She focused instead on the bride. She was pretty enough, but Barbara wondered if she knew the man she had just married. She wondered, too, what his secretary thought about the marriage.
By coincidence, only a few weeks later, she was in the airport in San Diego when she looked at a copy of the Chicago Tribune at a newsstand. On an impulse she turned to the society pages and saw another wedding photo, this one with Chet Armstrong, Jr. He was, if anything, even more handsome in white tie and tails than she had tried to forget he was. Standing beside him was a slender and beautiful but innocent-looking blonde beauty who looked like she had just graduated from high school.
The wedding was reported in great detail, but Barbara only read part of it. The groom was identified as "the son of Chester Armstrong, Sr., and Eloise Fothergill Armstrong. He is partner with his father in Armstrong Enterprises, an international manufacturing, marketing, and investment corporation dealing, among other things, in aeronautics and munitions, and holding numerous government contracts to provide new and reconditioned parts for airplanes."
Munitions? Barbara wondered what that sideline of Armstrong Enterprises was all about.
She almost tore the paper up, but was curious about the bride, so she read on: "The former Edwina Carruthers Livingston is the daughter of Edwin and Melissa Carruthers Livingston of Kenilworth and a recent graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her father is a Chicago attorney, political leader, and North Shore property developer."
Good luck, Edwina, Barbara wished her silently. You're going to need it! Then she bought the paper and promptly threw it in the nearest trash can.
Afterward, she gave no more thought to either Ken Knowland's marriage or Chet Armstrong's, but just hoped their wives could keep them on a short leash.
As autumn 1940 approached, Barbara got another letter from Gail, also postmarked London: "No bombing here yet, but everyone fears it's coming. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth is urging the women of Britain to keep up their war work in every field of national service. Toward this goal, in September the Air Transport Auxiliary was set up. British women pilots are ferrying aircraft from the factories to Royal Air Force airfields, relieving male fighter and bomber pilots for combat missions over Nazi-controlled France.
"At first, I thought it would be exciting to join them. But then I realized it would be unfair to Timmy, to risk my life in another country's war. So far, we're staying out of this one.
I don't know how much longer we will or can. But I have to think of Timmy first, so I'll just stay with being a stewardess. At least for now. But you...?"