And now that Charlie had written her, her mind raced with plans. In the two seconds that it took Marcelle to reach down and pick up the halves of the letter, Mabel had thought out five of them. Mabel snatched them from Marcelle and rushed to her dressing table. She flipped open the top half, saw her name and address, then Charlie’s name and address, and fumbled as she matched the bottom to the top.
There, with both pieces tightly fitted together, Mabel deciphered that Charles Levine was suing her for twenty-five thousand dollars.
“Marcelle!” she screamed. “Get White Star on the line! I’m going to New York!”
* * *
October 6, 1927
Dear Captain Hinchliffe:
Sadly, I do not believe you received a letter I had written to you a week or so ago, as I have heard no reply. To be brief, I would like you to fly me across the Atlantic so that I may claim my title as Queen of the Air. In my letter, I regretted being shocked about your eye wound but I have never seen a man missing an oracle so close up before, and given the unlikelihood of such a meeting I thought it must be a hilarious joke. Also, contrary to what you may have witnessed, I was happy to abandon my quest across the Atlantic so that you and the little man also on the plane may have survived. Well, you mainly. My thoughts were only for your safety, I promise you.
Perhaps the sum of twenty thousand dollars will be enough to provoke an answer, and of course, if I may offer to cover the costs of the dining room for you and your family, gratuity included. However, since I have enhanced my offer by a substantial sum, we would be carrying another passenger, whom I believe you have met. His name is Solitaire.
I may have to leave the continent sooner than later, as matters have sprung up and I may be traveling back to the United States shortly to avoid a summons in the most ridiculous case. A reply at your earliest convenience would be much appreciated.
May the three of us blaze into aviation history together.
Again, regards to your wife, Mildred, and your sons.
With the greatest regards,
Mabel Boll, Queen of Diamonds
* * *
George looked at Ruth and smiled as she came into the office after returning from a test run in the American Girl.
“And?” she said as she took off her flying gloves and tossed them onto George’s desk. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a viable route,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ll most likely hit some rough patches in the mid-Atlantic until we get farther south, but after that, we can follow the shipping lanes, then dart up from Spain and shoot right into Paris.”
With a single clap and a quick rise on tiptoe, Ruth said, “How soon can we go up to Roosevelt Field?”
“How’d she do today?” he asked.
“Tip-top,” Ruth replied. “We got her loaded with the equivalent weight of four hundred fifty gallons. Takeoff took a little longer, struggled a bit, but once I got her up, it was fine.”
“Struggled how bad?” he asked.
Ruth took in a deep breath and then deflated a little.
“It took some coaxing, a couple of swearwords, and I was up,” she said with a smile, then looked at George and knew she needed to be forthright and less hopeful. “It was a hard takeoff. Until the last second, I didn’t think I could do it.”
George didn’t like the sound of that. He wanted to add more fuel to the plane’s load just to be sure on this longer route that there was enough to get them through, shipping lanes or not.
“I need to figure something for the fuel. I’m going to recalculate, or maybe we can find lighter cans,” he thought aloud. “I don’t see us leaving for a week or so.”
“That might be perfect,” she said, slumping into the side chair. “I’d like to go up and see Mama and Daddy before we leave, just for a couple of days or so, and maybe that’s enough time for Lyle to visit for a weekend.”
“And then there’s Frances Wilson Grayson,” George added. “She’s itching pretty bad to get off the ground to beat us, I heard. Moving her plane up to Roosevelt Field. But she has it packed full of presents for her friends. There’s hardly any room left over for fuel. I heard she won’t listen to anything the pilot or navigator has to say about carrying extra weight.”
“Who’s flying it?” Ruth asked.
“Wilmer Stultz,” George answered. “And he’s got quite the reputation. Naval airman. Met him once in Pensacola. Good pilot, but a helluva drinker.”
“Well, even drunk, he’ll fly better than she will. Does she know the difference between a column and a propeller? Has she ever been in an airplane?” Ruth laughed. “I read that plane of hers weighs a ton. If she is really planning on flying to Denmark, her flight path is going to be full of ice and nasty weather. What could she be thinking?”
“Oh,” George admitted. “She’s thinking of one thing: Miss Ruth Elder.”
* * *
It took Ruth several days to get through to Panama on the phone, and when she did, Lyle’s voice was flat and impatient. She asked him sweetly, kindly, if he’d like to come to visit before she left for Roosevelt Field in New York.
“How can your husband visit when you don’t have a husband?” he asked curtly.
“Lyle, please,” she said. “It’s just about getting more publicity, that’s all. A single girl gets more front pages than a married woman. Please come visit. Just for the weekend. Please don’t be sore.”
“It’s always about what you want, Miss Elder,” he said. “Haven’t I always given you everything you ever wanted? A car? A house? I moved you to Florida . . . I knew before I married you that you were always used to getting your own way. You never think about anybody else. You are selfish, Ruth. What else do you want from me?”
“All I want from you, Lyle,” she finally said after several moments, her voice cracking, “is for you to believe in me.”
And, with that, she placed the receiver back on the cradle, slowly and quietly, and as soon as she knew he couldn’t hear her, she began to sob.
* * *
Ruth spent a wonderful day visiting with her family in Anniston, even eating a big slice of tomato pie—something she hadn’t touched after the picnic with Reverend Jenkins. She was getting ready for bed when Mama called to her. There was a box on the kitchen table with a thin little ribbon around it, and Ruth’s mother pushed it toward her.
“This is for you.” She smiled, at once a little sad and very proud.
Ruth pulled the end of the ribbon and it slid off the package. She lifted the top off of the box and first saw a man’s necktie; underneath that was an argyle sweater.
Ruth looked oddly at her mother.
“Go on, get the rest of it out,” Sarah Elder told her daughter.
Ruth pulled out the tie and sweater, and tucked underneath those were a plain white poplin shirt and a pair of pants.
Ruth laughed, the pair of pants in her lap.
“Are you fooling with me?” she asked.
“Heavens, no!” her mother exclaimed. “Every picture I see of you next to that plane, you are wearing a silly little dress. Well, you can’t fly like that! How do you get in and out of it politely like a lady? So I made you an outfit. It’s a flying outfit. I think more people will take you seriously this way.”
Ruth giggled again, this time with delight. She stood up and held the khaki-colored twill pants up to her; they billowed at the sides, like jodhpurs, then came in slender, buttoning at the knee, like knickers. Ruth thought they were perfect.
“I saw a picture of ladies climbing a mountain, and they looked just like that,” Ruth’s mother said. “I figured if they worked for climbing, they’d be good for flying!”
“I love them!” Ruth said as she hugged her mother. “Thank you, Mama. Now, what’s the rest of this?”
“A nice white collared shirt, a tie, and a sweater to go over it,” Sarah said. “It’s the Ruth Elder look! That’ll teach ’em to say my girl is only in it for a gag.”
“I’m sorr
y you saw those stories in the paper, Mama,” Ruth said sadly. “But they don’t bother me none, I promise you. I know why I’m making this flight, and really, I don’t care anything about what people say who don’t know me.”
“You’re exactly right, Ruthie,” her mother said. “You’ve always been the strongest-willed and most determined of all of my children. You got a spark about you. I know that if any girl can do this, it’s you. I won’t say I’m not worried, because what kind of mother would I be if I weren’t? But I am proud of you and so is Daddy. You’re our girl.”
Ruth hugged her mother again, this time tighter.
“Can you make me another pair of knickers?” she asked with a smile. “I’m afraid I might wear this pair out!”
* * *
Ruth was wearing her new outfit when she returned home to Lakeland, hoping that Lyle had come home for the weekend as she had asked in the last letter. The sun was just starting to set. When she got off the train, several reporters were there with their notepads in hand, Ernest Simpkins being one of them.
“A couple of questions, Miss Elder?” he said, cutting in front of her. “We heard that you are leaving for Roosevelt Field quite soon. Can you tell us why you are going to make this trip?” Ruth laughed. Mr. Simpkins certainly wasn’t doubting her now.
“There really isn’t much to tell,” she said with her trademark infectious bright smile. “You know, I’m just like any other girl of twenty-three. I like to live, I like to have fun, and one day when I saw a plane flying over Lakeland, I thought to myself: That’s living; that’s fun. Then I met George, and after some persuasion I convinced him to teach me to fly. I was thrilled by aviation the first moment I stepped into a plane.”
“But why the flight over the Atlantic?” another reporter butted in. “Why can’t you just be happy flying a plane in Lakeland, being the flying ‘Dixie Peach’?”
Ruth tilted her head. “When Lindbergh reached Paris, I made up my mind that I would be the first woman to make the trip. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, but I was determined to go as a copilot, not a passenger. But I like that new nickname!”
Take that, Frances Grayson, she thought.
“But aren’t you scared?” the third reporter asked. “Fourteen people have already died attempting this flight. The weather this time of year is dangerous.”
Ruth paused, and her smile shrank into a contemplative expression. She was silent for a few moments, trying to figure out what to say.
“I know that it is a long chance,” she finally said, slowly and deliberately. “But think what I’ll have if I get there. I’ll have everything. I’ll be made. And think of what I’ll get away from; I worked at a dentist’s office. I think it is worth the chance. If I win, then I’m on top. If I lose, well . . .”
Ruth shook her head and the smile reappeared. “I have lived, and that’s that.”
Ruth chuckled to herself as she walked on and hailed a cab at the front of the plain brick building that was the Lakeland station. Word must have gotten out that they were ready to go; people were starting to take her seriously. She hadn’t expected that.
But when the cab pulled in front of her white cottage, there wasn’t a single light on, and the curtains were drawn, just as she had left them. Lyle hadn’t come.
She had expected that.
* * *
An hour before Mabel embarked on the ocean liner, she made one phone call to a trusted and dear friend who loved to feature her as the lead story on the society pages. And Mabel had a nugget for him.
The story the following day was accompanied by a glorious photo of Mibs, and read simply:
This pretty society girl, daughter of a millionaire, wanted to fly the Atlantic. She was willing to pay five thousand pounds for the privilege, but the aviators thought the job was worth ten thousand pounds. Papa thought the price too high for the job, and the lady left by a prosaic steamship.
CHAPTER NINE
FALL 1927
Ruth Elder and George Haldeman in the survival suits they designed.
Ruth and George landed at Roosevelt Field unannounced. No one was waiting for them, which was exactly how they wanted it. They hadn’t even bothered to rent a hangar in advance, having planned on finding quarters for the American Girl after they’d arrived in New York.
Much to their surprise, it looked like parking the plane at the field was going to be a bit of a problem; J. J. Lanning, the owner of Roosevelt Field, had instituted a set of restrictions after the Old Glory and Sir John Carling disasters, even though the Sir John Carling had taken off from Ontario and the Old Glory had chosen Old Orchard in Maine to depart from. If there was a tragedy from his field, the publicity would be a nightmare. He was still riding high with the Lindbergh glory, and he didn’t want to tarnish that image by letting some unprepared pilot with an inadequate plane roll down his runway toward a predictable death.
He demanded that anyone attempting an Atlantic crossing from Roosevelt have a multi-engine plane that was able to land on sea and land; it must carry a navigator and a radio, and pass a government inspection. Curiously, Ruth realized, the Dawn, Frances Grayson’s plane, which was already parked in a hangar at Roosevelt, met all of those qualifications. The American Girl didn’t. The Spirit of St. Louis and the Miss Columbia wouldn’t have, either.
While George shook his head in disbelief, Ruth simply went into action.
“Don’t worry, George,” she said with a grin. “This is where I come in.”
Ruth sauntered up the stairs to Lanning’s office, and within an hour, she was back.
“He said he’d have to think about it and give us an answer tomorrow, and in the meantime, we can park the plane here,” she said with a victorious smile. “I don’t think it will be a problem. He was a very understanding man.”
George burst out into unbridled laughter. Oh, the persuasion and power of a pretty girl with a Southern accent, he thought. Even if she is wearing a tie and knickers.
“I requested a specific hangar, if it’s all the same to you,” she added, with a wink. “I want the one next to Frances Grayson.”
The next day, Lanning dropped his requirements and the American Girl rolled into her hangar next to the Dawn.
* * *
“Elsie,” Lord Inchcape called as he heard his daughter’s heels click against the marble floors after the front door closed. “Would you come to my study for a moment?”
“Certainly, Father,” she called, her voice echoing off the two-story-tall entryway, laying her bag on the side table and quickly going through the correspondence and mail that had been placed on the salver. She was expecting a small parcel any day now, but it had not arrived yet.
She’d had a difficult day at P&O; she was currently working on five ships. Elsie was swamped with last-minute details and lists of things that hadn’t been completed yet. In the middle of the mayhem, the new commander of one of the ships, Captain Bartlett, had just come from a tour of the ship and was infuriated, calling it “nothing short of a ladies’ parlor at sea.” A true salty dog with a backbone etched with conventionalism, he burst into Elsie’s office unannounced and began his temper tantrum.
“I have been forty-three years at sea,” he declared, “and in my early days we were thankful for a biscuit and pea soup, and ate off our sea chests.”
Elsie looked down and laughed. “Well, Captain Bartlett,” she said, looking up at him, “if you really believe in the good old days, you should give up your cabin and your bath and go back to your biscuit served on a camp stool. I’m not changing a thing, except perhaps to re-cover everything in your room in purple silk. And not dupioni, but charmeuse.”
She was annoyed when he finally left, but proud of herself for standing her ground. After all the work she had put into that ship, there was no way she was going to let anyone reprimand her for it. It was a comfortable, beautiful ship, and she wished that Captain Bartlett would find a more suitable thing on which to sail, like a trawler.
As she cr
ossed the threshold to Father’s study, she sincerely hoped that he didn’t want to talk to her about Captain Bartlett. She was just too tired.
“If this is about the ship, can we possibly talk about it tomorrow?” she asked, sitting in one of the leather chairs opposite her father. “That captain is a brute, and just the mere thought of it exhausts me.”
Lord Inchcape snickered. “Oh, he’s a crusty one, that man. I can only imagine what flavorful words he had for you,” he said. “But no, this came in the post today for you.”
He handed over the little parcel. “It’s from the American embassy,” he said, folding his hands together. “Are you planning a trip, old girl?”
Elsie laughed, the parcel in her lap. “Oh, who knows? I might want to sail across to New York again. My passport had expired, and I wanted to keep it updated in case something thrilling came along.”
“ ‘Thrilling’?” her father said as he raised one eyebrow. “What kind of ‘thrilling’ do you mean?”
Elsie sighed. “I don’t know—a shopping spree, see the sights, just get out of London for a change.”
She was suspicious of his questioning, and suddenly had visions of her and Captain Hinchliffe running from runway to runway as the police tried to arrest them.
“There’s always Glenapp,” he said cautiously, as if the excitement of rolling green valleys, grey skies, and the tiny village below it could challenge New York for thrilling. But then it came to her in a moment, just like that.
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. In fact, once I finish all my loose ends on the ship at the end of the week, I might just take the weekend out at the castle. Would you mind?”
“Of course not, but I certainly can’t go,” he replied. “Mother is still a little too weak to travel.”
Elsie paused, putting the next step in order.