Till We Meet Again (23 page)

“She’s only interested in the trip, I think, Jack. But thank you anyway.”

“In that case, drive on out to Burbank and head for the Grand Central Airport. Let’s see now—your best bet is the deluxe daily express flight to San Francisco—it leaves every day at two-thirty, and three hours later you’ll be up there in plenty of time for drinks at a speakeasy, dinner in Chinatown, or maybe lobsters at the pier, spend the night in a suite at the Mark Hopkins, an early lunch at Ernie’s, or maybe Jack’s, and then you take the same flight back to L.A. You’ll be home for dinner. Round trip will set you back seventy bucks per person, and it can’t be beat for a good time.”

“That sounds a bit … filling, Jack. The girl is my eleven-year-old daughter.”

“Oh. Oh! I see. Well, in that case I suppose we’re talking about a little sightseeing flight?”

“Precisely.”

“No problem. I’ll arrange it for you myself. How about Saturday afternoon, about three-thirty? The light’s best in the late afternoon.”

“Perfect. And thank you, Jack, I appreciate it.” Paul de Lancel hung up, thinking once again that nobody at the Quai d’Orsay would care to know that men who had barely been introduced called each other by their first names in the City of the Angels, and that there was almost nothing that couldn’t be arranged by a single phone call. It would shock them immeasurably if they suspected these facts, for if such sensible behavior ever became a world habit, it would eliminate the need for a Diplomatic Corps.

“Yes, sir, Mr. de Lancel,” said the airline official. “Mr. Maddux made all the arrangements. Said to tell you the trip was on him, his pleasure. There’s the plane, right out there.” He pointed to a shiny new bi-motor plane standing on the tarmac not far from the single building that housed the air terminal on the great, wide field in Burbank. Six people were already waiting in line for the sightseeing flight.

Paul took Freddy’s hand and started toward the plane, but she stood her ground and didn’t move.

“That’s a big plane and there are other people going on it,” she said in a voice of utter disappointment.

“Now, Freddy, I didn’t promise you a plane all of your own, did I? Just a ride. And this is the best time of day.”

“Daddy, don’t you understand? I want to go up
alone
.”

“Come on, sweetheart, how can you go alone? You can’t fly a plane by yourself.”

“I know. There’d have to be a pilot. Just me and the pilot, please, Daddy, so I can imagine that it’s just me, by myself.”

She was all ardent pleading, her eyes looking into his. Paul seemed to see himself, and he remembered, for an instant, the flavor of his boyish dreams. Not the dreams themselves, but their urgency, their total lack of understanding of what it might ever mean to compromise.

“I’ll tell Mr. Maddux that you were most kind,” he said to the airline official, “but I believe my daughter would prefer to go up in a little plane. What do you recommend?”

“When you leave the airport, turn left and keep going on the same road until you get to a little town called Dry Springs. Turn off on the main street, drive through town, and pretty soon you’ll see a sign for a flying school, the McGuire Academy of the Air. It doesn’t look like much, but don’t worry about that. Ask for Mac—he’ll take her up for a spin. Best pilot out here. Flew in the war, I think.”

“Thanks,” Paul said, and led the way, with Freddy beside him, excitedly walking so fast that she kept up with his long-legged stride. The McGuire flying school, when they reached it some twenty-five minutes later, proved to be a low wooden structure that looked like a huge garage. There were a number of planes parked inside, but otherwise the big space was deserted. Eventually, off to one side, Paul and
Freddy discovered a small office with its door open. Paul looked in and called out, “Anybody here?”

“Be there in a minute,” a voice answered from behind them, and soon a man crawled out from under the plane on which he had been working. He was wearing mechanic’s overalls over an open-necked workman’s shirt. His brown hair, the pleasant color of gingerbread, was disheveled and he seemed, to Paul, to be no older than thirty. He had a good face, a strong, open face, what Paul thought of as a typically American face, self-confident, friendly and freckled. He walked with a markedly lithe assurance, almost as if he were a professional gymnast.

“I’m looking for Mac,” Paul said.

“I’m Mac,” the man answered, with a disarming grin, wiping his hands on a piece of clean rag and shaking hands with Paul. “Terence McGuire.”

“Paul de Lancel.” Unsmiling, Paul hesitated. He hated to entrust Freddy to a pilot in overalls.

“What can I do for you?” Mac asked.

“Please, I’d like a plane ride,” Freddy said breathlessly.

“Just a minute, Freddy,” Paul interrupted. “I understand that you flew in the war, Mr. McGuire?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That’s very interesting, isn’t it, Freddy? Tell me, where did you fly?”

“In France.”

“I meant with whom, with what group?” Paul probed, far from reassured.

“First with the Lafayette Escadrille in 1916—if I’d waited for our army to get the message that there was a fight going on, I might have been on the ground forever. Then, when the United States finally got into the war, I transferred to the American Air Service—the 94th Aero Squadron.”

“Then you must have shot down some German planes?”

“Well, naturally, I bagged a few. Fifteen to be exact. The last four of them at Saint-Mihiel. We all had our share of victories. Eddie Rickenbacker got almost double my score. Are you a reporter, by any chance? I haven’t talked to one for years. I didn’t think anyone was still interested.”

“No. Just an anxious father.”

“I see. You didn’t want your daughter going up with a mechanic? Can’t blame you. You’re right to be careful. She’ll be all right with me.”

“Oh, please, Daddy, don’t waste all this time talking!” Freddy cried, at the end of her patience, dancing up and down, her hair bouncing, her eyes afire.

“Come on, kid. We’ll take up the Piper Cub over there. I was supposed to be giving a lesson this afternoon, but it was canceled, so she’s gassed up and all ready to go,” McGuire said, pointing to the tiny plane parked outside the hangar twenty feet away. Freddy turned, without saying another word, and dashed toward it at full tilt, closely followed by the pilot.

Paul stood on the tarmac, feeling foolish. The man had been an ace, a triple ace, and had flown for France for two years. So this was what had happened to at least one of those chivalrous and romantic heroes once he got home and took off his shining boots, dashing jodhpurs and belted leather jacket. Paul sat down on a camp chair near the hangar of the flying school and resigned himself to wait nervously for Freddy’s return. That Piper Cub looked dangerously small.

Terence McGuire buckled Freddy into the left-hand seat of the Piper Cub, with a complete set of controls in front of her, circled the plane, and climbed into the right-hand seat. No need to check out the plane; he’d done it an hour before. He looked at the empty sky and started off, taxiing toward the end of the unpaved, dirt airstrip. The afternoon light at Dry Springs was as golden as any that had ever fallen in Greece, the sky as thrillingly blue, the air as clear and beckoning, as if it contained some splendid promise.

Freddy was silent, and he glanced at her profile to see if she was frightened. It was rare that someone brought a young girl for a spin. Mostly it was boys, and older than this kid, although, with the seat pushed far forward as it was, her feet easily reached the rudder pedals. No, she wasn’t frightened, but it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had decided at the last minute that he’d rather not go up after all, thanks anyway. She looked, well, not excited exactly, but deeply intent, as if this joyride were something she was concentrating on with every one of her senses. He held the Piper for a minute at the end of the airstrip, and went through his pre-takeoff checklist. Then, before he began his run toward the takeoff point, he took another peek at his passenger. She’d gone white under her tan, and she looked as if she were holding her breath.

“You O.K., kid?” he shouted over the noise of the motor. She nodded briefly but didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the windscreen and he’d bet that she wasn’t even blinking.

Once they were airborne, and had climbed to fifteen hundred feet, McGuire leveled off and headed east, away from the brilliant rays of the slanting sun, and flew straight and level, keeping an even airspeed. First-time passengers had enough trouble just being off the ground, in his opinion, without having to deal with any fancy stuff. Unlike some pilots, he felt no need to show off at the passenger’s expense.

“Like the view?” he asked Freddy. Now that they were up, he didn’t have to shout.

“It’s great. It’s better than great! When’s the lesson going to start?” she asked.

“Lesson? What lesson?”

“This lesson,
my lesson
.”

“Hold on, kid. Your father didn’t say anything about a lesson.”

“He didn’t have a chance. You two spent the whole time talking about the war. I’m supposed to be having my first lesson today. Why do you think we came to a flying school?”

“If I’d known it was supposed to be a lesson, we’d still be on the ground and you’d be learning how to check out this plane. This isn’t the way to give anyone a lesson,” McGuire protested.

“I’ll do that next time,” Freddy said, and smiled for the first time since they had left the airport.

“Damn right, you will. And not just next time. Every time. O.K., put your hand on the stick. Now, gently, push it forward. What happened?”

“We went down,” Freddy said in rapture.

“Right. Pull it back toward you. Now what?”

“We went up.”

“Forward takes you down, back brings you up. That’s the first thing. And the most important. Everything’s important, but getting up and down comes first, kid.”

“Yes, Mr. McGuire.”

“Call me Mac. All my students do. What’s your name?”

“Freddy.”

“Boy’s name, huh?”

“Not in French. It’s Marie-Frédérique, really, but no one’s allowed to call me that. What’s the next thing, Mac?”

“You’ve got your feet on the rudder pedals. They control the direction of the plane. You steer the plane with them, not with the stick. The stick isn’t like the wheel of a car. The rudders
are
like the wheel of a car. So press—gently—on your left rudder. What’s happening?”

“We’re starting to turn left.”

“How are you going to get back to flying straight ahead?”

“Right rudder?”

“Do it. Good. Now hold her straight. Just use your left hand. Relax your arm, this isn’t an arm-wrestling contest. Good. Now look at this dial, Freddy. It’s called an altimeter. It shows you how high up you are. And this knob is the throttle. If you push it in, the plane goes faster. If you pull it out, the plane goes slower. It’s like putting on more or less gas. Got it?”

“Yes,” she said and in that single second of sudden comprehension, all the power of her natural coordination shifted to the control panel of the Piper Cub.

“Look at the altimeter, Freddy, and try to take her up two hundred feet. You’ll need to push in the throttle and pull back on the stick. Whoa! Not so fast. Gentle—gentle—gentle. That’s what she wants, and don’t you forget it. Try again, up another two hundred feet. Hmm … that was better. Now take her down—gently—four hundred feet so we’ll be back where we started. What are you going to do?”

“Push the stick forward and pull out the throttle. Very, very gently.”

“Right. Go.”

Freddy’s pealing laugh rang out. She could fly a plane! Mac’s hands weren’t on the stick. He was sitting in the cockpit with his arms folded and
she was flying the plane
. She’d known she could do it all her life, known with a knowledge that she could never remember not possessing or trying to explain. It was different from what she’d expected, more … more … 
businesslike
, because of all the dials on the control panel whose meaning she didn’t yet know, but the
wonder
, the wonder that she had known was waiting for her like a gift on the wind, the wonder, oh, yes, it was there!

“We’d better turn around and head back,” Mac said. “I’ll take over, but you keep your hand on the stick and your feet on the rudders and just feel what I do.”

Reluctantly, Freddy surrendered the plane. “How old do I have to be before I can take her up alone?”

“Well, first you have to know how, and you don’t yet. But you can’t solo until your sixteenth birthday.”

“What! Who says so?”

“The government. Regulations. The damn fools—I soloed when I was twelve, but that was back in the good old days. Before that, in the very beginning, there weren’t any dual controls, so that first time you took one up you soloed—sink-or-swim-style.”

“That means I’ll have to wait four and a half years,” Freddy wailed. “How can I wait that long?”

“No choice. You can learn to fly, but you can’t solo.”

“Four and a half years,” Freddy said in misery.

“You take shop in school?”

“They don’t have shop at Sacred Heart,” Freddy said mournfully.

“Change schools, that’s what you’d better do, and take shop. It’s a start. And math, that’s important. You good at math?”

“Yes,” Freddy muttered numbly. “It’s my best subject.”

“Well, don’t knock it. Without some math, how do you expect to navigate? And, believe it or not, there are people who can’t do math to save their lives.”

“Like my sister, Delphine,” Freddy said, brightening a little.

“At least one of you has a girl’s name. Freddy, can you see the airport from here?”

“Of course.” She squinted into the sun and pointed out the precise location of the airport, all but invisible, and very far away on the floor of the San Fernando Valley. “I saw it a minute ago, maybe more.”

“Hmm.” He’d known it was there, Terence McGuire thought, because that was were it always was, but he wouldn’t have bet a nickel that anyone else could spot it the first time up And he’d only just seen it. The kid had good eyes. Better than good.