The Atlantic Sky (12 page)

Just as she turned the door-knob, Cynthia came gliding out of her room in a long crimson housecoat, and murmured, ‘Saks, ten dollars in the “as was” tray.’ And then blinking her bright eyes, ‘What price poor Pollard’s posting?’

‘Pretty grim,’ Patsy said, falling into the way of dispensing with all greetings as though in fact they hadn’t done any travelling at all. ‘I saw him at the airport. Just on the apron. When did it come through?’

Cynthia shrugged her shoulders. ‘A couple of days ago, I imagine. When I came in yesterday he told me, and the party was organized then.’ She looked down at Patsy’s hand still holding her case. ‘Chuck it into your room ... and then step right this way, madam. I’ll have tea ready for you in a moment.’

And when Patsy obediently did what she was told, Cynthia had already poured the water into the pot, and from her position over the gas ring irrelevantly announced the fact that she’d been listening to birds.

‘And what have
they
been whispering?’

‘Oh, this and that, you know.’ Cynthia lit a cigarette, drew Patsy’s attention to the fact that her holder exactly matched her housecoat and then went on. ‘I heard quite a bit about Geoff’s posting, of course, in the crew rest-room.’

‘Go on,’ Patsy said. ‘Mind if I help myself?’ And she reached for the teapot.

‘Joanna Trent was there ... and she came out with rather a surprising theory.’ She looked sideways at Patsy. ‘At least I was surprised. But now I come to think of it, I can’t for the life of me say why.’

Patsy smiled. ‘Then you tell me, and maybe I’ll be surprised and maybe
I
can say why.’

‘I wonder,’ Cynthia said cryptically. She walked over to the mantelpiece, and draping an arm gracefully over its white marble looked down at her nails with elaborate concentration. ‘And here’s me been acting as an extra outsize gooseberry all these days!’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘And you and Geoff must have wished me on the other side of the world!’ She walked over to Patsy’s chair and looked down at her with sudden gentleness. ‘And you never let on for a moment that I was in the way.’

Patsy pushed her cap to the back of her head and rumpled her hair. ‘It must be this after-trip weariness you’ve so often told me about ... but please, what are you trying to say?’

‘I’m just telling you ... that you’re going to get engaged to Geoff. Now don’t look so stunned! Joanna Trent says so. Oh, lots of people say so. The whole airline in fact knows but
me
!’

‘And
me,
’
Patsy said drily. ‘For goodness’ sake, Cynthia,
you
should know better. You’ve nearly always been with us—’

‘May I be forgiven!’

‘—and so you
know
there isn’t the slightest truth in it.’ Patsy jumped up quickly and started to walk up and down the room. ‘And anyway, you know Joanna Trent just talks and talks and—’

‘All right, my child, don’t get all stewed up! You’ve convinced me.’

‘But what if Geoff’s heard it?’

‘Oh, Geoff’s no fool. He won’t worry.’

‘Or—’

‘Or who?’

‘Oh, no one really. I just—well, don’t want it to get around.’

‘Too late, my child. It has.’

Patsy looked worried for a moment. Then she suddenly smiled. ‘Oh, anyway,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t matter. Geoff’ll understand. And I don’t suppose the rest are interested enough to take much notice.’

‘That’s the girl! Let’s fill up your cup, and forget the old grapevine. It’s here to stay, so we might as well get used to it. I must say it had
me
fooled, though I thought I was too wise a bird. More sugar? Now, if you’re not absolutely dying for your bed, how about thinking about the dresses we should wear for poor old Geoff’s farewell party?’

But Cynthia might have spared herself all thought of it. For three days later, on the very morning of the party, she was called out from stand-by to take the service to Montreal, because Eleanor Sykes, the stewardess on the flight, had got a heavy cold and was forbidden by the M.O. to fly.

‘What a bind, isn’t it?’ she said, arranging her cap in the crew room. ‘Janet’ll be missing it, too (though a fat lot
she’ll
care), with that double New York-Bermuda shuttle she’s on. There, Patsy my dear, will I do?’

Patsy nodded. ‘Have a good trip,’ she said. ‘I expect I’ll catch up with you, anyway.’

Patsy caught the next bus home, and then wrote some letters, and in the afternoon went for a fitting in Regent Street for her summer-weight uniforms. The house was odd and silent without the other two girls. Already they had welded themselves together, under Mrs. Waterhouse’s care, to the next best thing to a family. She ran her bath and laid out her fresh and crisp party clothes and then dressed herself with care.

‘The Pollard limousine!’ announced Geoff, as she answered the door ten minutes later, after his long insistent ring. ‘For the last time, at your service.’

‘Oh, you’ll be back, Geoff,’ Patsy said. ‘You’ll be coming for leave, and I expect you’ll see lots of us then.’

‘I keep thinking of that,’ Geoff said, and grinned. ‘May I say how pretty you look tonight?’ Quite beautiful,’ he added so softly that Patsy looked at him sideways and very anxiously. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he went on, ‘it’s the effect of the moon.’ They both looked up from Mrs. Waterhouse’s doorstep to the full moon that was just riding above the tops of the houses opposite. ‘And the party spirit, and my last night, and all that.’

‘Well, let’s go,’ said Patsy, pulling up her coat collar, and running down the steps towards Geoff’s car. ‘The party will be waiting for you.’

‘Let them,’ Geoff said, as he followed her. He looked back at the solid edifice of Mrs. Waterhouse’s old-fashioned house. ‘You know, I’ve developed quite an affection for this place. I’ve had fun.’ He gave the building a mock and strangely wistful salute, and then started the noisy engine with gusto.

‘Are there many coming tonight?’ Patsy asked, talking brightly because she was disturbed by his unhappy profile.

‘I imagine.’ Geoff nodded his head, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘Most of the bods that are in. If they feel like coming.’

‘Cynthia was sorry to miss it. She was simply wild at being called out this morning.’

Geoff murmured politely that he was sorry, too.

‘And Janet, too, she'll ... she’ll miss you...’

But Geoff appeared to be absorbed in his own thoughts. Very soon, the traffic had thinned out, and they were speeding along the Great West Road towards the airport.

‘They’re having it in the lounge of the flying-club,’ he said, turning in at the gate before the one they usually used. ‘Just up past Control.’ He drove along for a couple of hundred yards and then stopped the car abruptly. ‘Here we are ... mind the skirt of your dress on the door there, it’s a bit jagged. Here, give me your hand. That’s better! And mind your shoes, it’s muddy.’

Faintly and jauntily across the cool evening air, a three-piece band was competing with the mutter and roar of distance-muted engines. Across the four lighted squares of windows, the dark shadows of a few couples moved in time to the racy rhythm.

‘Looks quite a party!’ said Patsy, taking off her coat, and hanging it on the side of the large entrance hall under the pegs labelled ‘Gals.’

World-Span Aviation and partner had somehow seemed to get together especially to give the ever-popular Geoff a good send-off to Iceland. The small room was soon packed with aircrew and ground staff all talking and laughing or leaning over the buffet or dancing to the untiring, perspiring band. Although it was her own Company and she belonged, and although she was Geoff’s special
protégée
and although World-Span employees were a friendly bunch, Patsy was conscious now and again of feeling extremely shy, as she did in recurring bouts at all parties.

Geoff obviously had, as he termed it, to circulate, and—as seemed to happen at a number of aircrew get-togethers—almost all the boys entirely forgot to dance with the girls. Patsy had a long conversation with a middle-aged man from Traffic, who like herself looked lonely, and she wandered over to the buffet, and from there admired the sight of Monica Fairways, radiant in crimson velvet, talking animatedly to Captain Prentice.

Joanna Trent came dancing by as Patsy sat listening to one of the other stewardesses talking about a charter trip she’d done, and seeing Patsy, called out, loudly and gaily, ‘Cheer up, Patsy! He’s not going to the other end of the world.’ And then, chuckling at her own joke, added, ‘Just to the back of beyond.’

But a little later, Geoff did come over and sat beside her. ‘Feel like a dance, Patsy?’ he asked. He looked at his watch. ‘In another twelve hours, I’ll be on my way.’

‘I know, Geoff.’ Patsy gave his hand a small squeeze. ‘I’m awfully sorry you’re going.’

And as if those gentle words were all that he needed, he suddenly suggested, ‘Shall we go outside for a little while?’ and as Patsy looked up anxiously, ‘There’s something...’

But he had already waltzed her out through the hall doorway into the moonlight outside before he finished the sentence.

‘Lovely night,’ Patsy said, standing beside him apprehensively, with Joanna’s words crowding her brain, just when she was wanting to think of something to say.

‘... I wanted to tell you...’ Geoff said at last, the words coming out softly as though from a long way away.

‘Then pick a quieter spot to tell it,’ a laughing, teasing, I-told-you-so voice said, as Joanna Trent swept from the lighted doorway behind her, with her arm through that of Alan Martin, one of the Engineer Officers. ‘Lovely party, Geoff. Sorry we have to go now. Enjoy yourself in Iceland ... and don’t worry about Patsy,’ she added in the sort of whisper that an amplifier firm might well patent, ‘I’ll look after
her.
’

Patsy and Geoff watched them go. ‘Joanna’s quite a joker,’ Patsy said weakly.

‘Quite a gossip,’ Geoff growled. ‘And,’ he said, turning Patsy round to face him, ‘like all gossips, she gets a bit right, and a lot wrong. Eh, Patsy?’

‘Why, yes, Geoff. I expect she does.’

‘The first time I saw you, Patsy’—Geoff looked down at his shoes—‘I knew you were the sort of person who
understood.
’

‘You, too,’ Patsy said, and meant it, and yet at the same time wondering how long this round-the-houses conversation was going on, and where in the end it was bound for.

‘And so, well ... you won’t laugh? No, of course you won’t. You’re much too kind. But...’

‘But?’

‘I think you’ve guessed, Patsy.’ And then after a long pause, in which he examined his shoes, the pathway, and the odd ends of grass around it, he looked up suddenly and said, ‘I’m in love.’

It was one of those moments when all thought and all capacity for reasoned speech become suspended. Patsy was neither vain nor even confident, and yet it seemed obvious that here was the first proposal of her life. And much as she liked and admired the man, it was as unwelcome as it was unhappy. She tried to make sympathetic murmurs in her dry throat. She liked Geoff. He was the nicest man in the Company. And when you compared him to men ... well, like Prentice, and then unexpectedly a pain, that was in turn a picture of crimson velvet and big brown eyes and night-black hair, brought sudden aching tears to her eyes. Not for herself, of course, but for Geoff.

‘And I had an idea that you guessed ... how I felt...
’
Patsy shook her head violently, but Geoff didn’t see her. He was concentrating on the twin dwarf headlights of a car on the other side of the perimeter track, and only his profile was turned towards her.

‘... about Janet.’

Patsy blinked her wide unbelieving eyes. ‘Janet?’ she echoed. But Geoff was obviously pondering the beauty of that name too, and only nodded and repeated it again. He gave a sudden boyish laugh. ‘No one but you would have guessed,’ he said, reaching out for her hand and squeezing it, while Patsy murmured with complete conviction that she was quite sure they wouldn’t.

‘Except Janet,’ Geoff said, ‘She’ll know, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Patsy did her best to keep the massive doubt out of her voice. ‘Are you going to tell her?’

‘But of course I am,’ Geoff said, suddenly brisk. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’ve written...
’
He thrust his hand in his pockets, as though out of patience with the night and love and himself. ‘I can’t put it down properly on paper, but heaven knows when I’ll be seeing her. That’s the airline racket for you!’ He thrust out his square chin. ‘No wonder it’s strewn with broken romances. It just makes for misunderstandings. She’s away on that Bermuda shuttle ... and by the time she comes back I’ll be gone. But you’ll be here, Patsy. And when she reads this letter, well, I’d like you to be on hand to tell her I’m...
’
he laughed shakily and miserably, ‘not all that bad a chap, if only she’d get to know me.’

‘You’re one of the best, Geoff,’ Patsy said vehemently. ‘She knows it, too, I’ll bet.’

And then, suddenly remembering that this was after all Geoff’s party and that it was getting late, she stamped her feet and said, ‘Don’t you think we ought to be going back? After all,’ she smiled in the darkness at him, ‘they’re your guests. And they’ll be waiting...’