“You need to be part of this,” Frank told her. “Flying a Lancaster one day, a Hurricane the next. Spitfires.” His arms raised in excitement.
“I’m flying for the race now, Frank. That’s all I can think about.”
Miriam had been glad when Frank went to Maidenhead for the Air Transport Auxiliary training, and equally glad when he had returned. She’d been unwell for a time after her procedure as she’d come to call it. Not physically unwell. She’d been lucky in that regard, but unwell in her mind. It was hard for her to say what was wrong exactly, just that she wasn’t quite right. She’d flown on her own, continuing with her mapping, and that had been good for her. This darkness and need for release familiar to her. It took her back to those days when she was a teenager, unable to focus, too quickly drawn into distractions, a kind of dim fog that she carried around to the point that her mother would tell her to shake out of it and get on with her work. Her efforts were rather mechanical back then, a slow slog through the day when only a long walk would have been a remedy. This time it was flying—that isolation, the feeling of escape, not from anyone in particular, but to be set apart from the world seemed a just and necessary thing.
When Frank returned, she was forced out of her stupor, his newfound enthusiasm bringing her back. By then Chamberlain had pledged his support of Poland if they were to be invaded, and suddenly the war was back on everyone’s mind.
“We’ll win the race, then you’ll join the ATA. It will give you the training to pilot bigger airplanes.”
“How do you know I want to fly bigger airplanes?” Miriam asked. “How do you know that’s what I want?”
Frank exuberance was somewhat jarring, the constant talk of the planes he would fly. The ATA was not yet up and running, but this preparation had hooked him, told him he had a higher purpose, and this troubled her, that war would have the power to do this. This was the reason she was curt with him when he suggested she could join the ATA, too. There was talk of opening up a women’s pool, and he thought her as good a pilot as anyone he’d seen. It seemed obvious to him that she join.
But she was trying to pull herself out of her thick and gloomy state, keeping her sights on the King’s Race, keeping her mapping going, flying farther and farther each time. She didn’t want to think of more change.
Everything was surging forward. Audrey needed her help, and there was talk of a trip to London. Stella Browne had invited Audrey to speak at one of her events, and Audrey had told Miriam she must accompany her, for strength and good luck if nothing else. Edmund needed her, too, but not in the way he once had. He was constantly escaping into his garden, putting in more flowers despite the Ministry of Agriculture’s advice to grow more vegetables. He had started building a pond of all things and could see no sense in installing an Anderson shelter. It was as though his air raid training was merely an obligation in the same way that playing for the village cricket team was during the annual fête, not something real and necessary. Though they kept up with the news, for Edmund, the talk of war was all a lot of posturing by political leaders. This urging from Frank to join the ATA was drawing war closer, adding more pressure to her relationship with Edmund.
“Let’s keep our eye on the race, Frank.”
It was Peter who had suggested Frank join the ATA, and it was for him he wanted to succeed. Miriam had not seen much of Peter lately, bound up in the work for his uncle, but she’d seen Frank’s urgent need to make gains, to impress him. She wished he didn’t feel the need to try so hard.