The Atlantic Sky (2 page)

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, soign
é
e, 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
t
he 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—’
P
atsy 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 wa
rn
ingly 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.

‘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
sl
ightly 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.’