper on the Company’s transport. So some time in the early afternoon Patsy found herself back in the freshly built waiting-room at the Admin Building, which still smelled of paint and distemper and new rubber flooring, waiting to be given a list of places where the girls might be accommodated cheaply and cleanly and with the Company’s approval.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get a place together,’ Cynthia Waring said for the third time.’

  Patsy smiled back at the girl beside her. ‘It would be nice. I’m glad we both got through all right. Though I must say I never expected to.’

  They both sighed together with huge relief.

  ‘But now, don’t you think, it feels as though we’re a bit out on a limb, as you might say? We don’t belong here yet—and yet we don’t belong in our old jobs either.’

  ‘Rather like a chrysalis ...’ Patsy said.

  Cynthia shuddered. ‘I must say I don’t feel quite so unfetching as one of those. But the general idea is right.’ The oak door at the opposite end of the room opened, and one of the typists came in. Sixteen pairs of eyes watched her expectantly.

  They had all, for the past fifteen minutes and in snatches for most of the morning, been sizing each other up, making half-friendly smiles, or critical unspoken comments, according to their different natures. They wondered who would pass the difficult course, who would be friends with whom, and what, in a year or so, their ultimate careers would be. Now they held out their hands for the typed lists, and studied them carefully.

  ‘We’ve got the U, V, W’s,’ Cynthia said. She ran a beautiful lacquered nail down the names. ‘I don’t like the sound of Uttley ... No, nor Verity ... reminds me of severity. Vining now ... that’s better.’

  ‘Waterhouse,’ Patsy said, putting her finger firmly on the very last name on the list. ‘Two bed-sitters. Meals if and when required. Sounds all right.’

  ‘We-ell, not much choice, I suppose...’

  ‘Come on, then.’ Patsy pulled on her gloves and picked up her handbag. She peered over Cynthia’s shoulder. ‘Bus 81, does it say, as far as Hounslow Central? Then turn right at the next cross-roads.’

  Side by side, they hurried along the concrete roadways, feeling unprotected and noticeable without uniform. Just as they passed the Operations Block, a window opened and a voice said, ‘What did I tell you? Trust Pollard!’

  ‘Hello, Geoff,’ Patsy called gaily, feeling that she was meeting an age-old friend that she hadn’t seen for years. ‘We’ve just started today. Oh, and this is Cynthia Waring. Cynthia, this is Geoff Pollard.’

  They grinned vaguely at each other and said hello in an uninterested kind of way. Then Geoff said, ‘And where are you off to now ... playing hookey already?’ He shook his head severely. ‘Just like all you stewardesses.’

  The two girls smiled at already being included in such a select sorority, and then said they were going off to inspect what a Mrs. Waterhouse had in the way of bed-sitters and that far from playing hookey they’d been hard at it filling in forms, listening to pep talks, and generally getting acquainted all day.

  ‘And does Mrs. Waterhouse have a telephone? Must do if you’re going to live there.’

  Patsy dived into the pocket of her coat and fished out the paper with all the particulars typed on it. ‘She does.’

  ‘Well, number, please.’ Geoff Pollard straightened his tie. ‘Strictly for operational purposes. All telephone numbers must be left here.’

  ‘1921289.’

  ‘That number has a familiar ring. I believe there’s a World-Span girl living there already.’

  But he noted it down and winked at them both with friendly impartiality. ‘One of these days, I’ll be giving you a ring.’

  ‘We haven’t taken the place yet,’ Cynthia said tartly, stamping her patent leather shoes to show that her dainty feet were simply frozen. ‘And at this rate it doesn’t look as though we’ll ever even see it.’

  Geoff Pollard grinned and gave her a mock salute and murmured ‘See you some time,’ to Patsy as he closed the window.

  ‘I must say,’ Cynthia squinted down her nose with some severity as they walked briskly on, ‘for the little girl up from the country, you’re a remarkably fast worker. Now when did you get to know him?’ She grabbed her friend’s arm. ‘Oh, never mind. Don’t bother to tell me now. Here comes a bus. And if my superb eyesight is still the 6/5 they swore it was at the medical, it’s an 81, bless its little heart!’

  They ran out through the open airport gates, across the Great West Road, and clambered on to the bus. They both felt as light-hearted as slightly older and wiser schoolgirls. The effect, Patsy supposed, of the classroom atmosphere of teachers and pupils, of discipline and uniform and the comfort of authority.

  Even at Mrs. Waterhouse’s, the illusion was preserved in that it was obvious that they would be looked after and mothered. She was a dear, rather older than middle-aged lady with bright blue eyes, and a face that was interested and alive and kind. She had had, she told them with some pride, a number of stewardesses in the three bed-sitting rooms that she rented. ‘A large number,’ she added with emphasis. ‘A very large number indeed.’

  Cynthia darted an exaggeratedly apprehensive look at Patsy. ‘What happened to them all?’ she asked.

  But now the good lady was bustling around, turning back the dainty cretonne-covered beds to reveal the box spring mattresses, and opening the cupboard doors to show that there was ample room for uniforms. ‘And I still have Miss Morley ... she’s on leave now ... who’s been flying for a long, long time’—the blue eyes looked regretful—‘and she seems happy enough here.’

  ‘And I’m sure we shall be too,’ Patsy said, after raising her eyebrows at Cynthia and getting a half-hearted nod in return.

  ‘And now that’s that,’ Cynthia said ten minutes later,
surveying their new home from the outside. ‘We’ve at least got a roof over our heads, and if my well-trained nose doesn’t receive me, hambone soup for supper tonight. So today wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘And it’s always supposed to get easier as you go along, now isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘So tomorrow,’ Cynthia declared with conviction, ‘will be that much better.’

  But later that night, after they’d collected their bags, had the forecasted hambone soup for supper, and were sitting in Patsy’s room, boiling up a strong brew 6f cocoa on her gas ring, the ex-model turned to the ex-shipping clerk and asked, ‘Did the Catering Officer’s stooge actually request our presence at the Section at eight a.m.! Didn’t my sharp ears deceive me?’

  Patsy’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘Your sharp ears did not. And you haven’t forgotten the rider to the invitation?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Cynthia slowly and mournfully. ‘It was bring your aprons and overalls.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Hinting delicately, would you say, at pots and pans and dirty dishes?’

  Patsy laughed. ‘I would say.’

  Cynthia examined the ten glittering, almond-shaped rubies of her nails. ‘It’s been nice knowing you,’ she said to them huskily. ‘Adieu. Farewell. Goodbye.’

  Though the washing up and the scrubbing in the kitchens made a hectic bustle of the mornings, during that first week Patsy found that the day had other, more peaceful hours in it.

  Question time at the end of each lecture, though, was a little uncomfortable. Then a movement would rustle through the room. Everyone would hope that someone else, much brighter, much less tired than she, would ask an intelligent question which would show that the whole class had been thoroughly digesting the subject.

  But despite question time, Patsy liked and looked forward and always listened attentively to the afternoon lectures, which were mostly given by Mr. Crosbie, the Catering Officer, or some equally kind instructor, until the lecture on Flight Planning turned up on the syllabus, two weeks after the course commenced. This was the only time Captain Prentice deigned to give them the benefit of his vast experience and wisdom. And he appeared in person to do it.

  He wasted no time in getting to the point. ‘The weather in the North Atlantic,’ he said, fingering a piece of chalk and doing his best to avoid looking at the froth of feminine faces in front of him, ‘is harsh, unpredictable, and at times of immeasurable force.’

  ‘And the description,’ Patsy thought, watching the large hand sketching the map with a kind of careless exactitude, ‘might well apply to you yourself ... harsh, unpredictable, forceful.’ She murmured the words over and over to herself, as Captain Prentice talked crisply of fuel consumption, wind components, head winds, tail winds, air speed, ground speed, cloud ceilings, weather limits, alternates ... all sorts of things that she had never heard applied in this sort of context before.

  ‘The Critical Point,’ he told them, ‘is the point in any flight when it is just as long to go on to the destination as it would be to return to the place of departure. Not to be confused with the Point of No Return, beyond which, as the name implies, there is no option but to proceed to the destination.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Patsy thought, looking at the straight back, the firm profile, ‘if he was always like this?’

  ‘Nothing can be taken for granted,’ the calm, unhurried voice went on. ‘Though on most occasions there are indications of disturbances, the sky might sometimes look quite clear. The weather might appear both calm and benign. But you can’t see very far, even from 19,000 feet, and you mustn’t trust just what you can see—’

  Mightn’t he, Patsy wondered, have been young and carefree before the variable, untrustworthy Atlantic sky got into his bones or whatever else it got into to make you like itself? He must once, she thought, have had quite a pleasant sort of face. Nice eyes, well-shaped jaw, straight chin. There was still a hint of humour in the mocking lift of his eyebrows. Might he not (many years ago, of course) have had a home and a family rather like her own, perhaps when he was about twenty-one—?

  ‘Fuel is carried for the flight itself,’ Captain Prentice was saying, ‘plus extra for unforecasted head winds and other emergencies. In addition, a North Atlantic pilot should arrive on the western side with enough fuel to fly round his destination for half an hour, proceed to his alternative aerodrome (which may be more than five hundred miles away), and then hold over the field before doing a full instrument landing. And a large reserve of fuel is carried because the North Atlantic weather—’

  It was as though he had suddenly become conscious of the concentrated gaze of sixteen pairs of girls’ eyes, and of one blue pair in particular, which were twice as busy as the others, comparing what he had said with what he was.

  Captain Prentice repeated, ‘The North Atlantic weather—’ And again he paused. His mouth tightened a little. He seemed at a loss for the right word, like a leading man who has forgotten his lines.

  Patsy became aware of the brooding severity of his glance. The whole class seemed to be waiting with bated breath.

  ‘Is,’ she said, without thinking, ‘harsh, unpredictable, and at times of immeasurable force.’

  A delighted titter from the class made Patsy immediately and uncomfortably aware of the apparent impertinence of her remark.

  But it was all right after all. Everyone seemed to think it was a huge joke. Not least, Captain Prentice.

  ‘Thank you, Miss—’ He paused, and Patsy thought to herself, this is where he consults the little piece of cardboard pinned to the instructors’ table, where the girls could be identified from the desks where they sat. But his eyes never left her face—Aylmer,’ he said. ‘But I hadn’t forgotten what the North Atlantic weather is like. I was trying to produce a few words’—and again he paused, just long enough for Patsy to realize that when he added ‘suitable enough’ it was a kindly way of saying ‘simple enough’—‘for you to understand the origin of the Low Pressure Systems which make all this careful flight planning on the North Atlantic so necessary. All the same, it’s good to know you remember my lecture so well.’

  He stopped to smile at Patsy. And Patsy, reassured, gave him a warm smile back.

  ‘Even if it’s only,’ Captain Prentice added contemptuously, ‘parrot-fashion.’

  In that first week or so, Patsy seemed to belong to World-Span twenty-four hours a day. But the nearest she and Cynthia got to an actual trip in an aircraft was the late afternoon when Janet Morley walked into Mrs. Waterhouse’s front parlour, wearing her uniform as unconsciously as if it had been just an ordinary tweed suit, and without seeming to notice their looks of humble envy said, ‘Hello! You’re the two new ones, aren’t you?’

  There had been some speculation about Janet Morley while she had been on leave. For while Mrs. Waterhouse had nothing but praise for her, the landlady’s voice was also tinged with regret that her stay had been such a long one. ‘Over three years she’s been with me ... flying all the time. You wouldn’t credit it, would you?’

  Now, looking at her for the first time, Patsy saw a quiet girl of medium height, with light brown hair very neatly arranged. Out loud, she said, ‘Yes, we’re the new ones. Cynthia Waring and Patsy Aylmer ... that’s me. And you must be Miss Morley.’

  ‘Well, Janet,’ she corrected her gently, giving them the first of her rare and very sweet smiles. ‘Now,’—she drew off one of her leather gloves and pulled out the fingers carefully—‘is that tea still hot?’ She glanced at Mrs. Waterhouse’s best flowered teapot, and then pulled out a chair as Patsy reached for the kettle in the hearth and topped it up. ‘Tell me all about yourselves.’

  ‘We’re not very interesting,’ Cynthia said, briefly repeating their ages and where they came from. ‘But’—she turned her bright eyes theatrically to the ceiling—‘we’re simply dying to hear about you ... and flying.’

  ‘Mainly the flying,’ Janet sa
id drily. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you know my name, and I’m twenty-five and I come from Yorkshire and I’ve been flying for three and a half years.’

  ‘Tell us about it,’ Cynthia persisted. ‘There must be all sorts of tips you could give us ... wrinkles and all that.’

  Janet eyed her coolly over the rim of her teacup. ‘That’s easily done,’ she said drily. ‘It’s work, work and then more work.’ She gave a quick smile. ‘As for wrinkles,’ she added, ‘they’ll come soon enough.’

  Cynthia raised her eyebrows in extreme pain. ‘But when you get there,’ she persisted hopefully. ‘New York now ... that’s exciting, isn’t it?’

  Janet nodded. ‘And the first thing you’ll want to see ...’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Cynthia said, settling herself down in her chair for a travel talk, ‘do go on!’

  ‘... will be your own little bed.’

  Cynthia pulled a long face. ‘Oh, but seriously...’ she said, aggrieved.

  ‘I was never more so.’ Janet looked at her wrist watch, and then got up and walked to Mrs. Waterhouse’s bay window to see if there was any sign of the crew transport.

  Then she glanced into the large mirror that hung above the Victorian fireplace, as if, quite unjustly, she was suspicious that her cap was not in dead centre.

  ‘I suppose,’ Cynthia said, glancing at the smart uniform, immaculately pressed, at Janet’s sensible shoes and starched white blouse, and then nodding her head towards the coveted cap, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t let us try it on?’

  ‘You suppose right,’ Janet agreed briskly, and picked up her shoulder bag. ‘Ah, here it comes!’ Then she added. ‘Hint number one ... never keep the crew car waiting.’

  ‘Give our love to New York,’ Cynthia said pertly. ‘To the little bed,’ and suddenly and surprisingly they all laughed companionably.

  ‘D’you know something ...’ Patsy began, as the two girls pressed their noses against the window behind the shelter of the long lace curtain.