The morning headline on the front page of the New York Times the next day screamed, “Earhart Plane Soaring over Atlantic; Reported Nearly Half Way to Ireland After Eight Hours.”
* * *
After an hour in the air and flying in good weather, the Friendship hit the storm LeBoutillier had been so worried about. It was a column of clouds rising defiantly in the air, crowned by ice crystals. Stultz attempted to fly over it, rose to five thousand feet—where the visibility improved for a moment—then the plane was thrown right back into the storm. With headwinds, fog, snow, and sleet, it was the typical Atlantic storm that had frozen the Endeavour and tossed around the American Girl. It took hours to break through, and when the weather calmed, Earhart crawled into the back of the cabin and fell asleep, not waking until morning. Bill had clearly sobered up, faced with the temper of the ocean; he flew almost the entire way, relieved only on occasion by Slim Gordon. Amelia, however, found a bottle of brandy that he had stashed away in the tool bag and hid it.
They flew through dense fog most of the way. Water from the condensation began dripping into the windows. Finally, they saw a ship, which meant they were close to Europe. It was a much welcome sight, since the Friendship was running dangerously low on fuel—so low that there were thoughts of landing in the ocean alongside of the steamer as Ruth and George had done. But Stultz didn’t agree, and wanted to keep going. What they didn’t know was that they had already flown over Ireland, obscured by the fog, and were now over the Irish Sea. A short time later, they landed in Burry Port, Wales, in a small bay where no one paid them much attention, and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic.
It was a relief for the crew: the Friendship was completely out of fuel, so much so that the seaplane could not get out of the bay without fuel being brought in.
* * *
Mabel Boll had stopped speaking after the Friendship had taken off. She sat in a perpetually trembling state of fury, waiting for the inevitable news that the Friendship had crashed or met some other terrible fate. When that news didn’t come but the news that the seaplane was successful did, along with photos proving it, she packed her bags, picked up her fur, and boarded a train to New York without a word to anyone.
* * *
As soon as she got back to New York, Mabel opened her mouth for the first time in a day after she dialed the phone number of the New York Times.
The weather report the Queen of the air had received, she insisted, was wrong.
“Tricked!” Mabel exclaimed with great emphasis. “I wished her luck and all that, but I’ve been tricked just the same.
“The report we received said that the weather was unfit for flying until Monday,” she said. “That was clearly not the same report furnished to the Friendship.”
The bulletin, she added, was signed by Doc Kimball. “Mr. Levine got in touch with Mr. Kimball and Mr. Kimball discounted it right away. But, meanwhile, the Friendship with Miss Earhart has slipped away. We are going to take the matter of that report up immediately!”
The newspaper ran it with the headline “Miss Boll Assails Weather Reports: Woman Rival’s Chagrin,” but only because Mabel was good copy when she screamed. But she was right: she had not been given the same report at all. While Kimball furnished the standard reports to both crews, George Putnam had paid for special reports tailored to the Friendship’s course. The Queen of the air had not received those.
She called Levine, who was hoping he might be done with Mabel for good. She asked him to contact Bert Acosta to pilot her over the Atlantic by the east–west route. She would pay handsomely, but wanted to leave as soon as possible.
Levine was in no mood to get stuck in Mabel Boll quicksand again, and he agreed to call Acosta, but that was it; he had problems of his own. Grace had filed for divorce again, and for the past two years the government had been secretly investigating him for fraud.
Levine, indeed, had problems. After the stock market crash of October 1929, he would be homeless, convicted of larceny and counterfeiting, and bankrupt, hiding in a hospital under an assumed name with a broken leg as the FBI tracked him down. He would never again regain the glory and the fortune he had been so accustomed to.
Mabel Boll, however, hung up the phone satisfied that Charlie would put things in order concerning Bert Acosta, and decided it would be best to travel up to Rochester to see thirteen-year-old Robert Jr. and her parents. She stayed in a nearby hotel, as their house was cramped, drab, and depressing. She needed rest and recuperation and friends and parties and champagne and another diamond. A really big one this time. It would be her present to herself for surviving so much despite all that had been done to her. She was a champion, she knew, and she wasn’t about to give up. She would be victorious; she didn’t second-guess it. She would be the first woman to traverse the Atlantic from the more difficult side, from east to west, something Elsie Mackay couldn’t even do.
Within a week, she had closed the house on Park Avenue, gathered up all of her Marcelles, and was looking out at the Atlantic from behind the handrail of a steamer sailing for Paris, where she would wait for Bert Acosta and prepare for her next conquest.
With the wind gently fanning her face, she pulled out her compact and powdered her nose, then smiled when she saw herself in the mirror.
It was a glorious day.
* * *
The procession into Glenapp Church moved slowly. Led by Lord Inchcape, then his wife, the air was solemn and still despite the summer breeze blowing outside and the geraniums, azaleas, and rhododendrons bursting with full bloom.
Kenneth followed his mother and father, his wife on his arm and his sisters behind him. The children were at the castle; they were too small and delicate to be exposed to such things.
His sister’s body was still held captive by the sea, her curly chestnut hair floating above and behind her as the currents moved slowly, as if in a passive ballet of the grave. He knew they would never find her; just where the plane went down was a mystery, and it was senseless to torment themselves about it. She was gone; it was as simple and finite as that. Her life had been cut as quickly as it could be spoken, and there were no stays, no reprieves; nothing would change for the rest of the time he was alive. Only her ghost would live on.
Since the nights and days at Seamore Place when they had desperately waited for word that never came, they had all done their mourning in their separate and private ways. His father kept to himself, ignoring almost everything around him except for Chim and Lady Inchcape. He had removed them from Seamore Place, essentially closed up the London residence, and had been at Glenapp ever since returning from Egypt. It was clearly easier for him, not expecting to hear her Rolls drive up every night, pressing and spinning against the gravel; he wouldn’t find himself calling up to her third-floor office to ask her a question or hope that she would lean over the banister just so he could see her face. At Glenapp, he had the sea, the hills, the glen. His yacht. Anything to not see her or hear her. He did not wish to speak to anyone; he did not want to nod after condolences or answer a single question about her. He wanted the silence to smother him and to numb him, to cover this cavernous, exposed wound in his heart that would never heal.
There were moments that pounced on him and he suddenly gasped and saw her, only in his mind, smiling at him, taking his hand. He could not think of her any other way. Not in the plane, not in the ocean, not beyond the world in which he had last seen her.
Lady Inchcape, remarkably, was getting stronger after her daughter’s death. She felt she had no choice: with so much collapsing around them, she needed to hold up the skeleton that this family had become. It would change, in time, she knew, but now the rawness of it was shocking and never hesitated to bite her. She needed to remember her place as a way to survive each day. Her strongest girl, lost. Her absence vast and immeasurable. The ache was thick and stifling; there were days when she did not believe she could swim through it. And every morning, despite the struggle of the pr
evious day, she woke up and had to do it all over gain.
Bluebell, who stood behind her cousins, filed into a pew in the church with the family. The reverend began his sermon once the rows had filled, and they had. Elsie’s friends from London, relatives, and the people of Ballantrae filed into every space of the church. She had not been able to say good-bye to her cousin, but the telegram she received from Lord Inchcape was dedicated to memory, and when she couldn’t stand it, combusting into a cascade of tears and sobs, she looked to that for comfort.
She was finished with school now, and her parents had urged her to join the other girls of her status in being presented to society this year. She didn’t agree and, because of Elsie’s death, decided she didn’t want to waste one moment of her life doing anything she didn’t want to do. As soon as she turned of age, she wanted to take flying lessons.
Anthony Joynson-Wreford, who had taken Elsie up for her first airplane ride at Northolt during the war, now with a penciled mustache and a wife by his side, fought with himself constantly over what he could have done to change the dreadful outcome. Should he have talked her out of it? Should he have refused to help her? Should he have never taken her up in an aeroplane in the first place? He had to remind himself of the way her face changed when she talked about flying—it filled with light and wonder—and he knew, honestly, that he could have done nothing to prevent the horror of what had happened. Elsie Mackay had decided to do something and, with or without his assistance, she would have gotten it done. There would never have been any other outcome: she was always going to climb aboard the Endeavour and vanish into the horizon.
Sitting next to Margaret, who held her hand painfully tight, was Sophie, the anguish worn on her face with sunken lids and violet circles under her eyes. She had confessed her role in the planning of the flight, and the Mackay family had forgiven her; they knew that Elsie was a strong force and that Sophie and Elsie were undyingly loyal to each other. She felt responsible for not holding Elsie back on that morning, for not having some magical words that would have changed her mind and let her see just how dangerous the adventure really was. Instead, she had let her friend go, and the heaviness that weighed on her was crushing, even more so now that she was surrounded by people who were grieving over something that she should have stopped. In time, she knew it would soften, and she would go on; but for now, the only thing that made sense to her was lying in the dark and playing that last scene over and over again in her mind.
Outside the church, where the villagers who couldn’t fit inside the building had gathered, stood Dennis Wyndham, who made sure that the family was far inside before he approached. He couldn’t forget her face the last time he saw her, her patience and grace when she told him she understood before she walked away. She had known, she had understood his flaws, his impropriety, and in that moment she forgave him for what he had done. He knew that. She had released him from his frailty without asking anything, and he was grateful.
From the pulpit, the reverend motioned behind him, to a thin green curtain that had been hung from the ceiling, its hem draping and folding on the ground. When he turned toward it and raised his arm, the drapery fell, revealing a brilliant, luminous stained-glass triptych. The large center panel depicted the Lord risen; the one to the left the Lord crowned in glory; and to the right was Elsie, swathed in robes, hand raised, with the wings of an angel and crowned with a golden halo.
The sun shone through the back of the glass, glowing with the vibrant light of life, hovering, staying, bringing it so far forward they could almost touch her.
* * *
“James,” Lady Inchcape began, several moments after she walked into her husband’s study. He was in his chair, turned toward the window, looking out over the Ailsa Craig as the waves beat against the base of the massive granite outcrop. He did not turn around, as he was deep in thought. They were always deep in thought. The thinking became weary and repetitive, but it would not stop. It churned over and over in all of them, digging deep grooves in their minds and their hearts.
“James,” she called again, this time catching his attention as he looked at her, then turned his chair toward her.
She was holding something, a paper, perhaps.
“I’d like you to see this,” she said. “Kenneth brought it up from London.”
It was a copy of the Daily Express, and a name he recognized all too well jumped out at him from the many headlines.
Mrs. Hinchliffe in Need
Appeal Will Be Made on Her Behalf to Lord Inchcape
London—The problem for providing for the future of Mrs. Walter Hinchliffe, widow of the flier who lost his life with Elsie Mackay in attempting to cross the Atlantic, will probably be placed before Lord Inchcape, the father of Miss Mackay.
According to the Evening Standard, it had been assumed before Hinchliffe started his flight that Mrs. Hinchliffe had been provided for by insurance in case of disaster. Now it is learned that the aviator’s wife was not provided for and that she is in a serious financial position.
“Nothing has been done to ease the position of my two children and myself,” Mrs. Hinchliffe said. “I first wrote to Lord Inchcape last April and told him one or two points about the flight. His response was non-committal. I have written him three more times, one of them registered, and have had no reply.”
He said nothing when he finished the article, and only looked up at his wife.
“A stained-glass window is not enough,” she said. “We must take care of the widow.”
He slowly shook his head.
“I take care of my family,” he grumbled. “He should have taken care of his.”
“You know she would have wanted you to do something,” Jane said. “You know it was her mistake.”
“I can’t make it all right,” he said defiantly, his brow furrowing. “I can’t make it all right!”
“No one can,” she said, sitting down opposite him and taking his hand. “She is suffering, too. And there are children. A girl and a baby.”
He sat there in silence, looking down at the desk. He only looked up when he heard something else enter the room, and when he did, he saw Chim. The dog came around to his side of the desk and immediately rested his chin upon Inchcape’s knee.
“This can be the last thing you do for her,” Jane said. “You have to keep her promise. You simply must. James, you know she needs you to do that. Honor her word.”
* * *
In the newspapers, the barrage was relentless about Emilie Hinchliffe’s desperate situation, orchestrated by Lord Beaverbrook. Daily controversies over the Elsie Mackay Fund raged in the House of Commons as well; it was immoral, many said, to accept the money when the widow from the ill-fated flight was barely surviving. Some contributions trickled in: Lady Lucy Houston, a ship owner and rival of P&O, sent Emilie a hundred-pound note.
The message from Ray kept running through her head: It may run to the last day in July, but it will be in July.
And now it was July, the end of the month, and nothing significant had happened. Emilie fed the children dinner, then put them to bed. The disappointment that she felt about the continued Inchcape silence defeated any slim hope that she might see some monetary relief, but also that the messages had been a farce. Which couldn’t mean anything else except that she had built up her belief in absolutely nothing all of this time. It wasn’t Ray. She was a fool. A daft, gullible fool.
* * *
Winston Churchill stood up in the House of Commons and yawned, deep and sincerely; it was late, and he felt it.
“Lord Inchcape,” he began, “being desirous that the Elsie Mackay Fund of five hundred thousand pounds sterling, given by him and Lady Inchcape and their family to the nation, should not be the occasion or object of any complaint by other sufferers from the disaster in which his daughter lost her life, has placed at the disposal of the Chancellor of Exchequer a further sum of ten thousand pounds sterling from his own property to be applied for the purpose of meeting
any complaint in such manner as the Chancellor of Exchequer in his absolute discretion may think fit. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has handed the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling to the Public Trustee for administration accordingly.”
The funds, clearly, were for Emilie Hinchliffe. A reporter from the Daily Express rang her with the good news at eight thirty p.m., as she was listening to the BBC radio.
It was July 31.
* * *
For Lord Inchcape, the grief haunted him for the rest of his life, which only lasted a few more years after his favorite daughter was gone. He stoutly refused to talk about his darling girl at any length under any circumstance. Her name was not mentioned; it was forbidden. It was not to banish her memory; he planted rhododendrons fifty feet high that spelled out her name on the glen, and he was often found walking among them until his last days. He could not bear to admit it out loud that she was really gone.
Then, one night shortly before his death, as he was eating dinner with Janet, he suddenly looked up and said, “I wonder how she did die.”
It was a question she could not answer.
In his study, he looked at his wife, who was still holding his hand, and then turned back to the Ailsa Craig, the grooves growing deeper and deeper.
* * *
In August 1928, few people noticed a news item in the New York Times that never appeared in the British press. The steamship Seapool had come across an airplane submerged in the water, bobbing silently as the blackish waves lapped at it. The day was fading into shadows, but the rudder stood up above the ocean, and the crew could see the damaged body and the wing covered only by thin inches of water. It meshed with the inky waves; it was a dark-colored plane, rocking by itself four hundred miles northeast of the coast, carried by the current.
Crossing the Horizon Page 39