Early in 1945, after hearing that his son Jack was safe in a German POW camp, Hemingway went “shopping for transport” and found space for himself aboard a Super Fortress that was leaving on the 6th March from Orly. On the morning of his departure, at around 3am, he left a scribbled note for Mary:

My Dearest Pickle:

I will love you always. I am going to get our new life together
started. Every minute that we are apart I shall be truly faithful. In my
heart, in my heat, and in my body.

Your Loving Husband

Mountain

The aircraft stopped over in London for refuelling, and Hemingway made his way to the Dorchester to look in on Martha – she hadn’t yet moved into her new home – who was in bed with flu, and as miserable as sin about her relationship with Gavin. Hemingway didn’t linger, just told her to get her hair cut, and to quit smoking. Martha yelled at him to get the hell out, and threw a vase of flowers at his departing back. On the landing outside he kissed a very unsuspecting bedroom maid and tipped her £5 to make sure Miss Martha was well looked after.

During the long flight across the Atlantic Hemingway was allowed to fly the aircraft for a few minutes between hands of gin rummy with a one-armed colonel from Georgia, and read most of the 1928 first edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterleys Lover, reading out loud the more sexually explicit bits:

” ‘…And softly, with that marvellous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire, softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down…’ “

A voice suddenly yells out from the back of the aircraft:

” Hey, fella, give me a break will ya.”

” Listen and learn, soldier” came Hemingway’s shouted reply. “Now where the hell was I? Ah, here we are. ‘…She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to him. And oh, if he were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helpless…’ “

The soldier shouts out again:

“Listen, man, I ain’t seen my old lady in two years, and you read that crap. Now shut your goddam mouth.”

” Sorry, son.”

Hemingway, putting the book back into his rucksack, looks out of the aircraft window and listens to the silence in the aircraft, a silence dominated by the four Pratt and Whitney engines pulling the Boeing through the thin atmosphere at fifteen thousand feet. All Hemingway could think about now was Mary.