Up Up and Away

by Nesta Tuomey

  After that, whenever their passions looked like getting out of hand he was always the one to call a halt.

  Kay was still taking the Pill and it had seemed such a terrible waste of all her efforts not to be taking some advantage of it. However it was not long before something unforeseen had occurred, forcing her to stop taking the contraceptive and she was now back to square one where lovemaking was concerned.

  She frowned remembering the evening three weeks earlier when she had returned to Carrick Road just in time to see her cousin’s car pulling away. Later as she got ready for bed, Kay had noticed something different about her room and then, with a great plummeting swoop of her heart, realised that Pendy was no longer perched on her pillow.

  Sam! she thought in dismay.

  Chaos had followed Winifred’s discovery that her son had Kay’s Pill which he had soon uncovered inside the furry white bear. ‘Look Mummy, he has sweets inside,’ innocently drawing attention on the drive home.

  ‘You may think you’re a woman of the world,’ Winifred had berated her when she came down especially from Kilshaughlin to impress upon Kay the error of her ways. ‘but you are just cheapening yourself, making yourself available to men.’

  And Mary had smugly told her grandmother, ‘Mummy says Auntie Kay isn’t a fit person to mind us anymore.’

  Beyond remarking in the weary tones of one who cannot repeat it too often, ‘Girls are very foolish. I’m always telling you to mind yourself,’ Molly said very little.

  Kay winced as she remembered the saddened expression which had accompanied Molly’s words. It had pained her far more than all Winifred’s tirades. Her cousin had finally left, declaring sanctimoniously that she would hold on to the contraceptive rather than offend her conscience by returning to Kay the means for further sinning.

  Since Kay had stopped taking the Pill the extra few pounds she had gained, had thankfully melted away but she suffered severe tummy cramps, ending in a scanty kind of period, and her mood swings left her feeling edgy and depressed. If she could have confided in Graham it would have been a great relief, but after all the fuss he had made over her going on the Pill in the first place, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

  That her pilot did not possess a sense of humour was something Kay had not recognised. She knew only that there was an area where their minds did not quite comfortably meet, some gap which no amount of passion ever filled. Not that Graham was totally devoid of humour, or incapable of appreciating a joke. He had quite a fund of funny stories which he told remarkably well. It was rather that he didn’t have the gift for seeing the ridiculous in a given situation. The kind of thing which could, despite the tragic elements, reduce Kay to the point of giggling helplessness, remained for him merely a sordid or regrettable incident.

  A sudden hush fell on the classroom and Kay was recalled to her surroundings as the Hostess Superintendent got to her feet to begin her winding-up speech. Five minutes later the lunch was over and clearing-up operations begun.

  It was a coincidence that Boeing and BAC-1-11 training ended on the same day as the group’s first anniversary with Celtic Airways. Kay and Sally went to the canteen to sober up on strong coffee, and sat there eying the new trainee hostesses self-consciously strolling past the canteen window.

  ‘Were we as new and gauche only a year ago?’ Sally wondered with a laugh. ‘Poor them! Wouldn’t you hate to be starting over again, Kay? It seems like centuries ago.’

  ‘Definitely another lifetime,’ Kay agreed with a heartfelt sign. She was visited by an image of Graham’s dark sardonic eyes resting on some new would-be hostess the way they had first rested on her and felt almost sick with jealousy.

  Dusk was beginning to fall on the airport when they left the canteen and bussed it into town. There they bought a bottle of wine to mark the occasion and a delicious Monument Creamery marzipan cream cake before heading back to Carrick Road.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sally whispered curiously as they passed Mandy Fuller on the stairs. Molly’s newest lodger was dressed as usual in a luridly-coloured sheath dress with the usual amount of jingling bangles and beads wrapped snake-like about her plump throat and wrists.

  ‘Oh, just someone staying here,’ Kay replied, uneasily reminded of Florrie’s claim that the woman was bringing men into her room at night. She dismissed Mandy from her mind and brought Sally into her room. They sat on the bed sipping wine, and were soon joined by Florrie, who had heard the sounds of merriment.

  ‘Beattie is totally mad,’ Sally opined about their BAC training officer. ‘She really flipped her lid today before the demo lunch. She and Betty went on a protest march around the prefabs carrying banners scrawled with ‘Free Celtic Air Slaves’ and ‘Down with Celtic Tyranny’. It was an absolute panic.’

  Kay giggled in sympathy. ‘Judy Mathews is obsessed with body beautiful,’ she offered. ‘And what a body!’ Sally sighed.

  ‘And what a jalopy,’ Florrie added. All the girls envied Judy’s Jaguar.

  Actually, Kay found Judy Mathews’ attitude to glamour a bit of an enigma. While she herself worked at every aspect of her own appearance with the intention of devastating men (and Graham Pender in particular) the Chief Hostess’s apparent indifference to male reaction, made all her meticulous preparations seem pointless somehow, rather like concocting a delicious souffle never intended for consumption.

  The girls continued sipping their wine and swapping stories until Kay got out her photograph of a young Captain Pender taken on holiday and showed it around.

  ‘The absolute image of Laurence Oliver,’ Florrie decided. ‘He’s fabulous,’ Sally agreed. ‘What a pity he’s married.’

  But she said it with such regret that Kay couldn’t be offended. ‘I suppose he’ll be taking off any day now on winter leave.’

  The inevitability of separation from her lover at this time of year was something Kay still had to face.

  ‘I’m going back to Spain,’ Sally declared. ‘It was such fun last time. Will you ever forget the night the Spaniards followed Bunny?’

  Kay grinned, though at the time it was anything but funny.

  Sally squeezed her arm impulsively, ‘Kay, why don’t you come back with me. We’ll have a ball.’

  In retrospect, it did seem the perfect holiday. The absence of trips to the beach and Bunny’s chip-making and lachrymose singing suddenly became rather lovable idiosyncrasies.

  Even Jose, who had been decidedly boorish, appeared romantic from a distance. Yes, perhaps she would go, Kay decided, swayed as much by wine as sentiment, while Sally continued glorifying their first holiday abroad. Caught up in their enthusiasm Florrie suggested that she might accompany them.

  It remained for Kay to find out Graham’s holiday plans. She reckoned he would take at least three weeks off and she didn’t want to be away a minute longer than he was. Next time they met she would ask him, then she could begin making some plans of her own.

  THIRTY SIX

  But Captain Pender intended taking a whole month away, possibly longer. Kay could hardly believe her ears as she listened to him casually planning to spend that length of time in Tenerife with his wife and another airline couple.

  ‘But why so long?’ she wailed.

  She hated the aggrieved, whining note in her voice but was powerless to disguise it. Secretly, she had cherished the hope that he wouldn’t be able to stay away from her for more than a week or two. It was a bitter blow to hear his true intentions.

  ‘Don’t be cross,’ he coaxed. ‘It was all arranged months ago. I’d give anything to be with you instead.’

  Huh! Kay thought cynically, what’s to stop you then?

  They were sitting in his car in their old trysting spot on the mountainside. Darkness pressed closely on the curving windows of the sports car and far below the city lights were a myriad of golden dots.

  Kay frowned. While it was gratifying to hear him say how much he would miss her, surely three weeks was more than enough to be away with a wife
he professed not to love. Not for the first time, she felt aggrieved at having to unquestioningly accept that the other woman’s whims and desires must always take precedence over hers.

  ‘Oh well, perhaps I’ll take extended leave myself and stay on in Spain like some of the others are doing,’ she said peevishly, wanting to take out her frustration and hurt on him.

  The minute the words were out she regretted them.

  ‘Perhaps you should do that.’ Captain Pender’s voice was icy. He withdrew his arm.

  Listen... I didn’t mean it!’ Kay stammered. How could she have been so childish? ‘I...I love you,’ she blurted, and felt as if her only advantage was gone. Up to this, she had prudently kept from admitting it, except in the heat of passion and then, only when his own warm avowal had gone before.

  ‘You are very dear to me, Kitty.’ He kissed her brow and regarded her almost sadly, ‘Nevertheless, I think you should take extended leave. Go off for a few months. See a bit of the world. I don’t want to stand in your way.’

  ‘But I don’t care about seeing the world,’ she protested.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he answered, smiling. ‘Isn’t that why you joined an airline in the first place?’

  No, Kay cried inwardly, it was to meet you. And it was true, she had made up her mind - a lifetime ago it seemed - to meet and fall in love with the pilot of her dreams.

  ‘Well, now’s the time to travel, not when you’re an old married lady with six children,’ Graham went on chidingly. ‘By then it’ll be too late... unless your husband is very rich and more than accommodating.’

  It burned Kay to hear him disposing of her without a qualm to the arms of some other man when he was the only husband she wanted. It was all too clear how little he saw their futures bound together. She wanted to cry.

  Instead feigning weary amusement, she drawled, ‘Six! My goodness, isn’t that rather a lot in this day and age?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ Graham shrugged. ‘Anyone married to you, my lovely Kitty, might find it hard to be sensible.’

  His eyes darkened with desire as he reached out to fondle her breasts. ‘Darling,’ he murmured as he undid the fastenings of her blouse and snaked his tongue across the soft swell of flesh to flutter the erect tips.

  Dizzily Kay looked down at his head pressed against her and almost of its own violation, her hand lifted to rest in the dark curling hair. As always when he lay on her breast, his hair brushing her skin, her body was pervaded by a feeling of weakness as though not bone but floppy liquorice supported her limbs. She gasped, no longer knowing her mind under his caressing tongue and fingertips, all her earlier resentment forgotten as he lowered the seats and they fell back sprawling, mouth on mouth.

  ‘How will I ever bear to be parted from you,’ Graham groaned, his hands easing her skirt over her hips.

  Shaken by an answering lust, Kay was uncaring that she was quite naked as she clung to him and fiercely returned his kisses.

  He was heavy on her. She wriggled to shift her weight but he insinuated his leg between hers, forcing her thighs apart. His breath came in tearing gasps as though he were in sudden decompression at forty thousand feet.

  ‘Darling, be careful,’ she whispered urgently, feeling as though a stranger held her. She struggled fiercely to put distance between them but still the jabbing pressure continued.

  ‘Don’t!’ she screamed suddenly, squirming helplessly to be rid of the maddening, agonizing thing causing such pain. The searing abomination continued for an eternity and all the time she was conscious of an outraged disbelief that he could hurt her so terribly.

  When at last he fell back she dragged herself upright, whimpering, with shocked tears stinging her eyes. She found her panties squeezed down the side of the seat and without looking at him, pulled them on. With trembling fingers she pulled the rest of her clothes together and sat with bowed head, feeling sick.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I got carried away,’ Graham confessed in a low voice. ‘I did warn you,’ he added soberly, pulling his sweater over his head.

  When Kay remained silent he asked uneasily; ‘It is all right, isn’t it? I mean there’s no danger...’

  Kay heard her own voice recounting the feeble story about Pendy and Sam as though it belonged to someone else.

  In the days following her deflowerment, Kay felt as if the shameful difference in her must be evident to all. To think she had trusted Graham and all he could say was, ‘I warned you,’ in that cold unfeeling voice. She felt belittled and unloved.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  Two weeks later as Kay was packing for Spain she glanced back over her diary and uneasily realised that her period was late. Oh God! she groaned, feeling sick to the pit of her stomach. She just had to be pregnant.

  She jumped up and paced about the room panic assailing her. How would she face everyone if she were pregnant! She would go to England and never come back. How could she have been so unlucky!

  Putting her head down Kay burst into overwrought sobs. She had no one to turn to. Graham had headed off on winter leave without contacting her again. What a bastard, not ever to send a note after what happened.

  Catching sight of her ravaged face in the mirror, she was appalled. She splashed cold water on her tearstained cheeks and applied fresh make up, aware of a heavy, cramped feeling in her stomach and a painful tenderness in her breasts. Maybe she wasn’t pregnant after all. Oh God, only let her period come and she would never so much as look at a man again.

  She slipped on her suede jacket and went downstairs to tell her aunt she would be back for tea.

  ‘Very well, dear,’ Molly put up her face for her niece’s kiss.

  Kay pressed her lips to the wrinkled cheek, struck by how old her aunt was looking. It was clear that the recent upset over Mandy Fuller had left its mark.

  Florrie’s suspicions about Mandy had turned out to be correct. She had been caught trying to smuggle a sailor into the house. Aided and abetted by Molly’s electricity saving campaign, he was stealing softly upstairs when Florrie, floating eerily on the landing in a long white nightie, scared the stripes off his blouse and sent him hornpiping so fast back down the stairs that he was lucky he didn’t break his neck as well as the bottle he was carrying. The noise had awakened the whole house but by the time Molly got downstairs, Mandy’s lover had taken off and Mandy herself was in bed, feigning sleep.

  A few days later she had been unable to resist bringing in another man. In outrage, Molly had gone across the street to enlist the help of Sergeant Kelly. Although ten years retired from the force, he had obligingly donned his garda uniform and returned with her to give Mandy her walking papers.

  To Kay it had been like something out of a French farce. The Lover, another able seaman by the look of him, erupted from Mandy’s bedroom with the Sergeant after him, and within the hour Mandy was sent packing too. It had been and awful shock to poor Molly. She had lost all her bounce and was showing no interest whatever in re-letting the room.

  Alighting from the bus in O’Connell Street, Kay quickly made her few purchases. In her downcast state she felt none of her usual desire to linger and have coffee in Bewleys, or stroll down Henry Street window-shopping. Within the hour she was sitting in the number sixteen bus speeding homewards. Staring glumly out the window, she played a frustrating little game. If the bus halted at a traffic-light she was pregnant; if they sped through, she was not. When they gone through five green lights, she felt ridiculously exhilarated. Then her spirits plummeted. What difference did traffic-lights make to her condition.

  Later that evening Kay went downstairs and found Florrie entertaining Dave in the kitchen. Her friend was comparing Mandy Fuller to her English namesake Mandy Rice Davies, who had made newspaper headlines a few years earlier. Florrie had nicknamed Molly’s erstwhile lodger Randy Mice Fuller, which so amused Dave that he burst into roars of laughter.

  It was a good joke, Kay thought, wishing she had been the one to think of it. She watched t
hem for a moment and jealously wondered if Dave was falling for Florrie.

  ‘Mrs. Begley caught them at it,’ Florrie was saying. ‘Only she saw the carry-on with her own two eyes, she would never have believed it.’

  Dave grinned and moved his chair to make room for Kay. He had been quick to grasp the humour of the Lover and listened attentively as Florrie led up to the climax of Sergeant Kelly’s uniformed entry.

  That was one of the nice things about him, Kay thought, his quick appreciation of humour. She put aside her gloomy thoughts and entered into their lighthearted mood, gaily contributing her own share of what had happened. When her description of the Lover won Dave’s amused applause, she felt ridiculously pleased.

  Encouraged by her success, she launched into an amusing string of airport stories, describing the epileptic aboard the London/Shannon flight she had shared with Florrie. She finished off by quoting Judy Mathews’ tongue-twisting cocktail blunder, ‘Give me the ingredients for a whisky sour, Miss Martini, please.’

  ‘She never did,’ Dave protested with a grin.

  As Kay returned his grin, she was fascinated by the dimple flickering in his cheek and wondered why she had never noticed it before. In the giddy mood which had suddenly struck her overcharged spirits, it seemed both vulnerable and unbearably sweet. She was at a loss to understand her emotions but somehow it was all bound up in his lean jaw and the way his lashes darkly fringed his deep set grey eyes. She was filled with a sad wasted feeling, as if these charms, so lately appreciated were infinitely precious and, moreover, reserved for someone worthier than she. She fell silent as Florrie got up to make more tea.

  It was cosy in the kitchen. For once Peg had been foiled and there was bread for toast as well as a slice of apple cake.

  ‘Go on take it,’ Florrie pressed it on Dave. ‘You need feeding, boy.’ She cut up the last of the batch loaf to make a heap of buttered toast, the light striking gold in her curling hair. ‘God help me if Peg comes in and catches me,’ she giggled. ‘She’ll go over straight away for Sergeant Kelly and I’ll be made leave this dacent woman’s establishment.’