He acquired his Philadelphia station by hiring a score of Philadelphians to complain to the Federal Communications Commission that the station did not broadcast in the public interest. Then he retained lawyers to argue the point before the Commission. The FCC did not renew the station’s license, and Lear Broadcasting applied for it and won it. Then of course he bought the station’s facilities at a distress price.
His reputation for sharp dealing—dealing like a Jew, she called it to her father—troubled Kimberly. It was not the image she wanted to share.
TWO
THAT SUMMER KIMBERLY LEASED A HOUSE ON THE CAPE. IT was across the road from a beachfront house her parents owned. The Lear children spent their summer on the beach, closely watched by their grandmother Edith.
Cecily Camden, the nanny, did not go with them. She said Great Britain would be at war before the end of the year and she had to go home to help her family with what she was certain would be a horrible ordeal. She stayed in the house on Louisburg Square for three weeks after Kimberly and the children moved to the Cape, which made it possible for Jack to take her to bed more often and for longer, more satisfying times than they had ever had before.
Because they were alone in the house, Cecily could strip naked for Jack, which she had never dared to do before. She loved the needle shower, and they made love in it half a dozen times.
“I thought you wanted to stay in this country.”
“I had that in mind,” she said blandly.
“You’re twenty-nine years old. I know you don’t want to be a nanny all your life. I thought that when the kids were a little older I’d offer you a job with the broadcasting company. Also, I could sponsor you for citizenship.”
“I wouldn’t need a sponsor. I could pass the test. And I’ve been here long enough.”
“Well, then maybe you should change your mind. I could give you a job right now.”
“There’s another little problem,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?”
She smiled and kissed him on the neck. “Don’t you know, really? You’re not that insensitive. You know I’m in love with you. I mean, do you think I’d let you screw me just because I worked for you? Do you think so little of me?”
Jack drew a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “all the more reason for you to stay. I’ll set you up in a job that will make it possible for us to be together often.”
“And I’ll be your mistress while you stay married to Missus? No, Jack, I don’t think so. Anyway, I really feel I ought to be home, seeing what’s coming.”
He drew her into his arms. He realized now that he had not sufficiently appreciated this simple girl. “Cecily . . . I’m going to miss you. What can I do for you, say, as a going-away present?”
“Well . . . you can give me three hundred dollars.”
“Three hundred? Okay. But why three hundred, exactly?”
She stared into his face for a moment, then lowered her eyes. “That’s what it cost me to have your baby taken out of me before it was too late. I got a good doctor to do it, and I had to pay him three hundred dollars—just about everything I had saved.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have paid for it.”
“You might have tried to talk me out of having it done. And . . . well, you might have decided you didn’t want to risk having me again. And I looked forward to those times. I remember every time we did it, every single time.”
He kissed her. “You’re a wonderful girl, Cecily. You’re right; you do deserve better than being a mistress to a married man. Of course I’m going to give you the three hundred. And what will your passage back across the Atlantic cost?”
“Well, I’m going third-class on the Aquitania, and—”
“No, you’re not. You’re going first-class!”
“Jack! I don’t even have the clothes to go first-class!”
“You will before you leave.”
Cecily knelt before him, took his penis in her hands, and placed it between her breasts. Then she pressed her breasts together around his hard shaft, capturing it in a soft, warm cleft. She moved from side to side and up and down until he achieved a unique orgasm: slow and rhythmic, reaching down into him and drawing up sensations from deeper inside him than ever before.
She kissed him fervently, on his eyes and ears, his cheeks and throat, as well as on his mouth. “There,” she whispered. “Let the Missus try to do that!”
“I’m going to miss you terribly, Cecily,” he said quietly.
Three
JACK WAS NOT FOND OF THE BEACH. BUT SINCE THIS WAS THE last weekend of the summer, he had agreed to drive out on Cape Cod as early as Thursday and stay through Labor Day.
Kimberly had chosen his bathing suit. For many years men had worn dark blue trunks with a white web belt and a white knit vest top. It had been all but a uniform. Now, she decreed, that outfit was passé, and she had bought for him a pair of maroon boxer-style trunks that did not include a vest. While it was true that the trunks covered more of his legs than the old ones ever had, he felt immodest exposing his bare chest, particularly since nearly every other man on the beach was wearing a white vest.
“I’m not sure,” he remarked to Kimberly, “that a constable won’t come along and issue me a citation for indecent exposure.”
“He’ll be issuing it to the best-dressed man on the beach,” she said acerbically.
“To the husband of the best-dressed woman on the beach.”
Jack was not entirely comfortable with the bathing suit Kimberly was wearing either. It was the first nylon swimsuit he had ever seen—the first one anyone on Cape Cod had ever seen. Her father’s company did a lot of business with Du Pont, and Harrison Wolcott had been given a bolt of the new experimental fabric. It was white, the only color yet made, and Kimberly had employed a skilled seamstress, first to make her an evening gown of it, then to make this bathing suit. One-piece suits had been around awhile, but they were knitted in dull-color wool and tended to conceal the curves of a woman’s figure. The elastic nylon clung like skin and gleamed. Kimberly had been wearing the suit for several weeks, but this was the first time she had worn it when Jack was with her on the beach. He wondered if both of them were not gaining a scandalous reputation.
He knew Kimberly didn’t think so and didn’t give a damn if they were. She thought they were by far the handsomest family on the beach. She was convinced that everyone else admired them. Probably she was right.
Little John came trotting toward them. “Mummy, Daddy! Is it all right if I run over and knock up Barbara? We can have such a good bathe together!”
Kimberly covered her mouth with her hand for a moment as she laughed. “John, you must not say you want to ‘knock up’ Barbara. That’s not a polite thing to say. You can say you want to knock on her door and ask her to come out and play. Do you understand? You mustn’t say you want to knock her up.”
The boy glanced at Jack, who was laughing hard. “But Cecily said—”
“I know, John,” said Kimberly. “I know. But you must understand that Cecily is from England, where they say things differently. Here it is very impolite to say you want to knock up Barbara.”
“Well, is it all right if I go knock on her door?”
“Yes. But ask her if she’d like to come swimming, not if she’d like to have a bathe. Cecily said that, too, but that’s not how we invite someone to come swimming.”
John frowned, but he ran off toward the neighboring house where the girl two years his senior had become his summer friend.
Kimberly shook her head. “Cecily was a gem,” she said, “but I have to be glad she’s gone.”
Jack wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. “I suppose I should go in the water,” he said. “It’s silly to come to the beach and not swim.”
“I have to confess something,” said Kimberly. She patted her bathing suit. “This tends to get a little transparent when it gets wet. I’ll stay out of the surf for today.”
&n
bsp; Walking down to the water, Jack wondered why she wore a bathing suit if she was afraid to get it wet. Then the answer came to him. He remembered that Kimberly had tennis clothes and didn’t play tennis, and riding clothes and didn’t ride.
He didn’t ride either, because he didn’t trust horses. But, growing up in California, he had become a strong swimmer, and he’d learned how to play a devilish game of tennis. He had played a bit this summer and had developed a reputation for being a worthy opponent on the court. This had led to invitations to play at a couple of the local country clubs where otherwise he probably would not have been welcome.
He swam out through the surf. Someone had anchored a raft beyond where the incoming waves broke, and he climbed up on it.
Looking back at the shore, Jack watched John scamper down the beach, followed by his friend Barbara. John and Barbara romped happily in the surf.
Jack was so engaged in watching the kids that he did not immediately notice that Kimberly was no longer alone. When he glanced in her direction, she waved at him and gestured that he should return.
Curtis and Betsy Frederick were with her, neither of them dressed for the beach.
He swam in and strode up the sand toward them.
“It seems our pledge not to listen to the radio this weekend was a bad choice,” said Kimberly.
Curt walked toward Jack. “Hitler invaded Poland this morning,” he said gravely.
TEN
One
1940
ON DECEMBER 17, 1939, THE DAMAGED GERMAN BATTLESHIP Graf Spee sat at anchor in Montevideo harbor. It had been pursued into Montevideo by British cruisers, which waited offshore. The government of Uruguay notified the German captain that unless he took the ship out of its neutral waters within the forty-eight hours allowed by international law, Uruguayan shore batteries would open fire.
The whole world waited to see what the German captain would do. Anticipating a spectacular naval battle, huge crowds assembled on the Montevideo waterfront. By great good fortune an American newscaster was in Montevideo, and he arranged to broadcast live as the drama unfolded.
In the event, Captain Langsdorff scuttled his battleship. The broadcaster breathlessly described the gripping drama to the American radio audience. Jack and Kimberly Lear were among the millions of Americans who listened with intense interest.
Until he heard that broadcast, Jack had been reluctant to station Curt Frederick in Europe. Occasional trips were enough, he’d thought. Seeing at last the impact of live descriptions of dramatic events, he authorized Curt to set up a news bureau in Paris and to go from there to the expected war front along the Maginot Line to broadcast personal impressions, live as often as possible.
Curt arrived in Paris in February—just in time to cover what soon became known as “the Phony War” or “the Sitzkrieg.” The real war was in Norway or on the Russo-Finnish front. The only story with any drama that he was able to cover was the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on March 18.
Since Paris was in no danger, Curt brought Betsy over to live with him in a flat on rue Saint Ferdinand.
They were enjoying something of a romantic idyll when Jack decided to call Curt home. It cost Lear Broadcasting far too much to keep him in Paris if he could produce only the stories he had been sending.
On Monday, May 6, 1940, Jack boarded the Pan Am Clipper in New York for the flight to Lisbon. Kimberly insisted she would go with him, but he argued that he would be in Paris no more than forty-eight hours, all of which time would be devoted to business. She acquiesced but said she would not stand for his making a second trip to Paris without her. Next time he was to arrange to spend two weeks.
Jack arrived in Paris on Thursday, May 9. Curt met him at the station and took him to the Royal Monceau, a huge traditional hotel a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, which loomed above rooftops and trees and was clearly visible from his windows.
Jack had never been in Europe before. Curt assured him that Paris had never been lovelier and that spring was the best time to see it. It had not rained for weeks, and the skies were high and blue. Fresh May gardens were in bloom. From the taxi between the station and the hotel, Jack saw Parisians—many of them fashionable women with long legs and colorful spring frocks—enjoying themselves in the famous sidewalk cafés. Though he also saw men and women in uniform, Paris did not look like the capital city of a nation at war.
“Well, Jack,” Curt said as he sat down in the parlor of Jack’s suite. “You cabled that you would like to see the Folies-Bergère. Every American does. Every American should. But I am told the Duchess of Windsor will be dining this evening at the Ritz. Would you rather see her?”
“Will the Duchess be as naked as the showgirls?” Jack asked mock ingenuously.
Curt laughed. “Well, then. And dinner afterward.”
“With Betsy, of course.”
The three of them went to the Folies. Jack enjoyed the show. Kimberly had taught him to think of himself as a sophisticated man—she probably would have insisted on the opera if they were to see any show at all—but Jack was not too sophisticated to love the spectacle and to delight in the nudes on the stage of the Folies.
They dined in a Russian restaurant not far from the hotel. It too offered a show, with balalaika music, cossack dancing, and saber dancing. The place was so noisy that Jack found it difficult to talk. He wondered if Curt had chosen this place precisely because it would be difficult to talk. When Curt went to the men’s room, Betsy took Jack’s hand and told him she was happy but missed their assignations of years past.
They walked to the hotel. Paris after midnight. Like New York, it was a city that didn’t sleep. For a moment Jack was sorry that he had not brought Kimberly along. But . . .
“Curt . . . is there really going to be a war?” he asked.
“I assure you there is going to be a war. I’m so sure of it that I’m sending Betsy home next month.”
Jack thrust out his arms to gesture at the songs and laughter echoing in the streets. “Not everyone thinks so.”
“I know why you came to Paris,” Curt said somberly. “On the other hand, should we have set up our operation in Helsinki or in Oslo? We’ve missed sideshows, Jack. The big curtain has still to go up.”
“I can’t afford to keep a correspondent in Paris and one in Berlin, one in London and one in Rome. You’re not the problem, Curt. But we’ve got to find the damned war!”
“The French shook up their government today. Paris is the key city. It may be bombed, as Madrid was bombed. That’s what I fear most, and that’s why Betsy is going home to Boston. Imagine bombs landing on Notre Dame! On the Louvre! Bringing the Eiffel Tower down in a tangled ruin! There’s going to be a great story here, Jack!”
“The question is, how long can we afford to wait for it?” Jack said glumly.
“Let’s talk tomorrow. I’d like to take you out to the Maginot Line. The world has never seen anything like it. Did you bring a camera?”
Walking back through the marble-floored lobby of the Royal Monceau, Jack noticed three women sitting in chairs in the hallway by the elevators. Even he, an American on his first visit to Paris could guess that they were prostitutes, waiting for a call to one of the rooms. Glancing over them, he decided that one of them, a faintly worn-looking woman no less than thirty-five years old might afford him an example of the legendary pleasures only a professional Parisian whore could offer. The other women were younger and more attractive, but he sensed that he would experience something special only with this conspicuously well used woman.
She said her name was Angélique—said it with a faint ironic smile that admitted it was not her real name and emphatically did not suit her. With sagging tits, smeared nipples, stretch marks on her belly, and a shaved pussy, she was just what he had expected.
And just as he had expected, he learned from her. First, they found that his French and her English were about equally weak. They amused themselves lying in bed, where she ga
ve and he received French lessons.
He would touch her nipple and ask what was the French word for that.
“Le mot propre ou le mot vulgaire, Monsieur?” she would ask in her throaty Parisian accent—the polite word or the vulgar word, Sir?
And he would laugh and say, “Oh, le mot vulgaire, Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît!”
She taught him the Parisian slang for cock, balls, cunt, tits, ass and for fucking, sucking, and what she called “la manière grecque”—the Greek style—fucking her in the ass, which she also taught him to enjoy.
She was an earthy Frenchwoman. Back home he would have refused her because she needed a bath. After their first penetration, from the rear, he suggested that they stretch out in the tub together, and she laughed. Then he told her he meant to pay her to stay all night. After that, she was willing to do anything, even take a bath. They agreed on a generous price, and she remained awake all night.
TWO
THE TELEPHONE WOKE JACK THE NEXT MORNING.
Curt could not control his voice. It cracked as he spoke. He was in tears. “The Germans are attacking in massive force! I will be at your hotel by eight-thirty.”
Angélique detected the urgency of the conversation. “Les Boches,” he said to her. She nodded, dressed quickly, and left.
Jack ordered breakfast for two brought to his suite at eight-thirty. His French was good enough to order breakfast but not good enough to understand much from the radio bulletins. Curt described what he had been hearing. The Germans had struck with overwhelming force. It was the blitzkrieg against Poland all over again, only ten times stronger. They were were attacking through Luxembourg and Belgium as they had done in 1914. Besides that, they were invading Holland.
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