The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘I’m not going to stop,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact, I want to get my commercial licence so I can fly for money.’

  ‘Then you’ll need good navigation skills. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve enrolled you at the navigation school at Richmond,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you getting lost.’

  SOME WOULD SAY, LATER, THAT JEAN BATTEN APPEARED irrational during her four months in New Zealand, her belief in herself so monumental. She had got the idea, it was said, that the government would step in and fund her proposed flight from England to Australia. Did she really think her flying feats were so impressive that people would fall over themselves to finance her ambitions? She must surely have seen the state the country was in.

  For she had hardly stepped off the ship when the Hawke’s Bay earthquake struck and more than two hundred and fifty people died and Napier and Hastings were largely destroyed. The government, already stretched to breaking point by the desperate unemployed, was hardly in the mood to be impressed.

  Others said that, being poor, Jean could only be expected to help herself. At the navigation school where her father had enrolled her, she was learning how to calculate position and distances, how to use dead reckoning, the art of combining visual reference points with maps, advancing a position based on the elapse of time travelled at certain speeds. She had enrolled, too, at the Auckland Aero Club and acquired an endorsement to her licence that allowed her to carry passengers. Her first passenger was her mother. They flew over the mangrove swamps along the edge of the sea, Nellie’s eyes fixed on the white lines of surf, her breath held, in a rapture of delight. ‘My first flight, darling. With you.’

  Jean learned, too, the variety of aerial tricks and manoeuvres the Gipsy Moth was capable of — flying inverted, circling and looping, slow rolling. Free of Travers’ watchful eye, she began to experiment, tossing the plane, twisting and weaving, flinging it against radiant autumn skies. On days when the weather changed she flew until curtains of rain all but obliterated her visibility, landing only at the last moment before her landmarks disappeared. When she performed, people on the ground gathered to watch and applaud. Frank Norton was always on hand when she landed, ecstatic with admiration. The crowd would disperse, leaving a path for them to walk between, as Frank escorted Jean to another restaurant, or a dinner or the cinema. He and her father had met, and it seemed that having a boyfriend, as Frank Norton was now perceived, and a pilot at that, had eased his anxiety. But the prospect of raising money to fly was as elusive as ever. Jean had been to see Madame Valeska. Freda Stark hadn’t come back from Australia and Madame was concerned about her. She’d heard, she said, that Freda was doing well enough in Sydney, but she wasn’t dancing at present. Valeska didn’t mention the cause of her absence, but at least Jean knew that Freda was alive.

  Frank’s leave was nearly over. Soon he would return to Quetta. He suggested, one evening, that he and Jean marry before he left. She could join him as an air force wife on the base when he had settled back in and arranged married quarters. They had had dinner at a small hotel where, at Frank’s request, candles had been lit at their table in an alcove off the dining room, overlooking the harbour. Very cosmopolitan, the manager said. It was hard to tell whether he was approving or derisive. As they entered the hotel a woman with three children holding the hem of her skirt stood at the side entrance, begging for leftover food. They stopped at the bar on the way into the dining room. Frank drank two whiskies in quick succession.

  ‘You can’t stay in New Zealand,’ Frank said.

  ‘I’m learning a lot. You’ve seen me. And I’ve stacked up the hours.’

  ‘But it won’t last forever. You don’t have the money.’

  She didn’t answer for a while. Her father’s largesse had extended only to the navigation school, and she could see that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t afford more. Nellie was back at the racetrack, wearing ever more flamboyant hats, a sparkle in her eyes when things went well. As before, there were Saturdays when she returned looking despondent, but it never lasted for long. ‘Madame Valeska’s offered me a partnership in the business,’ Jean said at last.

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  When she said no, of course it wasn’t, he pressed his offer of marriage.

  ‘But we hardly know each other,’ Jean said.

  ‘I’d be gentle with you,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t.’ Jean wiped her mouth, leaving a trail of lipstick on the white napkin. Frank sometimes got away with a kiss on her cheek, but that was as far as it went. His lips held all the appeal and suction of a plunger. When he tried to kiss her mouth, her insides went rigid with distaste.

  ‘I know you’re young. And, you know, I like that, well, that you haven’t been with other men.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she said, tilting her chin.

  ‘Yes, I do. I’d stake my life on it.’

  She felt resentment flooding through her. The sex and turmoil of married women’s lives was not what she wanted either. Frank had once described how he saved money to fly when he worked on a haberdashery counter, and the way people he served put their change in a jar on the counter, marked ‘Frank’s Flying Fund’. He’d escaped. His customers wanted him to fly. People wanted her to get married and be safe.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about any of this,’ she said.

  Frank had borrowed a family car for the evening. When the dinner was over and she was seated beside him he began to drive away from the city. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To look at the sea. Just the two of us, and some moonlight. I thought it would be nice.’ They had driven for some miles in silence when he pulled up near an estuary. There was only a crescent moon, and away from the town, it had grown very dark. Close by, Jean could hear the lapping of waves. Frank placed a hand on her arm. ‘It’s time for me to teach you some things.’

  ‘Things? What things?’ Only she knew what he meant.

  ‘I’ll be careful. I won’t let you get pregnant.’

  After scrabbling frantically at the door handle, Jean threw open the door before jumping from the car. The sea was very close and she ran screaming towards it. Frank was a step behind her. When he caught her, he seized her wrists. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Stop it, Jean. I’m not going to try anything. I promise.’

  She stood there in the shelter of his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Frank, I can’t.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, too. I wouldn’t force you. I’ve never done that to a woman.’ He edged her back to the car.

  ‘Why are you so scared of men?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you drink all the time?’

  He sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘I’ll stop. It’s just that I’m on holiday, you know?’

  She sat in the car and sobbed then. ‘It’s useless here in New Zealand,’ she said. ‘I need to get back England, to Stag Lane. Everyone here thinks I’m silly.’ He was silent then. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? Because I’m young and poor they think I’m arrogant to want so much. When everyone’s so desperate, they want me to be the same. I have to find a way of doing it myself. Back there in London, people know what’s possible.’

  Only days before, she had fallen foul of one of her instructors. A storm was coming up and he had advised her not to fly. I can make my own decisions, she had retorted. She didn’t know herself why she had spoken like that. It was just that she was certain that it was all right to fly. Then she had taken off and a squall had hit her side on, causing the plane to slip and slide through the cloudbank in driving rain. The instructor spoke to her about it the next day, citing the poor example she was setting for less experienced fliers. She had, after all, only thirty hours in her logbook and really, who did she think she was? Just because she had trained at Stag Lane didn’t make her an expert. That had been the finish really.

  ‘It’s your lookout, girlie,’ he’d said.

  She had embroidered he
r earlier response — ‘It’s my business what I do’ — and walked away. She wished, later, she could take it back but it had been said, and there was no going back on it. The Auckland Aero Club suddenly seemed seedy and lacking, the instructor an amateur. Word had come that Amy Johnson and a copilot had set new records, flying from London to Moscow, and from there across Siberia to Japan, in the fastest time ever.

  Jean sat there in the car, with the sea beating beside them, wondering how on earth she could get back to London, but knowing that she must.

  ‘If you go back, I’ll join you in London when I’m finished this tour of duty next year,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll be out of the air force then. You’ll be older.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not holding my breath.’

  JOHN WAS BETWEEN MOVIES IN 1931. This was a chance for him to come home and see the family. He had work lined up, he assured them, but the slump had hit the industry. He and Jean and Frank Norton and their father shared a Sunday lunch at the Courtville flat. Jean had invited Frank before the disastrous night out. She thought he wouldn’t show up, but he did, as bold as if nothing had happened. John told them he would go straight into rehearsals for The Wonderful Story when he got back to England. Reggie Fogwood had it all lined up. It was a pretty grim story, about a paralysed farmer whose girlfriend goes off with his brother. Moore Marriott, the comedian, would be in it, but John had a miserable role. He told them a funny story about Marriott, for his father’s benefit, about how the actor carried four sets of false teeth to alter his appearance. He imitated him, pulling his lips down to make himself look toothless. ‘You’re obsessed with teeth, you lot,’ Frank said, out of thin air.

  ‘What do you expect?’ John said lazily. ‘This family’s made its money out of teeth.’

  ‘Plenty of teeth, not much money,’ his father said, laughing at his antics. They seemed on friendlier terms, as though the ten years that had passed had softened their differences. As if to catch up on that lost time, John had seen more of his father while he was in New Zealand than he had of Nellie. Besides, he noted, it wasn’t exactly as if his mother had gone out of her way to see him in London. And as for Jean, she was a brat, he told her. It never occurred to him that she wasn’t following her music career over there. After his first surprise at learning the truth, he spoke to her rather as an indulgent older uncle might have done. They exchanged notes on Harold. John said his time in New Zealand was too short for him to get up north.

  ‘The kids’ll be growing up. Perhaps I’ll go,’ Jean murmured, not really meaning it.

  Fred wasn’t sure, but he thought there might be another baby on the way.

  ‘Poor Alma,’ Jean said. Fred and John looked away. She sensed they were in agreement.

  ‘It’s really time I was off,’ Frank said. His ship was leaving the next day. He caught Jean’s eye, signalling for her to follow him.

  In the passageway he stood close, breathing heavily. If he just could stop breathing, she thought, perhaps she could get to like him better. The idea, unbidden, made her smile.

  ‘Will you come to the ship to say goodbye?’ he said. ‘That, at least.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you for everything. I’ve had a very nice time.’

  ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘I’ll wave to you in the morning.’

  ‘Get in touch if there’s anything I can do to help. Will you promise me that?’

  She allowed him to kiss her cheek, and listened to the thud of his shoes on the stairs. When she couldn’t hear him any longer, she returned to John and her father.

  ‘He likes you,’ Fred said, teasing her. ‘I was waiting for him to ask for your hand.’

  ‘I’m not going to marry him,’ Jean said. ‘Not for anything.’

  ‘You could do worse,’ her father said.

  ‘I want best,’ she answered. She pulled her lip down over her front teeth, the same gumless look John had imitated.

  John said, when the laughter had died down, ‘If you want to come back to London, I’ll pay your fare. You can stay with me for a bit until you get yourself sorted out.’

  Frank had already said he would pay for her fare. Although she now wanted desperately to return to London, she had refused, believing that if she accepted she would be beholden to him. She hoped that in the morning she would be waving farewell to Frank Norton for good.

  ‘The offer’s there, Jean,’ John said. ‘I wouldn’t want to stay here either. No offence meant, Dad, but I couldn’t live in Auckland now.’ He ran his hand through his beautiful tousled hair. ‘It would squeeze the oxygen out of me.’

  ‘What about Mother?’ Jean said.

  ‘Do you think I’m made of money?’ John said. His flat was definitely not big enough to accommodate more than one extra person. Really, it was over to her.

  CHAPTER 16

  STAG LANE. THE MUD UNDERFOOT, LARKS RISING ABOVE, the hedgerows heavy with hawthorn berries. And, inside the clubhouse, cries of pleasure when she arrived, as if she had never been away. Of more importance, as if they had always known her. Amy Johnson walked over and said, ‘Jean, where have you been?’

  And the Duchess of Bedford came in, stamping her feet to dislodge the mud, shouting, ‘Mud pies.’ Then she caught sight of Jean. ‘Well, hullo, I haven’t seen you for days. I thought you must be sick. Where did you say you were?’

  ‘New Zealand,’ Jean said.

  ‘Good heavens, what were you doing there? The place is full of savages, isn’t it?’

  ‘I grew up there. It’s my homeland.’

  ‘Really, how extraordinary.’ The Duchess studied her as if she were some interesting new breed of person.

  Herbert Travers was pleased to see her again, if taken aback with her new daring in the air. She needed another seventy hours in her logbook before she could gain a commercial pilot’s licence, something Travers now seemed to take for granted, once he had got over the surprise of seeing her looping the plane. The important thing was that she was back in the clear, bright sky over England that summer. As well as the general flying and cross-country tests that counted towards her B licence, at the end of her hundred hours of flying, there would also be a solo night flight between Croydon and Lympne. This was the greatest challenge, but it still lay a long way ahead. Nor was her study for a commercial licence just about flying. There were more exams to pass in navigation and air legislature, in meteorology and the inspection of aircraft and engines. She began another engineering course. For months she spent each day in a hangar, dressed in overalls, alongside the regular mechanics. She learned how to banter, and how to wipe the grease off the tip of her nose with her elbow.

  So everything had changed again, and she was happy, although there were people missing from her life. The absence of Nellie was painful. Every week her letters arrived, full of promises to take a ship to England, just as soon as she could afford it. There was always a pound enclosed. Jean looked carefully for Victor Dorée each time she went to the clubhouse, knowing it would not do to ask after him. She had had more time to study the entrance to his house in Orchard Road, had seen the name on the closed gates: Oakleigh. In the distance she could see a fountain, and formal gardens.

  It was Amy who brought his name up in a conversation. Had Jean met him, she wondered aloud.

  ‘I just know he has his own Gipsy Moth,’ Jean said, avoiding the question.

  ‘Good Lord,’ Amy said sighing. ‘If only. It’s the money, it’s always the problem, isn’t it?’ Amy was born into a fishing family, poor as muck, was how she described it, but her dad had worked and gone without to help her get her first plane. She was a strange person, Jean thought, intense and febrile, needing everything around her to be perfect. This was something Jean understood; it just seemed that her new friend let her feelings show more easily. She knew that if she smiled she often got her way, but this was beyond Amy, who tensed and snapped if things weren’t going her way.

  Jean considered enquiring about Viscount Wakefield’s money, but decided that might be ba
d form. Instead she asked about Victor’s apparent wealth.

  Amy laughed. Victor was one of five sons of a wealthy linen merchant. Jean decided not to confess that she already knew these details. If she had learned one thing from her mother’s flutters — she had never liked to call them gambling — it was not to show your hand. A good tip was worth its weight in real gold, and you used it for yourself. Victor’s family had a chauffeur, and servants, and a gardener, Amy told her. And, it seemed, the sons got pretty much whatever they liked. She’d heard Victor was flying somewhere overseas. ‘It would be nice to get your foot through that door,’ she remarked. ‘Well, I thought you might have bumped into him.’

  Jean decided her new friend was being too curious. ‘I just wondered about a man who could afford his own aircraft,’ she said.

  ‘He’s fairly attractive,’ Amy said, picking at a cuticle and nipping it off with her teeth. ‘Anyway, he’s not here, so that’s that. I expect he’d want to marry someone rich.’

  ‘You’re famous,’ Jean said. ‘That might help.’

  ‘Hmm, you can’t tell with those types, can you?’ Amy said. ‘They usually end up marrying some girl whose family’s in Tatler. Anyway, he’s younger than me. Men never marry older girls.’

  SIR ALAN COBHAM BROUGHT HIS FLYING CIRCUS to Stag Lane just as Jean arrived back. Described as swashbuckling, like a man out of a movie, Cobham had deep-set eyes, a narrow moustache and a cleft chin. Using op pilots and a dozen or more planes, his circus toured the country, barnstorming and offering joy rides on specially cleared fields or airstrips. The whole country seemed taken up with the possibilities of flying.

  ‘I could do that, you know,’ Jean said to Amy. A plan was hatching in her head. Cobham wanted to employ more stunt pilots and was offering to trial those who believed they had the skills, so when a group of airmen lined up for test flights, Jean lined up with them. She was the only woman. Nobody said a word.