The Atlantic Sky

by Betty Beaty

  ‘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.’

  Which was exactly what Patsy did. The next two trips went like sunlit, starlit, neon-lit flashes. She did her first ever trip on her own with Captain Laycock. And, exactly as Cynthia had said, he was helpful, and wonderfully easy to fly with. Patsy found herself doing better than her best. Because she wasn’t being watched, and because she wasn’t nervous, her hands were deft and her feet seemed tireless.

  And the next trip—once more to Montreal—she enjoyed, too, although they had head winds all the way westbound.

  ‘Another good trip,’ she told Cynthia, when the other girl arrived in from New York, a day later. ‘And don’t you think somehow, it seems to be getting easier?’

  Cynthia yawned. ‘I’ve got news for you—’ she began, and looked at her friend sideways.

  ‘No,’ Patsy sighed. ‘Don’t tell me!’ That expression of Cynthia’s was only used on the airline for the most unpleasant news.

  ‘You can guess.’ Cynthia kicked off her shoes and massaged her feet. ‘They feel as though I’d walked. There and back.’

  ‘One of us is out with Prentice,’ Patsy said hopefully.

  ‘Dead right!’ Cynthia rubbed her heels and then grinned. ‘And it’s not me.’

  ‘My next trip?’

  Cynthia nodded. ‘I spared a moment to pop in to Ops, and there was old Jennings just pinning up the roster.’ She flung herself into one of Mrs. Waterhouse’s best chairs and closed her eyes. ‘I’m beginning,’ she said wearily, ‘to see what Janet means about flying.’

  ‘I’ll make you a cuppa,’ Patsy said. ‘You’re sure you didn’t make a mistake?’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘What about?’ Cynthia still lay with her eyes closed. ‘About you being out with Prentice?’ She shook her head veheme
ntly. ‘Sorry, old thing. You know my 6/5 eyesight and all that. Not a hope.’

  Patsy made the tea and poured it thoughtfully. Cynthia took one of the cups, and began to drink thirstily. ‘Ah, that’s better. Cheer up, child! He can’t actually eat you. Sometimes, I admit, he looks as though he’d like to. You especially, Patsy ... just to be cheerful. But he doesn’t really scare me.’ She laughed airily.

  Patsy stared at her meaningly across the rim of her cup. ‘Well,’ Cynthia said, ‘he doesn’t petrify me...’

  Patsy still stared.

  ‘Well, not absolutely and completely and utterly petrify...’ Cynthia smiled apologetically. She looked again at Patsy. ‘All right, he has me trembling in my size fours from the moment I set eyes on him. Is that better?’

  ‘Much,’ said Patsy, and smiled.

  ‘But what can we do about it? Absolutely nothing. He may,’ she said unconvincingly, ‘have a heart of gold. No? Silver, then? No, I thought not. Not even lead?’

  ‘Stone,’ Patsy said. ‘Flint.’

  Cynthia started to get up and stretched. ‘It’s me for bed now. You’ll probably find that it isn’t so bad after all. Oh, and by the way, I nearly forgot. I saw Geoff and he’s got some free seats for the ice show. You know how some of the firms send in their tickets for adverts and all that. Well, he drew four ... and wasn’t he a poppet—he suggested he took the three of us, if Janet’s back by Thursday.’

  ‘Sounds all right,’ Patsy said. ‘If she’ll go.’

  ‘Which she won’t. But nice of him to offer.’

  ‘There may be a last-minute change, of course,’ said Patsy.

  Cynthia raised her thin eyebrows. ‘Are you with us, my dear? Change the ice show? No, don’t tell me. Change the roster.’ She took Patsy’s arm firmly. ‘Bed for you, child. And me, too. Anyway,’ she ended heartily, ‘he’s probably heaps nicer than we think he is.’

  They went silently up the stairs. At the first landing, Cynthia said, ‘And we’ll enjoy the ice show ... and you’ve got three more days stand-off first.’

  But the ice show, which was colourful and spectacular and to which Janet did (very surprisingly) go, came and went. And the three days’ stand-off was two and then one and then none, before Patsy had time to do more than write letters and telephone her mother and wash and iron and worry about the trip.

  She began to notice all the small things about her pre-flight preparations to see if they gave her an omen of what kind of luck she would have on the trip. Mrs. Waterhouse was late with her breakfast, which was a bad sign, and her hair which she had washed the night before was too soft to lie neatly under her cap. But the day was bright. Sunshine slanted along the grey London pavements. And the crew car, which came quickly along the road and pulled itself up with a flourish in front of Mrs. Waterhouse’s gate was, like herself, dead on time.

  Mrs. Waterhouse, of course, never missed the opportunity to come to the door and wave her off.

  ‘Have a good trip,’ she said to Patsy in a conspiratorial whisper, eyeing the five male occupants of the nice modern vehicle which allowed you as good a view as if they’d been arranged in a shop window.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Patsy called over her shoulder.

  ‘Cheerio,’ Mrs. Waterhouse called, rather less surely, having met Captain Prentice’s unsmiling eyes.

  Then he turned and acknowledged Patsy’s ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ with a slight nod and a brief ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Nice day,’ the radio officer said, moving up a little at the back to make room for Patsy. ‘First on your own?’ he asked, and smiled at her nicely.

  ‘Third!’ Patsy said so indignantly that they all smiled. Except Captain Prentice, of course. In his seat by the driver, his back was towards them, and it expressed nothing at all except the strictest airline rectitude.

  The conversation continued in vague companionable snatches. They talked about their stand-off and what they’d done or hadn’t been able to do because it wasn’t long enough. Someone else had been to the ice show and the navigator had seen Patsy with Geoff in the coffee bar afterwards. It made the journey up to the airport pass quickly. The easy friendliness warmed the atmosphere up a little, despite the chill of Captain Prentice’s calm disapproval.

  ‘Here we go again,’ the navigator said, picking up his brief-case, as the crew car stopped outside the Operations block.

  Patsy heard Captain Prentice tell the engineer to go straight to the aircraft, while the navigator and the First Officer obediently followed him into Operations. Then she walked down the pavement and across the apron, towards the Catering Section. She was beginning to get the feel of her job. Just as her uniform and her cap and her shoes had moulded themselves to her, so now, she and the job had to know each other and somehow fitted in.

  There were eighty-two passengers on the manifest. There was no note to say that Sir Somebody-or-other would be travelling on her service and commending him to her special care. The menu was only very slightly different from her previous trips. There was pineapple juice instead of soup, and fruit salad instead of strawberries.

  But all the same, the job was not well enough known to her to have become stale or just routine. It was still quite exciting to check your stores and equipment like a well-trained mother of the eighty-two passengers, and the five crew that she had to feed and care for. It was still thrilling to see under Aircraft G-AHAK at the top of the sheet, the sum total of their little world summarized in the words that called up sailing ships and storms and stress—ninety-three Souls on Board.

  But for fifteen minutes after she mounted the passenger steps, she was the only soul on board, inside the empty cabin of the Astroliner. She filled up the galley refrigerator, checked the water supply and that the taps were working. Then she set up her bar and her equipment, saw that the cleaners had done a good job on the cabin interior, laid out lovingly the exotic creams and powders and lotions in the Ladies’ Powder Room. The cellular blankets and the small pillow for each passenger she folded and stowed neatly on the baggage rack, checking at the same time that the company folders, complete with a map of the North Atlantic adorned with dolphins and sea-monsters, a picture postcard of the Astroliner they were flying in, a coloured pencil and a comment card, were right in front of everyone’s nose, and seeing that the little waxed bags in case of sickness were handy (but not obtrusively so) while the lap straps were easily and neatly placed on every seat.

  ‘And that’s that,’ she said to herself, because there was still no one else around. She counted off her jobs on the fingers of both hands, and there didn’t seem to be one left unaccounted for.

  And then suddenly, the First Officer opened the flight deck door and came through the deserted cabin towards her. ‘All set?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ Patsy said. ‘Just waiting for the passengers.’ The First Officer, she noticed, had a kind and gentle face. The sort of person who would not get in Captain Prentice’s way. ‘Is it a good forecast?’

  ‘Fair to middling poor,’ he smiled. ‘Could be better. Could be a good deal worse.’

  Patsy nodded and smiled. She was not unduly daunted. Already she had discovered that pilots were like farmers. In their lifelong battle with the weather, they never handed their adversary a compliment.

  The First Officer glanced out of the window. ‘They’re coming now, I think. Your passengers. Yes, here they are. I can see Miss Fairways. Do you know her?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Patsy leant out of the open doorway, and smiled down.at the vanguard of her protégés for the flight. ‘At least, only by sight. I saw her the last time I was out with Captain Maynard and Captain Prentice.’

  ‘Quite a coincidence!’ the First Officer said, and laughed. But Patsy was only half listening. She was looking down at Miss Monica Fairways, and really seeing her for the first time.

  ‘Hello,’ Miss Fairways said from the bottom of the metal steps to Patsy at the top. Patsy murmured back at her. Now she could see why even Captain Prentice fell in
love with her. The enormous dark eyes, the pink-and-white petal skin, the really jet-black hair would be enough. But for good measure, there was the tall, slender figure, the full red mouth, and the delicately modelled nose.

  ‘I said, have a good trip,’ Miss Fairways called up, and Patsy said, ‘thank you, and went on adding to her mental list die white even teeth and the soft husky voice.

  But before she had entirely completed her catalogue of Miss Fairways’ many and beautiful attributes, she noticed that the Traffic girl had not done a smart right-about-tum after leaving her passengers and proceeded straight back to the Section. No—she had hurried, quite gracefully but still very quickly, under the port wing, and as the first passenger said his name was O’Rourke and Patsy said that seat twenty-one was the last but three on the starboard side, she was deep in what appeared to be a pleasant conversation with Captain Prentice.

  ‘Good evening, sir. Yes, just on the right. Shall I take your coat?’ She went on saying, ‘Good evening, madam. Yes, it’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?’ And yet all the time she was wondering with half her mind if they were still talking and if so—about what?

  And then the last passenger was coming up the steps. Or rather the last but one. For Mrs. Branston (it must be, because she was the only one left unmarked on her list) was followed slowly by Timothy John. Patsy had heard, with a fair degree of disbelief, the other, older stewardesses boast that they could always tell the passengers who would be difficult. But now—a sign of maturity no doubt—she could feel the stirring of that very same instinct in her bones.

  Not that it would have needed a psychologist to tell, because it was fairly obvious. Timothy John did not want to come aboard.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs. Branston,’ Patsy said welcomingly, and as Timothy John was still trying to anchor his mother to the last step of terra-firma, she said with a crisp elder-sisterly wisdom to her very last passenger, ‘I have some sweets ... a lot of sweets inside.’

  And half an hour later, Timothy John was firmly established aboard Astroliner Able King as the perfect antidote to Captain Prentice. Patsy had reported up front, had taken round the magazines, the cigarettes, the sweets. She had watched a seemingly effortless take-off without technically appreciating anything more than the sweet swift sensation of rising up smoothly into the clear evening sky. She had taken a load of tea and ham sandwiches up front, and been undeterred by the brusque ungrateful nod of her captain. For every time she walked down the aisle, she saw the small tautly frightened figure, bolt upright in the seat beside his mother, of the Boy Who Didn’t Like Flying.