American Dreams (70 page)

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'You look so sad lately, dollink,' the director said. 'We thought a nice German weenie dog might make you feel better.'

'You're sweet, both of you.' Holding the wiggling puppy against her bosom, she kissed the men in turn. The wiener dog licked her chin.

After they watched the pup frolic for a while, Hobart said, 'What will you christen her?'

That took only a moment's thought. 'Schatze. It means treasure, or sweetheart.' She picked up Schatze, who yipped and wriggled in the crook of her arm. Excited, the dog wet.

Fritzi held the pup at arm's length. 'Girl, you need training. I know just the right paper to use. Hobart, be a dear and hand me that copy of Screen Play in the pantry.'

Later, during the night Schatze barked and cried in the best style of a puppy thrust into a new, strange environment, namely the pantry where Fritzi had shut her up with a dish of ground-round steak rushed from the butcher shop at half past six. She'd also spread pages from Loretta Gash's publication over the pantry linoleum.

After an hour of listening to the poor dog's misery, Fritzi relented.

Barefoot, she went to the pantry, opened the door.

'All right, Schatze, you win.'

Excited again, the wiener dog leaped into the air and dampened the 438

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hem of Fritzi's cotton nightdress. She laughed, changed her gown, and sat with Schatze on her lap in the kitchen. Together they ate two bowls of warrned-up chili and twenty crackers. Fritzi, however, drank all the beer.

At Lily's suggestion she'd checked her weight on a penny scale earlier in the week. Since Loy left she'd gained seven pounds. She'd never been able to eat and gain weight in times past. Was this another toll taken by age?

She went to bed with Schatze snuggled against her stomach as if she'd belonged there always. In a nightmare, she chased Loy across an endless dark void. As the pursuit grew more desperate, her failure more certain, terror gripped her - she'd never catch him. She woke shouting and thrashing, with the little wiener dog licking her sweaty face.

79 Air War

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The new plane was fine, light and maneuverable. Nicknamed the Bebe, it was a smaller version of Nieuport's two-seat reconnaissance ship.

Today was the second time Carl had taken one up since three of them had been delivered to the N65 squadron operating in the skies over Nancy.

During his first months in the French flying corps, Carl had piloted a slow Farman, spending most of his hours aloft buzzing back and forth with field glasses, observing German entrenchments. Because he had a good deal of experience as a pilot, he was soon reassigned from the observation squadron to the N65, a true pursuit squadron devoted not to scouting but to chasing and downing enemy planes that menaced French held territory. He'd left his friend Rene behind to shoot at German observation balloons, clumsy gas bags that could explode with deadly force. Pilots who ventured too near could be blown up along with the enemy balloonists.

Carl had rolled out of the French-style hangar of canvas and girders an hour ago. Though it was a warm day, he'd donned a fleece-lined coat bought in a Paris specialty shop that outfitted airmen. The flying corps had no uniforms. In the earliest days, his messmates told him, pilots wore nothing heavier than a driving duster, and consequently froze their asses in the slipstream at higher altitudes.

Tess's scarf was knotted around his throat and tucked safely inside the Air War

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coat. The rest of his flight gear consisted of goggles and oil-stained motoring gauntlets. I Ie wore no parachute. They were available, but far too bulky for a big man squeezed in a small cockpit.

New, hornlike streaks of white hair above Carl's ears testified to the strain of aerial duty. There were men in the squadron who had, literally turned white in one night, usually after a harrowing air combat. Carl had been flying three and a half months and hadn't yet engaged an enemy plane, though he'd chased quite a few.

A casual observer would have said Carl looked rather seedy, but he fancied he looked rather romantic. That was an attitude common to aviators in this war. They felt they were stronger, smarter, braver than men fighting in the mud and filth of the trenches down below. Luckier too -- they'd escaped the sordid horror of the ground war. Death was certainly no different in the air, but everything else was.

The Bebe clipped along at six thousand feet. The eighty-horsepower rotary motor droned smoothly. Three other pilots were aloft with Carl.

German artillery below the horizon was hammering again, blanketing the land for miles with dust clouds in which shells burst like holiday
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sparklers. French artillery replied from positions behind him.

He bent to adjust the air and gas mix levers, and when he looked up again, he panicked. His three wing mates had vanished into a towering cloud. Suddenly, two thousand feet below, an Aviatik two-seater with black wing crosses popped from under the same tall cloud, going the opposite way. An artillery spotter.

Quickly he planned his strategy: attack from underneath the Aviatik. A second German manning the rear-seat swivel gun made diving from above foolhardy.

A Fokker pursuit monoplane burst out of the cloud. The observer's escort. At once he changed his plan. Fokkers were deadly because their guns fired through the synchronized propeller. The race to develop a superior synchronizing mechanism was one of the great technical battles of the war. He must knock out the Fokker first.

At least he had more experience than many of the young Frenchmen sent to the front. Some had as little as five hours at flight school, and had never flown before that. Sending anyone out with training that meager was, in Carl's mind, tantamount to committing murder.

As he went higher, he turned. He thrust the nose over into a dive and felt a heavy vibration in the wings transferred to the fuselage. He streaked downward in spite of it, and in seconds he was on the Fokker, pressing the 440

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button to fire the big Lewis gun mounted above him on the upper wing.

His rounds missed. He dove past the Fokker, banked away underneath.

The Fokker came after him.

Carl headed into the sun. The Fokker's fuselage-mounted machine guns chattered, and several rounds punched holes in the Bebe, a foot behind the cockpit. He yanked the stick back, and the plane climbed steeply in a retournement.

At the apex of the climb, he put the nose over and descended steeply again; again he felt the wings shaking horribly. But he'd gotten the Fokker off his tail.

Carl finished the evasive maneuver by flying in his original direction. He passed the German observation plane. The rear gunner tried to swivel to shoot but was too slow. When Carl was well in front of the Aviatik, the Fokker appeared behind it suddenly, dived beneath it, then zoomed up, closing fast on Carl's Nieuport.

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He executed a renversement. He came out of it flying straight at the Fokker, his Lewis gun blazing. The Fokker returned fire. One round nicked Carl's propeller; a chip bloodied his face.

They were on a collision course, firing steadily. He could clearly see the enemy pilot's youthful face, blond hair, clenched teeth. Only Carl's hands and will controlled his plane; the rest of his body was running wild with fright. His bladder let go.

One of his incendiary rounds ignited the German's fuel tank. The explosion shook his plane, and the red fireball scorched his face as it rolled toward him, obliterating the sky. He dove like a madman, just clearing the lethal smoke and flame. The Nieuport vibrated hellishly. Small pieces of wing covering tore and blew off. Carl was hurtling nose first to a crash. He fought to bring the Nieuport out of the dive, thinking, First and last kill in one day.

A thousand feet above the earth, the plane responded. He flew with his eyes shut for a few seconds, feeling the wing vibration dampen and then disappear altogether. A glance overhead showed the Aviatik darting into clouds to hide.

His breeches dried before he landed, thank God. He turned the Nieuport 11 over to his flight mechanic and jogged toward an open staff car that would deliver him to the chateau where the squadron was billeted.

Aviators rode and slept in style - dined that way too. In the evening mess, with a good whitefish and a fine bottle of Graves, Carl listened to his commanding officer, Major Despardieu:

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'Fine work today. Your colleague Rossay was above you during the dogfight. He verified the kill.'

The mess in the chateau's great hall was crowded and smoky. Of the sixteen pilots who flew regularly, twelve were present, playing the piano, laughing, tossing darts at postal cards tacked to a bulletin board. The cards, from a German company called Sanke, bore sepia photographs of German heroes of the air war, the most recognizable being Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann.

The major took the monocle out of his eye. 'You do appreciate that the Bebe's wings tend to crumple and shear off if the machine is pushed too hard?'

'Yes, sir, 1 got that idea today. I didn't think about it long, I was pretty busy' .

'Of course.' Despardieu clinked his brandy snifter against Carl's. 'Still, mon ami, you needn't worsen your chances.'

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No other words were needed; Carl understood perfectly. The men in the squadron talked a lot about the fact that the average life expectancy of a front-line aviator operating against the enemy was three weeks.

In an abstract way he was proud of his success today, but he felt none of the heady exhilaration familiar from his days of race driving and stunt flying. Maybe it was because the brief duel at six thousand feet had ended with another man's death. Probably a decent chap - some mother's boy just following orders.

He reached for the brandy decanter to calm a bad case of nerves. Next morning when he looked into his shaving mirror, the horn-like streaks of white hair were thicker.

80 Torpedoed

On the last night out, Captain Turner addressed hundreds of passengers in the grand lounge. Not all of them could crowd in; the ship affectionately nicknamed Lucy carried more than twelve hundred on this crossing.

William Turner was a veteran of the Cunard line, a solid, broadly built seaman who didn't mingle comfortably with his clientele. Which probably 442

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meant Bowler Bill was a damn fine sailor, B.B. decided. Bowler Bill's nickname came from his favorite off-duty hat.

Like all of the great ship's public rooms, the lounge was opulent. The period was late Georgian. Heavy furniture complemented rich tapestries on polished mahogany walls. The fine attire of the ladies and gentlemen was a perfect match for the surroundings.

Captain Turner took a wide-legged stance, hands behind his back.

'Ladies and gentlemen. While I do not wish to alarm you unduly, it is my duty and responsibility as master of this vessel to inform you that we today received an Admiralty signal advising us of submarine activity in the area of Fastnet Rock.'

The dire announcement brought a gasp from Sophie. She clutched the diamond choker glittering at her throat. B.B. nearly fell off the sofa arm where he sat holding her other hand. Others in the crowd reacted with degrees of concern ranging from mild to panicky.

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'In response we have adjusted our speed downward and altered course so as to clear Fastnet by a margin of more than twenty miles. Further, in the morning you will see an armed Royal Navy cruiser alongside, our escort to Liverpool.

'Meanwhile, you will have noticed that we took certain precautionary measures immediately we had the message. All lifeboats were swung out on their davits, canvas covers removed and provisions checked. Stewards have already blacked out portholes of your cabins. We ask your indulgence in showing no unnecessary lights, particularly on the open decks.

'It is also my unpleasant task to recall that we conducted a lifeboat drill shortly after we left port, as required by maritime law. Although the drill is mandatory for all passengers, my officers who checked off names reported to me that half of our guests did not bother to attend. While I anticipate no need for emergency use of lifeboats, I urge you most strongly to find your station if you did not participate in the drill.' B.B. had gone, but Sophie hadn't, preferring to sleep late.

A man raised his hand. 'Captain? We hear Lucy was refitted with defensive cannon and ammunition lockers, down on F Deck where once there were cabins. Now you can't get down to F Deck because of steel doors.' B.B. had picked up the same rumor: a dozen six-inch guns mounted on gun rings and concealed behind removable armor plate on both port and starboard sides. He hadn't told Sophie.

The captain looked as though he'd like to barbecue the questioner. 'I cannot comment on that, sir. I must return to the bridge now. If you have Torpedoed

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other questions, kindly consult one of the officers. Thank you for your attention and cooperation. Please resume and enjoy your activities for the evening.'

A few guests remembered themselves and applauded. Bowler Bill was already gone. B.B.'s dinner sat badly in his gut. He wasn't worried for himself, only Sophie, who looked pickle-faced with fear.

'Benny, are we in danger?'

'Definitely not. Hun subs are after merchant ships carrying ammunition and such stuff. Nobody attacks a floating hotel'like this.' His sweeping affirmative gesture nearly knocked aigrette plumes off the head of a passing grand dame.

'Suppose something did happen. Would we get off?'

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'No. question. I personally did an inspection-hike around Boat Deck before dinner' Sophie worried a lot, so he'd memorized particulars. 'This ship carries twenty-two regular wooden lifeboats and twenty-six collapsibles.

Plenty for the passengers we got on board. Now, stop fretting. Want to go dancing or play cards?'

Sophie wanted to do neither. B.B. helped her to their royal suite, the ship's finest accommodation. It consisted of a drawing room, dining room, and two bedrooms; the unused one stored their twelve pieces of luggage.