Free The Atlantic Sky by Betty Beaty Page B

you...’
    Miss Trent continued down the aisle, smiling to each side of her, with Patsy trailing a few inches behind her.
    ‘Now,’ Miss Trent said, 'setting the tray down in the galley, ‘what really were you doing? I thought for a moment you’d found a bomb on board! Lucky the passengers didn’t notice.’ She gave Patsy a half kindly, half irritable smile. ‘But don’t get in my way, there’s a good girl!’ She started to wash the plates quickly. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘there’s still a drop of coffee in the urn ... pour yourself a cup. You’ll get your air legs after a while.’ She watched Patsy pour them each a cup of coffee. Then she said, ‘And now go and do up their straps. We’re not all that far off.’
    Patsy found that she would rather have waited on everyone in the aeroplane three times over than have had that dinner at Prestwick. Not that the food wasn’t excellent, and better served than she could hope to do it. But Joanna led the way to a round table, set in the centre of the room, so that their passengers could get a good view of them, and just as Patsy was about to say, ‘Isn’t this rather large for two?’ the radio officer and the engineer walked up, and it became obvious that the whole crew would eat together at this same table.
    ‘Here are the Captains,’ Joanna Trent said as they came up, and then without any trace of self-consciousness, ‘What does it look like? Keflavik?’
    Captain Maynard smiled. ‘No. Direct Gander.’
    ‘Praise be!’ Miss Trent said.
    Captain Maynard sat down in the seat next to Patsy. ‘And how are you getting on, Miss Aylmer?’ he asked.
    Just for a moment, Captain Prentice opposite them glanced from one to the other. ‘Badly,’ his straight mouth seemed to say. ‘Idle,’ said the black, slightly raised eyebrows. ‘Incompetent,’ said the hazel eyes.
    ‘Oh.’ Patsy looked down at her fish. ‘I’m...’
    ‘... doing not too badly,’ Miss Trent said, reaching for another roll. She eyed Patsy with elder-sisterly appraisal. ‘And I’m not so sure that she’s as shy as she looks.’ She darted an intentionally mischievous smile from Patsy to the crew, at which Patsy, who was on the contrary twice as shy as she looked, felt her, face dissolve into a flood of burning pink.
    Once again, Captain Prentice glanced in their direction. But this time he seemed to look with slightly more approval at Miss Trent. As though, after all, she had rather more intelligence and acumen over appearances than he had, in the past, ever given her credit for.
    For the rest of that dinner-time, Patsy kept quite quiet, gratefully sheltering under the other girl’s bulwark of endless conversation, until mercifully the Tannoy announced their departure, and Miss Trent announced the need to get going.
    Once they were up in the air and away over the Atlantic, there was very little to see in the way of wonders. Nearly everyone wanted to have his seat adjusted into the reclining position. One by one, the passengers’ individual reading lamps were switched off, the tiny curtains drawn across the inkspots of portholes, and this small, self-contained world, carving its way through the thin and icy A tl antic air, went quietly off to sleep.
    All except the blue-lit nose and the white-lit galley. ‘You can take up the next lot of tea and sandwiches,’ Joanna Trent said, loading the tray for the third time since they were airborne, ‘and then we’ll take turn and turn about to have a bit of rest, eh?’
    Patsy nodded. Already she was noticing how tiring even doing very little on an aircraft can be. The altitude, the pressurization, the vibration, or the murmur of the engines (she didn’t know which) made her feel as though she hadn’t slept for a week.
    ‘They’re all as happy as sandboys in there.’ Joanna Trent reappeared quickly from the flight deck and grimaced. ‘A most sepulchral silence! You know, even I would boggle at keeping the jolly old conversational ball