And returning too would be BlueSky Holidays Chief Operating Officer, Ms Gina Summers. On Monday, I had worked on the flight that Ms Summers had flown out on. Ms Summers had been away on a three-day stay to assess the staff, check out the leisure facilities, and critique the restaurants at the newly opened BlueSky Holidays affiliated hotel complex on Madeira in the Azores. I was to welcome Ms Summers aboard at the air steps on Camilla's orders. A prospect I was dreading.
I tried again. "Gemma, why are you having second thoughts about letting me keep my cabin crewman job at BlueSky Holidays? Especially now, when Camilla has unlimited power over me. I mean, you were so hell-bent on getting me away from Camilla. And what about the social life you said you want? Nights out and weekends away - you could have all of that."
"I have been thinking it over. Things have changed, Mason. My long-running catfight with Camilla, as you called it, is over. Coercing me yesterday lunchtime to go to my knees to kiss the soles of her feet to save your reputation, Camilla has defeated me beyond recovery. Camilla has got me out of her hair. I am no longer her bugbear. Camilla's reason for mistreating you at work was to get at me. Yes, she will still take pleasure in subduing and subjugating you because it is in her nature, but she no longer has that driving motive. And so now it occurs to me that I can maximise my other advantages. After all, why should I care if you want to be the foot servant of air hostesses? If you want to enslave yourself at their stinky after-flight feet, go ahead - I can live with it. I shall have to forego the sort of social life I want, for now. But, with all of our new domestic arrangements: you, assuming all household chore and shopping responsibilities, and your early evening soap-time foot services to me on your home-use kneeling mat - our relationship is on a new footing. So, I have made a decision - of sorts. You can keep your job for now. And in the event I am not happy with your situation at work, I have a reliable fallback. I can easily pull the plug on your peculiar preoccupation and have you start work in the loading bay at the DIY superstore."
"All right, Gemma. You are in control - total control. I will continue in my cabin crewman job or take the job at the DIY superstore - it is up to you. You saved my reputation at the cost of your self-esteem. I witnessed what Camilla put you through, on your knees at her feet - and I was excited by it! And worse, Camilla saw that I was excited by it. And so now there is no price too high for me to pay. I will do whatever you say. The best of all possible outcomes is that you can have your cake and eat it."
"All right then, Mason. All I wanted was your total submission to my will. Yes, I know that you will submit totally to Camilla and slavishly serve her cronies at work. But now it will be at my sufferance. Oh yes, and another new rule: You will sleep on our sofa whenever you come home after midnight. I will not tolerate your habitual ruining of my night's rest. So now, go on, Mason. Go to work. Go to Camilla - your Queen of the Skies!"
***
I hadn't liked to leave Gemma on such a cross note, with her 'Queen of the Skies' jibe ringing in my ears. But there it was. And at least now, unless Gemma decided to 'pull the plug on my peculiar preoccupation' and have me start work in the loading bay at her DIY superstore workplace, she could have it both ways, with what she liked to call 'our new footing'.
***
The time was 12:45 by the time I had driven to Gatwick Airport, retrieved my regulation issue kneeling mat from my locker, reached the third floor of BlueSky House where all of our Gatwick HQ departments were located and knocked on the sky-blue door signed 'Crewing'.
Even from the corridor, I could hear the bustle and business of the busy Crewing department - loud, strident female telephone voices hectoring uncooperative cabin crewmen to compliance. I looked across the passage to the sky-blue door signed 'Personnel' - my next port of call. They sounded swamped with work there, too. Their recruitment programme for a hundred new air hostesses to replace the hundred or so cabin crewmen who had resigned on the spot on Monday rather than sign their revised contract would be in full swing. And so would be their trickier, heavy-vetting search for thirty new Subservience to Stewardesses directive-compatible cabin crewmen to achieve our COO Ms Gina Summers' new optimal par of one flunky per flight to do the lackey work for the air hostesses and then massage their feet post-flight on their kneeling mats.
Janice, the Head of Crewing, opened the door. Janice, in her mid-twenties, was dark-haired, slim, and she was taller than me at about five foot ten. Janice had a lot going for her, and that was for sure - but she was what some people might call 'handsome' rather than beautiful; her long face and big teeth did give her a slightly horse-faced appearance. The dress code was informal in the Crewing department. But as supervisor, Janice wore a suit of light grey jacket and trousers to the office, and for the power-pumps effect, she had wangled a pair of the free-issue uniform black leather pumps worn by the air hostesses.
Generally, the Crewing department is off-limits to non-Crewing staff - the girls in Crewing would usually contact air hostesses and cabin crewmen about any work schedule issues over the phone. But, as had happened to me a year ago, new cabin crewmen were sometimes 'invited' to the Crewing department for an 'informal' visit. My call had come from Janice. Janice had wanted to 'assess' me in person. To gauge my pliability - my manipulability - to determine just how far she could push me when she might want to alter my roster adversely or at very late notice. I had later suspected that it had been Penny in Personnel, who had tipped off Janice that I might be a bit of a pushover - a Crewing girl's go-to guy for difficult times. And, having received my surprise call and been 'invited' to the Crewing department for a one-time 'getting-to-know-you' visit by the supervisor Janice, I had at the same time made the acquaintance of the other five girls working in Crewing: Sharon, Jill, Alice, Olivia - and Suzy, who had made the biggest impression on me because her catty attitude had belied her cute looks. And so I concluded that to be the reason Janice or one of the other girls in Crewing would 'invite' a new cabin crewman to the office to see him in person and introduce him to her colleagues on their home turf: to sound him out. To try and cow the impressionable new male employee with their force of personality; to put a daunting face to the hectoring voice, that afterwards would contact him over the phone with their unreasonable roster altering demands. In cahoots with the girls in Personnel, I believed it to be their tried and trusted ploy, their sly interdepartmental scheme that was a victory of teamwork because it provided the girls in Crewing with a steady supply of likely lads.
Janice said, "Hello, um... Mason, isn't it? Cabin Crewman Mason Mallard? What is it? We are manic in here. We are all on the phones, trying to maximise the hours and minimise the rest periods, of you, revised-contracted cabin crewmen during our current staff shortage. It is testing our creative rostering talents to the limit!" said Janice, showing me her great teeth as she laughed at Crewing's little in-joke at the expense of their susceptible string of 'likely lads'. "But at least I have drawn a long straw with your cabin crewman colleague Terry - a like-minded crony of yours, or so I am given to understand. I have just been updating Terry, whose weekly roster I am now responsible for preparing. Terry is in your crew room. He is dutifully massaging returned air hostesses' feet before he flies out to Ibiza under Senior Stewardess Jasmine on the second leg of his double-shift of short-hop flight duties that I have put him on today to Holland and Spain. Anyway, we are all up to our necks here, so what can I do for you, Mason? If it's about your new weekly roster, Suzy has already done it. It should be in its usual place in your crew room."
"Hello, Janice. It's very nice to see you again after more than a year," I said. "It was thoughtful of you to invite me here to your office back then for our introductory chat, and I enjoyed meeting the other five pleasant and personable young ladies who work here with you in Crewing. I remember each of you playing your parts in helping me to settle in - you were all most instructive. And, of course, I always enjoy hearing from you all to discuss my roster changes over the phone. But actually, I am here as instructed by Senior Stewardess Camilla Cameron. Camilla has told me to report to Suzy to collect my weekly roster and massage her feet."
Suzy appeared at the door. Suzy was in her early twenties, svelte at five foot six and slightly built. Suzy wore a short-sleeved white shirt, a nicely faded above-the-knee blue denim skirt and a pair of well-used black leather flats. And she had a new hairstyle that suited her - long wisps of her blonde hair hung down each side of her face to give her a deceptively coquettish look.
"Hello, Miss Suzy. I'm here," I said, indicating my regulation-issue corporate colour sky-blue one-foot square, one-inch thick foam-rubber kneeling mat. "Um... your hair looks nice, Miss Suzy."
"Glad you like it," Suzy sniped caustically.
She hadn't changed: she was the same, old Suzy, I thought as her demure image dissolved, fragmented like the fragile facade it was. Her tone made it plain that she didn't care a jot whether I liked her coy coiffeured affectation or not and that clumsy compliments or blatant flattery would not work with her but would backfire on me.
"It's very nice to see you again after so long, Miss Suzy," I said, lying through my teeth. I remembered what it had been like a year ago, the only time I had been in Suzy's vixenish presence. I had been lulled by her lovely looks, only to be surprised and subdued by her sniping personality.
"Jan, it's okay," Suzy said. "I'm expecting Mason. Let him in. That kneeling mat is his ticket into here. Neat, isn't it? See how they are personalised? Mason's name is on it, in the BlueSky Holidays font."
Janice said, "Hang on a sec, Suzy. Cabin Crewman Mason is here to massage your feet? On the orders of Senior Stewardess Camilla?"
Suzy said, "Yes. That's right, Jan. I know what you are thinking: cabin crewman-provided foot massage is the new after-flight perk of the air hostesses and the destination-airport turnaround interlude treat of the female flight deck officers. But Senior Stewardess Camilla has instructed Mason to report to me in person in future for his weekly rosters - and to massage my feet. Later, when I dismiss Mason and on every Thursday in future, I will send him across the corridor to my friend Penny in Personnel. As a friend of Camilla's, I have almost equal authority over Mason. And as a friend of mine, Penny has similar authority over Mason, conferred by me. So Penny can also use Mason and lend him out to her friends. So, would you like Mason to massage your feet too, Jan? After me? Go on, Jan - treat yourself! Camilla has told me that Mason is quite good at foot massage. He is learning very quickly, coached by his female counterparts. And some extra practise for him every Thursday for the six of us here in Crewing and then later for our four colleagues across the corridor in Personnel will undoubtedly improve him further. So, how about it, Jan? Hmm? Would you like Cabin Crewman Mason to massage your feet?"
Janice said, "Um... I don't know, Suzy. It is highly irregular. But, well, yes, I suppose that would be rather nice. That is if Mason wouldn't mind."
Suzy said, "Whether Mason minds or not doesn't enter into it, Jan. I will order him to massage your feet. Mason will do whatever I tell him. I am a friend of Camilla, so Mason will obey and revere me as he would Camilla herself. That is the extent to which Camilla has Mason under her spell."
Janice said, "Oh! Well, in that case, why not? And what about the rest of the girls here in Crewing? What if they all want a foot massage too?"
Suzy said, "Well then, Jan, they shall all have one - simple as that. Camilla has sent Mason here to me - so he will submit to me and obey me on Camilla's say so. It is just simply unthinkable to Mason to do otherwise. Jan, you have to understand Mason's mindset, his peculiar desire to sacrifice his very self to Camilla's every whim. Camilla has given me the gist. But here's how I see it, Jan. Mason's obedient bondage to Camilla is his pitiful weakness - all the more pathetic because it is purely self-imposed and self-enforced. Camilla did not deliberately cast her spell on Mason - her only interest in him was to use him to needle her longtime antagonist, Mason's girlfriend, Gemma. But Camilla is not the sort of girl to spurn such a fortuitous benefit - why should she miss out on the many life-improving usefulnesses of such a devotee? Camilla tells me that Mason has been her fawning puppy dog since their days at secondary school. He carried her school satchel, toted her textbooks, even spent his pocket money to top up her phone credit - to the great indignity and high dudgeon of his then-girlfriend and now fiancee Gemma! True, Mason would hate to give up his job and leave us now - but the only reason why Mason applied for his cabin crewman job at BlueSky Holidays in the first place was that Camilla worked here as an air hostess. Mason's helpless vulnerability is common knowledge among the air hostesses. Many of them benefit from it, too, as a friend of Camilla - especially her close coterie of cronies, who delight in exploiting Mason's moronic mindset at their every opportunity. And now, Mason's hardwired slavish imperative to serve Camilla - and, to attend any of her friends at her behest - will be apparent to all of us here in Crewing. And then later, when I send Mason across the corridor to my friend Penny, the extraordinary extents of Mason's seemingly unalterable allegiance and undiminishing devotion to Camilla will also be revealed to our colleagues over there in Personnel."
