Her Last Flight(98)

They said nothing in the ambulance, on the way back to the airfield. Sam fell asleep on Irene’s lap. Raoul sat next to them, staring at the wall of the truck. They had not seen his fiancée among the dead or wounded; nobody could remember seeing a woman of her description, seven months gone with child.

By the time they reached Bilbao it was dark, and all the airplanes had been caught in the strafing except Irene’s. She said they could load the patients into the Sirius and fly to Madrid or to the coast, and Sam said all right, but they would have to wait until dawn, because you couldn’t navigate from the air when all the towns were blacked out. They ate some stale bread rolls and hard cheese in what had once been a commissary, and went to sleep on pallets in the hangar, one blanket each, while the wounded begged for morphine on the other side of a line of curtains.



By the grace of God, the Germans didn’t bomb them during the night. Irene woke first and checked her watch, which had a luminous dial. It was half past four. Sam was heavily asleep next to her. She didn’t want to wake him, so she lay perfectly still. The injured had either fallen asleep, or given up, or died, because the hangar was quiet. She stared at the shadow that was Sam’s face until she felt him wake, felt him feel her beside him. Felt him start with surprise and then relax.

“Goddamn,” he whispered. “So it wasn’t a dream.”



The next day, Irene made three flights out of Bilbao, taking wounded to the hospitals in Valencia, stopping only long enough to load and unload patients and refuel the airplane. For the next several days, she and Sam and Raoul flew during the daylight, back and forth, while the mechanics worked to repair their planes at night. When they sat together at night, eating their dinner, Raoul didn’t speak, and Irene knew there was no news; he was just flying and flying, to keep himself from thinking about his fiancée.

When she returned from her last flight on the fifth day, the sun had nearly set, and she had trouble judging the runway in the glare. She came down hard, and the jolt knocked the breath out of her lungs. The orderly in the back thought they were going to crash and screamed. Irene felt her last nerve fray down to nothing. She kept her composure until the ship rolled to a stop. Then she put her head on the edge of the instrument panel and cried.



“You need a rest,” said Sam.

“I’m all right.”

“You’re not. You’re exhausted. You need to eat and sleep.”

“So do you.”

“I’ll see if I can find you a private room somewhere,” he said. “With a real bed. Or a cot at least.”

“That’s not necessary,” Irene insisted, but she was falling on her feet, staggering on Sam’s arm as he led her to the commissary and made her sit. He brought her some food and some red Spanish wine and went to speak to the commandant. When he returned, he told her that the commandant had relinquished his own quarters for her.

“Damn you,” she said. “You told him my name, didn’t you?”

“Had to. Anyway, what difference does it make?”

The commandant’s quarters were small and bare, just a washstand and a narrow camp cot, a tiny lavatory attached. Sam said he would sleep on the floor and went to get their kit bags from the hangar. Irene sat on the camp bed and closed her eyes. Her ears felt as if they’d been stuffed with rags, but she was used to that sensation. Silence, that was the only luxury she cared about now. Silence and darkness. There was a blackout curtain hanging in the window; she got up and pulled it shut, then lit the paraffin lamp, just enough to see by. She took off her flight suit for the first time in two days and washed herself as best she could in the basin. When Sam opened the door she turned. He didn’t see her right away. He set down the kit bags and the pair of blankets and said something about filling their canteens from the sink. His voice trailed away in the middle of a sentence. In the hollow glow of the lamp, his expression changed from shock to wonder to despair. His mouth gaped open, trying to make words again.

“Does George know?” Sam said at last.

“He does now. I left him a letter.”

The room was small, and they were only a few yards apart. Irene stood with her hands straight down her sides, wearing only her underwear, her plain silk undershirt and silk drawers, silk not for luxury but because Irene found it the most comfortable fabric for long flights.

Sam asked if he could touch her. She said of course.

He stepped forward and stretched out his blistered fingers to measure the shape of her abdomen. How long? he asked, and she said Six months, and he said No, I mean when will it be born, and she said About the beginning of August, and he started to sob. She gathered him in her arms while he wept into her hair. Between them, the baby jerked and stirred like a grasshopper.

Sam did not sleep on the floor that night, after all. Somehow they found a way to wedge together in the cot. When dawn broke, and Irene started from some dream, she smelled cigarettes and knew he had been awake for some time, turning everything over in his head.

“Well?” she said. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that if it’s a boy, you should name him for your father.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t remember my father. He left my mother soon after I was born.”

“Oh, Sam.”