Free The Atlantic Sky by Betty Beaty

most depressing sight in years, come in here! There,’ she said, pointing to the passengers walking in a slow uneven crocodile towards them. ‘Right in front! Monica Fairways. Now,’ she grimaced at Patsy, ‘d’you see what I mean! Isn’t anyone as beautiful as that depressing to us girls?’
    Patsy could see a tall slim girl in a uniform similar to her own, except that it lacked the cherished half-wing. She noticed a pale oval of a face, and watched the graceful, unhurried walk.
    ‘Ah, well,’ Miss Trent said briskly as Patsy murmured that the traffic girl was indeed extremely attractive. ‘That’s that! And now to mind the Company’s business.’
    She gave Patsy a gentle push out into the cabin, and arranged herself at the top of the steps just inside the entrance, with her seating list at the ready. Patsy watched her friendly smile put the passengers at their ease. She seemed to have a knack, too, of remembering names.
    At last, the rear door was closed. A couple of men raced away with the metal steps. Miss Trent walked up and down the aisle checking the straps. Then she stopped up at the front, underneath the glowing seat belt sign.
    ‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘Your flight time to Prestwick will be forty minutes. We shall be flying at eight thousand five hundred feet. Dinner will be served at Prestwick. The bar will be open as soon as we are airborne,’ and she gave them all her wide dazzling smile. ‘Thank you.’ A second or two later, there was a jerk and a splutter as the inner engine on the starboard wing sprang alive. The aircraft rocked slightly, as the power seemed to ripple through her thin frame. Down below on the tarmac, the starter trolleys were pushed away. Two of the ground staff darted under the wings and ran quickly away to avoid the slipstream, dragging the chocks from the wheels behind them.
    ‘We’re off.’ Joanna Trent came up beside Patsy as the aircraft, a little jerkily at first and then quite smoothly, moved forward towards the end of the runway. ‘Say goodbye to London for a few days.’ She picked up her passenger list and scanned it. ‘No children, and no V.I.P.s,’ she said happily. ‘Money for jam.’
    As the aircraft left the ground and started to climb higher in the sky, Patsy had time to watch the last long shafts of sunlight turning the clouds and smoke and mist over London into a blaze of orange and crimson. She saw the golden lights of the Great West Road and the small white pinpricks of the street lamps and the tiny square rectangles of the homes and a few late shops.
    The passenger cabin had settled down to a quiet, companionable warmth like a hotel lounge. A few people sipped sherry, or smoked, or dipped their noses into magazines, or chatted quietly with one another. No one seemed to want coffee or tea or a sandwich or an aspirin, or to do anything except get to Prestwick or Gander or New York or wherever they were bound.
    Patsy hardly saw any of the mysteries going on up front in the blue-green light of the flight deck. Once she followed Miss Trent and her tea-tray, to carry a plate laden with ham sandwiches. But she was no more than a hand appearing out of the semi-darkness. For which she was thankful.
    ‘Have a dekko, will you,’ said Miss Trent, ‘and see who’s disembarking in Bonnie Scotland?’
    Patsy did as she was told and took down the sheaf of papers clipped to the wooden board. Two passengers only were getting off at Prestwick. The rest were routed through to New York. There didn’t seem much else to do at the moment, except to wipe over the work table, and rub the long chromium mixer tap, and walk once more down the aisle and smile at everyone, and hope that someone might ask for something, so long as it was something that you knew about.
    Still no one wanted anything. She smiled at the passengers and they smiled back at her. A few of them buried their noses again in their magazines as though afraid that she might think they were wanting