by Max Hennessy
As the music stopped, her father dragged her away, arguing fiercely in a low voice, and a moment later, as Ira watched them talking to the grey-headed woman with the high bosom, Boyle appeared alongside him.
‘Hello, Ira,’ he said. He was dressed in a dinner suit that was green with age and with his overlong grey hair and shrewd yellow eyes he looked like some seedy plantation owner in the wrong environment. He sucked at a cigarette for a while and Ira waited for him to speak. He had a considerable respect for Boyle’s shrewdness, but the old man was a solitary unfriendly being who had never sought him out much before, and he suspected he had something on his mind.
‘These Hughesden instruments,’ he said after a while.
Ira turned quickly. ‘What about the Hughesden instruments, Mr Boyle?’ he said.
Boyle eyed him. Despite the fact that he had never shown much interest in Courtney’s transatlantic project, he had a healthy regard for Ira and Sammy. In his time he had lived a life full of financial rewards and devoid of physical risk – something, he had always felt, that put things in the right order – yet, somehow, in Ira and Sammy, whose lives had been full of physical risk but had remained, he suspected, totally empty of financial rewards, he felt curiously he had met someone he ought to envy, and who ought to be able to expect something approaching the truth from him.
He gestured. ‘I’m just an old Irishman,’ he said slowly, ‘and Irishmen are notoriously sentimental about their friends. I’ve known Felton all his life. I worked with his father before him.’
Ira said nothing and the old man went on awkwardly: ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I get sentimental about young girls, too. Especially when they look like Alix does tonight. And about the young men they dance with – especially when they’re brave young men. You’re a brave young man, Ira. So’s Sammy.’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Mr Boyle?’ Ira asked.
The old man seemed to writhe inside his clothes. ‘My duty’s to Felton,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t stop me having a conscience, too. You ought to know that Felton’s got himself into some sort of mess.’
Ira studied the old man for a moment, not very surprised at the announcement. ‘What sort of mess?’ he asked.
The old man shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet exactly, because he won’t level with me. But he’s short of dough and I suspect he’s come to some sort of agreement with Joe Hughesden.’
Ira regarded him warily. Clearly, the old man was trying to tell him something without using all the words.
‘An agreement that affects the Dixie?’ he asked.
The old man shrugged again and ran his fingers through his thick hair. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How much?’
‘God knows.’
‘Mr Boyle, how about giving me the facts? What’s Felton up to?’
‘Son’ – the old man sighed – ‘I don’t know. I told you once that if he were a good businessman he wouldn’t have had me for a lawyer, and maybe that’s right. I’m no Clarence Darrow, and I’m too old these days for the way they handle things now. But I’ve known Felton since he was at college, and pulled a lot of his fat out of the fire because he’s never been much noted for his sense of responsibility. He wouldn’t have gone off and flown in France in 1917 if he had been. He left a sick wife and a child of twelve when he went. Most of the time he was away I looked after ’em because he didn’t seem to have thought much about providing for ’em.’
He paused, his lips moving the cigarette about in his mouth, as though what he had to say was difficult and he needed time to choose the right words.
‘He lost a fortune in real estate in Florida last year,’ he said. ‘Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t. Does Alix?’
‘I guess so. He’s just a plug businessman really. He thought it was sound, but the bottom fell out of it and a hurricane down there last year finished it off. People who sold land at thirty dollars an acre aren’t getting their money now and bank clearings have dropped to a quarter of what they were. For God’s sake, I only just kept him out of the Harding oil scandals.’
He paused, frowning fiercely. ‘He’s a damn fool with his money,’ he went on. ‘But maybe he’s not the only one. Everybody seems to think this boom’s going to last for ever. It won’t. We had a slump in 1924 and if people keep on speculating as they are doing, we’re going to have another.’ He gestured across the room at Courtney. ‘He’ll be caught,’ he prophesied. ‘He’s a sucker with his money. He falls for anybody’s guff.’
A great sigh escaped him. ‘But hell, don’t we all?’ he went on. ‘Aren’t we all nuts for six-cylinder automobiles, electric ice-boxes, every damn thing they offer – even service-with-a-smile. If they tell us it’s good in the ads, we buy it. But this time he’s on his own. He’s not asked me and, hell, I’m not such a lousy lawyer he can afford to ignore me!’
He paused and gestured with an air of finality. ‘That’s why I’m warning you, son,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what he’s up to and if it were good, I wouldn’t worry. But it can’t be, or he’d have included me in it.’
‘Are Hughesdens being difficult about the instruments?’ Ira asked.
‘I guess they are.’
‘How?’
‘They want ’em on the Dixie.’
Ira paused and drew a deep breath. ‘Mr Boyle,’ he said, ‘if I’m flying this aeroplane, I’m saying what we install. It’s three thousand six hundred miles and I’m taking no chances.’
The old man stubbed out his cigarette, not meeting his eyes. ‘It might be difficult for Felton.’
‘That’s something Felton’ll have to sort out himself!’ Ira said. ‘It doesn’t concern me. It’s his problem, whether he likes it or not.’
Boyle sighed. ‘There are a lot of things coming up that Felton won’t like,’ he said. ‘He won’t like to hear, for instance, that Hughesdens might insist. I’ve talked to ’em and that’s how it seemed to me.’
* * *
As Alix reappeared at Ira’s side, the fragile dress seemed even more revealing than before.
‘Made your peace with your father?’ Ira asked.
‘I didn’t know we were at war.’ Her voice was clipped and brusque. ‘We’re spending too much on this jamboree,’ she went on. ‘I don’t like it. And Pa’s hitting the bottle. He’ll be as stiff as a cigar-store Indian before the night’s out.’
‘Maybe he’s worried,’ Ira suggested. ‘Boyle just told me it’s Hughesdens who are being difficult about those instruments, not him.’
Her brows came down. ‘That old crab-apple,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I guess he’s right, though. Pa says they claim they have a right to put ’em on the Dixie because they always put ’em on Courtney autos.’
Ira was silent for a moment. ‘Alix,’ he said after a while. ‘How much of the Dixie do you own? I mean, how much money have you put in? I think it’s more than you said.’
She gave him a curious glance. ‘I guess around half now. Why?’
Ira shrugged. ‘Nothing, I suppose.’
‘You worried about something?’
‘I think Boyle is.’
As they talked, Ira saw Courtney begin to head across the floor towards them, trailed by a grinning young man in a dinner jacket whose eyes were firmly fixed on Alix. Alix saw them at the same time and, grabbing Ira’s hand, pointedly whirled him round and out of the room towards the balcony. As he vanished through the door, his last glimpse was of Courtney stopping dead in the middle of the floor, his face flushed, and the confident grin sliding from the face of his companion.
There was no one else on the balcony and, because it was cold, she moved closer to him. He put his aim round her, feeling her shiver under his hand through the flimsy dress, and they stared down for a while at the illuminations of New York that lay in square glittering blocks below them, the glow from Broadway lighting the sky. The memory of the clearing in the trees on the Charleston road and the smell of ming
led pine needles and perfume was still strong in his mind but he suspected that her interest in him now was chiefly to infuriate her father. Nevertheless he was also young enough not to be indifferent to having alongside him a girl garbed in a staggeringly brief dress and eager to swop kisses behind the curtains.
She glanced behind them and, half-turning, he saw Courtney still standing with the young man in the dinner jacket, both of them obviously disconcerted and uncertain what to do.
‘Considering the number of decorations for bravery you can hang on your chest,’ she said in a hurried voice, ‘you’re really surprisingly slow. You weren’t so slow that night on the beach.’
Ira grinned. ‘I haven’t time for a three-alarm whoopee tonight.’
She laughed outright at his description and he gestured. ‘You should do that more often,’ he pointed out. ‘It suits you.’
He saw the young man in the dinner jacket move forward and the flicker of alarm that sprang to her eyes, and he reached out quickly for her.
He didn’t have to hold her off and she pushed him away at last with a twisted smile. His collar was under his ear and the scent of her perfume was strong on his suit, and he was aware that she was suddenly looking at him with starry eyes, apparently indifferent to the fact that her hair was awry.
‘Can we introduce a small note of sanity into the proceedings?’ she asked in an unsteady voice. ‘That was quite an encounter.’
He glanced behind him. The young man in the dinner suit had disappeared. ‘Who was it?’ he said.
She flushed hotly. ‘The New York boy I told you about,’ she said. ‘The one I used to go around with. His wife’s in Europe.’
‘He seems to have gathered his courage about him. He didn’t look very scared of you just then.’
‘I didn’t want to see him.’ She looked up at Ira and gave him a twisted grin. ‘Thanks all the same. Intrepid birdmen make a change from businessmen, friends of Pa, and old flames who consider me a pushover because I’ve been divorced. “Yes, Alix. No, Alix. Oops into bed, Alix.” That’s all they think of. You weren’t serious, were you?’
They were staring at each other with the cautious suspicion of a couple of hostile bantams, neither of them prepared to give an inch and both on their guard.
‘I got the impression you weren’t,’ Ira said.
She gazed at him for a second, her eyes uncertain, then she lit a cigarette and dragged the smoke down in great gulps. ‘Doesn’t pay to be serious with fliers,’ she said shortly. ‘It’s something I’ve discovered. They don’t think that way. About anything.’
Ira shrugged, aware of the tension between them. ‘Some of us do,’ he said. ‘About some things. Like flying three thousand six hundred miles non-stop. You have to.’
She nodded, her eyes avoiding his. ‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a long way.’
Their conversation was still awkward and limping, as though the embrace had made them strangers, and she changed the subject abruptly. ‘What happens afterwards?’ she asked unexpectedly. ‘What will you do after you’ve made the flight, I mean.’
He shrugged. ‘It’ll depend on whether we get there first,’ he said, ‘whether we get there at all, or whether we end up feeding the fishes south of Iceland.’
She turned on him quickly, her face full of anger. ‘Don’t say that,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve told you, don’t ever say that.’
She was staring at him now with an agonised expression that was completely at odds with the brusque imperiousness she’d worn all evening. ‘You’ve got to make it,’ she went on. ‘If you can’t, you shouldn’t be trying.’
‘Fonck ought to have made it,’ Ira pointed out mildly, ‘but when it came to the point, he didn’t. If we do, and we’re the first, then I don’t think we’ll need to worry about the future.’
She looked at him strangely, then pulled him from the balcony.
‘Pa’s got a whole lot of people on his neck,’ she said. ‘He’s just been telling me. Safety devices, Rafts, Parachutes. Radios. They’re pressing him hard to install ’em in the Dixie.’
‘I don’t want ’em,’ Ira said.
She laughed. ‘I don’t want you to have ’em,’ she said. ‘But Pa’s done business with some of these people and they’re threatening to hold off if he turns ’em down. They’re all scared that if you pull it off, they won’t be getting a cut of the publicity. They’re beginning to realise there’s money in this race and they’re wanting to get their claws on some of it. You’ve got a lot to learn about business and a long way to go before you get your wheels off the ground and heading for Paris.’
She gazed at him with a shrewd alert look, then her mood changed again and she gave him a grin that was both youthful and experienced, the knowing grin of a slum urchin who knew the answer to every question in the book.
‘That’s enough about money for the time being,’ she said.
He nodded at her dress. ‘Certainly, in that get-up,’ he agreed.
She gave him a bright-eyed gay look, new and fresh and young. ‘Greed’s as straightforward as any other vice,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Ever been to Coney Island?’
* * *
The visit to Coney Island after the formality of Courtney’s party seemed at first like sheer inspired lunacy and, with Alix leading the way, they rode the merry-go-rounds, took in the sideshows, ate popcorn and hot dogs and had their photograph taken together by a boardwalk photographer. But, just when they seemed easy at last – and for the first time – in each other’s company, with all the doubt buried for once, they ran into a large woman with dyed hair and pearls trailing three bored small boys.
‘Another flyer, Alix?’ she said loudly as Ira was introduced. ‘You should be careful. Remember the last one. They’re all the same.’ She patted Ira’s aim condescendingly, beaming at him. ‘You can’t be trusted, can you? You aviators are too used to taking risks.’
Alix’s excited eager look faded immediately and was replaced by the old wary unwillingness, and the evening changed at once. The laughter went out of her abruptly as if it had never been there and she ended the outing by trailing Ira round a selection of drab smoky places where he was inspected through peepholes by blue-jowled men before being allowed to enter. She was suddenly tense and harsh-voiced, and gestured cynically at the noisy crowds standing at the bar drinking concoctions of poisonous liquor while a brassy blonde tap-danced to an orchestra crowded on a dais about as big as a table top.
‘The unspeakable knocking back the undrinkable,’ she said. ‘It’s the smart thing these days to get stewed.’
She was suddenly in a dangerous mood and ready for anything. ‘Sin’s out of date,’ she pointed out. ‘Freud says so, and anything goes. It’s OK to get into the back of a car with a boy or drink gin from a hip flask.’
The pleasure had gone from the evening suddenly and her abrasive desire for excitement managed to take away all the joy they had managed to get from each other’s company. They parted uncomfortably outside her hotel.
She seemed a little at a loss as she said goodnight. ‘It’s been a lousy evening,’ she admitted brusquely. ‘I guess it’s my fault. My generation’s an unhappy bunch. We’ve destroyed too many values without producing anything to take their place.’ She sighed. ‘I guess I must be a brass-bound idealist, because it never works out with me.’
Ira stood on the pavement for a while as she vanished inside the hotel, watching with his brows down, uneasily remembering her bitter philosophising and aware of an uncomplicated concern for her. He suspected she’d lived so long and unnaturally with some obsession about men, there was no longer much room in her life for kindness and affection and she was now seeking them both with a fierceness that was angry and abnormal.
* * *
He was late arriving at the hangar on Curtiss Field the next morning, but Sammy was even later, his face pale, his eyes heavy. He had vanished from Courtney’s party early with Woolff and had not appeared at Erwin’s Ho
tel until daylight.
‘Jesus, Ira,’ he said slowly, holding his head as though he daren’t risk leaning too far forward, ‘you should have seen the girls we were with. Real eyes and teeth and’ – he gestured – ‘legs right up to here. Wonderful investment, legs – especially with short skirts. Talk about a view.’ There was still a smudge of lipstick on his collar, Ira noticed. ‘Hal took me to a speakeasy but the police raided the place and a bloke got shot, they said. We had to go like hell through the back door. Then this bloke grabbed me and we found a couple of girls and went back to his place.’ He frowned heavily, struggling with his memory. ‘I wonder who he was?’
He fought to open the heavy wad of the newspaper, his brows down and looking as though he were having trouble with his eyes. ‘They’re real arm-breakers, these Yankee rags, aren’t they?’ he went on. ‘And for a country that don’t believe in drink they certainly know what to put in coloured water. My head feels like a dog’s basket.’
Slowly, as though his hands were weighted, he spread the newspaper on the desk in front of him and Ira saw his expression change and a flicker of a grin appear on his face.
‘Listen to this, Ira,’ he said. ‘In the gossip column. “Everybody loves a lover and rumour says there’s talk of a romance between Alix Courtney, divorcée daughter of Felton K. Courtney, and the man her father is financing for his transatlantic flight, Englishman Ira A. Penaluna…”’ He looked up at Ira suspiciously. ‘Ira, it isn’t true, is it?’ He seemed suddenly indignant that he hadn’t been told.
Ira lifted his eyes from the maintenance sheet he was studying. ‘Save your breath, Sammy,’ he said. ‘It’s only newspaper talk.’
Sammy stared at him for a moment longer, his face thoughtful, then he bent over the paper again.
‘“…‘China’ Penaluna, as he is known” – Lor’, since when? – “is the famous Captain Penaluna who made his name in France by shooting down forty-five German planes. In 1919, in Russia, he was responsible for destroying five Bolshevik machines, and in China, as a general, he is credited with collecting another three for his bag…”’