Up Up and Away

by Nesta Tuomey

  ‘But I was sure we were going to sit together during twaining, Sally. I was weally counting on it.’ A right affected pain. Kay ignored her, determined not to be ousted. They were like two dogs tussling over a tasty bone, she often thought, each determined to get the biggest share.

  Sadie McIntyre, their training officer, had a gamine haircut, beautiful snapping black eyes, and looked elegantly anorexic in the heather tweed uniform. She was short on smiles and strong on discipline, moving everywhere with a lithe swinging stride which brought to mind the army rather than the air force! But oh, how glamorous! ‘Now ladies, like so,’ doing incredible things with her long clever fingers and producing a tulip out of a linen serviette.

  In the group of nineteen were three former ground hostesses. Elsie with a tight bubble haircut like a young Shirley Temple. Penelope and Paula - big, blonde and busty, continually bickering over men, and a mine of information, mostly salacious, about top echelons of Celtic Airways staff.

  The Chief Executive was a pure swine (so they said). Hated anything young, female and pretty. The Hostess Superintendent, like royalty, never seen unless you were in dire trouble. The Chief Hostess, tough as nails, having an affair with womanizing Captain Simon Cooney, nicknamed ‘Cunty Cooney’ for obvious reasons and fatally attracted to new hostesses. God help anyone Maura Kane caught poaching on her preserve.

  It was all said with such relish! ‘The Poison Pens,’ Kay and Sally nicknamed them, though not adverse to listening to their gossip.

  Another spy in the camp was Lucy, sister to one of the check hostesses, and niece to the Hostess Superintendent. Petite with strikingly beautiful indigo blue eyes and regrettably frizzy black hair. She was forever quoting ‘my sister Eva’. Quite obviously she was carrying back tales. How else could Miss McIntyre have found out about the art postcards Sandy Hayes was showing under the desks?

  Art! Porn was nearer the mark.

  The group sexpot, Orla O’Neill (doted on by Lucy), plump and lavishly attractive, always doing madcap things like blowing bubbles around the canteen or hanging her bra out the window to draw the pilots. Aided and abetted by giddy red-headed Sandy, they danced the can- can on top of their desks while another of their clique, kept nix at the door, or left fake spiders on Miss McIntyre’s table when not tying everyone’s coat sleeves together in the cloakroom or letting off stink-bombs.

  All very schoolgirlish behaviour, Kay pointed out.

  ‘Surprisingly juvenile,’ Sally agreed, ‘Especially when you think how most of us were working before joining Celtic.’

  Cecily (met at the airport interview) with her English schoolgirl slang had a ‘pash’ on Sadie whom she considered ‘frightfully okay’. Half the time the girls couldn’t understand what she was saying, her accent was so posh.

  By the end of the first week they had all formed into smaller groups. Cecily hung on to Sally, Kay and Bunny until she and Elsie discovered a similar ambition to become pilots and ever afterwards were to be seen together discussing flaps and ailerons in the same dedicated fashion as Orla and her gang compared eye-shadows and mascara.

  The days flew by. Sitting with Sally and all the others in the shabby prefabs, Kay shared the experience of being moulded in the Celtic image - as Dave Mason described it - by Sadie McIntyre and the external improving influences to which she exposed them.

  One day it was slinky blonde Babette, the airline’s chief beauty adviser, to give them advice on grooming. On another it was the task of Monsieur Albert, a red-haired stylist with a luxuriant moustache of slightly different hue, to share his expertise.

  Moving imperviously amongst them nothing fazed him, not even Orla’s audibly hissed comment, ‘Very AC/DC.’ He recommended conditioning and restyling for everyone (except Sally whose blonde shining cap momentarily reduced him to reverent silence), all to be carried out, it was understood, at his own salon in town at specially reduced rates for Celtic Airways hostesses.

  After beauty care came a trip to the medical centre for the smallpox jab. As they lined up, Dr. Price’s warm brown eyes came to alight appreciatively on Greta Boyd Thompson, another of Orla’s clique, who from sheer force of habit couldn’t stop vamping with her eyelashes.

  ‘Please, please don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded when drawn tenderly forth.

  Lucy stood by watching scornfully, obviously hoping for some new titbit for sister Eva. Twenty jabs later it was all over.

  A week later, it was First Aid and Fire Prevention Drill. Then back again to the classroom for aircraft and emergency procedures.

  ‘Give me the list of pre-take-off checks,’ Sally ordered, her hostess manual open on the desk before her. This hardbacked tome issued at the start of training with instructions to carry it everywhere along with the regulation torch, whistle and spare blouse, was the hostess’s bible.

  ‘Catch me carrying that awful weight,’ complained Orla and immediately dumped it to allow more space when flying for ‘shopping’ or duty-free booze and cigs.

  Snapping her manual shut, Kay took a deep breath and rattled off, ‘Check personal appearance, count pillows and rugs, place fresh hand towels in the toilets, check personal appearance, check seat pockets, replace sick bags, check life-jackets, check fire extinguishers and axe, check life raft ... Oh,... and check personal appearance,’ she threw in again seeing as it was a request made beginning, middle and end of all checks.

  Sally frowned, ‘Wrong order,’

  As she read out the correct sequence, Kay sighed and reached for a cigarette. Whether or not you tidied the seat pockets before you checked the fire extinguishers or vice versa didn’t seem to matter all that much. The only instruction which made sense to her was to check personal appearance after checking life-jackets by which time, like as not, your beret would be tilted over your eyes and your hair in a mess - not to mention all the goo sticking to your hands and knees if the cleaners hadn’t done their job properly.

  ‘Now ask me the emergency equipment,’ Sally said.

  Kay opened her manual and tried to memorize it herself as Sally correctly gave answers. A million other do’s and don’ts of air hostessing.

  ‘In no circumstances must an air hostess ever run,’ Miss McIntyre grimly warned. ‘What? Not even in an emergency?’ queried Orla.

  ‘Especially never in an emergency.’

  It was supposed to inspire panic or something. Few of them could imagine sauntering happily while the aircraft plummeted, but kept their opinions to themselves.

  ‘What would you do if the captain invited you to join him for coffee on airport turnaround?’ the training officer posed. Crew etiquette in CA was even tighter than at Buckingham Palace. Anyone with four gold bars was a deity.

  ‘Kiss his ass,’ hissed Orla, convulsing her row.

  Already heavily dating one or two second officers, she was working her way - so she said - to the top.

  ‘Or bottom,’ Sandy crudely insisted.

  Kay had yet to see the pilot who had caught her with her stockings down although his face had a tendency to float into her mind whenever she caught sight of a pair of well-shaped shoulders in dark cloth and a profusion of gold bars. Four, she always imagined, which meant he was a senior captain ... but given the utter mindlessness of her predicament at the time she couldn’t be certain.

  TEN

  Two mornings later the subject of Kay’s thoughts, Captain Graham Pender, accepted the perfunctory kiss on the cheek from his wife, Sile, and heard her mumbled ‘Good luck with the test,’ before he went out the kitchen door. As he closed it she was already turning to the fashion section of the morning paper and reaching languidly for the coffee pot.

  In the early years of their marriage, Sile had gone with Graham to the front door to wave him off, but in the last ten or so, he had come to accept her lukewarm observance of her wifely role as much as her total pre-occupation with self. In a way he was rather relieved to be spared any false displays of affection.

  On his way out he glanced in the mirror and qui
ckly removed the lipstick stain from his cheek. Even at eight-thirty in the morning his wife was fully made-up.

  Despite his spouse’s imperfections, Captain Pender was in good humour as he sat behind the wheel of his white Alfa Romeo and drove swiftly to the airport. He was pleased to note the fresh clear day with no wind and plenty of blue in the sky. If he had ordered it especially he could not have got himself better flying conditions for his final Boeing test which after twenty flying hours on the 707 and two satisfactory flight checks behind him, he was due to take this morning.

  As he drove he congratulated himself on getting Fonsie Maguire as training pilot. Graham was aware that training instructors are born not made and Fonsie was undoubtedly first class. It could so easily have been Paul Monahan. He shuddered slightly. Monahan was known for taking a set against pilots and after that, God help ‘em! Nothing they could do was right. All going well today, Graham thought in satisfaction, he would be off turboprops next spring and on jets, flying trans Atlantic routes.

  He put his foot down hard on the accelerator and shot up the straight stretch to the airport, going almost fast enough to get airborne. At the wheel of his sports car, he felt much like he did when roaring down the runway before take-off - exhilarated and completely in control. He flashed past a convoy of three juggernauts bound for Belfast, judging the distance finely and without slackening speed. Then the changing traffic-light forced him to slow or he would have missed her.

  It was the green airline bag which first drew his attention, and as his eyes travelled upwards from the smooth kilted knees to the pouting mouth and dreaming green eyes, he felt a lurch in his chest as he recognised the girl he had seen the month before in Griffith House. She was even lovelier than he remembered that day and he had often thought about her since. Once or twice he had mistaken other girls for her but now that he saw her again, Captain Pender realised that when compared to her, they were pale imitations.

  ‘Kay,’ he said her name softly, experimentally. With a screech of tyres he brought the sports car to a halt a little way beyond the bus stop and waited with a look of pleased anticipation in his dark eyes as she ran to catch up with him.

  Kay stared puzzled in the window, curious to see who it was in the white sports car stopping for her. When she recognised the pilot, she went quite literally weak at the knees. Golly! she thought, he was even better looking than she remembered.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to get in?’ His foot touched the accelerator impatiently.

  ‘Why y-yes.’ All long legs and kitbag, she subsided into the low bucket seat and had barely time to tidy herself when with a responsive roar the car shot forward to race along the airport road, overtaking everything in sight.

  After a brief amused glance at her set face and a rather longer lingering one at her rounded knees, Graham concentrated on his driving.

  ‘Fast enough for you?’ he called at one stage.

  Kay gulped and nodded, the Griffith House incident uppermost in her mind. With terrifying speed, the car bonnet rushed towards the back of the trailer ahead, miraculously zipped round it and gained rapidly on a blue radio cab. To her surprise she was enjoying herself.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, intrigued at a sign on the dashboard. ‘Am I in the ejector seat?’

  Her shyness forgotten, she looked inquiringly at his rather hooked profile. Help! He was beautiful. She couldn’t stop staring at the classically shaped head with the waves of lustrous black hair curling on his tanned neck.

  Graham turned and smiled straight into her eyes. ‘Scared?’

  She looked away, confused. ‘N-no, should I be?’ ‘Not if you behave yourself.’

  ‘I always behave myself,’ she fired back. Damn! Why had she said it like that? ‘Always?’ he murmured, another expression in those dark intelligent eyes, languid, almost caressing.

  Kay gulped. The low roof of the car seemed to press lower and the distance between the bucket seats diminish. She felt unbearably conscious of his strong hands on the steering wheel and his muscular thigh hard and solid in the dark uniform pants, shifting gear. In the suddenly overcharged atmosphere, the musky fragrance of Paco Rabanne dizzily stirred her senses. The car slowed. They were at the administration building.

  Kay snatched up her kitbag. ‘What do you think?’ she retorted provocatively.

  Lord! she was as shameless as Orla. But there was something about him, she blushingly realised, that brought out a side of her she hadn’t known until then she possessed.

  ‘I really couldn’t say,’ he drawled, his dark-lashed eyes locking boldly with hers.

  Hot-faced, Kay stepped back from the kerb, knees weak again. As he drove on, Graham regarded her appreciatively in his rear-view mirror, ‘No,’ he murmured softly to himself, ‘but it’s something I should very much like to find out.’

  Kay was distracted in class that day. Her thoughts kept winging away with her handsome pilot. Where was he now? What was he doing? She couldn’t stop thinking of him.

  ‘Miss Martin!’ Sadie called her to attention. ‘The position of the fire extinguishers, if you please.’

  With a guilty start Kay stammered, ‘O-on the righthand...’ ‘Starboard, please!’

  ‘Starboard side of the p-plane...’ ‘Aircraft, Miss Martin!’

  She had fallen into the trap again. Kay groaned heavily. Even when assisting passengers though a gaping hole in the fuselage, all engines merrily burning, you were supposed to request them leave the aircraft, never the plane. Two blunders in one afternoon. Would she ever stop thinking of this morning’s encounter?

  ‘Probably married,’ Sally had said when she told her and Kay felt a dipping of elation. She hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Sounds gorgeous though,’ Sally enthused. ‘Some people have all the luck,’ making Kay feel a whole lot better.

  At three o’clock Sadie ran out of patience and sent them all over to the clothing stores hut. The place was overrun by pilots. Was he one of them?

  Hastily, Kay slid behind a clothes-rack made nervous by the sight of so much gold braid. Oh, damn! she swore inwardly, furious at the state she was in. He was probably miles away! Still, she was thankful when he looked out again to find them all gone.

  She and Sally spent an enjoyable half-hour slipping in and out of the slim skirts, and boxy jackets. Some of these, despite the skirt sizing, would have comfortably housed a Jayne Mansfield or a Marilyn Monroe. Finally, they realized that the thing to do was to select a skirt and jacket nearest to their approximate measurements and take them for altering to the airline’s tailors.

  ‘And I fancied myself looking just like that,’ Sally ruefully indicated the elegantly uniformed hostess in the CA advert.

  Kay grinned sympathetically. It was how she had seen herself too. She listened to Sally laughingly repeating her remark to the tough little woman manning the counter and was disconcerted by her roars of laughter.

  ‘Her! God help your innocence, child,’ the woman squawked and held her sides. ‘That wan’s a pro. Never saw anyone with legs like hers lasting the pace round here. Be evening me suffering plates of meat are well cooked, I can tell ya,’ cocking a significant glance skywards. ‘What must theirs be like?’

  Another myth exploded. With wry looks, Sally and Kay bundled up their uniforms and complimentary packs of nylons and fled for town. In the street off O’Connell Street they found Duke & Mason, the airline’s tailors, and climbed the bare stairs to the top of the building. In a tiny room overlooking the cinema were two ladies, one very stout and slow, the other nervously cheerful, each busily machining away at opposite sides of a trestle table covered with assorted oddments of clothing all bearing the distinctive airline colour. Sally nicknamed them Sunshine and Shadow. As Sunshine discreetly whipped a tape-measure about hips and bosom, she called their measurements to her companion who with soulful eyes and turned-down lip laboriously wrote them down.

  Back on the street, hurrying with the evening crowds towards the buses, Kay and Sally discuss
ed the two women and shared the view that Shadow was a manic depressive who would one day wreak havoc with her dressmaker’s shears. Giggling, they invented little scenarios in which, one by one, she bumped off the most dislikable members of the hostess group. Lucy was the first to go having been caught twice that week carrying tales.

  Gretta Boyd-Thompson was next. Since Babette had been unwise enough to tell her she had model potential, she had become unbearably conceited, flirting outrageously with any airport male she came into contact with - no matter how ancient or crocked. The fire prevention officer, a nice old buffer with a propensity to mis-pronounce words - his continuous reference to ‘sponaranus gombulsion’ kept them all in titters - asked for a volunteer and Gretta vamped him so relentlessly that he nervously activated the fire extinguisher and blasted the entire wall with white foam.

  Enjoyably the girls worked their way through the group, granting a stay of execution, or sounding the death knell as the fancy took them. By the time they jumped on their respective buses they were giggling so hard tears rolled down their cheeks.

  Kay arrived home to find Dave cosily ensconced by the fire with Molly. It was the first time he had been to the house in weeks. He raised a laconic hand in greeting. How cosy they looked, she thought. Obviously enjoying a good natter.

  ‘Get yourself a cup,’ Molly interrupted herself to say.

  Kay went to sit near the fire wanting to get warm first. If she knew Molly, the pot was sure to be empty and she didn’t feel ready just yet to face the draughty kitchen. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her numbed toes to the blaze.

  ‘How’s life? Dave enquired, thinking she looked very pretty with her cheeks flushed from the cold, her eyes sparkling in the firelight.

  ‘Oh, much as usual.’ ‘Been flying yet?’

  Kay frowned, galled by the fact that up to this she hadn’t set foot in a plane.