by Betty Beaty
At first, the barley sugars, the coloured fruit drops and the packets of chewing gum had helped. Then Patsy had found a small advertising model of an aircraft (of much more manageable proportions than the one he was flying in) which he still clutched in his hand. But as the lights of London fell back and then died away under their starboard wing, and the four yellow-tailed engines continued their steady roar towards the black sky ahead, Timothy Branston began to whimper.
‘Perhaps he’ll go to sleep,’ Patsy suggested, sitting herself down in the seat in front of the two of them, and smiling cheerfully to show that the thin banshee noise of a frightened child’s wailing was disturbing to no one. ‘Let me read him a story, while you have a cup of coffee.’ She went back quickly, poured a cup from the urn, sifted quickly through the pile of children’s books suitable for a five-year-old, and then walked leisurely down the few paces of the aisle to the Branstons’ seats. ‘Coffee, Mrs. Branston?’ she said, handing her a small tray. ‘Biscuits are there if you’d like them.’
Mrs. Branston’s tired eyes brightened. ‘It’s the first time he’s been in an aeroplane,’ she said apologetically, and sipped her coffee gratefully. ‘We’re going out to join my husband, in Montreal...’ and her voice trailed away.
There were about three different categories of travellers, Patsy thought sadly, flipping over the pages of the book to see if there was an illustration that would catch Timothy’s lacklustre eye. The business-men or women, hustling and brisk, the pleasure travellers, anxious to get the most out of every minute, and the rather sad band of emigrants, taking their last look at the lights of London, leaning back to see the misty outline of Britain’s coast. She didn’t have to ask which one Mrs. Branston belonged to.
‘This one?’ she asked Timothy, pointing to a story about horses, and he nodded politely and obligingly, staring straight ahead of him until she’d finished.
‘Another one?’ Patsy asked, but this time Timothy shook his head.
‘It’s all been a bit of an upheaval these last few months. And then saying goodbye to his granny, and...’ Mrs. Branston looked away from the porthole where the small precious miles of England were spinning away so quickly under her feet.
‘But you’ll love it in Montreal!’ Patsy said warmly. ‘It’s a wonderful place. It’s the last of what they call the fall there now, and the trees have been the most glorious scarlet and gold. And there’s wooden huts, Timothy, just like Davy Crockett cabins. And in the winter, you’ll see horses pulling along sleighs with little bells tinkling away across the snow, just like Father Christmas...’
‘Any bears?’ Timothy asked, brightening a little.
‘We-ell,’ said Patsy, not sure whether this would be exactly cheering news, ‘sometimes up in the mountains...’
She became aware of a flicker of interest among the passengers at the front, the herald as always of a visit from the flight deck. Patsy looked up to see Captain Prentice, hat correctly in line and gloves neatly tucked under his arm, doing his first courtesy round of the passengers. She had just time to extricate herself from her seat in front of the Branstons and be at least standing before Captain Prentice was bowing slightly and saying, ‘Everything all right, madam?’ with a swift sideways look at Patsy to ask her plainly what she thought she was doing lounging in the seats with the passengers.
‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ Mrs. Branston said gratefully. ‘We’re being very well looked after.’ She gave Patsy her sweet tired smile. ‘And it’s nice,’ she went on, ‘to talk to someone who knows so much about Montreal ... and about Canada altogether,’ she corrected herself, seeing like Patsy, Captain Prentice’s look of undisguised surprise.
‘Good,’ he said politely, as he moved on to the passengers behind her.
The Captain’s round gave Patsy sufficient breathing space to serve coffee and biscuits to the passengers who wanted them, while Timothy Branston rather tearfully swallowed a bowl of soup.
‘We’re well on the way now,’ Patsy said, as she helped him with it. ‘Would you like some lemonade, Timothy?’ Timothy shook his head.
‘I think he’s a bit sleepy,’ Mrs. Branston said, hopefully and hypnotically.
But as if to prove her wrong, Timothy burst into loud and ear-splitting sobs.
‘I’ll go and get him an extra blanket,’ said Patsy hopefully, and set off up front. She could see one or two passengers looking her way, as if to ask for something, then think better of it; at least it looked as if they understood her predicament and weren’t blaming her for it. And the sooner she could settle the child to sleep, the sooner she would be able to attend to the needs of her other passengers.
She collected the blanket and was about to return to Mrs. Branston when Captain Prentice put his head round the flight deck door.
‘Oh, yes, Miss Aylmer,’ Captain Prentice said, glancing at her briefly. For a second longer than on the rest of her, his eyes stayed on her cap. Furtively she straightened it. ‘Is that child still crying?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Patsy said, wishing she’d never heard the name of Branston.
Captain Prentice nodded his head. He appeared for a moment to ponder the child’s remarkable staying power, before saying, ‘The pilots’ crew-rest bunk isn’t occupied.’
Patsy stood quite still.
‘Put the child in there. Mr. Rivers and I can rest in our seats. Can’t we, Mr. Rivers?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the First Officer said stolidly.
‘But, sir...’ Patsy began, when he turned slowly and looked at her. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said quickly.
‘With my compliments,’ he added slowly. ‘That better?’ For one fleeting second, there appeared to be the ghost of a smile deepening the lines around his eyes. So he was kind, Patsy thought suddenly. There was something about him, she didn’t know what, that made him quite human, and, for a fleeting second, gentle. She smiled at him warmly. ‘Oh, thank you, sir,’ she said eagerly. ‘Thank you.’
‘The Company, not me.’ And now his voice was slightly mocking.
‘All the same—’ she started to say.
‘And if there’s anything worse,’ he went on, turning back to his instruments, ‘for the Company’s business ... Mr. Walker, 'Number One again...’ he frowned at the panel in front of him. Then glancing up as though suddenly aware that Patsy was still there, he said, ‘If there’s anything worse for the other passengers to fly with than a crying child, I don’t know it.’
Except his eyes said, very clearly, as he gave her a quick nod which meant and now get out of here and quick about it, an incompetent stewardess.
It should, Patsy thought, have been some consolation to see Mrs. Branston and Timothy step off the aircraft at Dorval airport six hours later, looking bandbox fresh and smiling happily. And it should have been some consolation that several of the passengers gave her their cards and told her to come and see them any time she felt like it.
And it should have been some consolation to sniff the fresh, sweet Canadian air, see the scarlet of the maples blend with the rusty chestnut trees and the russet of the limes.
But the sum total of all these consolations didn’t add up to such a big consolation as—pushing the glass swing doors of the mammoth St Lawrence Hotel rather wearily open—the sight, right in the first set of armchairs, of Captain Bill Maynard.
He waved to her, and then got up and came over to stand beside her at the reception desk. ‘I was hoping it’d be you,’ he said. ‘Carry your bag, ma’am?’
Patsy smiled and shook her head. He was out of uniform, but the memory of the three gold bars on his sleeve made her still a little shy. Remember, Captain Prentice had said, the authority of any captain you fly with is supreme.
‘Where are the rest of ’em?’ Bill Maynard asked genially.
Patsy glanced behind her, through the street door. ‘Just outside,’ she said. ‘They’re still sorting out their baggage. And we dropped Captain Prentice outside the town office. He wanted to see the Station Manager.’
‘Oh, it’s Prentice, is it?’
Patsy nodded.
Bill Maynard gave a funny little smile. ‘Nice for you!’ Patsy stretched out her hand for the key that the man behind the reception counter handed her. ‘Quite a nice trip,’ she said cautiously, as the clerk dinged the desk bell for the bell-hop.
‘Look, I’ll see you later,’ said Captain Maynard. He looked at his watch. ‘You weren’t thinking of going straight off to bed, were you?’
Patsy shook her head. The idea had certainly entered her head, but now the thought of talking to someone who seemed to understand the difficulties and pitfalls of her job was much more welcome.
‘Right, then!’ He held up his finger. ‘One hour’s time. I’ll see you down here, and we’ll have a cup of coffee. Starting from—’ he jerked his hand down like a time-keeper. ‘Now!’
It gave an odd little fillip to her battered pride that Captain Prentice should choose that moment to come striding through the Reception Hall (as though he owned it, of course) and that he should hear Captain Maynard arranging to meet her. ‘That will be lovely,’ she said much more cheerfully, and scurried to catch up with the bell-hop who was speeding into the lift with her baggage.
‘Morning, Maynard,’ she heard Captain Prentice say ungraciously, and then she caught a scowling glance in her direction, before the glass-fronted elevator miraculously whisked her out of the line of fire.
And exactly an hour later, Bill Maynard was saying, ‘Now tell me what World-Span has been doing with you.’
‘Nothing very much,’ Patsy said, savouring her cup of coffee and wondering if she should dunk her enormous doughnut into it, as all the Canadians appeared to be doing. ‘Except,’ she laughed, ‘fly me.’
Bill Maynard smiled. ‘Me, too!’ he said. ‘Right now I should have been home on leave. Instead,’ he sighed and smiled at the same time, ‘here I am called out to do a positioning flight ... Able Mike went us ... and,’ he grinned rather sheepishly this time and added suddenly and surprisingly, ‘I’m enjoying myself far more.’
Patsy flushed. ‘Was it a good trip?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes, fair enough. But this stand-off’s better.’ Then, as though embarrassed by paying her an indirect compliment, he added, ‘And now tell me what’s been bothering you.’
‘Why, nothing!’ Patsy said vehemently, looking round the chromium and glass and marble coffee bar. ‘I’m enjoying this, too ... very much.’
Bill Maynard lit a cigarette and looked at her solemnly for a moment. ‘But an hour ago you were feeling pretty down in the mouth. Now, weren’t you?’
Patsy looked at him in surprise.
‘Oh,’ he waved his hand impatiently. ‘You were tired' Sure ... but you’re much too happy a person to let that get you down.’ His brown eyes twinkled at her. Then he said very quickly, and earnestly, yet with an undercurrent of suppressed laughter, ‘My guess is that you did something wrong. Probably something quite frightful,’ he added teasingly. ‘And that Captain Prentice ... unlike another captain who shall be nameless ... was not amused.’
Patsy gave a long sigh of huge relief. It was as though it had all fallen into its proper place.
‘I suppose it wasn’t really anything so terrible,’ she said, ‘but I had a fractious child, and nothing would stop him crying.’
Bill Maynard smiled. ‘And you think Captain Prentice blamed you, thought you were neglecting the other passengers. You’re rather a poppet, Patsy,’ he said. ‘And d’you know what would have happened if I’d been the captain?’
‘You’d have been angry, of course,’ Patsy suggested cautiously.
‘No—at least, not with you.’ Bill Maynard was still smiling. ‘D’you know why?’
Patsy shook her head. Now that she came to think of it, had Captain Prentice been all that annoyed? It was hard to remember. Only the feeling he always gave her was still vivid in her mind—the wretchedness with which his displeasure seemed to fill her.
‘Because I’d have said to myself, that girl tries to look after the passengers who most need her. She’s thoughtful and kindly to them. And that in the long run is what matters.’
‘Would you,’ Patsy asked, ‘give me an adverse report?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t.’
Patsy smiled. ‘Oh, I’m so relieved!’
‘I’m Maynard,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You’re doing this trip with Prentice.’
Patsy stared down into her coffee cup. ‘Well, never mind,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe Mr. Crosbie will understand. You wouldn’t call it an enormous black, would you?’
‘I wouldn’t. No. Others have done far worse, while they’re learning.’
And then, as Patsy was about to change the subject and talk of pleasanter things, Bill Maynard said slowly, ‘It’s just that Prentice is a perfectionist.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘He’s so skilful, so efficient himself’—that way it didn’t at all sound like a compliment, and yet it ought to have done, Patsy thought—‘that he can’t understand when people fall even slightly below his standards.’ He smiled. ‘In other words, when they’re human.’
‘I suppose it’s a big responsibility,’ Patsy said, wondering at the same time why she felt she had to defend him. ‘I mean, being in charge of everyone’s training.’
‘And he lets you know it. Nor is there any disagreement allowed.’ He paused. ‘The pupil does not argue with the master.’
‘Even you?’
‘Well, as it happens, I do argue with him,’ Bill Maynard said, and laughed. ‘Oh, not all that much, I grant you. Let’s call it a technical disagreement. Nothing that you’d understand. And I’m only telling you about it to make you feel better. But he has this bee in his outsize bonnet about safety. He puts you through the hoop on every emergency that’s likely to happen, and certainly every one that isn’t as well. And this latest insistence on two-engine flying practice. I’ve got as many hours in as he has, and I told him it wasn’t ever going to happen ... on a four-jet Astroliner.’ He drained his coffee cup. ‘But it didn’t make any difference to Prentice, if that’s a comfort to you. I had to go on doing it until I could do it standing on my head, although he knows and I know and all the other pilots know we’ll never need it.’ Patsy smiled sympathetically. All the various crew members had their troubles, she supposed. And the fact that Captain Prentice was at the root of so many of them made him, if anything, rather less of a bogey.
‘You know,’ Bill Maynard said, ‘I don’t usually listen to girlish gossip. But I do hear that big brown eyes and jet black hair can help a lot.’
Patsy laughed with conscientious gaiety. ‘Yes, I’ve heard that too.’
‘And now,’ the pilot said firmly, ‘drink up your coffee, and then be a good girl and go and get some sleep. My orders this time. And if I’m still here tomorrow, shall we do a film together in the evening?’
Patsy smiled and said that would be nice. But now the very mention of the word sleep was weighting down her eyelids. She seemed to be only half awake by the time she opened her room door and she could only vaguely remember having a shower and turning down the central heating a little and then climbing into bed.
And then, Captain Maynard wasn’t in Montreal next day. He took an aircraft down to New York, and Patsy spent the three-day stop-over looking round the shops and taking pictures of the wonderful marble stations with the doors that opened by a radar beam, and the new university buildings and the view from the top of Mount Royal towards the Adirondacks, to send home to her mother. She saw nothing of Captain Prentice, and only occasionally did she see one or other of the crew, either in the hotel coffee bar or looking around the stores like herself for the largest, cheapest present that their dollars could buy.
Sometimes she did feel a little lonely in this big city, and wished that she were the sort of stewardess that the crews were always falling over themselves to take out. But she wasn’t, she thought, skipping across the fearsomely fast traffic, again by herself. She was the sort of
stewardess that they were nice enough to, and rather elder-brotherly, and at the same time didn’t mind asking for the extra cup of tea while she was in the midst of serving passenger lunches. At least, she thought, peering longingly at a wonderful electric mixer that she knew her mother was simply aching for, they were nearly all nice to her. With one, large exception, that was.
But before she had time to look more than half a dozen more times at that selfsame mixer, and after she’d practically decided that three stand-offs without breakfast in Montreal would just about be able to buy it, there was Thursday again, and 23.00 hours and the time for Astroliner Able Peter to take service 484-71 back to London.
It was as quiet a trip as she could have wished for. Captain Prentice remained on the flight deck, except for his brief majestic rounds of the passengers, which (if their faces were anything to go by) rather terrified them. He was, she thought, peeping momentarily around the galley stanchion, an impressive sight. Six feet two, had Joanna said, or was it three? And as Joanna had so aptly added, built to go with it. Then the three heavy gold bars of a senior captain, the row of medal ribbons under the slim gold wings, and the immaculate fit of the dark blue uniform. Then, too, where was the jauntily-angled hat, which so many of the pilots affected? No, Captain Prentice’s sat straight and plumb as an artificial horizon, while his brown leather gloves were carried (in place, she was sure, of the Field-Marshal’s baton) correctly in his left hand.
Of course, passengers always asked her about the Captain, after he had returned off-stage, and back (as it were) to the wings. Their little entertainment over, they would like to have a short discussion because smooth flying was boring, and over the Atlantic it was pitch black and there was nothing to see out of the portholes.