The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  Suddenly the sheik stood up. She could have sworn she saw a glint of humour in his eyes, as if this was an intriguing diversion, but called on Allah and walked toward the propeller. It was clear that he had decided to help, but she now saw that if the propeller did turn over, the flowing sleeves of his garment would be caught in it. There was nothing to be done, but to roll his sleeves up and tie them around the back of his neck, something he allowed her to do with an air of amusement.

  Once again, Jean switched on the contact, and suddenly the engine roared into life. The tribesmen jolted with fear. She saw that they would be injured if they came near the propeller, so she turned the engine off and jumped out, gesticulating violently for them to keep away. They retreated a little way and stood in a group. Leaving the engine running, she walked over to the men, offering a packet of chocolate biscuits by way of thanks, and said goodbye. The sheik pointed along the track where, in the distance, a camel caravan was approaching.

  By now it was nine o’clock and the heat was intense. She ran for the plane, jumped in, not waiting to strap herself in, and took off, climbing for a minute or two, then circling back to wave to the tribesmen, who were now almost obscured by dust. They waved wildly in return, and over the sound of the engine she believed she heard an ululating chorus of farewell.

  Ahead of her lay Baghdad, in Mesopotamia, recently renamed Iraq, where there had once been the hanging gardens of Babylon. The city lying beneath her shone, the blue and white of the mosques relieved only by the intense green of thousands of date palms clustered along the edge of the Tigris, flowing into the Persian Gulf. Again she was overtaken by poetry, lines Harold had once recited, his lips moving with wonder: I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun. That was as much as she could remember, an old Greek poem. How much more did Harold have stowed away in his head? What else had settled there before things went so wrong? Before they had all come to the parting of the ways.

  CHAPTER 20

  IN THE DISTANCE, ON THE JOURNEY between Baghdad and Basra, Jean saw a mirage. A deep sapphire-coloured lake appeared in the desert, standing out in sharp contrast to the surrounding yellow sand. No such lake was marked on her map, and for a moment she doubted her compass. More than an hour and a half later, the lake disappeared. When she looked back, there was no sign that it had ever been. Like the civilisations that had come and gone in this vast expanse of land, it had simply ceased to exist.

  From Basra she flew to Bushehr, where she slept for a few hours in a bare room of a guest house. At midnight she rose again and set out for the town of Jask on the Persian Gulf.

  The night was warm and clear, until three in the morning when the moon set, leaving her in complete darkness. As she flew by the light of her torch on the instrument panel, the sense of loneliness she had experienced over Greece settled on her again. Sometimes the coastline she was following took a great curve, so that she would think that she was flying out to sea, and then realise that she was steering towards mountains. These she could just distinguish by their density against the sky, a more intense black than black.

  She was saved by the dawn, and in its tender, creeping light her despair melted, and she began to shimmer with excitement. Jean knew she was flying to Australia faster than any person had done before her, and that the record was within her grasp.

  At Jask, she slept again for an hour or so, and ate a tin of cherries. She prepared the plane to fly to Kashmir.

  But the elements were against her again. Some hundred miles to the south, over Baluchistan, she encountered more sandstorms so violent she was forced close to the ground. The plane jolted this way and that, hurdling sand hillocks and missing bushy coastal trees by inches. Shortly, she came to an area of fields and decided that, at whatever cost, she must land. She eased the plane over an earthen bank and brought it to rest, rejoicing for a moment that the landing appeared successful, until the plane lurched and the wheels began to sink deep into mud, tipping the propeller nose-first into the quagmire. She switched off the engine and leapt in after the plane, standing in the mud and putting her shoulder to the nose. Nearby, some two hundred tribesmen stood looking at her with curiosity. The wheels sank deeper in the mire, until the plane was resting on its fuselage, tail in the air, and she was up to her waist in the mud. Her body could no longer support the weight of the machine. She called upon Allah, as she had learned the day before, shouting loudly.

  On hearing this, the tribesmen approached and carried the plane to dry land.

  When she inspected the plane, she discovered that the one of the propeller blades was fractured. She had no idea how she was going to explain this. She knew she must be only some thirty-five miles from Karachi. If there was some way of communicating with the airport there, it might be possible for them to bring her a propeller. After some thought, she put up a great wail, shouting ‘Karachi’, all the while pointing at the propeller.

  The people shook their heads. Karachi was not possible. Instead, they said ‘Bela’, and indicated that they would take her there. She knew this to be an ancient town in the hills, a long way to the north-west, in the opposite direction to Karachi. There seemed nothing for it, but to agree to their plan. Between them they picketed the plane to the ground, and two men volunteered to stay with it. She again gathered her belongings, placing them in a bag. Desolation almost overwhelmed her as they turned their backs on the plane. When they reached a village, women of the tribe gave her food, curried prawns, with goats’ milk to wash them down.

  The tribesmen strapped the air cushions from the plane onto the back of a camel, and helped her to mount, seating her where she could rest her back against the camel’s second hump. Her driver climbed in front, and the journey to Bela began. Throughout the long night the driver kept the camel going at a steady pace, shouting loudly when it stumbled.

  Early in the morning, they reached the city of Bela, a place that had begun to seem like the mirage she had seen days before, a place that existed only in the imagination. Her driver collected her baggage and motioned her in the direction of a large square white house. He knocked sharply on the door, until a man, heavy with sleep, opened it, demanding to know their business. Some words were exchanged and then he said, in perfect English, ‘Come inside, you must be very tired.’

  This greeting was so unexpected that Jean thought for a moment she would cry with relief. ‘Where am I?’ she whispered. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Until recently I was the head man of the Jam Sahib,’ he said. ‘Come, sit down. I’ve got English tea, and some rather nice biscuits. When you’ve had those you can wash and rest until it’s time for breakfast.’ The room was simple, with whitewashed walls, but furnished with colourful kilims and cushions.

  ‘I need to get to Karachi.’ She explained her predicament.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will have to give that some thought. It is a shame that Jam Sahib is not here. He was with us until last week.’

  ‘He speaks English?’

  ‘Oh, my dear young lady. Where are you from?’

  ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘New Zealand. And do they not play cricket there?’

  ‘I believe they do.’

  ‘But you are not a follower of the game? Ah well, never mind. Jam Sahib played test cricket for England. He was described once in a newspaper as the Midsummer night’s dream of cricket. You may have heard of the name Maharaja K. S. Ranjitsinhji.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  The assistant sighed, and stirred another lump of sugar into his own tea. ‘He was a prince among men.’

  ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘He is not with us.’

  ‘He has died?’

  ‘Last week.’ He bowed his head for a moment.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jean said.

  ‘The time for mourning has passed.’

  Jean could see no way through this strange conve
rsation. ‘So is there no Jam Sahib now?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed. We have a new Jam Sahib. But he, too, is away, attending to his duties as the new ruling prince of Nawanagar, which is the area where you are now. Hmm.’ He scratched his chin, deep in thought. ‘The new Jam Sahib has an aged Chevrolet truck which I think he could spare for a few days. He is kind, he would want you to have it. Yes, indeed, that is the answer. And I can signal ahead to your people in Karachi what has happened, and perhaps you can alert them to your needs for this flying machine of yours. Forgive me, your aeroplane. The late Jam Sahib liked aeroplanes. He even went for a flight in one once. It took off in a field and brought him back to land in the same place.’

  ‘Cobham’s Flying Circus. I asked them for a job but they wouldn’t take me because I’m not a man.’

  ‘You can fly a circus plane? You must be a very good flier indeed. But surely Mr Cobham would be right? What does your father think of a young lady like you flying in a circus? No, no, Mr Cobham must surely have been correct.’

  The journey that followed had a hallucinatory quality. There was not enough petrol available for the journey to Karachi so, on the way, they took a detour back to the plane, still guarded by Baluchi tribesmen, and drained enough to see them on their way, leaving sufficient fuel for a takeoff. They lurched, then, over dry riverbeds, dashed down banks and across rivers in flow, became stuck in mud, collecting stones, cactus and thorn bushes to place under the lorry wheels. Time, which had seemed so important to Jean, had become meaningless, something not to be measured. She entered Karachi, its streets filled with camel caravans, the animals decorated with red and purple scarves, tinkling with bells. She saw Mohammedan priests dressed in bright orange robes and another man in black wearing what appeared to be the hoof of a cow on his head. This was a priest of the Parsee.

  They drove along Drigh Road to the entrance gates of the British RAF compound, where a Commander Watt was in charge of the aerodrome. He invited her into a cool and pleasant room, where she collapsed into an easy chair and sipped cold lemonade. Outside, he said, there was an army of reporters, who had heard that she was missing in the desert. Did she think she could face them?

  ‘I could have a quick word,’ she said, ‘but I do want to get away as soon as possible.’ Jean had lost some three days, but now that she was back at an airport, all the urgency of her journey returned. She began again to calculate the chances of still breaking Amy Johnson’s record. It was not impossible. Now it was 5.30 p.m. She had telegraphed from Bela at four in the morning, asking for a propeller to be waiting for her on her arrival. The propeller wouldn’t be available until the following morning. Resigned to spending the night in Karachi, she spoke to the reporters. As well, she sent cables to her mother and to Victor.

  Still in her flying suit, she fell onto the bed that was offered to her and slept until the next day. When she woke, the propeller had arrived. The story of the girl aviator who had spent nights in the desert, and was still hell-bent on flying to Australia, was flashing its way around the world. The commander offered her a pilot and a plane to fly her out to the abandoned Moth.

  But the machine was not to be found. It was impossible to believe that it had disappeared. After searching the surrounding barren land for more than an hour, they returned to Karachi.

  A second search was organised. This time the plane flew all the way to Bela and back. The plane, somebody suggested, must have been dismantled by the tribesmen and taken away. Or, they said, perhaps all the land around there was marshy, and it had simply sunk right into the ground. Jean could not believe either of these propositions. The day had started so well, she had felt so refreshed and light-hearted, and certain that she would be on her way. Convinced that the plane still existed, she saw this as merely another setback to be overcome.

  The truck that had brought her from Bela had not yet begun its return journey. She offered the driver money for a journey to the fields. In the evening, they arrived at the village, and again mounted camels. It was impossible to strap the propeller to a camel, so teams of men volunteered to carry it on their shoulders. They set off into the night, six camels, two boys running ahead with flaming brands to light the way, the tribesmen panting with the exertion of carrying the propeller.

  Towards midnight, they came to the plane. To Jean’s astonishment, a circle of the Baluchi people sat around it. By the light of the moon and the torches, she saw that every part of the plane was covered with camel cloths. A sandstorm had blown up and the local people had covered the machine with cloths to protect it. In the process, they had also provided the perfect camouflage from the air.

  To her joy, the engine turned over as soon as she switched it on next morning. Now, at last, she could continue her journey to Australia. She gave money to all who had helped her, and prepared to leave. There was a fair wind blowing, but the space to take off was so short that she vaulted the plane over a bank and into the next field, where there was sufficient runway for the plane to rise. Within half an hour, Karachi lay beneath her.

  Suddenly there was a sharp report and her engine failed completely. She was some five hundred feet up, but the airfield was too far away to reach by gliding. Below her lay Drigh Road which ran northwards from Karachi, through a series of sandhills. This seemed the only immediate place that was firm, and where there were no houses. As she glided down in the now totally silent machine, wondering how she could dodge the cars, she saw to her horror that the road was bounded at intervals by a series of white posts that appeared narrower than the thirty-foot span of her wings. Sure enough, as she landed two of these posts caught the plane in an inevitable embrace. The plane turned a complete somersault. Jean clung to the bottom of the cockpit, so that when the aircraft came to rest, she was able to lower herself on her shoulders and crawl out from beneath the wreckage.

  A car approached along Drigh Road and the driver stopped. She stood for a moment looking at the remains of her plane, before accepting his offer of a lift. As soon as she could, she resolved, she would attempt another flight to Australia. She learned soon enough that a connecting rod had snapped clean in half and gone right through the engine casing.

  BARELY A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE JEAN HAD LEFT London. It was still April 1933. As Nellie noted, the bluebells were still in flower beneath the trees at Oakleigh. She had rung the Dorée household several times, but a servant always said that the family was out. Yes, Mr and Mrs Dorée and all the young Mr Dorées as well. She had walked up the familiar driveway and knocked on the door, wearing her best hat. Mrs Dorée came to the door, and, after some hesitation, invited her in. They sat in the reception hall, on hard-backed chairs, beside the curved staircase that led to the upper rooms. Mother to mother, Mrs Dorée said, Victor hadn’t really budgeted for this mess. Jean, she intimated, was a resourceful young woman, who would surely find some way to get herself back home. Perhaps, did Nellie think, it might be time to return to New Zealand?

  Nellie took her leave, keeping, as she related it to Jean, a civil tongue in her head. ‘Embarrassed,’ she said. ‘That’s what she was. They wanted the newspapers in on the act so long as the stories were good. Cheap cosmetics, indeed. They’re trade really, not professionals.’

  In India, a doctor had ordered Jean to rest in a darkened room for several days, for fear of concussion. After three days, she emerged from her room, set upon finding a way to return to London. A cable arrived from Viscount Wakefield. He had been told of her difficulties and, more than that, he commended her for keeping a steady head in the face of danger. She was to see the Castrol agent in Karachi, Mr Chubb, who would take care of her return journey, the passage of the plane’s remains, and anything else she might need.

  Four days after the crash, Jean boarded a ship. Late in May, she disembarked in England. That night, she and Nellie sat down to a barren meal of toast, and hot chocolate made with water. Nellie wanted to say a prayer of thanks for Jean’s deliverance, but Jean said she was no longer sure about divine intervention, and
could they please leave prayer for another day.

  ‘What will you do about Victor?’ Nellie asked.

  ‘I should try to see him. Whatever his mother thinks of me, he should have a chance to explain himself in person.’

  Before she went to bed she wrote two letters, one to Victor suggesting that they meet, and another to Viscount Wakefield to thank him for his generosity.

  A note arrived from Victor. ‘I agree that we have some matters to discuss,’ he wrote. He didn’t propose that Jean visit the house, nor that he would take her to dinner. ‘There is that pub in Edgware Road, The White Lion. We could meet at one o’clock on Saturday afternoon if that’s convenient for you.’ It was the same pub where she and Frank Norton used to meet.

  She almost didn’t go, but still she supposed there could be some misunderstanding.

  Victor had arrived before her and was seated, suave, distant, drumming his fingers on a tabletop, as if impatient. He glanced at his watch when she walked in.

  ‘Victor,’ she said. ‘What can I say? I’m sorry about the plane.’

  ‘Not half as sorry as my mother.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she said, knowing how pitiful and silly this sounded, yet unable to help herself. ‘You know, it was hard out there in the desert.’

  ‘Well, of course I’m glad you’re all in one piece. I wouldn’t have liked to have that on my conscience.’

  She felt herself stiffening. ‘I take it that our partnership’s finished?’

  ‘Well, it was worth a try. Look, I’m sorry old thing, but you did take some risks.’

  ‘It’s my fault then?’

  He was silent. His face was as smooth as the satin sleeve of one of his mother’s dinner dresses, and, it suddenly occurred to her, almost as pink.