There was a new American Club nearby, with a pool （closed for the winter） and a terrace and snack bar. She went sometimes for cocktails with other pilots but said little. No one tried to draw her out as Ruth had. Had she always been so uncertain about how to talk to people? She couldn’t remember how she had been before Barclay, before Alaska.
She bought a motorbike and rode around the countryside when she had free time and enough gas coupons. She went to Henley and watched people rowing on the river. She rode past Eton College, where boys played rugby in the fields and loitered in tailcoats outside crenellated brick buildings. She rode past villages where you’d never know there was a war, past others that were little more than bomb craters, past the wreckage of a B-17 among a stand of beech trees. Mostly she rode past grass and trees, stone walls, sheep.
One afternoon, after flying circuits and bumps in a Harvard, she came into the flight office and there was Ruth, blue-uniformed and grinning. “Howdy, stranger,” she said.
Marian’s first response was joy, then terrified dismay, and Ruth, who had stepped forward for a hug, noticed the shift and faltered. Their hug was off-kilter, as stiff as an embrace between two mannequins.
“I was going to write and tell you I got my wings—and my togs,” Ruth said. She struck a fashion model pose in her uniform. “I got seconded to Ratcliffe for a bit. Mostly I’m the taxi service.” She pointed out the window at a Fairchild 24. “That’s me. But then I got sent down here, and I thought I might run into you and save the postage.”
“Congratulations.” Marian turned to study the big map of Britain on the wall, updated daily with locations of barrage balloons and no-fly zones.
“You went off to London and then not a peep,” Ruth said.
“It’s been busy.”
Ruth waited for more. When none came, she said, “You’ve probably missed me, though. Even though you haven’t written.”
Stricken, Marian looked from the map to her boots. Ruth stepped closer. “You’re acting so peculiar. Has something happened? Did I do something wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m not feeling right. That’s all.” Marian swung her parachute onto her shoulder. “I have to go.”
Ruth didn’t call after her, didn’t follow. Marian, riding her motorbike back to her hotel, saw the Fairchild take off and disappear.
* * *
—
Two weeks later, on a rare clear-skied day in mid-December, Marian got her first Spit. She’d delivered a Hurricane to Salisbury, and, without fanfare, the ops officer there pushed the new chit across the counter.
The plane was waiting, its long, perforated cowling angled up at the sky. It had been camouflaged for photo reconnaissance, and, except for its black prop and its roundels and tricolor, the whole of it was cornflower blue, as though the sky had stuck to it. It had no armor and no guns so it would be light and fast, able to reach its ceiling quickly, over forty thousand feet, and carry enough fuel to get to Germany and back.
The female members of the ATA were unanimous that the Spitfire, hero of the Battle of Britain and symbol of RAF pluckiness aloft, was in fact a woman’s plane. The cockpit was petite; a woman slid into it like a finger into a glove. The controls responded to the softest touch. Men, they all agreed, tried to muscle the thing too much, wanted to dominate it out of its most essential grace. One of the English girls had lost her pilot fiancé when he tried to take off in a Spit with an air traffic controller on his lap, larkily giving him a lift somewhere, and couldn’t pull the stick back far enough because the cockpit was too full of male bodies. Both had been killed.
Marian climbed into the cockpit, consulted the Ferry Notes, began her checks. She had flown plenty of Hurricanes, which she liked and weren’t so different from the Spit, but there was something newly thrilling about this plane, the close hug of its cockpit, how the controls seemed to press up eagerly under her hands and feet. The engine started with a harsh rattle, settled into a steady popping, a textured drone. Marian wasted no time taxiing since Spits were prone to overheating on the ground. She swung the nose from side to side, peering around to see where she was going. In no time at all the cockpit was warm enough to make her sweat. This was a plane meant to be in the air. On the runway she throttled up. The muddy field rushed alongside. A bounce over a rut, and the ground released her.
The Spit was needed in Colerne, in Wiltshire, not far. She dawdled on the way, turning a forbidden roll, a loop, carving and slicing the sky with the thin, elliptical wings, the earth swinging up and over. Under the Perspex dome, she was the hinge of it all, the swivel point. She went into a steep climb, leveled off. Ten thousand feet. Higher already than she was supposed to fly. There was a pressurization system, but the notes said to keep it off, as low-flying ferry pilots should have no call for it. She didn’t know how to turn it on anyway.