Behind the Inchcapes were Princess Mary and the viscount, who had accompanied them back from Cairo after it was clear that the news would not change and could be no other. Despite protocol, Mary defiantly refused to disembark first, insisting that Lord Inchcape needed to leave the ship far more profoundly than she did.
At the top of the gangway, Lord Inchcape hesitated. All of these souls, he thought as he looked down at the pier that was swimming with a town’s worth of people, none of them her. And with every step he took down that gangway back to England, back to Seamore Place, back to a house without his daughter—the certainty of which became more and more blinding—he came closer to the cruelty of the truth, and felt despair settling heavily onto his shoulders. In Cairo, it wasn’t yet real; it was still only a thought, an appalling thought, but the actuality of it wouldn’t be absolute until he returned home to understand it for himself and saw that his daughter occupied nothing.
It had taken him five days to tell Jane that Elsie had gone and that the hope of her returning was forlorn. He watched as his wife faded, as part of her vanished, looking ashen and empty before she even realized what the words meant. It was the light leaving her, he knew; he watched it go. His beloved Jane was broken by his words, and it was senseless to think that the light could ever be revived. He wished he could hold that for her; he wanted to lift that torment from her and take it on as his own, to relieve her of it.
At the bottom of the gangplank, Kenneth came forward, and Inchcape clasped his son’s shoulder—for balance, for sorrow, for everything. Kenneth kissed his mother, took her elbow, and the group of them went through the crowd, which parted as the grief of the family seemingly led several steps ahead of them.
Not one word was spoken.
* * *
Golf Hotel Hyeres
6th April, 1928
My dear Bluebell,
I cannot tell you how Aunt Janey and I appreciate your kind telegram. We are extremely grateful for your sympathy in our dreadful trial. Aunt Janey is still bowled over by the shock and won’t be equal to the journey home, I am afraid, for a little time. Elsie had the courage of a lion and at the same time a heart full of tenderness for us and everyone and the end she must have come to in the Atlantic is a continual nightmare. I knew nothing of her intended venture till 36 hours after she had started. I kept it from your aunt for five days, hoping always that I would be able to tell her of Elsie’s safety. But then hope had vanished; I had to break it to her and the shock was dreadful.
Yours affectionately,
Inchcape
* * *
Bluebell kept her uncle’s letter in the top drawer of her dresser. She read it several times a day to stay tethered to Elsie; she dreamt about her often, and every time, the dreams were similar. The two cousins were dodging about in London, laughing, until Elsie would tell her it was time for her to go, and Bluebell would protest, saying that she’d only just come back. Elsie would shake her head, look at her watch, and say, “What about tomorrow? One o’clock? I will see you then.” When Bluebell would resist even further, Elsie replied simply, “This is what I do now. From tea until bedtime I watch over everyone I love. So you see, there’s no way I can stay, dear Bluebell.”
“Will we still have our adventure?” Bluebell asked.
Elsie smiled at her beloved cousin, eager to bite at life, anxious to spin every wheel.
“We are, dear,” she would say. “We are.”
* * *
When she was older, no longer a girl, Bluebell would recall her cousin with an affection and strength she never really found for anyone else. When she had children, and then grandchildren, it was her hope that one of them would have that force in them to do remarkable things, to see things in exceptional ways, and become the rare and significant force that she knew Elsie had been. She realized, after many years, that you cannot manufacture the courage of a lion and a heart full of tenderness. That sort of being is only born.
She committed her uncle’s reply to memory, and while she felt a significant hollow in her life where Elsie should have been, Bluebell never once doubted that Elsie had accomplished what had she set out to do.
She had been the first woman to cross the Atlantic; anything else was impossible.
* * *
Gordon Sinclair was not eager to tell his story. He had already explained it once to his wife and Emilie, and he was not eager to get thrown into a national debate on whether flying should be prohibited to save lives. Sinclair wanted only to keep a low profile; the news about Hinchliffe and Mackay had swallowed the country.
“It was only a couple of hours before the Endeavour took off,” he told the Western Morning News in the one and only interview he ever granted, “that Miss Mackay decided to fly with Captain Hinchliffe. I had been working to get the plane ready for a fortnight, and the rest of the party arrived three days before. I was busy in getting stuff aboard that I take much notice of the repeated talks that Miss Mackay had with Captain Hinchliffe. All I knew was that suddenly at two o’clock on Tuesday morning—I had stayed up all night busy with our preparations—that I was told I was not to fly. The party left the hotel in Miss MacKay’s car—meaning Miss Mackay, her friend, Captain Hinchliffe, and myself. When we got to the aerodrome, the Endeavour was wheeled around in readiness to take off. The engines were started up and Captain Hinchliffe climbed aboard with his passenger, and that was the last I saw of them. She was smiling as the machine took the air.
“I came straight back to London, where I have been lying low purely because I wanted to keep my word to Miss Mackay. The only reason she did not want her flight known until it had been safely accomplished was to avoid undue anxiety.
“Captain Hinchliffe told me that he felt quite confident he would be able to pick out a suitable landing ground near St. John in the event that he found it impossible to push much further.”
* * *
Hinchliffe had been right. More than twelve teams were waiting for their chance to conquer the Atlantic, and a little more than a month after the Endeavour flew off into the horizon, the Bremen, piloted by Major James Fitzmaurice, successfully flew across the Atlantic, experiencing horrific weather but managing to land on a remote Labrador island. It led to the belief that Hinchliffe and Elsie might have landed someplace and were safe.
“I shall not give up hope until the middle of June,” Emilie told the press. “By then the snows should have shifted and if my husband is being looked after in an Eskimo encampment, as I am sure he is, he will then be able to get the news through.”
But Emilie knew she couldn’t make it until June: the finances were dire. Although Elsie Mackay’s accounts exceeded £3,410,000, the Hinchliffe bank account reflected £160.
Emilie had been holding out for over a month, not daring to go into Ray’s suitcase and look for the life insurance policy receipt Elsie had just paid the premium on before they left. To Emilie, even thinking about inquiries on the policy was blasphemous; her husband was out there, suffering, shivering, hungry, possibly near death.
Now the £160 was gone. Ray’s parents helped with what they could, and Ro and Gordon were able to offer her money for the girls. The house in Purley was not yet fully completed; she doubted she could even sell it, but nor did she want to. The children needed to eat. She had two babies to take care of and a missing husband.
When her fear had reached its coldest point, she opened Ray’s suitcase and found the receipt just where he said it would be, directly on top. She was suddenly suffocated by emptiness, and dread crept into every bone. She stared at the last thing her husband had done for her, and the action of it swelled to enormous proportions. Ray had placed all of these things where they were now. She reached out with one finger and touched Ray’s shirts, his socks, a light flying jacket. An unbearable tightness in her chest moved to her throat, and she muffled a cry with her hand. She shook with no control; she sobbed with no sound. She held one of his shirts to her face and breathed in. He was still there. In the we
ave, the threads, the hems of the coat, he was still there. When she pulled it away, a short, clipped hair tumbled from the collar into her lap.
Is this, she thought, all that I have left?
With the single hair safely folded inside a sheet of paper and tucked into the drawer of her desk, Emilie called the telephone number on the receipt the following day and furnished the account number to the clerk at Lloyd’s of London. “I believe I have to make a claim on this policy,” she said reluctantly.
Within minutes, she was told this wasn’t possible. A notice had been sent, the clerk said. Didn’t you receive it, Miss Mackay? Emilie explained that she was not Miss Mackay but the beneficiary of the policy that belonged to Walter R. Hinchliffe, her husband, who was believed to be deceased.
The silence on the other end of the line was drawn and stark.
“I’m so sorry,” the clerk said. “We sent notice. The premium was paid with a note that was insufficient. The policy is not valid. It is void. We—we sent notice.”
Emilie felt she only had one choice, and it was not a good one. She pulled a sheet of correspondence paper out of her desk drawer, careful not to disturb the folded one, and in her clearest handwriting began a letter addressed to Lord Inchcape.
* * *
She waited for two weeks and had heard nothing from the Mackay family about her request to honor the life insurance policy their daughter had promised her husband. She was not surprised. She understood that her grief was their grief as well, in addition to most likely not taking kindly to a letter from the wife of the man they held responsible for their daughter’s death.
A letter, however, did arrive with formal, slanted handwriting that Emilie didn’t recognize. There was no return address. Emilie thought it might be a clandestine communication from a Mackay family member. Her pulse began to beat faster.
She sliced open the top with her letter opener.
Dear Mrs. Hinchliffe,
Will you excuse a perfect stranger writing to you? I am supposing you are the wife of Mr. Hinchliffe, the airman, lost the other day. I get writing on the Ouija board, and I had a communication from him the other day, that they came down into the sea, at night, etc. His great anxiety is to communicate with you. Of course you may not believe in the possibility of communication, but he has been so urgent, three times, that I must write directly to you and risk it.
Yours sincerely,
Beatrice Earl
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SPRING 1928
Elsie Mackay.
Dark, not unattractive, graceful, habitually well-gowned and bejeweled, Miss Mackay was the envy of most women. Her silver Rolls-Royce flashed by at breakneck speed. Her horses invariably galloped.
—Elsie Mackay’s obituary, Time magazine, March 26, 1928
* * *
Ruth,” the man sitting offstage in the director’s chair called. “Look to your left. Good, good. Look to your right. Perfect. Very nice. Now look toward me.”
Ruth shielded her eyes from the light with her hand. “I can’t see you, Mr. Strayer!” she laughed. “It’s all so bright!”
“That’s fine,” he replied. “Look in the direction of my voice, please. Thank you.”
Sitting on a stool under the whitest, most intense lights she had ever seen, Ruth tried to look toward where she thought Mr. Strayer was, and she couldn’t help but squint. The glare was shining directly into her eyes, and by reflex she could only open them a sliver. Which was not what Mr. Strayer, the film director, was asking for.
“Open your eyes, please,” he asked. “We need a full forward shot.”
Ruth tried again, but it was no use. The lights were too powerful. She was trying to focus; this was important, this is what she had wanted. She was here for a screen test, after all. She smiled at Mr. Strayer, trying to show him that she was affable and cooperative, but today of all days—not that it mattered, not that it was shocking—it just caught her off guard was all. She had not expected to walk out the front door of her building and be served with divorce papers, having been charged with cruelty.
Damn Lyle, she thought. She had not doubted him when he threatened, but there was still a sliver of sadness about the whole thing. She hadn’t fought back—in fact, she hadn’t said a word, not even when he told the press he was suing her for desertion as well, and after she returned, she showed him no affection, which apparently hurt him terribly. To him and the press, she had kept quiet. She wondered how Lyle liked being treated like that. She imagined how he reacted to being ignored. To listening to her silence.
She reminded herself that now was a good time for new starts: her speaking tour was over, and she was screen-testing for a movie. Now was the time for the part that counted, the part that would be the most important. To see what it was that she could do on her own, not to try to fix broken things. She was headed forward; that was the only direction that mattered. She was never going back—to Alabama, Lyle, or poverty. Ruth wanted to be somebody, and only she could deliver on that promise to herself.
Lyle wasn’t lying, either. He had joined Admiral Byrd’s expedition to the South Pole as a dog trainer, mentioning to the press, “Yes, the South Pole is cold, but not as cold as Ruth.”
Poor, pathetic Lyle. The thought of him as a dog trainer in the South Pole made her giggle as she tried to control her laugh. Trying to boss around all of those dogs as he cried, “Wash my dishes! Do what I say! I am NOT Mr. Ruth Elder!”
“Miss Elder?” Mr. Strayer called. “Is everything all right?”
Ruth covered her mouth with her hand and blushed.
“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “It won’t happen again.”
She could barely make out the director sitting past the lights, but she could swear that he was smiling back.
“Quite all right, actually,” he said. “That light was perfect for you. Can you laugh again, but more than a giggle this time?”
It took little effort for Ruth to release the laugh she’d been trying to hold back. If Ruth was beautiful with her calm, steady expression, she was electric when she smiled and ablaze when she laughed.
Mr. Strayer nodded. At first he hadn’t been so sure about her, but that laugh, that smile, yes, she was perfect. Ziegfeld had been right about her all along.
“Miss Elder,” he asked from the shadows behind the shadows, “would you like to play the lead in Moran of the Marines? There may be some flying in it for you, too.”
Ruth laughed again purely from joy.
“Thank you, Mr. Strayer, so, so much!” she said, clapping her hands.
She saw a figure walking toward her, and the man who had a moment ago been hidden by the glare of the lights was now standing in front of her with his hand held out.
Ruth shook it gladly and her smile beamed, the same smile that had gotten her the job.
“You’ll need to report to costuming right away, and we’ll start table reads next week,” he said. “Ever seen Richard Dix in a film? He’s a good actor, and you’ll be playing opposite him. I think you’ll make a nice pair.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Ruth said again as she slid off the stool.
“That lady with the clipboard will tell you right where to go,” Mr. Strayer said as Ruth nodded and began to walk over to her. “Where’s my next girl? She here? We’re looking for . . . who? Jean? Is there a Jean Harlow here?”
Ruth followed the lady with the clipboard off the soundstage, through the squeaky metal door, and right out into the glorious California sun.
* * *
The blindfold worked so well once before that Levine thought he’d try it again.
“All right, Mibs, you ready?” he said, positioning Mabel in the hangar right in front of the plane that he had purchased for her.
“Oh, am I!” she squealed with delight. “I’m ready! Ready!”
For four months, the anticipation of seeing her new plane for the first time had driven her absolutely bananas. It had taken that long to fine-tune it, replace the int
erior, and give it a spectacular paint job that she knew would make it look like a soaring diamond.
And it was just in time. It was flying season again, and was almost exactly a year after Lindbergh had taken off. There wasn’t anything to get more excited about; it was a go. It was definite. She had her plane, she had Bill Stultz as her pilot, and they were all set—all the way across the ocean to prove she could do what nobody else could.
True, she felt a tinge of sadness about Hinchliffe, and was sure that his great demise had something to do with his one eye. She had tried to be calm and carefree about a monocular pilot, but really, she was just trying to be kind. And, she told herself not to forget, this was the man who had threatened to tell the world how much she weighed.
I wonder if he weighed Elsie Mackay, she thought. A tiny thing.
But still a thief.
She sighed. None of that mattered now. In a matter of a week, after the press conference built up enough buzz in the newspapers, Mabel would be off to aviation history with Bill and Charlie alongside her flying straight into an eternity of fame. She was eager and impatient to get that plane up and claim her title. Her competitors, one by one, had fallen away, and now it was her turn. Elder. Grayson. Mackay. Gone, gone, gone. There was hardly anyone left worthy of calling a challenger! Only that pest Amelia Earhart, and their camp was quiet. Rumor had it that she was only chosen on the Putnam/Guest flight because of her resemblance to Lindbergh; it was a great gimmick. Mabel could agree with that, being that Earhart resembled a boy teetering on the cusp of puberty.
She was silly to insist that they fly last fall. She should trust Charlie; he had her best interests at heart. He wanted her to have this. She knew it in her bones. He was a dear man. She was lucky to have spirited him away from his wife and children. So lucky.
Crossing the Horizon Page 35
