She was lying in bed with her foot in a sling surrounded by noisy people dressed in white. A table with bottles and glasses suggested the air incident had not been too severe. “Joachim didn’t want to bother you, but I told him that since you didn’t come to see me in Santa Monica Hospital after my car wreck that this would be your penance.”
“I didn’t know you were in Santa Monica Hospital,” he shouted over the din.
The foot was sprained, not broken, but Joachim had insisted that she be admitted. He had one arm in a sling and the other wrapped in bandages, but at least was on his feet. The injuries had not prevented them from ordering a few bottles of Henkell Sekt and inviting other inmates to join in the party. No one seemed to be a doctor, but no one seemed to need a doctor. “The accident was entirely my fault,” said the young pilot, sheepishly, generously. “I’m afraid I interfered with her landing, and this is what we got. Fortunately, nothing serious—except of course my poor plane.” He asked someone to pour Cal a glass of wine. “Sir, your cousin is a pilot par excellence. She insisted on making the landing, herself. It’s just that, you know, a woman. I’d never seen that before. I’m afraid I lost my nerve.” Everyone laughed.
With Maggie limping but ambulatory, it was on to Dresden and Prague two days later. Something had clearly sparked between Maggie and the young Prussian, for she wrote him at every stop until Paris, when everything changed. Crisis in Europe was everywhere. As Americans, they were mere spectators at the show, but the actors all seemed determined to win their approval. It was as if Americans, distant and unaffected, were the only objective arbiters in this deadliest European drama.
Wherever they were, Maggie made a beeline for the airfield. Flying was almost unknown to European women, nothing like in America where Amelia Earhart had been racing with the men and inspiring a generation of female pilots before her crash the year before. Showing up at the flying clubs with her long dark hair falling down her smart red flying suit, flashing her pilot’s license and asking who would take her up and in what, Maggie made friends instantly. She was dying to race but had no plane. In England, she’d flown a Miles Falcon out of Penshurst, in Berlin the Fieseler and in Dresden a Klemm 32. In America, flying was still a sporting activity like yachting, but European men were fanatics. Even as their nations stumbled toward war, the clubs held cups and competitions. The pilots were mostly military and took fierce pride in their planes, certain they were superior and ready to prove it.
While in Munich, the crisis over Czechoslovakia came to a head. The Bavarian capital, bustling and beautiful in the September sunshine, was inundated with reporters and diplomats, and the cousins were fortunate to keep their reservation at a Goethestrasse pension, though it was reduced to a single room. Under a giant red and black swastika, Cal argued with a crisp, young Nazi, showing him the reservation for two rooms. Eyeing Maggie, the man seemed surprised Cal would need two rooms. Both Prague and Munich were under strict military control, and Maggie could not find a plane in either city.
And suddenly the threat was gone. Toasts were offered, pacts signed, the page turned and on to a new chapter. Reporters and diplomats decamped and statesmen flew home trumpeting peace in our time. Hitler had foxed them again. The cousins caught the train for Paris. Like Berlin, Paris was simultaneously in the grip of war fever and a sport-flying craze. Two days after arriving, Maggie met a French airman named Arnaud Ricot de Scitivaux in the bar of the Hotel Crillon and a day later was flying over the Channel in his Morane-Saulnier 341. The letters to Lt. Joachim von Falkenberg stopped.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I’ve booked the Normandie for Dec. 2,” Cal announced into the hotel phone. “Think you can make it?”
His room was just down the hall on the second floor of the Crillon, but he’d learned on this trip always to call first. It was not his first call, but the first time she’d answered.
“Oh, Cal, no.”
He knew what was happening and was helpless against it. Maggie was a person of spontaneity and inspiration; he one of planning and organization. They’d survived six months on the road by not interfering too much with each other. While he visited museums and read newspapers, she hung out at the airfields and flew planes. At night they occasionally met for dinner. If she’d been a spy she would return home with a full report on the performance of each country’s latest aircraft. In France she’d even managed a side trip to le Mans for a few tours around the track with Jean Bugatti in his new test car. She’d become as fanatical about racing as the Europeans.
“I’m dressed,” she said. “Why don’t you pop around and we’ll talk.”
“I’m on my way.”
Arnaud Ricot de Scitivaux, was exactly what his ancient name suggested: dashing, elegant, accomplished, and wealthy. He was also devilishly handsome. They’d met him in the Crillon bar when he’d sent a bottle of Veuve Clicquot around with his card as they were ready to dine. He was a captain in the French Air Force and had slipped the concierge a hundred francs to inquire about the young couple he’d seen in the dining room. Brother and sister, the concierge believed, staying in separate rooms. It was all Arnaud needed, but the concierge helpfully added that he believed the young lady was an aviatrix.
Cal walked down the hall, knocked and Maggie let him in.
Europe had changed her, sophisticated her. Months of touring lands living on the edge was putting things into perspective. The cities were lively, the people friendly, the men beautiful, the countryside lovely, exactly as they’d hoped except that over everything hung a great black cloud of doom. People covered up their anxieties with wine and dancing and making love, but the next morning the dread came seeping back. They were adrift in leaky boats in violent seas, reprieved occasionally by lulls of false hope, as at Munich.
She was dressed in white silk. Her luminous dress and gold bangles and dangles in stark contrast with her dark hair and bronzed skin. In Paris, where fashion demands the palest skin, where women invest in the costliest creams and salves to erase the slightest blemish and would never dare go outdoors uncovered, the vibrant Maggie Mull was as rare a sight as an Amazon princess on the Rhine.
“My goodness,” he said.
“May I take that as a compliment?”
He smiled. “You look wonderful.”
“Come sit down, Cal. I have some news.”
They were at the front of the hotel in rooms looking out on Place de la Concorde. The noise from that turbulent racetrack of cars was diminished but not eliminated by two sets of thick double windows. He sat down in a meticulously stitched Voltaire chair with shiny brass-tipped upholstery pins that likely went back to the great man himself. He watched his cousin sit down on the settee across from him and light a cigarette.
He knew without being told. It was the largest diamond he’d ever seen.
Arnaud was waiting at the bar, and Cal immediately congratulated him. They shook hands and ordered champagne. “Before we sit to dinner,” said Cal, as their flutes were filled, “may I toast you both. It is of course wonderful news.”
It was not exactly how he’d received the news in Maggie’s room. It had bothered him, alarmed him, and good soldier that he was, he still couldn’t hide it. Nelly had fiercely resisted sending her daughter off with him, even knowing that no amount of resistance would change a thing. She’d taken Cal aside and made him promise to watch over her day and night, making clear that he was responsible for her, knowing it was an impossible demand.
They’d talked in Maggie’s room until they were more than just fashionably late for the dinner with Arnaud. The diamond said he had no chance, but he had to try.
“Another Harold, no?”
“Nothing like that. Harold was flying lessons.”
“Another Falkenberg.”
“Stop it, Cal.”
“And Arnaud?”
“I’d say we were made for each other. He would say the same th
ing.”
“Excuse me for being practical, but at least Harold didn’t live in a place about to go to war. What do you do when it breaks out—and it will, you know.”
“He wants to come to America.”
“Everyone over here wants to come to America. The ships would be bursting if we gave them all visas.”
“So, I stay here.”
“Why is he any different from the German?”
“You bastard!”
“Well . . .?”
“Arnaud is on our side.”
“Oh, you’re taking sides?”
“I am now.”
“He’s in the French Air Force. No way they let him leave.”
“Just for our honeymoon. He wants to meet everyone in Los Angeles.”
“And when the honeymoon is over?”
“You’re too far out there, Cal, as always.”
“Someone has to think ahead.”
She showed a flash of anger. “Why? Why does anyone have to think ahead? Why not take life as it comes?”
“Sure—unless what’s coming is a war, a really nasty war, just like the last one, where just about everyone in uniform is killed and whole nations are destroyed and afterward everyone runs around asking themselves, goodness, how could this have happened?”
Her dark eyes closed down on him, and he had to look away.
“Cal, have you ever been in love?”
He stared at her without answering. She understood.
“Then how can you have an opinion? Love is not something you walk away from. You walk away and you hate yourself the rest of your life, wondering, always wondering.”
“You make a mistake and you pay for it the rest of your life.”
“God, you’re cynical.”
“No, I am not cynical,” he said, with feeling. “And no, I have never been in love—at least not to the point of signing up for the rest of my life, if that’s what you mean.”
At dinner with Arnaud, over more champagne, his opposition softened, as things tend to do. There was nothing to dislike about Arnaud except that he didn’t have long to live. He’d been raised in the best of Parisian families, gone to the best of schools, including in England and Germany. He was cultivated, curious, courteous and madly in love with Maggie.
“I was in love with her from the first,” he said, laughing, “even after finding out she was a flier. As for flying, she is magnifique! I let her fly my MS, you know, all the way to Dover. She wanted to fly over London but we didn’t have enough petrol. Anyway, we didn’t have clearance.” He laughed again and reached for her hand. “You never know about the English. They’re never sure who the enemy is. Maybe everybody. They might have shot us down.”
The wedding was set for March 4 in the Basilique Sainte Clotilde, just around the corner from the Ministry of Defense, where Arnaud worked. Cal stayed for it, though no one came from the States. Nelly wanted to come, but not alone, and Eddie and Lizzie were too busy. Lizzie wrote a long letter saying she felt awful but it would take a month and the Times wouldn’t give it to her. In Eddie’s absence, Cal gave away the bride. Everyone at home, he learned from Lizzie, was upset but not surprised. If Maggie hadn’t shocked them this way, she would have found some other way. They peppered him in letters with questions he couldn’t answer. Arnaud was first rate, he said, just that the timing was bad.
With no one else from the Mull side, there were plenty of Scitivaux to fill the pews at Sainte Clotilde. It was a military family from centuries back with roots all across France. Arnaud’s immediate family lived in a nineteenth century hôtel particulier on the rue las Cases just behind the church, where the reception was held. Cal could not have known, but the bridegroom’s family was as upset as the bride’s, though civilized enough not to show it. The Scitivaux were not provincials and would have been just as annoyed at Arnaud’s marriage to a French girl. It was not a good time for weddings. Not all the bridesmaids were as upset as the family, and Cal ended up on a couch in the library with one of them, entangled in the poor girl’s crepe chiffons.
Three times in three years Europe had dodged war with Hitler, though at the cost of considerable self-respect. The sentiment was that Hitler would continue advancing until someone stopped him, and that someone would have to be, as it always was, France, perhaps with help from England, though you never knew with the English. The French and British hoped Hitler’s next target after Czechoslovakia would be Soviet Russia, but he had other ideas. In a few months he would sign a peace treaty with Moscow.
Cal spent April Fool’s Day, 1939, on the Santa Fe Chief rolling west through Kansas and Colorado. In Albuquerque, he got off long enough to buy a newspaper. He sensed it would be a terrible year but could not have guessed how terrible. He’d stopped worrying about Maggie. When they said goodbye at the Gare St. Lazare she’d never looked so happy or so beautiful. His thoughts had rolled back over the years, back to Bel Air, back to the stables at Playa del Rey, to poor Billy Todd, to the night she walked away from Harold and never looked back. Maggie could take care of herself. He was proud to have her for a cousin.
As the train traversed the Mojave, his thoughts turned back to his own life, knowing he’d been changed as much as Maggie by Europe, knowing he could not go back to being an accountant, at least not for long. If a new cataclysm swept across Europe, would America be next? We’d tried to escape the first time, ultimately dragged in, suspecting it would have been better to be in from the beginning. Roosevelt had made clear he did not intend to stand by and let Hitler conquer Europe. Congress wasn’t with him, but where did the people stand?
Where did he himself stand? He was about to turn thirty. He sensed big changes coming.
Chapter 17
Hands on the sink, Angie gazed out over the ocean. Behind her the smell of coffee spread from the kitchen through the little sala toward the bedroom. It was the best way to awaken him. From where she stood she had a clear view as far as the jagged island on the horizon. “Cómo se llama?” she’d asked at the little store where they’d done some shopping. Isla San Martín, they said. Very good fishing at the isla just in case la señora and her marido wanted to rent a fishing boat. They had come for the fishing, verdad? Angie had turned a ring over to resemble a wedding band.
She spoke Spanish whenever she went to the store, spoke it with Willie, too, Memo, as she called him, short for Guillermo—and they took her for one of them, which she was, though her mother was from the other side of Mexico, near Vera Cruz. I could stay in this place forever, she thought. Well, maybe not forever. Too many years of a strict father, bossy brothers, nasty husband, men always telling her what to do. She needed someone gentle like Willie. During the day she wore a little shift, and her feet already were so hard and black she didn’t need shoes. Willie admired her feet because his pink ones couldn’t take two steps on the hot sand.
Hers was a loving family, but more than anything it loved Jesus. All that talk about sin must have worked because we turned out well enough, she thought. They hated me for running away with Gil but when they find out I’ve returned to the church all that will change. I’ll see them again. I know I will. You don’t just walk away from your family, not forever you don’t. Children run off all the time, but families come back together. Jesus brings them back.
She took off the percolator and poured a cup. Mexican coffee, from Chiapas, strong and black. She went back to look out at the island again. We’re not running away, she’d told him; we’re leaving until Gil is gone. What would be better, Willie, tell me, tell me. I saw he was scared, scared but listening, something at work, his lips moving, and I knew he was praying. He lets Jesus make up his mind for him. The whiskey helped. Where, where, he kept repeating? I said anywhere, up the coast, Carmel, San Francisco. Anywhere. Then I said Mexico.
Mexico! That’s what did it. He wanted to see where Abuela Isabel was born, “I never have, you know
.” He said abuela, the Spanish word, and we started speaking Spanish and laughing. As children we spoke Spanish with Mamá at the rancho, he said. After a little more whiskey I knew he was ready. We talked about Mexico all the way down. I slept some and missed the border but he woke me coming into Rosarito. We saw horses on the sand and fishermen shoving off in their little boats. He’d been up all night and was starving. The sun was just up when we pulled into the Rosarito Beach Hotel, walking through the lobby hand in hand, Willie in rumpled clothes and me in a skirt and blouse. People might have wondered, but maybe not. They say that if you posted the names of all the Hollywood couples that have shacked up at the Rosarito over the years, the gossip columnists could fill books.
In Ensenada, I inquired at Propriedades Gomez while he went for a beer and I found our little house. A half hour south of the city, Sr. Gomez said, nothing down there, just a village with a little tienda and some fishermen. You’re surely not alone, he said as I paid the deposit and rent, and I said I was with my husband who was doing some shopping. The house is by itself, he said, but it’s okay. Never had a complaint. He gave me the key and here we are.
“You bastards don’t have a thing on me,” he kept shouting from his cell, and after three days of no sleep they let him go. Didn’t even take him to court.
He’d lose his job but so what? This was better. He laid in some food at Angie’s, bought a bottle of rum and waited. Each day he read the papers: mystery unsolved, search continues, Klan questioned, husband held, candlelight vigils and evening prayer, reporters and police fanning out over the state, brother’s reward money up to five thousand dollars. It was the chance for the reward that kept him. Sister Angie was worth five thousand dollars and the price was rising. He knew Angie’s habits. Who better to find her than her husband?
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