A month later, Kay was back in training again, this time for the Boeings. The two week course had far surpassed anything they had previously encountered on Europe but at the time she had heard of her transfer to the Atlantic route, she had been totally fed-up.
‘Poor you,’ Sally had commiserated when the lists were posted. She was down for training on the new BAC 1-11’s and was excited at the prospect of getting the occasional continental overnight. She had begun at last to get over her Dutchman and was looking forward to soothing her bruised spirit in Malaga with her Spanish admirer.
She nudged Kay as some of the Atlantic girls came in off their flight, and whispered, ‘They’re all so old-looking. They must be years flying.’
Kay nodded dolefully, although suspecting tiredness had a lot to do with it. Who wouldn’t look tired after being up all night working such a strenuous flight!
Sally nudged her again, ‘That one must be five months pregnant at least.’ She gave a husky incredulous laugh, ‘How do they get away with it? I mean, she’s sticking out a mile.’
Overhearing her, a reserve remarked, ‘She’s probably one of the married ones back for the summer. They only do it for the free trip.’
The free trip to any part of the world was CA’s carrot to ensure there were enough hostesses working Atlantic routes in the busy season.
None of this made Kay feel any better about her own transfer but she cheered up when Bunny, who was also been transferred to the Boeings, insisted she knew quite a few Atlantic hostesses who were youthful and glamorous. To Kay’s relief it was a view corroborated by Judy Mathews at the start of training. According to the Chief Hostess Atlantic all ‘her girls’ were top notchers, high flyers (whatever about the more jaded specimens sometimes glimpsed about the restroom) and Kay found herself responding to this attractive image.
What excited Kay most was the Atlantic uniform. It was a couture designed dream. Monogrammed pleated silk shirts with cap sleeves and rows of tiny covered buttons; waist hugging jackets over A-line skirts - linen in summer and fine Donegal tweed in winter - and, best of all, cute little flat airline caps with a Yankee flavour. To everyone’s delight the gaberdines had been replaced by turquoise cloaks lined in beige silk, and no schoolgirl hoods to spoil the line.
As she sipped her wine at the demo lunch, Kay reflected that in some ways it was rather restful being back in the classroom after a year spent at the whim of rostering. Another bonus was meeting Graham in the afternoons. When she had told him she would soon be joining him on the Atlantic, he had seemed genuinely pleased
‘Just think,’ he told her enthusiastically, ‘If we could wangle two nights together in New York... or better still, three in Chicago!’
It would be wonderful, Kay thought. A trip away together would make up for all the disappointments they had suffered since his wife’s return had put an end to their glorious freedom of the summer. Regrettably, their time together these days was so frustratingly brief. Certainly not long enough to work up the kind of passion that had sent her fleeing to London for the Pill. Another let down was being restricted to the car once the colder weather set in. Somehow no matter what they had done in the open air, Kay had never been aware of any loss of self-respect, but in the close, leathery-smelling depths of the sports car where his wife and family must often travel, she was conscious of a feeling of degradation, a sensation which was in no way lessened when an object one night, spiking her bare shoulder at the height of ecstasy, turned out to be a muddy golf shoe half-concealed beneath the rug.
‘Dratted thing,’ Graham had growled, shoving it angrily out of sight. The mood was spoiled.
‘This is all wrong,’ he sighed, sitting up. ‘You deserve far better than these hole and corner meetings. Ah if only...’
Regarding him wistfully Kay had hoped he might say if only they had met before, or if only they could be together always.
Instead he continued rather shockingly, ‘If only I had the strength to send you away from me now.’
‘But... but surely you can’t mean that,’ she whispered, feeling as if part of her stomach had dropped away. She shivered and hugged her arms to her chest, afraid she was going to break down and cry.
When he took her hand and gently asked. ‘Would you really mind so much,’ she was unable to reply.
Next time they met Graham had been strangely withdrawn and disinclined to initiate lovemaking. When Kay tentatively asked him if anything was wrong, he muttered something about not wanting to take advantage of her. ‘You’re very young, my dear. I don’t want to spoil your life.’
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.