The Atlantic Sky (13 page)

‘To say goodbye? Yes, I suppose so.’ He took her arm. ‘Let’s go.’

Just before they walked up the two last steps to the lighted doorway, he turned and faced her. ‘Thanks for everything, Patsy,’ he said, and putting his hands on her shoulders, kissed her in a gentle, sad and brotherly goodbye.

But even that peaceful few seconds had to be shattered. ‘Ah,
there,
you are, Pollard!’ A great pair of shoulders blotted out the long shaft of yellow light in which they had been standing. Captain Prentice glanced at Patsy and said coldly, ‘Good evening, Miss Aylmer,’ and then, turning quickly back to Geoff, he thrust out a large right hand. ‘I just wanted to say goodnight, and to wish you good luck in your new job.’ His voice away from the flight deck, and when not addressing herself or a classroom of females, was kindly, almost gentle. ‘We’re sorry to lose you.’

Patsy glanced at Geoff’s face. She was horrified to see it glowing so obviously with pleasure and admiration.

‘I think you’ll find it quite good fun up there,’ Captain Prentice went on. ‘Isolated and all that. But after all, it’s not as though you’re married...’

‘No-o.’ Geoff thrust his hand in his pockets and jingled the loose change thoughtfully. Then he added suddenly and with boyishly disarming frankness, ‘But I’d like to be. Sometimes, that is.’

Captain Prentice’s face very subtly changed. Looking at it, Patsy found it impossible to say exactly how. Surprise and yet not surprise, disappointment, and then that coolly blank poker face which he seemed to assume like a uniform. ‘Well,’ he said, not unpleasantly, his brief keen glance flickering over Patsy’s face and then back to Geoff’s, ‘when that happy event arises,’ and his voice had a hard ring to it which made a mockery of the word
happy,
‘I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to find some sort of suitable accommodation ... even in Iceland.’ Then he looked very pointedly at his watch, gave Geoff a brief commiserating look, and said, ‘Goodnight, then...’ and added ‘Good luck,’ as though this time he really needed it, and to Patsy a cold any-captain-to-any
-
stewardess good-night.

But even the encounter with Captain Prentice, and her final goodbye to Geoff after he’d seen her home to Mrs. Waterhouse’s, weren’t the things that really stayed in Patsy’s mind that night. Long after she’d made herself a cup of cocoa and had a bath and laid out her clothes for the morning, and then finally climbed into bed, the same thought kept going round and round in her mind. How, she thought, with real distress, could Geoff expect much hope from Janet? And why did he love her when their total courtship seemed to be one of arguments and battles and squabbles? When she did fall asleep, it was with the thought of how on earth she was supposed to tell Janet about Geoff ... when his very name appeared to make the human equivalent of her hackles rise.

But like most late-night worrying, it was a complete waste of time. For the very next night, two hours after Geoff would have landed at Keflavik, the charter flight with Janet Morley as, stewardess arrived on the tarmac at London Airport. And two hours after that, she was standing in the doorway of Patsy’s room, her cap still dead straight, and her uniform looking as though it had been freshly pressed and only her face tired and travel-weary, saying in a rather harsh, strained voice, ‘What’s all this I hear about Geoff Pollard being posted?’

And just as Patsy automatically reached for the freshly-brewed pot of tea, and opened her mouth to explain the history of Geoff’s posting, her whole conception of life and love and romance was suddenly turned upside down and topsy-turvy. For maybe because Janet was tired, and in her pale unguarded face her eyes were so expressive, or maybe because now there seemed no need to conceal it any more, but there and then, Patsy knew that Janet
cared.
And all her romantic ideas of sweet dalliance and old-fashioned courtship dissolved in front of the look in Janet’s sad dark eyes. It was no use telling herself that anger and bickering and hostility and disliking each other as much as she did Captain Prentice didn’t make for love. Because...

At the very thought of the man Prentice, Patsy winced. And if, at the back of her mind, some strange ill-conceived part of her had fastened on the similarity of the two relationships, she squashed it down firmly and irrevocably, by the simply antidote of thinking of Monica Fairways’ exquisite loveliness.

And then she poured the tea into a cup, and as she handed it to the other girl, said in gentle comprehension, ‘Don’t worry, Janet. He left a letter for you.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

The offices of World-Span Aviation, busy at the best of times, were being galvanised into even greater activity. For almost out of the blue, the cherished charter flight for the United Nations Delegation had been handed to that up-and
-
coming young firm. And from the Chairman of the Board down to the humblest sweeper-out-of-aircraft there was the deepest sense of pride.

Efficiency, service, safety, the cherished mottoes of the firm, were taken out and re-furbished. The newest aircraft was chosen well in advance and put into No. 2 Hangar and given a Check Four. Then it was cleaned and polished-and groomed, so that every piece of metal and paint was spotless and gleaming, every seat, every piece of carpet, every linen headr
e
st as immaculate as the most careful cleaning could make it. And having picked, their best aircraft, it followed that it would be flown by the best crew. And although the Captain was a foregone conclusion, there was the most excited speculation as to what names would appear on the crew. So excited, in fact, that for the moment at least it quite swamped the usual seasonal speculation, rampant at this time of the year, as to who was or who wasn’t going to be in for Christmas and the hopeful speculation as to whether maybe the management, full of Christmas cheer, might not decide to cancel the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services—a hope that was always a pipe dream held by those who had enjoyed Christmas at home last year, and therefore would certainly be away this.

But Patsy herself was a bit outside all this charter flight name guessing. Never, even in its wildest moments, and from even its most unreliable sources, had her own name been so much as mentioned. And she was more than content that it should
not
be.

‘Well,’ Janet said one morning quite briskly, as she took her place in front of Airs Waterhouse’s large flowered tea-pot and started to pour the first (of many) cups of the day, ‘heard about Christmas yet?’

Patsy shook her head.

‘Roster’s up in Ops,’ Janet said briefly. She frowned as though trying to remember. ‘I’m nearly sure you’re in. But I don’t want to raise your hopes.’ She smiled shyly and apologetically across the table at Patsy. ‘I was a bit ... er ... excited.’ She said the word humbly as though (which was true enough) it was a state that was quite foreign to her.

But before she had time to explain, or before Patsy had time to ask, the front door was opened and then slammed with a resounding bang, a pair of unmistakable feet clipped rapidly across the newly scrubbed hall tiles, and Cynthia threw the dining-room
door
open with a flourish and said, ‘Janet Morley, you
lucky, lucky
old thing!’ She beamed with delight. ‘Pour me one, I’m nearly dead!’ she said, eyeing the teapot greedily. ‘But I’m simply and utterly and absolutely delighted!’

Patsy looked from one to the other.

‘Yes, it’s really quite pleasant, isn’t it,’ Janet said, pouring the tea obediently.

‘Don’t look so wide-eyed, Patsy.’ Cynthia took off her cap and slung it accurately on to one of the chairs. ‘You mean she hasn’t told you?’

‘Hasn’t told me what?’

‘She,’ Cynthia placed a proprietorial hand on the back of Janet’s chair, ‘has been chosen to assist our Miss Mayhew on the one and only United Nations Charter Flight to little old New York. Isn’t that,’ she said, beaming again,
‘wonderful
!’

‘But of course it is,’ Patsy exclaimed. ‘You must be thrilled to bits! What an honour!’ They both smiled affectionately across at Janet. ‘So that,’ Patsy went on, ‘was why you were too excited to remember the Christmas roster properly? That’s what you were just going to tell me?’

But the word ‘Christmas’ had a magical effect on Janet. The brisk air slowly vanished. The gratified smile gave way to one of gender sweetness. Even her voice was humbler and softer. ‘Why, no,’ she said simply. ‘Not exactly.’ She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and brought out an unmistakably Icelandic letter. ‘It was about this...’

They both nodded politely and uncomprehendingly.

‘... you see, I didn’t know whether I could get it or not ... proper leave over Christmas...’

Cynthia said loyally that Janet was ages and ages overdue on her leave.

‘ ... and then I didn’t know if I’d get one of those rebate fares, or not...’

Patsy, feeling it was her turn, said that of course she would and anyway, everyone was entitled to one a year, weren’t they?

‘But of course.’ Janet favoured them both with a gratified smile. ‘That’s what I was so excited about. There was the rebate fare all approved...’

They both nodded.

‘And there was I on the roster for ten days’ leave over Christmas.’

‘And
,’ Cynthia added with some severity, ‘the United Nations Charter job.’

‘That too, of course,’ Janet agreed vaguely. ‘And of course, Iceland’s simply beautiful for Christmas...’

‘
Iceland
?’ Cynthia echoed, clutching her chair. ‘For
Christmas
? Didn’t my sharp ears deceive me?’

‘If it’s nice weather,’ Patsy murmured doubtfully, remembering the wind-lashed, rain-washed coastline which was her only memory of Iceland.

‘Which it will be,’ Janet said happily, folding her letter away and pushing back her chair.

‘Rain, hail or thunder, it will be!’ Cynthia said with sudden comprehension. ‘Ah, well,’ she sighed with worldly wisdom at Janet’s retreating back as she opened the diningroom door. ‘In those circumstances ... it might just as well
be
Iceland.’ She turned to Patsy. ‘Pour me another cup, there’s a poppet. You’re nearest. Hey, wake up ... it’s me that’s just back from a trip!’

But Patsy, with her chin resting on her hand and her elbow on the table, was staring wide-eyed at the grey cold sky immersed, unhearing, in her insoluble, terrifying, fascinating, inescapable problem of love.

And then, as the airline, providing as it certainly did all the ingredients for romance and excitement, also provided the well-known antidote of hard work. Patsy was out on service and had no more time to think of anything but catering stores and passenger amenities, and ship’s papers and bar accounts. They left London Airport with a small charter aircraft one winter afternoon, just six hours ahead of the United Nations Charter on its flight to New York.

The weather was cold and dreary and damp, and the sky itself seemed to shrink for comfort around the brave lights of the airport.

As far as it was possible for such a brisk and enterprising firm, Service No. 879/41, commanded by Captain Laycock, and stewardessed by Patsy Aylmer, left its home base quietly and without notice, like a poor relation. All the excitement, all the extra security police were already centred around the silver shape, ghostly and shimmering in the bluish hangar light, of Astroliner Able King.

‘Big night tonight, eh?’ Captain Laycock said to Patsy when they were airborne. ‘Wish you were on it?’

Patsy shook her head violently and the Captain laughed. ‘Well,’ he said, leaning forward and adjusting the automatic pilot, ‘let’s hope we can send ’em some good weather forecasts back!’

A kindly hope that was not at all justified. Wind, hail, rain and sleet seemed to fill the whole vast wilderness of the North Atlantic sky. The passengers slept only fitfully, and Patsy, busy with trays and drinks and aspirin, not at all.

For the first hour after leaving London, the airliner fought its way doggedly through clouds that tossed it up and let it fall again in strong destructive currents, through what seemed a thousand-mile net of steel-mesh hail, through bucketing, drenching rain, and smudgy sleet. Then suddenly it seemed to swim straight and clear into a vast, star-washed, empty heaven.

Patsy, seizing what might well prove to be a very brief respite, took a cup of tea to the wakeful old lady sitting huddled and miserable in seat ten, brought some more magazines and the box of free cigarettes to a man who had been reading his way solidly through storm and tempest from Prestwick, and filled up a tray with hot tea and sandwiches for the flight deck.

‘Ah, Miss Aylmer,’ Captain Laycock said, taking the tea gratefully. He looked out at the deceptively clear untroubled heavens. ‘We’re flight planning now to Heron Field. Gander out. Goose Bay out,’ he grinned across at her. ‘And we won’t be in the clear for very much longer. Intermittent snow over the whole of the Eastern Seaboard.’

‘Where’s Heron Bay?’ Patsy asked.

'South of Goose. Not brilliant even there. But at least it’s above limits. At the moment.’

Patsy nodded and smiled and walked back to her passengers. Now that they were into the winter, she was beginning to see Captain Prentice’s lecture fulfilled with uncanny accuracy. Winds and rain, a clear sky like now, and then, right in their path, a suffocating blanket of snow. She shivered a little as she walked down the aisle, picking up a forgotten magazine, tucking in a blanket, leaning over and switching off the reading lamp above the head of a now sleeping passenger.

And then thinking of his lecture made her remember the man himself. She looked at her watch. The strong winds had already blown them back an hour behind flight plan. It was past midnight in England. He would be over a thousand miles behind them now, studying perhaps without surprise the reports of the weather that lay ahead of him.

‘Heron Bay 03.05,’ Captain Laycock murmured. He looked at his watch. ‘About another hour.’

Patsy said ‘Yes, sir,’ and looked out doubtfully. It didn’t seem possible that anything or anyone else existed in this world but them.

And yet, fifty minutes later, after rather reluctantly she had wakened those of the passengers who had managed to snatch some sleep and handed round tea and rolls and orange juice, the seat belt sign most reassuringly glowed red. And as if by magic, she felt the lowering aircraft floor pull slightly at her feet, she saw the thick cotton-wool cloud thin a little and begin to shred, and then rather grudgingly part in order to allow them a brief peep below. To Patsy’s relief and surprise, she saw lights—yellow and white, reflecting in the snow around them. Very slowly now they went down and down. And then suddenly they were through the cloud.

The last shreds of it for a moment flurried past the window and then they saw the flarepath lights glistening on the high banks of shovelled snow on either side of the runway, and the tyres gently brushed the ground.

Like a snowy turntable, a circle of white field edged by muzzy airfield buildings moved past the windows as they ran, their tyres sizzling softly along the damp, cleared runway. Then as they taxied up to what appeared to be the main airport buildings, the passengers wearily reached to unfasten their straps, blinked at the dark desolation around them and murmured that at least they wouldn’t have to stay here very long, and weren’t they glad.

But they were wrong. An hour after they had obediently followed the Canadian Station Officer who did duty for all the airlines in this isolated station, Captain Laycock was in earnest, exasperated conversation with a take-it-or-leave
-
it foreman in charge of maintenance in the hangar.

And half an hour after that, Captain Laycock was in earnest, very technical and very depressing conversation with Patsy. As far as her brief lectures on aircraft construction permitted her to understand, a bad oil leak had developed in Number Three engine, and until it could be fixed, here they must stay. It wouldn’t be very long, not more perhaps than fifteen hours or so, but Miss Aylmer must understand, and with her, of course, the passengers, that this was a bad-weather alternative airfield and therefore didn’t have the same facilities for maintenance as, say, Gander. Patsy, who hadn’t the slightest idea of the engineering facilities at Gander and
was
only vaguely aware of them at London, murmured, ‘Of course.’

What she had more than a slight idea of, though, was what the passengers would say to the prospect of a night and most of another day in this isolated, snow-bound place.

She had managed to find a few beds so that the women and children could lie down, but because there was no hotel at Heron Field, most of the passengers had to get what rest they could in the chairs of the reception hut. Just as she’d given three of the more wakeful ones a cup of tea, and they’d been grumbling to her about the delay and the discomfort, small dark shapes appeared along what appeared to be the only road that led out of the airfield into the forest beyond. Patsy saw them as she stood by the window, looking out at the snow-dotted darkness, and as she watched, gradually the shapes became a sledge drawn by dogs, and followed by three figures muffled in furs.

Patsy watched them wearily and incuriously. One of the passengers, coming up behind her, remarked that there
were
human beings here after all, but apart from that, no one took the slightest notice.

No one even took much notice when the airport nurse, a quiet, pleasant-faced Canadian girl, came into the reception hut and, holding her cloak around her shoulders, tiptoed over to Patsy and whispered something to her.

But Patsy was instantly alert. ‘A woman
ill
?’ she repeated. ‘But
where
?’ Automatically, like a good shepherdess, her eyes travelled the room, counting her flock. There were nine she’d seen safely to bed. No one was missing. But the Canadian nurse’s soft, sing-song voice was going on. ‘Oh, not on the sledge?’ Patsy’s face was gentle with sympathy and concern. ‘But of course I’ll come. Yes,’ she said, getting up and hurrying beside the nurse, ‘I’d no idea.’ She listened while the nurse went on explaining about outlying trapping stations: how they were dependent on aircraft for all transport, how they came here to see her, and if they were really bad were flown out on the first available aeroplane, since there was no doctor for hundreds of miles.