Levine just shrugged. “One down . . .” he offered.
“Then Frances Grayson. You know she’s not done yet,” Mabel hissed. “Her pilot made her turn back once because of bad weather, but it won’t happen again. She won’t let it. And Elsie Mackay. Oh, yes, you know Elsie Mackay is next with Hinchliffe.”
“Hinchliffe never said the lady was going,” Levine reminded her. “Just that she had a lot of money. And who knows who it is? It could be anybody!”
Mabel drew back her arm and threw her glass at Levine, who ducked just enough that only one of the ice chunks bounced off his head.
“Who do you think it is?” Mabel roared. “The Queen? Of course it’s Mackay! Hinchliffe had better not be flying her!”
Levine wiped his brow and laughed at her.
“I don’t know how much you offered him, but it was never going to be enough,” he said. “I’m afraid first impressions do last forever.”
“Oh, yes, crucify me for my excellent sense of humor,” Mabel declared. “I defy anyone to be introduced to a one-eyed pilot and not laugh. I’m sorry if I find joy in everything!”
“Poor Mabel,” Levine mocked. “Poor, poor Mabel.”
“Shut up, Charlie,” Mabel snarled. “Just get me another pilot. One with two eyes.”
* * *
All Ruth saw was hands.
Reaching, waving, open, waiting to be shaken.
There were thousands of hands.
Docked at Horta, on the island of Fayal in the Azores, both Ruth and George were shocked to see the hordes of people lined up on the pier.
“What’s going on?” Ruth asked Captain Goos, who stood next to them. “It looks like we’ve come in the middle of something.”
“I don’t think so,” the captain said, smiling. “I think the something is you.”
“That’s impossible,” Ruth laughed. “This is a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure it’s just the excitement of such a big ship coming to dock.”
“Well,” Captain Goos laughed, “the ship’s name isn’t Ruth.”
And then she listened, and the murmur of the crowd—which actually sounded like a hive of bees—was a little indiscernible at first, but if she listened closely, she could just about make it out.
George burst into joyous shouts of laughter. “They’re saying, ‘Ruth Ruth Ruth Ruth Ruth!’ ”
She looked at Captain Goos with a squint and a smile.
“Did you tell them to say that?” she queried.
“Ruth Elder,” he said, “today you are the most famous person in the world. Of course they know who you are!”
Before George and Ruth boarded the cars that would take them through the city and on to the governor’s home, Captain Goos made his good-byes and bid the pair good luck in Paris and back in the United States.
Ruth unabashedly wrapped her arms around the tall, older man and thanked him for saving their lives and for the kindness he had showed them in the two days it had taken them to reach Horta.
The captain could really do nothing but pat the tiny girl on her back and smile. “It was completely my pleasure, Miss Elder,” he said, quickly returning her embrace.
“Here’s your cap back,” she said as she removed it from her head. “Thank you so much, again and again and again.”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s yours. You lost your plane, but you gained a captain’s hat.”
“If you ever come to Alabama, do you promise to stop in?” she asked. “I think my mama and daddy would like to thank you and fix you a really nice supper.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “Nothing would delight me more.”
Just before he departed, several photographers stepped in and took a quick photo of the captain and the aviators, and reporters tossed out some questions.
“Captain Haldeman, how did Miss Elder do in the final hours of your flight when you thought you were facing certain catastrophe?”
“It would be impossible for me to describe her remarkable courage and endurance,” George answered. “The best way for you to get an idea of how she was during the flight is to look at her now.”
And Ruth, who had turned back to shake more hands with the crowd, was simply smiling and laughing.
* * *
From the deck of the SS Lima, a Portuguese mail boat that was bringing George and Ruth to Lisbon from the Azores, she could see flowers falling from the sky.
The tiny plane that had just swooped down over the ship had dropped them; a bouquet of red and white flowers tumbled from the sun. The captain picked them up and handed them to Ruth, who found them to be quite exquisite—dahlias, daisies, and carnations. A fleet of motorboats flanking either side of the ship and accompanying them tossed her flowers from their decks.
When the liner docked, George and Ruth were the first to disembark, and were hailed with shouts, calls, and applause as they stepped down the gangway, where officials were waiting to greet them. When they got to the bottom, Ruth was astonished: fifty university students had draped their cloaks over the ground and stood to the side, emulating Sir Walter Raleigh when he laid his cloak out so Queen Elizabeth I wouldn’t have to sully her shoes in mud. The students stood in a line at the edge of the path of cloaks, clapping and cheering. She looked at the students with uncertainty until she saw that they were encouraging her to use their cloaks as stepping-stones. She linked her arm inside George’s, and together they walked down the red-and-gold-trimmed path to the dignitaries who waited for them at the end.
The next day George and Ruth flew from Lisbon to Madrid in a Junkers airplane at the invitation of the Spanish military air force, where another enormous crowd met them with cheers and shouts, and the Daily Mirror sent an open-cockpit plane for them to fly themselves into Le Bourget, their original destination, in exchange for their story.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FALL 1927
Mabel Boll and a bauble.
Thousands and thousands of women, many of them waving scarves, were crowded on the tarmac at Le Bourget when Ruth took off her flying goggles and finally looked around her. She wanted to hug each and every one of them. These were not the people who had told her that she couldn’t fly across the Atlantic simply because she was a woman. These were the people who had believed in her.
A surge of happiness climbed from her gut into her throat, making it impossible for her to speak, and rendering her entire field of vision blurry and wet. She cleared her throat several times and stood still in an effort to pull herself together; sobbing as she was helped out of the cockpit was not an image in a photograph she wanted to see on the cover of any newspaper.
“Bonjour! Bonjour!” Ruth called out as an enormous bouquet of flowers was placed in her arms. It was really the women whom she wanted to meet. She had been surrounded by nothing but men for the last several months, and she was delighted to see her own gender. As she got closer to the crowds that cheered for her, she shook hands, thanked them, and saw that many of them had scarves in their hair as she did and were wearing knickers and ties and sweaters.
She took a step up on the barricades that held the crowd back, and that’s when she felt someone yank her sweater, pulling her backward. It was a legion of photographers—although she wasn’t sure who it was who had pulled her back—snapping away, with Ruth looking slightly terrified.
Then the crowd broke through the barriers, all heading toward Ruth. She was lost almost immediately as the crowed swarmed her. The flowers had been knocked out of her arms and crushed. With another unexpected push, Ruth was very quickly in the air, being held up by several gendarmes so the crowd could see her.
“Don’t let me fall!” Ruth cried while trying to appear cheery. “Don’t let me fall!”
She was being applauded for being alive; because she and George had survived; because they had had the nerve to try. She had made it, finally on the runway in Paris, a scene she had imagined in her head but never seen like this. They carried her like that through the c
rowd as people waved and reached out to touch her. Ruth kept her hands up, waving and blowing kisses; she couldn’t stop laughing. In her dirty clothes and captain’s hat, Ruth was literally the toast of Paris, carried on the shoulders of policemen until they reached the reception room.
She was then bundled into a car, but the streets were all clogged with people lined on both sides to see her, jumping in front of the car to snap photos, tossing flowers, shouting her name. It took them longer to get to the hotel than it did to fly to Paris. With the convertible’s top down, she waved to everyone who stood along the streets to watch her go past, her hand waving, waving, waving, until her wrist throbbed.
* * *
Ruth had every intention of walking through the door of her room, straight into the bathroom, and right into the tub. The last time she had been in water, she was struggling for her life in the ocean. If she didn’t love her mother so much, she’d throw her knickers and sweater and socks straight into the incinerator.
As soon as she stepped inside her suite—which had the spread of a luxurious Paris apartment—Ruth gasped and was frozen by felicity.
The front room was filled with boxes tied with string and ribbon wrapped in paper: hatboxes, trunks, trunks, trunks. Walls of trunks.
One had a note on it from Isaac Liberman, the president of Arnold Constable and Company, an elegant and highbrow department store in both New York City and Paris, with a congratulatory greeting. It was filled with dresses, bags, lingerie, silk stockings, fancy dressed dolls, and jewelry. Liberman later sent out a press release stating its worth at $34,000.
Another series of trunks was from the influential and eminent French designer Jean Patou, who had included almost his entire line of dresses, coats, shoes, hats, and—much to Ruth’s delight—perfume.
The gifts came from Parisian stores, shops in New York, and London proprietors, and many come from people who just wanted to send her a little something, like a new scarf or a pair of proper white cotton gloves. It was all so lovely.
Ruth felt a bit too dirty to even touch many of the things, but she couldn’t help it. The silks, the velvets, the crepes, Patou’s beautifully constructed knit dresses. She had never before seen, let alone touched, things that were so elegant and fine. A cream-colored suit of cashmere with a mink collar; a navy-blue drop-waist dress with gussets and exquisite diamond stitching; silk shoes with steel beading across the straps in flowing, floral designs. Silk stockings in every color, so delicate she could barely feel them on her fingertips. Every dress became her favorite until she saw the next one as she lifted trunk lids and opened hatboxes and slipped her tiny, tired feet into each delicious shoe. She never knew people wore such beautiful things, that they even existed, so far were they from her serge and cotton dresses she thought were so fancy at home. She had rarely worn anything new, let alone things trimmed in fox, finished in French seams, lined with silk. In an hour her room was draped with velvet, fur, and cashmere and dripping jewel-toned delicacies from every piece of furniture; extravagance puddled on every surface. She hardly needed to go shopping anymore, but then again, she simply laughed when she realized how absurd that thought was.
* * *
Mabel was already on her fourth predinner martini when Levine finally arrived at the Plaza bar and plopped himself down at the table that she had been sitting at for almost fifteen minutes.
“Good news for you, Queen of the Air!” he spit out, holding his hands up and wiggling his fingers. “We got a pilot. We got a pilot, Mibs, baby!”
Mabel put down the glass that was almost to her mouth and looked at Levine seriously.
“All right,” she said brusquely. “Who did you con now?”
“Ahhhh,” Levine said, waving his hand at her. “Have a little faith, yeah? You’re not gonna believe our good luck. You ready? You ready?”
“Charlie,” Mabel said drolly, “I’m tiring of your show. Just spit it out.”
“Wilmer Stultz,” Levine said with a very pleased look on his wide-grinning face.
Mabel slapped both palms on the marble table as she leaned forward.
“Are you serious?” she asked, her face lit up and her eyes wide. “Wilmer Stultz? Oh, my God! This is fantastic! Is Grayson dead? How wonderful!”
“Nope—well, dead in the water, you could say,” Levine replied. “That old lead ship of hers is too heavy to fly but she won’t believe it. Sent it back to New York to get it retooled. But not before she and Stultz got into a helluva fight and he walked off.”
“Is that right?” Mabel said with a sly smile, leaning even farther in.
“Thaaaaat is right,” Levine said with a showman’s flair.
Mabel jumped up out of her chair like a schoolgirl and popped herself into Levine’s lap, her arms around his shoulders. She planted a firm one on his floppy lips.
“I knew you could do it!” she cried, rubbing noses with the man she had just called a con artist. “I knew you could do it, Charlie! So when do we leave? Now that Elder’s out of the way and Grayson’s got plane trouble, there’s no better time for us to take off than now!”
She reached over, grabbed her drink, and downed it. “I can be ready tomorrow. Really, I can. I know what you’re going to say, but if I just bring my emergency jewels and a couple of furs, I’ll be set. Let’s fly right into Paris so that I can finally go home. Whaddya say, Charlie, whaddya say?” she rattled off.
“We’re going to Havana next week,” Levine said, clasping his hands together. “And you can be the first woman to fly to Cuba. Whadda you say?”
Mabel pointed a wobbly finger at Levine. “And then we’re transatlantic?”
“As soon as we have good weather,” Levine said. “You won’t be able to push Stultz. He just had this same fight with Grayson and he left. And he’s right. Now is not the time to fly unless you want an ocean burial.”
Mabel gasped, slid off Levine’s lap, and scurried to her own chair.
“What is it?” Levine asked, to which Mabel responded with a finger against her mouth and a “Shhh!”
“It’s Peggy Hopkins Joyce,” she said almost silently. “I loathe her. Bug-eyed Betty.”
Blond, tall, thin, and wrapped in the fur of at least one hundred dead rodents, Peggy Hopkins Joyce was glamorous, witty, and a bit of a tart. Not that drastically different from another blond, thin, and glamorous woman who was sitting across from Charles Levine at a table in the bar. She and Peggy, in fact, looked alarmingly alike and were commonly mistaken for one another. They had loved to hate each other since one of them snubbed the other one on an ocean liner to a place neither of them could remember.
Peggy caught a glimpse of Mabel as soon as she passed over the bar’s threshold. “Oh, look,” she said to her entourage, extending a long, lean finger with a diamond the size of a house planted on it. “There’s the Widow Boll. Let’s go and taunt her.”
“She’s coming this way,” Mabel hissed to Levine. “Don’t say a word.”
Peggy and her crew of young, perfectly manicured men of no means and two or three shorter and less finely featured girls—for purposes of accentuating Peggy’s beauty—gathered around the table in a clump like grapes.
“Well, look what an ocean liner dragged in,” Mabel said coyly. “It’s the courtesan of the nearly dead millionaires, Charlie. There are still two or three doddering old fools near that fireplace. I have no idea who they are but they are drawing their last breaths. You could probably talk one of them into buying you a diamond before a family member or their nurse finds them.”
“Yes, well,” Peggy laughed. “I heard you were too fat to fly across the Atlantic. And now I see that it’s true. Poor thing.” She clicked her tongue in pity.
Mabel smiled. “I was going to compliment your blossoming bosom, but it appears that your fourth chin has finally slid that far down.”
“It’s a shame your application for historic preservation was rejected,” Peggy retorted. “Those eyelids could use some scaffolding. Perhaps you could we
ar your hair tighter.”
“Hey, hey,” Levine interrupted. “That’s enough, yeah? Why don’t you go on and let us enjoy our night?”
Peggy turned to Levine. “You!” she said with a laugh. “I remember you! You were pictured in a cut-out swimsuit next to an article about me.”
“It was an article about us,” Mabel corrected her. “Charles and I were having an affair in France that broke up his marriage. You were mentioned once.”
“I rarely need more than one introduction,” Peggy replied, and then turned back to Levine. “You were adorable in your swimsuit. You should wear it more often.” And then she winked.
Levine tried not to smile.
“Run along, Peggy,” Mabel snapped. “Don’t you have a layaway payment to make somewhere?”
“Tell you what, Mabel,” Peggy said before walking away. “When your fingers get too corpulent for your rings, especially that one”—and she pointed at the sixty-two-carat—“let me know. I’ll buy them from you wholesale. I’ll expect your call next week.”
“You mean you’ll find a deathbed with a checkbook,” Mabel replied, and sneered as Peggy clip-clopped away in stunningly tall high heels with her tribe behind her.
“Everyone at Tiffany’s says they haven’t seen you in a while, Mabel,” she called, not turning around. “Whassa matta, your kitty broke?”
Mabel stared at Levine silently. Then she reached for her empty drink just in case there might be a drop left.
“She don’t know nothin’ from nothin’,” Levine said as Mabel tried to summon a waiter. “Don’t let her get under your skin. Remember all the things that guy from Le Boulevardier said about me? Huh? Called me a bum, a thief, a criminal? A defal . . . defal . . . defalcon?”
“Defalcator,” Mabel helped.
“Yeah! And a larcener. I never burned nothin’ down. Things like that can make a man very sensitive, you know. But not me.”
Levine pursed his lips and shook his head, then pointed to himself.