As Little As Nothing, page 8
“Impossible. There will be no war.” This sudden assertion, so much like his brother.
22 October 1938
Miriam Reads Her Body Like the Weather
There was a dull ache in her breast, a tingling in her nipples. The occasional cramping she’d felt in her abdomen these past weeks was more a nuisance than a hindrance, which is why she’d agreed to make the trip with Frank. He had seen so much in her, saw her future in flying spread out before her in a way that she had not put thought to. It was hard to say no to him, but still she knew her body was sending coded messages, ones she was trying to interpret. Was this her body’s way of finally relinquishing her last baby?
Frank wanted to fly to London to see the balloons. They needed the practice and could go via Croydon to familiarize themselves with various routes.
It was the best thing for her, she knew, to be up there at four thousand feet. It gave perspective. It took her away from a body that seemed unwilling to give up the signs of pregnancy. Almost two months now, she calculated, and there were days when she imagined she was conjuring symptoms, a way of not letting go, a constant and gentle reminder of failure. She was tired, too, and that made her question everything: Edmund’s brisk cheeriness, Frank’s unwavering support, her own ability to navigate to Croydon. She’d worked on the map for the past week. How had she come to see the Earth like this? How had she felt this need to place herself in the landscape? She’d taken the map of Hampshire, four miles to an inch, then plotted the landscape details and redrew the entire thing, highlighting their route with rail lines, identifying towns and villages as she’d seen them from the air, a church steeple, a windmill, the curve of the high street, the green roof of a country manor. She used a colour-coded system to memorize the routes: churches—red; rail lines—black; rivers—blue. She’d questioned pilots on what they’d seen and pieced it together, and now at four thousand feet, she was mentally ticking off each landmark.
The barrage balloons had her worried though. It seemed a ludicrous effort, as if they were still playing at war despite the peace agreement. The city had decided to do a demonstration of them, a run-through to make sure they worked, to make sure the barrage operators knew how to raise and lower them effectively. Her friend Mildred had told her about them.
“Have you seen pictures of them?” Miriam asked Frank before they took off. “Elephants, they call them. Three times the size of a cricket pitch. Four hundred and fifty of them over London.”
“A flimsy bit of nylon to stop those German bombers. Is there a kind of genius in that?”
“What do you mean?”
“A simple solution. Fill the balloon with hydrogen, suspend them with heavy cables, and no German pilot wants to get near enough to drop his bombs. We’ll win the bloody war with puppets!”
“But there is no war, and it seems a waste. Everything seems a waste these days. Why are we still pretending? And these balloons will be a threat to our pilots, too. I heard them talking at the airfield. That means they’re increasing risk, not lessening it.”
“Well, I hope we get close enough to see them. A remarkably simple bit of engineering.”
In that moment she saw him as he might have been as a boy, the wonder of discovering engineering feats, the awe that would come at a moment when he saw an invention that would all but overwhelm him.
“What happened to your leg,” she’d asked him not long after they’d met. She’d known about the Wentworth family. Rumours adrift, in and out of the village like morning fog. She’d probably seen him once or twice; she knew he was a cripple, probably even knew he’d been born with the affliction, yet she asked, because she wanted to hear the story from him.
“What happened to your leg?”
Part of her wanted to hurt him that day in the hangar, to embarrass him. The luncheon had left her feeling scorched, their kindness like a weapon readily released. She was no longer a hero; she was a visitor. Each role had its own mantle. That’s why she’d grabbed at the offer of flight. Snatched it from Peter’s hand. Knowing she would never get the chance again and wanting somehow to even out their places in the world.
She’d felt a cramp in her abdomen just then, as if her body were convening with his in some way.
His story told her that he’d suffered, the braces, the horrid wrench; she had forgiven him everything then—his class, his money, his misdirected invitation. Suffering, the unexpected equalizer.
They couldn’t fly directly over London, Miriam told him before they left. They would need to see the balloons at a distance.
His disappointment worn like his own deflated balloon, so that she understood this meant more to him than just a spectacle. We’ll get close enough, she told him.
And they did, following the perimeter of London.
“They’re better viewed at a distance,” she shouted into the mouthpiece. She knew about perspective, angles, scale. At that height, not a thousand feet above the balloons, the angle narrowed the distance between them so they appeared almost touching. It was true they were a sight, the bloated oval shapes in shimmering steel grey nylon held in place by cables that anchored each to the ground.
“Magnificent,” he mouthed when she banked the airplane.
Later they would talk about this sight, which at once displayed engineering boldness, and yet they were ominous, as though an alien presence, unidentifiable, almost monstrous.
“Time to head back,” she said into the mouthpiece.
Thirty minutes into the return, the weather turned. She readjusted in the seat to ease the strain in her back and kept her eye on a horizon that was getting lower with each mile. Rain forecast, they’d been told at Hackley, but they’d be home in time.
There were dark streaks of rain ahead, as if lead were melting from the sky, and she felt the pressure change in her head. She took one hand off the controls and held her arm against her breasts as if they needed protection, but it was her entire body she wanted to protect, not from the weather, or even any kind of war that might erupt, but from itself, an existence that had her enslaved to its hormonal shifts, the constant monitoring and nurturing that had left her weak in spirit. She should not feel this way, up here in the clouds, her place of refuge. She shifted her attention to the airplane—throttle, flaps, airspeed—touching the instruments as she did when doing a pre-flight routine, muttering the fundamentals of flight, re-engaging with the machine that would deliver them home.
“Weather ahead,” Frank’s voice bellowed.
Miriam saw that the ceiling had lowered even more, rain falling in sheets now less than two miles away. Her mind on her map and the landscape on either side of the path she’d chosen. She needed to drop into the valley ahead, keeping to one side in order to give herself room to manoeuvre should she need to escape.
“Diverting west,” she shouted, as she banked the plane. She gripped the controls as the plane swooped, suddenly feeling birdlike, a hawk patrolling its territory. Do birds see boundaries in the air? she wondered. How do they know when to leave one place for another?
Miriam had no appetite for competition, no juice in her blood that would help make the King’s Cup Race a success. Flying was a personal quest. Each flight a discovery of landscape, the reading of the wind, the rush of propulsion, the exhilaration of a landmark detected. She focussed on the technical aspects when she was flying but remained dreamlike on the impression it had on her. The visual sensation summoned a new language. The verdant pastures, the cobalt rivers, the demarcations that put sheep in one field, cattle in another. Stone and brick brought structure to the landscape, a signifier. Industry, innovation, patience. This is what she saw when she was flying. Not the finish line.
But they’d agreed. A race from London to Manchester. And the trial run, under the pretense of seeing the elephant balloons, was really an opportunity to test their mettle. The bad weather was perfect. Ready-made to challenge their strength, her fortitude, her knowledge of how to dodge a storm cloud.
This an unspoken arrangement for Frank, who was unable to express his desire to win when he’d asked her to co-pilot the race. But he’d showed her in so many ways how much it meant to him. In his casual but direct comments that resided in a question—your landings are improving, you might want to ease up on the aileron when banking, have you noticed how the elevator sticks a bit when taking off?—an opportunity to seek an opening as they made their plans. He could hardly contain himself, she saw, the will to win so strong he kept himself harnessed from the strain of it.
She checked her map, not wanting to rely entirely on her instincts that told her there was a dip in the landscape ahead, not quite a valley but a rising to the west that they could snug into, a hope for some protection from the rain and the wind.
“I’m taking it to twenty-five hundred feet,” she said, pushing in the throttle.
Frank was calculating their time, she knew, comparing it to that of the trip he’d made with Peter—the rain would skew things, of course, but they’d have to adjust if it rained on race day.
She pushed hard, her concentration so intense she forgot about her body, the race, the barrage balloons that would save them from Hitler’s planes, and focussed on the airplane and the rain that was thrashing around them. The ceiling so low she felt she could reach out and touch treetops. The wind buffeted them, the turbulence staying with them for a few miles, then they were in the valley, outwitting the elements.
She scanned the sky and saw a break ahead, saw her chance to get them back by going farther west, over the downs and to the north of Ashleigh. Another gust lifted her from her seat, but she was gripping the instruments so hard she barely felt it. The rain was letting up, her face washed in the constant stream, cooled in the wind that came in from the west. She would be there soon, she knew, this test a decent one. She had got them through the worst of it, had held her own map in her head as she’d guided the plane to where it needed to be. The race seemed possible now, even a challenge she might enjoy.
25 October 1938
A Responsible Man
Edmund was not what one would call a joiner. The sociability that was required as shopkeeper and postmaster far exceeded his inclinations, so although most would call him “a good sort of fellow,” this was often followed by “a bit of a loner,” which to many was regretful, a cause for suspicion. That he had Miriam in his life was an unacknowledged but accepted blessing by those in the village, for she, too, was often described as one who kept to herself but was more connected, more likely to stop and go through the exercise of asking after one’s family. They were friendly, mildly inquisitive, knowledgeable, and on the periphery of the village goings-on; they did not lean into gossip, or make a regular night at the pub, or sit on committees to plan the village fête or cricket derby with a neighbouring village.
A Responsible Job for a Responsible Man. The sign in the village hall drew him in. The Ministry had posted them around to attract more air raid wardens, keeping the recruitment drive on as a precaution. News of the chaos in Bristol, where it was reported that half the gas masks distributed didn’t fit properly, and in Birmingham, where arrangements had been made to evacuate 300,000 citizens but with no arrangements made to cater to them, was the talk at the recruitment office.
Many were surprised when Edmund signed up, could not envisage him walking the village, reporting on blackout misdemeanors, training youngsters and old widows on how to wear a gas mask. But if anything, it was Edmund who was most surprised, and though he had mentioned it in passing to Miriam, even he couldn’t fully fathom what had pulled him across the threshold of the village hall.
When he was orphaned at fourteen, he worked at the shop he would eventually inherit, under the supervision of his uncle, who had reluctantly stepped in to take over. Theirs was a tidy life—regimented meals, silent evenings spent reading, going for a walk, catching up on house repairs. His only interaction with others was at the shop, and his uncle would press upon him that there was a steady but modest affluence that separated them from the villagers, and so he learned not to look down upon them but to respect the difference in their status. It was as though his uncle had created a class for them on his own, which Edmund understood and kept on. The separation of class could have been his uncle’s method of protecting them from requests for credit, or it may have been his attempt to shove them closer to gentry. But this separation remained throughout Edmund’s life so that he didn’t have friends as such, but a series of interactions at the shop that he interpreted as a good substitute for friendship. Still, at times it didn’t seem quite enough.
Bloody fool, what have you got yourself in for? he muttered on the way home, clutching pamphlets, a steel helmet, and a gas mask that smelled of old tires. Already it seemed like too much responsibility.
He didn’t believe in the war, didn’t believe that all the fuss would ever amount to much, but he’d been reading about the preparations in London, not just the distribution of gas masks, but the digging of trenches, the building of bomb shelters, and there seemed to be an accelerated energy around these activities, an added vibrancy that he saw he could be part of. He had been caught up in the moment, he now realized. They were forming a “report and control room” for the district, to be based at the police station. They would need air raid wardens to advise people on precautions and enforce the use of blackout curtains so that no artificial lights were visible from the air. They would work with other personnel—firefighters, rescue and first aid, a plotter, a runner. He’d seen the ordnance map of the district that filled one wall so that they would be able to place pins where activity took place.
He had thought it might be good for him. To talk to people outside the shop. To be out in the village with a purpose, to see and be seen in a new light. He could feel himself getting easily agitated these days, what with Miriam taking up flying. He needed something that would direct his attention elsewhere.
That man Thompson who’d come into the shop to post a letter the other day.
“How’s Mrs Thomas?” he’d asked, an easy smile that unsettled Edmund. What was he getting at exactly? “Saw her at the airfield last week,” the man pressed.
“She’s learning to fly.” Edmund dropped the change into the man’s hand.
“She’ll be in the RAF soon enough.” Again that smile.
Edmund had decided it was a game they were playing. That’s what he sometimes did when he couldn’t follow the intent or direction of a conversation; it somehow took the pressure off.
“Pity they won’t have her.”
“Well, she may have her own ideas. The war’s off for the moment, but it’s hard to let go these days.”
Edmund had watched the man leave and rushed to the door, locked it, and put the closed sign up. Was Miriam planning for war? Is this what this was all about? The race? The flying? It was all so far away. Germany. Poland. Czechoslovakia. They’d already had their war. It didn’t make sense to do it again. He went to the cupboard and opened a pack of cigarettes he kept there along with a flask of whisky and stood at the back door, looking up at the sky. He took a swig from the flask, coughed as he drew from the cigarette.
He was committed now. A warden. He had to hope he was right and the war would not materialize. As he approached his home, he saw that the lights weren’t on and remembered that Miriam was at a meeting with Audrey. He went inside, hung his steel helmet and gas mask on a coat hook, and put the kettle on.
26 October 1938
Propaganda
The message: how to get it right? It was this challenge that kept Audrey in her dressing gown at ten in the morning. Condoms, IUDs, stem pessaries, cervical caps, spermicide pessaries. To list them was to educate. That was her thinking as she lined the words up on the notepad. Instructions, yes, that’s what a woman would want, would need, in fact. Surely, clarity counted for something.
Instead, everything was shrouded in euphemism: feminine hygiene or marriage hygiene. Douching with Lysol, the perfect antiseptic for marriage hygiene. Disinfecting daily, the advertisements promised, would save your marriage. Why was it always the woman? Audrey wondered. Why were they responsible for saving the marriage?
She slid the notebook onto the bed and stood to dress. Miriam would arrive soon. She would have perspective. She would know what women wanted to know.
What would the younger version of herself have wanted to know? Audrey wondered. Robert, again. Creeping into her thoughts. That conversation with Miriam, she’d revealed more than she intended. Yet it had felt good to tell Miriam, someone who knew nothing of her past, had no investment in her unsound judgments. There was more to tell, of course, and who knew, perhaps she would. Miriam had asked about desire, but Audrey could tell her more about doubt.
* * *
The problem began with the pewter dress. Audrey had been to London to see her friend Evelyn, and they’d seen it, clear lines, an unfussy finish, a good dress for the times. But it didn’t quite fit right, two darts would pull it in nicely, and she could pick it up in three hours. So there it was: sold.
They would have lunch at the 19 Club, Evelyn told her, a gathering place Audrey had heard of but not yet been to. Corner table, near the window with a view to both the park outside and the expanse of the crescent-shaped restaurant.
The dress seemed a silly indulgence, but Evelyn insisted, and their entire day was navigated around it. A museum would have been a treat, but they still needed to return to the shop, and then she would have to rush to her train. These little pellets of thought were firing in her mind, triggering a growing agitation as she watched platters of food move like a ballet across the floor, waiters bowing, directing, serving, amidst discreet whispers, a bellowing laugh, a woman who spoke too loudly of her neighbour’s affair. The day was dull, which made the glass ornamental lights glisten as if they were candlelight. Evelyn was waving to someone, talking to Audrey from the side of her mouth, saying something which she didn’t catch but gathered was gossip, Evelyn’s currency. It was hot, too hot for the cardigan she was wearing, and when she removed it, turning to fold it away, she caught sight of Robert at a table tucked at the back near the waiters’ stand. He was with another man and two women, and they were leaning into each other, absorbed in their conversation. She could see that they were enjoying each other’s company with comfortable familiarity, friends perhaps.
