Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (54 page)

“I have a date.”

“Tomorrow night, then.”

“It’s just a short layover. Thanks all the same.”

They were only half an hour out when a woman passenger began nagging about when was dinner. “Kell, I just can’t cope,” Mimi Draycott complained. “Every time I pass her she nearly tears my arm off asking me again.”

There was also the unaccompanied minor, Richard Comstock, who refused to stay put. He kept wandering back to the galley, brandishing a swizzle stick he’d picked up from the liquor cart. “You’re kind of cute, but get the hell back where you belong,” Wendy said, pushing him aside.

“Cute? I detest that word,” he said, making a face.

“T.S. I’d like to meet you in about ten years.”

“You’ll be old then.”

“You little fink! Get back to your cabin,
baby.
”

He kept trudging back, though, hanging around Kelly, who he figured from the very first was the boss. He spotted her purser’s badge. Kelly pigeonholed him without effort: ten years old but the product of a sophisticated environment, top drawer, would prep at Hotchkiss, would go to Haverford or Middlebury or Princeton or Williams, would spend a year or two in Paris, would marry a distant cousin of Jackie Jennedy’s, would clip coupons until his death at eighty-five.

Oh, listen, I’ve seen this kind so often, she said to herself, and to him, “Honey, in about an hour,” when he asked, “When do we eat?”

He ran a hand through thick, sunburned blond hair.

His eyes were an ineffable blue. “I’m starved, doesn’t that matter?”

“It won’t be long.”

“Gee.”

He jingled some change in his pocket. “Do you have your hair frosted?”

“No, it’s naturally this way,” she said, giving him a push. Not that she was a crab, far from it, but from takeoff time until landing, there would be no more than a scant hours’ rest for her. It was no sinecure. It was a damned hard job.

“Mummy has hers frosted,” he volunteered. “You sit there and they put Reynolds wrap around it. It drips. Mummy says it’s unbelievably tiresome but it looks nice when it’s finished. It takes hours and hours.”

“I can think of nothing more fascinating than your mother’s hair job, Richard.”

“Very funny,” he said.

And still he didn’t go away. She drew a deep breath and smiled. “How old are you, dear?”

“Ten. Don’t pretend you don’t know that. I’m a special passenger. They told you how old I was, didn’t they?”

“All right, so they did.”

“Then why did you ask?” He eyed her. “You’re the chief stewardess. Do you make much money?”

“Quite a bit. Will you marry me for my money?”

“I’m betrothed to my cousin Gisela. That was done when we were born. She’s Roman. I’m half Italian too. My mother is from an ancient family. It’s an excellent lineage.”

“Really?”

“We’re in the Almanac de Gotha, of course.”

“Congratulations.”

“Is that an unkind remark?” His eyes narrowed.

“No. Why should you think it was?”

“Because people are envious of others’ patrimony,” he stated. “I know that for a fact.”

Well, Stephen Snob, Kelly thought, but then he turned on the charm again. “You’re really awfully pretty,” he said. “You have lovely eyes and nice high cheekbones.”

“That makes my day,” she said, rumpling his hair. “You run along now, sweetie. I have some cooking to do.”

“You mean you actually cook? On a stove? I thought — ”

“See you later,” she said, and turned her back on him. I’ve put in too much time all in a bunch, she told herself. She was running on her reserves now. The night stretched ahead, endless, it seemed. She would have to watch herself, not to snap at the girls, who — even the ones she knew — tended to resist the authority of the one in charge.

But you must remember, she reminded herself, that when this flight is over, you have twelve whole days vacation. Almost two weeks before going on the job again.

It was a sustaining thought.

• • •

It was in that brief lull after the hot meal was over and the galley cleaned up that Kelly had a chance to palaver with the pet passenger on the flight. The girls had been falling all over him, sneaking him doubles in drinks and wondering if he was a gun-runner. He was in first class and he did look secretive and poker-faced. A little bit like the late Mike Todd, one of Elizabeth Taylor’s erstwhile husbands. He had that kind of slightly tough good looks; the resemblance, though, was mostly in the smoky black hair, eyes and eyebrows. Kelly saw at once why the others found him attractive. He had a kind of leashed animal magnetism.

She ran into him while he was sitting in the lounge, smoking a long and expensive-smelling cigar, and he told her she looked a little beat. She sat down with him, something she rarely did. During the long hours of a flight — particularly a night flight — odd and sundry passengers did their best to claim your exclusive attention, at which times they confided things they wouldn’t have dreamed of telling their best friend. This man was intriguing, however, and had made no attempt to soft-talk any of the stewardesses into a date. Not that they had given up hoping.

“Well, I’m a little tired,” she admitted.

“Been doing this long?”

“Four years.”

“At your age, four years probably seems like a long time.”

She put him down as thirty-five, more or less. “I’m not that young,” she said.

He didn’t say, “You look like a kid, I bet you’re not more than twenty,” which was the standard gambit with men on the make. She was almost twenty-seven and some days she looked it. Most of the time not, but there were always those discouraging times when you hadn’t had enough sleep and then you remembered you weren’t as young as you used to be and you still hadn’t found what you were looking for.

As a matter of fact he didn’t say anything more for a while. He set his half-smoked cigar in an ashtray and the smoke drifted lazily upwards. He stretched and crossed his legs. He was a little on the stocky side, and when he had boarded she had seen that he was only an inch or two taller than herself. She was five foot eight. Just as long as he’s not shorter, she reflected, surprising herself.

Would she like to go out with him, then? But he was faintly elusive. He looked different, somehow. The girls were right. There was something about him that set him apart from the ordinary businessman. He looked like a loner; if not a gun-runner, as the girls had been wildly conjecturing, a speculator of some kind. Like a man who took chances. He had that strong, rather hard face. But he also had a sensitive mouth. She found herself looking at his mouth.

There had been a rather long silence, but oddly enough a companionable silence. It was restful to sit here with this quiet man and for the first time in her life she found the smell of a cigar agreeable. He picked it up again, drew on it and then, as the smoke wove around her head, he put it back in the ashtray again. He sighed and leaned back.

“It’ll be a long night,” he said.

“Can’t you sleep?”

“You know how it is. You wait until everyone puts the overhead light out and you start to doze off. Then some insomniac gets tired of tossing and turning so he puts his light on again. Then someone else does. And there are these little pinpoints of light all over. So you decide not to even think about sleep and you make it up when you get to your destination.”

He went back to his cigar. “I see our high-toned young passenger has found friends,” he remarked, glancing down the aisle.

Kelly followed his look. Young Richard Comstock had indeed found friends; he had been adopted not long out of Kennedy by a middle-aged Spanish couple. Senor and Senora Nascimento, occupying seats in the second row, had taken him under their wing; obviously the boy had also taken a fancy to them. Particularly to the Senora, and at the moment he was sitting patiently with his arms extended as she wound some soft rose-colored wool around his wrists.

“I couldn’t be more pleased,” she said. “A boy that age all alone can be a first-class headache.” She was watching the trio up front. The man was reading something and the woman was winding the wool. Occasionally she would interrupt herself to adjust the long, double string of pearls she wore round her neck. They were the only bright spot in her outfit of austere black. They were good pearls, the best. If it hadn’t been for the pearls, and the fact that the Nascimentos were traveling first class, it would have been easy to mistake them for indigent, faded aristocrats without a penny.

They were fine-looking people; both had gaunt, attenuated faces, like El Grecos. They seemed the very essence of old Spain, with their proud noses and hooded eyes.

“I’m Steve Connaught,” Kelly’s companion said to her. “I should have said that before.”

“I’m Kelly Jones.”

He held out a hand. The skin of it was dark, almost swarthy, like the skin of his face. There were short black hairs at the wrist. Taking it, a kind of electric shock ran through her, and she knew instantly that if this man were to ask her out she’d say yes. Without thinking further about it. It was something she didn’t do all that often, but this time she would.

He didn’t ask her, though. They chatted for a while longer and then, because she so wished he’d tap her for a date, her pride got her up off the bench. She was afraid he’d see it in her eyes. She walked down the aisle and talked to the Nascimentos.

“Everything all right?”

“Pair … fect,” the Senora said, looking up with a pleased smile. “Thees pretty boy helps me, see that, Senorita? So quiet, such a nice boy.”

“You’re being very good to him.”

“Is a pleasure.”

“
Je suis tres bien eleve
,” Richard retorted, obviously stung at the inference that he was on sufferance with the Spanish couple.

“See, he speaks French pair … fectly,” Senor Nascimento looked up from his book and beamed. He had the wispy, croupy voice of someone much older. Asthma, perhaps. “He speaks a little Spanish, too. A very good pupil.”

“They’re trying to teach me,” Richard explained. “It’s a
little
bit like French.” He cleared his throat.
“El abogada les explica las difficultados …”

The Senor and his wife laughed heartily.
“Ah, querido,”
the woman said, fondly.

“Thank you very much for being so kind,” Kelly said, and made her way back. There was an occasional request on the way. “You have Fresca, I hope?” a woman asked, and then one or two passengers asked for coffee. Steve Connaught was still sitting cross-legged in the lounge, though he’d finished with his cigar. “Do you want anything?” she asked him.

He leaned his head back. “No. Thanks. Not a thing.”

“Well, all right. But if there’s … just ask, if you feel like coffee, or Sanka …”

“You’re sweet. Thanks, but I don’t need a thing.”

Kelly had the feeling that his eyes followed her as she went into economy cabin; at any rate her back seemed to tingle, right between the shoulder blades, as she pulled the louver and went through. You’re too tired for a date anyway, she told herself, and decided that if Steve Connaught asked any of the girls for a date it would be Wendy Warren. All the girls were nice-looking, but Wendy was the beauty.

So what do I care? she thought.

The Westport tipplers were well on their way to besottedness, the movie was almost over, a few passengers had pillows tucked behind their heads and their overhead lights off, the other stewardesses had just about finished their dinners. The line to the lavatories made working in the galley difficult. When it had thinned out a bit and the head sets were collected and accounted for; when the Little Blue Ball was nearly dark as passengers huddled with coats thrown over them, then there was an opportunity for Kelly to think about her own meal. She ate it rapidly. It tasted like straw and lodged firmly in the center of her gut.

“I want two of you to get some sleep,” she said, and assigned Doris and Margot to stay with it while two others slid unobtrusively into back seats. Wendy was assigned up front in first class cabin.

You’re a masochist, she told herself. Throwing that beautiful girl at that attractive man’s head. You didn’t have to do that, did you? So all right, they’ll see Madrid together. Due to you, you damned idiot. But if that was all a man wanted … a face and body …

Abruptly, she opened a lavatory door and went in. She washed her hands briskly and then turned to face herself in the mirror. The light was pinkish, designed to be flattering to women, and it was. She looked at herself for a long time. Why did she put herself down? The face that looked back at her was heart-shaped and, as Richard had said, was high in the cheekbones. Her eye span was wide. Her hair was cut short, perhaps too short, and it had cost her plenty at Vidal Sassoon’s. There was nothing wrong with her looks.

It was just that every girl wanted to look like Jean Shrimpton, or Wendy Warren. To be ravishing, to make every other girl look sick. And yet, regarding herself gravely, she had a surge of confidence. You sensed things, and Steve Connaught, who had been assiduously wooed by every stewardess in the plane, had sat quietly and companionably with her, only
her
… and she had felt his admiration.

Okay, she thought, and went outside again.

Her trained eyes canvassed the cabin. Everything was quiet, but she knew the babies would start whimpering soon. They were four hours out, with three to go.

She got out her log book, and the night wore on.

She managed to get in almost forty-five minutes rest. Dozing but not able to blank out, she planned ahead. The cockpit crew on this trip was considerate, but that was due to the Captain, Norman. I hope there isn’t a sizeable shortage in my liquor count, she thought restlessly, and again was grateful for the flight crew up front. Some of the newer men, the brash kids who were making it difficult for all of them, frankly confiscated bottles when she wasn’t looking. Passengers did their share of stealing too, mostly the small liqueur bottles. They wanted them for souvenirs. There was always someone who cleaned out the soap in the lavatories.

She fingered her small purser’s badge, fought to empty her mind, and closed her eyes. A man’s face floated in the darkness behind her shut lids. His name was Steve Connaught … with a V or a PH? she wondered, and didn’t mind not really sleeping. He had a nice face to think of … and his voice was deep and sexy and rumbling …