Kitchen Privileges Page 7

  I had to gently disabuse her of the notion that the flight hostess was a full-time, on-board nanny, but other than that it was, praise heaven, an uneventful trip, both from New York to Gander, and then Gander to London.

  Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Heathrow Airport. I simply could not believe that I was really there, abroad, in England. In the crew bus on the way to the hotel, I sat awestruck, my face pressed against the window. My first vivid impression was of the number of locations we passed that displayed the sign BOMB PARK. It was now 1949, and the rubble from the war had been cleared, but those empty spaces brought home to me how severely England had suffered during World War II.

  We settled in at the Green Park Hotel on Half Moon Street and went down to dinner. The guys told me to be sure to order the roast beef.

  I love roast beef and cheerfully obeyed. The waitress’s expression became distressed. “Oh, love,” she said with a sigh, “I’m so sorry, but…the roast beef’s finished.” The six crew members I was sitting with chimed in to finish the sentence with her, then explained. In post-war London there was an acute shortage of beef, but the Brits did not want to see it disappear from the menu. So it was always listed, and when someone not in the know requested it, the same stock answer was given in restaurants all over England: “Oh, love, I’m sorry, but the roast beef’s finished.”

  It was a gorgeous evening, and after dinner, I eagerly suggested that we all go for a walk. As one, they protested, “Honey, you’ve walked across the Atlantic. Forget it. We’ll take you sightseeing tomorrow. Instead we’ll buy you a drink to celebrate your first night in London.”

  “If you guys think I’m going to sit inside on my first night in London, you’re mistaken! No thanks. I’m going out.”

  I strolled down Half Moon Street to where it terminated at Green Park, across the road. Feeling as though I were living a dream, I tried to get my bearings. Now let’s see, I thought, looking to the right. Trafalgar Square is that way.

  A song lyric ran through my head: “A nightingale sang in Barclay Square.”

  I had carefully studied the guide books. And the palace is just beyond the park, I told myself.

  Another song began running through my mind: “I’m going to London to see the queen.” And…

  Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. Startled, I spun around. A thirtyish lady wearing a ton of makeup, a raunchy fur, a hat squashed on a tangled mess of curls, said apologetically, “Beg your pardon, love, but this is my corner.”

  Welcome to London! I rushed back to the hotel and had a nightcap with the guys.

  December 26, 1949. My wedding to Warren Clark, held in the school auditorium because our little church had burned down.

  Seven

  Europe, Africa, Asia. If my mother had been in charge of scheduling, I couldn’t have done better with the assignments I got. Nineteen forty-nine was a wonderful time to see the world, just as everything was about to change. My other world was changing, too.

  Warren’s brother Allan was getting married on June 25 to June Mary Callow, who had been one year ahead of me at St. Francis Xavier. “We won’t rain on their parade,” Warren told me. He was turning thirty on July 19, and his mother was planning a big party for him. “I’ll give you your ring for my birthday, which shows how nice I am. We’ll announce our engagement at the party.” First, though, we did tell our plans to my mother and Mrs. Clark. Both were delighted, if startled. Of course, our friends began to speculate about us. However, my cousin Al Hayward, who was Warren’s best friend, was worried. At the wedding in June, he pulled me aside. “Mary,” he said, “I don’t want you to get hurt. Warren never sticks with any girl for long, so even though I can see he’s giving you a big rush, I can promise you it won’t last.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised him solemnly. What I didn’t tell my cousin was that Warren and I had selected the setting for my engagement ring the previous evening.

  Mother and I began shopping for wedding gowns. I loved the first one I saw—totally traditional, ivory satin with Chantilly lace. But the instincts of the bridal buyer she had been didn’t allow my mother to make a choice without comparison shopping. In the end, at Arnold Constable on Fifth Avenue, we bought the first one I had seen and loved. In the interim, however, there wasn’t a store in Manhattan or a bridal shop in the tristate area that wasn’t given the opportunity to trot out every gown in their stockrooms.

  As a wedding present, Mrs. Clark gave us a DeSoto Coupe and a check for five thousand dollars. A couple of months before the wedding, she took me shopping for furniture. “He doesn’t know a thing about it, Mary,” she said. “We’ll make the choice.” When we were finished, Warren almost fainted to see that most of the five thousand dollars had disappeared, but Mrs. Clark was right to encourage me to buy good quality. I still have most of that furniture. The car arrived early, and we had it by the end of the summer, well before the wedding. After all the years of buses and trolley cars, it was heaven to find that DeSoto parked in front of the tailor shop when Warr picked me up.

  Because back then it took so many flight hours to travel to long destinations, a trip to India took three weeks, a trip to Johannesburg a full month. En route to India, we’d stop for a couple of days in London, then in Damascus, Karachi, and New Delhi, and then we’d stay maybe a week in Calcutta before we started back.

  Warren would write to me, and I’d find his letters waiting at various stops. He signed all of them “Warren-you-know-better-than-that.” I know it sounds quaint to most people, given today’s climate, but in 1949, a well-bred Irish Catholic girl simply did not “fool around,” even with her fiancé. An arm around the shoulder, holding hands, a chaste kiss—that was the way it was. And even when they made a pass, the men respected their dates or fiancées for toeing that line. As a result, at the end of the evening, in between kisses goodnight, I would be hissing, “Warren, you know better than that.”

  Mother, who told me it was her duty to my dead father to see that I came through the dating years unscathed, had guarded me with the vigilance of St. George slaying the dragon. Whenever I would come home with a date, she’d be leaning out the window, dangling dangerously between earth and heaven. “Is that you, Mary?” she’d call.

  No, it’s Gunga Din, I’d think, but her method worked. No one ever got fresh with me with that alert sentry hovering twenty feet above. All that changed, of course, when Warren and I started going out together. Mother retired, blissful in the knowledge that I was dating Mrs. Clark’s son. When I pointed out that dating Mrs. Clark’s son was not precisely the same as dating Mrs. Clark, the reference sailed over her head.

  I began shopping for my trousseau—very limited shopping, I might add. But one of the items I selected was a sheer black nightgown. I showed it to Warren, and he managed to read the newspaper through it. My mother was horrified and called me aside. “Mary, you wouldn’t put that thing on and wear it in front of that fellow, would you?” she asked me.

  Women of my mother’s generation never discussed sex. Neither I nor any of my friends received any heart-to-heart, “Dear, it’s time I told you something,” advice. Mother told me the nuns would tell me anything I needed to know. And in a way they did. When we were seniors, Mother St. Margaret locked the door of the classroom, looked out the window to make sure that Wilfred, the house eunuch, combination bus driver and general repair man, who lived over the carriage house, was nowhere within earshot. She then said that we were now sixteen and seventeen years of age and might be invited on dates.

  Pray God, we thought.

  “Sometimes the young man might be driving a car,” she continued.

  Pray God again.

  “Sometimes the car may be crowded, and you might have to sit on a young man’s lap.”

  We shivered with hope.

  “Therefore, young ladies, if the occasion ever arises that you might have to get into a crowded car with a young man, be sure to bring a pillow.”

  She unlocked the door. My
sole sex-education lesson was over.

  Mother began making up the invitation list. Even after the experience with Uncle Fred at her own wedding, she hadn’t learned. She kept digging up cousins I’d never met, inviting them because they were “family.” Of course the budget was tight, but if we eliminated the soup, we’d save enough to have a lovely affair at the McAlpin Hotel. She had had her reception twenty-five years earlier at the Martinique, next door. And, of course, going hand in hand with all the time spent planning was my life as a Pan Am hostess.

  Africa was still divided into territories: The Belgian Congo. The British Gold Coast. French West Africa. The Union of South Africa.

  India had achieved its independence two years earlier, but the sense of colonialism remained in the very air we breathed.

  I was on the last Pan Am flight into Prague before it was closed to western planes. Soviet Union soldiers with submachine guns guarded the terminal while we boarded seven American men who were anxious to get out of that country while they could.

  On one flight, I brought over a four-year-old British child, Gillian Ann Richardson. Her father, an American serviceman, had gone home, leaving her mother pregnant. Gillian’s mother was dying, and her best friend, a war bride, had been trying to adopt the girl. Finally the red tape had been cut through.

  Gillian was a slender, quiet child with enormous brown eyes. She clung to the woman from the orphanage who had brought her to the plane. I asked the woman if she and Gillian had been very close. It was sad to learn that she had known the little girl for only twenty-four hours.

  In flight training, we had been told that the passengers on the plane were our guests and should be treated as though they were in our private living rooms. We were not simply to serve meals. We were to chat with passengers and make them at ease. But on the long flight over the Atlantic, I still found time to sit with Gillian, to hold her when she fell asleep, to pray that her new life would be a happy one.

  Gillian’s arrival turned out to be a media event. At LaGuardia, the purser led the passengers across the tarmac. I was asked to wait with Gillian, then walk down the steps and hand her to her new mother. There was just one problem: Gillian by now had bonded to me. She clung to me and refused to let go.

  “Look at her,” I whispered. Her mother’s best friend, her new mother, was an English beauty with strawberry blond hair, blue eyes, and a peaches-and-cream complexion. She had not seen Gillian in three years.

  “I knew she’d grow to look exactly like this,” she said, her face radiant with joy.

  “Look at her, Gillian,” I whispered.

  They gazed at each other. Then Gillian reached out her arms and rushed down the steps of the plane.

  On another occasion my special passenger from England was a woman whose calloused hands, worn expression, and shabby clothing were all the evidence needed of a hardworking life. She sat quietly, refusing the lunch tray with a shake of her head, but timidly requesting a cup of tea, if it wasn’t too much trouble. I thought she might be terrified of flying and was trying not to be obvious about it. The seat next to her was empty, and when the other passengers were settled, I sat down beside her. She began to tell me about her daughter. She was a war bride. So in love. The most beautiful wedding. “I haven’t seen her in three years,” she said.

  “And you’re going to visit her now? How wonderful.”

  “I’ll be bringing her back with me, but I’m not sure if she’s ready yet.”

  “Will her husband be with her?”

  “No, but I’ll be seeing him now.” She turned to me, her eyes filled with pain, her voice raw with grief. “He murdered her two days ago.”

  The television cameras were waiting on the tarmac for her, too.

  I loved just about every minute of flying. Getting married meant I’d have to give up the job, because you had to be single to be a stewardess. But as my wedding day approached, I did not regret when the moment came to turn in my wings. I was ready and eager for the next chapter in my life. Marriage. A family. And learning to become a professional writer.

  December 26, 1949, was the big day. Our little prefab church had burned down a few years earlier and the new one hadn’t been built yet, so the school auditorium was where Sunday Masses, weddings, and funerals were held. Some girls went to other churches for their weddings, but the pastor, Monsignor Quinn, considered that an act of total disloyalty. When Mother had received the telegram from the Navy Department that indicated Joseph had only a few days to live, she had rushed to the rectory. Monsignor had helped her to get a priority plane reservation and, from the proceeds of the Sunday collection, lent her the money for the ticket. She paid him back, but even so, I felt I owed it to him to get married in the auditorium. It was decorated with Christmas greens and poinsettias and did look Christmasy. They even had a big red bow on the basketball hoop directly in front of the stage where the Nuptial Mass was celebrated.

  I spent my last few nights in the apartment on Lurting Avenue, figuring out the seating arrangements at the McAlpin. “Who in the name of God is this?” was the exasperated question I asked Mother a number of times as I studied the list of invitees. Her answer was always the same: “A cousin.”

  “I hope none of them is in sneakers,” I grumbled. None of them was, but one little kid whose baby-sitter didn’t show was brought along at the last minute, and his beaming parents persuaded him to sing a couple of songs for us.

  “Happy is the bride that the sun shines on today,” goes the old saying. Well the bride was happy, but the sun was in hiding. Sheets of pouring rain were being driven by near-gale winds. The service was being held only one block away from the apartment, and in the need to keep expenses chopped, we’d hired only one limo to make three runs. How long could it take? First Mother would be driven, then the bridesmaids, then Johnny and I. He was giving me away.

  The problem was that each of us had to wait to make the dash across the sidewalk and into the limo between gusts of torrential rain, and that slowed up the timing. I was twenty-two minutes late. And there’d been another unpredictable hitch.

  The organist was blind. He was in the choir loft and received his signal to switch to “Here Comes the Bride” by a buzzer an altar boy pushed from the side of the altar when the bride arrived.

  Mrs. Clark was always ahead of time and was in the church at five of ten. The altar boy spotted her and pushed the buzzer. She walked down the aisle to the bridal march from Lohengrin. A second buzzer was pushed when the same dopey kid saw my mother arrive a few minutes later. Ditto the bridal march for her. When I arrived, I realized there was something odd. Then I got it. People were already standing up and facing the rear of the church.

  Warr’s first words to me at the foot of the altar were, “What kept you?”

  Then, on the same stage where eleven years earlier I had not gotten the chance to say “Come let us dance to the music of this happy day,” I took my wedding vows. And for the next fourteen years and nine months, until Warren’s death, we lived happily ever after.

  Eight

  Apartments in post-war New York were as scarce as hen’s teeth. To ease the shortage, the Metropolitan Insurance Company had built two housing complexes in Manhattan between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets, from First Avenue east to Avenue C. The complex that ran from Fourteenth to Twentieth Street was called Stuyvesant Town. The complex from Twentieth to Twenty-third was called Peter Cooper Village and was more upscale, with apartments that had larger rooms and a second bath.

  But both complexes were attractive, airy, and comfortable, and had plenty of playgrounds for the rapidly arriving post-war babies. Unlike many such housing projects, they also proved durable, and still—more than fifty years later—are sought-after housing, with long waiting lists.

  The father of my new sister-in-law, June, was friendly with a Manhattan congressman. He had already helped June and Allan to get an apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and now he promised to help us.

  We got one. I was emba
rrassed, however, when we signed the lease. Another new tenant was there, almost hysterical with glee at getting a place. She and her husband had been living in a furnished room for three years while they waited for an apartment. “How long have you been waiting?” she asked.

  “Forever,” I assured her.

  Johnny had graduated from high school and was working to save for college. Thanks to Joseph’s G.I. insurance, and my mother’s status as the dependent of a deceased serviceman, she had a monthly pension for life—small, but enough to take care of her basic expenses. She still baby-sat to make a little money, but in death, as in life, Joseph had taken care of her. She no longer aspired to having her old home back someday—the apartment was more convenient and better suited to her needs, she decided. The bus which had replaced the trolley car arrived regularly right at the corner, and the church where she attended daily Mass was less than a block away.

  Warren and I took to marriage as ducks to water. We loved each other, we were in love, we were best friends, and we made each other laugh. He was a very special man. Years later, one of his friends expressed it best: “Mary, he’d light up a room when he came into it.” And it was true. He was good looking, smart, kind, funny, yet oddly enough, when he wasn’t smiling, could look austere. I told him I was intrigued by the fact that he had such a Waspy appearance, especially in winter when he wore a homberg and chesterfield.

  Almost every man in Stuyvesant Town in those days was an ex-G.I. Many of them were going to law school or business school at night while working during the day. They were all starting to climb the ladder in their profession and all were sure they were going to make it. Warren had a job as salesman for American President Lines, the prestigious passenger and cargo steamship carrier that had offices in Rockefeller Center. He thoroughly enjoyed the travel business. The only catch was that he had begun to realize that a beautiful office, classy clients, and the ability to sail anywhere in the world free on vacations did not make up for a relatively low salary. He began to think about leaving his job there and trying another profession.