a novel by Jeanette Lynes
EXCERPT
SHE IS OFFICIALLY a spinster. Thirty-six years old. She has her work, though. Her Master’s degree protracted by polio, but earned nonetheless. She thinks silver linings, thinks clouds, as she clip-clops with her cane along the sidewalk that leads to the main entrance of Fort William Aviation, while the wind bangs her satchel against her wool-coat-covered thigh. Thinks aerodynamics. She grasps the brim of her floppy hat against a sudden gust. Snow falls in hard pellets like pop rivets. Her plum new job begins today. After nine years in a fusty office at Fairchild, she, Muriel McGregor, is now Chief Engineer at this plant with a contract for three hundred northern model Mosquitoes and a sky-high security alert in the wake of recent escapes – subversives – from Angler Detainee Camp. She’d arrived yesterday and, hunkered beside her steamer trunk in her new flat, had inked, in bright red, this milestone in her diary – the Lakehead at last! December 15, 1941. Threshold! Below these words she’d sketched a horned cartoon devil and added, wickedly, Watch out for subversives and monsters!
The head office of Fort William Aviation stands apart from the plant, separated by a frozen courtyard about half the size of a Dominion- league hockey rink. Muriel notes, as she passes the courtyard’s snow- covered benches, a Christmas tree listing crookedly as the bitter wind buffets tinsel and garlands of Union Jacks looped over its boughs. The pine’s off- kilter stance gives it a forlorn look. She flips through her mental Kardex and remembers that she’s to proceed to the reception area on the main floor of the two- storey office building. She stops for a moment to breathe the bracing air. Bears down on her cane. Before pushing the buzzer beside the office door, Muriel rolls her dream over in her mind – landing skis. Engineers have been trying to crack a foolproof design. This is how Muriel wants to be remembered, not as a spinster or a cripple, but as the brilliant engineer who perfected landing skis. Which is why the Fort William job is perfect; its long winters are ideal for testing skis.
She buzzes. Through the glass panel of the door, Muriel sees a girl with crimped hair skitter towards her. The girl introduces herself as Fraudena, the plant’s switchboard operator, and urges Muriel to, “for pity’s sake, come in out of that awful wind chill.”
As Muriel stamps snow from her boots onto the mat inside the door, she recalls the long- distance telephone chat she had with this switchboard worker several weeks ago. The girl had warned Muriel that, since there’d never been a lady engineer at the factory, people were curious as cougars. Newspaper reporters from Fort William and Port Arthur had been ringing the factory, hounding Fraudena for information. The newshound from Port Arthur said he wanted to run a feature called “Queen of the Mosquitoes Lands at the Lakehead.” Muriel had quipped back to the switchboard girl to tell reporters who call that she rises in the morning, makes hot oatmeal just like everyone else and does not bite.
The phone rings insistently on the switchboard, and Fraudena makes ‘will it never stop’ eyes and says whoever it is, they can just call back. She asks Muriel how her train ride was, all the way from British Columbia.
“Oh – grand, grand,” Muriel breezes. “What a country this is.” An odd thing to say, the engineer thinks, given it’s her own country, but lately she’s had the sensation of observing earth from outer space. As for the girl’s query about her journey, Muriel leaves out a great deal.