Chapter 7 – Pacts and Persuasion

As summer drew near, Frederick was looking forward to the experience of flying. He'd decided that instead of going to summer school, he would head down to Texas to get his private pilot license. To earn the money to pay for his flight lessons, he was planning to get himself a part-time gig pumping aviation fuel for private planes. It wasn't just that he was hungry for the experience of getting airborne; he also wanted to maximize his chances of getting a pilot slot, and clocking in some flying hours of his own would be helpful.

Though they knew it was a childish practice, Anne and Frederick ended up making all kinds of pacts before they parted for the summer. They promised to send each other email every day; to keep up with their respective running distances; for Frederick to bring Anne's pig, now reduced to a sagging frame of foam-board, up with him when he did his first solo; and so on.

"Do you want to spit in your hand and shake on it?" Anne grinned.

"Naw. Didn't you outgrow all that by fourth grade already?"

When Anne saw Frederick off for the summer, he was sporting a new bumper sticker on his creaky rust-brown '86 Pontiac, a gift from her. It read: "I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning."


Charles was all too eager to welcome Anne home when she finished summer school in August. They'd have even less time together than during winter break, for the fall semester would be starting in less than three weeks. There was something he wanted to say to her, and he'd been gathering up his courage for months on end to bring up the subject. It proved unfortunate, though, that he chose his own front porch as the place to bring it up.

"Say, Anne, um, do you … have you ever thought it possible that we could be more than friends?"

"Charles, I'm sorry. We'll always be the best of friends. In fact you're the best brother I could ever have. To my mind, we'll always be Fievel and Tanya. But that's the thing, you see – there's somebody out there, someone whom I love, not as a brother. Charles… I don't know how to say this, but – I already have a boyfriend." She could barely get out the last few words, and it was almost like a whisper when she said it.

This was the last thing that Charles had expected to hear. After all, hadn't he been the guy who'd been closest to her up until they went to college? Still, he had to fashion some kind of a response for civility's sake, lame though it might be.

"Who… who is he?" Charles knew he probably looked and sounded as deflated as he felt.

"Um… someone I met in college." Anne rarely mumbled, but this was one of the most uneasy conversations she'd ever had, especially with Charles.

Their awkward silence was broken by two small figures shooting out from under the porch, and running right past them into the house. They could hear Louisa's voice yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! Guess what? Anne has a boyfriend!"

"Well, isn't that sweet." Lucy Musgrove appeared in the doorway. "Anne, dear, why don't you tell us about him? And are we going to have the honour of seeing him soon?"

Before Anne could reply, the twins, who had been trailing behind their mother, cut in with their sing-song voices, "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a golden carriage!"

It couldn't have been a worse time for that interruption, though Anne reminded herself that Mrs. Musgrove probably had no idea of the situation she'd just walked in on, and that the twins were probably too young to fully understand the conversation they'd been eavesdropping on.

"I – I'm sorry, but maybe it'd be better to talk about this some other day. You see, I… I haven't told my family about him yet. And - no, he isn't in town. He's got a summer job in Texas, pumping aviation fuel. It's to pay for his flight school."

For the longest time, nobody said anything. Mrs. Musgrove could sense that definitely, there was more to the situation than met the eye, for Anne was as white as a sheet and Charles just slouched there, speechless, with the most pitiful hangdog expression on his face.

Finally, Anne stood and made to leave. She was relieved that this time, she'd come from somewhere else and driven there by herself, rather than the usual practice of Charles picking her up from her home. At least that spared Charles from the awkwardness of having to see her home, after all that had transpired between them that day.


"What a joke, Anne! I never pegged you for playing such a brilliant prank - imagine, you having a fling with some guy working in a gas station? That's a hoot if there ever was one!"

There had never been any point in explaining or reasoning as far as Elizabeth was concerned, and Anne knew that now was definitely not the time to start. And unlike all those past times when she'd lost it at Elizabeth, she now had the maturity to act on her knowledge that walking away was the only way to get out of such situations with her head held high. It was lucky that Mary was spending that summer at a school friend's summer house in Martha's Vineyard; at least she had only one sister at home to contend with her over the issue.

"It's not like that, and you know it. In any case, I'm not going to discuss the situation with you any further."

"Anne! Whatever happened to your sense of -"

By the time Elizabeth found her tongue to come back with her standard retort, she found that Anne had already left the room and she was talking to thin air.


"Anne." Walter hated giving fatherly lectures, or in general, dealing with any kind of disciplinary matters pertaining to the girls. So when he summoned her to his study, Anne knew it had to be serious.

"It has been brought to my attention that you have been flirting around with some young punk working in a gas station. Is this true?"

"No, Father." Anne hesitated. "I mean, yes, I am seeing somebody. But it isn't like that. He's in my year at MIT, and also planning to major in aerospace studies. And he's an ROTC scholar."

"I see. And what is this young man doing for the summer?"

"He's going to flight school in Texas, so he can clock up more flying hours to improve his chances of becoming a military pilot."

"Then what is this whole business about him pumping gas? Can you possibly offer any explanation for the rumor that's going around?"

"Well, Frederick is pumping gas - but... but it's not what Liz thinks it is. He's working at an FBO* over the summer. And yes, his job is to refuel private planes. It's to pay for his flying lessons."

"Frederick, is it now?" Walter fixed Anne with a long, hard stare full of disgust and derision. "Well, well. I hope I do not need to remind you again of your duty as a member of the Elliot family. If you must have your fun, see to it that you don't ever disgrace the Elliot name. If you get pregnant, you're out. And I don't want to hear any more rumors. You are going to end it, and end it quietly. I don't want to hear a single word about it from anyone. Is that clear?"

"Yessir." Anne just wanted to end the entire conversation, though she had no intention at all of doing what he said.


"Anne, child. Tell me about your young man."

If there was anyone in her family that Anne thought of as safe, it would have to be Grandma Stevenson. Ever since their mother had died in childbirth when Mary was born, Grandma had been just like a mother to the Elliot girls. Grandma lived in a smaller house near the Elliots' home in Grosse Pointe, and when the girls were growing up, Grandma had been the one who'd dropped them off and picked them up from school; fussed over them whenever they were ill; blown over scraped knees; and oohed and aahed at their little art projects and the A's that Anne had scored in school. And Grandma was the only person in the family who had a soft spot for Anne, because Anne was the one who reminded her most of her late daughter. To Grandma, Anne was like Elizabeth Elliot nee Stevenson reborn; and she loved Anne most because of it.

"Well, where do I start? His name, I guess. His name is Frederick Wentworth. And he's in my year at MIT, and he's really smart. In any math course, he beats me hands down, and he's been giving me a good run for my money in design and mechanics class. We started out as rivals, and then we were friends - and then, well, Frederick's the only guy out there who likes me for being me, you know? So among all the guys who've asked me out, well, he's the only one I ever really wanted to be with."

"And what about dear Charles, then?"

"Charles? How did you know?"

"Mrs. Musgrove had a word with me about it when she dropped by day before yesterday. Poor boy, he's really upset about the whole thing. Anne, are you sure you won't reconsider?"

Although Anne felt sorry for Charles, now that she knew just how cut up he was about the whole thing, she couldn't help also feeling a little irritated with him for telling his mother about it. After all, nothing had ever started between them, and if he hadn't told, the matter would have remained strictly between the two of them without anybody else having to know.

"Grandma, you know I've always thought of Charles as a brother. And I don't know - it wouldn't be fair to him for us to get together, and then for me - or for him - to find out that actually we wanted something else, or someone else. We were still young, I guess. And besides, he didn't actually ask me to be his girlfriend until now, and - and I'm already with Frederick."

"Well, you're still young yet. And you still have your whole future ahead of you. There's no guarantee that things won't change in a year, or in a few years. It won't be long before you have to start thinking about how you'll be carrying on the Elliot legacy. And no matter what anyone else says, you must believe in yourself that you can do the Elliot name proud.

"This young man, is he financially stable? I hear he's been taking on a summer job to finance his flying lessons?"

"Yes. That's true. And I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of. After all, he's earning an honest living, and not all of us were fortunate enough to be born with the resources to chase our dreams. In fact, I admire him all the more because he hasn't got anything handed to him on a platter - no parents, no family wealth, nothing. Everything he's got so far has been earned through his own hard work, and that's really an achievement. Not many people have that kind of independence, especially when they're just 19 years old. Every day, I look at Frederick and I think about how blessed I am to not have those kinds of worries - that even if I am funding my own studies, at least I have the security of a home, a family and a business to fall back on."

"But have you thought about what will happen to you after college? Someday you'll graduate, and you'll have to make a decision about your future. You've had so many advantages when you were growing up, Anne, and it'd be a waste to throw all of that away. Everything we've got today is only possible because of the hard work your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before that, put in to build up ELMSCO. So you have a duty to come back, and to carry ELMSCO on for the next generation. And the reason why I never said a word about you studying engineering is exactly because you're the only one of your generation with the potential to really make a difference to ELMSCO. You're intelligent, capable and responsible.

"I'm not questioning your young man's character, or honor, or whatever you young people want to call it these days. Of course, now it's easy for you to say, you're still in school and being together is easy for you when both of you are living on campus. But after graduation, can it still be the same? If you come back to ELMSCO, can your father accept Frederick? Once you marry someone, you marry their family – and this applies to Frederick as well as to you. So you also have to ask yourself if Frederick can accept your father – you know already how your father feels about him.

"And if you don't come back to ELMSCO, what kind of a life can Frederick provide for you? Whatever standard of living he can achieve, especially in the beginning, will be a far cry from everything you have been used to here. Think about that – and whether you can accept it."

All this was totally new to Anne – marriage had been far from her thoughts, even after she'd started officially going out with Frederick. At their age, weren't they entitled to live in the present, after all? Still, none of what Grandma said, legitimate though it might be, could change Anne's mind about sticking with Frederick. She knew that she had never been more in her element than after she went to MIT and met Frederick, and no number of obstacles they might face in getting started with adult life would change the fact that it was all worthwhile.

"I have every faith in Frederick. He's driven enough to give himself a realistic shot at achieving his goals, and as for his career, the Air Force will take care of that. He's on an ROTC scholarship, after all."

"Then you have even more to think about. In the military, he could be posted somewhere that you can't go to, and then you'll have to cope with the household, even children maybe, all on your own. And you can't be sure if he'll ever come back. That also means for sure that you can't join ELMSCO and be with him at the same time.

"I'm not asking you to make a decision now. But you're still young, and it's wise to keep your options open. Don't rush to tie yourself down, because when you're older, more options will come your way. So all I'm asking you to do is to keep an open mind so you can take advantage of those options when they come up. You're right about one thing – you grew up very lucky indeed. Don't negate all the advantages you grew up with – it wouldn't be worth it."


By the time she was due to return to school, Anne was thankful she'd driven her car home from Cambridge instead of flying back. It wasn't just about saving money – the drive, which she spaced out over two days, allowed her to escape all the lecturing, chiding and prodding a little earlier.

Besides, Anne was desperate to go back to Frederick. She'd never felt this alone in her life before – in the past, Grandma had always been on her side, but now it seemed that nobody at home was at all in favor of her relationship with Frederick, not even Grandma. Anne now knew that if she and Frederick were to have a future together, she'd have to be financially independent from Walter, and she'd have to start thinking about how she could strike out on her own after graduation. It was a new thought, but one that she doggedly clung to. All of it would be worthwhile in the end, she was sure.

And while making that resolution to become independent of her family, Anne resolutely kept silent about Frederick. She'd make sure that until they secured their future together, her family members would never hear the name of Frederick Wentworth again. That way, they couldn't pour more cold water on her, or on them.


*An FBO (Fixed Base Operator) is a facility catering to the needs of private aircraft. Typically, it provides space to park, service, and re-fuel the aircraft, as well as lounge and conference facilities for the passengers and private aviators.