Miriam took off early as she tended to, noting the red hue of the horizon, thinking of shepherds who would take warning.
They lived in the sky that month. That February had an intensity brought on by excessive sunshine, solar halos, and the appearance of the aurora borealis on the twenty-fourth. The month was packed with activity, and the sky was afire, and in the mapping, Miriam thought of the sparkle of a solar halo as a normal feature. She had decided to work her way to Birmingham, creating segments of a nearly three-dimensional map with contrasting shades of green, the textures of fields, trees, and the endless ladder of railway tracks that she’d included to help give depth and contour to the land below.
On this morning she would be back long before the weather moved in; sometimes she just needed to go up for an hour to free herself from terra firma and its entanglements. The breeze jostled her, but the air was so clear and pure it felt like her entire body was being aerated, her scalp tingling.
Frank had been ill, so she’d made several trips on her own these past weeks, going farther each time. She’d made a padded seat to protect against the cold wooden one, and a pouch to hold a tea Thermos, a tin of biscuits, a flask of whisky. The cold up there was like nothing else.
It was the paper Frank had given her two days ago that added to the normal frisson she felt when flying. Her ticket to the race. The King’s Cup.
The last time a Gipsy Moth had won this competition was 1928, and since then the modern airplane had become streamlined, efficient. They were in a new age of aerodynamics.
But the race was for all comers, so a handicap had been established. This meant that the Gipsy Moth could fly next to the new machines, and the calculation of physics would give it a fighting chance.
She held the vision of Frank in the hangar, leaning against the workbench, his face aglow with the news that they would be in the race, and in that moment, a self-reckoning. She had no idea how she’d got there, entering a race with him when there were so many other pilots around, and she said as much. Why me?
“You could be better than me, and I wouldn’t care,” he said.
“I don’t see the sense in that,” she told him. “Why would I be better than you?”
“The point is not that you would, but that I wouldn’t care. I trust you.”
“I think you are saying that we each have our handicap. Mine being a woman.”
Frank had laughed at that, said he understood why his aunt Audrey was so fond of her.
Her relationship with Frank was complicated, Miriam knew. There was the class divide, and of course, he was a man. Were people talking about the time they spent together, their newfound status as flying partners? That day of the crash they had somehow come together, each understanding what needed to be done, each understanding the other’s limits, so that together they were able to get Peter free. It was that early test that had set them, proved a lingering bond.
Miriam, who had come to trust Frank, understood that sometimes a person just knew, with a sense so deep that it might just sit in their marrow, of the strength and goodness in another. So she was happy for him in this new venture, and happy to be with him in this monumental race. Anything she’d witnessed, which some might consider a mark against his character, was brushed aside like the tiny bits of dust that she found in her airplane each morning.
She took the plane down toward Winchester to the sea, the morning light on the water like dazzling emeralds. She felt the cold front on an icy breeze that burned her cheeks and reached for a second set of gloves. As she neared Southampton, she peered over the edge and saw a cluster of warships tethered to the dock, waiting. Some days when she flew, she’d see them out at sea. Were they so eager for war that they needed a test run? She wondered what it would be like to be a pilot in the war, the town below enemy territory. Those ships eager to take aim at her. From this distance it was impossible to see the people on the ground, only evidence of their existence. Moving vehicles, smoke from chimneys, and yet inside they’d be having a cup of tea, bathing the baby, knotting a tie. How was it possible to harm them? How was it possible to destroy so much life?