The Atlantic Sky

by Betty Beaty

  Just for a moment, it was exactly like that. His hand still rested on the back of her seat Their two profiles were etched against the starlit porthole. Except that there was silence. A curious companionable silence, that was neither embarrassing nor troubled nor watchful. The sort of silence when, if it hadn’t been on board an aircraft, if it hadn’t been between two people in uniform and on duty, and worst of all between a captain and his stewardess, one hand would have stolen over the other, and the companionship would have been complete.

  Then he suddenly straightened. ‘Bring some sandwiches up with the tea, would you, Miss Aylmer?’ he said quite kindly, and the peace and the dream were shattered together. Stars and silences and quiet companionship and he was only thinking of sandwiches!

  ‘Ham or cheese, sir?’ she asked, but he was already walking away. At least, his feet were. As far as he himself was concerned, they were already millions of miles apart. Yes, she thought, pressing her nose against the porthole for one last look, further than Vega or Altair or whatever their names were. As far as the tiniest pin-head of light which her eyes could see.

  She got up and stretched and walked rather wearily back to the galley, and, mechanically and half-heartedly, began to lay the flight deck tray.

  But after they landed at Dorval airport in Montreal, and after she had caught up with her sleep, life began to look quite different. There was a wonderful sharp tang in the air, the streets were bathed in bright pale winter sunshine, and the sky above the clean-looking buildings was of an unbelievable blue. Looking out of the hotel bedroom window, Patsy began to look forward to the two days up in the Laurentians, and to hope that Mr. and Mrs. Hitchin were serious about the invitation and would, as they had promised, come round and pick her up.

  And things could hardly have worked out better. For at just the right time of half-past ten, when Patsy had had her breakfast and put on her suit and her soft blue sweater and packed her slacks and done her hair, the telephone rang.

  For only the space of two seconds did she hope that the voice would be deep and firm and English. And then it was the next best thing. ‘Hi,’ said Mrs. Hitchin. ‘We’ve parked right outside. Come along down! Or aren’t you ready yet?’

  Patsy said she was absolutely ready and wasn’t it a wonderful morning, and certainly she’d be right down.

  Then better still, as she stepped into the elevator with her small suitcase in her hand and her big off-white chunky-looking coat tossed elegantly around her shoulders, she was aware of a dark head and a massive pair of shoulders towering above the seven or eight tightly-packed occupants of the lift. The alert eyes took in every detail of her, she was sure, before she had time to say, for some reason a little breathlessly, ‘Good morning, Captain Prentice, isn’t it a ...’

  ‘All face front,’ the lift-boy said crossly, and Patsy obediently turned, so that her shoulder was wedged somewhere in the region of the Captain’s very English tweed jacket, and the top of her head was just level with his shoulder.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ Captain Prentice asked very distinctly in her ear, ignoring what had been the beginnings of a remark about the beauty of the morning.

  Patsy nodded her head vigorously.

  ‘Where to?’ He asked it so sharply that their immediate neighbours slid their eyes sideways in their direction.

  ‘To the Laurentians ...’ Patsy murmured, wishing that she could see his face.

  ‘Mezzanine,’ said the lift-boy, but nobody moved.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Street level,’ said the lift-boy, and clanged open the gates.

  ‘In that case—’ Captain Prentice began, as they moved forward on to the foyer floor. He glanced with only passing interest as Mr. and Mrs. Hitchin and nodded at their smiles—‘don’t forget to leave your address with Operations.’

  He began to move away.

  ‘Isn’t that the Captain?’ Mrs. Hitchin asked, coming up and taking Patsy’s hand and saying it was just grand that she was coming.

  Patsy nodded.

  ‘Then maybe he’d like to come along as well. There’s plenty of room, and we like lots of young people around.’

  But Patsy shook her head. ‘No,’ she said decisively. ‘He wouldn’t come if you asked him.’ They both watched the large figure making its way across the crowded foyer. ‘There’s a girl in England ...’ Patsy murmured. ‘He doesn’t go out with the crew at all.’

  Mrs. Hitchin slowly transferred her bright eyes to Patsy ‘Oh, I get you,’ she said. But got it all quite wrong. Instead of saying nice for her, or nice for him, or some such remark that showed it didn’t really concern either of them, she took Patsy’s hands in her own gloved ones and squeezed them hard, and with typical Canadian warm-heartedness said confidently, ‘Oh, never mind! We’ll just have lots of fun, and forget all about that, eh?’

  And certainly it wasn’t the Hitchins’ fault that it didn’t work out that way. For everything was laid on, from snowcapped mountains and quaint ski lodges with brightly painted pine walls to luxury bathrooms with scalding water and unobtrusive but welcome oil-fired central heating.

  And the ski instructor with his enormous black sweater covered with the heads of elks, and shoulders that were only a size smaller than Captain Prentice’s—he made the first steps look like child’s play. But next day, on her hired skis, and with the Hitchins and their friends already swooping away and out of sight, Patsy discovered what a child must really feel like.

  Then after a whole morning of feeling as though she’d got a couple of five-bar gates on her feet, Patsy slowly began to get the hang of it. The slope looked even easier, and it wasn’t difficult if you kept going the same way.

  And then suddenly, coming down almost parallel to her, but far faster than she was going and rapidly converging on her path, was a flying swift-moving figure. It waved her to move to one side, to turn, to stop. There was one moment when she could feel the particles of snow flying against her face. She felt herself knocked sideways with a great rushing flying gust. Something that felt like the tip of a ski seemed to crack down hard on the back of her head, then she was falling ... falling ... falling into layer after' layer of black cotton-wool.

  When she opened her eyes, the sun was shining. But it was shining in horizontal stripes that lay tigerwise across a neat white bed. Patsy blinked her eyes. The polished pine walls of the ski lodge seemed suddenly to have been painted white. The Hitchin’s guest-room bed had turned from a quilted luxury divan to a neat white box with a white-painted iron frame, and a wooden board at the bottom. The window, too, was no longer a large picture one that framed the snowy side of a mountain, but prim and rectangular and equipped with Venetian blinds.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she gasped, putting up her hand to her head and feeling a bandage. ‘No!’

  But as if in that clinical stillness her horrified whisper had been a shout of defiance, the door opened. A smiling nurse popped her head round the door, and before Patsy had time to ask anything, said in her friendly Canadian voice, ‘I’m Benson. What price the bronze medal?’

  Patsy had just had time to pick up enough skiing jargon to know she meant the beginners’ speed-trials prize.

  ‘Am I—?’

  ‘In hospital?’ the nurse said briskly. ‘Sure.’ She picked up the chart at the bottom of the bed, and said, ‘What d’you think I am ... a nightmare?’

  Patsy grinned rather feebly.

  ‘And in case you don’t know how long you’ve been asleep,’ the nurse went on, ‘it’s still Tuesday. Afternoon, not morning. And how are you feeling?’

  Patsy said she was fine. She lay back in the pillows and gazed up at the ceiling while the nurse took her pulse and her temperature. Rather muzzily, she was trying to make lightning calculations.

  ‘Before you ask,’ the nurse said, blinking her shrewd brown eyes, and taking advantage of the thermometer in Patsy’s mouth, ‘a Mrs. Hitchin said she’d telephoned Dorval and that you’re not to worry. She sent in a bunch of flowers and
a box of candy’—the nurse broke off to whip the thermometer out of Patsy’s mouth—‘and if you’re good, you can have a visitor tomorrow.’

  ‘No other message?’

  The nurse shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘They ... er ... didn’t phone from the airport?’

  ‘I guess your friends took care of that. They said they phoned Dorval and everything was fine at that end.’ She smiled very firmly and very reassuringly.

  And I can guess just how fine, Patsy thought, leaning back restlessly on her pillows. The stand-by stewardess called out. The roster moved up one ... and Christmas coming on.

  Christmas! She’d forgotten. She sat up in bed. ‘How long will I be here?’

  ‘Four or five days. Maybe longer, I guess.’

  ‘Four or five days! Then I’ll be here over Christmas?’ She put her hand to her mouth. Now the whole situation became terribly and hopeless confused. Not only the roster, but the whole complicated financial situation began to worry her. ‘What have I got?’ she asked, feeling her head again, and then trying to move the different parts of her body. Hands, arms, neck, ribs all right. But how about further down?

  ‘You’ll live,’ the nurse said with professional vagueness, and then Patsy felt her ankle. A bang on the head and what felt like a badly sprained ankle. She lay back and sighed.

  There was Christmas at home gone and her parents’ disappointment, to say nothing of all the fuss and bother she’d have caused.

  What wouldn’t she give, she thought, to have someone come in and say now you’re not to worry: the roster’s all right: the stand-by is fixed up: with luck you’ll be home in a few days: accidents happen to anyone, and it was jolly plucky of you to try anyway: now forget everything: you’re sure you’re not in pain? Your room is quite comfortable? Someone with a strong, firm jaw she had in mind. Someone by the name of Robert Prentice.

  And then, next day, when she’d just had a delicious lunch and her face was made up and her hair brushed, and she was feeling small and feminine and helpless in her austere little bed, the nurse was popping her head round the door and saying, ‘There’s a Captain Prentice to see you,’ exactly as if her thoughts had conjured him up.

  He was in uniform, and he came into the sunlit room very slowly. With a pang, Patsy realised that in a few hours’ time he’d be taking off to England, and she felt a twinge of loneliness at being left behind. But at the moment, it was nice to lie there, and to look at him, and to feel touched and happy and reassured that he’d come to see her.

  The nurse wheeled a little tubby armchair close by the bed, and giving them both a dazzling smile hurried out. Captain Prentice smiled and said thank you to the nurse, pulled the chair to a more comfortable distance from the bed, laid his cap and his gloves down on to the table and in a quiet, unhurried (almost uncaring) voice said, ‘How are you feeling?’

  Dropping unconsciously into the favourite Canadian expression that covered all states of being from rude health to death’s door, Patsy said she was just fine.

  ‘The doctor tells me that you’ll be in here anyway for the next few days,’ Captain Prentice said. ‘I’ve arranged for you to fly back supernumerary on Monday.’

  ‘On Boxing Day?’

  Captain Prentice inclined his head.

  There was something going very wrong with the conversation, Patsy decided. No concern, no sympathy. Surely this was the same man who’d put his arm round the old woman and told her not to worry? And after all, she was a member of his crew. And it had been an accident. You didn’t go cracking yourself on the head and spraining your ankle and landing up in hospital for Christmas just for fun. The very thought of it brought a quiver to her mouth. ‘Then I’ll be in here over Christmas.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Couldn’t I come back now... with you?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well as a passenger ... I mean supernumerary. Oh, I feel fine ...’

  ‘The doctor says not.’

  ‘But I could discharge myself. I mean, I could sign whatever it is and ...’

  ‘No.’ The one quietly spoken word was final and unalterable. ‘You’ll stay in bed and do exactly as you’re told—’ And then as though the imperturbable Captain Prentice had at last reached the limits of his patience, he walked over to the window, glanced out at the neatly laid out hospital grounds, and very distinctly added, ‘For once.’

  Patsy’s eyes opened wide. ‘I do nothing else,’ she said, a faint colour creeping over her face.

  Captain Prentice raised his eyebrows. As if he had finally mastered his irritation, he said, ‘You’re supposed to keep quiet.’

  But Patsy was not to be silenced. At the back of her mind a voice told her she was taking unfair advantage of the fact that she was supposed to be ill (although she didn’t feel it) and that to a certain extent he would be giving her gender treatment. But her own disappointment at the unfriendliness of this visit, the desire even now to be taken with him, not left here, and above all the desire to justify herself to him, were strong enough to silence it. ‘How can I keep quiet? I thought,’ her voice trembled slightly, ‘that you were coming to see how I felt...’

  ‘You told me how you felt,’ he said unhurriedly, and with maddening logic. ‘Just fine, wasn’t it?’ A thin, hateful smile, exactly like that first smile she’d seen and disliked at the interview, just curved his lips.

  ‘... and if I was comfortable...’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a moment’s silence. The kid glove treatment, Patsy decided, was worse than the more familiar one of honest-to-goodness ticking off. It left you so painfully in the wrong. Which she wasn’t, of course.

  ‘After all, it wasn’t my fault that it happened—’

  ‘But it was your fault.’

  Patsy turned her head to get a better view of his face. His mouth had tightened now, and he had the kind of look that made her think he just itched to slap her—sprained ankle, bandaged head, and all. ‘How could it be?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘D’you read your Line Standing Orders?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course ... I mean, I do sometimes...’

  ‘Then I advise you to read them again.’

  There was a sudden silence.

  ‘What,’ Patsy said at last in a still, small voice, ‘do they say?’

  ‘Number Eighteen states categorically that no member of an air crew shall, during a stand-off, engage in any sport or occupation which may result in injury. That,’ Captain Prentice added, ‘covers skiing.’

  Patsy digested this fact for a moment. She might have known that whatever she did while under the command of Captain Prentice, it would turn out that she was in the wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘In a way, it’s my fault, too,’ he said magnanimously. ‘I ought to have known when I saw you in the lift that—’ he paused in that maddening way he had, as though to pick the most telling phrase, ‘you were up to something like that.’

  ‘And if you had?’ Little spirals of red-hot anger were rising inside her.

  ‘I’d have stopped you,’ he said, pleasantly and promptly.

  Just like that.

  Patsy slowly counted ten. But it wasn’t to cool her anger, it was just to savour it. ‘You love it, don’t you?’ she said,, suddenly sitting up in bed. ‘Being able to order everyone around ... all the time.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Do this .. .do that. .. stand up—’

  ‘Lie down!’

  And down she flopped with her head back on the pillows. But now there didn’t seem any more to say. He always had the last word. Her blue eyes blazed as hard as she could make them. How, she wondered, could she ever have been so mistaken as to think she liked him? It had been the effect of the night’s strain at Heron Field, of Janet and Geoff really being in love after all their fights, of anything and everything except what she herself really did feel.

  She saw him glance
at his wrist watch. The time allocated for visiting one’s junior crew member in hospital was clearly almost up.

  And now she remembered all the things he hadn’t said that he might have done ... the expense to the Company, the calling out of another girl, the extra work for him. And then, somehow, she wasn’t angry any more. He was all right, she supposed. It was just as Joanna had said. As far as he was concerned, he hardly knew she existed. Now if it had been someone he had been personally interested in, like Miss Fairways for example ...

  There was only one retreat open to her now, she felt.

  Drawing the sheets up close under her chin, she said miserably, and her voice sounded just right with the words, ‘I feel a bit tired now, Captain Prentice. I wonder ... if you’d mind ... if I got a bit of rest?’

  And just by a strange quirk in the man’s make-up, the entire situation seemed to alter. For the first time, he was alert and full of sympathy and best of all, of real concern.

  But she hardly saw it. There was the nurse’s brisk knock on the door. She brought in a bunch of flowers with a red ribbon, wrapped in sheaves of cellophane. ‘For you,’ she said, popping them on the bed and handing Patsy a note. She watched benignly as Patsy opened and read it.

  ‘Who are those from?’

  And before she had time to realize that these at least were entirely her own concern, Patsy said with the enthusiasm of someone who has felt herself utterly unimportant and now discovers that someone at least knows of her existence, ‘From Bill Maynard. And aren’t they lovely?’ ‘And he telephoned just a while back,’ the nurse said, ‘to say if you’re not too tired, he’ll pop around this evening and that—’

  But Captain Prentice was already half-way to the door. ‘But that’s exactly what she is, nurse,’ he said calmly. ‘She’s just been telling me. In fact, that’s why I’m going now. Miss Aylmer is much too tired to have anyone else in.’ He picked up his cap, his gloves, his brief-case. ‘Goodbye, Miss Aylmer,’ he said stiffly. ‘Keep her quiet, nurse. Don’t let her talk you round!’