Tycoon (26 page)

They stayed at Weldon Abbey through Christmas. Anne was going to America with Jack and had a wistful feeling that she might never see the old house again. She took Jack on a walk around the grounds, showing him the ruins of the monastery
and of the abbey church, which the first earls had allowed to crumble. To Jack's great surprise, a peacock strutted in the ruins of the church. He had not supposed this exotic species could survive the cold climate of England, but Anne told him this was by no means the only estate that kept a flock of peafowl.

On December 27 Jack and Anne left Weldon Abbey and were driven to the airport in London, where they boarded a flight for Majorca. They would stay there ten days, their honeymoon.

1946

A
NNE HAD NEVER VISITED THE
S
TATES, BUT SHE BELIEVED
New York was where she wanted to live. Jack agreed. He emphatically did not want to live in Boston. They leased a brownstone on East Fifty-fifth Street, and he took office space in the Chrysler Building.

Mickey Sullivan was with him when one of the lease agents asked Jack if he could provide credit references. “Certainly,” said Jack. “You can check with Mr. Harrison Wolcott, president of Kettering Arms, Incorporated.” Then he glanced at Mickey and showed a trace of a smile. “And Mr. Dodge Hallowell, president of Boston Common Trust.” Mickey turned away until he could choke down a laugh.

Jack did not have to seek sponsorship for a club. As a graduate of Harvard, he was welcome at the Harvard Club.

Curt's broadcasts would now originate from a studio in the Chrysler Building and go out by telephone line to the LNI stations. Curt and Betsy also moved to New York.

I
N
A
PRIL,
A
NNE FLEW TO
L
ONDON AND FROM THERE TRAV
eled to Berlin. Beautiful homes had been blasted to pieces in both cities, but many distinguished pieces of furniture, antique silver, and even china had survived and were for sale. She spent much of her own money and some of Jack's, not guessing that money was scarce for him. She shipped thirty crates of treasures to New York. Few of them arrived before autumn, but when they did and were unpacked, the Lear house on Fifty-fifth Street became a showplace of the city.

The furniture Anne had shipped to New York was of fine eighteenth-century workmanship, but none of it was delicate; the antiques were not museum pieces; they were meant to be used.

“Most of these pieces are from Berlin,” she explained to Jack as they worked together, unpacking her purchases and arranging them in their rooms. “I bought them at distress prices. If your house gets knocked about, you salvage what you can and sell it to buy food.”

“I guess you have to feel sorry for the people who owned some of these things,” Jack suggested.

“I
don't feel sorry for them at all. They made war and lost. Basil and Cecily were just two of the many millions of fine, innocent people they killed. If their treasures are picked up by the victors, that's just too bad. I'm sorry I had to pay anything at all for these pieces. I'd have stolen them if I could.”

The house could not
all
be furnished with eighteenth-century antiques. The library was not. The master bedroom was not.

Also, while Anne was in Europe, Jack had contracted with a firm of plumbers to replace all the fixtures in the four bathrooms with more modern fixtures. He could not find a marble shower stall with a needle shower and a bidet, but he did have installed a tiled stall big enough for two people to shower together.

Before she left for Europe, Anne had told him to go ahead and hire a maid; she would be satisfied with his choice. He hired a thirty-year-old Negro woman named Priscilla Willoughby, who had worked for Tallulah Bankhead until the actress's idiosyncrasies became too much for her. She came with good references, including one from the redoubtable Tallulah herself.

B
Y
D
ECEMBER THE
L
EARS CONSIDERED THEMSELVES SUFFI
ciently well established in their new home to throw a party.

They invited guests to a dinner party, to be held on Friday evening, December 13. It was to be a small party, nothing grand—a dress rehearsal for something bigger they would do later.

The invitation list was limited to old friends and associates: Herb Morrill and his wife, Esther; Mickey Sullivan and his wife, Catherine; Curt and Betsy Frederick; and Cap Durenberger and his girlfriend. Anne suggested this would be a good opportunity for her to meet Jack's family. When he demurred, she insisted. The invitations went out, and on the Tuesday before the Friday-night party, a wire from Los Angeles advised that Erich Lear and a friend, plus Robert and his wife, would be pleased and honored to attend Jack's housewarming.

The Lears arrived and checked into the Waldorf only hours before the dinner party, so Jack had no opportunity to introduce them to his new wife before the other guests arrived.

“All I can tell you, darling, is that I warned you. I hope you can still love me after you see what I come from.”

The guests were due in less than half an hour. Anne kissed Jack as she straightened his tie.

He was wearing a single-breasted tuxedo that had arrived unordered and unexpected from his Savile Row tailor, as had a tweed jacket and two pairs of slacks. Curt had explained to
Jack that the tailor regarded it as his obligation to see to it that his gentleman was properly outfitted for all occasions. Indeed, he had helped Jack to write a letter to the tailor, explaining that he would not be riding, hunting, or fishing and would not require clothes for those activities, nor would he be coming to England for the races at Ascot or doing any upland shooting in Scotland. Curt had explained also that there would be no point in asking for a bill; the tailor would submit an annual statement, as he had done during Jack's years in London. Curt also advised him to visit the tailor each time he was in London so the man could check his measurements.

Anne and Jack left their bedroom and checked the living room and dining room. Everything was ready. Priscilla, who wore a black uniform with white apron and white cap, plucked up from the floor a leaf that had fallen from a pot of gold chrysanthemums. Since there would be only twelve at table, Priscilla had suggested that Mrs. Lear need not hire a butler for the evening. The cook would take care of everything in the kitchen, and Priscilla would serve. By now Anne was confident that the maid would handle everything to perfection.

Curt and Betsy were the first to arrive.

Anne waited for them in the living room, where she stood before the fireplace. Behind her, a huge mirror half shrouded in drapes hung above the mantel. She wore a full rose-colored silk taffeta skirt, calf-length, and a black cashmere sweater with mid-length sleeves and a scoop neckline that displayed the Arthur Emerald in a setting of diamonds and white gold.

Jack greeted Curt and Betsy in the foyer. “Anne looks . . . regal, Jack,” Curt observed.

“I'm very proud of her,” Jack said simply.

“My God, what an emerald!” Betsy exclaimed when she took Anne's hand.

“It's the only significant piece of the Weldon family collection I brought with me,” Anne explained. “I have it on loan, so to speak. It has to go back, eventually. King George the Third gave this emerald to Arthur, Fifth Earl of Weldon, who had supported him in some political dispute or other. The Eighth Earl commissioned the present setting, with the diamonds.”

Jack nodded toward the voluptuous teenage nude hanging
on the wall to the right of the fireplace. “Don't think the Earl and Countess of Weldon are cheap for wanting the emerald back. The painting is a Boucher, and it was their wedding present to us.”

“I've never seen a Dürer quite like that one,” said Betsy, pointing at a framed sketch.

Anne explained. “Albrecht Dürer didn't like to go to the doctor, so he did sketches like this of himself nude, pointing to the place where he hurt—hoping the doctor could diagnose from that.”

“The painting on wood over there—of the Annunciation—is a fragment of a Grünewald altarpiece,” said Jack. “Anne looted Europe.”

“Just Berlin,” Anne said with a sly smile.

The Morrills arrived, and the Sullivans. Then came the California Lears.

Erich, at sixty-one, was now completely bald and heavier than the last time Jack had seen him.

He was accompanied by a nineteen-year-old girl with flaming red hair, big blue eyes, and a red-painted mouth. “Jack,” he said, “let me present a gal with a great future in pictures. Miss Barbara Tracy.”

Barbara Tracy was wearing a black sequined dress that clung to her. Jack sensed that she was embarrassed—though for which of several possible reasons he did not try to guess.

Erich stared into the living room and saw Anne. “Well, Jee-zuss Christ! You seem to have a talent for one thing, anyway. And a
countess
no less.”

“She's very beautiful,” said Dorothy Lear, Jack's dowdy sister-in-law. Like Eleanor Roosevelt, she was not an unattractive woman but one with an uncanny knack for choosing unflattering styles. Unfortunately, she was entirely without Mrs. Roosevelt's winning personality.

“Oh, is that a Christmas tree I see?” Bob asked. “And a menorah, too. Aren't we broad-minded?”

“Eclectic,” said Jack.

Anne greeted her in-laws with skilled and practiced warmth. If Erich expected to detect any suggestion of approval or disapproval or even of surprise, he had to be disappointed. She gave nothing away.

“How do I address you?” Erich asked with a slightly sardonic smile.” ‘Your Ladyship'?”

“Really, Mr. Lear, why don't you try ‘Anne'? I've been known to respond to it.”

Erich grinned and tightened his grip on her hand. “You're gonna make a great American!”

“With all due respect, Sir, I am going to try to avoid doing so.”

“Okay. Right. Jack didn't become an Englishman when he spent some time in England, and you're not going to turn into an American.”

“Precisely.”

Erich nodded. “I, uh, I've never seen a home furnished with such taste.”

“It wouldn't suit everybody,” said Anne. “But it suits us.”

“I hope you come to California soon and see the California style. It wouldn't suit everybody either.”

“I'm sure I'll admire it, Mr. Lear.”

“I hope you will. Everybody calls me Erich. Why don't you?”

Anne nodded. “Erich. I'm so glad we've met at last.”

A little later Jack spoke with his father. “Some girl you brought,” Jack said dryly.

“Don't kid yourself,” said Erich. “What you're lookin' at is
talent
That gal's got talent. She's a natural.”

“Natural redhead?” Jack asked with a grin.

Erich laughed. “She's no redhead!”

“Bob have her under contract?”

Erich pointed a finger at Barbara Tracy. “If I bang 'em, he signs 'em. Family obligation. He may even put her in a picture,”

At dinner, Curt was seated beside Erich.

“How many radio stations does my son own?” Erich asked Curt.

“You'll find this hard to believe, Mr. Lear, but I don't know for sure. I'm a journalist and a broadcaster. Mickey knows. Herb knows. I
think
LNI has twelve stations now. I understand we may pick up one more in January and another a month or so later.”

“He's a damned aggressive corporate raider,” said Erich
grimly. “I know something about the Richmond station. Jack went to the stockholders. Their stock could bring $15.25 a share. He offered $17.00. Management found another investor who was willing to bid $17.25. Jack stuck at $17.00 and sent a mailing to the stockholders. He told them their stock was not worth even the $15.25 but he had offered $17.00 because he knew he could make the station more profitable and increase their dividends. When the stockholders met, he owned 38 percent. The owners of 14 percent voted for his management, and Jack took over. He fired every damned executive in the house, as a warning to others who might resist him sometime. He even fired their goddamned
secretaries!
He fired two
announcers
because he didn't like their voices. He put the word out that southern accents were out; the station was to sound like a station in Washington or Philadelphia, if not a station in Boston. The local congressman had been getting free political ads. Jack told him that was illegal and from now on he'd have to pay for any ads he ran. The congressman told Jack he'd give him trouble with the FCC. Jack told him to go screw himself. In the 1946 election, the congressman scraped through with less than seven hundred votes. He ain't going to give nobody trouble, now. My son's a chip off the old block.”