“Yes, I don’t know. I think so.”
The crunch of her bicycle wheel as she approached him, the sudden mournful scrape of the airplane as it settled farther into the ditch, then silence again, the swift, hollow silence that shocked them still for a moment as if another catastrophe, possibly another plane, would descend upon them.
“His pulse, check his pulse.” Miriam rushed to the plane after dropping her bicycle on the road. Frank remained still.
“A pulse?”
“Yes, his neck.” She motioned with her two fingers on her neck, but by this time she was past him, reaching into the cockpit. She felt the cool, dry skin of the pilot, sliding her fingers across his neck, searching.
“Well?”
Hand held up to quieten him. “I’ve got it. He’s alive.” She felt giddy at this, as if they’d done their part.
“Can we get him out, do you think?”
Miriam looked at Frank as she stepped down. He was not a man of practical sense, she thought, noting the fine cloth of his suit. For a moment she thought to get on her bicycle and return home, as if the pilot was truly safe now. Her back ached, and her head felt light, woozy. She would not faint, she knew, but she was far off from having the strength to lift a man.
“Perhaps we can adjust the angle,” she said, returning to the cockpit pulling at the branches that shielded him. “The pilot is pressed against the side. If we could arrange the plane so that he is sitting back, perhaps he could breathe better.”
Frank took a few steps to the tail, glad for a task, then stopped. It was thrilling and terrifying, this adventure. What would they think of him? To have rescued a pilot. It was only later that he considered who he meant by “they.” His family.
“Frank Wentworth.” His hand thrust out to her.
“Miriam Thomas.” She offered no hand but walked to the nose of the airplane, its propeller deeply embedded in brambles.
“One of us will need to climb up,” she said. “We need weight to lever it out of the ditch.”
Her eyes on his leg, he noticed, as he took a few tentative steps.
“I can . . .” She stepped forward.
“No, no. I’ll climb on the back.” He was already halfway onto the plane, one foot swinging up to the wing, the other reaching behind the cockpit. Then he was sitting backward, straddling the plane as if riding a horse.
“There. There I am.” He slid farther back, and Miriam tried to rock the tail, running back to front to pull bushes away. This went on for some minutes until Frank lost his grip and slid off the airplane.
They were both panting, the need to get the pilot free suddenly urgent.
“We need help.”
Just then, a groan from the cockpit. Miriam at his side, wiping the pilot’s brow, telling him he would be fine, he’d had an accident, but he would be fine.
Words as a balm, words as a tonic. How did she know this?
Then she was standing next to him.
“Go get help,” she whispered. “My bicycle.” She gestured.
Then shame; it followed him even now when he was being so brave. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Never mind.” She brushed past him.
He stumbled after her, told her where to go, where she could get help. Then she was gone, and he was left alone with the failing pilot. He might have conjured her. He might have believed her a mirage if she hadn’t reappeared twenty minutes later. She’d met a farmer on horseback and sent him to Wentworth House to get a car.
“You have a car, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” and as if he were performing his own bit of magic, they heard the rattle of a vehicle. There was Michael, driving the car, and the farmer on horseback not far behind. There were ropes, and instructions, and Miriam back soothing the pilot, and Frank in the midst of it, his leg throbbing, his head, too, aching from the strain. The airplane pulled by a rope with the car. Frank disentangling the bushes, one clump at a time. Then, with a final jolt it was free, pulled from the ditch as a petal plucked, and Frank rushed to the cockpit, pushing Miriam aside, opening the door, and reaching so that the pilot could slump over his shoulder while Frank half carried, half dragged him out of the cockpit. The pilot’s head lolling from side to side, like a drunkard’s.
He managed to hold the pilot as he pivoted away, into the arms of Michael with the farmer behind to help.
No one noticed Frank as he disappeared to the other side of the airplane. Michael gave instructions to the farmer to have the bicycle taken back to the house. Miriam was in the back of the car with the pilot, a handkerchief from Michael to staunch the blood from a wound that had opened on his forehead. No one noticed Frank’s unsteady hand reach out to the airplane, the other to his brow. No one heard him muttering . . . alive, alive.