“Unless you get pregnant again,” Jack laughed, slapping his daughter gently on the shoulder.
Three
1952-1953
JONI DECIDED SHE WOULD WORK FOR A YEAR BEFORE SHE went to college. She said she was too disorganized to settle into any program of study and wanted a year to think.
She wept inconsolably when John left. Anne found that a little curious but did not guess the reason. She tried to involve the girl in the planning for the new house. Joni was enthusiastic but was conspicuously distracted. She began to look for a job.
Finding one was not easy. She had no secretarial skills and didn’t want a secretarial job anyway. Jack offered to find a place for her in the company. She responded with a blunt question: “What could I do?” For a while she drove her car around in Greenwich, Stamford, and White Plains, answering employment ads in the local papers. When she turned eighteen, in August, she went to New York and moved into the brownstone. She came to Greenwich only on the weekends. Jack gave her an allowance, but she was embarrassed to take his money.
Finally, in October, she told Jack and Anne that she had a job and asked if she could continue to live indefinitely in the brownstone. They said yes and asked her what kind of job she had. As a model, she said. For Macy’s. She would be photographed in clothes the store wanted to feature in ads in the New York Times and other papers.
Joni was pleased. This kind of modeling was not glamorous work, and the pay was meager, but she could live quite well without taking an allowance—as long as she lived in her father’s luxurious apartment.
Before long Jack and Anne began to recognize Joni in advertising spreads in the Times. She modeled dresses and coats for a time; then she began to appear in bras and panties.
Just before Christmas a telegram arrived from Boston:
DEEPLY HUMILIATED BY TIMES PHOTOS OF JONI IN HER UNDERWEAR. TRUST YOU ARE HAPPY ABOUT TURNING OUR DAUGHTER INTO A WHORE. TRUST SHE IS HAPPY BEING ONE.
MRS. DODGE HALLOWELL
Jack and Anne did not show Joni the telegram. They didn’t need to. Joni had received one of her own:
YOU HAVE THOROUGHLY HUMILIATED YOUR GRANDPARENTS AS WELL AS DODGE AND ME BY ALLOWING YOURSELF TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED ALL BUT NAKED FOR PUBLIC DISPLAY IN NEWSPAPERS. SUGGEST YOU NEVER AGAIN APPEAR IN THIS CITY.
MRS. DODGE HALLOWELL
Joni did not show that telegram to Jack or Anne. She answered it with a wire to her mother:
GO TO THE DEVIL.
JONI
Her mother’s telegram only made her more determined to find success in the work she had chosen to do. When the time came to apply to colleges and universities, she did not apply. Instead, she had a portfolio of photographs taken of herself and began to visit modeling agencies.
In April 1953 she was accepted by the Rodman-Hubbel Agency. Her assignments then became more varied, and she appeared in slick magazines instead of department-store ads in newspapers.
Four
OCTOBER 1953
JACK AND ANNE HAD TWO CHILDREN: LITTLE JACK, WHO WAS now six, and Anne Elizabeth, who was four. Jack was forty-seven. Anne was forty. They talked about having more children and decided they should not.
Anne went to her gynecologist in the spring and was fitted for a diaphragm. She found it uncomfortable, and Jack could feel it when he was inside her and didn’t like it. They relied on condoms instead. But neither of them liked those, either. Both were bothered by the feel of rubber between them.
In bed one night in the Manhattan townhouse, where they had come after a formal dinner honoring Curt Frederick, they talked about what they had come to regard as a problem.
“I love you so much, Jack,” Anne whispered to him as they lay together. “I want to make love with you. All the time. I . . . have been thinking that maybe I should have my tubes tied. It’s not a big operation. It—”
“I have a better idea,” he said. “The operation that I can have is much easier.”
“Oh, but, baby!”
“It’s much easier. It’s not painful. And it doesn’t change anything, as far as feeling is concerned. Curt had it done when he was fifty and Betsy was forty-seven. He assures me he cannot tell the difference. He says it’s just as good for him as it ever was.”
“You wouldn’t feel you were . . . How can I say it?”
“Less of a man? I’d feel I was more of a man, for having done something . . . responsible. Why should you have to undergo surgery when I can have this done as an office procedure?”
Ten days later he lay on a table in a surgeon’s office and submitted to the procedure. It was not painless, but it was not major surgery, either. The discomfort was gone in a week.
Three times Anne used her hand to make him ejaculate into a glass and went with him when he took the sample to a lab, where it would be examined under a microscope. The third time, the lab found no sperm cells in his semen.
He and Anne made love with a new freedom. She offered him more, as if she wanted to make it up to him for having had the operation. She had never withheld anything from him, but now she welcomed him with new fervor.
Five
DR. LOEWENSTEIN HAD BEEN RIGHT. NOT EVERY TELEVISION station had to be a separate entity. A station could be connected by wire to satellite stations. What was more, local commercials could be inserted in the commercial breaks in a program. During commercial breaks in a Carlton House movie, local businesses could advertise their goods and services.
Late in 1953, LCI began an experiment in transmitting signals from its major stations to satellite stations by using a series of microwave transmitters. A microwave transmitter could send its signal only on line of sight, not over the horizon. Even so, a properly situated microwave transmitter could send its signal for twenty-five or thirty miles. A series of stations could send a program from a major television station to a community of satellite stations for a fraction of the cost of leasing wires.
Frequency allocations were another problem. With only twelve VHF channels available, competition for them was aggressive. For a time, the seventy UHF channels were all but ignored. Independent and public television stations took them. So did LCI.
Most television sets received only the twelve VHF channels. Sets that could receive the UHF channels cost a little more money. Also, the UHF channels did not reach such great distances. The solution, said Dr. Lowenstein, was to make consumers want to receive the programming on UHF.
In many areas—rural areas, especially—people could watch Milton Berle and Your Show of Shows on their VHF sets but had only heard of the interesting, risqué Sally Allen Show. They wanted it. They bought UHF sets and put up the additional little antennas that were needed to bring in the UHF stations.
By the end of 1953, the Lear Network was being called the fourth network. It was a status Jack Lear would not claim, but he was pleased with the result of his adventure in television.
Six
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1953 JACK AND ANNE RETURNED TO LONdon. They spent a week seeing shows and visiting shops, then drove to Weldon Abbey for a three-day visit, bearing gifts and also photos of the home they were building in Connecticut. The Countess put them in the bedroom where they had spent their wedding night.
A big fire burned in the fireplace. Tonight it warmed the room.
“The fireplace didn’t do much for us that night, did it?” Jack remarked. “The bed had been warmed for us, but this room was cold!”
“I’d intended to wear the white negligee,” said Anne. “Remember it? I bought it for our wedding night. But this room was so cold that night that we couldn’t come out from under the covers.”
“Without frostbite,” he chuckled.
She smiled. “It was a wonderful night for snuggling, though, wasn’t it? The bed was warm, but you’d have kept me warm even if it hadn’t been.”
“We were in Majorca before you could wear the negligee. I wish we had it now.”
“We do,” she said with a playful smile. “I brought it. Give me a minu
te to put it on.”
The white negligee consisted of a sheer pleated skirt and a snug lace bodice that scooped under her breasts, leaving them bare. It was held up by narrow silk straps that ran from her armpits and over her shoulders. She modeled it for him, the way she’d done in Majorca. The pleats stirred as she walked, yielding glimpses of everything the skirt covered.
She sat down on an eighteenth-century settee that faced the fireplace. While he took off his clothes and pulled on a knee-length black Japanese silk robe, she poured cognac into two snifters. He sat down beside her, and before he took a sip of the brandy he kissed her, first on the mouth, then on each nipple. Then he dipped his tongue in the cognac and transferred a few drops to her lips and a drop or two to each nipple, where he knew it would tingle.
Anne dipped her tongue in the brandy and transferred a few drops to the tip of his penis.
They laughed.
“Can I ever express to you how much I love you?” he asked.
“Maybe not with words,” she said. “Anyway, you don’t have to express it. I know it. I feel it.”
They moved to the bed. In one respect, Anne was a woman like none he had ever known before. She was wet! Sometimes, with others, he had put saliva, even Vaseline, on himself to effect a smooth entry. Never with Anne. From the time he began to kiss her, she became wet. Entering her had never been difficult; she was ready and slippery as soon as he approached her.
The only sexual difficulty they ever experienced was a minor one. Well hung though he was, Jack could never seem to penetrate Anne as deeply as she could accept. She could be satisfied without deep penetration, but she loved to feel him as far inside her as he could reach. They achieved the best penetration when he lay on his back and she mounted him. She would spread as wide as she could and lower herself on him.
She had a joke: “Oh, lover! I feel you in my throat!”
As she impaled herself on him, she grunted, “You didn’t get in like this on our wedding night. Damn that cold night and those down comforters!” She began to pump. “Damn!”
He looked up and studied her closely. She kept her chin high, her eyes tightly closed, and drew her lower lip back between her teeth. She grunted and sometimes squealed, as she raised her hips and slammed them down, driving his shaft into her. Her breasts bounced, and sweat began to gleam on her lithe body. Who could have guessed this of the polished, dignified, aristocratic Countess of Weldon? Nobody, he judged. Besides every other wonderful thing she was, Anne was a carnal animal.
Seven
AT THE SAME TIME THAT HIS FATHER AND STEPMOTHER WERE reenacting their wedding night in rural England, Midshipman John Lear was exulting in one of the most memorable experiences of his life. Tense but alert, he took his turn at the wheel of the venerable aircraft carrier Essex. It was midafternoon in California, and the Essex was cruising off San Diego, launching and recovering F9F Panther jets. The pilots were in training for carrier operations. The midshipmen were getting their first sea experience.
Keeping an eye on the compass, hoping he wouldn’t let the ship wander off heading, John could not watch the air operations, even though they were what interested him most. The jets roared off, hurled by steam catapults. Returning to the deck demanded the maximum skill and steely calm of every pilot. It was surely the most difficult flying anyone would ever be asked to do.
The wind was shifting.
“Bring the ship to two-eight-five degrees.”
“Two-eight-five degrees, aye, sir.”
John spun the wheel.
“Twenty right rudder will be enough,” muttered the regular quartermaster. “Then ten left when she’s within five degrees of course, to stop the turn.”
Watching the turn of the compass, feeling the huge ship turn in response to his steering, John had to brace himself to keep from shuddering.
His turn at the wheel lasted only half an hour, but he knew he would never forget the experience. Leaving the bridge, he was able to linger for a while at a vantage point where he could see the flight deck operations. There was no doubt in his mind that in another three years he would be flying from a carrier.
TWENTY - SIX
One
1954
“I’M GLAD TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE, MR. LEAR. I’VE wanted to meet you for a long time.”
Dick Painter saluted Bob Lear with a glass of rye. They sat together in the living room of a suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. They had chosen this place because they didn’t want Jack to learn they had met.
Dick had made all of the arrangements. Two girls in black panties and bras, with black garter belts and dark stockings, sat in chairs by the bar, ready to bring fresh drinks to the two men on the couch.
“I can’t help but feel that your brother has made a point of keeping us from meeting. Do you have that feeling too?”
Bob shrugged. “Jack’s a devious guy.”
Dick leaned forward and stared into Bob’s eyes. “Your brother is one of the most intelligent and effective men I’ve ever known. And ‘devious’ is not a word I would use to describe him. Since you used it—”
“He has a lot in common with our father. You know much about my father?”
“Everyone knows of your father. He was a tycoon. Whatever he touched turned to money.”
“Well, my father and my brother have got something in common. When my father wanted something, he got it! Whether it was a piece of ass or a contract. But he ran up against one guy he couldn’t break—Jack. Jack just walked out on him. My father hated him for it. Still, he had to recognize that Jack was just like him.”
“A chip off the old block,” Painter suggested.
“Like that. Me, I’m more a business-type guy. I had to be. That was what the old man wanted.”
Dick Painter was glad he had arranged this meeting. He’d had no idea what Bob Lear might be like. Now Bob sat there in a light-gray double-breasted suit with a bright, splashy necktie, the archetypal envious younger brother, unable even to aspire to his elder brother’s achievements.
In Bob’s own suite, before they came here for their business meeting, Dick had met Dorothy Lear. My God! Married to that, Bob would have had to be blind and illiterate not to have been envious of his brother’s marriage to the exquisite Anne, Countess of Weldon. And before her, there had been the most beautiful Boston debutante of 1929.
“Bob, some of us at Lear Communications have been exploring for almost four years now the idea of merging Carlton House Productions into LCI. We think there are immense advantages. Jack has blocked us at every turn, saying you would never accept such an arrangement. Has Jack seriously presented the proposal to you?”
Bob shook his head. “I never heard of the idea,” he said. “He never said anything to me.”
Dick glanced at the two young women waiting beside the bar. “Why don’t you girls call down and have dinner sent up?” he said. “Tell them to give us, say, forty-five minutes.” Then he lowered his voice. “Bob, do you have any idea how much Jack is worth?”
“A hell of a lot, I figure.”
“Have you seen the home he’s built in Greenwich, Connecticut? A fuckin’ museum, Bob! And where did the money for something like that come from? He sold most of his network to the gentlemen who now own the controlling interest in LCI. In short, he cashed out! But he won’t with Carlton House, and he won’t let you. Maybe, uh . . . You get my point?”
Bob Lear nodded.
“Okay. Maybe that’s as far as we can go this evening. Tell you what, maybe we should look a little closer at the two young ladies over there. I can promise you one thing. They’re artists! You take your choice. Maybe a little before dinner, then a little after.”
Bob Lear frowned. “I’ve been . . . Well, I’ve never been what my father was—what I guess my brother is.”
Dick laughed. “Then here’s your chance to expand your horizons, Brother Bob. Pros, those girls. Absolutely discreet. They don’t know who you are. I’ll take care of them, money
-wise. Enjoy!”
“Well . . . the one with red hair,”
“Good! Good choice, Bob! Uh . . . figure half an hour before dinner comes up. Save a little of yourself for later. Okay? Know what I mean?”
When Bob Lear had gone into a bedroom with the redhead, Dick and the other girl shared a laugh. Then Dick slipped into a closet to make sure the cameraman caught everything that happened in that bedroom.
TWO
JACK HAD NO HESITATION ABOUT CALLING MONICA DALE TO ask her if she would appear on a special television show he was producing. He was surprised and pleased when she said she would, depending on her schedule and the script. He told her he wanted her to appear on a special two-hour broadcast of The Sally Allen Show. It would be a variety show, built around songs and dances, with perhaps some sort of flimsy plot in the background to tie it all together.
She did not ask the question her agent would have asked: did the Lear Network have enough stations to cover the nation and get worthwhile exposure for his star? Very soon the agent called to ask just that—plus, of course, how much Jack proposed to pay. The answer was that Lear Communications, In corporated had just acquired WNNJ in Newark, New Jersey, whose signal could be received in all five boroughs of New York City and even in Westchester County and well up into Connecticut, as well as all over northern New Jersey. WNNJ was a Lear satellite station. Most of its broadcasting came in by microwave transmission from Kansas City, which continued to be the pilot station of the network.
Sally Allen surprised Jack with an odd request.
“I got a letter from Len,” she told him. “Jack, I can’t help still having some kind of feeling for the guy. He’s not asking for money. But could I help him find a job? Is there anything in the world we could do for the guy? I guess I’m too tenderhearted, but I hate to see old Len on the curb.”
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