Audrey nods, her eyes serious. "Right, Miss McDonald," she says. "I've seen what I need to see. I'm impressed with your work. Let me have a quotation for labour and materials and we'll see about getting this thing done."
Cat blinks, surprised. "I thought – I mean" – she pauses, aware she's about to self-sabotage out of nervousness – "that's a very quick appraisal, Mrs Knapp, I had this meeting booked in for the whole afternoon."
"You were head of the engineering corps here, weren't you?" Audrey snaps.
Cat nods, a little unsure of where this is going. "86th Lexical. I had captain's bars, but it's professional courtesy, really. I never ordered enlisted men about, I did my own job throughout the war."
"You were in charge of this place," Audrey continues, implacable, "and you, and it, are still here. That'll do for me. Toby, come along."
"Wait!" Toby cries, and waves his little square of paper. It's half-squashed and covered in inky smudges, but he holds it quite still in his palm and Cat sees the movement.
"Well done," she says, and looking at his bright, sweet face, and Audrey's serious one, makes an impulse decision. "Toby," she says, "would you like to stay a while?"
___
Talitha is sure it's the right door, with the right voice filtering through it, for five minutes before she brings herself to turn the handle and go in. Inside, the open hangar space is familiar, airy under the rafters and filled with light filtering through dust motes. There is a biplane at the far end – de Havilland Giant Moth, provides the part of her mind that never forgets such things: single-engine and four-hundred mile range – half-occluded by a swarm of craftspeople, sharpening the smudged flying forms and doing something to the structural lexicography. Something experimental, that same part of her mind adds, and Talitha turns away sharply.
"Can I help you?" asks a voice, and Talitha looks at the junior craftswoman with her hands on her hips. "This is a working hangar, I'm afraid, it's not safe for—"
"Don't be overzealous, Lindy," says a familiar Scottish voice, and Talitha wheels around. McDonald is there, her arms full of scrolls of paper. "You're my friend from the café, aren't you? Let me just – hey, Toby, put these somewhere, will you?"
A boy scurries across from the other side of the hangar and does so, seemingly delighted to be asked. "So good to see people happy in their work," McDonald says, sounding quite sincere.
"Your apprentice?" Talitha guesses.
"Not quite." McDonald sits at the edge of a desk – there are a half-dozen of them in a row at this end of the hangar, although only three seem occupied at present. "But the lad has a fancy for the craft, so he's spending a week or two with me to see if it's for him. Lindy, this is – Talitha, isn’t it?
Talitha nods.
"This is Lindy, she's helping out on that monster thing over there." The 'monster thing' is the Giant Moth. Lindy nods stiffly and returns to it without another word, striding determinedly across the hangar. "And," McDonald continues, "she's still not quite on board with the whole civilian aspect of our work, these days. I think she misses the barbed wire." She grins. "Anyway, Talitha, what can I do for you? How did the tins hold up?"
"Oh," Talitha says, suddenly brought back to herself. "They were fine, thank you. Ah, you left this in the café the other day, I asked the owner where I might find you, and..."
She trails off awkwardly, but McDonald takes the sketchpad from her. "Thank you!"
She flips through it and Talitha catches sight of a whole multiplicity of forms, some for flying, some for strength, some for precision, some she's never seen before. "Are you in the trade?" she asks, curiously. "Not many laypeople know how valuable one of these things is."
The paper, Talitha knows, has metal filings in the weave – so even a perfectly-executed form will not take, and a craftswoman can practise without accidentally turning her sketchpad into a paper aeroplane. "No," she says. "But I picked up a little bit in the war."
"Right." McDonald nods. "A lot of people did. Well, listen, if you want to come back at twelve, I'll stand you your lunch, all right? It'd have cost me ten times as much to replace this, after all."
Without waiting for agreement, she turns away to her not-quite apprentice and starts giving him a list of forms to memorise; she breaks off in the middle of the last to call some instructions to the team working on the Giant Moth; she breaks off from that to try some new form of her own on her newly-returned sketchpad; then asks the boy to repeat back the first five items on the list. A little bewildered, Talitha goes back into the cool, heavy spring air, and thinks it chilly after the warmth of the space inside.
___
They have lunch at the same café, though not at the same table. Cat orders toasted sandwiches and tea for them both and goes to fetch them when Mrs Daly behind the counter calls her name. "That the girl who's taken Amelia Pennyroyal's spare room?" she asks Cat. "Odd fish, that. No one knows her here. See if you can find out what brings her to Downham."
"You're a terrible old gossip, Mrs Daly," Cat tells her, and picks up the tray with utmost concentration. She makes it to the table without incident and Talitha looks up and smiles.
"Thank you," she says. "You know, this wasn't necessary."
"Not a bit of it," Cat says, biting into cheese, ham and pickle. "Eat up, it'll get cold. Maybe I should have ordered chips as well. I can, if you want?"
Talitha laughs, surprising herself once again. "I forgot that," she says. "Lex engineers are always hungry. I worked with one chap who had scrambled eggs on the hour. It was quite endearing."
"I've read theories that say it's some of our energy that makes things fly," Cat says, composedly. "Even if it's not, it's thirsty work. Where were you stationed?"
The sudden shift in conversation startles Talitha. "A long way from here," she says, after a moment. "Up north. You know," she adds, "there's money in wires and cables, these days. Telegraphic lex engineers, household appliances, that sort of thing."
Cat nods. "And there always will be. When I'm old and not on the top of my game any more, that's what I'll do." She has a craftswoman's dispassionate assessment of her own skills, Talitha notices. "But right now – Toby, wee Toby, you met him. Well, his mother has an idea for a new kind of plane. Further, faster, with proper long-range cargo. It's all to do with a stronger physical skin, maybe made out of metal. When I can't fly any more, that's when I'll do household appliances."
Talitha nods in return. "Metal, though? Won't that stop the forms from executing?"
"Somewhat," Cat says, "but it's not an absolute effect, it depends on other factors and I'm hoping we can work around it. I'll show you the diagrams if you like."
"Miss McDonald..."
"Cat."
"Cat," Talitha says. "Should you be telling me this? If it's a private commission, and—"
Cat sighs. "You sound just like Lindy," she says. "Listen, Talitha. I was born into the trade. I got my charter mark when I was twenty."
Talitha whistles involuntarily – she knew, of course, that Cat's talent was something out of the ordinary – but perhaps, hadn't quite grasped the extent of it. She says nothing.
"And during the war," Cat continues, "I had to do some things I wasn't proud of. I built new, improved lightweight planes that dropped new improved heavy artillery, and I put planes back together faster than the medics could put together the pilots. And I did it all behind the barbed wire up there." She motions to the window and the road up to the base. "No apprentices and not accountable to anyone, though my charter swears I'll teach my craft to anyone who asks. They can do proprietorial washing machines, frankly, I don't give a damn. But anyone who wants to fly gets to learn how."
Cat knows when she's finished speaking that she must be flushed with emotion – it's a practised spiel that nevertheless works its way through her body every time, like a form through canvas. But she looks up and Talitha is smiling at her, tentative, luminous. "I understand that," she says.
"We could do this again," Cat sa
ys, suddenly. "I mean, it's nice to have company at lunchtimes. It's been lonely since everyone up at the base started to leave."
"I'd like that," Talitha says, and she's smiling again.
___
"What happens," Toby asks, "If I do this?"
He picks up his pen – privately, Cat notes his grip has got much better: firm between forefingers and thumb – and rests the nib on his own wrist. He glances up at Cat, then stubbornly begins to sketch a form, a simple one for flight that's on the list that she drills him on every day. He reaches the end, smudges the ink and then looks disappointed. "Oh."
Cat breathes in and shoves down her immediate reaction, which is to grab the pen from his hand. "What were you hoping for?" she asks, keeping her voice gentle. "That you could sketch out avis-alpha-b and up, up and away!"
"Alpha-b?" he asks, distracted, and she shakes her head.
"A little beyond your pay grade, I think. You need to get avis-unmarked absolutely spot-on before we do the variations. And soon I'll have to think about getting the first-year syllabus for you. I'll make a note."
"Cat," he says, a hint of a whine coming into his voice. "Tell me."
She relents after a moment, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Toby, you mustn’t try and do forms on yourself like that. Not on yourself or anyone else. Do you understand?"
“Why not?" He looks up at her in confusion, and Cat reminds herself that he isn’t like she was; he wasn’t born into this life.
"There are long textbooks about it," she says, after a moment, “which you'll have to read before you get your charter mark." His eyes shine at that and Cat realises that it's because she's talking about his charter mark, as though it's a given that he will get it, some day. "But for now: think about it like robbing Peter to pay Paul. You can’t burn up the energy in your own body that way. What's the First Axiom of the craft of flight?"
In his frustrated expression, Cat sees herself at his age, and smiles beatifically. Finally, he says: "Remember Icarus."
Cat nods. "That's right. Don't do that, Toby. It doesn’t work, and it's not" - she hesitates - "it's not right. Promise me you won't do that again."
Toby glances up at her. "I promise."
"There's a good boy." She ruffles his hair and he ducks away, heading across the hangar presumably in an attempt to escape both form drills and gestures of affection.
"That's not quite it, you know," Talitha says, emerging from the shadows behind the prototype. The aircraft is about half-done and is beginning to take on a personality of her own. Cat can't quite see the shape of her yet, except in shadows and absence, like a dry patch under a tree in the rain. It'll come.
"What's that?" she asks, as Talitha walks out from under a wing.
"What you said to Toby." Talitha looks at her, her eyes dreamy. "It's not quite right. There are some forms which will work on skin. If someone else draws them."
"Oh," Cat says. Before she can think of anything to say, Talitha is gone, edging back into the dimness behind the aircraft, heading for the door out to the sky.
___
Cat formally declares Toby her apprentice after he's been hanging around the hangar for a month. "Getting in the way," Lindy says, but Cat knows that's not right. The lad has fetched and carried messages, stirred great pots of ink, trimmed brushes, got up early and stayed late. Cat herself was born into pre-war privilege, the daughter and granddaughter of flight craftswomen; she respects the boy scrabbling for his start.
Audrey is grim but accepting, when she visits next. "God knows it's in his blood," she says. "His father was a craftsman. A mediocre one, mind you, never stretched to anything but rivets and joins. But it's a trade for the boy."
Cat smiles, then feels herself grow abruptly serious. "I'll do my best by him," she promises, "but my best isn't what it might have been. Before the war I'd have sent him to Woolwich for his theory, and he could have come here for his practical, but since the war—"
Audrey holds up a hand. "I'm grateful for whatever you can give him, Miss McDonald."
"Call me Cat," Cat says, for at least the fiftieth time, and smiles again. "Would you like to see how the work is progressing?"
"I would, thank you," Audrey says, and this time, as Cat shows her around the bare skeleton of the aircraft, she's less nervous: she knows the work is good. She and her people have been scratching forms and grammar on scraps of paper, making tiny models to dart around the hangar; they've been testing materials out on the hill, in the full blast of the wind; they've been consulting the sort of textbooks the craftspeople often leave for the academics. The aircraft doesn't yet look very different from any other of its size - the forms have been done on the usual heavy paper and then laid on the surface of the metal plating; Cat means to have them put within the skin only when everything is complete - but she's aware on a subconscious level that this one is different. A different presence, she thinks to herself, then smiles at her own fancy.
"It looks like you're making good progress," Audrey says, with reserve; Cat thinks that she probably doesn't say anything she doesn't mean, and keeps on smiling. "Have you considered a name, yet?"
"For the type?" Cat shakes her head. "Not yet. We might have to move away from the" - she gestures at the Giant Moth they were using as a model, now on the other side of the hangar from the prototype - "insect theme."
"For the particular craft." Audrey is hesitant. Nervous, Cat realises. "I don't know what the custom is, with these things - for the builders of the craft to name her, or for..."
"Oh," Cat says, and then, gently, "I think you should name her. If she's your" - Cat pauses - "unquiet life."
Audrey gives her a half-smile. "In that case," she says, "I suppose I'll have to think of something."
And after that, Cat thinks she's forgotten - after another week, some of the metal plating is appearing, and craftswomen in the hangar are calling it the Beast and the Thing and other such hefty monosyllables, so Cat thinks she's not the only one to have felt the presence of it, sitting squat in the hangar - but then Audrey asks, in a routine letter that otherwise deals with quotations for further materials, how they're getting on with Margaretha Zelle.
"Mata Hari!" Talitha says, startled, when Cat tells her.
"I had to look it up," Cat says, ruefully, over a cheese bloomer. "I don't know much about - well, anything that's not flightcraft."
"That's understandable," Talitha says. She seems amused, taking a bite into her own sandwich with piccalilli. It's a bright, breezy day, so they're sitting on the hill on the grass and holding on tightly to the sandwich wrappers. "I don't suppose you've ever had much time for anything else."
"And you should forgive me if I'm wrong," Cat says, tentatively, "but wasn't she a spy for the other side?"
"Brave as anything, though," Talitha says, and Cat is content to take her word for it.
___
Not long after that, Cat needs a favour.
"You're afraid of flying!" Talitha says, and chuckles. A shared and excellent steak pie has just rather robbed them of any great urgency to return to work.
"Not at all," Cat says, primly. "It was part of my training. But" – she pauses – "Miller, my old assistant, you know. He used to do it. When they wanted a craftsperson along on a test flight."
"Seems to me they ought to have one along on every test flight," Talitha says. "I'll do it, Cat. But you should try it sometime."
"Oh, no," Cat says, "no" - and then almost gets knocked flying onto the grass. "Lindy!" she says, stepping backwards. "Don't rush about so! What is it?"
"You've got to come," Lindy says, breathless and incoherent, "I called the fire brigade but they won't come in time, you've got to, Cat—"
She turns and runs back up the hill, her wildly scrabbling feet pushing up tufts. Cat follows her up and into the hangar, pushing open the little door with her eyes on her feet, so it takes her another second to look up and swear extravagantly. Margaretha Zelle had been hung from the roof: now she's half on the
floor, great strips of paper hanging from the now-bent hook, and one of her wings is almost broken off, turned into a shapeless mess from the impact. "Is there someone under there? When did it happen?"
"Toby," Lindy says, tearful but steady, "he was looking at the forms, he was trying to figure out the pattern. Just a minute ago, Cat, he wasn’t under the fuselage, he was under the wing, he might be—"
"Shut up, all of you," Cat snaps out, with military sharpness. "Not a word! Now."
In that textured silence, the paper flaps in the draught, a drop of water falls from the roof, and from the left wing of the stricken aircraft, two metres down and along, something - someone - taps. "Toby?" Cat says, loud and clear. "Tap twice if that's you."
Tap, tap.
"Tap if it’s just you under there."
Tap.
"And once more if you're hurt."
Tap.
"All right," Cat says, clapping her hands. "The fire brigade have to come all the way from King's Lynn, we can't wait for them."
"Cat," Talitha says, urgently, "the plane’s on the edge." She gestures at the hook, at where part of the structure remains suspended. "If we pull or tug at it, we might bring the whole thing down. It might crush..."
"Understood." Cat breathes. "We need to lift it. Not manually, you know how. None of you distract me for the next two minutes." She's getting down on her knees as she speaks, drawing forms quickly on the sheets laid out on the hangar floor. It's only the skill of long, long practice that keeps them neat and true. She draws strokes in abbreviated forms, crossing out rather than erasing her mistakes, waiting for them to execute; she thinks for a second about the hook she hadn't even considered, designed to hold up aircraft made out of canvas and not metal, then pushes away the thought. It’s not useful.
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