The Atlantic Sky

by Betty Beaty

  Oh, he hadn’t, Patsy thought, mentioned the trouble and the expense, and he’d been (with difficulty) reasonably forbearing. But all the same, he was just the old Captain Prentice of the Training School days. Somehow, even at the end, he’d managed to make her feel miserable, make her feel small.

  And to punish her, after all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  If there was a land that Christmas should be spent in, it was Canada. Snow and fir trees, cold clear starlit nights, warm brightly-lit houses, shops teeming with presents and wonderful shop displays, carol singers with lanterns, ribbon-tied wreaths of holly on the doors, even (just once) a glimpse of a horse drawn sleigh.

  But one thing it wasn’t. And that was home.

  It was on Christmas Eve that Patsy was discharged from the hospital. She took a taxi to the hotel, and just had time to say hello and thank you for the flowers and yes I’m lots better to Bill Maynard over a quick cup of coffee.

  She half hoped that he might say there was a spare seat on board his aircraft and why not hurry up and come now. But he didn’t. Everyone seemed to be concerned with getting their last-minute presents stuffed into their baggage.

  Captain Prentice had said she should return on Boxing Day. And Boxing Day it was.

  He had thoughtfully left an envelope for her from the Accounts Section with sufficient dollars for her meal allowance. Canadian food prices and the cost of a cable home being what they were, it didn’t exactly permit of over-much festivity.

  But there’d be a big welcome waiting for her at home. She thought of that all the way across the Atlantic on the aircraft. And then, after she’d found a week’s sick leave waiting for her in London, all the way on the train, too.

  She got a taxi from the station, and it wasn’t yet dark when she was opening the kitchen door and shouting, ‘A merry Christmas ... two days late!’

  ‘Darling!’ her mother smiled, giving her a big hug. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!’ She pushed back Patsy’s cap and then her hair and said, ‘How’s that head?’

  ‘Oh, better, thanks. Did you have a good Christmas? Where’s Dad? Where’s Timothy? Did Meg get over for Christmas ...?’ And then, ‘My ankle? Oh, that’s fine too. But how did you know? I mean you must be psychic ... I didn’t say anything in the cable about my head and my ankle.’ She gave her mother a quick kiss. ‘Mother’s intuition, eh?’

  She took the cup of tea that Mrs. Aylmer always seemed to have just freshly made and gulped it gratefully. ‘Wonderful!’ she said. ‘Never tastes the same on board an aircraft. Now tell me’—she pulled out one of the kitchen chairs for her mother and another for herself and sat down—‘all about it.’

  ‘Dad’s over in the office,’ Mrs. Aylmer said. ‘And Timothy’s at Lionel’s. I’ll call Dad in a minute. But first of all, just let me have a look at you!’ She smiled affectionately at her daughter. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you in your uniform ... you do look nice. You’re happy, darling?’

  Patsy nodded.

  ‘I’m so glad.’ Her mother stretched her hand across the table and patted her daughter’s hand. ‘But,’ she sighed and pushed a stray wisp of grey hair from her forehead, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do these dangerous things!’

  ‘Flying?’

  ‘No, of course not. Skiing.’ And they both laughed.

  ‘Especially,’ Mrs. Aylmer said, trying to assume some severity, ‘trying a big slope on your own after your very first lesson.’

  ‘Mum ...?’ Patsy began, frowning and smiling at the same time.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘As Cynthia would say, you’ve been listening to birds.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that someone who knows about me and about skiing and about World-Span has been talking to you. Who was it?’

  A faint pink just coloured Mrs. Aylmer’s still pretty cheeks. ‘It was,’ she said, almost archly, ‘a very big bird.’

  Patsy shook her head. ‘Then it wasn’t Cynthia. I give up. Well,’ she said, getting up and pouring herself another cup of tea and then coming over to sit beside her mother, ‘it was nice of them. That stopped you worrying. Did someone phone you?’

  Mrs. Aylmer shook her head, and then nodded it. ‘No, they didn’t phone ... and yes, wasn’t it nice? And it did stop Dad and me worrying. He came here. In his car.’

  ‘He? Who on earth?’

  ‘A captain, I think, although he didn’t say so. But he said you were on his crew, so I thought he must be ... and somehow,’ she closed her eyes and screwed them up tight as she always did when she was trying to think, ‘I seem to have heard his name before ...’

  She opened her eyes suddenly wide at the sound of a queer choky noise from Patsy. ‘Are you all right, dear? Sure now?’ She screwed up her eyes again. ‘Very tall and dark and good-looking.’

  ‘I know him,’ Patsy said. ‘Well. But I wouldn’t call him good-looking. Yes,’ she went on, as her mother opened her eyes wide again, ‘he was the captain. I think,’ she added with an attempt at lightness, ‘that he was a captain at birth.’ While all the time she could see from her mother’s disapproving expression that she was thinking that World-Span was doing her daughter a power of no good. ‘Why did he come down?’

  ‘To put our minds at rest. It was so much nicer than getting just a phone call. I’—she looked at Patsy with near-displeasure—‘was very grateful. So was Dad. And he ... Robert, I mean, he was much too young for us to call him Mr. Prentice ... told us so many interesting things about the life.’

  But Patsy said nothing.

  ‘You know,’ Mrs. Aylmer went on. ‘About flying ... what a responsibility it must be for him! And then he told us about your course. He made us laugh ...’

  She was still laughing when the door was thrown open and Mr. Aylmer said, ‘I thought you must have come, Patsy. I could hear the chitter-chat half-way up the road!’ He gave his daughter a kiss, patted her shoulder, looked to see if she’d lost her country bloom, and then walked over to the dresser to get himself a cup of tea. ‘Remind me to give you some skiing lessons down Ridgeways Hill, the very first fall of snow!’

  They all smiled.

  ‘I’ve just been telling her,’ Mrs. Aylmer said, ‘about Robert Prentice. He was a captain, dear.’

  Mr. Aylmer leaned back and half smiled at Patsy. ‘In other words the man on the Selection Board. I thought so!’

  ‘It must,’ Patsy put in, ‘have been a very good description I gave you,’ suddenly thinking that all in all (despite changes this way and that) she had now reverted to her original opinion of the Training Captain.

  ‘Good enough to identify him by, I should say. A girl’s description of a man. That type of man.’ He gave Patsy a long look, half serious, half teasing. ‘But it wouldn’t have been mine.’

  Patsy obligingly asked him what his would have been, and Mr. Aylmer first lit his pipe andthen examined the end of the match and shifted in his chair] just as he always did before really getting down to a subject that he enjoyed.

  But when it came, his opinion was short enough and simple enough. ‘I liked him,’ he said. ‘What’s more I respected him. And more than that ...’ he looked up suddenly ‘... he was the sort of man I’d want ...’ and then he seemed to see right down into Patsy (just as he could always do) and it was as though he saw the pang of pure pain that his unspoken words for a son-in-law had given her. The smile left his lips. ‘That I’d want ...’ he repeated, and then ‘to have beside me in a tight spot.’

  But those words didn’t help much, either. In a way, Patsy thought, before she banished the idea, they had a way of being the same thing. But she didn’t say anything. She just got up and poured her mother some more tea and hummed a snatch of song to show she didn’t care, and then, kissing her father lightly on top of his head, uttered her usual let-out for embarrassing remarks about Captain Prentice, ‘He’s a very good pilot, if that’s what you mean.’ But she knew that it wasn’t what he meant. And so did they.

/>   Nevertheless, it served its purpose. For the name of Robert Prentice was hardly mentioned after that. And Patsy was beginning, now that she really thought it over carefully, to concede that (after all) it had been kind of him, and thoughtful, and unexpected. She was feeling wonderful after her week’s leave and (a sure sign that she was really becoming a seasoned stewardess) just a bit nostalgic for the sound of a Tannoy announcing departures and the roar of an aircraft’s engines, and the smell of the cabin and the sensation of the floor just rising and then tilting a little under your feet.

  So as soon as she got back to Mrs. Waterhouse’s she scanned the white-painted scribbling board for a message for her from Ops. There was a red pencil-notice to say that Cynthia was sleeping and wasn’t to be disturbed until tea-time. There was a neat blocked note to say that Miss Morley would be in about four. And a memo in Mrs. Waterhouse’s spidery scrawl to say that when the coalman called the manhole was open.

  But nothing for Patsy Aylmer.

  She went slowly upstairs, tiptoed past Cynthia’s door and then lit the gas ring and put on the kettle.

  At four o’clock precisely she heard Janet’s key in the door and then her quick firm steps across the hall. ‘Coo-ee!’ Patsy called over the banisters. ‘There’s some tea in my room.’

  ‘You got back early,’ Janet said, taking off her gloves and folding them carefully.

  ‘Yes,’ Patsy smiled. ‘I thought I might be stand-by tomorrow or something like that. And d’you know’—she pulled up a chair to the small card table and began to pour the tea—‘I was beginning to hope I was.. You know, I missed it all. And after being in hospital and then a week’s leave ...’ She broke off suddenly and stared at Janet’s left hand, concentrating on the third finger. ‘Janet! How absolutely wonderful! Where did this happen?’

  ‘In the middle of Iceland’s barren mountains, of course.’ Cynthia, flinging open the door, blinked rather sleepily from one to the other. ‘And if my sharp eyes don’t deceive me ... that’s tea!’

  They talked for a little while about Geoff and Janet and Iceland and Christmas. Much as Patsy loved her home, it was good to be back. She murmured rather shyly something of the sort to Janet, and added that she could hardly wait to be airborne again.

  ‘When I am out, please?’ she asked, eyeing both of her friends anxiously.

  ‘You’re not. Not that I can remember, that is,’ said Cynthia. ‘Not this week anyway ... is there a little more tea in that pot, I’m simply dying of thirst!’

  ‘Are things slack, then?’ asked Patsy.

  ‘No—o. Just so-so,’ Cynthia hedged.

  ‘About right for this time of year,’ Janet said slowly. ‘The fact is, Patsy,’ she added bluntly, taking a deep breath, ‘you’re not on the roster for this week. Or next.’

  ‘They’ve forgotten about me, then,’ Patsy said. ‘I might have stayed at home and they’d have forgotten about me altogether.’ She smiled determinedly. ‘I’d better go up and see them in Line Control tomorrow.’

  ‘No, they haven’t forgotten you ...’ Janet began.

  ‘It’s like this, poppet...’ Cynthia said at the same time. Patsy clasped her two hands tightly together. ‘I’ve not been grounded?’

  ‘Of course not, child,’ Cynthia said comfortingly. ‘Barbara Mayhew told Janet that they’d decided’—suddenly she began to speak very rapidly—‘that-it-would-be-best-if-you-didn’t—fly-for-a-couple-of-weeks-till-you-were-really-over-your-fall-as-it-were...’

  Patsy said indignantly that the fall was absolutely nothing. ‘Darling, don’t interrupt!’ Cynthia exclaimed, and then went on more slowly, as though the worst was now over. ‘They knew you wouldn’t want to hang around just kicking your heels, so wouldn’t it be a good idea and all that if you helped in some place that’s almost like flying—’

  ‘There isn’t any place that’s almost like flying!’ Patsy said indignantly.

  ‘—there you go again, interrupting like mad! So the long and the short of it is that you’re going to help for a couple of weeks in Traffic.’

  ‘Traffic!’ Patsy stood up. ‘Did you say Traffic?’

  Cynthia nodded miserably. ‘Well, dear,’ she said with determined brightness, ‘you do meet the passengers and all that, and it would help you to get rested up, and they...’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Well, Janet as we said got it from Barbara Mayhew—’

  ‘Then it’s not been confirmed?’ Patsy asked hopefully.

  ‘Sorry, dear old thing, wrong again!’ Cynthia shook her head. ‘There was a phone call. But we ... Janet and I ... thought that it was best to tell you ourselves.’

  ‘Nice of you,’ Patsy said gratefully, smiling at them with determined brightness. ‘It’ll soon go ... a week, then two ... don’t you think?’

  Like lightning, they assured her.

  ‘And,’ Patsy said, ‘it’ll be quite interesting in Traffic.’ Just the experience every stewardess should have, they said.

  ‘And it isn’t like a punishment grounding ... I mean, is it?’

  Purely out of kindness of heart, the other two said.

  ‘But whose heart?’ said Patsy suddenly. ‘That’s what I’d like to know!’ She was getting over the disappointment now, and doing her best to feel cheerful about it.

  ‘Why,’ Cynthia said, jumping up and getting the kettle and pouring much too much water into the teapot, ‘I think it really originally came—’

  ‘From,’ Janet said quietly, ‘Captain Prentice.’

  Patsy said nothing. She sat quite still, stirring her tea. ‘One thing I didn’t know,’ she said at last, taking a biscuit and crumbling it furiously, ‘was that in England and in this day and age, even in flying and all its yes-sir-no-sir-three-bags-full-sir, anyone could be punished without a hearing. Even,’ she added, giving the name its full measure of her bitterness, ‘by Captain Prentice.’

  But apparently they could and were. She discovered when she reported up to the Traffic Section next day that the redoubtable captain had yet further tricks up his immaculate sleeve.

  For she was to be someone’s especial protégée for these two weeks. A kind of under training Traffic girl. And her instructor and protectress was to be none other than the beautiful Monica Fairways.

  Perhaps Captain Prentice had some vague idea that (as Joanna Trent had once said) Monica Fairways was really quite a depressing sight. For, Patsy decided at the end of the first day, it would have been almost impossible to be with her for long without developing a marked inferiority complex.

  She had such a lovely face and figure, such a charming voice, such a perfect smile, and so much assurance, that you knew after the first few moments that your hair was out of place, your make-up all wrong, and that you were too shy, insignificant, too unsure of yourself.

  On the second day, she stood timidly beside Miss Fairways in Bay Number Three of the Passenger Hall, and obediently watched her check the passengers’ tickets and their passports and baggage slips. Patsy just telephoned here, or telephoned there, as Miss Fairways told her. She went errands. She fetched forms. But all the personal contacts Miss Fairways did herself. And she did them so well that it would have been superfluous to offer to help her.

  After a day or two the passengers, the Traffic officers and everyone else seemed to accept Patsy’s unobtrusive presence as part of the new Reception Hall decor. Their glances slid off her as though she had been an extra marble pillar, and then lingered on the warmer, brighter loveliness of Miss Fairways.

  But one thing Patsy was grateful for. Miss Fairways never asked any questions. Used to the friendly curiosity of air crew, Patsy was relieved that the Traffic girl appeared to have not the slightest curiosity as to why Patsy was there, where she came from, who her friends were, or what she was like as a person.

  ‘A stewardess?’ she murmured vaguely to Patsy, as they sat together in the staff canteen. ‘Oh, you have to fetch the coffee. It’s a cafeteria... and I’ll have biscuits too. Chocolate wholeme
al. Milk chocolate wholemeal.’ And when Patsy obediently brought it over arid they sat thoughtfully over their steaming cups, Miss Fairways added, ‘I thought of being a stewardess ... one of these days. When I feel like it, that is. At the moment I’m happy where I am. But Robert—’

  Patsy put down her spoon rather loudly and clumsily.

  ‘... Captain Prentice, I expect you have to call him ... he was very keen for me to be one.’

  He would be, Patsy thought.

  ‘When I said I was thinking of doing it, he said I should certainly try... you know, in that rather odd way he has?’

  Patsy did indeed.

  ‘And then what do you think?’

  Patsy didn’t.

  ‘I said it would be rather too cramping to my social life ...’ she smiled the comfortable smile of a girl who has an over-full programme, ‘... and he said and a good thing, too.’

  And very softly, in between sips of coffee, Miss Fairways began to hum Jealousy ... ’twas all over my jealousy ...

  But it took a week for Patsy to discover why Monica Fairways never asked any questions. The Traffic girl was just not interested. There was only one subject that she found absorbing, and that was Monica Fairways, and she awarded it practically all her mind and heart with commendable singleness of purpose. There was, however, another which ran it a not-too-close second. And that was the subject of the men who liked Monica Fairways. And their number, Patsy discovered, was legion. Discarded admirers seemed to strew Miss Fairways’ elegant path. They waylaid her on her way to work, they telephoned her, they wrote. Indeed, they came.

  For on the eighth day, just as Patsy had been half expecting, and at a slack time when Miss Fairways was leaning gracefully against a table, and deciding which polish best became the whiteness of her hands, Captain Prentice’s voice suddenly electrified them both.