Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  “You do, Squadron Leader. Helga’s taking the phones, Annie’s with her.”

  “Where’s Tony, for Christ’s sake?” Jock screamed.

  “The Wing Commander’s on his way back from Newark. He delivered those three and a half tons of carnations. Colonels Levine and Carlutti delivered the strawberries and tomatoes to Detroit and Chicago—they’re on their way back too.”

  “Any joy?” Jock asked, using the two words with which, after a sortie, RAF pilots had asked each other if they’d shot down any enemy planes.

  “Nope,” Freddy answered, her brief reply meaning that none of the three Eagle pilots had been able to scare up cargoes for the return trips, the essential backhaul without which there would be no profit on the deliveries. The three planes were all returning to L.A. as “deadheads,” the most awful word in the business except for “wreck.”

  “Fellas, could you just wait outside for a minute?” Jock asked the pilots who were following their conversation with interest. “I need a quick meeting with my partner here.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” he said frantically to Freddy, when the room was empty. “How can we be turning away business and operating at a loss at the same time? How? How long do you think that can go on? How long? Here we are, grounded ten feet under a ton of office work, when the original idea was that the three of us would be flying without salary; those Brendas of yours disappear overnight; we still haven’t hired enough mechanics; I have a full load of ripe peaches waiting to leave from Bakersfield—do you have any idea how perishable they are?—but I can’t turn even one single plane around without more pilots than Tony, Levine and Carlutti, and today I got orders for three more loads for tomorrow—oh shit! Me and my big ideas! In another few weeks we won’t be able to meet the payroll. We’ll owe money!”

  Freddy tipped her desk chair back so that she was almost reclining in it, hoisted her sublime legs up onto the desk, lifted her skirt a few inches above her knees, and crossed her spike-heeled red pumps at the ankle. She seemed to be silently consulting the ceiling while Jock drummed violently on his desk, waiting for her to say something. She groped in her handbag for her compact and carefully applied a fresh layer of bright red lipstick, looking at her image approvingly. Then she swung her legs to the floor, got up, and started, light, lissome and larky, toward the door.

  “You can’t leave me here alone! Where the hell do you think you’re going? Flying again? That’ll finish us for sure!”

  “Squadron Leader Hampton,” Freddy said with a deliberately, unfairly, unrighteously jazzy smile, “do try to calm down, I hate to see you in such a flap. You’ll get an ulcer. Take deep breaths. Think good thoughts … even your mind must be capable of a good thought from time to time. Actually, you don’t look terribly well, do you?” she crooned, ruffling his hair and tweaking his ears casually. “Have you been eating right, Squadron Leader? Getting enough vitamins? I know what, you can have Annie’s lunch … yum, yum, eat it all up. I’ll take her with me and feed her.”

  “You’re really leaving?” he said in incredulous fury. “I don’t fucking believe it!”

  “Helga will watch over you. I’m going—to buy a mink coat.”

  “Bitch, bitch, bitch!” Jock roared as his two phones and Freddy’s two phones all rang at once. “Now I know why you didn’t let me die when you had a chance. You were saving me so you could kill me yourself!”

  “Aren’t you getting a little paranoid? I didn’t even know you then,” Freddy said sweetly, as she closed the door softly behind her.

  Jock let the phones ring on, not trying to answer them. He shook his blond head from side to side, an expression of consternation subduing his untamed features. Why did he suddenly feel so fucking lonesome? Why did he feel as if he’d been abandoned? “Paranoid”? He only prayed that was the answer. He’d settle for merely paranoid any day.

  Swede Castelli’s familiar office was filled with photos and model planes and flying relics as ever, but Swede himself looked, it seemed to Freddy, less cheerful than she had ever remembered seeing him. He had greeted her surprise visit with delight, but his face seemed forlorn under his pleasure. He swept Annie up, and regarded her small perfections with wonder, shaking his head over the passage of time. “Now, little lady, you sit right here,” he said, putting her down carefully.

  “Oh, I’m not a lady,” Annie said gravely. “My Grannie Penelope is a baroness and my Grannie Eve is a vicomtesse, and my Auntie Jane is engaged to marry a marquess, which means she’ll be a duchess someday, but I’m just plain little Annie.”

  “Why, you poor kid. That’s a crying shame. Maybe a prince will come along for you.”

  “What kind of prince?” Annie asked, interested.

  “Annie, don’t you want to play with the model planes?” Freddy said hastily.

  “I’d rather talk to Mr. Castelli, Mummy.”

  “Later, Annie.” Freddy shooed her away.

  “I was wondering when you were going to get around to coming to see me, Freddy. You’ve been back for weeks,” Swede said, mildly reproachful.

  “It’s been too complicated, Swede, you old honey bun. I can’t begin to describe it.”

  “Don’t bother, I can imagine only too well. No work to be had, no matter how hard you try, just like here. Remember those years when we were so busy planning stunts that I almost had to sleep in the office? Remember when you went from one film to another without a weekend off, and so did everybody else? Remember that great little organization I ran? It’s finished, Freddy. Nobody’s making movies with flying in them anymore. During the war I had lots of business with films about the Air Force, but now, kiddo? Forget it. It’s picket-fence time, rose-covered cottages, love in bloom, and nobody, but I mean not a single studio, wants to know from that old wild blue yonder. I just sit here looking at the walls and wishing the phone would ring. Not a peep out of it for months and months. Maybe I’ll rip the thing out.”

  “It’s been that bad, Swede? I’m really sorry.”

  “Or that good, depending. I mean, kiddo, I never thought you could have so much money and so little fun. There’s something wrong about it.” He slumped despondently in his desk chair.

  “ ‘So much money’? With no business? How come?”

  “Boy, have you been away a long time! Everybody made money during the war, and some of them hung on to it. Like me. Everything I invested in turned to gold. I’m rich, kiddo, really rich. Seems I’ve got a touch for making a buck. But I’m not the type to sit still and visit my money. I wish there were some kicks in it, but I guess I really can’t complain. I’ve had my fun.”

  “I’ve come just in time,” Freddy said. “Have I got a job for you!”

  He raised his brows. “Where? Not in that air cargo outfit of yours? Freddy, do you have any idea of how many little bitty companies like yours have already been started and gone bust in L.A. in the last year? Hundreds.”

  “I’ve learned that. As it turns out, Jock Hampton wasn’t the only veteran to have an idea about air cargo. But a few of the companies are going to survive and get bigger. It’s inevitable, it has to happen, it’s the future. Eagles will be one of them.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I say so.” She ambushed him with her smile and the flag-blue certainty of her eyes.

  “Same old Freddy. Bossy, pig-headed, stubborn, mulish, obstinate, domineering—if you weren’t so damn beautiful you’d be impossible.” Swede sighed reminiscently. “Some things never change, thank God.”

  “We need you, Swede.”

  “Doing what? I don’t see myself hustling freight, even if you should ever get any. I’m too old and too rich for that, kiddo. And probably too fat.”

  “I want you to run Eagles, take over operations Our problem is too much business, too fast. We have six phones that ring all day long. It’s mouth-watering. Oh, Swede, it’s your kind of picnic, the kind you thrived on. You’ll have more damn fun straightening out our mess—I almost envy y
ou. First you’ve got to decide how many more planes we should be renting and how many more pilots we need, because if we don’t grab the business they’re throwing at us now, somebody else will. Then you have to solve the backhaul problem—you should have done that yesterday—find a guy to run maintenance and engineering and another to handle contracts. You’ll have to hire office help immediately, take a good look at our charter rates to different cities—”

  “That’s all?” His round face had lost its gloomy look, and he sat up straight.

  “That’s just the beginning. You could also answer phones in your free time, but you’re not going to have any free time.”

  “What do we use for money?”

  “I’ve got a few bucks left. And of course, as our chairman of the board, you’ll want to be in for a piece of the action, since, as you said, everything you touch turns to gold. Also—we’ll make a lot of promises.”

  Castelli looked at Freddy sharply. The kid was wearing thousand-league boots. She was in the mood to jump out of a plane without a chute and fly under her own power—and he didn’t doubt she could. Well, what the hell, he never had been able to resist her, and she’d made him a lot of money in her day. What was the worst thing that could happen? He’d lose some of his no-fun bucks. He’d risk more than that for a bunch of ringing phones.

  “Ah, what the hell … count me in. I’ll need a few days to wind things up here—”

  Freddy hugged him tight and kissed him loudly on both cheeks. “You won’t be sorry, I promise. Oh, Swede, you’re going to love it. We have nothing but problems!” She picked up a sign that read “Back in Five Minutes” and shook it thoughtfully. “I’m double-parked downstairs. Come on, Swede, we’ve got to get out of here fast! I’ll hang this on the door. You don’t want me to get a parking ticket, do you? And I have to fly a load of peaches to New York in an hour. When I get back, I’ll help you kick ass.”

  Taken by surprise, the ex-stuntman followed Freddy as she cantered out of his office, with Annie running at her heels. It wasn’t until they were halfway to Burbank that he realized Freddy couldn’t get a traffic ticket on a studio lot, but by that time he was too excited to care.

  The worst thing about Dior’s New Look, Freddy thought as she descended gracefully from the Buick, was that it was so long that it hid her legs above the ankle. On the other hand, it emphasized her small waist and exaggerated the volume of her hips and breasts. But legs, face it, Monsieur Dior, legs were what males were fixated on. Still, when you came to think about it, once any woman was lying down in bed, what did legs have to do with lovemaking? You could wrap them around a guy, but unless he was some sort of knee fetishist or calf-and-thigh freak, why legs?

  She walked slowly, conscious of the elaborate scaffolding under her violently fashionable suit, which had a tightly buttoned jacket of natural silk shantung and an immensely full black shantung skirt. First came the tulle corset that also served as a low, strapless bra, a deceptively fragile-looking garment that had an implacable will of its own, owning to dozens of supple, narrow bones hidden in the layers of tulle that encased her like an iron maiden from the tops of her breasts to below her hips. Then came crinolines of different thicknesses, to hold out the skirt to its proper dimensions; a skirt that was itself lined three times, once in tulle, once in sheer organza and finally in silk pongee, so that the other linings wouldn’t scratch her stockings. She wondered if her grandmother had ever been so shaped and molded and restricted by anything she wore? If she dared to draw a deep breath, Freddy reflected, she’d probably pop a half-dozen buttons. As for reaching her arms over her head, it was out of the question. She should be grateful that she could still bend her elbows. No, in this suit she had to sway and mince, not prance or caper.

  Such was the price of elegance in 1949, and Freddy understood why Dior himself, on his first tour of the United States, had been met in city after city by mobs of angry women with posters that said “Christian Dior Go Home” and even “Burn Mr. Dior.” When she discovered that there was no other direction in new clothes, aside from the New Look, she had accepted it reluctantly, but she had drawn the line at a hat. She hadn’t worn a hat since she’d been out of uniform, and she wasn’t about to change that now. Her hair had been carefully cut and shaped and set and combed out by an expensive stylist, but now, a day later, it had rejected whatever he had tried to do to it, and reclaimed its own unpredictable and unnamable shape, a combination of wave and curl and tumble and bumptiousness that was, if nothing else, familiar. She shook her head reproachfully at her hair’s disobedience to fashion, and it was as if a giant bright copper dahlia shimmied in the sunlight.

  “Mrs. Longbridge? The front door’s over here, Mrs. Longbridge,” said Hal Lane, the real-estate salesman, trying to move her along. This was his second day of showing Freddy around, and he was still not willing to believe that, unlike his other clients, the last thing on her mind seemed to be buying a house. However, the important thing about Mrs. Antony Longbridge was that she absolutely had to move; she wasn’t just a lookie-look, like some women he’d wasted time on. She had to get out of that dump she and her husband had rented three years ago. It simply wasn’t fitting for two of the partners in the biggest air cargo outfit in the country to be living in those rundown, cramped quarters. Leaving aside their own comfort, they couldn’t possibly entertain there. Imagine inviting people to dinner in a place that wasn’t as nice as even the cheapest tract house. The Longbridges, in his opinion, were well overdue to go for something that would reflect their position. He just couldn’t understand why they’d waited so long.

  “This is probably one of the finest dwellings in Hancock Park,” Hal Lane announced as they approached the front door. “It has a very special Old World quality.”

  Freddy looked up from her frowning contemplation of her billowing hem and halted suddenly on the paving. “Mr. Lane, I told you yesterday when we started out that I had only two days to devote to finding a house, and I warned you that fake English was absolutely out of the question. Why are you wasting my time?”

  “But … but … this isn’t fake English, Mrs. Longbridge, it’s real … ah … Queen Elizabeth. Just wait till you see the interior. It’s exceptional. A master bath to die for.”

  “I see half-timbers that don’t have any purpose, nasty little red bricks, tiny windowpanes that shut out the light. Sorry, but there’s no point in even going inside, Mr. Lane.” She looked at her watch. “We have another six hours.”

  Well! he thought as he helped her back into his Buick. Maybe a good-natured, chatty lookie-look would be preferable, after all. What was her hurry? He riffled through his listings, discarded half of them—Mrs. Longbridge obviously wasn’t sophisticated enough in the language of real estate to understand that in Los Angeles an English house, preferably Tudor, commanded instant respect and conferred immediate status—and started his new car.

  Freddy sat back, not even seeing the tree-lined streets with their bright winter flowers, sprinklers playing on the lawns during this November day. She had mixed feelings about this move away from the poky little house in Burbank in which so much had happened. She’d never forget those elated, crazy, twenty-hour days, after Swede Castelli had taken command of the office, when they’d hired fifteen new pilots in the middle of the worst of the postwar housing crisis. Between delivery trips the guys hunted for trailers or motels into which they could move their families, meanwhile bunking on the floor of her living room—except for the lucky one who’d managed to share a bed with Helga—and Freddy had cooked big stews for them every night that she wasn’t flying herself. Annie had been in charge of milk, cookies and paper napkins. Tony had tended bar, and Jock had run the poker game.

  Those were the early days of catch-as-catch-can backhaul: the tragedy of the three valuable planeloads of live Maine lobsters that had died of fright, as far as anyone could figure out, during a thunderstorm; the thrill of the hundreds of shipments of dresses and blouses, hot items that sold out in minutes
, sent straight from the factories of Seventh Avenue and delivered without a wrinkle in them, for they had flown cross-country on hangers attached to racks that had been hastily installed inside the planes; the weekly loads of Life and Time, to which they had gradually added a dozen other major magazine clients; the “dearly beloveds” as the Eagles referred to the many carefully crated dead bodies that were rushed to their former hometowns to be properly coffined and given funerals; the racehorses that recovered so much more easily from a plane ride than from a long trip by train or truck, that Eagles pilots took to betting their entire salaries on them; and most important of all, the charter flights.

  Without human bodies—living, breathing human bodies—they would never have made it, Freddy knew. It was the chartering of entire planes that had allowed them to weather the very early days: the football teams, the conventioneers, the church choirs going to competitions; the servicemen on leave, the student groups, the stranded circuses, animals and all; the marching bands; the nuns and nurses, none of whom could wait until the postwar log jam in transportation was solved. They’d switched from the DC-3 to the four-engine DC-4, discovered the right kind of collapsible seating and the right kind of sandwich box lunch, and sold space at ninety-nine dollars per person cross-country to countless groups willing to endure an austerity flight to get where they wanted to go cheaply and safely.

  Hal Lane pulled up in front of a white-columned house. “Mrs. Longbridge, I believe this major residence will be well worth your time.”

  “Lord have mercy,” said Freddy, “I’m back home at Tara.”

  “Tara was copied from this mansion.”

  “I’ll take a look,” she said as cheerfully as possible, since the house was within the circle she’d drawn on a map to show Lane the distance from the airport beyond which she wasn’t willing to live. As she walked through the many grand, empty rooms, blocking out Lane’s commentary as automatically as if he were engine noise, Freddy wondered how long it would take her to get used to living in this vast amount of square feet. She’d gone from her bedroom at home to Mac’s little house, and from there to the half-dozen crowded ATA digs she’d shared with Jane, to the comfortable bedroom and small sitting room that she and Tony had been given at Longbridge Grange, and finally to the tiny house in Burbank. Could she ever feel as cozy here as she had in her past twenty-nine years?