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  TOUCHFEATHER

  TOUCHFEATHER

  JIMMY SANGSTER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2017 Jimmy Sangster

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 0997832355

  ISBN 13: 9780997832358

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253,

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  To Sydney

  Also by Jimmy Sangster

  The Touchfeather Series

  Touchfeather, too

  The John Smith Series

  private i (aka The Spy Killer)

  Foreign Exchange

  The Jimmy Reed Series

  Snowball

  Blackball

  Hardball

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book was originally published in England in the late 1960s and reflects the cultural and sexual attitudes, language, and politics of those turbulent times. This new edition also retains most of the original British spellings, grammar, and punctuation.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  To the best of my knowledge and belief there is not—and never has been—a Katherine Touchfeather on the roster of air hostesses employed by BOAC, TWA, PanAm, Air India or any other member of IATA. Katy, as my story makes clear, is employed by Mr. Blaser. How he contrives to have her appear in the right aeroplane at the right moment, wearing the right uniform and exhibiting the ready smile and warm friendliness of the perfect air hostess, is his secret. I would like to assure SAS, United, Quantas, American, Lufthansa and all other member companies of IATA that I make no suggestion that any of their employees could, or should, do the things Katy does—despite some recent airline advertisements which may have given their readers ideas to the contrary, e.g., ‘Save Friday night for Ingeborg Bechtel. She puts the fun in flying’. Or ‘Sometimes our hostesses take young men home with them’. Katy Touchfeather is to be regarded entirely as fiction. Whereas my admiration and affection for that unique race of young women, the air hostesses, is demonstrably fact!

  J.S.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Katy Touchfeather. I mean, what sort of a name is that to hand a girl? The Katy is all right, or Katherine as my parents put on my birth certificate. But Touchfeather! It doesn’t sound any better in French either, nor for that matter in Spanish, German or Italian. I know, because I speak all of them to some extent. Still, that’s just one of the crosses I have to bear. The other is Mr. Blaser. Considering that he is the most important man in my life, it’s remarkable how little I know about him. C. W. Blaser, CBE; the C. W. must stand for something, but I haven’t the faintest idea what. To me, he’s Mr. Blaser or, more usually, ‘sir’. Handsome? I suppose so, in an ex-naval, pride-of-the-quarterdeck sort of way. He’s about fifty years old, with iron-grey hair, and a face made up of clefts and creases. There are clefts in his forehead, and creases around his eyes; he has two deep clefts angling down either side of a thin, hard mouth, and he has a cleft in his chin which could make him look like Cary Grant, but which doesn’t. His eyes survey the world from beneath a formidable pair of eyebrows; they are greyish eyes, not quite blue, and not quite any other colour. There is a basilisk quality in the way he uses them, and over the years I have learned to fix my own gaze on a point just above the bridge of his nose; I find him less intimidating that way.

  But the most disconcerting thing about him is that he never looks at me as a woman. Not that it would do him any good, but it’s discouraging when every man looks at you in one way, while the one most important in your life looks at you in an entirely different way. Earlier on in our association, I must admit to having tried some of the feminine wiles on him, hoping at least for some sort of reaction. I didn’t try the low-cut blouse, or the black suspenders under a short skirt—which can be effective, but which I find too personal for mass consumption—but I paid particular attention to my hair, which is reddish, and I fluttered my eyes, which are greenish, and I poked out my chest, which is largish but firmish; and I licked my lips a couple of times, and crossed my legs, and sighed a little. Nothing.

  I decided much later that when he thinks of me, which can’t be very often, he thinks of me as a Fred. But then I suppose he’s on the right track; if he thought of me as a Katy, he’d never ask me to do some of the extraordinary things he does ask me to on occasions. As long as he is the boss and I’m just a simple employee, it’s better that our relationship remain on the completely negative level that it has done up to now.

  I’d only been in from New York for two hours when his secretary called me.

  ‘Mr. Blaser would like to see you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m in the bath.’ I was, too—a hot, steaming, overful bath laced with Fenjel and Epsom salts. There’s nothing like Epsom salts for easing the aches out of insteps that have practically cracked under the strain of walking across the Atlantic. I’d been up and down the economy class aisle so many times that my arches felt like they had been fractured. It’s not so bad on TWA or Pan-American because they provide inflight entertainment in the form of movies. This keeps the passengers quiet for a good ninety minutes, and gives one a breathing space. I don’t wish to appear unpatriotic, but BOAC plays hell with its long-distance hostesses; with no movie to pass the time, the passengers get bored, and when they get bored they invariably buzz for the hostess. They’re never quite sure why they send for her. Most of the time they don’t ask for anything particular; they just talk, and we, the hostesses, just listen and make suitable comments where necessary.

  But at least I’m not tied to BOAC like some of the girls. One day I’ll be BOAC, all trim and navy blue, but the next I’m as likely to turn up in the pale blue of PanAm or the red of TWA or, my favorite, the sari of Air India or Pakistan. There’s something terribly elegant about a sari; it’s both sexy and practical, whereas most sexy getups are uncomfortable to wear and, on occasions, downright embarrassing. Not that I’m anti-sex by any means; given a combination of the right time, the right place and the right man, I’m all for it. I take my pills regularly and I can honestly say that, providing the three conditions just mentioned are there, Katy won’t be found wanting. But I was a well-brought-up young lady, a credit to my parents and a virgin longer than ninety percent of my friends. Still, there comes a time...There always does. I learned to take my pleasures, kicks, jollies, whatever you like to call them, when they were presented, without too much thought for the morning after. Because in my line of business I can never be sure there’s even going to be a morning after. And when I say that, I’m not thinking entirely of air-hostessing.

  After Mr. Blaser’s secretary had hung up, I hauled myself out of the bath and started to dry off. If Mr. Blaser said ‘Jump!’ one jumped. He wanted to see me, so that was that as far as I wa
s concerned. BOAC or TWA may have been picking up my tab on the surface, but I worked for Mr. Blaser first, last and in between. I dressed quickly, but carefully; Mr. Blaser liked his people to look right. I’d been in disgrace for a whole week once when I had turned up with a ladder in my stocking.

  ‘We pay you a very generous clothing allowance, Miss Touchfeather. Please see that you use it in the manner for which it is designed.’

  There was no point in telling him that the clothing allowance barely covered cosmetics and dry cleaning. He wouldn’t have understood; he didn’t wear cosmetics and I’m sure that he had a wife hidden away somewhere who sponged and pressed his suits religiously.

  I had a reasonably heavy date for later that evening so, as it was already past seven, I settled for my little black number, the dress that nearly makes me look like a lady. That’s another thing about Mr. Blaser—he likes his people to look as though they could have been brought up in Cheltenham or Tunbridge Wells. The fact that I was Streatham born and bred he chooses to ignore.

  When I was ready, I unwrapped my genuine, natural wild-mink stole from its polythene cocoon and called a mini-cab. The mink most certainly hadn’t been bought out of my clothing allowance, but the less said about that the better. Five minutes later the house phone rang.

  ‘Miss Smith?’ enquired a voice. I confirmed that I was Miss Smith and that I would be right down. I have found that it saves a great deal of trouble to use the name Smith when it’s not important. Imagine what I’ve had to go through with Touchfeather, especially with some of the more chatty cab drivers and such like. This one wasn’t chatty and gave me no trouble at all; he was too busy trying to find the address I had given him.

  Thirty-two Pandam Street is an adjunct of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It’s an old building sadly in need of demolition. It houses, among other things, the department whose job it is to investigate air disasters after the investigators have investigated. In other words, when the official boys have finished sifting the wreckage and made their findings, the lads from Pandam Street swipe all the files and try to discover what really happened. Not, I hasten to add, that they ever find a discrepancy in ‘cause of accident’. They’re not interested in that; they’re interested in the ‘cause of the cause’. A bomb in the luggage compartment has got to have been placed there by someone; a failure of two engines simultaneously or a malfunctioning altimeter may be just that, but there has to be a reason for the failure which sometimes goes beyond the mere collapsing of tried and tested equipment. They usually check the passenger list first, and it’s surprising how much information can be gleaned from a list of names, especially when that list can be checked against every other list in existence, whether it belong to MI6, the CIA or, on one momentous occasion, the KGB. But apart from that department, with which I have very little to do, 32 Pandam Street also houses Mr. Blaser.

  I paid off my mini-cab and, mounting the four steps to the front door, rang the bell. The door was opened by Bill Banks, who grinned lecherously when he saw me.

  ‘Ah, Miss Tootchfeather,’ he said. That was the way he pronounced it. ‘Nice to see you, very nice indeed.’ I gave him my number-one-type smile, the one reserved for friends, and then slapped his hand as he pinched my bottom in passing.

  ‘Careful, Bill. Someone might see us.’

  ‘There’s no one here,’ he said, reaching out again. I sidestepped smartly and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek. ‘That’ll keep you going for a while, you dirty old man!’

  He wheezed into laughter, blasting out a smell of camphor and Guinness.

  ‘I’ll be all ready for you when you finish with ‘im,’ he said, nodding towards the stairs.

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ I said. Bill Banks was seventy-two, but even though he was one hundred percent talk, I never travelled in the elevator with him; it had broken down between floors on one occasion, and I had been stuck with him for ninety minutes. He hadn’t tried to rape me or anything like that, but the smell of camphor and stout in a confined space can be pretty overpowering after the first ten minutes.

  I ducked past him to the stairs and walked up the two flights to the door marked RECORDS. I knocked and went in. Miss Moody was still at work. I think she must live in Mr. Blaser’s pocket, because I’ve never been in that office when she hasn’t been there, and I’ve visited at some very strange hours. She’s a little, grey-haired body of indeterminate age, and she never smiles. This isn’t to say that she is unfriendly, but she possesses the most atrocious set of false teeth, which have on occasions been known to drop out onto her lap. So she tries to keep her mouth tightly shut all the time, talking as much as possible through her nose.

  ‘He’s waiting for you,’ she said as I walked in. ‘You look very nice.’

  She always gave me a morale booster before I went into Mr. Blaser’s office, because she knew I wouldn’t get one once I crossed the threshold. That was just one of the things that made me fond of Miss Moody. There were others, like the fact that she was responsible for checking my expenses, and she had been known to pass items that Mr. Blaser didn’t even know existed. I tapped politely on the door and waited for the light affixed to the lintel to turn green. Miss Moody gave me a nod of encouragement, and I walked in.

  TWO

  The first time I met Mr. Blaser I had been an air hostess pure and simple—well, simple anyway. To be an air hostess had been my ambition since I was fourteen years old and, as one of the prime requisites was at least one foreign language, I surprised all my teachers by shining in French, while at all other subjects I was never more than three away from the bottom of the class. And because languages seemed to appeal to me, they took me off domestic science and gave me Spanish, and off biology onto German. Italian I picked up in my spare time. So, by the time I was old enough to apply for the job as air hostess, I was fluent in four languages and could say ‘No!’ in half a dozen more. I enjoyed the training enormously, not least because of the uniform I was issued on the first day. I have a good figure and, never having had too much money to spend on clothes, the first putting on of my uniform remains one of the red-letter days of my life, like the first time you kissed a boy, or the first time you...only I hadn’t at the time. I romped through the training, passing out with the highest marks anyone could remember.

  My first flight was also memorable in that I fell in love with the Captain. He was tall, handsome, amusing and very, very gentle. He could ease a 707 onto the ground as softly as a falling leaf, his large hands coaxing maximum reaction from his plane with minimum fuss. We stopped over in Beirut for two days, during which time I learned what his plane felt like. I wasn’t very ‘with it’ in those days. To me, the verb ‘to seduce’ was something the male practised on the female. Apart from fluttering my eyelashes, I had no idea how to go about getting the man I wanted, but I wanted to go to bed and apparently I put the message across, because that’s where we ended up. It was the first time for me and I was desperately frightened that I would be a disappointment to him. I started out nervously, trying to remember all the things I’d read and heard about that were supposed to please a man. But it is something you just can’t learn from books. After five minutes with those gentle hands, I mislaid my mental manual and the whole operation was taken over by an automatic pilot I wasn’t even aware I possessed. Two weeks later we were married in Mexico City, and three months after that I was a widow.

  I try not to be maudlin about this. It happened three years ago. I tell myself that had he lived our marriage would automatically have descended from its elevated plane to the more mundane world of diapers, hot stoves and the seven-year itch. But it never had a chance to come down from the metaphorical honeymoon we were still having. After Tom died, I mooned about for a couple of weeks, completely lost and loathing myself because I wasn’t pregnant.

  Then the airline called me and asked me to go back to work. I refused at first. Then I began to wonder what I was going to do for the rest of my life on my widow’s pension. That did it—t
he words ‘widow’s pension’. They had a connotation of middle-aged, deprived women drying up until they blew away. So I went back to work. It was all very depressing at first; I’d be meeting people we had known together and going places we had both been. The first time I returned to Beirut I cried like a baby all night. But everything passes except memory. In a couple of months I had pulled myself together sufficiently not to feel sick every time I saw a man with four gold rings on his sleeve.

  And it was about then that Mr. Blaser entered my life. Considering the subsequent impact he was to have on it, it was surprising that he entered with so little fuss. I was ten minutes from boarding a flight to Nassau when the Duty Officer told me that I was wanted in Flight Control. I’d never been in Flight Control before. Our job is to keep the passengers happy and healthy; the men up front look after everything else. With no idea what it was about, I checked that my seams were straight and reported to the office.

  Mr. Blaser got to his feet as I came in. It was the first and last time he ever did so and he shook my hand dryly when I introduced myself. He indicated for me to sit down and then he slid back into the chair from which he had uncoiled.

  ‘Very sorry to hear about your husband, Miss Touchfeather,’ he said. I had reverted to my maiden name when I returned to work. It had been ten weeks by then, and I was able to accept condolences without bursting into tears. So I sat there, making the appropriate inane remarks one does in such situations, and wondering why this strange man should be sorry. To the best of my knowledge he hadn’t even known Tom. Which shows how wrong you can be.

  ‘I knew your husband very well,’ he said. ‘He worked for me on and off.’

  I nodded, feeling that nothing was required of me at this stage. I was wrong again.

  ‘Aren’t you interested in what he did?’