The Atlantic Sky (8 page)

‘You know,’ Captain Maynard, ‘this isn’t fair. It’s
my
party. Pardon me,
yours
and mine. Yet I find the utmost difficulty getting a dance with you.’ He whirled her three or four times round the small cleared space. ‘Having fun, Patsy?’ he said softly. ‘You look wonderfully alive ... and young ... and sweet.’ He waltzed her near one of the long windows. ‘Let’s sit down a minute.’

The long velvet drapes were still undrawn. ‘Isn’t that a sight, Patsy? New York at night. There’s Fifth Avenue. Look at the lights, and the cars! And d’you see that pink glow in the sky? That’s over by Broadway and 42nd Street ... all the cinemas and theatres.’

Patsy pressed her face Against the glass. Down below, in the multi-coloured cascade of street and sign lights, the people and the cars and the buses hurried along as though they had to take even their evening’s pleasure at breakneck speed. ‘Now in England at this time,’ Bill Maynard went on, ‘it’d be as dead as the Dodo.’

‘What
is
the time?’ Patsy said suddenly. ‘I didn’t put on my watch.’

‘Shame on you, Patsy!’ Captain Maynard laughed. ‘So you’re thinking it’s time to break it up ...
our
party.’ He pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on. This is our dance—He held her more closely this time. ‘And if you think it’s late, why, they’re still broadcasting! Hark at that,’ he turned the knob as they passed, and the noise bellowed out. A jolly American voice said this is Nat Somebody-or-other and his boys, broadcasting to you on 260 metres. By courtesy
of...
the jolly voice paused ... P.I.Pep pills. Are you tired, sang a male quintet, jaded, blue, maybe shy and lonesome, too? P.I.Pep pills, they chanted to the tune of a rhumba, P.I.Pep pills see you through.

It was a huge joke. Everyone was saying P.I.Pep pills and clapping their hands to the rhythm of the rhumba while the jolly American voice urged them to put a bit more pep in it. A bit more pep in it ... and Patsy and Bill Maynard and Joanna and someone else did a spirited and inaccurate rhumba. ‘It’s a good thing these walls are pretty soundproof,’ Patsy said as Captain Maynard whirled her around.

‘You never hear a thing ... even of what goes on in the next, suite,’ he assured her. ‘Come on now—one last long whirl...’

But suddenly Patsy was aware that the life had gone out of the party. Even by the window, where they still danced, everything had gone quite cold, as though someone had sliced the vital arteries of joy and laughter.

Then a voice said, ‘Switch that thing off!’ and there was a complete and awful silence.

Joanna and her partner were already frozen as if there were to be a spot prize. Bill Maynard suddenly dropped his arms from, Patsy’s and turned his eyes angrily towards the door.

Patsy was aware of Captain Prentice standing framed in the doorway. Behind him, bobbing up and down behind his shoulder, was a man she took to be the hotel manager. ‘That’s all right,’ Captain Prentice dismissed his partner. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

Quite thankfully, the manager disappeared. With him, given the chance, the rest of the room would have gone, too. Very slowly, Captain Prentice turned, closed the door behind him and advanced two paces. No one stirred.

‘There has been a complaint,’ he said slowly and distinctly. He looked at his watch with great deliberation. ‘A justifiable complaint,’ he said with emphasis. He took a deep breath. ‘And about
my
crew...’

‘My
crew, you mean,’ Patsy thought she heard Bill Maynard murmur under his breath.

‘...I don’t allow complaints.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘It’s half-past two in the morning.’

Patsy’s eyes widened. It simply couldn’t be. Why, the radio...? Then she remembered that she was in America, the land of the Marathon, the land of everlasting entertainment.

‘... other people have to work, and therefore sleep. And may I remind you,’ he looked across at Captain Maynard with an oddly cryptic look, ‘that you are under the discipline of Captain Maynard or myself
on the ground as well as in the air
.’

His gaze slid from the other captain to Patsy, so close beside him. There it remained.

It was still there while he touched on the subject of crew discipline. Of gaining rest to fit one for the return flight, of the consideration (and the emphasis was heavy on this) due to other hotel users, and then on to what appeared to Patsy’s rebellious ears to be the whole onus of the good name of Great Britain.

‘And so’—Captain Prentice wound up his speech—‘and I’m sure Captain Maynard has been telling you the same, just before I came in—’ he gave a thin smile to the others from which Patsy was excluded. ‘
Bed
.’
he said, like the shot out of a gun. And then as he closed the door, more quietly, ‘See they get off straight away, Bill.’

For a moment, it struck Patsy that Captain Prentice had done his best to save the other captain’s face. Then she heard Bill Maynard murmur, ‘Subtle.
Very
subtle.’

But everybody, now that the pep had been well and truly knocked out of the party, was saying good-night and making for their rooms.

‘Good-night, Bill,’ Joanna said cheerily, ‘and thanks a lot. It was a nice party ... till the visitation.’ They exchanged knowing smiles.

‘Good-night,’ said Patsy. ‘It was a lovely party. Sorry,’ she added, seeing his angry face, ‘that we made so much noise.’

But Captain Maynard had turned back into his sitting-room, and Patsy was being shepherded along the corridor by Joanna.

‘Oh, what a storm in a teacup!’ she sighed and chuckled at the same time. ‘Never a dull moment! What a life! I could have gone on till dawn, couldn’t you?’

Patsy said she doubted it, as they stepped in the lift and were whisked through the intervening seventeen floors.

‘Oh, I just wake up now,’ Joanna said, giving visible proof of it by following Patsy into her room, pulling out the dressing-table stool, and lighting a cigarette, and saying, ‘The best part of a party is the inquest afterwards.’

Patsy blinked her eyes doubtfully. ‘I’m awfully tired,’ she said.

‘Or worried,’ Joanna said heartily. ‘Now don’t let that man Prentice get you down. He’s not going to come round and literally see everyone’s tucked up. Though I wouldn’t put it past him sometimes. Bit of a brute, Captain Robert Prentice.’

‘It’s Robert, is it?’ Patsy smiled suddenly. ‘I’d never
thought
of him having one ... a
Christian
name, I mean.’

‘Don’t blame you ... for all the times it’s used, he might just as well not. But,’ she went on maternally, ‘don’t get a thing about him. He’s not all that ferocious. At least, not all the time. And one thing I
know. Two
things, come to that.’ She held up two large, well-manicured fingers. ‘One, he doesn’t like Bill. And two ... something I’ve suspected for a long time ... he keeps himself to himself and doesn’t come to crew parties and all that because of
her.’

‘Her?’ Patsy queried.

‘Mademoiselle Fairways, of course! The traffic queen with the big brown eyes and the blue-black hair ... now three thousand miles over the ocean. You remember.’

Patsy nodded. ‘I remember.’

‘And tonight, he wasn’t really
angry
...’

‘I thought he was,’ Patsy interrupted. ‘I thought he was
furious
.’

‘With whom?’

‘With all of us. With me in particular. When he’s around, I always seem to do the wrong thing.’

Joanna laughed comfortably. ‘You poor little thing, you couldn’t be more wrong!’

‘No?’ Patsy murmured hopefully.

‘ You’re barking up the completely wrong tree.’

Patsy sat down on the edge of her chair and listened almost eagerly.

‘Why,’ Joanna said, ‘he’s not exactly a bosom pal of Bill Maynard, and anyway, he’d have to put on some sort of a show tonight. Crew discipline and all that.’ She made a brief grimace. ‘And I know quite well he’s not head-over-heels about yours truly. But
you,’
she gave a kindly motherly laugh and shook her head.

‘Me?’ Patsy prompted her gently. ‘What does he think about me?’

‘But that’s just it! There’s no need for you to look so glum. You don’t have to worry about Prentice.’ She shook her shining dark gold head. Then she yawned and walked to the door. ‘If it’ll be any comfort to you to know...’

She opened the door and said, ‘Ah, bed! Night-night!’

‘Tell me,’ Patsy said urgently.

‘Tell you?’ Joanna asked through the half-closed door. ‘Tell you what?’

‘You were saying,’ Patsy said, ‘that Captain Prentice wouldn’t—’

‘Oh, that! Well, if it’ll cheer you up at all ... you can take it as the absolute truth ... between you and me, he hardly knows you exist!’

Just before the door clicked shut behind her, Miss Joanna Trent wrinkled up her nose and gave Patsy a comforting smile, like a mother who’s lulled a fretful child into the prospect of sweet dreams. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ she said.

CHAPTER SIX

‘Welcome home!’

Cynthia was leaning over the banisters on the top landing at Mrs. Waterhouse’s, and calling down the well of the stairs to Patsy in the hall. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

Patsy lifted up her tired eyes just in time to see the brown-haired head disappear, and while the high-heeled shoes clicked noisily down the stairs in an effort to catch up with their owner’s voice, she had time to consider the question.

A good trip? Having no other trip to judge it against, she hesitated. Joanna Trent had been pleasant enough. Seeing New York had been fun. The incident at the party still rankled, but if Captain Prentice had been even more distant on the smooth, fast return trip, Bill Maynard had made up for it with an extra special friendliness. He was full of high spirits. The return trip from his angle seemed to have gone very well, culminating in a beautifully smooth landing at London. ‘And the two starboard engines were just ticking over,’ he told Patsy with pardonable pride, as they waited side by side, the last of the crew to go through Customs. ‘After my performance on that flight with you, Captain Prentice seems to think that the more asymmetrical flying practice I have’—the customary disarming grin was there, but under it Patsy could see the bitter resentment—the happier World-Span Aviation will be.’

Cynthia bounded down the last step. ‘A little bird told me you’d be home any minute now. An Operations bird—’

‘By the name of Pollard,’ Patsy smiled.

‘Which same bird said he was sure by the look of you a cuppa wouldn’t be amiss.’

‘When did you get in, Cynthia?’

‘A couple of days ago, on schedule—but look, you haven’t answered my question. Did you?’

‘Did I what?’ Patsy asked, reaching down for her bag again, preparatory to beginning the trek upstairs. ‘Oh, have a good trip—yes,’ she said, suddenly making up her mind. ‘Yes, I did. And by the look of you, so did you.’

‘Oh, a marvellous trip!’ Cynthia bent down. ‘Let go of that bag.
I’m
carrying it up. There’s a tray all set in my room. And the kettle a-bubble on the gas ring. What could be more like home, eh?’ She flung open the door of her room. ‘There you are! Sit down and make yourself comfortable.’

‘Tell me more. Who were you with? Ah, no, don’t tell me.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘If my excellent memory doesn’t deceive me, it was Maynard, eh?’

‘It was,’ said Patsy.

‘Then why so suddenly glum? He’d be easy to fly with,
I
should say. Now what,’ she stood in front of Patsy and rolled her eyes, ‘if you’d had Prentice?’ she pronounced the name in a sepulchral whisper.

‘But I did!’

‘After-trip fatigue,’ Cynthia murmured, turning her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Where,’ she said, frowning tragically, ‘are my first aid notes? Ah, now I remember, treatment is hot sweet tea.’ And then with exasperation, ‘You just said it was Maynard.’

‘Both,’ Patsy explained. ‘Maynard was being supervised, too.’

Cynthia nodded. ‘At last I get you. It’s hard to remember sometimes that those lordly creatures have to do supervision trips themselves.’ She seated herself gracefully on the edge of one of Mrs. Waterhouse’s mahogany chairs. ‘Was it frantic?’

Patsy shook her head and said that it wasn’t. In fact, altogether a very nice trip, although the meal the whole crew had at the airport just before taking off had been eaten in an aura of awful silence.

‘Even with Joanna Trent?’ Cynthia pursed her neat red lips. ‘My supervisor ... Miss Peters, you know, said she was positively the nearest human approach to a Tannoy extant. What do
you
think? Did she gossip? Is she the mother of all grapevines?’

Patsy laughed. ‘Actually, she’s awfully nice and was awfully kind...’

‘Charitable soul!’ Cynthia said with severe disapproval.

‘... and she ...’

‘Takes an interest
,’ Cynthia said. ‘I
knew
you were going to say that. Don’t look surprised. And I only hope you didn’t give her anything to be interested in.’ And then, agog, ‘Did she tell you anything?’

‘Shame on you!’ Patsy said, and smiled. ‘Of all the turnabouts. And anyway, I didn’t listen.’

Cynthia sighed. ‘Not even once?’

‘Well, maybe just the odd time or two. But I’ve got nothing to tell. Oh, one thing. Not gossip really. Apparently everyone knows. But Prentice really
is
human, after all. He’s fallen for a Miss Fairways of Traffic.’

‘No!’ Cynthia gave a long whistle of surprise. And then, ‘Traffic, eh? I must have seen her.’

‘Very black hair and dark brown eyes.’

‘Sounds pretty.’

‘Very
pretty,’ Patsy agreed, feeling a suddenly overwhelming need to be utterly fair and as impartial as a judge over Miss Fairways’ appearance. ‘She brought the passengers out to our aircraft, and she’s—’

But Cynthia cut in with a tart, ‘I must say she’s very welcome to him,’ and then added, ‘Talking about welcomes, Geoff gave me a very nice one when I got back—’

‘He did to me, too.’

‘—and as he was obviously at a loose end, and I knew you wouldn’t mind,’ she gave Patsy a quick sideways look, ‘I suggested he came round for a bite to eat.’

‘Sounds sensible,’ Patsy murmured.

‘Oh, but it wasn’t,’ Cynthia said.
‘Quite
the reverse. Janet was home. Need I say more?’

‘Pity about that,’ said Patsy. ‘They’re both so nice.’

‘Absolute angels. I couldn’t agree more. But dear old Janet could do with a teaspoonful more sugar in her makeup. She just won’t let other people like Geoff see her as we do, all kind and good-hearted and thoughtful. Anyway, Janet spent all that afternoon in Mrs. W.’s kitchen, baking rabbit pie—for that selfsame supper. And then he puts his great foot in it when he comes by asking her if she’d made it specially for him. Altogether a very poor meal. The sparks were literally crackling over my innocent head all evening. While dear Mrs. Waterhouse kept popping in and looking at us so approvingly that I almost
wept.’

They both stared into the fat row of flames in the gas fire.

‘But,’ Cynthia brightened, ‘one thing old Geoff
did
say that was worth hearing ...
our
names. Yours and mine are on the provisional roster for next week. Of course, it still depends on our reports, but if all goes well ... you’re for the city of Montreal, and I’m taking the service to New York.’

‘Taking the service,’ Patsy echoed reverently. ‘Doesn’t it sound wonderful?’

‘Actually, my child, I must admit that, hardened woman of the world though I be, those same words thrill
me.’
She paused. ‘And if you’re good, I’ll tell you something else.’

Patsy assured her that she was.

‘Your trip’ll be a piece of cake. You’re out with Captain Laycock. Yes, the one that’s just had the pleasure of my company. So
you
’
ll
be all right.’

‘And who are you out with, Cynthia?’

‘No one I’ve seen before. A man called Burgess. All right according to Geoff. Vital statistics ... three children, a house in Hampshire, an old car and a nice wife, takes three lumps of sugar in his tea, and has no known flight-deck vices.’

‘Sounds all right,’ Patsy smiled.

‘We’ll keep our fingers crossed, and wait and see,’ Cynthia said cautiously. ‘We still haven’t really and truly been told that we’re through.’

But the next day, when Cynthia declared she must go up to the airport to chase up two white monkey jackets she was short of, and, just in passing, called in at the aircrew rest-room, and (quite casually of course) looked to see if she had any mail, there it was. The letter, signed in Mr. Crosbie’s own ornate hand, which said that Miss Waring had successfully completed her supervision trip, that flight pay would be effective from the end of her course, and that subject to satisfactory service, she would receive a yearly increment from that date.

And the day after that, Patsy, too, found she simply had to go up to Heathrow. This time to see if Staff Admin had heard anything from the tailor’s about the alteration to her second uniform skirt. And she, too, passed by the rest-room. And being a bit earlier than Cynthia she was in time to see the mail actually being delivered into the pigeon-holes, and spent an agonizing ten minutes in. breathing down the neck of the clerk who was with painful slowness posting the letters into their proper holes. Until at last it made an appearance. The identical stencilled twin of Cynthia’s, except with a different name. And yet more precious than the rarest collector’s piece.

‘So you’ve got yours, too,’ Cynthia grinned as Patsy popped her head round the door of the sitting-room. ‘You don’t have to tell me. You look the way I felt yesterday. Come along in.’ She held open the door. ‘I’m just going to press my uniform and then start packing. Stand-by tomorrow. Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘Wait,’ a voice from the kitchen said drily, ‘till you’ve been doing it as long as I have.’

‘Yes, Janet, bless her heart,’ Cynthia said, raising her eyebrows. ‘Just to cheer us on our way.’ She pushed the half-open kitchen door a little wider, and said pertly, ‘Well,
let us.
’

‘Let you what?’ Janet fiddled with the collar of the blouse she was ironing.

‘Let us wait until we
have
done as much flying as you ... before we get so gloomy about it all. In other words,’ she bent over the board and held the collar so that Janet could iron it more easily, ‘spare us our girlish dreams.’

Janet raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘It’s only that I’m wondering when you’re going to wake.’

‘Take no notice,’ Cynthia said to Patsy. ‘She isn’t going to bite. At least, not yet. It’s that brush she had with our mutual friend—’

‘Out of my light,’ Janet said authoritatively.

‘I can’t think what it is about Geoff...’ Cynthia murmured very slowly.

Patsy said, ‘Geoff’s fine.’

‘In his place,’ Cynthia added judiciously.

‘And that’s not here,’ Janet said, reddening. She banged the iron down heavily on the board. ‘And that’s that!’ She folded up her ironing carefully. ‘Now,’ she said; as though softening a little,
‘when
you’ve finished nattering about the flying you’re going to do, there’ll be a cuppa up in my room. A decent cuppa...’ She looked at Cynthia. ‘With a pot warmed
first
... in five minutes flat.’

And in five minutes flat, Cynthia moaned, ‘Mahogany again, Janet! Clear dark red mahogany!’ She sipped it with huge distaste. ‘Bad for the complexion. Bad for your figure. Bad for sleeping. Bad for just about everything. And now, be a lamb and pour me another cup while you’re on your feet. That’s it ... mother us a bit.’

Janet pulled up a stool near the gas fire. ‘So
you
got on all right?’ she said suddenly, looking across at Patsy.

Patsy nodded into her cup. ‘So it seems,’ she said, patting her pocket where the precious letter was kept warm. ‘I had my doubts, but it’s there all right.’

‘Cynthia says you got scared out of your wits with Prentice.’

‘Oh,
come
...’ protested Cynthia indignantly. ‘I only said he simply
petrified
her.’

‘He’s all right,’ Janet went on, ignoring her. ‘If you keep on the right side of him.’

‘But I didn’t,’ Patsy said, and laughed. Captain Prentice seemed comfortably far away from this small room with the hissing gas fire and the kettle gently humming, and the strong brew of tea, sipped companionably as she sat beside Cynthia on the hearthrug. ‘That was the trouble.’

‘Usually,’ Janet said thoughtfully, ‘he’s all right, if
you're
all right.’ She looked across at Patsy with elder-sisterly concern. ‘Were you?’

‘Evidently not.’ Patsy shrugged her shoulders, and gave rather a worried little smile.

‘Don’t you believe it!’ Cynthia stood up. ‘It was the weather. Or what he ate ... or,’ she clasped her thin hand to her head, ‘he’s in love. With the lady in Traffic. Tall, sloe-eyed and beautiful.
No
country maiden, her.’ She patted Patsy’s arm reassuringly. ‘It’s love that does it.’ She walked over to the window, and draped herself gracefully on the rather battered cretonne settee. ‘Perhaps she turned him down,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘Perhaps that’s it.’

Patsy grinned. ‘She wouldn’t dare.’

‘Well,’ Janet was still frowning, ‘let’s hope you fit in better next time.’

‘She doesn’t have to do it again,’ Cynthia said mildly. ‘Wake up, Janet, old girl!’

‘But he’s on the roster.’ Janet counted carefully on her fingers. ‘About four trips from now you’ll probably be out with him again.’

‘I never thought of that!’ Cynthia sat up quickly. ‘I thought he chiefly checked and administered.’ The last three words she mouthed with deep distaste.

‘Puts in the same hours as the other pilots,’ Janet said approvingly.

‘Bless him!’ Cynthia said. ‘He would!’ She got up and dusted a crumb of biscuit off her skirt. ‘D’you know something?’ She put her arm through Patsy’s and walked her towards the door. ‘A little bird has just whispered to me ... let’s at least enjoy the trips in
between
.’