by Nesta Tuomey
Some chance, Maura thought as she watched Oliver’s frowning expression. A change of blouse between flights and a touch of cologne was going to be the most any of her hostesses could hope for. She felt a slow burn of anger. It really was a disgracefully short-sighted policy.
‘Well, I’m afraid you ladies will just have to hang on a little longer,’ the Chief Executive dismissed them, getting briskly to his feet and coming round his desk. ‘Round about next April we’ll meet and discuss the situation again.’
Left to McGrattan, they would still be in the prefabs in the nineteen nineties, Maura thought in despair as she followed her colleagues from the room. There was no doubt but the man was a master of delay tactics.
Outside the three women stood for a moment to chat before returning to the hostess section. Unable to bear a post-mortem, Maura soon excused herself and headed rapidly for the canteen. Glancing at her watch, she decided she had time for a quick coffee before attending the hostess debates and interviews scheduled to take place that morning in Griffith House, the crew training centre.
A few miles from Dublin Airport the last of the twenty girls scheduled to attend the Celtic Airways debates and interviews that day was hurrying breathlessly towards the main road, intent on catching the 8.40 airport bus. As she hurried along, Kay Martin was unhappily aware that she had spent too long titivating in front of her mirror and was almost certainly bound to miss the bus. There wasn’t another for twenty minutes.
Kay had got up early to give herself enough time to pin up her dark hair and apply her make-up with extra care before dressing in the cherry-coloured suit and spindle heels she had bought especially for the occasion. She had arranged the day before for a friend to phone her in sick and taken the day off work. No one at home or at work knew she had applied to the airline. She had deliberately kept it a secret. With all the competition she was up against there was no guarantee she would be successful and she didn’t want to look foolish if she were turned down.
Now as luck would have it who should she bump into, as she hurried along all togged out in her finery and wearing the hat Dave Mason’s sister had made such a compliment of lending her, but Mrs. Halpin, the biggest gossip on Carrick Road. Kay’s heart sank, miserably conscious of how conspicuous she must look in the eye-catching hat.
It was a big wide-brimmed affair with floating velvet ribbons, like something you would see on Ladies Day at the Curragh and made her head prickle with heat so that every minute she had to fight an impulse not to snatch it off. Only for a superstitious conviction she stood a better chance at the interview wearing a hat, Kay would never have bothered with it at all.
‘Howya, Kath-leen,’ the old woman crackled, ‘What has you all tarted up this time of day. On yer way to the races?’ her shrewd old eyes lit maliciously on Kay’s headpiece.
‘No, just into town.’ It irked Kay having to answer the woman at all but the old busybody had a terrible tongue and there was no knowing what she might say to her aunt when they met.
‘Are yer on yer holliers then,’ Ginny persisted, challenged rather than discouraged by Kay’s sudden burst of speed. Her thin old legs in their split suede boots shuffled even faster, the empty shopping bag flying jerkily up and down on her crooked arm.
‘Must be a hot date whoever he is. Go on! I won’t keep yer.’
Mercifully, Kay had not missed the bus after all. Ahead of her it drew up and waited a little beyond the stop as constricted by slim skirt and four-inch heels, she made a last hobbled dash, Ginny’s valedictory blast in her ears, ‘Yer only young once. Make the most of it.’
Gasping, Kay accepted the grinning conductor’s outstretched hand and allowed herself to be hauled panting aboard.
‘Ooh, that hat!’ he sighed and hit the bell with his clenched fist.
As the bus lurched forward, Kay staggered, caught off-guard, and felt herself tenderly gripped from behind.
‘Easy does it, alannah.’
Blinkered by the hat, she shrugged herself free and tottered to the only empty seat between two gossiping women holding bulging grey Celtic Airways kitbags on their stout laps, their hair in plastic rollers beneath their headscarves.
‘Fares, please.’ The conductor approached and rolling her ticket, sang in irritating falsetto, ‘I had a bonnet trimmed with blue. Do I wear it, yes I do ...’
Blast him and blast this stupid hat, Kay groaned inwardly.
Feeling distinctly overdressed, she grimly sat it out as the bus rattled through Santry on its way to the airport. Supposing she was the only one at the interview wearing a hat, she thought. Oh God! it didn’t bear thinking!
A mini gale was blowing as Kay alighted at the airport terminal and following the instructions in her interview letter, walked in the direction of Griffith House. She had to ask the way several times and eventually arrived, feeling windblown and conspicuous, at the green sward set back from the main highway. Clutching her hat low on her forehead, she hurried up the narrow path set amidst neat borders of late-flowering petunias, with only one thought in mind - to repair the damage to her hair and make-up before anyone saw her.
In the washroom, Kay viewed her reflection in horrified dismay. The soigne look she had been to such pains to create that morning had quite gone, vanished in the wake of the malicious wind that buffeted the airport on all but the balmiest days of summer. Now she understood why all those women workers on the bus had kept their hair so unattractively rollered until the last minute. She wished she had been so wise, or had even the sense to tie on a scarf.
‘Damned climate!’ she swore. Making a quick decision, she pulled off the awful black hat and ruthlessly stripped away the velvet ribbon, unconcerned just then how she would explain to its owner the mutilation of her best hat. Trembling in her haste, she tied the long ribbon into a floppy artistic bow, then removed the tortoiseshell slide from the pleat of hair on her neck and shook down her hair. Released, the glossy waves fell smoothly to her shoulders. When she clipped the makeshift bow midway on the back of her head, the effect was at once pleasing and unfussy.
Satisfied, she stared at herself in the brightly lit mirror. At least now she had a face. Her black fringed eyes stared steadily and a little boldly back. Nothing venture, nothing gain, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she had flouted convention altogether. She had conformed to a degree.
Shoving the butchered hat behind the washstand with the intention of redeeming it later and feeling much relieved to be rid of it, Kay hurried out to the corridor. There she followed the sign marked Hostesses and quickly entering the interview room, slipped self-consciously into the one remaining chair at the huge mahogany table around which set nineteen other girls of her own age.
As she did so, her neighbour, a pretty blonde with a gleaming pageboy hair-do turned to give her a friendly smile. Kay returned the smile and relaxed in her seat, glad that she was not late after all. And that she had got rid of the ghastly hat - a real stroke of inspiration, seeing as none of the other candidates was wearing one.
She glanced about her and recognising no one from her first interview didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad. The room they sat in was large and the walls were panelled in the same rich coloured wood as the table. On the polished surface several heavy glass ashtrays were scattered. So they were not to be denied the solace of a smoke. Thank God, she sighed in relief.
From the way they were grouped, it looked as though there was to be a discussion of some kind. Kay studied the faces of those nearest her, seeking some clue, but apart from the friendly blonde’s initial greeting, none of them paid her any heed as they chatted in low voices amongst themselves.
She glanced away, depressed. Everyone seemed very well in with everyone else. Where had they all met before, she wondered. On the bus to the airport? Too much of a coincidence to believe they were all friends from childhood, she mused cynically. Her stomach rumbled painfully, reminding her that she had neglected to have any breakfast before coming out. She glanced at her watch a
nd saw it was getting on for twenty to ten. What was holding things up? Nervously she wished they would get a move on.
Maura Kane, sitting at a small table at the top of the room with the Personnel Manager and the Hostess Administrator, unwittingly shared the same thought. She was aware that until the Hostess Superintendent made her appearance the first scheduled debate for that morning could not get underway.
This system of round-table debates had been devised by the Superintendent some years earlier when she maintained that they gave the best character clue as to the class of girl they were considering taking into the airline as air hostesses.
Maura gave a surreptitious glance at her watch. She had come straight from the canteen to Griffith House expecting to find her superior there before her and was now very conscious that they were running behind time. She looked up to find the Personnel Manager’s inquiring gaze upon her and met his eyes with a rueful shrug. It wasn’t like the Superintendent to be late, she thought. She decided to give her another five minutes before taking action.
In her office in the hostess section, Amy Curtis, the Hostess Superintendent, sighed and lifted her feet on to the little brocaded footstool she had dragged from under her desk. She was aware that she should have left five minutes earlier to attend the hostess debates but her mind was still dwelling on the recent meeting in the Chief Executive’s office and she found it difficult to bestir herself.
Besides she was feeling tired, all the fuss and strain of hostess recruitment over the past weeks beginning to tell on her. Given a choice that minute, she told herself, she would have headed straight for home and happily gone to bed for the afternoon. If only she could!
She let her grey head fall back wearily against her chair and with closed eyes reviewed the morning’s meeting which had ended so disappointingly. Unlike the European and Atlantic Chief Hostesses, the Superintendent had not placed a whole lot of hope in the outcome of the meeting with the Chief Executive, nor when it had followed on predictable lines had she echoed their frustrated indignation. McGrattan had acted much as she expected - displaying a healthy respect for number one and making sure that his first year of office would reassure the Board of Directors of their good choice in appointing him the new head of Celtic Airways. The Superintendent couldn’t entirely blame him. No doubt when he was more secure in his job, Oliver would give them their new hostess quarters.. In the meantime they would all just have to tighten their belts and hang on. Well, she for one wouldn’t have any difficulty.
Of the Spartan school, Amy Curtis was used to making sacrifices and felt that a certain amount of them were good for the human character. Today’s cabin crew wanted everything at once and with the minimum of effort. They were so much better off, if they only knew it, compared with the hostesses before them.
She often wondered how they would cope with a flight to Lourdes in an unpressurised Bristol Wayfarer loaded with stretcher cases, as their predecessors in the fifties had been forced to do. Although she had never been an air hostess herself she knew what she was talking about having done a good bit of flying in her capacity as Celtic Airways PR Officer. Briefly, she recalled the ugly, big plane bucketing uncomfortably through bad weather, with everyone throwing up. It had been a bit of a nightmare, she honestly admitted, especially when compared with the speed and comfort of today’s jets.
‘Better get a move on,’ she advised herself, fighting the temptation to stay where she was. Resolutely she kicked the footstool out of sight and struggled up. She was way behind schedule. Oh well! The day would be long enough for them all by the time it was over, she absolved herself, as she slipped into the jacket of her Hardy Amies suit and smoothed her hair.
THREE
With the arrival of the Hostess Superintendent proceedings in Griffith House got underway at last.
‘Boarding Schools Versus Day Schools,’ intoned the Hostess Administrator in relief. She was elegantly dressed in a tailored silk suit and spike heels. Kay remembered her from the first hostess interview.
With one slim eyebrow raised, she queried, ‘Now who will lead off?’ Everyone about the big table stopped talking and sat up.
What’s trumps? Kay felt like asking, as her companions wriggled self-consciously in their seats and reached eagerly for their cigarettes. She waited for some daring soul to get the debate going, and shot a curious glance at the stern-looking woman in the mannishly severe pinstripe suit who was settling into her seat between the attractive-looking blonde woman with the Sassoon cut and the white-haired man with untidy eyebrows. As Kay watched he deferentially inclined his ear to what the older woman was saying. She was obviously someone high up, Kay decided. The minute she had appeared proceedings had begun at once.
‘Boarding schools foster team spirit,’ a bony-looking girl with a deep fringe earnestly led off.
‘Boarding schools are the only hope for children from broken homes,’ came from a girl with an enormous white collar like a puritan.
‘Absolutely,’ her neighbour supported her with a conspiratorial smirk, the pair of them obviously in collusion.
Kay decided to root for day schools having been to one herself and knowing very little about the other. Anyone she had ever spoken to about boarding school had said it was like being in prison - you spent all your time planning what to do when you escaped and then went stone mad in the holidays.
She bided her time before taking the plunge, barely listening to what her companions were saying. When she eventually screwed up her courage and broke in with, ‘Well, I’m completely against boarding schools,’ her voice was nervously pitched too high and she blushed in embarrassment as heads swung round.
Taking a deep breath, Kay firmly continued, ‘Mainly because you miss out on home life at the most important stage of growing up.’
She was aware she was getting a lot of attention from the other table and from the older woman in particular. Her face burned self-consciously as she determinedly kept going.
‘At least when you attend day school, you have the chance to live a more natural life in the heart of your family. You get the corners knocked off ‘and you have to learn to give and take. T here are times when you don’t get what you want because there are others besides yourself to consider. But in a way that’s no bad thing.’
She said a lot more about the joys of family life before ending firmly, ‘Anyway I think it is a lot better than living in an institution any day!’
As her voice trembled to a stop, Kay realised that she had made it sound as though she were one of a large family. But so what? She honestly did believe what she was saying. It was what she had learnt firsthand from living with her rather eccentric Aunt Molly.
Kay supposed that in a sense she came from a broken home. Not from parents divided by incompatibility, but by death. Kay had been orphaned when she was ten years old having tragically lost both parents in a boating accident. Her aunt had then taken her to live in her big rambling old house on Dublin’s northside.
Amiable and gregarious, Molly ran a haphazard kind of boarding house in Carrick Road, more for company than profit and couldn’t have been kinder to Kay if she had been her own child. There were some who would say that Molly Begley was hardly a stable person to have charge of a ten year old orphan and in the circumstances, boarding school life would have been infinitely preferable but Kay had been glad of a second chance at home life. Her aunt’s generous act had made this possible and it wasn’t something she would ever forget, or cease to be grateful for.
In the hush that followed, Amy Curtis said gravely, ‘Thank you, Miss Martin. I must say, you have put a very strong case for home life and day schools.’
Now that Kay had led the way there was a rush to support her views, everyone at the table suddenly remembering there were two sides to the debate. Home life was sacrosanct; boarding school unnatural and restrictive.
As the session progressed the room became unbearably warm, with curls of smoke joining to form a low ceiling. It was a relief when th
e session came to an end and Kay was able to get away from them all and breathe the cooler air in the corridor. As she leaned on her elbows on the window sill and stared tiredly at cars whizzing down the airport road, she heard a slightly incredulous voice from behind her.
‘Did you really mean all you said in there?’
Turning, she saw the blonde girl who had smiled at her earlier. Reddening a little under the other’s amused scrutiny, Kay answered a little stiffly, ‘I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.’
‘Just wondered.’ The girl whose name was Sally laughed good-humouredly and offered Kay a cigarette, snapping her lighter beneath the tips and inhaling deeply.
Kay stared. Two counts for envy. She didn’t own a lighter and had never inhaled in her life. The most she could do was bring the smoke down her nose, which she did now to restore her equilibrium. No, three! she amended, regarding Sally’s smooth bell of wheaten hair.
‘What do you make of that crowd in there?’ Kay answered cautiously. ‘Not a lot.’
‘Licks all of them,’ Sally’s laugh was derisive. ‘I think boarding school life is best because it encourages you to keep the dorm tidy. I mean I ask you? What rubbish!’
She laughed again in her throaty way, as if afflicted by a not-too serious attack of laryngitis. A bell rang.
‘Back to school like good little girls,’ Sally sighed, stubbing out her cigarette and leading the way.
‘Buy Irish and Save The Economy’ was the subject of the second debate. Kay played safe and stayed out of the limelight, amazed at how many ignored the dictates of commonsense and advocated Italian knits and leather goods over tweeds and brogues. She supposed if she were being truthful it was how she herself spent her hard-earned cash but it didn’t seem the time for such honesty.
The morning wore away. At one distance removed, the watchful trio murmured quietly, marking their cards like punters at a race meeting.