Here you go. The final chapter of this story. It was difficult at times, trying to come up with almost plausible storylines for the various films. Don’t worry, while this has been going I’ve written more – maybe not so long, I seem to get one of those a year.
Enjoy! Marianne
Chapter 35

With the certificate, and from what I read in the first journal, I had the start of the book, and after that the words flowed like water over a waterfall. The opening paragraphs set the tone.

I was born in a run-down terrace house, in a run-down Midlands town that doesn’t deserve to be named. My mother was a whore, and she was called Candace Sophia Harringby. She named me Alexander Hamilton Harringby. I never knew who my father was but had a great number of ‘Uncles’ as I grew up.

Carl taught me how to stay on top of things, and, most of all, he taught me mischief. He wasn’t a bad man but did like to create mischief as a way to keep him alive. It was him that organised paperwork for me to leave my past behind. I was proud to bear the name of Alec Carl Curtis when I applied for a place in the Air Force. There, I learned to fly, in more ways than one, with Carls’ words of wisdom locked in my brain. “Whatever you do, don’t get caught.”

Over the next few months, we finished the film, and I finished the book, inserting a lot of pictures from his service days, as well as originals of all of the families. I was even there, a doe-eyed boy, gazing at my hero when he took the picture. Most of my siblings had that same look. There were several pictures from the funeral. I left out the Piper and what it contained as superfluous to the main story. I sent the Major the story and pictures in Word format, and he sent me back an official letter that allowed publication, as well as a note that said he knew a lot of guys who would buy the book.

I emailed the story to Linda for her editorial input. A couple of weeks later, she rang me to say that she was going to come to London to meet a friend of hers, a person who ran a publishing house. She had sent him my earlier works, once she had cleaned them up, and had also sent him ‘Flyboy’. He wanted to meet me and discuss business. I told her that I would love to meet him but would try to bring Horatio to add his gravitas to the situation.

I emailed Horatio with a copy of the story and told him that I was to meet a publisher, asking if he would like to join us. He said that he would let me know after he had read the story. Two days later, he said that he would be with me as he considered the story would fly off the shelves. I called Linda and we made a luncheon appointment, with the publisher paying the bill.

I went to the agency that morning, where Horatio brought me up to date on the arrests that had been made since the funeral. I hadn’t picked up on them, as the majority had been baggage handlers and ground crew, not only in this country, but also across Europe and America. From what had been on that small disc, over sixty were already behind bars. He told me that they were closing a net around the main gang members, the ones who called the shots but never got close enough to be tainted.

We went to the lunch and had a good meal, a good talk, and shook hands on a deal. It would see my original stories of the three films being released over a period, but after ‘Flyboy’. The publisher took a picture of me to use on the cover and wrote down a potted history of my achievements. The book, I was told, would be into a print run within the week, then released to critics in a month. The initial print run wasn’t huge, but this allowed for advertising when it needed to be reprinted as ‘The Wildly Successful Book by…’

Horatio was given a cheque to be put into my account. It wasn’t huge, but I would get a fair chunk of every book that left the shelves. Linda was given a cheque as a ‘finder’s fee and editing’. We all left the table, happy that it had been finalised. I was told that book signings would be organised later.

First, though, was the launch of the film, now called ‘Alone!’ That was, I thought, better than ‘Fly’. Over the filming time, Chloe had become a popular cast member, with her given several screenplays to read. She had also fallen for one of our camera crew and had moved out of the house about two weeks ago. I had asked her about her love life, prior to our meeting, and she had told me that she had boyfriends, with the last one breaking up a few weeks before I met her.

We attended the previews and spoke to the critics. They were in praise for the film and were especially taken with the pairing of us sisters. That became a talking point after the premiere and first few weeks on screens. All of a sudden, there were screenplays which had us together, as explorers, policewomen, criminals, dancers, you name it. When ‘Flyboy’ hit the shops, the interest exploded, with our real-life story out there for all to see. The film and book went into the stratosphere. I went from wondering what I was going to do, to wondering how I was going to fit it all in.

With my ‘Angel Flight’ idea, we had registered ‘Unicorn Air’ as a charitable organisation, offering transport for the needy and infirm, and I had seeded it with enough funds to pay for an office and receptionist. Her work was, so far, minimal, but we had her designing fliers and putting together lists of places that we would consider going to, and from.

My old boss had come up trumps, offering the charity the use of a hangar at Gatwick, which was too small for the aircraft he was now using, but too big to use as a club base. We could fit all of our small fleet inside, and it had its own fuel tank, which he had left half-full. The other women fliers that finally came on board put their planes there. It was a win for them, with their pride and joy under cover.

We did start getting work, moving sick children of the aristocracy into London for hospital. They were then generous with their donations. All our planes had been given treatment to be able to carry a stretcher and life monitoring equipment. We had developed a working relationship with the London City airport, so that we could land, transfer the patient, and take off again, without parking fees, and a heavily reduced landing fee. I had been too busy to be a working member, so far, and both Pipers were still at Redhill.

That changed, one day, when I was called to attend to a job where I, and the 600, had been specifically asked for. I was told to fly to our Gatwick base, where I would pick up Sally, an ex-747 pilot and one of the Ninety-Nines, as well as two passengers. The flight was to Aerodromo der la Cerdanya, in the Catalonian region of Spain, with the return back to Gatwick. Both Sally and I were all-weather rated, and she had Garmin fitted to her older Lear Jet.

I told Adrian that I was off on a job and drove to Redhill to get the 600 into the air. I had plenty of fuel but would top up from our tank. I landed at Gatwick and taxied to the hangar. There was an ambulance parked inside the hangar, and I went in to file our flight plan, only to find Sally was there and had done it for us. Our passengers were a woman in a nurses uniform, and a man in scrubs, with a gauze mask over a large moustache. They helped to load the stretcher attachment and put their bags in the luggage compartment.

Fully fuelled, I got permission to taxi out, and then to take off. The weather in the mountains north of Spain was given as changeable. The flight there was unremarkable, with our passengers keeping to themselves. The landing was in misty rain, and we taxied to the small collection of huts where an ambulance was waiting. Our passengers opened up and jumped out, with the man now looking like a Spanish labourer, without the scrubs and with his moustache in full view. He opened the back of the ambulance and pulled out a set of chocks, putting them by the wheels.

Then, another two men, in scrubs, got out of the ambulance and carried a stretcher over to the plane, where they loaded it on the mounting rack. From the cockpit, the guy on the stretcher looked in his mid-twenties. Then, we had to wait for an official to inspect everything before we could take off again. It was during the waiting period that our original male passenger took his bag out of the back and put it in the ambulance, with the other two guys bringing heavy bags and putting them in the baggage compartment.

When the official arrived, Sally and I were out of the cockpit to show our passports and the flight plan back to Gatwick with our sick passenger. When I opened the luggage compartment to let him look, there was no sign of the big bags. Our passengers were now the nurse and one of the ambulance guys, who showed their passports. Our original passenger had a chat to the official, in Spanish. I had learned enough to know that they were talking about the chances that Barcelona had this season. The chocks were pulled away, and our moustachioed friend pulled them towards the clubhouse. The ambulance left and we were free to go.

On the way back, I realised that we had, unwittingly, been party to something out of a Le Carre novel. We had taken an agent into Spain and swapped him for someone coming home. Who the poor sod was in the stretcher was I would never know, as he was put into the ambulance, back at Gatwick, along with the big bags. With the other two inside, it drove out of our hangar and out of our life. I guess that we had just had our first job from some government arm, as our payment towards getting it all organised so easily.

I never bothered to tell Horatio, but he did give me a wink the next time we discussed finances, and he told me that we had been given a nice little government grant. That was the first of several trips I was asked for, usually to a remote place, but always bringing someone out on a stretcher, in an unconscious state, and always with extra baggage in the secret compartment.

And so, my life continued. I had given the church a donation that had paid for the building of the bell tower. With my own wedding being so well reported, a lot of couples wanted to wed in the same church as a film star, with the vicar being canny enough to suggest that a donation to the bell fund would be good. That had resulted in them being able to install a set of automated bells, operated by computer, so that you could choose the tune, or the changes wanted.

Chloe and I made more films together, for both general exhibition and for sale to streaming services. We did our own detective series, with us being members of a secret government agency, tracking down spies and foreign agents. That ran for about four years before it faded. Chloe was a star in her own right and had picked up her own awards.

May and Bob were regular visitors, and we had a number of good parties in the back of the house. We all got together for Chloe’s wedding at the same church that had seen me and Jeff. It was the first time I heard the bells in the tower. I, and many of the congregation, had tears in our eyes as we listened to the ringing.

We saw a bit of our extended families, and Linda was a regular visitor to the house in the school holiday periods. It was her that pushed me to write more. I wrote three more books over the years, all as preliminary works to the screenplays. Younger Films turned them all into films, after the book had been on the market. I was in high demand for book signing tours, as well as visiting film events. I had been in the game long enough for ‘Turbulence’ to be considered a classic, and Adrian started a series of retrospective Julia Leigh events that had us flying around the country, and then around the world.

Of course, as you age, so does everyone else. My mother passed away, followed a few months later by Bert. Jeff died in America from an overdose, a solid body of work to his name. Tony finally had a return of his problems, going downhill quickly. Kym and Kurt were fully retired and living in their home with a full set of carers. A lot of actors that I had worked with decided it was time to die or retire, and I was invited to a lot of retirement parties and funerals. I decided that I would truly retire.

‘Unicorn Air’ was getting steady work and steady donations. We were the go-to transporter for the well-to-do, our film friends, even minor royalty, seeing that we were discrete and reliable. I wasn’t needed and gave the Cheyenne to the charity, a nice tax dodge. They sold it by auction, with it going to a museum that would use it for short scenic flights, my ownership of it giving it extra attraction. Adrian sold the plane he was currently flying, and we used the 600 whenever we wanted to go anywhere.

The villa lease had been given up, and the apartment in Palma was sold. We bought a place near Nice to retire to. We gave up the lease for the house that had been our home for so long and bought an apartment in a tower for use whenever we would be in Britain. Jacquie and Bronte were absorbed into the administration of Younger Films, both on good salaries, and found themselves a small house for them and their two little ones.

Larry and Brendon surprised us by setting up their own company, training butlers and bodyguards, finding a place big enough to be a home and an academy. We had all done well out of our time in the house, with all my staff amassing a good amount in savings, having all their food and accommodation supplied over the years.

Molly came with Adrian and I to Nice, the 600 housed at the Cote D’Azur airport. Our home had a lovely view, plenty of rooms and a study overlooking the sea where I could sit and think about ideas for stories. A couple of years later, with me in my late fifties, I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BAFTA’s, the year after that, the Academy matched it. Two years after that I was awarded an O.B.E. for services to the film industry and to the country, with the setting up of ‘Unicorn Air’.

I became a celebrity, as a film star and respected author with a lot of influential friends. We were invited to many parties but didn’t go to a lot. I did regular book tours, mainly to Book Weeks as part of bigger festivals. I was also on call for Film Retrospectives. A couple of my works had become classed as classics, with ‘An Interesting Occupation’ being one. A few times, there were events which linked ‘Alone!’ to ‘Flyboy’ where they saw the film and bought the book from one of the stars, sometimes with Chloe coming along as well.

I sold my share of Younger Films to Chloe, now she was earning more than I was at her age. It was now the third biggest production house in the country, having taken over the entire studio. I planned to live out my life as a grand dame, in the sunshine, with Molly continuing to live with us until she passed on. Adrian finally gave his ex-wife the control of his share of the family business, so they went through an uncontested divorce, and we then married in a civil ceremony in Nice.

We were absorbed into the social fabric of the Cote D’Azur, being asked to join various community groups and charities. Life was good until, some years later, Adrian had a massive heart attack and was dead before he hit the floor. The sixties is far too early to die, and far too early to be a widow. It turned my world upside-down.

Molly and I were like a couple of old friends, and we spoke about what we should do. Over the course of a few days, we decided to move back to Britain, in the tower apartment, where we would be closer to our old friends. Once more, the 600 carried a coffin, with us taking Adrian home to Bristol, where he was laid to rest next to his parents, with both me and his ex-wife holding Molly as we cried over the grave.

The house in Nice went onto the market, where it sold well, and we settled into the apartment in London with us both sharing household duties. It didn’t take long for me to be taken into the circuit, once more, and our lives picked up. Molly wasn’t left out of invitations, and we found ourselves as regular guests at premieres and private screenings. I had loaned all my awards to Younger Films, to be displayed in the reception at the studio, joined by the original Best Picture statuette and display that had been on show at the agency. With others they had won since, it was an impressive display.

Michael had closed the London offices and had set the agency in bigger premises at the studio. The number of stars on the books had quadrupled since I was taken on. The staff had doubled, and Michael’s successor, Justin, was now running the whole business. Jim and Belle now had three children, with one girl called Jamie, and had moved to Paris, with Jim now wheelchair bound. Cynthia and Moyra had adopted two girls, now in university, and had settled near Ashford, to live on their accumulated earnings and the interest from dividends.

David was now the studio CEO, with a good dozen or more in his directing team. He had set up a training school for all the duties within the industry and were now training all of the crews in-house. This created a particular level of production that set the ‘Younger Standard’ ensuring that the studio never put out second-rate product.

I found myself being called in at odd times to teach location finding, with particular emphasis on sightlines, seeing that this had been my own skill. I would take groups out to scout for locations for films that were being proposed, bringing our ideas back to the directors to follow up. Molly would come along, acting as the den-mother to make sure we all came back as we had left. It gave both of us a reason to get up in the morning.

One of the other classes I was involved in was screenplay writing, with a few good writers to work with. I set them a task to write a screenplay from a book of their choice. They chose ‘Flyboy’. As each scene was presented to me, I could see it in my mind, in eager expectation for what they would produce next. I was too close to the concept, so we presented it to David and his directors for final assessment. I wasn’t surprised when they wanted to film it.

It became the main film for the following year. I would be in the studio, watching a young actor playing me as a young boy. May came down to see them playing her wedding day scene. The guy they had as young Alec had all the sex appeal that the real Alec had, and the even younger Alec had boyish charm in the scenes with the whores. There had been a picture of Carl, and every effort was made to have the characters looking as close to the real people as possible with the crews going overseas to the right locations to film the postings.

They had even been able to get a couple of Typhoons and Tornados for the airfield scenes. The studio pulled out all the stops for this one, with it becoming the most expensive film it had made without any input from other studios. Justin explained it to me when I queried the expense.

“It’s a true story, Julia, with a fighter pilot hero who is a serial bigamist and lawbreaker. It has two future film stars as actually being in the story and is an adaptation of a best-selling book written by one of them. Of course, we’re giving it our all, it’s going to be a box-office hit and we’ll make a lot of money out of this. The film will be your crowning glory and you’ll be able to fully retire after you finish the round of interviews and the premieres.”

The film followed the book, but with me being the catalyst in his downfall by finding the marriage certificates. Eric came out of retirement to play Horatio, another one who had passed on, and the Major, now retired, was pleased that they had one of the best actors around to play him. As in the book, the last part glossed over his years in prison, as well as the arms-dealing reason for his long incarceration. The 600 got its scene in bringing his coffin south, without saying that it had been his plane, and they recreated the pomp and ceremony of the pick-up and the flight, including the helicopter escorts. The funeral had actual footage taken at the event.

The credits were run on one side of the screen, while the other side was taken up with pictures of the real people, along with what they had done with their lives. For me, it was sad to see the ones we had lost along the way. Our twin brothers had passed on, but had read the book first, telling me that they loved it. Of the wives, only Janet and May were still alive to be at the premiere, and only the brother from Bahrain and us four youngest sisters attended. Even Molly, who had watched a lot of the studio work, didn’t last long enough to see the completed film. The 600 got another trip with a coffin, down to Bristol where she was laid next to her family.

The film was released fifty years after ‘Turbulence’. So much had happened in that time. The 600 was then stored at the Gatwick hangar and would then be given to ‘Unicorn Air’ along with a very healthy donation, no doubt ending up in a museum as it was the last one still flying. Before that, I flew myself to various places to be seen and to sign everything put in front of me, along with the other stars of ‘Flyboy’. One destination where it wasn’t needed was the Palace, where I was made a Dame at the ripe old age of seventy-eight.

After that, I sold the apartment and went to live in a retirement home with other old actors, spending our days reliving our pasts and laughing at the good times we had had, and crying, together, over the bad ones. Chloe and Linda would come to see me to tell me the news.

I had lived a good life, had met, and loved a lot of good people. My accidental intersection with the projectile vomit had shifted me onto another track, and my transition was not even a discussion point now. To everybody around me, I was Dame Julia Leigh, film star, director, writer of screenplays and respected author of a number of best-selling books. Perhaps, one day, they may make a documentary of my life, with another young lad playing the part of Jamie.

I was finding it harder to get around and started thinking about my life ending. I had asked that my funeral service would be held in the church where Jeff and I had married. That way, I could hear the bells of their tower one last time. Then, I would have my last flight in the Piper to look forward to, now being carefully maintained as it was almost as old as I was. I had asked the ladies at ‘Unicorn Air’ to take me for a scenic trip, landing at Northolt.

The son of the funeral director would collect my coffin. I had already arranged for a plot close to my father, and the service would be held in the church where he had been farewelled. I would be under the flightpath of the planes that were my start in my working life, and the means by which my life took a fundamental change.

I often went off to sleep with a smile as I pictured the scene in my mind. Two headstones, one for Alec Carl Curtis and the other for Julia Leigh Curtis. Neither name being the ones that was on our birth certificates. For one, the difference was for illegal means, for me the change was expected in the film industry. As they say, ‘A rose by any other name……’

Marianne Gregory © 2024