Till We Meet Again (69 page)

“Twenty-six isn’t either,” Delphine observed wryly. “Even if you do have little Annie.”

“Oh, I never think about age,” Freddy said gaily. “There’s just too much to do at Longbridge Grange. I’ve got my bridge lessons, and now that some of the staff have come back to work, Penelope is teaching me all the fine points of dinner parties, and I’m learning to embroider so I can make tray mats and how to knit so I can make tea cosies and egg cosies for the next bazaar—apple pies are too easy—and of course there’s my Sunday school.”

“Your
own
Sunday school?” Delphine asked, manifesting as much surprise as her supine position permitted.

“Absolutely. It’s a Longbridge tradition, every Sunday afternoon from three to four—just for children up to ten years old. After that, they go to the vicarage to prepare for confirmation.
I keep the attendance books, and if a child shows up for six consecutive weeks I put a pretty stamp in it, but if any of them miss even one single week they have to start the six weeks all over again
from the beginning
to get the stamp.”

“That seems rather drastic,” Delphine objected.

“Consecutive must mean consecutive,” Freddy insisted with ardor. “It’s excellent character training. Penelope plays hymns on the piano, and the children sing and I read them Bible stories. I’m getting rather good at it.”

“Somehow I never thought you were the religious type … still, people do change, don’t they? And we haven’t seen each other in so long … you’re getting to be the perfect English gentlewoman.”

“I hope so … after all, I married a country gentleman, didn’t I? Oh, I almost forgot to tell you the most exciting thing of all—I’m making my own potpourri! Penelope has a secret recipe—it’s been in the family for hundreds of years—so I decided to invent my own. I started with lavender and roses, naturally, and then I just went plain crazy: marigold petals, cornflowers, heather, salvia, larkspur, pinks, lemongrass, lemon verbena, thyme, feverfew, peppermint leaves, sweet woodruff, mace, chamomile flowers, powdered orrisroot—just a touch—violets, geranium leaves, a dash of powdered nutmeg—let’s see, did I forget anything? Heavens! Cinnamon sticks! Don’t even
try
to make it without cinnamon sticks. Of course, the secret is in perfect timing in the picking of the flowers for drying—only in the morning after the dew has evaporated, and only when the flower is
perfect
. Then you mix, very, very carefully, and add essential oils at the end. The whole process is far more complicated than it sounds. My potpourri is going to be wonderful when it’s aged properly. Right now it still smells a little … unfinished … but my mother-in-law’s very optimistic. I’ll send you some when I’m satisfied with it. Delphine … Delphine?… are you asleep?”

An hour later, when Armand came back from his walk with Tony, he found Delphine brushing her hair before dinner, refreshed by her nap.

“Did you have a nice, intimate, sisterly talk with Freddy?” he asked.

“Fascinating. And you with Tony?”

“Highly informative. I know more than I ever wanted to
know about the stupidity of the Labour government, shortages, lack of funds, price controls, low productivity, high taxes, and the all-over impossibility of ever getting anything done in England. I kept wishing I was back here, listening to the two of you wallowing in low-down, sexy girl talk.”

“Don’t feel left out, you didn’t miss much. Unless you enjoy watching a very bad actress at work.”

“What bad actress?”

Delphine yawned luxuriously. “My little sister, you oaf. I was brilliant, pretending to believe her.”

“As brilliant as usual?”

“You bet your ass, Sadowski. I think I’ll let you stick around, after all.”

Freddy looked up from her embroidery frame as she heard Tony tear sheets of airmail paper into tiny bits and throw them into the small fire that burned ineffectively in their bedroom at Longbridge Grange, against the bone-chilling damp of a rainy April afternoon in 1946, an austere springtime of tiny, unopened buds and increased rationing.

“Wasn’t that from Jock?” she protested. “I wanted to read it too.”

“I didn’t want to waste your time,” Tony said, clearly irritated at his friend’s letter.

“More about his relentless love life? I rather enjoy all the disgustingly sordid details. Makes a change from Trollope.”

“Not even that, darling. He’s got another of his mad ideas. Now he wants to lease a bunch of surplus planes and start an air cargo business.”

“That must mean Jock still hasn’t got a job,” Freddy said thoughtfully. “How long does he expect that the fortune he won at poker is going to last?”

“Not long, if he goes on like this. He’s dead keen on the notion—he says he can rent DC-3s for four thousand dollars a year, a special veteran’s rate—‘only four thousand,’ mind you—and he proposes that
we
pull up roots and move to Los Angeles and go into partnership with him. Us! Just like that! He says the place is crowded with demobed pilots and ground crew who will work for practically nothing to get a job in aviation. He says we’d be getting in on the ground floor of a whole new industry. I say he’s a piss-artist.”

“Some things never change,” Freddy agreed. “Did he say what kind of cargo he was talking about?”

“You know Jock—he’s thinking of fresh produce—can’t you just picture a DC-3 full of vegetables? Jock says the plane holds three and a half tons of cargo. It’s a classic Hampton cock-up … the flying greengrocer.

“As a matter of fact, oddly enough,” Freddy said thoughtfully, “somehow it rings a bell.”

“How so?” Tony asked, surprised by the unaccustomed pensiveness of her tone.

“On the West Coast we grow so much stuff that’s out of season in the East, and too perishable to go by train … there has to be a market for it.” Freddy had put down her embroidery frame and was looking into the fire with dreaming, visionary eyes that saw a country Tony Longbridge had never believed really existed.

“Now hold it, darling. In the first, second and third place, if it were a foolproof plan and we wanted to do it, which it isn’t and we don’t, we can’t possibly take any money out of this country to go into a partnership, not even with Jock, the silly blighter. Currency restrictions, remember? We couldn’t have gone to Paris if the Sadowskis hadn’t put us up.”

“You know perfectly well that I have fifteen thousand dollars in Los Angeles, gathering interest since 1939.”

“That’s your private nest egg.”

“It’s my dower, my wedding portion … you did not marry an empty-handed bride.”

“I’ve never agreed with you about that. It’s your own money—nothing to do with me.”

Freddy paid no attention to his familiar protestation. “If,” she said, “and I’m just saying ‘if,’ Tony, it’s only a ‘for instance,’ so don’t jump on me—
if, just for instance
, we did use that money, we could lease a couple of planes and still have plenty left over for living expenses before we started to make a profit. If Jock leased another two, maybe three planes,
only for instance
, so we’d have five all together—”

“Steady on!”

“Just let me finish my thought—I wonder what Jock means when he says guys will work for practically nothing—how much ‘nothing’ would that be exactly?”

“Freddy! What the bloody hell are you raving about? A fleet of five cargo planes! You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”

“Hmm … just turning it over in my mind, only for fun, merely letting it simmer …”

“Are you indeed?”

“How does it hurt to imagine it, Tony, just to
imagine
those DC-3s, loaded to the gills, taking off for New York or Boston or Chicago—but of course I’m being whimsical, it’s not as if we could possibly leave The Grange.”

“I should damn well think not.”

“You’ve lived here all your life. How could you begin to consider pulling up stakes and moving to a strange place where the sun shines every day of the year or they give you your money back?” Freddy had walked over to the window and stood looking out at the funereal, inexorable rain that had been falling for weeks, during the English spring. “I wonder what it’s like above the weather?” she murmured. “Is the evening star still there?”

“What was that, darling?”

“Nothing.” She smiled at him gently. “Jock doesn’t need us anyway if he wants to get into air cargo. As he said, California is swarming with pilots. And we have our life here—you have the land to manage, and I have Annie and my bazaars and my bridge lessons and the Sunday school. Still … if neither of us took a salary … no, never mind.”

“ ‘Never mind’—two of the most irritating words in the English language, as well you know. If neither of us took a salary, then what?” Tony demanded.

“I was just wondering about … well … profits. There wouldn’t be any, not for a while. It wouldn’t be a piece of cake. First we’d have to get there, find a place to live, buy a car, rent an office, arrange for hangar space, pay office staff, interview pilots and crew … it would cost a bundle just to gas up five DC-3s …” Her voice trailed off as she looked at the dripping yews below their window. She seemed to be insulated from the firelit room by a haze of yearning so palpable that it quivered in the air.

“ ‘Five DC-3s’? Are they that real to you already?” Tony asked, with an enigmatic note in his voice.

“I’m just remembering all the financial problems I had with my flying school.”

“It was rough, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. Real rough.” As she turned to answer Tony’s question, a passionate, wild, hopeful child looked out of Freddy’s eyes for just a second before she lowered her lids, but it was too late and Tony had seen it.

“Was it more difficult than the cake sale?”

“Not on the same level.”

“Rougher?”

“Considerably.”

“But you did it well, didn’t you?”

“I managed.”

“Was it as thrilling as making potpourri?”

“Stop teasing, Tony. That’s like comparing … oh, flying to … to … there’s nothing you
can
compare it to, is there?” With a resolute set to her jaw, Freddy buttoned up her cardigan, sat down and took up her embroidery again.

“Darling, who do you think you’re kidding? You’re
perishing
to try this air cargo caper. Do you think I don’t see you stop whatever you’re doing and listen hard every time a plane passes overhead?”

“Habit, mere habit,” Freddy said, blushing angrily.

“Rubbish! If your ears could flap, they would.”

“Well, even if Jock’s idea did intrigue me,” Freddy cried, “how could we ever consider taking such an enormous step? It would mean moving away from your family, it would be a complete change of our way of life. You’d hate it, Tony, I know you would. So let’s just not talk about it anymore.”

“But you’re dying to give it a try, aren’t you? Try to tell me that isn’t true.”

“I’m not any good at lying to you, am I? But times have changed. The war’s over, Tony. I’ve … settled down in this sceptered isle … this other Eden … this demi-paradise.”

“Bullshit, sweetheart. What’s more, you forgot ‘this earth of majesty’ and ‘this seat of Mars.’ That will never do. Oh, you put on a bloody marvelous act, I grant you, but what did the war ever have to do with the way you feel about flying? My poor grounded baby, reduced to one fucking horsepower, and an old farm nag at that.”

“I’ve never complained,” Freddy said tonelessly.

“No, and that’s the scary part. It’s so unlike you to be docile—it makes me nervous. Look here, Freddy, I honestly, truly wouldn’t mind a bit of a change. I get in Father’s way a hell of a lot. He’s much less impatient than I am with red tape, and a damn sight more experienced. If he really needed me here I couldn’t even consider it, just couldn’t, you know that, but it’s not as if it were forever—I mean, why the hell not? Old Jock’s not stupid, got the spirit of enterprise, that boy does. And when we blow all the money, and come back with our tails between our legs—”

“It’ll be
my
nickel?” Freddy exclaimed, still not believing him. Tony nodded at his wife, withholding nothing.

“YIPPEE!” Freddy catapulted out of her chair, so high into the air that her wide-flung fingertips brushed the beams of the ceiling.

A tiny knock sounded at their door and Annie slipped in, dressed for bed in a long, flowered flannel nightgown. “Yippee what?” she asked.

“Guess what, little Annie, we’re all going to visit your pal Jock in the place your Mama grew up in—the City of the Angels, she used to call it,” Tony said.

“Like in Sunday school?” Annie asked, wary, but ready to be enchanted.

“Nothing like that at all. Like a summer day, like a big, warm, blue trip to the seaside, and do you know the best thing about it? Your Papa won’t have to play bridge with your poor Mama any more because—don’t tell her I told you—but she still hasn’t figured out the difference between trumps and spades, and odds are she never will.”

“So what are we going to call it?” Jock asked, as he poured himself a beer in the backyard of the tiny house Freddy and Tony had finally found near the Burbank Airport.

“Something confidence-inspiring, I should think,” Tony answered. “What do you make of ‘National Airfreight Express Limited’?”

“A bit windy, old chap, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Undoubtedly you have a better suggestion, old buddy?”

“I kinda like ‘Fast Freight Forward.’ ” Jock grinned proudly at his inventiveness.

“I wouldn’t give my business to an outfit with a name like that,” Freddy protested. “It sounds like a football play on a high school team … a second-rate high school.”

“Why Freddy, I think that Jock’s name is just plain fabulous,” protested Brenda, Jock’s latest girl and their volunteer office manager. “You could even call it ‘Fabulous Fast Freight Forward’—I bet I could get Hedda Hopper to use it as an item.”

“Brenda, you don’t exactly have a vote here,” Jock said hastily. “Brenda knows a lot of people in show business,” he explained, turning to Freddy and Tony.

Freddy inspected Brenda with wonder. Her dark hair was so long and shiny that she looked as if she had puddles on her
shoulders. Her astonishing tits indicated full female maturity, yet could she possibly be old enough to have graduated from high school? Where did Jock find them? He had sworn that she could type, take dictation, file and answer phones, but she looked as if she’d never even done her own long and perfect dark red nails. And why did she have a Southern accent, when she said she was from San Francisco?”