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 them 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.’
‘Is that what he said?’ Dave whooped joyously. ‘Indeed, Florrie, you’d better watch out or he’ll be back over for you next time.’
The thought of big slow Sergeant Kelly was too hilarious to bear and it was a while before any of them were sober enough to resume attack on the toast. Kay couldn’t help wondering if Captain Pender would find it as rib-tickling as they did, and tried to imagine her mature, handsome pilot seated with them, enjoying the joke. Perhaps when they became more used to one another, they would experience silly innocent moments like these. But would they ever come to that stage? Her face clouded over. It didn’t seem likely. Not with Graham’s wife always somewhere in the offing.
She glanced up to find Dave’s grey eyes fixed on her, a puzzling expression in them.
‘Walk me to the gate,’ he suggested.
She nodded, her mind still busy with thoughts of Graham and the whole confusing tangle of their relationship.
‘Nice to see you laughing again,’ Dave remarked when they were outside in the crisp night air.
Kay stared, not having realised that her depression was so evident. ‘Well if I seem gloomy,’ she retorted, ‘it’s because I’m exhausted. We were really run off our feel all summer... and then Boeing training on top of everything.’
Dave nodded. ‘Yes, you do look tired.’
Kay raised her head haughtily, stung by the implication that she did not look her best. At the same time she was filled with dread. What had prompted that remark? Perhaps she was already showing signs of the thing she so greatly feared.
‘For God’s sake Dave, anyone would look tired after the summer we’ve put in,’ she said irritably.
‘Yes, of course,’ he calmly agreed, gazing down at her. ‘The life of an air hostess isn’t all beer and skittles as that poor epileptic would be the first to admit.’
In spite of herself, Kay had to laugh.
‘You should mind yourself better, Kay,’ he told her, ‘You don’t want to wear yourself out.’
His words brought tears to her eyes. His tweed sleeve felt rough against her face as she laid her head against him and cried quietly.
‘What is it, Katie?’ he asked gently. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ In her weakness, she seemed to him a lovable, tired child in desperate need of comfort.
‘I’m just tired I suppose,’ Kay admitted weakly. ‘Just so ti...ired.’ To her surprise he bent his head and kissed her gently.
She stared up at him but his face was shadowed.
‘That’s the trouble with standing under these trees, I can’t see your expression,’ she complained, as if life along with all its other tribulations had conspired once more to frustrate her.
‘Well that can easily be remedied,’ he drawled, drawing her into the light. ‘Now everyone can see us.’
‘Who’s everyone?’ he teased. ‘Sergeant Kelly? You don’t suppose he’ll come over and arrest us for being out without a light.’
‘For being randy without a licence,’ Kay offered with a giggle.
For randy was definitely how she was feeling. Inwardly, with sinking heart, she acknowledged the sudden mood swing. It was surely another side effect of the dread condition.
. She was appalled at her brazenness in no longer feeling guiltily ashamed - her state of mind for every waking moment since she had lost her virginity - but there was an almost hysterical relief in the lessening of tension it had brought about. How wicked she was, Kay thought. A veritable scarlet woman.
‘Come back under the trees,’ she coaxed, tugging at Dave’s sleeve, suddenly desperately needing him to make love to her. Only by so doing could the other raw memory be made bearable.
‘What an improper suggestion.’ He made no move to comply, just stood there watching her with a slightly hooded expression.
Kay shrugged. ‘Oh well, if you don’t want to...’
At once he took her into the shadowy undergrowth and positioned her against the bole of the silver birch. His lips came down firmly on hers in the leafy darkness and she felt him grow hard against her as their bodies strained together. Unlike Graham, there was no adoring sweet talk from Dave, no tender aspirations but it was like a benediction the way he enfolded her against him and there was healing in the sweet lingering kiss he gave her. Then abruptly he stepped back and puller her over to the light and sanity again.
‘Go to bed, Katie,’ he ordered, his voice friendly, making no claims.
Kitty, Katie, she thought as she stumbled up the path. To her surprise she was aware of no disloyalty to Captain Pender at having embraced Dave so passionately. It was out of her great need of her pilot that her body had grown weak, she reasoned. It could never have happened otherwise. Yet she was unable to forget Dave’s kiss, which had thrilled and consoled her.