She would just go a little higher. Another nudge to the throttle. Three hundred miles per hour. She wanted to smear the plane into the sky, blue on blue. Up. Fifteen thousand feet. She needed to be careful not to get carried away, but she felt well in control. Below, Britain was molded to the earth’s curvature; fields and hedges slid over it like iridescence over the surface of a soap bubble. Up. Seventeen thousand feet. She must pay attention, come down soon. The air was meager in her lungs. She remembered the skipping of the Travel Air’s engine when she’d flown too high over Missoula. Why did she have this impulse to throw herself at boundaries, be flung back by them? She felt the beginnings of fear, like frostbite beginning in the warm core of her instead of on her skin.
In the thin air, the plane traveled faster, nearly four hundred miles per hour. She couldn’t stay long. Up, though. She needed to find out what was up there, to be away from what was below. Away from Ruth. Away from the world where Jamie was in the war. Cold now. Much too high, but only a little bit farther and she would know what she wanted to know. She was sure of it. The engine seemed to grow quiet, but still the altimeter’s arrow swept to the right. The sky turned midnight blue at the edges of her vision, darkness bleeding up and inward as though she were sinking into something.
* * *
—
After she landed and taxied in and switched off the engine, Marian sat in the cockpit, quite still. Cold lingered in her; her head ached. Her hand trembled when she finally opened the canopy. She walked to the ops office, handed over her chit, received a new one, a Miles Master needing transport to Wrexham.
“Everything all right?” said the officer who took her chit. “You’re a bit green around the gills.”
“Fine. I’ll just have a coffee before I go.”
She made her way to the canteen, and there sitting at a table reading a newspaper was Ruth. The world narrowed to Ruth as it had to that last point of light, flickering through the propeller, before she’d fallen unconscious.
Ruth looked up blankly at the sound of Marian’s footsteps, then she was standing and coming toward her. “Are you all right?” she said. “You look completely wrung out.” Only two pilots were in the canteen, both men, absorbed in their newspapers.
“Just a headache.”
“When did you get so fragile? Next you’ll be telling me you have the vapors.”
Marian glanced at the pilots. “I thought a coffee would help.”
“I’ll get it,” Ruth said. “Go outside. Get some fresh air. I’ll meet you.”
The brick of the building was cold against Marian’s back, but the sun warmed her face, hurt her eyes. Squinting, she took the mug Ruth brought her. The coffee was abrasively bitter but very hot. “What’s going on with you?” Ruth said. “You’re acting so strange.”
“What are you doing here?” Marian asked.
Ruth seemed to decide against pressing her, said, “Taxi service, what else? They must think I’m all right at it since it’s all I do. Once in a blue moon I ferry a Moth—yippee. Where would the war effort be without one more decrepit biplane? But next week I’m finally going back to White Waltham. We’ll be reunited.” This last with forced cheer.
“I might have left by then.”
Ruth dug in her pocket for cigarettes. When she’d lit one, she said, “We’ve gotten out of sync, haven’t we?”
Marian indicated the plane parked by the hangar. “I’ll probably be posted soon. I’ve just done my first Spit.”
“The blue one? How was it?”
When she had come to, she had been in a spiraling dive, a pinwheel of fields and hedges spinning into a blur.
“Like everyone says.”
“Heaven?”
“Just about.”
“I’m dying of jealousy.” Neither said anything for a minute. The coffee and the oxygen-rich air were helping Marian’s headache, though Ruth’s smoke wasn’t. Ruth added, “If you’d written I would have told you Eddie’s here now, in a training unit at Bovingdon.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” She was growing cool, remembering Marian’s neglect.
“I’m glad for you.” Marian knew she didn’t sound glad at all. She’d never known jealousy like this, the sting of it.
A distant engine sang a single nasal note, crescendoed as it came closer. A Spitfire appeared, lined up, landed. “My passenger’s here,” Ruth said. “Time to go.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the brick wall, put the butt in her pocket. “See you, Graves.”