Ten minutes before landing the drinks trolley was still not put away. It stood abandoned at the back of the cabin while around it squeezed the dwindling line of passengers intent on making one last visit to the toilet before the Boeing 720 landed in New York. None of the six hostesses – four in tourist and two in the forward section – were anywhere to be seen, except for a thin dark-haired girl perched on an armrest at the rear of the cabin, chatting animatedly to a woman feeding a very young baby. Married, and back working the North Atlantic route for the summer, Mary absently turned her wedding ring over and over on her finger.
In the galley, with the tweed curtain drawn against the public, two hostesses sat taking a last puff at their cigarettes, their backs bulking out the hand-woven material like a large humped monster. On the stainless steel counter, below the ovens, their engagement rings gained lustre in a measure of gin, the solitaire touching bands with a two-stone twist.
Another hostess, also engaged to be married, was in the toilet where she had been for the past twenty minutes renewing her make-up. Elbows braced against the bulkhead, the hand with the sparkler spread like a starfish, she steadied herself against the pull of the descending aircraft and drew eyeliner across the top lid, close to the lashes, without smudging. In the forward galley the senior completed her flight report with the assistance of the fifth hostess. The rear door had been difficult to close on take-off. She noted it and hoped it would not give trouble on the return flight. Not really her responsibility, she reminded herself, but that of the outgoing crew. Once she had put it in her flight report it was up to the engineers to check it out. The hands of her watch crept imperceptibly forward. Goodness! They were almost down. It was ten to eleven Irish time, or ten to six American time, whichever way you read it. She signed her name and, leaving the junior hostess to lock the containers, went down to the rear of the cabin.
Walking slightly uphill against the incline, she tried to keep a smile on her face while inwardly raging at the signs of disorder around her. Where was everyone? She rushed to dismantle the trolley, at the same time barring two more passengers attempting to get to the toilets. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pointing to the seat-belt sign. ‘We’re landing in five minutes.’ Then she relented and let the child through.
‘Be quick,’ she urged, with her free hand pushing him towards the unoccupied toilet. As she tugged frantically at the levers on the trolley, Mary came forward. With her help, the senior managed to collapse it, breaking a nail in the process. She frowned and shoved the trolley behind the last row of seats, strapping it quickly into place. Just her luck, she thought, saddled with three engaged girls, and one married hostess back for the summer. She pulled the galley curtain along its track just as Jill and Margo emerged laughing and pushing on their rings, before going unhurriedly down the cabin checking seat-belts.
Irene came out of the toilet, her cosmetic bag tucked under her arm. She positioned her flat airline cap on her fair head, driving the pin firmly through the linen cloth. Beside her, Mary removed the gilt wing from her blouse and re-pinned it on her jacket. The jet thundered towards the runway. The senior, unable to keep her feet any longer, sank down on the crew seat beside Mary and fastened her seat-belt. They were almost on the ground when Jill, smiling helplessly, gave up the struggle mid-cabin and sank down beside a passenger. Captain Devlin set the aircraft down with only the slightest of jolts and the Boeing raced over the tarmac. The senior looked at her watch. It was exactly eleven o’clock. She immediately turned the hands back to six.
The last of the passengers had departed down the steps and the hostesses drooped tiredly inside the aircraft door, the cheery farewells fading on their lips. Mary, still brightly chatting, accompanied the woman with the baby off the aircraft, supporting the carrycot to the foot of the steps where she handed it over to a smiling ground hostess. Turning, she climbed back up to join the others.
‘Where does she get her energy?’ Margo asked, batting a yawn before inspecting her ring. The gin soak had really added an extra sparkle, she thought.
‘Must be marriage,’ Jill hinted slyly, as she pulled cotton gloves on over her own sparkler.
‘Trying to show us up,’ Pam grumped, her eyes shadowed with fatigue.
Jill addressed herself exclusively to her engaged colleagues. ‘Oh now, girls, it’s all before us. This time next year we’ll be just the same.’
‘Speak for yourself. This time next year I’ll be lying in the sun every minute I get,’ Margo retorted. ‘Not slogging back and forth across the Atlantic.’
‘I hope it keeps fine for her,’ Jill included Pam in the wink but the other hostess turned away and slumped into a seat, kicking off her shoes.
It was six-twenty by the time the hostesses passed through Immigration where they were greeted by a wise-cracking immigration officer, who kept up a running commentary with each of them, before stamping their passports and waving them on.
‘Miss Dell-Annie, how’s trick’s? Miss Cork-R-Ann, what’s new? Well, nice to see you back, Miss- Oho! My apologies, Missus Cog-Lan! How could I forget you’re a married lady now. Well and how’s he treating you? Good, I hope.’
In Customs, Captain Devlin shot his cuff and looked pointedly at his gold Rolex. ‘What kept you girls?’ he queried irritably. ‘We were about to send out a search-party.’ He frowned ponderously around, inviting laughter.
Captain Martelli, four gold bars minus the seniority ring, smiled obligingly.
‘Some of us,’ Devlin remarked sotto voce, ‘would like to get to Greenwich Village this side of Thanksgiving.’ He nudged the navigator, who was still rankling at being caught in excess of his spirits allowance. Rather than pay duty he had surrendered his extra bottle of Jack Daniels.
‘Cheer up!’ cried the First Officer, winking at the hostesses. ‘Think of the good home it’ll get.’
‘Like hell!’ muttered the navigator.
‘Let’s get away out of this,’ growled the captain. When the last case cover had been chalked he walked ahead with little strutting steps, his braided cap set uncompromisingly on his bullet head. Captain Martelli, tall and elegant, moved easily at his side, his head inclined courteously, his distinctive moustaches drooping in a lugubrious curl at either side of his full lips.
Outside the crew relinquished their cases to the drivers and sat into the taxis waiting to take them into the city.
‘See you later,’ cried Ted. The First Officer had decided to avail of the helicopter service into New York, thereby saving himself fifty sweltering minutes in the evening traffic. He stuck his head in the window of the second car. ‘Sure none of you want to join me?’
The hostesses shook their heads, unwilling to squander ten dollars of their precious travel allowance, not even for the thrill of landing on top of the Pan-Am building.
As the taxi moved off Mary slipped her feet free of her shoes then remembering how they would swell, quickly eased back her toes. She felt the familiar bloated sensation in her stomach she always felt after flights and was relieved she did not have to begin thinking of the return journey for twenty-four hours. As they sped along she listened in an absent, divorced way to the conversations about her.
‘I always put my watch back,’ the senior was saying.
‘Me too,’ agreed Jill. ‘Otherwise I don’t feel I’m really in America.’
Mary was flying the Atlantic route over two years and had never once altered her watch. She supposed it said something for their different outlooks. When away she thought in terms of home and the time kept there but Jill and Margo, despite their altered status, still gaily lived it up on every trip to New York. They had been everywhere, done everything; Coney Island, Radio City, the Staten Island Ferry. In season they never missed ice-skating in Central Park. Sometimes Mary wished she could be more like them but she was saving every penny. And now that she and Niall were buying a house rigid economy had become an obsessional necessity.
‘Let’s go out to Long Island first thing tomorrow,’ Margo was saying. Mary did not catch Jill’s reply. She leant her head against the window, shivering a little in the air-conditioned interior. She did not see herself doing anything so energetic or expensive. She was looking forward to a good lie-in, followed by a leisurely trip around the shops.
Macy’s sale ran continuously all year and Mary had heard from the other hostesses that there were great bargains in polyester sheets and pillowcases. With slight imperfections they were selling at less than six dollars a pair. With a bit of luck, she thought, she might pick up a set of double sheets. Shopping was one of the things that Mary liked best about being back flying for the summer. You got things in New York you got nowhere else. But in other respects it was tough working the summer months, she reflected. She only hoped that the free trip at the end of it would make it all worthwhile.
The towering uneven buildings of Manhattan appeared suddenly on her right. In summer they were not as impressive as when she had first glimpsed them on a black December night, with the windows ablaze with light. Nevertheless, she felt again some of their first magical impact.
‘Glad to be back?’ Captain Martelli softly enquired from the shadows. ‘Beats housework, I don’t doubt.’
Overhearing Jill teased, ‘Oh, Mary’s an eager-beaver. She even ate her supper standing up tonight!’
Mary burned. Anyone would think she was like Pam or the senior.
‘You girls could do with the skids under you,’ the navigator complained. ‘I had to ring three times for coffee and when it came it was stone cold.’
‘Well, don’t blame that on us,’ Margo interjected indignantly. ‘We’re only the slaveys at the back. The flight deck is Pam and Elinor’s job’
‘And very well they looked after us too,’ Captain Martelli said peaceably. He stretched an arm along the seat behind Mary. ‘Coming out with us tonight?’ he asked her.
His soft Mediterranean eyes watched her in the gloom as she sought an answer that would not seem gauche or discourteous. She rarely went out on stopovers. In the beginning it was because of Niall, later in order to save money. Now she was spared the necessity of a reply as their car slid to the kerb behind the first taxi.
As the drivers hurried back to open the doors Mary pushed herself free of the springy upholstery and stood breathless in the stifling heat of 33rd street. At the crew check-in she got a thrill as she signed her married name in the registry for the first time and a few moments later she notched up another first when the bellboy called her ma’am. She rode with him to the tenth floor and tailed him breathlessly down a maze of corridors, rooting in her purse for the quarter tip as she went.
Inside her room, she kicked off her shoes and padded about, turning on the television, checking the air-conditioning. A chill breeze fanned her midriff as she leaned on the radiator and peered through the dusty window. She was too high up to see anything but the familiar, dwindling blare of car horns and police sirens rising from the street below, reminded her she was really back in New York.
Later, in Harry’s cafe where she went with some of the other hostesses, she eschewed her favourite snack and merely ordered coffee. Harry always made a big fuss of aircrew, especially hostesses, and regardless of what they ordered he never made out the check for more than a dollar. Even so, waffles and chocolate ice-cream was still an extravagance. These days Mary had more pressing demands on her money. Margo, unaffected by such considerations, opted for cherry pie and Jill, similarly unburdened, ordered two scoops of different flavoured ice-creams.
While the girls waited to be served Ted and the navigator came over to sit at their table. Having arrived at the hotel a good forty minutes ahead of them, the First Officer had changed out of uniform and was looking enviably cool in chinos and an open-neck shirt. The navigator, like the hostesses, still wore uniform.
‘How about coming out with us tonight,’ he said now to Jill. He had been staring at her ever since the girls sat down.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Jill teased. Beside her, Margo plunged a spoon into a dish of cherry pie, cutting through an avalanche of pink snow. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘Scrumptious!’ From the jukebox Spanish Eyes softly strained.
‘How about it?’ the navigator pressed. ‘Are you coming out or not?’
Jill opened her eyes very wide and laughed. ‘You don’t ever give up, do you?’ She made a slow pass through the air, motioning with her left hand significantly.
‘Okay, so you’re engaged,’ the navigator assumed a worldly air, along with a slight American twang. ‘I’m hitched myself but it don’t mean you gotta retire from living. Anyhow you’ll be married long enough,’ he added sourly. ‘I should know.’
‘Well, whatever you girls decide,’ interrupted Ted smoothly, ‘make it snappy, otherwise we’ll never get downtown this stopover.’
The conversation drifted over Mary’s inattentive head. She yawned and sipped her coffee, anticipating the moment when she would run her bath and enjoy a long hot soak. She was looking forward to it intensely.
As the telephone continued to peal long and insistently Mary came out of a doze. Raising herself up out of the bath, she grabbed for a towel and ran with it into the bedroom. She didn’t care who it was looking to share her room, she would say no, even if it was the Chief Hostess Atlantic herself returning from the Barbados without a cent to her name and no bed for the night. She grinned wryly and lifted the receiver.
Jill’s breathless voice pleaded in her ear. ‘Mary, be an angel and come to my rescue. Margo’s got a headache and Irene’s gone off with friends and I’m stuck here with that dreadful bore of a navigator. I just can’t face him on my own.’
Mary shifted damply on the carpet. Her skin dried and froze in the air-conditioned chill. She wished passionately that Jill would go away and take her problem with her. She wished she were in a room with no telephone and a barricaded door. She gave up wishing and cast a regretful glance at the bottle of Rye whisky and the half-glass already poured.
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘Just as soon as I get dressed.’ And with a sigh, put down the telephone.
In a small crowded room in Greenwich Village the crew sat at two tables placed end to end, while a vocalist in a white tuxedo sang, ‘Fly me to the Moon.’ He was backed by a piano and a saxophone; a few couples danced close on the tiny floor.
Mary sipped her beer and silently calculated what this night out with the crew was going to cost her. She peeped a glance at her watch. The hands now stood at twenty past three. She thought longingly of her room back at the hotel and wished she had ordered something stronger than beer. At least then she would have got some ice in it. She was sick of economising all the time, she thought. Ordering cottage cheese salad when she really wanted spaghetti bolognaise and why, all because the salad cost eighty cents cheaper. Eighty cents, for God’s sake. And it was the same reason she had opted for beer, because it wasn’t anything so costly as spirits while, of course, cocktails were the priciest of all.
She glanced glumly about her. No one else was being abstemious that she could see. The captain was drinking Bourbon, and the navigator was already on his fourth Tom Collins; Jill was on Manhattans, she never drank anything else, and Irene, who had just joined them at the club, was already started on her second gin and lemon fizz. Mary sighed and hoped her sacrifice would not be in vain. Though really, as she well knew, it would all depend when the check was brought whether separate tabs had been kept or the total evenly split. Probably the latter.
‘Ready for another?’ Captain Martelli leaned across to check her glass. His white silk polo-neck seemed oddly at variance with his drooping moustaches.
‘No thanks.’ Mary summoned a smile. ‘No, really.’
Surely they wouldn’t stay much longer, she thought. At her other side Ted was nodding off. Having gained a head-start on everyone else, alcohol and jet-lag had combined to send him to sleep. Why did they all have to behave as though it were really only half-past ten and not five hours later? Mary wondered. At this rate they were putting in a twenty hour day. No wonder people said that jet-flying was ageing.
A young man, casually dressed in a tartan shirt and saffron coloured tie, approached the captain. Hands on hips, he respectfully made some request. Captain Devlin chuckled and leaned across the table to tap Jill’s wrist. She got to her feet with a pleased smile.
The navigator stared at the swaying couple with heightened colour. ‘Bloody nerve!’ he muttered. ‘Bloody bad form!’ He was quite drunk, Mary realised. He began talking about some woman, she supposed it was his wife.
‘Bloody silly woman. Wait till you hear. Got a fortune teller to the house to tell her fortune.’ He snorted in derision. ‘At her age! Silly bitch.’
Mary shifted uncomfortably, feeling trapped in the beam of his ill-humour. An image of Niall came to her, at home in their wedding bed, almost a night’s sleep behind him. He was always saying how much he envied her the chance to travel and see the world. If he could only see her now!
When the check was brought Captain Devlin made a swift calculation and dropped a green-backed bill on the plate. Mary’s heart sank. So it was to be split seven ways. She kissed her floral bed linen goodbye as she added her green back to the growing pile. They went out to wait for a taxi.
Back at their hotel the crew stood about on the sidewalk, blinking sleepily.
‘Anyone for breakfast?’ Irene asked brightly. She had renewed her lipstick in the cab and looked the freshest of the three.
‘Count me out,’ Captain Devlin began walking away, Ted and the navigator stumbled after him. Captain Martelli hesitated, with his foot on the hotel step, and smiled apologetically. ‘It has been a long day,’ he said, looking at Mary. ‘Don’t stay up too late,’ he called when the girls turned away.
Mary, her thoughts still intent on salvaging some of her allowance, decided she would confine herself to a cup of coffee. That wouldn’t cost much, she thought. Only a few cents. Funny to think that the tip cost more than the actual beverage!
On the street corner a coloured man stood bawling his wares, his eyes rolling in his night face. ‘Come and get yuh real life-size poodle dawgs,’ he was calling. ‘They one dawg guaranteed never to need no poop-scoop.’
Jill and Irene quickened their steps, their tiredness forgotten, and reached out in delight. ‘Oh, aren’t they beautiful! sinking beringed fingers into the curly fur.
‘How much?’ Jill waited breathlessly.
‘Only seven dollars, Ma’am, and they’s a bargain,’ he answered solemnly.
‘What do you think?’ she turned impulsively to Irene.
‘Oh yes!’ She didn’t hesitate. ‘Most definitely!’
‘Seven dollars for you?’ Jill tapped the poodle’s black snout reflectively, then her expression brightened. ‘Okay!’ she said with a dazzling smile. Clutching their toys, the girls fumbled for money. They were a dollar short.
‘Mary!’ they cried, turning to her.
Mary sighed and let the floral pillowcases go. Maybe this trip she would do better to concentrate on some very small guest towels. She couldn’t afford anything more if she was to bring home any of her allowance.
The man looked hopefully at her. ‘How about you, lady?’ he chivvied. ‘Don’t you want a little dawg to keep you company? Looks kinda lonesome on his own.’
The others, secure in their possessions, encouraged her. ‘Go on, Mary, why don’t you? Your first trip back. Look how gorgeous he is.’
‘I’m saving,’ Mary said weakly, knowing it sounded ridiculous. Only a few dollars, she read in their amazed eyes. Pin money, barely two pounds! She didn’t blame them. She had been just the same herself before marriage, squandering as much on a manicure. What, after all, was seven or even ten dollars? Why, she had once seen a passenger tipping a hostess with a twenty dollar bill.
She hesitated in brooding indecision. The poodle was decorative and useless and wildly impractical, she knew. Just the sort of frivolous thing she had bought unthinkingly in the past. But that had been before the crippling expense of a new house had overshadowed her every purchase. Sometimes she found herself comparing the heavy commitment she and her husband had taken on to the burden of caring for a fond, but wearisome, relative whose incessant demands were wearing away their youth and spirit.
Illogically now, the toy became for Mary a symbol of those carefree pre-nuptial days when she had returned from every Atlantic trip giggling, ‘A couple of us stayed up late last night in Boston or New York or Chicago and just guess the crazy things we did?’
‘I’ll take it,’ she whispered. The girls let out a rousing cheer and Mary found her arms filled to overflowing with fluffy white poodle.
‘Alleluia!’ intoned the coloured man, folding the trestle table under his arm. He swaggered away, hollering catch calls into the night. The girls looked at each other and laughed a little sheepishly.
‘Bang goes my breakfast,’ said Jill ruefully. She slung her bag on her shoulder and turned back towards the hotel.
‘Wait,’ Mary said impulsively. ‘I’ve still got some money left.’ The others regarded her hopefully. ‘All I want is coffee,’ Irene murmured abstemiously.
‘And maybe a pastry,’ breathed Jill. ‘But only if you have enough,’ she hastened to add.
The girls swung along clutching the toy poodles to their breasts, their sparkling engagement rings rivalling the animals’ diamante collars in brilliance, and crossed the threshold of an all-night food bar. Heads turned as they stepped inside.
‘Let’s have waffles,’ Mary suggested with reckless generosity, her eyes glowing like twin stars in her tired face as she pulled out her last few dollars and placed them on the counter. ‘And a double scoop of chocolate ice-cream all round!’