Lenore Crane was a princess, or so she thought during the first decade of her life. She lived with her younger sister and their parents in a spacious brick home in Boston’s Back Bay, a short distance from the bank where her father, Samuel, held the prestigious position of president, and she wanted for nothing.
A beautiful child, she had long, silky blonde hair, a small nose, delicately rounded face and the palest of blue eyes. Her dresses were of the softest velvet, hand picked by her mother at Best’s. Her shoes were of the finest patent leather, replaced at the first sign of wear. The dolls she played with were from England, and the cups in which she served them tea were miniature versions of the elegant Royal Worcester her mother used when she entertained, which was often.
She was taken to movies at the luxurious Metropolitan Theatre, to parties at the country club, all in the elegant Pierce-Arrow that her father proudly drove. Her piano teacher came to the house once a week, as did a private ballet instructor. She was taught early on how to use the phonograph and had a larger record collection to choose from than anyone else she knew, and if she didn’t want to listen to the phonograph, she could turn on the radio, which was the newest and the best, paid for in full at the time of purchase rather than on the installment plan that had become so popular among those of a lesser station.
Never in her life did she dream that anything could shatter such a lovely existence. If her mother’s greatest excitement was in frequenting such chic specialty shops as Slattery’s and Madame Driscoll’s, Lenore only knew that she had the most beautiful, best dressed mother around. If her father’s greatest excitement was in defying Prohibition by slipping into the Mayfair after the bank closed each afternoon, Lenore only knew that he’d have a chocolate bunny or some other tempting sweet for her sister, Lydia, and her when he returned.
Unfortunately, imbibing bootlegged liquor wasn’t Samuel Crane’s only excitement in life. There was a side that he kept to himself, a side that was in stark contrast to the conservative image he upheld at the bank.
Samuel Crane played the stock market, played it with a daring that awed his broker, who soon learned to follow the man’s tips rather than offer his own. Samuel would have been fine had he limited himself to investing his own money, but he didn’t. He used every cent of his salary to maintain the style of living he found to his liking, so when he needed additional money he embezzled it from the bank.
On October 30, 1929, the day after the stock market crashed, Samuel Crane was found hanging from a noose in the attic of his home. Lenore was just shy of ten at the time, but that day brought about changes in her life that profoundly affected every aspect of her being.
With the sudden death of her husband, Greta Crane was stunned. She barely had time to grieve before humiliation set in, and that was quickly followed by horror when she discovered the extent of the debts bequeathed her—debts that could be repaid only by the sale of everything she had held dear.
The heartrending ordeal was akin, in Greta’s mind, to the draining of her own life’s blood, and had she not had children to care for she might well have joined her husband in oblivion. For Lenore and Lydia’s sakes she pushed on, leaving the Back Bay and moving with the two girls to the upper half of a modest two-family house in Watertown, which she rented for less each month than the amount she’d previously spent on clothes in as many weeks. Gone were the maid, the cook, the Pierce-Arrow and the country club, replaced by an existence that, while stark physically, was even more devastating emotionally.
Disillusionment was a mild word to describe Greta’s feelings. She was furious at her husband, at the bank, at the stock market, at Herbert Hoover. She wallowed in shame, living in a purgatory of her husband’s making.
Without a source of income, much less the skills to secure one, she took a night job tending a blind woman in nearby Belmont. On the one hand it suited her, for she could steal away to earn her living in the dark, leaving the eyes of the world none the wiser. On the other hand it meant that her small daughters were alone at night and that she, herself, caught what sleep she could during the hours they were in school.
Taking the cue from her mother, Lenore quickly realized the shadow of disgrace under which they lived. She kept her eyes lowered when she went to school, avoided making friends and hurried her younger sister home as soon as class was dismissed to find what little sanctuary she could in the confines of their small apartment.
There was no piano to play, no ballet to practice. Cloistered in the tiny room she shared with Lydia, Lenore took to dreaming. At times she would pretend that her father had been called away on secret business but would one day return to restore his family to its rightful place in society. At times she imagined that she was simply living a nightmare and would awaken once more in the Back Bay, on fine linens beneath eiderdown. At times she would dream of the future, imagining herself swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor who would rescue her from shame and shower her with wealth.
Greta fed this particular dream with the bitterness that had become a mainstay of her personality. “You’ll do better than I did,” she sternly instructed her daughters on so many occasions that Lenore learned the speech by heart. “You’ll marry men who are careful, men who earn handsome livings without having to resort to gambling. Your father was sick that way, and it is because of him that we have to live as we do. But we’ll show them; we’ll show them all. You’re good girls and beautiful girls. Some day you’ll be back on top.”
It was easier said than done. Where once Greta would have anticipated her daughters’ grand debuts without a worry in the world, now such lavish affairs were out of the question. Not only didn’t she have the money, but she was totally alienated from the society of which she’d once been a part, and she refused to mingle any more than necessary with the people of her new and demeaning station.
So she saved every spare penny in an empty oatmeal box on the back of the pantry shelf, intent on providing whatever she could for her daughters when the time came for them to work their way upward once more. She frowned on any unnecessary expense and pushed Lenore into errand running and babysitting jobs as soon as Lydia was old enough to be left alone.
There were times when Lenore wished her mother worked days, for then Greta wouldn’t be around to scrutinize every step she took. It became particularly difficult for Lenore when she entered adolescence, when her body made changes that Greta continually editorialized upon.
“No, not that sweater, Lenore,” she scolded with a calmness that was deadly. “Lydia can wear that.”
“But it’s my favorite,” Lenore argued, “and the softest one I own.”
“Wear the green one.”
“The green one itches.”
“Then wear a blouse. That sweater is too tight. You don’t want to flaunt yourself or you’ll attract the wrong sort. It’s bad enough that we have to live among neighbors like these, but I refuse to have you stoop to their level.”
At times like those, Lenore wondered if “their level” could be half as bad as her level. The mother who had once been so indulgent had become a shrew. She rarely smiled and her features were pinched. If there was any warmth in her it was iced over by the rigid will for vengeance that seemed to keep her going.
Lenore needed warmth. She was lonely. Where once she and her sister had been close, the three-year difference in their ages came to seem huge. Lydia was as unsatisfactory company for her as, increasingly, her dreams were, and since Greta discouraged her from making local friends she was frustrated. Even the disgrace she had hidden behind since her father’s death began to pale. When her mother spoke of the “wrong sort,” Lenore could only reflect that she didn’t attract any sort, and that bothered her.
The public library was the one spot her mother allowed her to visit during what little spare time she had, and it was there that Lenore met Natalie Slocum. The girls were both thirteen, both alone and craving companionship. What began as a simple exchange of books grew into friendship. While Lenore was at first reticent to open up, Natalie’s quiet charm and lack of pretentions soon won her over.
As opposed to Lenore, Natalie had never known wealth. She had been raised in a shabby, wood frame house in an even poorer part of town than the one in which Lenore had spent the last three years, and rather than condemn Lenore for her family’s downfall, she was wide-eyed and hungry to hear about life in the Back Bay. It was a dream to her, as it was now to Lenore, and the two sat for hours reveling in it.
Natalie’s life had been hard. Her mother had died when she was two and her father had tried his best to raise his only child with the meager means available to him. But he was a milkman, working long busy days, and he was incapable of giving Natalie the guidance she needed as she approached womanhood.
Nonetheless, he had always doted on her, as Natalie was the first to admit. On a cold winter’s night he would hold her close beside him and read her stories from the books one of his more benevolent customers had passed down. At the first snowfall of the year, he would wrap her up in layers of clothing and take her sledding on a makeshift flyer. In the spring he would make picnics for them to share beneath the neighbor’s oak, which sprawled into their tiny yard with a breath of shade. And in the summer he would always take her to the beach.
The irony of it was that his doting did her in, particularly when she began to blossom and his cooing over her childlike charms was replaced by a more mature, if every bit as intense, praise for her intelligence and beauty. He was her father and as such he was biased, she reasoned; she came to wonder if she had a serious lack that he was desperately trying to cover up.
She wasn’t beautiful as he always said she was. The mirror that he had given her for her twelfth birthday told her so. She had dark hair that waved where it shouldn’t, brown eyes set too far apart, a nose that had a bump in it, a fleshy mouth and skin the color of the flour paste she used in school. No, she wasn’t beautiful, certainly not like Mary McGuire, who lived down the street and was a year ahead of her in school and had everyone in the neighborhood at her beck and call.
Nor was she brilliant. She was smart, perhaps, in a common sense way, but not brilliant. Or, if her father was right and it was so, her teachers certainly didn’t think so. They never sought her out for the right answer the way they sought out George Hollenmeister, and they never let her skip reading to help with the younger children the way they let Sara French.
Reaching her own conclusions and being sensitive about them, she kept to herself, which suited her because the books and magazines that were her constant companions didn’t mind the way she looked or dressed or that she didn’t have a mother or that she would never grow up to be a Ziegfeld Girl.
Just as those books and magazines couldn’t talk back to her, though, neither could they provide the human companionship that increasingly, if subconsciously, she craved. Meeting Lenore Crane that fateful day in the library, on the other hand, perfectly fit the bill. The fact that they went to different schools and had never set eyes on each other before gave them each a fresh start. Beyond that, Lenore’s insecurity was something with which Natalie could easily identify. The shyness and caution that characterized their initial interactions quickly faded as the need they shared emerged.
They became secret pals, delighting in the knowledge that their friendship was private, an exclusive club for two. Meeting at the library several times a week, they would sit in a quiet corner with books open on their laps while they whispered back and forth about anything and everything.
Natalie told Lenore about the stuck-up Nola Wurtz who always shunned her, and about Mary Melanson, whom she had seen one day behind the school kissing a boy. She told her about doing odd chores for the Belskys on Friday nights and Saturdays for which she received fifty cents a week, and about saving up to buy a pair of saddle shoes. She admitted that she wished she had a mother, or, if not that, a brother or sister, or, if not that, a dog like Little Orphan Annie’s Sandy.
In turn, Lenore confessed that having a mother wasn’t so wonderful if she was angry all the time, and that sisters were fine until they starting asking questions you didn’t want to answer, and that the worst thing about having come from the Back Bay was that you could never go back once you’d left. She asked Natalie’s opinion on whether she should cut her hair into a more stylish bob (though it was a moot point, since her mother would never have permitted it), whether her sweater was indeed too tight, and whether she thought Greta Garbo was really as beautiful as they said.
The girls saw eye to eye on practically everything, but most vehemently on their plans for the future. They were going to make it, and make it big. They were going to marry well and one day have everything they were missing now. They were going to be respected and admired and sought after by the cream of society. Or so the dream went.
Their friendship, while precious to them both, was viewed as anything but by Lenore’s mother.
“You were at the library again today?” she asked with the quiet sharpness Lenore knew so well.
“I do my schoolwork there.”
“Was the Slocum girl there too?”
“Yes.”
“You spend too much time with her, you know.”
Lenore kept her voice low, because she didn’t like the way her mother’s nose was tightening around the nostrils. A fight was brewing. “I only see her at the library.”
“What’s the point of it?”
“I like her.”
“But she’s nothing—”
“You’ve never met her!” Which was a happy state as far as Lenore was concerned. For once Greta’s embarrassment over their home suited Lenore’s purpose because she didn’t want to subject Natalie to Greta any more than Greta wanted to be subjected to Natalie.
“She comes from nothing,” Greta specified.
We come from something, and look where we are now, Lenore thought, but she knew better than to say it. As it was she’d raised her voice more than was wise; in a minute Greta would be telling her to be still lest the landlord heard every word. “She has a wonderful father.”
“Who has neither money, connections, nor power. When you pick friends, Lenore, you have to pick wisely. If someday you’re going to meet a man who can provide for you well, you won’t do it through girls like Natalie Slocum.”
“Mother, I’m barely fourteen! What difference does it make who my friends are now?”
“Keep your voice down, Lenore, or Mr. Brown will hear every word you say. And in answer to your question, it does make a difference. Believe me.”
Lenore didn’t, not for a minute, and nothing her mother could say or do, short of penning her in the house, could keep her from seeing Natalie. Their friendship was the brightest light in Lenore’s otherwise drab life. It was emotionally rewarding and fun; thanks to Greta’s narrow-mindedness, it also satisfied Lenore’s adolescent need to rebel.
By the time the girls reached sixteen, they were visiting each other’s house regularly. Robert Slocum was warm and welcoming to Lenore, and if Greta was more standoffish with Natalie, at least she was civil. She hadn’t given up the war, Lenore knew; she had simply yielded in this one particular skirmish. Which was understandable, because by the time the girls were juniors in high school another major battle loomed on the horizon.
Boys. Lenore and Natalie spent hours talking about them, speculating about who would ask them to the dances, rehearsing seductive smiles, experimenting with their hair, the hemlines of their skirts, the way they walked.
The four years since they had first met had seen changes in them both. Lenore had come to terms with her body, able to appreciate its shapeliness. She had, indeed, cut her hair, and even Greta had had to admit that the pains of curling it were worth the effort. Her once round face had slimmed, emphasizing features that were patrician and fine. She was a stunning young woman, and given the looks she had begun to receive from the boys at school, she knew it.
Natalie was every bit as attractive in her own way. Her once unmanageable dark hair now responded to her skilled hand, falling over her shoulders in gentle waves. She had learned to clip and pencil her eyebrows and add a touch of color to her cheeks, and when she wore deep red lipstick, the mouth she had once considered far too full was luscious.
They were a riveting duo as they walked from class to class together. While Natalie was the more outgoing of the two, Lenore was just that little bit prettier. They complimented one another, gave each other strength, and that self-confidence added a special aura to their looks so that, indeed, they often had company walking home from school.
Which made Greta nervous. She was working as a bookkeeper for a local businessman and was rarely home in the afternoons. But Lydia, a teenager herself and more than a little envious of her sister, was a ready-made spy for her mother, reporting everything that happened and with whom.
“So it was Lewis and Joe today?” Greta asked as she was making dinner. By that time she had taken Natalie under her wing, reasoning that since the two were fast friends what one did affected the other, and since Natalie was without a mother she could benefit from the advice of one older and wiser.
The girls were reading a magazine at the kitchen table. Lenore had actually come to enjoy the times when her mother would lecture the two of them, for the force of the attack was far blunter than it would have been if mother and daughter were alone. She suspected that, as much as Greta had initially resisted, she had grown fond of Natalie, and that gave Lenore, who deep down inside did want to please her mother, a warm feeling. Moreover, when Natalie was there, Lenore had an ally.
“Lewis and Joe?” Lenore repeated, looking smugly up at Natalie. “Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know about Lewis,” Greta went on skeptically. “From what I’ve heard,” and she made it her business to hear everything, “he’s been something of a problem in school over the years.”
“But he does well, Mrs. Crane. His father teaches at Harvard, and his mother is a Fenwick. You can’t find better qualifications than those.” Natalie knew just what to say to ease Greta’s worry. Not that either she or Lenore were madly in love with Lewis—because Lewis was madly in love with himself—but he knew how to put on a show of chivalry, which, to a seventeen-year-old girl, was something. “He’s always polite, and he’s very good looking.”
“He’s a senior, isn’t he?”
Lenore nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“What are his plans for next year?”
“He’ll probably go to Harvard.”
“Not on his grades he won’t.”
“He doesn’t need grades, Mother. He has money and connections. He’s in.” There was a faint note of bitterness in Lenore’s voice; from time to time she recalled that she, too, had once had money and connections.
Natalie, who understood Lenore well—indeed, often felt bitter about her own lot in life—also understood that Greta wasn’t one to be antagonized. She sought to soften her friend’s words, saying, “It doesn’t matter where Lewis goes to college. He’ll be a success. He has the drive.”
“Thank goodness for that, at least,” was Greta’s quiet murmur. She turned to face the girls. “How about you, Natalie? Have you thought about what you’re going to do after graduation?”
“I have,” Natalie said, frowning, “but my father and I can’t see eye to eye on it. He wants me to work because of the money, but I don’t see that closing myself off in some office is going to get me anywhere but older.”
Greta gave a limp smile. It wasn’t that she didn’t legitimately feel the smile, just that she had gotten out of practice. But she was pleased now; Natalie was on the right track. “Then you’re considering college, too?” That was what Lenore was doing, with her mother’s urging. Although it would be costly, it was one way for a girl without status to meet a man with it.
“I’d like to go to Mass. State,” Natalie declared. “I can train to be a teacher.…”
“Until something else comes along,” Greta finished. “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling Lenore. Haven’t I, Lenore?” Of course, Greta hadn’t been thinking in terms of Mass. State, she’d been thinking of terms of something a little more exclusive, like Simmons. After scrimping for years to save money she wanted her daughter to have the best that it could buy.
“Yes, Mother.”
“And it won’t be as expensive if you live at home,” Greta added, failing to add that if Lenore lived at home, Greta would be able to sort the good prospects from the bad.
Lenore had other ideas. “I was thinking that it might be nice to live at school.”
“Very expensive,” Greta drawled in immediate refusal.
“Either that or take a room of my own.” She needed to get away from Greta, whose watchful eye and pained expression were like shackles, a constant reminder of where they had once been and how far they had fallen.
“Rooms cost money, too.”
“I’ve been working weekends and summers at the A&P, so I’ve saved enough to get me started. I can earn extra money by tutoring once I’m at college. Of course,” she slowed, lowering her eyes, “if Nat and I were to room together, we could split the rent.”
Natalie’s eyes bulged. “What a great idea!” Then her face dropped as quickly. “I can just imagine what my father will think of that. I mean, in his heart I’m sure he’d like to see me in college. He wants only the best for me. But the best costs, and he gets nervous.”
“If you go off to live somewhere else he’ll be alone,” Greta pointed out. “That’s something to consider.”
“Don’t add to her guilt, Mother!”
“I was simply making a statement. And it is worth some thought. Besides,” she twitched her nose, “nice girls don’t live in rooming houses.”
“I’m not talking about a rooming house,” Lenore argued, “but a room in a house, or a small apartment.”
“You have a room in this house, and you don’t even have to pay for it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“If you’d like, I could ask you for rent. Some parents do.”
“Mother, you’re making too much of this.”
“I’m sorry, Lenore, but I simply believe that girls your age shouldn’t be off on their own.”
Lenore couldn’t believe what she was hearing, or, rather, she could believe it since it had come from her mother, but she found it laughable. “We’ll be eighteen. Half of the girls we know will probably be getting married and having babies right from high school.”
“Maybe you will, too,” Greta said hopefully. Indeed, she had dug into the oatmeal box for the funds to dress her daughter in the latest styles, and she didn’t begrudge the expenditure, seeing it as an investment for the future.
But neither Lenore nor Natalie shared her hope that the investment would pay off so soon. They weren’t interested in the boys they knew who were just starting out in life. They wanted to meet mature men, men who were already established, who could give them all they had dreamed about for years. They wanted to live in Louisburg Square and drive Cadillacs and dance their Saturday nights away at the roof garden at the Ritz. They wanted elegant clothes and fur mufflers and servants to do the work they had had to do for years. Above all, they wanted security, which was something that had been relentlessly drummed into their heads.
As the months passed, Greta came to agree with Lenore’s assessment of the high school boys. Alex Walter, who took Lenore to her junior prom, was handsome enough, but had neither money nor training and was bound for the Civilian Conservation Corps after graduation, which didn’t bode well in terms of ambition as far as Greta was concerned.
Will Farino, who took Lenore to the fall harvest dance, was positively charming, as was his father, a slick salesman who Greta was convinced would eventually find his way into prison. If Greta wanted respect for her daughter, tangling with the likes of the Farinos was not the way to gain it.
Hammond Carpenter, who invited Lenore to go carolling on Christmas Eve and was as beautiful a male as even Greta could remember seeing, had his heart set on entering West Point in the fall. While Greta had no argument with the honor of a career in the military, she had no desire to see her daughter shifted from place to place for a lifetime, much less living on government wages.
George Hastings, who took Lenore to her senior prom, was positively idolized by every girl in the school. Captain of the football team, he was built well, had strong features, a swarthy complexion and thick black hair that ranged over his forehead. He was also nearly illiterate. And when a boy was kept in school solely for his athletic prowess, Greta reasoned, the man that boy would become had few hopes of success—not to mention the fact that his father was a drunk.
So Lenore graduated from high school with a diploma and no husband, which was fine with her, because she was headed for the world. Unfortunately, she was headed for it by trolley, because Greta had her way about her daughter living at home. On the positive side, Natalie had her way about going to college, and had even managed a scholarship, so Lenore and she commuted to Simmons together.
When all was said and done, they were very much on their own, for they left Watertown at six-thirty in the morning and rarely returned before ten o’clock at night. It was easier to feel and act the part of sophisticated women when they were away from the tangible evidence of their modest means, and sophisticated women were precisely what they wanted to be.
Between classes and the jobs they had taken near the college they were busy, but not so busy that they couldn’t socialize. There were afternoons spent with friends where the talk over coffee and pastry centered around Brenda Frazier or Alfred Vanderbilt, and movies, where all eyes focused on Clark Gable or Jean Harlow, and parties, where activity revolved around the jukebox and the jitterbug.
And there were men, many of whom were far more exciting than those either girl had known before, but none of whom fit the specifications for Mr. Right. On the one hand each girl had her share of offers, which was some solace, since the prospect of being old maids and having to provide for themselves forever was terrifying. On the other hand they were willing to hold out awhile longer, convinced that it was simply a matter of time before their patience would pay off.
So Lenore and Natalie finished their freshman year, then their sophomore year, and both were still single.
By the summer of 1941 Greta began to worry. Talk of war was rampant, and war would mean the exodus of the best of the available men. “And who knows how long a war could go on? You’re twenty now and getting older every year. By the time the fighting ends there will be that many more and younger women fighting over the men who come home. I was married by the time I was nineteen.”
“And widowed by the time you were thirty-one,” Lenore pointed out somewhat dryly. “If I rush to marry now and there is a war, I could be left a widow, too, so where would that leave me?”
“It would leave you with whatever estate your husband had.”
“Which is why I have to make sure that I find a husband with an estate worth leaving. Don’t worry, mother. I’m on your side. I don’t want to live this way forever. And I’m trying. Really I am.”
Natalie was trying all the harder. She was that much more practical than her friend, and while Lenore continued to work as a tutor, Natalie left her job in the English department and signed on to work spare hours in the office of a young lawyer who had the uncanny knack of attracting wealthy clients. If ever there was an opportunity to mingle with the wealthy, she calculated, that would be it.
Her boss, Gilbert Warren, was handsome and available and very definitely on his way to the top. He took her to dinner from time to time, and though she admired him professionally, he was a little too slick, a little too domineering, a little too arrogant for her romantic tastes.
One of his clients was just right, though. His name was Jackson Whyte, and he was a businessman who had, in six short years, built a flourishing career flying wealthy people from one spot to another in the airplanes that had taken the country by storm the decade before. He was tall and very handsome, soft-spoken but forceful, and when he came near he never failed to set Natalie’s pulse to racing.
He also happened to be Gilbert Warren’s best friend. The two had met at Amherst, where Jack had been a year ahead of Gil, and, from what Natalie could gather, they were nearly as close as she and Lenore. Jack was in the office often, and during those times Gil was more relaxed than normal. Boisterous laughter would come from behind Gil’s door, telling Natalie that the men were discussing far more than the legal brief she had typed for Gil on a matter pertaining to the Whyte Lines the day before. On one occasion Jack even accompanied Gil and her to dinner, and she saw firsthand how well the two men meshed. Where Jack was a brilliant administrator and businessman, Gil had the rashness to think further, making suggestions for growth that might have paled another man but that Jack was more than capable of realizing.
Then the day came when Jack asked Natalie out.
“I’m terrified,” she confessed to Lenore that night.
“But you like him. You’ve been waiting for this.”
“I know. Still, he’s … intimidating in a way. He’s.…”
“Perfect? Your whole face is glowing, Nat. He’s perfect!”
“No, he’s not. Not really,” Natalie answered pensively. “He certainly isn’t wealthy, at least, not in the way of old money.”
“But he’s well on his way there. Do you have any doubts that he’ll make it?”
“No. He’s smart and aggressive. He took his father’s small business and has really built it into something.”
“And he’s handsome and charming and available. What could be better?”
“He’s moving fast. Maybe that’s what scares me. Somehow, when I’m with the two of them I get breathless, like I’ll never be able to keep up.” She smiled sheepishly. “Maybe it’s just that he could be right in so many ways and I’m nervous that he won’t think the same of me.”
Lenore grew stern. “Natalie Slocum, that is nonsense. If he didn’t like you he never would have asked you out. He’s had plenty of time to talk with you, and he knows by now whether he likes what he sees.” She grasped her friend’s arm and smiled. “This is your big chance, Nat. It’s the one you’ve been waiting for.”
Natalie knew she was right, but that knowledge increased her apprehension, because there was so much at stake and she did want the date to go well. It occurred to her that things would be better if she could relax, so she spent that entire night bolstering her self-image, convincing herself that what Lenore has said was right and that Jack had to have liked her to have asked her out. She was sure, she kept telling herself, that she would make Jack Whyte a wonderful wife.
Come morning, she was a bundle of nerves. So the first thing she did when she went to work that afternoon was to walk into Gil Warren’s office and tell him about her date with Jack and, by the way, she had a very dear friend who was just her age and absolutely beautiful and wouldn’t it be fun if the four of them were to do something together?
The following Saturday night, Jack and Natalie and Gil and Lenore went to the Hotel Brunswick, where they ate dinner, danced and talked the night away. Greta, who had greeted the men when they had arrived and had been as impressed by Jack’s shiny new Packard as she had been by the men themselves, was excitedly waiting up for the girls when they were finally delivered home. Natalie was spending the night, as she often did since her father was courting a widow from Chelsea and frequently never made it home at all.
“Tell me,” Greta commanded when the girls had stopped bubbling long enough to take off their coats. “Tell me everything.”
“He was wonderful!” Lenore exclaimed.
“They both were!” Natalie amended proudly. “They drove right up to the front door of the hotel and left the car with the doorman—did you see the bill Jack slipped him, Lenore?”
Lenore shook her head. “I was too busy matching my steps to Gil’s. You should have seen him, Mother. He was so gallant—offering me his elbow, helping me off with my coat, making sure I didn’t trip on the steps leading to the restaurant, holding my chair for me. And he knew everyone! The maitre d’ greeted him by name and with such respect. Wasn’t that so, Nat? And the waiter jumped when he raised his finger, and no less than five couples stopped to say hello to us. Did you see the jewels on that one woman, Nat?”
“I swear, we were the envy of every woman there! They kept looking at our table, and it was all I could do to be calm and cool and take it all in as though I’ve been to the Brunswick a hundred times before.”
“But you pulled it off?” Greta asked.
Natalie shared a smug grin with Lenore. “We both did. They were pleased. I’m sure they were.” She bit her lower lip to restrain an even broader smile, but the eyes she turned on Greta danced. “We’re going out again next weekend. To the theater. The theater. Do you know who goes to the theater?”
“The best of the best,” Lenore answered proudly. “And you can be sure that we won’t be sitting in peanut heaven, either.”
They sat in the sixth row center, and Lenore and Natalie could have easily spent the evening ogling the intricate crystal chandeliers overhead, the elegant velvet framing the stage, or the finery worn by the other theatergoers. But they diligently paid attention to the show, determined to sound intelligent during the discussion that would surely follow the final curtain. They managed admirably, though they could only sit in silent awe when Jack and Gil launched into a comparative analysis of the many other shows they had seen.
The two young women were on a cloud that night, and there they remained for the next few weeks. Escorted well, they dined at one posh restaurant after another, went to Pops concerts at Symphony Hall, spent days at the beach, took drives through the country. Sometimes the couples were together, other times they went separate ways. Neither Lenore nor Natalie minded that, because each was enthralled with her own special man.
Lenore adored the fact that, when she was with Gil, she felt like a princess again. He treated her as though she were fragile. There was a gentleness in the way he touched her hair, an admiration in his eyes when he looked at her. He told her that she was beautiful, and although she had heard it from other men before, she prized it from one as suave as Gil. She rather liked the way he took control, thinking him not domineering but strong, and if he could be as tough as nails when discussing professional matters with Jack, with her he was unfailingly respectful.
Likewise, Natalie adored Jack. Where once she had been intimidated, his outward affection boosted her confidence. When they were together he was easygoing and indulgent. He hesitated to talk about business when he was with her, as though he wanted to protect her from the more mundane matters of life. Of course, she found his business anything but mundane, since it reeked of success, so she frequently asked him about it, then took delight when he smiled and offered her one small tidbit or another. More than once when they had been with Gil she had seen Jack lose his temper over business matters, yet he was an icon of good humor with her. She truly believed that he was the answer to her prayers.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December threw the fate of those prayers into question. Lenore and Natalie spent many a frantic hour wondering what would come of their blossoming romances. Within days of the declaration of war, Jack and Gil made their decisions to enlist, and the women felt that their own futures had been besieged.
Then Jack proposed to Natalie.
And Gil proposed to Lenore.
While the rest of the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams, Natalie and Lenore were ecstatic. Gil’s connections with a local judge facilitated the waiving of the standard five-day waiting period, and in a small double ceremony, Natalie became Mrs. Jackson Whyte and Lenore Mrs. Gilbert Warren.
Natalie and Jack went off on a two-day honeymoon in the country, which was a luxury given the circumstances. If Natalie had hoped for something longer, she didn’t complain. She had what she wanted; Jack was hers, legally bound. Wildly in love with her husband and the future she envisioned as his wife, she pushed from mind the knowledge that he would be going off to war and immersed herself in his undivided attention.
Her initiation into womanhood was gentle but fierce. She discovered that her husband was as astute in love-making as he was in business, exhibiting a keen sense of timing, being daring when daring was called for and conciliatory when conciliatory was wise. She let herself go far more than she had ever imagined she could, but she sensed a need in Jack to stake his claim before he left for the war. With that instinct unique to womankind, she knew that at some point during those two days he had given her a child to keep her company until he returned.
Lenore and Gil stayed in the city. They spent their wedding night at the Ritz, and though Gil had legal business to clear up the next day, he returned to her quickly. In truth, she appreciated the brief respite. Gil was intense, far more so with her than she had expected. Though he treated her with care as she had been given every reason to believe he would, he was a man of passion. Surprisingly, while Natalie had been the one without the mother for guidance, Lenore knew less of what to expect in physical matters than her friend. Greta’s sole concern had been with getting her daughter married; once the papers were signed Lenore was on her own.
And that was exactly how Lenore felt, at least when it came to making love. Gil held her and kissed her, touched her slender body with an expertise that did, indeed, arouse her, but he reached his peak of pleasure quickly and was done, leaving her to wonder whether the stories she had heard of shooting stars were merely a fairy tale.
Still, she was happy. She had a husband who was respected, who would see that she was taken care of while he nobly went off to war. And when he returned—for she refused to believe that he wouldn’t—she would have the world on a string.
Three days after their weddings, Natalie and Lenore kissed their husbands good-bye. They had both decided, with Jack and Gil’s encouragement, to continue at Simmons, but rather than living at home, they moved into Gil’s house on Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge. Natalie had offered to spend her free time in Jack’s office, helping her father-in-law manage the airline, which would be running on a heavily curtailed schedule during the war. Likewise, Lenore insisted on doing what she could by way of secretarial chores to assist the older lawyer in whose hands Gil had left his practice.
Within two months after Jack’s departure, Natalie’s pregnancy was confirmed. She was delighted, as was Jack when he learned of it on his first leave from training camp. Lenore was envious and told Gil as much, then graciously endured his fervent attempts to remedy the situation when it was his turn to have leave.
By the spring of 1942, when both men had completed officers’ training and were shipped overseas, the first of the Whyte and Warren heirs were on their way.