Free Fall in Stilettos

by Catherine Louise

  He held it between his fingers, looking at it briefly, then he sniffed it. The corners of his mouth turned down.

  ‘Doesn’t smell like you’re supposed to eat it,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that coffee doesn’t look like you’re supposed to drink it,’ I retorted. ‘Actually, Marmite is very good for you, full of vitamins and delicious. Go on, just try it – you never know; you might really like it.’

  Sometimes I could be so evil. I’d just impressed myself at how innocent a suggestion it had sounded. Trying not to laugh, I just watched and waited. Reluctantly, he bit on a corner. After a couple of chews, he resembled a small child having just tried blue cheese for the first time.

  ‘Tastes disgusting. ’Ow can you eat that stuff?’ he asked. I wasn’t sure if he was more appalled at me for eating it, or whether his horrific facial expression was due to the taste alone. Reaching for a napkin, he spat out the contents then swigged down the rest of his coffee, which was sure to extinguish any remaining tastebuds.

  ‘Well, you either love it or you hate it.’ I couldn’t stop myself laughing, and I tried desperately to prevent the chewed contents of my mouth from spraying the table. Marc’s face was still screwed up, which was all the funnier. Eventually, I managed to get some words out. ‘So, where’s your breakfast this morning? Aren’t you hungry?’

  ‘Not after that,’ he said, looking at my toast and only half smiling. ‘I’ll stick with this.’ He raised his cup. ‘Excuse me whilst I get another.’

  He probably went off to scrape his tongue clean, somewhere I couldn’t see him. I wolfed down as much of my plate as I could, not wanting to scoff the lot whilst he just observed and drank coffee.

  It was okay to eat food with someone else if they were eating too, but not with someone watching and definitely not with a stranger or almost stranger. It was a self-conscious thing, protecting me from a fear of embarrassment, like getting it round my face and not even being aware that I had egg or tomato sauce dripping around the corners of my mouth and some sort of sausage grit stuck between my teeth when smiling. If they were eating too, it made them equally as exposed to the vulnerabilities. Maybe I was far too vain.

  Dabbing the napkin around my mouth, I then rubbed my teeth with my finger to guarantee no disgusting ugly tooth incident. A quick flick of the tongue, and all was good. When Marc returned, he had another hardcore full-strength coffee. We chatted about working and past naff jobs.

  ‘Come on, you can’t compare wrapping chicken in a factory with a load of ex-criminals, to mopping out toilets in a nightclub,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, waiting for my reply.

  ‘If I told you what went on in those toilets and what I mopped up, then believe me, it’s far worse than handling fists full of chicken. I’m eating breakfast, so I won’t give any more details other than to say that ladies’ toilets are far worse than men’s. Men’s just smell the worst.’

  I was certain I had one-upmanship on the worst jobs scoresheet. Then thinking about how I’d just dragged the conversation down to a level of discussing toilets, I sat and sipped my tea without saying another word. When I’d almost drained the mug, I left the last swig to enjoy like a chaser following the final mouthful of food. Then I knocked it back and held on to the mug, enjoying the soothing warmth on my hands.

  ‘What about the future? What job do you see yourself doing in the future?’ he asked.

  ‘I like the airlines. Perhaps long haul. See some places. Travel the world and get paid for doing it,’ I laughed.

  ‘Why not? I am always on the lookout too. I want to make captain.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, when you’re old and wrinkly enough,’ I joked. Then I glanced at my watch. ‘Well, I think I’d better go and make myself decent now,’ I said, resting my mug down on the table.

  ‘You don’t ’ave to go yet; you’ve still got time,’ he said, whilst holding up his wrist and flashing his chunky wristwatch.

  ‘You don’t have make-up and hair to worry about, so that’s why you still have time,’ I replied, getting up to leave.

  ‘’Old on; let me ’elp you,’ he said. I had no idea what he meant. He reached out with my napkin and gently held my face with one hand as he dabbed my cheek with the other. I could feel myself blushing. ‘A bit of sauce, I think.’

  I don’t know how long I stood there staring, but I managed to blurt out, ‘See you later,’ before darting out of there. Damn, how could I have been so careless to have left sauce over my cheek? Next time, I’d check my whole face and not just my teeth.

  Back in my room, I thought more about the sauce incident. I’d fled when he touched me. A bit uncool. But I wasn’t trying to impress him. I didn’t think I was. No one had ever wiped my face before apart from my mum, when I was a kid, obviously.

  I threw on my uniform, all except for the tights, which called for careful handling to avoid ladders. Almost everyone complained about the uniform, but I liked it. The navy-blue colour suited me, and the skirt highlighted my waist and hips, revealing a pleasing silhouette, like the 1960s fashion icon Brigitte Bardot, or so I thought. When the jacket was buttoned, it pulled in just enough to accentuate my waist. The blouse was a pale sky blue. We wore a patterned scarf, with contrasting flecks of white, which wrapped around and draped across one shoulder. The tights were tan coloured, just dark enough that if you’d forgotten to give your legs the once-over with a razor, you could just about get away with it. But I’d never tested out that theory for more than a couple of days and then only if I’d been in too much of a rush. The shoes gave me a bit of height, making me almost five foot eight. It was all finished off with a daring dash of deep red lipstick, called red light, the type of colour I wore as a teenager to tart myself up during the red lipstick and high heels brigade phase in sixth form. Somehow, the lipstick suited the navy colour, and without it my face looked washed out. It also drew out my blue eyes. I loved my tarting stick and applied it with gusto along with a good liner so as not to get trout pout – where the lipstick sort of runs and makes me look dodgy, like I’ve applied it on a bumpy car journey. A dusting of powder completed the look. Then I tackled my hair and tied it into a neat bun, finished off with a light spritzing of spray to hold it in place. I rubbed Anni Sui perfume over my wrists and neck and then created a high up misty cloud of droplets to walk through just to perfect the overall finish, as was my routine. A heavy perfume was too much, I had learned. It made you smell like an overenthusiastic duty-free shopper, but an eau de toilette worked just long enough over the course of a day to linger nicely and cost less too. Good old toilet water. Picking up tips as I went along, looking polished was the game; the epitome of sexy sophistication was my aim. I got the whole art down to about thirty minutes, which wasn’t bad. Tossing the remainder of stuff that lay about my room into my wheelie case, I was good to go. I say tossing, but it was a well-thought-out method and logical manner that I could implement fast. It involved stuffing all available extra orifices, like shoes, to provide extra room.

  I headed to the foyer to meet the crew. Marc was sat reading a paper. I wondered if he’d since thought about wiping my face. He’d probably wiped loads of girls’ faces. He was French after all, I reminded myself. Didn’t the French dry hump their mates from a playground age? The napkin thing was probably nothing.

  We were all flying back to Birmingham (positioning) for an airport standby. We strolled over the road to the airport, wheeling our cabin bags. All of us attempted to keep a low profile in the airport lounge until boarding time.

  ‘Looks like we’re sitting next to each other,’ Marc said, as he reached down to pick up his pilot briefcase. ‘We can finish our earlier conversation.’ I wasn’t aware that we hadn’t finished our earlier conversation as he’d put it, so I just smiled. ‘Sorry, I just ’ave some administration which I ’ave to catch up on too,’ he added.

  Good, I thought. I wouldn’t wholly ignore him, but his paperw
ork was a valid reason not to have to chat the whole time. He told me about his degree in something properly intelligent sounding like aeronautical physics, which to me meant a degree in becoming a pilot, and I’m sure he mentioned maths at some point too. More concerned with what I was going to be wearing to a girls’ night out at the pub that evening with Emma, and mentally planning my outfit, I vaguely listened. Until I felt my tights catch on the Velcro patch inconveniently tucked underneath the seat edge, then I stopped listening altogether.

  Like a boobytrap, a continual strip of Velcro ran along the underside edge of the seat, holding a lifejacket in place. Industrial-strength tights would have been the only resistance against getting caught out. If I happened to tuck my stocking-clad legs close, I was guaranteed a ladder and mistakenly I did it every single time. At no point were anyone’s legs safe clad in anything less than 20 deniers. Fortunately, I wasn’t a passenger (positioning) too often, or it would have bankrupted me. The grooming allowance we were given wasn’t exactly compensation. Bulk buying in packs of five for £2.79 was the best bargain I ever found.

  ‘Oh, bugger it,’ I said.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Marc said, looking up and putting down his pen.

  ‘Just caught my tights on that bloody Velcro strip. I’m always doing that.’ I rubbed my fingers across the bumpy patch and the couple of holes it left after pulling free.

  Marc shifted his papers to one side and peered down at my legs. ‘Still look good to me,’ he said with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Well, maybe you could help and get my bag down from the locker whilst I whip these off for the replacement ones in my case,’ I said seriously.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, detecting my sense of humour loss.

  Marc’s eyes bulged. Obediently, he got up to bring down my case from the locker.

  ‘Don’t look,’ I said.

  He diverted his eyes. Wriggling in my seat, I was able to slip off my shoes, raise my thighs and part push down my tights by inserting my hand down through the waist of my skirt. Then I shimmied the tights down and in one swoop pulled them to my ankles. It was a similar procedure in reverse to replace them with a new pair.

  Tights were the bane of my life as cabin crew. If I managed to get through a day without laddering a pair, then typically I’d have holes in the toes from all the running around. The holes became big toe manglers and were so painful after a day on my feet. Anticipating the heavenly relief of freeing my toes made me rush to my car to tear open the tights, relieving my fat red toes from being pinched at having burst through. On hot days, the issue was amplified from sweaty toe swelling. Standby days were also bad news. Being called out on standby meant literally jumping into action. Putting on a pair of tights at speed was an impossibility, especially with long nails. Preservation of tights meant spending standby days dressed in them ready to go, just in case. The only benefit to wearing tights was the elasticated band at the top that pulled in my stomach like free liposuction when I’d gorged myself on too much crap / crew food – unidentifiable morsels in a hot silver packet with a cardboard lid.

  *

  Having arrived back in Birmingham, I took up residence on the leather sofa in the crew room.

  ‘What d’yu reckon? Is it my size?’ Jim poked his head through the clothes rails and had taken the opportunity to put on a blouse and skirt then started happily parading around in front of us in his socks. The radio was playing, and he was shaking his arse to It’s Raining Men and generally being outrageously camp and funny.

  ‘You’re such a fool,’ Becky said. ‘Anyone could walk in.’

  He didn’t care. I offered some encouragement. ‘Here, let me help you finish the look.’ I offered him my lipstick, which he couldn’t resist. Tying one of the scarves around his neck, he was all too pleased. He mimicked a trolley dolly walk and pose, before turning up the radio and going for it disco style, like an over-indulged child on Haribos.

  ‘Well, I ’ave to go back to Paris now. Nice chatting to you,’ Marc said with a raised voice over the sound of the radio as he stood over me. I was lying back on the sofa with my shoes kicked off, using a box as a footstool to rest my feet. Too comfortable to bother moving but also trying to act nonchalantly, brushing off the sauce incident, I didn’t move.

  ‘Have a good trip,’ I said, pretending to be distracted and raised one arm to give him a wave. The other was holding my mobile ready to text Emma about putting the fizzy wine in the fridge. Marc was just about to exit the room, having grabbed the door handle, when Jim rushed up to him from behind and gave him a whacking great slap on the arse. Instinctively, I drew a sharp breath in disbelief and cupped my face with my hands. You could tell it would have smarted. Jim stood still waiting for a reaction, possibly realising he’d overdone it. It could have gone either way. Marc turned around, gave him a harsh stare, then raised his middle finger before heading off. He was amazingly self-controlled.

  As the door closed, we all burst out laughing. Jim had felt the fear. He’d already stripped off his dressing-up clothes in record time.

  ‘Ouch,’ Becky said. ‘You went too far that time.’

  ‘Nah. He loved the attention. Anyway, just us girls now that your boyfriend’s gone,’ Jim said, trying to tease me.

  ‘What?’ I said, looking over my shoulder to catch an eyeful of too much bare flesh. Jim stood in his boxers, hastily trying to get his trousers back on.

  ‘Yeah. I noticed he was a bit friendly with you, chick,’ Becky said. ‘Clearly Marc came over to say bye to you, not us.’

  Getting up to check through the box of roster changes, I thought about Marc. He was kind of cute for a French guy, even if he wasn’t on my current hot list scale along with Brad Pitt.

  The phone rang. It was crewing. We all held our breath. Becky delivered the news that it wasn’t a call of duty. We were free to go.

  The Mother of All Roster Changes

  Crewing were nobody’s best friend. They determined your roster, and like the ultimate rulers – we obeyed. They also controlled the jinx factor – roster changes that turned plans to mush. It affected us all – getting screwed over with changes and forcing a reschedule of any social life. No one was immune. Crewing was a dirty word. An us and them scenario.

  Everyone hated doing Paris. The passengers were often difficult or rude, sometimes both. Those with armfuls of hand luggage provided a challenge, having raided duty free prior to boarding. Attempts to drag on oversized bags were a common occurrence. The situation was exasperated by telling passengers that their bag might fit into the overhead locker if they pushed hard enough. Slamming lockers shut was a regular irritation. Maybe because the flights were usually full, I noticed the annoyances more. But I didn’t flinch if a passenger was obnoxious. I’d developed a protective bubble. Attempts to burst it occasionally occurred with the exceptional moron. If a crew member was really pissed off, then the removal of bags for the hold easily infuriated some. Small things provided job satisfaction.

  Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) intimidated me – not something I liked to admit, being a professional flight attendant. But it was one of the largest airports in the world. Trying to decipher my way around, dressed in uniform, felt like I should have known what the hell I was doing. Ironically, I rarely did. People approached with questions, not realising I lacked basic navigation skills.

  Crew rooms were sometimes a devil to find. The Parisian room was no exception. The safety of my home base was always preferential. Contending with getting lost and experiencing a language barrier, all whilst under a time constraint, was stressful. Tiredness could amplify a bad situation, and sleep deprivation was an everyday normality, but at the wrong time of month, my capabilities lapsed, and it took some restraint not to sit on my wheelie case and cry.

  June 2003

  Thumbing through the roster change files, I spotted my name on paper and automatically I let out a tut. On closer inspection, it
was bad ass – first involving a positioning flight to Paris. Then operating four sectors followed by a night-stop in Paris. The jinx factor, I mumbled to myself as my shoulders slumped. There was only one potential upside. The remote possibility of seeing Marc. But it wasn’t likely. Any pilot could have been tasked with working out of Paris.

  It should have been an easy day with shuttle runs to Dublin. But it was too late to sack it off, swap the duty or even go sick. Putting my CDG fears to one side, I reluctantly put on my fluorescent vest to go airside. Locating someone available in the air car shed – a bit like a man cave where mainly men playing on walkie-talkies hung out – I was taken directly to the aircraft. That action averted the first potential trauma of finding the right aircraft. Several were parked up on stand.

  ‘We’re delayed,’ said a whispering voice from an unfamiliar crew member as I entered the cabin. The passengers had already boarded.

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ I replied.

  It was no surprise – an epic day being made even longer with a further delay. The captain announced that we’d missed our air traffic control slot. Code for a very long boring wait ahead. It didn’t really matter to me. My plans for the evening had already turned to dust. It reminded me to text Emma to cancel our night at the pub, again. I wasn’t reliable anymore. She’d probably be expecting it. And as she used to say, it let her know that although I hadn’t been seen in a while, I wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere, undiscovered, which was another saying she occasionally repeated after hearing my mum say it.

  Feeling conspicuous in my uniform, I located my seat. The mature lady next to me glanced my way, probably eager to ask when we’d take off. We politely smiled and nodded at each other and thankfully she didn’t ask.

  The regular sound of the call bell indicated the rising level of passenger intolerance. The operating crew members were doing well fending off irritable passengers, mostly getting grief about connecting flights. The only places to escape were the galley – behind the tiny curtain – or the loos. I opted for the galley every time. Someone always wanted the loo.