The Atlantic Sky (3 page)

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-fashi
o
n.’

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 said 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.

‘That uniform is really quite fetching,’ Cynthia said, standing on the tips of her size four shoes so that her 6/5 eyes would be enabled to scrutinize each square inch of the blunt-nosed crew car and the row of faces.

‘No, I wasn’t talking about the uniform,’ Patsy said, ‘Oh, there she goes, let’s wave to her! But about—’

‘Properly worn, that is,’ Cynthia added with some severity.

‘—about Janet,’ Patsy said warmly. ‘I think despite what she’d like us to think, she’s really rather sweet.’

‘You always were charitable, I imagine,’ Cynthia murmured. ‘Of course, you’d need high heels to set off that slim skirt.’

‘And I really think...’ Patsy went on. The crew car still hadn’t moved off, and they kept their eyes glued to it all the time, ‘that we’re all going to fit in very well.’

‘Of course,’ Cynthia said, walking to the mirror and examining her face, first this way and then that, ‘we need slightly different hair-do’s to set off that cap. But Patsy, my child,’—she swirled round dramatically—‘you took the very words out of my mouth.’

True to his word, Geoff Pollard had phoned, and then, the day after Janet left on service, had followed it up with a call.

Just, as he told Patsy when she opened the door to him, so that the Company could be satisfied that they were both nicely settled.

‘And we are,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t be more comfortable. Come in and see!’

Geoff took off his blue uniform cap and hung it on the large antlered hat-stand in the hal
l.
‘Quite a big-game hunter, your landlady,’ he said, exchanging stares with a fish in a glass case, and at that moment, from her back ‘snuggery,’ came Mrs. Waterhouse in person. ‘I thought I heard the door ... oh, you’re there, dear!’ she said to Patsy, but her eyes were on Geoff.

‘Mrs. Waterhouse,’ Patsy said politely, ‘this is Mr. Pollard.’

In that easy way of his, Geoff put out his hand and said, ‘How d’you do?’ while Mrs. Waterhouse murmured that she was delighted.

‘From World-Span Operations,’ Geoff explained. ‘I phone the flying staff for duty and...’

But Mrs. Waterhouse shook her neat grey head to stop him. ‘Mr. Pollard,’ she said with a smile, ‘you have no need to tell me.’ She squared her diminutive shoulders with maternal pride. ‘Though Miss Morley, who’s still with me, was my first World-Span girl, I’ve had many ... a
great
many airgirls staying here.’

‘So,’ Geoff Pollard said, ‘there’s not much you don’t know about running an airline?’

‘Not much?’ There was gentle reproach in Mrs. Waterhouse’s motherly eyes. ‘Not much,’ she repeated, and shook her head. ‘Why, nothing, Mr. Pollard!’

As Patsy told Cynthia later, when the three of them sat over a pot of tea, ‘Geoff and Mrs. Waterhouse got on like a house on fire.’

‘She a dear, isn’t she, Geoff?’ Patsy said. ‘We’ve been awfully lucky to get someone like Mrs. Waterhouse.’

‘I think we have been, too,’ Cynthia agreed. ‘But what keeps revolving in my brilliant brain is—what happened to all the other stewardesses who stayed here?’

‘Perhaps they were posted,’ Patsy said. ‘Or got other jobs.’

Geoff gave them both an enigmatic smile. ‘I’ve a pretty good idea,’ he said. ‘And you two had better be careful! What happened to them might happen to you!’

‘Well, if Janet survived, I reckoned I can too,’ Cynthia declared.

‘Mm ... mm,’ Geoff pursed his lips. ‘Janet Morley looks to me like a very smart girl.’

Patsy asked, ‘D’you know her, Geoff?’

‘Only to phone her for service. And I’ve seen her around.’

‘Wait till you meet her,’ Patsy prophesied. ‘You’ll really like her.’

But when they did meet, some two weeks later, for cold Sunday supper in Mrs. Waterhouse’s dining-room, Patsy was disappointed. It was one of those times when Geoff had taken Mrs. Waterhouse up on her vague invitation to
drop in any time, we always have cold buffet on Sunday evenings.
And Janet was just helping Mrs. Waterhouse to arrange the slices of beef and tomatoes that constituted it.

‘Hello, Patsy,’ she smiled as Patsy came into the diningroom. And then added a much cooler ‘Hello,’ to Geoff behind her.

‘Of course, you two know each other...’ Patsy said by way of introduction.

‘Of course,’ they both echoed simultaneously.

Then Janet went into the kitchen to get the kettle, Mrs. Waterhouse murmured happily that she was sure they could manage all right now, and how nice it was to see Mr. Pollard, but he would excuse her wouldn’t he, and she knew he’d be well looked after. Cynthia breezed in and said, ‘Not beef again?’ and ‘Hello, Geoff,’ in the same breath, and began to hand round the plates.