The Atlantic Sky Page 6

  They both eyed him warily.

  ‘Out with it!’ Cynthia said. ‘Unless my sharp ears deceive me, he wants to tell us something.’

  ‘Ladies,’ Geoff said, ‘I’m merely saving the company its telephone calls.’

  ‘There,’ said Cynthia, ‘I knew it. This,’ she struck a dramatic attitude on top of Mrs. Waterhouse’s well-scrubbed steps, ‘is an historic occasion. Patsy, my girl, the man is notifying us for service!’

  ‘You’ve both got to pick up your uniforms first. Then get your American visas. You do all that tomorrow. And afterwards ... off you go!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘You’re on Thursday... to Montreal,’ he said to Cynthia, and then more gently, turning to Patsy, ‘Saturday for you ... to New York. But,’ he added as encouragement, ‘you’ve' got a good skipper ... you know, Maynard. And a fairly easy stewardess. You’ll do.’ He gave them both a fatherly smile. ‘Now in you go, and get some rest. And don’t worry!’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On Saturday afternoon, as the crew car turned in through the airport gates, Patsy was conscious that she was seeing everything with an excited clarity that would never be quite the same again. Her uniform had the crisp stiffness of first-class barathea, her blouse (despite its laundering) still had that subtle scent of newness, and her shoes, with their soles clean as they came out of the box, hadn’t a speck of dust on them. Only her cap was slightly disappointing.

  It sat rather stiffly and primly like a stranger, as though it hadn’t quite got to know her head.

  From her seat at the rear, she looked with satisfaction at the two people who would be most responsible for saying whether or not she passed this final hurdle. Captain Maynard, and Miss Joanna Trent. She could only see the back of the Captain’s head, as he sat in his place beside the driver. All the same he’d given her a nice smile when she’d climbed on the crew car, and he’d remembered her name was Aylmer.

  Joanna Trent, too, was nice. All the way to the airport she had chatted away to Patsy as though they had known each other for years. It had been reassuring to hear her voice going on and on about old this or Captain that or about what Mr. what-was-his-name had said in Ops about the flight something-or-other.

  ‘Here we are!’ As the bus stopped outside Operations, Miss Trent stretched her arms above her head and stifled a yawn. ‘Too many late nights,’ she winked at Patsy. And then added with a throaty chuckle, ‘Lucky me!’

  Patsy followed the other girl out of the bus, and fell into step beside her as they walked down the concrete pathway to the Catering Section. Miss Trent was tall and well-proportioned, with dark gold hair, large features and lazy grey-green eyes. She had the look somehow, Patsy decided as she peeped up into her face, of an amiable lioness.

  All the time, Miss Trent kept telling her the way things should be done on the Line. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to seem unduly depressing ...’

  Patsy looked up at her anxiously.

  ‘... but the supervision trip—some people say, including,’ she chuckled softly, ‘Miss Barbara Mayhew, Flight Stewardess, that it’s just as important as the course. I mean,’ she said happily, ‘that you’re just as likely to fail on it. Get me?’

  Patsy said that indeed she did.

  ‘But don’t worry!’ Miss Trent became the third person to utter such consolation, as they reached the door of the Section. ‘I’ll look after you. Just tag on behind me. You can’t come to any harm that way’—she smiled widely and yet warningly—‘and you won’t get in mine. I can’t stand people getting in my way! You know, the helpful variety that you’re tripping over all the time.’

  And with that good advice, Miss Trent swept into the Catering Section, checked off her stores, and chatted with the girl on the other side of the counter, while Patsy stood decorously a few paces behind her.

  They walked to the doorway. ‘The men’ll put the heavy stuff on. The loaders,’ Miss Trent explained when they were outside again, indicating two men not half her size, waiting on the tarmac. ‘We’ll toddle out to the aircraft through the Reception Hall, it’s shorter.’ She set off towards a huge glass door which she pushed briskly open. ‘Now I wonder,’ Miss Trent said, narrowing her eyes and looking round the huge, crowded hall, ‘which our little brood is ... oh, there they are! Well, I never,’ she chuckled. Her whole face was alight with interest. ‘There’s someone getting a move on now. Over in Bay Three. Now what,’ she said, looking at Patsy indulgently, ‘would you give for big brown eyes and black-as-night hair?’ She implied that Patsy would obviously be willing to change her own colour scheme regardless of cost.

  Patsy made a murmur that indicated she didn’t quite know what she would give. She had been sure that in the midst of the melee round the traffic at Bay Three that screened everything but a girl’s small blue hat, she had caught a glimpse of Captain Prentice, and the sight had not been reassuring.

  Miss Trent said, ‘Of course, lots of people have been in love with her. But Captain Prentice is the latest victim.. And,’ she said, nodding her head sagely, ‘ the biggest. Catch, I mean.’

  ‘Who for?’

  Miss Trent shook her gleaming gold head. ‘Monica Fairways,’ she said slowly. ‘You know, you mustn’t get so earnest about the job that you forget personalities. They’re most important,’ she chuckled. ‘What would the grapevine do then, oh, then?’ She glanced down at Patsy. ‘Ah well,’ she said tolerantly, ‘it’s your first day. Can’t expect you to do much except admire the aircraft. Cheer up, though,’ she added as though she’d suddenly thought of something. ‘Even the Captain himself is in the same boat as you. He’s under supervision. And not to harmless little me, either! To Captain Prentice ... did you see him in the hall? Looking all businesslike, as though he was just solving traffic problems. But really and truly ... oh well, come on!’

  Having reached the end of the Passenger Reception Hall, it was as though Miss Trent, with her very first step on to the apron on which stood six patient silver aircraft, was brought back with a jolt from considering the interesting and unpredictable behaviour of human beings to the more mechanical aspects of her job. Into the cabin they went, arranging magazines and folders, and still the torrent of words continued.

  ‘And that being that’—Miss Trent refolded a blanket with an air of finality and eyed the passenger cabin critically—‘I’ll just spruce myself up before the customers appear.’ She walked towards the Ladies’ Powder Room, which was at the tail of the aircraft, near the doorway to the galley. ‘You did remember to put out the fresh tissues, and the paper towels? Ah yes, so you did!’

  Patsy heard her humming as she combed her hair and rearranged her cap. Then the humming suddenly dried up. ‘Why,’ the voice went on, two tones higher, ‘for goodness’ sake! Here come the passengers!—But that’s not all ... if you want to see the most depressing sight in years, come in here! There,’ she said, pointing to the passengers walking in a slow uneven crocodile towards them. ‘Right in front! Monica Fairways. Now,’ she grimaced at Patsy, ‘d’you see what I mean! Isn’t anyone as beautiful as that depressing to us girls?’

  Patsy could see a tall slim girl in a uniform similar to her own, except that it lacked the cherished half-wing. She noticed a pale oval of a face, and watched the graceful, unhurried walk.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Miss Trent said briskly as Patsy murmured that the traffic girl was indeed extremely attractive. ‘That’s that! And now to mind the Company’s business.’

  She gave Patsy a gentle push out into the cabin, and arranged herself at the top of the steps just inside the entrance, with her seating list at the ready. Patsy watched her friendly smile put the passengers at their ease. She seemed to have a knack, too, of remembering names.

  At last, the rear door was closed. A couple of men raced away with the metal steps. Miss Trent walked up and down the aisle checking the straps. Then she stopped up at the front, underneath the glowing seat belt sign.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘Your flight
time to Prestwick will be forty minutes. We shall be flying at eight thousand five hundred feet. Dinner will be served at Prestwick. The bar will be open as soon as we are airborne,’ and she gave them all her wide dazzling smile. ‘Thank you.’ A second or two later, there was a jerk and a splutter as the inner engine on the starboard wing sprang alive. The aircraft rocked slightly, as the power seemed to ripple through her thin frame. Down below on the tarmac, the starter trolleys were pushed away. Two of the ground staff darted under the wings and ran quickly away to avoid the slipstream, dragging the chocks from the wheels behind them.

  ‘We’re off.’ Joanna Trent came up beside Patsy as the aircraft, a little jerkily at first and then quite smoothly, moved forward towards the end of the runway. ‘Say goodbye to London for a few days.’ She picked up her passenger list and scanned it. ‘No children, and no V.I.P.s,’ she said happily. ‘Money for jam.’

  As the aircraft left the ground and started to climb higher in the sky, Patsy had time to watch the last long shafts of sunlight turning the clouds and smoke and mist over London into a blaze of orange and crimson. She saw the golden lights of the Great West Road and the small white pinpricks of the street lamps and the tiny square rectangles of the homes and a few late shops.

  The passenger cabin had settled down to a quiet, companionable warmth like a hotel lounge. A few people sipped sherry, or smoked, or dipped their noses into magazines, or chatted quietly with one another. No one seemed to want coffee or tea or a sandwich or an aspirin, or to do anything except get to Prestwick or Gander or New York or wherever they were bound.

  Patsy hardly saw any of the mysteries going on up front in the blue-green light of the flight deck. Once she followed Miss Trent and her tea-tray, to carry a plate laden with ham sandwiches. But she was no more than a hand appearing out of the semi-darkness. For which she was thankful.

  ‘Have a dekko, will you,’ said Miss Trent, ‘and see who’s disembarking in Bonnie Scotland?’

  Patsy did as she was told and took down the sheaf of papers clipped to the wooden board. Two passengers only were getting off at Prestwick. The rest were routed through to New York. There didn’t seem much else to do at the moment, except to wipe over the work table, and rub the long chromium mixer tap, and walk once more down the aisle and smile at everyone, and hope that someone might ask for something, so long as it was something that you knew about.

  Still no one wanted anything. She smiled at the passengers and they smiled back at her. A few of them buried their noses again in their magazines as though afraid that she might think they were wanting something. So, for everyone’s sake, Patsy just stood in the galley, and hoped that Miss Trent would hurry up and come back and give her something to do. Then she pressed her nose against the galley porthole and gazed outside.

  A bright moon was shining now, and the mountains and the still water of the Lake District were a clear wonderland down below her. She cupped her hands round her eyes to press out the lights behind her while the moonlit wing moved like a silver blade above the majestic scene below.

  When she heard the firm, heavy footfall of Joanna Trent in the galley doorway, she said dreamily, ‘You know, Miss Trent, I think I could stay at this window and watch all this for ever. I’d no idea that flying was like this—’

  ‘Nor I,’ a deep voice said drily. ‘And I’m sure,’ Captain Prentice’s voice went on as Patsy spun round quickly from the porthole, ‘that you could stop and stare at it for ever. Unfortunately, World-Span Aviation would not find it a profitable arrangement. And now,’ he went on, ignoring her flushed, uncomfortable face, ‘Miss Aylmer—’So he did, after all, remember her name—‘there’s something I’ve noticed—’ Patsy’s hand flew up immediately and involuntarily to her obviously culpable cap. ‘—about the difference between pilots’ trips under supervision and those of stewardesses.’

  Perhaps, Patsy thought, more hopeful at the trend of the conversation and lowering her hand to her side again, this is just a friendly little talk at the back to put a new girl at her ease.

  ‘In the former,’ Captain Prentice went on, ‘the supervisory pilot merely sits and watches the other man do the work—’

  At the very word work and the emphasis he gave it, Patsy changed her mind about the pilot’s purpose in speaking to her. Captain Prentice (she had been silly to think otherwise) was still on the job.

  ‘—while in the latter it appears customary for it to be the other way round.’ The tone of his voice went drier than ever. ‘The supervisory stewardess does all the work. And the stewardess under supervision merely sits watching.’

  For a fleeting second, Patsy thought there was an odd quirk of humour about the calm, firm mouth. But no, when she looked again it was set in its usual uncompromising line.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘What for, Miss Aylmer?’

  Patsy hesitated. The man had a knack of twisting her tongue and paralysing her brain, so that the right words never came. ‘For—’ she flushed and floundered. ‘For,’ she said again; and then in a rush of fear and confusion which in the end only sounded like downright rudeness, ‘For admiring the scenery.’

  ‘Far be it from me,’ he said, ‘to interfere with your simple pleasures, but since on the manifest your name appears as a member of the crew, perhaps it would be as well to supply further evidence that we are not, in fact, carrying another passenger.’

  Patsy’s colour deepened at the injustice of it. After all, Miss Trent had indicated that she shouldn’t do anything till she was told—keep out of my way, that’s how she had put it, kindly but firmly implying that one woman in a very small kitchen was quite enough, thank you very much. It crossed her mind that Captain Prentice needed straightening out on these details, but when she opened her mouth, the only words that came mumbling out were, ‘Sorry, sir.’

  But he wasn’t even there to receive the apparent apology. Satisfied, it seemed, with ruining her flight, he had continued on his way up the cabin, and disappeared into the crew compartment.

  For a moment, Patsy stood still. Then she thought to herself, perhaps he’ll be coming back in a moment. Hurriedly, she walked up the aisle. Miss Trent was thrusting open the flight deck door, carrying her laden tray competently and easily. She looked curiously at Patsy. ‘What’s up?’ she whispered under her breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Patsy. ‘I just thought I ought to help you...’

  Miss Trent continued down the aisle, smiling to each side of her, with Patsy trailing a few inches behind her.

  ‘Now,’ Miss Trent said, 'setting the tray down in the galley, ‘what really were you doing? I thought for a moment you’d found a bomb on board! Lucky the passengers didn’t notice.’ She gave Patsy a half kindly, half irritable smile. ‘But don’t get in my way, there’s a good girl!’ She started to wash the plates quickly. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s still a drop of coffee in the urn ... pour yourself a cup. You’ll get your air legs after a while.’ She watched Patsy pour them each a cup of coffee. Then she said, ‘And now go and do up their straps. We’re not all that far off.’

  Patsy found that she would rather have waited on everyone in the aeroplane three times over than have had that dinner at Prestwick. Not that the food wasn’t excellent, and better served than she could hope to do it. But Joanna led the way to a round table, set in the centre of the room, so that their passengers could get a good view of them, and just as Patsy was about to say, ‘Isn’t this rather large for two?’ the radio officer and the engineer walked up, and it became obvious that the whole crew would eat together at this same table.

  ‘Here are the Captains,’ Joanna Trent said as they came up, and then without any trace of self-consciousness, ‘What does it look like? Keflavik?’

  Captain Maynard smiled. ‘No. Direct Gander.’

  ‘Praise be!’ Miss Trent said.

  Captain Maynard sat down in the seat next to Patsy. ‘And how are you getting on, Miss Aylmer?’ he asked.

  Just for a moment,
Captain Prentice opposite them glanced from one to the other. ‘Badly,’ his straight mouth seemed to say. ‘Idle,’ said the black, slightly raised eyebrows. ‘Incompetent,’ said the hazel eyes.

  ‘Oh.’ Patsy looked down at her fish. ‘I’m...’

  ‘... doing not too badly,’ Miss Trent said, reaching for another roll. She eyed Patsy with elder-sisterly appraisal. ‘And I’m not so sure that she’s as shy as she looks.’ She darted an intentionally mischievous smile from Patsy to the crew, at which Patsy, who was on the contrary twice as shy as she looked, felt her, face dissolve into a flood of burning pink.

  Once again, Captain Prentice glanced in their direction. But this time he seemed to look with slightly more approval at Miss Trent. As though, after all, she had rather more intelligence and acumen over appearances than he had, in the past, ever given her credit for.

  For the rest of that dinner-time, Patsy kept quite quiet, gratefully sheltering under the other girl’s bulwark of endless conversation, until mercifully the Tannoy announced their departure, and Miss Trent announced the need to get going.

  Once they were up in the air and away over the Atlantic, there was very little to see in the way of wonders. Nearly everyone wanted to have his seat adjusted into the reclining position. One by one, the passengers’ individual reading lamps were switched off, the tiny curtains drawn across the inkspots of portholes, and this small, self-contained world, carving its way through the thin and icy Atlantic air, went quietly off to sleep.

  All except the blue-lit nose and the white-lit galley. ‘You can take up the next lot of tea and sandwiches,’ Joanna Trent said, loading the tray for the third time since they were airborne, ‘and then we’ll take turn and turn about to have a bit of rest, eh?’

  Patsy nodded. Already she was noticing how tiring even doing very little on an aircraft can be. The altitude, the pressurization, the vibration, or the murmur of the engines (she didn’t know which) made her feel as though she hadn’t slept for a week.