Dave received Kay’s postcard and read with some amusement that the natives were friendly. ‘I’ll bet,’ he grinned, surprised to have got a card from her at all.
She was so wrapped up in her own life these days, he thought. Her job as an air hostess seemed to have taken her over completely. And she was clearly infatuated with some pilot or other. That much was evident the night he took her to the Hunt Ball. It pained Dave to think about it so he did so as little as he could.
He gave a last glance at the card and threw it carelessly on the hall table. Dave prided himself on not being sentimental, never collecting theatre programmes or setting any great store on keepsakes or letters. Now as he went into his tea, it didn’t even cross his mind to hold on to this one.
It was mid-week before Captain Pender discovered Kay’s uniform in the back of his car. He was about to drive to the airport when his eye was caught by the corner of the plastic carrier- bag protruding from behind the passenger seat. He pulled it out with a puzzled frown, unable to understand how the hostess uniform could have got there. Then he remembered.
It must have been lying there all week, he thought, feeling bothered and irritable at the sight of Kay’s property, yet disposed to handle it lingeringly. Absently, he rubbed a fold of the skirt between his fingers, a ruminative expression in his dark eyes. Then abruptly he pushed it back and sternly took himself in hand. This will never do, he thought, annoyed with himself for getting soft over a piece of tweed. It would have to be returned at once, he decided. Now, while she was still away in Spain and there was no possibility of bumping into her.
As he drove across the city the memory of their last meeting came strongly back to Graham, stirring him as it had then, and whenever he had thought about it since. How vulnerable her tears had made her seem, he mused. And how fiercely protective, yet sensuously weak, he had felt at the sight of them. With an effort, he controlled his emotions. If he’d any sense, he told himself, he would stay clear of her, cut off all contact now before he got in any deeper.
Twenty minutes later, he passed slowly up Carrick Road, searching for the house he remembered stopping at the evening he brought Kay home. Parking his car, he strode purposefully up the moss-covered path, carrier-bag in hand. Somewhere in the depths of the house a bell jangled and Captain Pender waited impatiently for it to be answered, checking his watch and cursing the delay.
When the door opened at last an elderly woman in a moth-eaten fur jacket and equally shabby Cossack style hat, regarded him in dribbling, slack-jawed wonder. Amazement, and some other emotion which Graham did not recognise as joy, showed plainly on her haggard features. Probably some ancient retainer, hardly her mother, he thought appalled.
‘Good morning,’ he greeted her courteously, and held out the bag. ‘Would you be so good as to give Kay this when she returns.’
With an unintelligible gibbering sound, Mrs. Halpin took it from him and continued her cretinous stare. To Ginny he was a dream come true, a lovely hunky pilot in full uniform, all four gold bars dazzling her old eyes in the April sunshine.
Graham tipped the edge of his cap and headed back to his car. What a perfectly dreadful old woman, he thought, as he politely closed the gate after him. Surely she couldn’t have had anything to do in the creation of that gorgeous creature. It upset Graham to think she might.
Mrs. Halpin lost no time passing on Kay’s uniform. She came hotfoot up the path, the carrier-bag on her arm, her eyes alight with curiosity.
‘Is he Kathleen’s fellah?’ she questioned Molly, who admitted her as far as the hall. ‘Bit old for her, ain’t he? She’d be better off with a young fellah like herself and leave the likes of your man to someone with a bit of experience, not a hundred yards away. D’yeh get my meaning?’ She broke into horrendous cackles at her own daring.
‘To whom do you refer? asked Molly, drawing herself up. She shuddered for fear the scrawny claw would grip her arm again. What a liberty, she thought.
‘That lovely hunky pilot that’s just come in me gate this minute, that’s who,’ Mrs. Halpin spluttered, ‘Nearly took weak when I saw him on me doorstep. Gorgeous he was, the spittin’ image of Larry Oliver.’
That the bag contained a uniform she had found out at once. And even went so far as to try it on, mincing before a mirror.
‘I brought it straight away in case Kathleen was looking for it,’ Ginny told her. ‘You know, not being able to remember like where she left it.’
As if, thought Molly disdainfully, her niece was in the habit of leaving her clothing in men’s cars and not remembering. Heaven only knew what the old harridan really thought of pilots returning Kay’s clothes in carrier-bags. Knowing Ginny, probably the worst.
Ginny had always been man-mad. She was notorious for it. For years she had made a fool of herself chasing after that lumpish bread man. A second Rudy Valentino, she called him. Even Bill had not been safe, Molly reflected, with Ginny constantly dropping by for a glimpse of his ‘luvvly manly face.’
‘Tell her to send him down to me if she doesn’t know what to do with him,’ Ginny cackled. ‘I’d be well able for him. Oh, it’s plain to see he’s years older than her, the luvvly hunk. I’d give him hunky-dory.’
Molly closed the door firmly on her neighbour and tottered back to the kitchen where Bill was reading a book.
‘Who was that?’ he asked, looking up.
‘Someone with Kay’s uniform,’ Molly answered absently. So he was years older than her and extraordinarily handsome, she mused uneasily. Perhaps where her beautiful young niece was conceded she would be better to keep her eyes open a bit wider. It was a pity that she hadn’t been able to get a glimpse of the handsome pilot.
When at the weekend Kay returned home from Spain and found the carrier bag in the hall, she cried out in surprise. ‘My uniform! What’s it doing here?’ Then as she remembered, she ran upstairs exulting. He was here! He was here!