“The children have arrived in Harwich. Almost two hundred from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that was destroyed during riots.” Edmund held the newspaper before him, reading to Miriam.
Perhaps because this had been so much on their minds—children, that is—this particular story brought the possibility of war to them, a reminder of the superb and cruel irony that life could present. Miriam fixed eggs on toast for them both before leaving to go on her flight with Frank.
“But they’ll be placed in homes . . . good homes,” she’d told him.
“Good homes!” His look incredulous. “Who will determine what good homes these children should go to? The wounds have penetrated. The scars are for life.”
She’d never heard him speak so harshly, the paper snapping with each turn. Was he angry at Hitler? The authorities at the orphanage? The people who had taken them in? There were so many ways to see why this moved him so. The loss of his parents when he was not quite a man, the loss of his own unborn children. But there was no way to take this further, to move from this distressing situation that was sending so many signals about war, about humanity, about how divisive they could be in their own kitchen, with their own private fears, disappointments. They were operating as islands at the moment, visiting each other through careful words, small tentative gestures.
She went to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and yearned to pull him into her arms, but he was too worked up, too detached from her in this moment.
“They need food, shelter.” This would only rile him.
“They need so much more than we can give them.”
Miriam wondered if he wanted to take one in, provide a home, at least for the time being. This thought frightened her, the responsibility of it. Already she was moving toward some other service if war came. She rubbed her hand along the side of his cheek. “You’re getting yourself worked up, Edmund.”
And later, during that flight when clusters of cumulous clouds splashed ominous shadows across the landscape, making her mapping more guesswork than precise scenes, she could not get these children out of her mind, nor the conversation with Edmund, who said that they were being moved around like cattle, that they would never get over this displacement. They had already suffered having to leave their childhoods, their mothers, their fathers, and now they were sent to a holding pen in another country.
These worries, she thought, as she banked to return to the airfield, why did they chase her here in the sky, her one safe place?
The landing had been one of her best, and when she and Frank jumped from the cockpit and folded the wings back to take the plane to the hanger, he told her so.
“You’ll be ready for the King’s Cup,” Frank said, but he had turned to Peter, who had come to help take the airplane inside, and whose wry smile made Miriam wonder if there was a joke being played at her expense. She left quickly to change from her flying suit and realized that she’d forgotten her maps in the airplane. The doors remained open and she could hear no voices so she thought they’d left, but when she rounded the corner she sighted them, Frank’s hand at the back of Peter’s head, their cheeks resting against each other as Peter held him in a half embrace.
The wind blew up, sending debris skittering across the floor, but the two of them seemed oblivious to the wind, the leaves, the quick intake of Miriam’s breath. She knew she ought to step back, knew that with the slightest turn of a head she would be caught, but she was so immediately absorbed in the scene, shocked by the daring, the brutal truth of what she was seeing, but also by the tenderness, the shy expression of adoration that comes from fresh love.
She took a step back, turned, and took long, brisk strides away and waited a full ten minutes before returning to the empty hangar.