Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

fear sleep as one fears a great hole.” No one from the family called on her. Except for Arnaud, no one considered her part of the family. When the day of the funeral came, she draped herself in black and walked alone to Sainte-Clotilde for the service, which was brief for the church had several others to follow. There was no burial for there was no body. Still a stranger in Paris and now a widow, she attended the family veillée on the rue las Cases and returned home to sit alone and cry in the dark, listening to the big German guns in the distance.

With Arnaud gone, she had no ties to France, certainly none to his family, which had no use for her now. The Germans were coming fast, pushing the Allies into the sea at Dunkirk, and it was only a matter of days until they reached Paris, a city rapidly emptying as its people and government fled southward in a terrible time of death, destruction, and humiliation. Paris had known other terrible times as well, but these were the worst.

She was desperate to help, to do something, to do her part, but the armistice was signed before she had a chance. With the Germans arriving from north, west and east the only exit was to the south, which was complete chaos, thousands fleeing and, with the armistice, other thousands trying to get back to Paris. Refugees from every country, pushed south by the advancing German army, filled the roads in the direction of Bordeaux where they might find a ship bound for America or at least escape to Portugal. She made it to Bordeaux and caught the first ship she could get for the States, one fortunate enough to cross without being torpedoed.

♦ ♦ ♦

They were five at dinner in Bel Air the night she arrived home. Lizzie met her at Union Station and drove her home before returning downtown to write her story. Along with other refugees, Maggie had been interviewed in New York when their ship docked, but no one in Los Angeles saw the New York papers. Hollywood had been filling up with prominent European refugees since Hitler came to power, but Maggie was the first local girl to return home since the war in the West broke out. She held a little press conference in a quiet corner of Union Station. All the papers were represented, but the Times was the only one represented by her sister.

They found her more beautiful than ever, character and suffering showing in a face that had always been sans souci. The old vigor was not dissipated, but there was a new composure. “I could never have made it without the plane Arnaud gave me,” she told them at dinner. “Cars, horses, carts, animals, every manner of contraption loaded till the axles broke. A few miles a day—if that. Only one highway south to Bordeaux. The side roads all go the wrong way. I found my little MS 315 sitting under a copse at Villacoublay. Amazing. I took on a French pilot who needed to get south, fueled up and off we went. In Bordeaux, I gave him the plane.”

“Such a sad story,” said Nelly. “Your young man died before we could meet him.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. She’d been in a fluster trying to decide what to have for Maggie’s first night home in two years. Lizzie solved it by telling her to stop by Castillo’s.

There was a sense of unreality around the table as they ate their enchiladas, a moment of family normality squeezed into the tumult of death, destruction, and disappearance they read about every day. Only Eddie seemed to take it all in stride.

“Glad to have you back, Mag,” he said, raising his glass. “’Course, I never wanted you to go in the first place. America needs gals like you at home.”

“Hear, hear,” said Cal, raising his as the others did. “And let’s drink to Arnaud, a good man. His family must be devastated.”

“It is the story of France,” said Maggie. “Retold for the hundredth time. There are two more pilots in that family still alive, at least last I heard. The plane Arnaud flew was not much different from the one I flew. Against Messerschmitts—no chance. They have some new Dewoitines coming out now. I flew a prototype.”

“Lot of good they’ll do now,” said Eddie.

“Not for the French,” she said. “The Germans will get them.”

“If fly you must, you can fly here,” Nelly said. “But it will have to be without a war. They fight all the time, those Europeans. Their quarrels are not ours.”

“Hear, hear,” said Eddie, lifting his glass again. “Here’s to peace in our time.”

Maggie froze, and only Nelly drank with him. Eddie did not notice.

She looked across at her father. “Speaking of prototypes, what do you know about Howard Hughes? I hear he’s working on some new planes, making movies about planes.”

“Hughes makes movies about girls, not planes,” said Nelly.

“He makes both,” said Eddie.

“You wouldn’t happen to know him would you, Dad? Doesn’t he have an airfield out near your Venice oil wells?”

“I do know Howard. Sold him that land. More like Playa del Rey than Venice.”

“What’s he like?”

“Never met him. Everything done on the phone. Very mysterious guy.”

After dinner they drove down the hill to the girls’ apartment in Westwood. Maggie was moving back into the bedroom on Tiverton she’d vacated two years before. Cal had moved from Westwood into an Echo Park stucco.

“As if nothing happened,” Maggie said as they opened beers and settled down to talk. “Strange to come back as if I’d just stepped out for cigarettes. How come you’re in Echo Park? What about Uncle Willie’s place on Sunset?”

“I haven’t set foot in it.”

“Ghosts. You want me to go with you?”

“Would you?”

“I have some time on my hands.”

“What’s this about Howard Hughes?”

“Just an idea. Have to start somewhere.”

“So where do we start?” said Lizzie.

“How about with Asa Aldridge?” said