Eleanor stiffened, a slight dip of her chin the only response. “Thank me by getting the job done.” She took Marie’s hand and pressed it a second too long. Then she turned and walked off across the field.
Marie approached the plane warily. She had never flown before and even this small plane, a metal contraption with a glass dome top, seemed strange and intimidating.
A man sat in the cockpit. He gestured to her impatiently to come aboard. She had expected a military pilot but the man’s hair was longish, curling against the neck of his American-style brown bomber jacket. His face was stubbled with whiskers. Was this the man who was to fly her to France? As she squeezed through the narrow door of the plane, Marie looked back over her shoulder for Eleanor. But she had already disappeared across the airfield.
Marie took the narrow seat behind the pilot and felt for a seat belt but found none. She had scarcely sat down before the ground crew closed the door from the outside. “Change of plans,” the pilot announced without introduction, his accent Irish.
Her skin prickled. “What is it?”
“You’ll be landing blind.” He turned to the controls, dozens of unfamiliar dials and gauges. Through the front windshield, Marie saw the propeller on the nose of the plane begin to turn. The plane rolled forward, jostling her as it rolled over the uneven earth.
“Blind?” she repeated before the meaning caught up to her. That meant she would be on her own, without the customary reception committee to meet her and help her rendezvous with her circuit. “But I was supposed to be met.”
The pilot shrugged. “Nothing goes as planned in the field. Something must have happened and it isn’t safe for them to come.” Then how, she wondered, could it possibly be safe for her to arrive? For a minute, she wanted to ask to turn back and cancel. But the plane was picking up speed, the engine growing to a deafening roar. She fought the urge to cry out as the ground seemed to slip from beneath her. Feeling the strange sensation for the first time, she almost forgot to be afraid. She looked out the window, hoping to catch sight of Eleanor. But she and the Vauxhall had already gone. The separation between Marie and England grew greater by the second. There was no turning back now.
As the plane shot up at a steep angle, Marie’s stomach dropped, and it occurred to her for the first time that she might be one to get airsick. Taking shallow breaths as they had been instructed in training, she looked down at the houses below, muted by the blackout. She imagined if she gazed far enough north she might see the old vicarage in East Anglia, Tess asleep beneath a thick plaid duvet in the attic room with the sloping rafters.
Neither Marie nor the pilot spoke further, for there was no chance of being heard over the incessant rattling of the engine that caused Marie’s teeth to chatter painfully. The air inside the plane grew colder, almost frigid. Below the earth was a sheet of perfect black. A silver ribbon broke through like a beacon, the Channel waters illuminated in the moonlight with a brilliance that no rules or blackout could dim.
The plane dropped suddenly, then listed sharply to the left. Marie grasped the seat hard to avoid being sent sprawling by the unexpected jolt. She had not imagined flying to be this rough. She tried to conceal her nerves, but a cool sweat broke out on her skin. “Is anything wrong?” Marie called. She tried to see the pilot’s face, searching for some sign of panic.
He shook his head, not looking up from the controls. “You feel every bump in this baby. That’s the thing about the Lysander—it’s small and slow and a German could shoot it with a slingshot.” He patted the control panel. “But I can put it down on a mosquito’s ass or in five hundred yards of shit.” Marie cringed at his crudeness, but he did not bother to apologize.
As they neared the French coast, the pilot eased forward on the throttle. The plane lowered and a thick fog seemed to encircle it. The pilot looked out the window, trying to get a better view of the ground below. Surely, Marie thought, there had to be a better way to navigate. “We