Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  “The Germans treat him differently? Why should he have to have anything to do with the Germans?” Delphine spoke in a voice in which fear was mixed equally with outrage.

  “My God, Delphine, I can’t believe how ignorant you are! We’re going to have to fight Germany, and we’re going to lose.”

  “You’re insane. I’m going home.” Delphine rose and picked up her handbag.

  “Sit down and listen to me.” Bruno put both of his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down into a chair. “Now stay there. Since you’re … mixed up with a Jew, you at least owe it to him to know what’s going on. Last month Chamberlain guaranteed that England would go to war for Poland. Daladier has joined his promise to Chamberlain’s. That means that France too will go to war for Poland. War, Delphine, war—”

  “Why Poland? Why do we have to fight for Poland?” Delphine cried, her eyes wide with horror.

  “God knows. Six years ago we could have stopped Hitler. Now it’s far too late.”

  “You just can’t say that, Bruno. You’re a defeatist, an alarmist. We have the Maginot Line and the greatest army in Europe.” Delphine spoke wildly, forcing herself to discuss things about which she had fought so hard not to think.

  “The Maginot Line won’t stop him.” Bruno shook his head with scorn “Belgium is neutral, Luxembourg is neutral, Russia is neutral. The Americans are convinced that war is coming and they’re not going to get into it. Your Charles Lindbergh, who knows more about air power than anyone in France, has toured Germany and seen their Luftwaffe. He says Germany is so strong that no one can possibly beat it—”

  “But the Munich Agreement—?”

  “Delphine, spare me Munich.” Bruno’s disdain for her words was like acid. “Munich only gave Hitler permission to go ahead. There will be a war and we will lose it—”

  “Are you a military genius—or perhaps a fortune-teller?” Delphine spat the words at him.

  “And when we lose the war, my dear Delphine, your Jew boyfriend will be treated like the Jews of Germany. He’ll have no work, no place to live, no citizenship, not so much as a driver’s license. He’ll be forced to flee France if he can afford to buy his way out. Do you want to share that with him? Because you will if you stay with him, I warn you.”

  “You lie! It won’t happen. If there is a war, France and England will beat Hitler. You are a foul and disgusting coward, Bruno. I’m ashamed to be related to you.” Delphine got up and walked to the door. “Why don’t you go downstairs and crawl inside a suit of armor that belonged to one of your brave ancestors? Perhaps it might give you some guts. On the other hand, if Hitler ever does come looking for you, it would make a good place to hide.”

  “You gonna fly to New York for the World’s Fair, Freddy?” Gavin Ludwig asked in May of 1939. He’d come into the office at Dry Springs for a Coke and found her at the desk, paying bills.

  “I can’t afford the gas,” Freddy answered. He hooted with laughter. Only Freddy knew how true her words were. She’d been forced to hire three male pilots to give flying lessons. Americans were more interested in learning how to fly than ever before in history, but none of them, not a single one, was willing to accept a woman as an instructor. She’d only been able to hang on to Mac’s pupils by promising them a man to teach them. In the eight months since he’d been gone she’d added two other instructors and been obliged to put a down payment on another plane, a Waco N&C, with a Jacobs motor and a comfortable backseat, which could be used for instruction as well as her own new aerial specialty, running an “elopement express” to Las Vegas and back the same night. She loathed the dullness of the work, but even being a matrimonial taxi driver was necessary if she wanted to eat.

  Why would people trust her to get them to the church on time, Freddy wondered, but not to teach them how to fly? She was one of the handful of women in the United States, a mere seventy-three in all, who held commercial ratings, yet any man, no matter how recently he’d won his instructor’s license, reassured the students more than a woman who could make a plane do a hundred maneuvers he’d crash if he attempted. Did they think that you flew with your cock?

  The three men who worked, in theory, for her had to be paid by the hour, the planes had to be maintained, Gavin’s mechanic’s salary had to be met each week, insurance cost a fortune, the hangar and office rent came due monthly, gas wasn’t cheap—the school, Freddy reflected, only paid for itself and for the upkeep of her Rider. The occasional Vegas trips kept her in food, and allowed her to meet the payments on the new Waco. Otherwise she’d have had to close the school.

  Restlessly she pushed away from the desk and wandered out into the hangar where the collection of vintage planes sat, each one of them burnished and gleaming, dust-free, rust-free and as recently painted as when they’d been new: the 1910 Curtiss Pusher, the Fokker D.VII, the two Nieuport 28’s, the Thomas Morse Scout, the Garland Lincoln LF-1, and the Stukas. Why the fuck not keep horses and buggies, she thought wrathfully, as she tapped one of the wheels of the Nieuport with the toe of her boot. Or unicorns or unicycles? They’d have to be more useful than these old birds, for which the movies hadn’t had any need whatsoever in the last year. The market for Great War movies had dried up completely as the shadow of a new war grew ever darker. Freddy did all the upkeep on the antique planes herself, teaching herself to maintain their engines, unable to pay anybody to do the delicate work properly, yet unwilling, in spite of their impracticality, to let them disintegrate into junk.

  Wings of the Navy, a million-dollar production, had opened the past January, and the Navy had lent Warner Brothers some four hundred and fifty pursuit and training planes, as well as fifty PBY-1’s, the giant Catalina flying boats. No, her poor old ducks most certainly weren’t wanted anymore. This antique squadron of proud planes had as much relation to the films of 1939 as did the stars of silent movies. And she had as much relation to the Navy pilots who flew in the sequences that had been filmed in Pensacola for Wings of the Navy as she did to Lillian Gish. She might have been hired as a stunt double for Olivia de Havilland, who played the love interest in the film, except that the Navy obviously never let a woman get near enough to a plane to do anything but blow it a kiss. No question, business was lousy, and it wasn’t going to get better. Even so, she could still go flyin’, even if it was an expensive habit. But necessary. So very necessary.

  Whenever Freddy was overcome with anger, more anger than even this sort of gloomy stock-taking could mask for more than an hour or two, she’d jump into the Rider and flee up toward the blue horizon, until she’d had enough relief from rage so that she felt that it was safe to put her feet on solid land again.

  She had somehow managed to get through the first few months of Mac’s absence in the belief that he would come back tomorrow, but on one morning of one of those empty tomorrows she’d suddenly realized that he wasn’t about to show up, not then, and maybe not for a long time, and she’d been immediately strangled by the anger she’d been warding off with her frenzied activities.

  It was a visceral anger, almost too strong for words. How could he do this to me? were the only words that came into her brain, repeated over and over, like a mantra of some Eastern religion that had taken possession of her mind until she feared that she’d go mad. Just those seven words, repeated with emotions that ranged from the outright depths of self-pity to murderous hatred of the man who had abandoned her, left her alone to struggle through life without the one person she had depended on. How could he do this to me?

  It was a question Freddy had not been able to ask anyone, because she couldn’t admit that he had gone. He’d said that he’d loved her so much that he had to leave her … Whatever that meant, it wasn’t good enough, she thought, raw, flayed from head to foot with the anger that never disappeared or grew less. Whatever that meant, it could never be good enough, and her only wish now was that he would come back to her on his knees, so that she could tell him how much he’d hurt her, how much he’d failed her, how much
she hated him, and then leave him forever.

  When Freddy was home alone at night, she found some relief after dinner in sipping whiskey and studying newspapers and news and aviation magazines intently, as many as she could lay her hands on, until she had lulled herself to sleep. Perhaps she would find Mac’s name somewhere in one of them, she caught herself thinking much too often.

  She never did see his name, but she acquired a thorough knowledge of world events. Now, of course, aviation news had become of worldwide importance and she followed with fascination the rapidly increasing development of air power in the European nations as well as in the United States. The editor of Aviation Magazine, on his return from a trip of observation, had ranked Germany and Russia first in the number of military planes; Italy next; Great Britain and the United States after Italy; and France at the bottom of his list. In quality he had ranked Germany and the United States first. In production, Germany first again.

  In Britain, the English had started a Civil Air Guard plan the day after the Munich Agreement, and begun to subsidize pilot training for women as well as men, open to anyone between eighteen and fifty, so long as he or she could pass a medical exam. Freddy followed this experiment with interest, particularly when a storm arose in the press over the use of women pilots, who were, it seemed, to be included in everything except the fighting services of the RAF, against many loud and furious objections.

  C. G. Grey, the editor of The Aeroplane, the English counterpart of Aviation Magazine, wrote an editorial that allowed Freddy to feel fury that had nothing to do with Mac.

  The menace is the woman who thinks that she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly, or who wants to nose around as an Air-Raid Warden and yet can’t cook her husband’s dinner.

  What, Freddy wondered, would the two hundred English women pilots who were already members of the Civil Air Guard, and who had been told by Captain Balfour, the Under Secretary of State for Air, that they would be used to ferry aircraft in case of a national emergency, do to Mr. C. G. Grey if they could lay their hands on him?

  The problematical fate of C. G. Grey had provided her something to talk about with her mother when they’d had lunch on Freddy’s nineteenth birthday, the previous January. She’d been careful over the past months not to see too much of her mother, afraid that Eve, who’d obviously been taken with Mac, would ask questions about him that she couldn’t answer, but her mother had kept the conversation light and general.

  In fact, every time they met, her mother had refrained from probing into her private life, Freddy reflected gratefully. She could never speak to her of her misery or her anger—her mother would probably drop dead of shock if she knew that her daughter was not a virgin, much less that she’d lived with a man—but she hated to have to lie to her as she did to Swede Castelli when he telephoned or dropped in, as he did faithfully, too faithfully for her taste, every week. He took a fatherly interest in the way she was carrying on the flying school, and he was obtuse or preoccupied enough to accept the story Freddy told him about Mac’s protracted stay on the East Coast. Freddy knew that Mac had no family left anywhere, but she’d dreamed up an aged mother and father in Maine, for whom he had to care, and Swede, bless his heart, believed every word of it.

  Swede Castelli was the only man Freddy could talk to without putting up her guard. She had to fire a number of the flying instructors she’d hired because they’d made persistent passes at her, which had led to a constant problem of replacing them. When Mac had left, she’d stopped looking in the mirror, but apparently the emotions that were gnawing at her insides, like snapping turtles, didn’t show in her face, because only the most firmly married of the men who had worked for her in the past eight months had not tried to pull a fast one. What was she supposed to do—wear a paper bag over her head?

  Freddy was still wandering about in the hangar, finding a little comfort from being near the venerable, aristocratic planes she loved almost as much as Mac had loved them, when she heard the sound of a car stopping outside of the flying school office. She walked outside, blinking as she emerged into the brilliant spring light, and shaded her eyes with her hand. Swede Castelli emerged laboriously from his old sedan, ponderously taking his time. He really should watch his weight, Freddy thought, he’s moving awfully slowly for an ex-stunt pilot. Well, he’ll be happy to see that all her three instructors were out giving lessons. If even one of them was hanging around waiting for his student to show up, it always looked as if business were slow.

  She walked toward him welcomingly, her hair so whipped by the wind that it almost covered her eyes. She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Hello, Freddy,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Nobody around but you? Place seems awful quiet.” He looked around noting the busy airfield and the deserted flying school.

  “Don’t sound so gloomy about it, Swede. My instructors are all out teaching. Earning a buck. Wait around and you’ll see some dreadful student landings, I promise you.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a cup of coffee going, would you?” he asked.

  “How could you run a flying school without it?” Freddy answered, thinking that Swede looked as if he needed something stronger than coffee. The heavy, balding man was so pasty-faced that she felt sudden concern for him. He seemed to have grown years older since his last visit only a week ago. Perhaps he was in bad health—certainly his normally cheerful expression was entirely absent. “Come on into my magnificent office,” Freddy said with a flourish, attempting to bring back his smile, “and try out one of the new chairs.”

  She gave Swede a big mug of the coffee she made constantly, so that there was always a full pot ready. Students asked for it shakily before they went up and as soon as they landed, always euphoric after an hour of the learning process. Among the students, the instructors and Gavin, Freddy estimated that she gave away more coffee than she’d sold pastries at Van de Kamp. She should charge for it. That might make the school a profitable paying proposition instead of a borderline operation.

  Freddy settled in another of the inexpensive but comfortable armchairs she had bought to make the office more welcoming, and looked fondly at the unusually silent man who sat busily sipping her fragrant brew. He worked steadily at the mug until it was empty, and then put it on her desk with as much delicate care as if it were fine porcelain.

  “Listen, Freddy, there’s something I have to talk to you about.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead with an unconscious sigh. “It’s about Mac.”

  “Can’t it keep, Swede?” Freddy said coaxingly, trying to hide her feeling of impatience. She wasn’t in the mood to concoct another installment of Mac’s devoted filial life in Maine.

  Swede Castelli seemed not to have heard Freddy’s question. “It’s about Mac,” he repeated heavily. “I’ve been … in touch with him, Freddy.”

  “You couldn’t have!” Her words leaped out of her mouth without an instant of thought.

  “Mac’s telephoned me at home every week … since he took off. He … he had to find out how you were … had to make sure that you were making out O.K.”

  “You knew all along and you didn’t tell me!” She jumped up and stood before him, accusation and betrayal glaring from her eyes.

  “Mac made me promise not to say anything. I swore I wouldn’t. I couldn’t let him down, Freddy. We’re old buddies—you understand what that means. He depended on me to keep my promise and I did, Freddy. Don’t think it’s been easy. I hated pretending I didn’t know the truth—Jesus, Freddy, I felt so bad for you having to make up all those stories, but I had to keep coming over. When Mac called me, he would have been frantic if I hadn’t been able to tell him that you were all right. Oh, Freddy …”

  “What’s wrong?” Freddy demanded, in alarm, without knowing why she used those words. She stood over Swede threateningly.

  “Wait a minute, Freddy, let me tel
l you in my own way.… Mac … Freddy, Mac’s … in Canada.”

  “WHERE IN CANADA?” she shouted. She’d go to him. She could be with him tomorrow. If she left right away and pushed the Rider, she could be with him in hours.

  “Near Ottawa, at a Canadian Air Force training base,” Swede answered. Freddy whirled and started for the door. Swede got up and put a restraining arm around her. “No, Freddy, no, listen to me. There’s more.”

  “More?” she repeated, panic shooting through her at a new, fearful note in his voice.

  “Mac’s dead, Freddy,” Swede said painfully, tears springing into his eyes. “There was a crash … he spun in, Freddy … it was over in seconds, I got a letter from his commanding officer this morning. Mac didn’t have any next of kin so he’d given them my name, just in case. The letter said that it happened while he was instructing a kid who froze at the controls. At least it’s what they think caused it. That, or something went wrong with the plane. They still don’t know for sure. The general said they may never know. The … funeral … was yesterday. A military funeral … both … both of them.”

  “Funeral,” Freddy repeated. “Funeral? Mac! Mac? My Mac? You’re lying to me, aren’t you, aren’t you? Please say you’re lying to me, Swede. Please, please say it.” Her pleading voice broke as her shock turned into comprehension. Swede Castelli clumsily put both his arms around her, as if he could protect her from his words.

  “Christ, I wish I was, Freddy,” she heard him say. “The guy was the only brother I ever had.”

  “Oh, Swede,” she cried out, almost inaudible through her savage sobs, “how can I live if Mac is dead? How, Swede, how? Why would I want to?”