Flight from Berlin Read Online Free Page B

Missouri, was forever being mistaken for a guy, but she didn’t seem to care. All the same, her flat-chested manliness was sure to raise eyebrows when they got to Berlin. Helen had even more brawn than her archrival, Stella ‘the Fella’ Walsh.
    Eleanor washed her hair as best she could under the thin trickle, then slipped into her bathrobe and lit a Chesterfield. The cabin vibrated from the hum of the engines below. One by one, she pulled out the gowns hanging in the tiny closet, cocking her head as she appraised each in turn, before settling for a shining pearl grey chiffon number to wear with her white-sable stole. She laid it on her bed and was choosing some jewellery when Marjorie and Olive returned.
    ‘So, guys,’ she said, ‘how was your turn in the Olympic paddling pool?’
    Marjorie stared at Eleanor, wide-eyed. ‘Is that what you’re wearing to dinner?’
    ‘Sure. Why, what are you wearing?’
    ‘Our team uniforms.’
    Eleanor wouldn’t even be joining them for dinner if Mrs Hacker hadn’t ordered her to be present for Brundage’s speech. But she had no intention of sticking around afterwards for whatever entertainment the team had organised. The playwright Charlie MacArthur, whom she’d run into on deck earlier, had invited her to join him and his wife, Helen Hayes, for a little drink with the press corps up in first class. Now that sounded like a party worth going to.
    There was a knock on the door, and the cabin boy entered, smirking, with Eleanor’s curling tongs.
    ‘Got them heated on the chef’s grill, ma’am.’
    ‘Thanks, kid,’ Eleanor said, handing him a second pair. ‘Girls, whatever you want, just ask Hal.’
    ‘That’s right. Coffee . . . tea . . . me ,’ the boy said as he left.
    She took out her small beauty mirror, balanced it against her trunk, and blew smoke thoughtfully into her reflection.
    ‘Eleanor,’ said Olive in a schoolma’am voice. ‘You’re smoking again. ’
    ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Eleanor said as she set about waving her hair. ‘I train on cigarettes and champagne.’
    S he found most of her teammates already assembled in the noisy C deck dining room. They were so many that they ate in two sittings, but all had gathered to hear Avery Brundage’s speech, with dozens standing around the edges of the room. Jesse Owens entered, looking a little delicate, she thought. She’d heard he’d spent the day in his cabin, seasick.
    Eleanor found herself sitting at a table with the decathlete Glenn Morris, the five-thousand-metre runner Lou Zamperini, and two relay runners, Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman. Morris had matinee-idol looks: six foot two, with brooding, Cherokee eyes and a chin like a DC Comics superhero.
    The noise subsided as Avery Brundage strode in, followed by two AOC officials and Mrs Hacker, the team chaperone, self-important with her clipboard. She’d applied some lipstick, Eleanor noticed.
    Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee, had on his buttoned-up double-breasted suit and rimless eyeglasses, which, together with his bolt-upright posture, gave him a trim, conceited appearance. He was a tall ex-pentathlete, broad shouldered, and at forty-nine wore his age well. Not handsome exactly—his chin and forehead were large and plain—but he had the charisma of conviction. Eleanor knew from the public beefs he’d had with her dad that Brundage took himself seriously in the extreme. Both were men of strong principles, but where her father’s were inclusive and egalitarian, she suspected Brundage’s were quite the opposite. He stood still, waiting until the dining room had fallen silent.
    ‘Fellow Olympians,’ he began, ‘we are finally on our way.’ Cheers and whistles from the audience. ‘You, America’s finest, are participating in an event that enshrines the world’s noblest sporting ideal: the Olympic Games. It is an ideal that exemplifies all that is good in man’s nature, an ideal that transcends the quotidian