Tycoon (22 page)

At midnight General Eisenhower appeared for a moment and said he was sorry he hadn't been able to join the game that evening. Kay Summersby asked if everyone had transportation back to London. When the Countess said she did not, Kay Summersby suggested that she go with General Lear, whose car was waiting.

On the way back to London, with Cecily driving, Jack's fascination with Anne, Countess of Weldon increased. From their conversation he learned something about her but not nearly as much as he wanted to know. He did not learn that she was widowed and assumed she had a husband somewhere in the forces. When he took her to the door of her flat at York Terrace, a very distinguished address, he saw that she was not just an aristocrat but quite well off, too.

Jack could not get her out of his mind. Two weeks later he ran into Captain Harvey, the British naval officer who had arranged to spring Curt Frederick from jail, and he mentioned the countess to him. The captain knew of her. She was a widow, he said. Her husband, the Earl of Weldon, had been killed about six months ago.

J
ACK ASSIGNED HIS SCROUNGER,
C
APTAIN
D
URENBERGER, THE
task of learning all he could about Anne, Countess of Weldon. As always, Durenberger was resourceful but probably not subtle.
His report was more detailed than Jack could have expected.

Brigadier Sir Basil Fleming, Ninth Earl of Weldon, had been killed in Italy in January 1944. He was thirty-nine years old. His widow, Sarah Anne Helen, Countess of Weldon, was thirty-one. She called herself, and was called, Anne.

Though Anne's father was not titled, he was descended in one of the several junior lines from the Sackvilles, Earls De La Warr; she was remotely related to Vita Sackville-West and many blue bloods considered her lineage superior to that of Sir Basil. Besides, she was brilliantly beautiful and had been courted by a dozen distinguished men.

Anne had married Basil in 1935. Their wedding had been the social event of the year, eclipsing everything else. At that time, Basil had not yet inherited his title and had been a member of the House of Commons. The marriage ceremony took place in St. Margaret's Church, the small church adjacent to Westminster Abbey—the church of the House of Commons, where Winston Churchill had been married in 1908. Churchill was, in fact, present for the ceremony, as were David Lloyd George, Anthony Eden, Duff Cooper, and many others.

When the Eighth Earl of Weldon died in 1938, Basil inherited the title and could no longer serve in the House of Commons. Though they kept their London town house and Basil took his place in the House of Lords from time to time, he and Anne began to spend much of their time at their country place in Bedfordshire, where Basil studied agricultural management and determined to make the old estate a profitable enterprise. His efforts were interrupted in September of 1939.

No one asked, though many wondered, why Anne did not become pregnant. When Basil died, the earldom passed to his brother, though of course Anne remained Countess of Weldon—Countess Dowager, a title she hated.

J
ACK TELEPHONED
A
NNE AND ASKED IF SHE WOULD HAVE
dinner with him. She agreed to meet him on the evening of Monday, June 5.

They met in the dining room of the Ritz. Jack came in his tux. Anne wore a pale green silk-satin gown, that suited her aristocratic mien far better than her awful uniform had.

“I am pleased you came in mufti, General.”

He grinned. “I am pleased that you did, too,” he said.

Anne laughed.

“And please, don't call me ‘general.' The rank is temporary at best.”

“Mr. Lear?”

“No. Jack. And that's my name. For me, Jack is not a nickname for John.”

“Well, then. I am Anne.”

“You will perhaps forgive me. I am by profession a journalist, and I did a bit of checking into your name and background. That was terribly unfair of me, but I did it.”

“Not unfair at all. I have resources, too. You are Jack Lear, the son of the American salvage operator Erich Lear and the brother of the film producer Robert Lear. You own a string of broadcasting stations in America, and you have been married since 1931 and have two children.”

He nodded. “That's me, I'm afraid.”

She smiled in a way that he thought was aristocratic. “What is more, you have an intimate relationship with that charming, plump English gel who drives you. Which means that a woman such as I—one who sees you socially—is safe from your more, shall we say, lubricous instincts? Those are taken care of.”

“You are entirely safe from those, Anne. Even
without
Cecily, you would be safe from those.”

She laughed. “Come now, Jack! Even though you have Cecily,
no woman is entirely safe with you. You've a reputation, you see.”

“God help me!”

G
ETTING AWAY FROM
C
ECILY TO GO TO
A
NNE BECAME A PROB
lem for Jack. He began to drive the car sometimes. Although it was very awkward for him to drive on the left side of the road through blacked-out streets, he made excuses to Cecily and drove himself to York Terrace and the exquisite flat that belonged to Anne, Countess of Weldon.

When they were alone there, he and Anne kissed. That was the extent of their intimacy. Gradually he kissed her more fervently. She accepted it.

“I went down to the USAF field in Kent again today,” he told her one evening. “The bombers are meeting no Luftwaffe fighters and little flak. Our smaller planes are bombing and strafing at will. It's over, Anne. We've won.”

She nodded. “Too late for many.”

He held her. She was wearing a simple cream-white linen dress. “I know, Anne. I know what you mean,” he said somberly. “And a lot more men are going to die. But there's no doubt anymore. God, when I saw that attack in Belgium in 1940—”

She kissed him, running her moist lips gently over his. “Why couldn't you have helped us sooner?”

“God, we wanted to! I mean, Roosevelt wanted to. / wanted to. Anne . . .” He glanced around her sumptuous living room. “Do you have any brandy? I'd have brought some, but—”

“I still have some of yours. A lot of yours.”

He sat down, and she poured.

“Obviously we must be glad that the war is over, or nearly over,” he said. “But it's going to be like it was after the last war. The problems of the peace will be as great as those of the war.”

She handed him a snifter. “I have a sense that you are not talking about politics but about your personal life.”

He sipped brandy. “You've been hurt by the war. I haven't. But you are going to be just as bored as I'm going to be when it's over. In wartime, we've known who we are and what we have had to do. Circumstances have made our decisions for us. Now we are going to have to make decisions for ourselves again, and it isn't going to be easy.”

“What decisions are you going to have to make, Jack?”

“Business decisions. I've let them slide since 1942. Then . . . personal decisions.”

Anne put her hand on his. “You've got one hell of a problem, Jack. So does General Eisenhower. I'm going to be very interested to see how you both solve them.”

S
UNDAY,
J
UNE
18, 1944

L
ATE AT NIGHT
J
ACK LAY IN BED IN HIS SUITE IN THE
P
ARK
Lane Hotel. He was listening to the BBC, trying to match the place-names he heard to the names on a board-mounted map he had propped up against his knees.

Forces of the American Seventh Corps, under the command of General Bradley, were reported to have taken a port city named Barneville. If that was true, it meant that the Cotentin Peninsula had been cut in half and that the great port city of Cherbourg was isolated from the German lines.

He would have liked to be in touch with Curt, who, as of their last contact, was in a French town called Carentan, which couldn't be far from Barneville. This news had to be significant.

Cecily would not let him ponder it. She had smothered his scrotum in her big wet kisses and was now licking her way up his shaft.

Jack closed his eyes and let the map fall.

His hours with Anne were nothing like that.

He usually visited Anne on Sunday afternoon, when she had time off from her work at ATS. Cecily welcomed the opportunity to spend that time with her family. Jack would drop Cecily at home, giving her some story about where he would be during the afternoon, and then would pick her up before sunset.

On the afternoon of Sunday, June 18, he dropped Cecily in the Elephant and Castle neighborhood south of the Thames and drove immediately to York Terrace.

Anne was not alone. A man and a woman were with her—Arthur, the new Earl of Weldon, and his wife, who had just finished having lunch with Anne. Jack couldn't help but notice that they were put off by him. They kept glancing at the small woven hamper of cheeses and lunch meats he'd brought. Obviously they were wondering about the nature of the relationship between Anne and this American general whose name they had never heard before. They stayed only long enough to be civil, then hurried away.

The nature of the relationship between Jack and Anne was affectionate, even amorous, but not erotic.

Jack moved to the sofa where Anne sat and embraced her. They kissed fervently. They sat together and kissed during much of the time he spent there. Occasionally he would very tentatively touch her breast or her leg, and she would firmly—though in no great hurry—push his hand aside. He was careful not to press her too much, out of fear that she would simply dismiss him.

London came under buzz-bomb attack again that afternoon. Anne poured whiskies, and she and Jack stepped out on her south terrace to see what was happening. Others were out on adjacent terraces, staring half apprehensively and half curiously at the sky.

The V-ls had what were called pulse-jet engines and made a staccato noise as they approached. London Defense put up a storm of antiaircraft fire, but it was not very effective. Jack and Anne and her neighbors on the other terraces saw one bright flash in the sky and realized that the flak had hit one of the buzz bombs. Others came on and dived to the ground. Dark yellowish columns of smoke and dust rose over the city.

Anne took Jack's hand. “So damned
random,”
she said.
“Where would you go to hide? I understand these bombs can even blast open the shelters.”

“I'm going to try to persuade Betsy Frederick to go home to Boston. She's in greater danger here than Curt is in on the Continent.”

Anne squeezed his hand. “For a time I was almost sorry the Blitz had ended. I thought maybe I could go out and walk along the river and wait to be hit. But now I don't want to die. I've gotten over that.”

“I haven't suffered what you have,” Jack said quietly, “but I think I can understand why you felt that way.”

“Let's go back inside. At least we can be in each other's arms if one of them comes down here.”

Inside, Jack pulled her against him and kissed her so passionately that he bruised their lips. “If it had to happen, would you want it to happen while you were in my arms?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

Anne nodded.

A
T FIVE-FORTY THAT EVENING
A
NNE'S DOORBELL RANG.
When she opened the door, she was surprised to find Jack standing there. He'd left her flat less than a half hour ago.

He staggered into the foyer, stopped, and turned to Anne. “Cecily is dead!”

She embraced him and found he was shaking. “Oh, Jack! How?”

“One of those goddamned flying bombs. Her whole family, plus two or three other families. When I drove into the neighborhood I could see a bomb had hit. When I reached her street, all that was left was a crater and wreckage. Wreckage of houses—no legitimate target anywhere near.
What the hell kind of war is this?”

“That
is
the kind of war it is,” said Anne. “You saw them
strafe the Belgian refugees. You should have seen what happened here during the Blitz. Legitimate targets? Buckingham Palace? The House of Commons? And Oxford Street, for God's sake—stores! Not a factory within miles. I'd walk out on that terrace in the morning and find that ashes had drifted down in the night and turned the whole thing gray. I'd find shreds of charred fabric and wonder if they were from the stock in some shop or the clothes of someone who'd died during the night. That's what kind of war it is. And—Oh, forgive me, Jack, for lecturing you. Poor Cecily!”

She took his arm and led him into her living room, where he sank down on the sofa and covered his face with his hands while he shook with sobs.

She poured him a whisky. She sat beside him and put her arms around him.

Two hours later he still sat slumped and, for the most part, silent.

“Jack, I want to say something to you.”

He lifted his head and focused his attention on her.

“Thank you for coming to
me,”
said Anne.

J
ULY
22, 1944

J
ACK SAT BESIDE
A
NNE IN HER LIVING ROOM.
T
HEY WERE
going out to dinner shortly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter. With a solemn shake of his head, he handed it to her.

T
HE
W
HITE
H
OUSE
W
ASHINGTON,
D.C.

Jack Lear

Brigadier General

American Information Service

London, U.K.

 

Dear General Lear,

First, let me extend to you my personal gratitude for the magnificent job you have done as head of the American Information Service. Your broadcasts to the British people have achieved every objective we had in mind for them, and more.