The Atlantic Sky Read Free

wrong clothes. What d’you think?’
    Patsy looked at the tall, very thin figure in the elegant simple suit. ‘I think you look very smart.’
    ‘Like a stewardess?’
    ‘I’ve no idea what they should look like,’ Patsy said simply and earnestly. ‘I only wish I did.’
    ‘Well, I don’t feel like me. And heaven knows, I should know how to dress. I’m a model,’ she said, suddenly walking gracefully up and down the room, finishing with a slow pirouette in front of Patsy. ‘And I do know normally. But this!’ She struck a tragic pose with her arms flung wide. ‘What is one supposed to be? A nurse? A travel guide? A philosopher and friend? A waitress? An explainer of rules and regulations? A minder of babes? Tell me... d’you know anyone who is?’
    Patsy shook her head.
    ‘Not me neither. What I do know is that a girl who’s just gone in was a nurse.’
    They both mournfully digested the fact.
    ‘She’ll have a mu ( ch-better chance than us then,’ Patsy said.
    Cynthia nodded emphatically. ‘And do you realize that even if they take you on ... there’s the course.’
    ‘Yes,’ Patsy said reverently, ‘ the course .’
    ‘I hope you don’t speak any languages,’ Cynthia went on accusingly.
    ‘I write French and German. But I don’t speak them very well.’
    Cynthia shrugged her shoulders as though she might overlook it this time.
    ‘And then,’ Patsy pointed out consolingly, ‘I’m not nearly so... I don’t know how to put it... well, poised as you are.’
    ‘No, that’s true,’ Cynthia agreed, rather too readily, ‘and I know how to make an entrance as it were.’ She matched her words by walking over to the corridor door, opening it, and then carefully advancing towards Patsy. ‘Good morning,’ she said, and inclined her head graciously, first to Patsy and then to three areas of thin air on either side of her. ‘There are four of them on the Board,’ she whispered. Then resuming her pose, ‘Take a seat? Ah, thank you.’ She sat down, and crossed her beautiful legs carefully. ‘Notice I cross my elegant ankles only,’ she whispered to Patsy. Then she drew off her gloves. ‘Glorious day, isn’t it?’ she remarked to the left-hand blank space, and then smiled expectantly at the whole side of the room. ‘Now you see how it’s done,’ she said, not without the pride of a true artist.
    Patsy sighed. ‘I never could.’
    ‘But of course you couldn’t! You crept round the door like a little blue-eyed innocent. Even I’—she spread her long fingers over the approximate area of her heart—‘feel like old mother wolf beside you. But that, as it were, balances the languages. Get me?’
    Patsy said rather sadly that she did.
    ‘But for all that, if I were a passenger,’ Cynthia said with disarming frankness, ‘I know which of us two I’d rather fly with. You ,’ she said, and smiled. And before Patsy had time to say she’d really be no good at all, she was sure, Cynthia went on, ‘And just supposing you are accepted, you couldn’t go on living where you are, could you?’
    Patsy shook her head.
    ‘I’ll have to change too—I have a flat,’ Cynthia said, suddenly and strangely in rather a shy way. ‘In the West End. And I just couldn’t afford it on a stewardess’s pay.’
    Patsy said that she supposed she couldn’t.
    ‘Would you think of trying to get fixed in the same place as me?’ Cynthia asked. ‘Oh, not an expensive place. Just the ordinary sort of bed-sitter that the girls usually live in, they tell me. But it would be nice to have someone else in the same job there too.’
    ‘Of course it would,’ Patsy said gratefully. ‘I’d like that very much.’
    They both lapsed into a companionable silence. Then, star tl ing as a gunshot, though it was no louder than a soft discreet click, the communicating door opened.
    ‘Miss Waring, please,’ a woman’s voice said quietly.
    Cynthia stood up with unruffled composure. One half of her face turned towards