A/N: So I admit this is a ridiculous idea, but I've been waiting a long time to write it. It all comes from an AU Blackthorn14 and I developed a long time ago, but I admit I'd sort of lost interest in it. Then along came Smallsteps32, and her fabulous story 'On the Other Side', which features the reverse of this: A female Douglas/Deborah and a male Martin and hgggk they're just so cute I started thinking about this AU again and how much better it would work with an (eventual) Martha/Douglas pairing. There will be fluff. So much fluff. But first, plenty of drama and plenty of silly events. Enjoy. (And go read 'On the Other Side'. The sequel has just started, I'm so excited!)
A tiny bit of housekeeping- The story is going to be a mixture of original stuff, and chapters based loosely around episodes; some will be closer than others, but there should be plenty of new things to keep it interesting. They won't come in order, but they will be within series- so, for example, I'm going to have events based on 'Edinburgh' next time followed by events loosely based on 'Cremona' for the third chapter, and then there might be some new places, etc. So, in true Cabin Pressure style, the chapter titles are going to be place names where the action takes place :P
Except this chapter title is misleading; it's in Fitton but it has nothing to do with the Fitton episode. Oops.
So after the world's longest author's note and a brief pause to say that I do not own anything for the duration, let's get started :)
Chapter One- Fitton
Moving to MJN Air hadn't exactly been what you would call a career move. It was more a sort of cat move: Douglas Richardson would always land on his feet, even if dropped from a great height, even if said great height was 35,000 feet up with Air England who threw you out of the plane for the little light smuggling that was supposed to be funding the divorce for your prematurely collapsed marriage. The divorce, however, had admittedly not been quite as premature as the wedding. He had married a few days after his twenty-first birthday; he'd just got his first job as a pilot and got his first house and in all the excitement had gone and got the wife to put in it. Three years later and the wife had gone out of it, and after four he himself had been forced out of Air England. It was an industry black ball situation, and perhaps he wouldn't have been hired again, if he hadn't stumbled across Carolyn Knapp-Shappey's somewhat desperate sounding advertisement for a first officer. Most pilots, he supposed, wouldn't want to work for a woman; but he couldn't afford to be choosy and it sounded rather fun. Anyway, he had been quite philosophical about it all- it was 1972, and women were popping up everywhere in unexpected places, giddy with the delights of so-called second wave feminism and the contraceptive pill. Douglas rather thought they would all have to get used to working for women eventually; if only until something better came along. Anyway, MJN Air had looked rather promising back then, shining and newly founded, full of bright ideas and aspirations.
After two years or so, the gloss had rather worn away and he had reassessed the little charter firm somewhat, but he had yet to abandon all hope. True, he had not been promoted to Captain when their other one had retired the month before, but he couldn't deny the truth of Carolyn's assertion that he, at just twenty-seven, was still too young and inexperienced to be a Captain. He was young. Young and going places- and so would this company, if Carolyn had found a decent captain. She'd been talking about expanding; if she'd found someone who knew what they were doing it might even be possible. It was the height of summer, 1974, and Douglas was in the MJN Air office with his jacket on the back of his chair, his sleeves rolled up and his feet on the desk next to the typewriter, waiting for someone to arrive, perhaps Carolyn, or his new captain, or the someone she had apparently taken on to help her with the stewardess-ing.
It was dreadfully hot and stuffy in the office and he was fanning himself with the accounts book in an attempt to stay awake when he heard someone approaching from outside. In one swift movement he swung his legs under the desk and opened the accounts in front of him, looking for all the world as if he had been hard at work, just in case it was his new captain. Instead, after knocking and waiting for an answer from within, it was a young woman that entered.
She looked to be little younger than he was himself, yet Douglas thought that this woman could only really be described as a girl. Perhaps it was something to do with the nervous face she was pulling and the fact she was clearly chewing on her lower lip. She was pale and pasty, without make up, stick thin and with sharp points where it would have been more becoming to have gentle curves. Still, it wasn't all bad. She looked to be about five foot four, five foot five inches or so; a nice height for a woman, Douglas thought, short without being inconveniently so; one would not have to bend over to look her in the eye. Her poor complexion was actually somewhat improved by the scattering of freckles across her face and unusually, she had completely ginger hair. This was not some out of the bottle colour with a reddish hue, this was a full blown hair-themed carrot tribute. It was pinned up behind her head in a kind of knot or a very messy bun which evidently did very little to disguise its length, because Douglas knew nothing about women's hairstyles and yet could guess confidently that it was very long indeed. Her legs weren't bad either, though she really needed to be wearing heels rather than flats. It was no wonder she hadn't been able to find stewardess work before this, as he guessed from her nerves she hadn't. It wasn't just that she was somewhat plain, it was the fact that she seemed to totally lack any kind of glamour to make the most of her redeeming features.
He decided at this point to pause in his analysis and say hello.
"Good morning." She replied. "You must be Mr Richardson. I'm Martha." She offered a hand to shake, but he, never one to miss an opportunity, pressed it to his lips instead. It was always good to have the stewardesses on side, and the quickest way to do that was to flirt shamelessly.
"Please, call me Douglas." He said, smiling winningly and releasing her hand when she awkwardly pulled away. She took a slight step backwards, hovering near the door. He wondered how she was going to cope with being a stewardess if she couldn't deal with a little light flirtation. It would at least be interesting to watch.
"Why don't you sit down?" He said, after watching her rock on her feet for a moment. "I don't know where Carolyn has got to, but I'm sure she'll be along any moment."
"Mm, she said she might be delayed." Martha said, dropping with visible relief into the chair on the other side of the desk. "Apparently she's bringing the new cabin crew."
Douglas looked at her, startled. If she wasn't the new cabin crew, then who was she? It occurred to him that he may have made a slight error. He decided to turn on the charm a little.
"I'm so sorry, miss." He said, in his special soothing-irate-clients voice. "I do apologise for the mistake. Carolyn hadn't told me what time you would be arriving, so I'm afraid I rather assumed you were our new stewardess."
Martha was looking at him in bewilderment, so he continued in his very smoothest of smooth voices. Carolyn would kill him if he lost them a client.
"Although, obviously, I did think it strange that a young woman with such obvious class and sophistication would deign to work with us poor souls in the aviation industry; it just goes to show that when something seems too good to be true, it probably is." Martha still didn't say anything, and so he concluded. "I'm sure Carolyn won't be long, but would Miss like a cup of tea while she waits?"
"Oh no." Martha said, looking at him very much as if he had grown an extra head. "She hasn't told you."
"Hasn't told me what?"
She opened her mouth in the pantomime of having words to push out of it, but before she could come up with any, Carolyn entered with her son in tow. She stopped short when she saw Martha.
"Ah." She said. "I see you've met. Good! Well then, Martha, this is my son, Arthur; Douglas you've seen him about before I think, but now he's finished school he is going to be taking over stewarding duties so make sure you keep an eye on him. Arthur, you remember Douglas, and this is Martha."
"Hello!" Arthur said, slightly breathless from nerves and excitement. Douglas knew for a fact the lad was only sixteen but already rather tall and well built, but at that moment he had such a look of wide-eyed wonder on his face that he wouldn't have looked out of place in a reception class. Anyone would think he had never seen an airfield before, which he had, because he had joined them on standby for a day a year or two before and done nothing but ask questions. He had wanted to be a pilot back then and Douglas had attempted to give him some pointers, but he had evidently lowered his ambitions, probably a wise move. It was not Arthur Douglas had a problem with.
"If he's the cabin crew," He said, not beating about the bush, "And she's not, and she's not a client, then who the hell is she?"
He was upset, admittedly, because he had already half-guessed. To his surprise, it was Martha that answered him, getting to her feet in apparent indignation and rolling her shoulders back, standing absolutely straight as she glared at him.
"She is Captain Martha Crieff, Mr Richardson, and you may call her ma'am."
Ooooooooooo
Martha had tactfully left the room and Arthur had been dispatched to show her around the airfield while Carolyn discussed her decision with Douglas. Discussion meaning argument. Douglas was not happy, not at all.
"You can't be serious!"
"Oh, but I am, Douglas." Carolyn said firmly. "I don't see why it should be such a problem."
"I'm not working for a woman." He said, disgruntled. "I refuse."
"You already work for a woman."
"Yes, but not on the flight deck!" There was a note of pleading desperation in his voice that Douglas didn't like, and sought to extradite immediately by switching to an appeal to reason and flattery. "The world is changing, I get it. I'm happy to work for you and I have every confidence in your abilities to run a business. But that's different. You aren't flying a plane. Female pilots are extremely rare, I think they all disappeared after the war and I've never even heard of a female captain. Anyway, it doesn't matter what I think-"
"You're right, it doesn't matter what you think, and yet, here we still are, stuck in this conversation."
"No, Carolyn, I mean the passengers won't trust her. She won't sound authoritative enough, they wouldn't feel safe. We'll look unprofessional, Carolyn, we'll be a laughing stock!"
"No, we'll be the airline that everyone is talking about." Carolyn said, with the familiar gleam of a money-making plan in her eyes. "Our fame will spread, interest will grow; scandal is the one sure way to get your name spread. Besides, don't you see, it's win-win. She can be two jobs in one. She can be a pilot most of the time, but then when we have an important client who wants a nice young woman to bring him his drink, she can pop on a stewardess uniform and oblige him."
Sometimes Douglas thought Carolyn was more sexist than he was. He wondered if Martha knew about this, or if he would have the delight of breaking it to her himself.
"Anyway," Carolyn continued "The poor girl just wants to fly aeroplanes, someone needs to give her a chance."
"Then make her First Officer!"
"Ah, but that just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, I don't think. Don't you agree?" Carolyn's sweet smile did not match her spiteful words.
"Even forgetting that she's a woman, she's younger than me and much less experienced than me, you just can't-!"
"Why can't I? It's my company, I get to decide who I hire."
"And I get to decide if I quit!"
His words hit against the cheap MDF walls of their office and fell flat. Silence reigned.
"Well then, Douglas," Carolyn said eventually. "By all means quit. Off you go."
She was attempting to call his bluff and they both knew it. The thing was, Douglas wasn't entirely sure if he was bluffing. He wouldn't deny that the main problem here was that his pride was hurt. For all his bluster, however, he was quite used to women pilots. His own mother and aunt had both done their wartime conscription in the Women's Auxiliary Airforce. His elder brother had already been born by then so his mother had stayed firmly on the ground, mostly packing parachutes; but his aunt had been in the Air Transport Auxiliary. She had never flown in combat, of course, but she had still had plenty of stories to tell Douglas when he was growing up; and if ever Douglas had been tempted to be scathing of the glorified delivery job his father would undoubtedly have taken the belt to him. His dad had been in the RAF proper, and the idea of community appealed to him. His war stories had never been very interesting. He wouldn't talk about the spitfire battles or being shot down on the wrong side of the line or any of the other numerous adventures Douglas' childish imagination attributed to him. He would only talk about how they couldn't have won without the ATA, without the Home Guard and the ARP units and rationing and everyone giving in their metal. For tales of airborne adventures, he'd had to go to his aunt. It was her, more than his father, that he'd been thinking of when he decided to become a pilot. She was the one who had added the glamour to the job.
And that was the problem, he decided at last. There was no dignity in being under a woman's command, not on the flight deck anyway. If he wasn't ready to be captain, he wanted a captain who he could learn from, who would improve his skills, let him meet the right people. This girl wouldn't be able to do anything like that; if anything, given that this was apparently her first flying job, he would be doing it for her. If she was an old ATA veteran he could have understood it; if she was an aging pioneer adventuress he would gladly and respectfully have taken the junior seat beside her and waited to see what he could glean from her wisdom. But Martha Crieff was none of those things, she was just a girl with no experience. She probably couldn't even take off on her own properly.
There were pilots who would have quit over it, especially pilots with his charm and smarm and ability to endear himself to almost anyone. But they were pilots who hadn't been black listed by the largest airline in the country. The aviation industry was a very small one and everyone knew everyone else. If he left piloting in a strop and slammed the door behind him, he might find it locked for good. He couldn't leave and Carolyn knew it, she'd known it before he had.
"I'll give her a chance." Douglas said magnanimously. "She won't last long. I give it about a week till you change your mind."
"We'll see, shall we?" Carolyn answered. "Now, if you've quite finished your hissy fit, go and find Martha and tell her to come and get her uniform; the client will be here any minute. Then you can go and do the walk round."
"Surely the Captain should-"
"Now, Douglas."
There were certain tones of voice you didn't argue with however much you wanted to. With a theatrical sigh, Douglas went.
It could be an interesting week or two. She wouldn't last longer than that.
