“My dear, do I have something to tell you!” she said as she drew Elsie close to her and ushered her off into a corner. “I have heard you have been flying! Is that true? You have your own plane?”
“I do,” Elsie admitted. “I took my pilot’s test several years ago.”
“Well,” Princess Anne breathed. “Can I trust you? May I swear you to secrecy? Because, my dear, I am about to tell you the most exciting thing. Possibly of all time.”
“Of course, Princess Anne,” Elsie acquiesced. “You certainly have my ear.”
“You know flying is a hobby of mine,” the princess continued.
“I didn’t know you were a pilot,” Elsie remarked with a surprised smile.
“Well, no, I don’t fly,” the princess clarified. “I do the sitting, and I enjoy the flight. I have two pilots: Captain Hamilton and Colonel Minchin. Do you know them?”
“Not personally, I can’t say, but I certainly have heard of them, of course.”
“I have hired them to do the most wonderful thing—the biggest adventure!” the princess whisper-squealed as she drew Elsie closer to her moon face. “I am financing a flight across the Atlantic! Just like Lindbergh, only the opposite way! Isn’t that exciting? Aren’t you excited?”
Elsie was stunned, but quickly gathered herself before the closest of the princess’ eyes swept up to capture her reaction at just the precise moment.
“Certainly!” Elsie exclaimed, a tiny bit falsely. “How wonderful.”
“That’s not all,” the princess teased, wagging her squat finger. “I am going to be on that flight as the first woman to cross the Atlantic! I have the perfect chair: it is a wicker throne behind the pilots. I’ll have a picnic basket and keep morale high!”
Elsie opened her mouth but nothing came forth. The princess stared at her.
“My dear?” the princess implored. She was not going to slink away without the perfect reaction.
“Simply bantam,” Elsie finally said. “So heroic. Adventure, indeed!”
“I’m so glad you think so!” the princess said with a brisk little squeeze of Elsie’s arm, leaving the smallest of bruises. “Now remember: not a word to a soul! Shall I keep you updated on our progress?”
“Please do,” Elsie answered. “When do you plan to embark?”
“Possibly quite soon,” she answered. “As soon as a couple of months. We’re considering airplanes now. That millionaire Levine, he’s that lunatic who flew across the English Channel about a month ago—I heard he killed a sheep upon landing—is planning an east–west Atlantic trip, you know. He’s out a pilot, but it won’t be long before he gets another one. Lucky for me, I have two of the best! And I’m—”
The princess realized how loud her voice had become and stopped herself momentarily, then added in a whisper: “—going to beat him!”
“I wish you the best,” Elsie whispered back, leaning in.
The following day as the last guest was pulling away from Seamore Place, Elsie phoned Anthony Joyson-Wreford, the pilot who had first taken her up in a plane at Northolt. She asked who he thought the best pilot in Britain was and how he thought Elsie could get him to fly with her.
“That’s simple,” Tony said without a moment’s thought. “Ray Hinchliffe. I flew with him for a while in the war. A capital pilot. He lost an eye in the war, but it never slowed him. He’s a top pilot at Imperial Airways now. The man simply has no peers.”
* * *
On the way up to Levine’s room at the Ritz, Mabel was so excited that she dropped her purse three times in the lift. She was meeting their new pilot for the first time, and Charlie promised he was the best in the country.
Of course, she had been livid when she found Charlie, in this hotel, exactly as she thought: checked in under his latest enemy’s name, Drouhin. He was nothing but pleased to see her of course, but if she hadn’t been wearing her sixty-two-carat on the same arm with her one hundred bracelets, she would have been able to lift her hitting arm and smack him a good one. Which was exactly what he deserved. She wasted no time in telling him the trauma she had been through on his account: the terrible flight with that degenerate Canadian pilot, trudging across France in a hurricane, having to hitchhike to the next port town and basically row herself across the channel. The truth read a little differently: the pilot needed stitches, it stopped raining as soon as she left the pasture, and a small steamer took her across to Canterbury, where a driver picked her up in a Rolls-Royce and drove her the hour or so to London.
But Levine explained that he left the way he had because he had to get out right then—there was a line of French pilots all waiting to make this transatlantic crossing, and if the courts could hold him up, they certainly would—and the next thing he knew, he was stealing his own plane. There was no time for a call or warning.
“I called you at the villa when I got here,” he pointed out, looking forward to another million-dollar jewel bath. “But they said you was gone, Mibs.”
And so, in all graciousness, Mabel forgave him. In the month since she had arrived in London, Levine had been meeting with mechanics, since the Miss Columbia had been damaged during its collision with a building. And a sheep. He was also talking to navigators and possible pilots and, of course, taking her to places at night where there was a good chance of a photographer or society columnists being present. On a commercial flight to Berlin on Imperial Airways, the landing was so smooth and perfect that Levine hadn’t even met the guy at the wheel when he knew he wanted him for his flight.
“Mibs, he’s the guy, I’m telling you,” Charlie told her excitedly, the most animated she had ever seen him. “This Captain Hinchliffe was a flying ace in the war, shot down the Red Baron and seven other planes. Got the Distinguished Flying Cross. The best commercial pilot in England. Hell, Mibs, in Europe! He’s the best one there is!”
Mabel didn’t know why she was so nervous. She hadn’t been nervous to meet Drouhin or even Charlie, for that matter. But neither one of them was a war hero who shot down the Red Baron!
Mabel fiddled with her dress and smoothed her hair after getting off the lift. She stood there for a moment, breathed deeply, and knocked on Charlie’s door.
“—and so I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s my plane. I’m picking the crew!’ ” Levine said as he opened the door mid-sentence. Then he laughed.
“My plane, right? I mean, who’s doin’ all the work here, the plane or the pilot? The plane! No offense,” he continued as he walked back into the room without so much as a hello to Mabel. Who, she would have told you, looked enchanting.
With a quick look, Mabel saw the sandy-haired pilot sitting on the settee. “Captain Hinchliffe, may I introduce you to Mabel Boll?” Levine said formally.
Mabel started to smile, but as the captain turned his face toward her, she looked a little puzzled, then burst out into a full-throated laugh.
“Oh, Charlie!” she said in between breaths, bending over and holding her stomach. “You are too much!”
Levine didn’t say a word.
“You are a card! You know just how to get me,” she said, her laugh still going full force. “A one-eyed pilot! A one-eyed pilot!”
Levine looked at Hinchliffe, who now stood tall and stiff behind the sofa, his black eye patch covering his left eye.
“Mabel,” Levine tried to interrupt, “this is Captain Hinchliffe, the pilot I told you about—”
“Oh, go on!” Mabel scoffed, her laugh lightening a little. “What’s the matter, you couldn’t find one with no arms? I love the gag, but you have gone too far!”
“Mabel—” Levine tried.
“Where’s the real one, Charlie?” she said, now standing upright, breathing in heavily between giggles and holding her side.
“Mabel, please,” Levine said more urgently. “Please stop.”
Mabel dropped a hand to her hip, put the other on her hip, and cocked her head to one side.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mabel scoffed. One hand fell li
ke a weight. “That’s insanity. He has one eye. A pilot with one eye is certain death, Charlie! I’m sorry, Captain, but you have one eye.”
“I am aware of that,” Captain Hinchliffe. “I once had two.”
Mabel, for once, was speechless.
“Trust me, Mabel,” Levine broke in. “He’s the best pilot in all of Europe.”
She blinked several times, then appeared to soften.
The pilot was used to stares and questions like these as he received them every day as he exited the cockpit after landing and passengers refused to believe that a half-blind man had just flown them to Brussels.
“Your remaining eye,” she finally said, understanding that there was no joke to be had and straightening herself, “must be very strong.”
“Yes, well,” he said with a smile, “at last count, it could bench fifty pounds.”
* * *
Captain Walter George Raymond Hinchliffe wanted to be an artist like his father. But seeing his father struggle financially through his childhood, he decided on something more reliable, more steady. An amateur middleweight boxing champion and aspiring concert pianist, he was studying dentistry at Liverpool University, a path that diverted when the war broke out and he was swept among the first waves of British forces sent across the channel to France.
It was far from what he had seen himself doing just months before, but when a chance to join the Royal Naval Air Service came, he jumped at it, recalling the flight lessons he took at Brooklands Aerodrome before the war. Clocking over 1,250 flying hours in only one year, he quickly became a well-respected pilot with exceptional skill. He served at Dunkirk, and with the inception of the Royal Air Force, he was promoted to captain.
Legends began following “Ray” Hinchliffe with his sterling record of seven enemy downings, but it was on a night patrol to intercept German aircraft with no moon and a swirling mist that the young captain hurtled toward the ground after shooting down a German plane. Shot in the face, through the bridge of his nose, he still managed to bring his plane down, in between a forest and a lake, hitting several trees and overturning the plane on contact. His face smashed into the twin Vickers machine guns that his Sopwith plane was armed with, destroying his eye. His skull fractured like a web, both jaws smashed and broken, his left arm and leg twisted and fractured, dragged along the ground as his comrades tore him out of the crumpled cockpit.
The face that Hinchliffe had known for his whole life was torn, caved in, and had parts missing. Surgeons reassembled him as best as possible, but the handsome captain in his prime healed as an older man with a more extended jaw, less sculpted features, and a patch to cover the absence of parts he no longer had. A month later he was invalided home, bearing three outstanding honors: the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Air Force Cross.
He got back into the pilot’s seat as soon as he could, and as one of the most experienced airmen of his generation—handling forty different aircraft—was offered a position at one of the first passenger air companies flying routes all over Europe. He sat in the copilot’s position; he could see better that way. He was quickly named chief pilot.
He met Emilie Gallizien, a plain but determined Dutch girl, the secretary of the company’s general manager. Ray was struck when she looked directly at him without a double take or an embarrassed dip of her eyes.
By the time Hinchliffe was recruited by Imperial Airways, the main British service, he had married the Dutch girl and they had a daughter, Joan.
Although he was considered their best pilot, health and fitness regulations were about to be established in commercial aviation and put into place the following year. Ray wasn’t going to fool himself by thinking he would be the exception to the rule when it came to vision restrictions. He knew his time was running out and he had a wife, a daughter, and another baby on the way to support. He had just built a new house in Purley, and he needed to start preparing for their future before it was too late. So when Levine, whose reputation well preceded him by the lengths of oceans, called wondering if he’d be interested in making twenty-five thousand pounds, well, he jumped at the chance.
What choice was there?
* * *
Whether she intended to or not, Ruth Elder made headlines in the Anniston and Birmingham papers the day after the beauty pageant due to an anxious reporter who mistook Ruth’s hyperbole as solid fact.
“Anniston Beauty Promises to Be First Woman to Fly Atlantic,” the papers screamed—under the fold—much to the Elders’ horror and their daughter’s delight.
Ruth couldn’t help but show everyone who came into the dentist’s office the story, so much that it became smeared and torn. It didn’t matter. She had thirty more copies at home. She clipped one copy and sent it to Lyle with a sweet note and a little doodle of her in a helmet zooming over the waves, her arms outstretched like a seagull’s wings. She found it all terribly funny. She loved to fly, that was true, but she had only been taking lessons for three months and her fifty-dollar prize certainly wasn’t going to buy her a plane. She’d have to win every beauty contest for the next fifty years to earn enough money to do that.
She continued to fly with George at every available moment when Lyle wasn’t in Lakeland. But after several weeks George said something that surprised her: he said she might be ready in a month or two to take her pilot’s test. He said she had chops, something she made him repeat several times.
On her next trip to Dixie’s, she parked and saw George standing with two men.
“Ruth,” George began with a smile, “these are some good friends of mine, Mr. Cornell and Mr. McArdle.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said in her delicate drawl, extending her hand gently.
The smile on Mr. Cornell doubled in size. “Miss Elder, a pleasure,” he said, extending his own hand with a nod of his head.
“Ruth,” George said, taking the lead, “these gentlemen are from West Virginia, and I’ve known them for quite some time, as I fly them for business and such. I want you to listen to what they have to say, because they have an interesting idea.”
“If I did something wrong, George, I am awfully sorry,” Ruth suddenly said, looking at each of them.
“On the contrary,” Mr. Cornell said. “But we want to talk about what you said.”
“Ruth,” Mr. McArdle stepped in, “did you mean what you said?”
“About being the first woman to fly the Atlantic,” George said.
Ruth almost dropped to her knees in relief. “Oh, that,” she said as she laughed along with them. “I was so excited about Lindbergh making it over, and, well, I’ve only been taking lessons for three months. That’s silly, no. I couldn’t fly that far by myself.”
McArdle shook his head. “You wouldn’t have to be alone, dear. You could have your pick of pilots,” he said.
Ruth laughed again. “Why, Mr. McArdle, that’s very nice, but I don’t have my own plane, and I’m not so sure how George would feel about me borrowing his!”
“We’d take care of that,” Mr. Cornell assured her.
“So . . .” Ruth said, stopping for a moment to tally. “So you, Mr. McArdle, will let me have a pilot, and you, Mr. Cornell, will lend me a plane?”
“Miss Elder, Charles Lindbergh was not a wealthy man when he took off from Roosevelt Field, but once he landed, do you know how much money he made his investors?” Mr. Cornell finally explained. “A lot. He made them a great amount. We want to invest in you. We want you to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. You’re young and, well, as the beauty pageant proved, quite attractive, a perfect combination to catch America’s eye and make you its ‘American girl.’ Do you see?”
Ruth’s eyes grew wide, twinkled, then sparkled. “I do,” she said with a growing smile. “I do see.”
“Now, just to make sure, Miss Elder,” Mr. McArdle said. “Is this something you really want to do? If there’s even a bit of hesitation, we’d be throwing our money away. So we—and you??
?need to be real sure this is something that appeals to you.”
“Of course,” Ruth replied with a little jump, clasping her hands together. “I just love flying. Yes, Mr. McArdle, yes, this is definitely something I want to do.”
“Now, is there anyone else you would like to consult: a father, a relative, a brother?” Mr. Cornell questioned. “Do you need to ask permission of anyone?”
“Certainly not,” Ruth laughed. “I didn’t ask for permission when I got married!”
There was a long pause from the two gentlemen from West Virginia.
Mr. Cornell broke the silence. “We were not aware that you were a ‘Mrs.’ ”
“I am a ‘Miss,’ ” Ruth said honestly. “I’ve already learned my lesson about that. But I currently do have a husband in Panama.”
“Will that be a problem?” George asked.
Mr. Cornell, hands in his pockets, laughed. “Not if we don’t mention him!”
The men laid out their plan: Ruth could pick her copilot and get her pilot’s license. Since Lindbergh had crossed, people would be clamoring to see a woman make it, too—a young, beautiful, spirited girl like Ruth Elder. She would be rich if they made it, but that wasn’t why she wanted to take this flight. Not really. She already had a cute little house and a husband who had a good business, and she could help her family when they needed it. She wanted to fly because she wanted to fly. If a woman was going to cross the Atlantic, Ruth wanted it to be her.
McArdle wanted her to quit her job and concentrate simply on flying. She couldn’t think of anything more alluring. Competition was bound to pop up, McArdle and Cornell added; as it was, a woman named Frances Wilson Grayson, president Woodrow Wilson’s niece, had already been quoted as saying that she was planning a crossing and was getting a crew together, which would take months. There was time, but not much.
“In a month or so, we’ll call a press conference and announce our plans,” McArdle said. “The newspapers are going to love you, Ruth. I think they already do.”