The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘I’ll write to him and explain,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him that there are still some opportunities for me here, and I need to take them before I settle down. And I’d like to see the end of the air race — he shouldn’t begrudge me that.’

  The race she referred to had been a buzz in the air all year, a major celebration of Melbourne’s centenary celebrations. It was planned to begin on 20 October from Mildenhall aerodrome in Suffolk. Smithy was one of the great names scheduled to start, and Jim and Amy Mollison, too. Charlie Ulm was in the States, and apparently wasn’t planning to take part, although she’d heard nothing from Charlie himself. For that she was grateful.

  She would have loved to participate in the race, but she knew that her elderly Moth would be no match for the planes that would be competing. As the money from her lectures had begun to accumulate, a new plan was shaping up in her head. A faster, more modern plane of her own was starting to seem like a real possibility.

  ‘The race isn’t until October,’ Nellie said. ‘Do you think that’s really fair?’

  ‘I don’t care about fair,’ Jean said, coming as near as she might to stamping her foot. ‘I don’t want to go back to London yet, and I don’t want to stay here. What’s the matter with Sydney? I thought you liked Australia.’

  After a moment of startled silence, Nellie said, ‘I can see you’re tired and upset.’

  ‘Don’t you understand that I need to be left alone?’

  ‘Well, I suppose if you can put Edward’s mind at rest, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go over to Sydney for a bit.’

  They took the next ship out of Auckland, the Gipsy Moth folded and stowed away on board. In Sydney, Jean found them a comfortable enough flat for a modest rent near Kings Cross. It wasn’t the best of neighbourhoods, someone remarked, another woman flier she had met on her first arrival from London. ‘My mother and I can manage,’ Jean replied crisply. She saw no need to recite the list of slums they had inhabited, the nights with furniture pushed against doors. That life was over. What was satisfying about where they lived was the privacy it allowed them. People didn’t come to the door while she was closeted away writing.

  The words came as quickly and easily as she had predicted, her logbooks and journals filling in gaps and reminding her of the exact locations where her adventures had taken place. She was grateful, as she wrote, for the disciplines of Ladies College, the English prizes she had won, and for the history lessons that gave background to the ancient desert sites. In the mornings she wrote at speed, in the afternoons she walked and swam and turned her face towards the warmth of the sun. Nellie, watching her closely, was relieved to see her looking well again.

  Solo Flight came out in September. Jean held her advance copy, opened it and inhaled its new paper smell. The dust jacket bore a picture of her wearing her white helmet and the Gipsy Moth against a blue sky. The hard cover beneath was green and strong. The first reviews in Sydney were warm.

  An offer, which she supposed must have come on the strength of her written words, arrived shortly afterwards from the Gaumont British Film Company. She was invited to go to Melbourne and broadcast a commentary on the great race, now officially called the MacRobertson Race, after the sponsor, a confectionery manufacturer. The first prize was ten thousand pounds. Jean’s contract was for the ten days the race was expected to last.

  That was how she found herself in the thick of it, sitting at a microphone, reading cables and telegrams on the progress of the race, and translating them into broadcast material. It was like being in the race itself, not just a spectator from afar, but a link to countries around the world.

  Smithy had withdrawn before the start of the race. In America he had bought a Lockheed Altair he’d named the Lady Southern Cross, planning to race, but the plane wasn’t ready in time. The Mollisons set a record time to India, but had to pull out near Karachi; a British plane crashed in Italy, killing both pilots. Malcolm MacGregor, whose youthful acrobatics had entertained Auckland when Jean was a child, had entered. He was now a squadron leader in the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

  Three days into the race, a de Havilland Comet 88, flown by Charles Scott and Tom Campbell Black, flashed past the winning post. It was a perfect, still day; the sun shone on the plane’s bright red wings and fuselage as it landed. The winners had made the flight in under three days, the fastest time ever flown. A hundred thousand people had gathered to watch the first arrivals. Jean clung to the microphone as the crowds jostled her, not losing a beat in her commentary. A day later she would scoop all the other journalists when she captured an exclusive interview with the runners-up, two Dutchmen, by the simple expedient of climbing onto a workbench and handing them a microphone through a hangar window. MacGregor arrived in seven days, coming in fifth.

  When it was all over, there was a party, of course: champagne that lasted all night, and dancing, and singing, too. She found herself at a piano and vamping out some tunes, the first time she’d played since that evening at Oakleigh, only now her playing was exuberant, a touch crazy. Everyone seemed more than a little mad, laughing and embracing each other, making risqué jokes at each other’s expense, spilling drinks as they threw their arms about in expansive gestures. The sponsor of the de Havilland Comet aviators came over and suggested she might like to buy herself a little memento to remind herself of the wonderful job she had done over the past ten days.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘I’d love to do that.’

  That night, too, she met Beverley Shepherd, a slim, fair-headed young man, two years younger than her. He was training to be a pilot. His eyes were blue and clear, his body supple, and he danced with a dazzling smoothness. The band was playing ‘I’m in the Mood for Love’, the year’s new hit, and he began to croon it in her ear, and she sang right back to him.

  ‘Can I see you home?’ he said. Afterwards he would say, ‘I didn’t think I’d have the nerve. How did I ever say that?’

  ‘Simply because you were near me,’ she said, and laughed.

  She fell in love with him. Just like that. Love, elusive, sometimes close, always complicated, had suddenly declared itself. Just as Charlie Ulm had predicted, as if he had known that she was ready for this moment.

  At yet another dinner, some days afterwards, the sponsor whispered in her ear, ‘So what did you get to put on your mantelpiece?’

  ‘I don’t think it will fit on the mantelpiece,’ she said, and laughed. ‘It’s a French evening gown by Patou, blue mousseline de soie.’

  It seemed like the perfect purchase to celebrate falling in love.

  Jean wrote again to Edward, delaying her return to London.

  IN DECEMBER, CHARLES ULM’S PLANE, the Stella Australis, disappeared on a flight between Oakland, California, and Honolulu. Theories abounded, but the most common one was that an unexpected tailwind had caused him and his two crew to fly past the Hawaiian islands in the dark.

  Jean wept in private. There was nobody, certainly not Beverley, not even Nellie, to whom she could confide her pain. Charlie’s last night flight.

  CHAPTER 26

  ‘YOU NEED TO STOP SEEING THAT YOUNG MAN,’ Nellie said. ‘You’re engaged to be married.’

  ‘Be honest, Mother. I never thought you liked Edward all that much,’ Jean said.

  ‘Liking him or not isn’t the issue, Jean. You’ve had enough trouble with men already.’

  Here in Sydney, a coolness was descending between them. Jean had stopped wearing her engagement ring when she was with Beverley. She slid it off her finger and put it in a pocket, leaving it there until she got home, but sometimes she forgot to put it back on. Nellie always seemed to see through her.

  ‘If you’re not careful, you’re going to have people talking about you. I don’t blame you for Frank, and certainly not for Victor. But I’m your mother. I can see what the newspapers will make of it if they catch you running around with Beverley Shepherd while you’re still engaged. All summer, swimming, driving, boating. You think nobod
y notices where you spend your time?’

  ‘Nobody knows I go to Bev’s house,’ Jean said, her face flaming. ‘Anyway, his family’s there. You could try getting to know them, you might like them.’

  But Nellie’s warning messages were hard to ignore. ‘You’ll become restless if you don’t fulfil your dreams,’ she said, in one of their exchanges. ‘I wanted to be an actress, and look what happened to me.’

  ‘You were happy enough married to my father. Until you found him out.’ Jean felt like a junior at school rebuking a prefect, but Nellie’s enthusiasm for a perfect marriage seemed misplaced. ‘Well, weren’t you?’

  Nellie’s tone was bitter. ‘He thought emancipation was just for men. I didn’t understand him.’

  ‘That sounds like the Temple of Higher Thought,’ Jean said. ‘Surely you’re not saying it was your fault?’

  ‘You’re not listening. If I’d been born in this century I’d have done it differently. I might not have married at all.’

  ‘And then I’d never have been born.’

  Nellie blinked and faltered. ‘I’m just saying, you and Beverley are both young. Don’t throw everything away, not just yet.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Jean said angrily. ‘You were happy enough for me to get engaged to the others.’

  ‘I don’t think this boy would be happy for you to go flying off around the world.’

  ‘Well Ted’s not either, but I stood up to him.’

  ‘After you’d accepted his engagement ring. Did you think you were in love with him, too?’

  As if she hadn’t heard her mother, Jean said, ‘Beverley’s different. I can see now what the others wanted: a wife they could boast about when I gave their dinner parties, when I was stout and middle-aged. They could tell about my exploits and make a good story of it.’

  Nellie had shrugged, as if Jean was beyond reasoning with, and changed the subject.

  People did, of course, know that Jean often visited the Shepherds. The family had many visitors at the Darling Point house, a sandstone mansion with views across the dark blue waters of Sydney Harbour, green bush pressing against its garden walls, the soft susurration of a gum tree on the boundary. The suburb was one of the best addresses in Sydney. Jean, as often as not, could be found slung in a hammock on one of the wide verandahs, sipping lemonade, freshly made by Beverley’s mother. He got his looks from her, a lean, tall woman with straight sandy hair, and a wide smile that broke out whenever she looked at Jean.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said more than once. ‘My boy in love with one of the world’s most famous women. Are you really in love with him?’

  ‘Oh,’ Jean said, laughing, dodging the question. ‘I’m not that famous yet.’ Her fingers strayed to Beverley’s face, tracing its contours. He was seated beneath her on the verandah, leaning back, eyes closed. He seemed oblivious to his own boyish beauty, the perfection of his profile, the morning stubble still soft. Yet. The word hung in the air. Beverley wanted to marry her. ‘It’s too soon. Yet,’ she said to him. In spite of herself, Nellie’s words had given her pause.

  ‘Why? Please tell me. Aren’t you happy?’

  ‘I’ve never been happier in my whole life,’ she said, and it was true. Some days, since she had met Beverley, flying seemed a chore, something that no longer consumed her the way it had. It was enough just to be with him. ‘You’re younger than me. I might be a handful.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does. You want to be a pilot. You should finish your training. You’ve got that lovely little plane.’ Like Victor’s mother, Mrs Shepherd had bought her son a Puss Moth. It was an uncomfortably close parallel. Later, Jean would reflect that this had been a deciding factor. She badly wanted to stay, but Beverley had never had to fight for anything. She didn’t want a man like Victor, with ambitions unfulfilled, or worse, lived through her.

  The Kingsford Smiths lived around the corner, although there was a question over how long they could afford the address. Beverley and Jean had taken to calling in on Smithy, his second wife, Mary, and their young son at the weekends. Mary was a neat, small-boned woman adoring of her husband. Jean and Smithy spoke only briefly of Charles Ulm, as if saying more would open up a wound too painful to examine. Smithy was sometimes in the doldrums; she assumed he was brooding on Charlie’s disappearance. His hair was already thinning, and the lines around his mouth were deepening. Money was on his mind, as well. ‘I’m going to have to break another record,’ he said morosely, one afternoon.

  ‘Sir Charles,’ Beverley said awkwardly, trying to participate in the conversation, ‘are you planning to break Scott and Campbell’s record?’

  ‘Sir Charles.’ Smithy’s tone was irritable. ‘Jean, tell your boyfriend not to stand on ceremony. You’ve dropped in for a cuppa, for God’s sake. Oh look,’ he said, rubbing a hand wearily over his face, ‘sorry, I didn’t mean to bite. I wish sometimes I’d never had this handle attached to my name. Every man and his dog thinks you’re rich. Sir this and Sir that, but when you talk about money it’s embarrassing because they think your pockets are full, and you must be greedy to want more. You know what it’s like, Jean, trying to raise money, the endless bloody circuit.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Jean said. ‘And sometimes I love it — that’s what bothers me. The rush of blood when you look at the crowd, and you can hold them in the palm of your hand, the silence ticking over that only you can break. It’s like a spell.’

  ‘And you think, in that instant of silence, that you’re God. I’ve got to get away from it before long or I’ll start believing it.’ He watched his son, playing on a swing in the back yard. Another Charles. ‘Yes, mate,’ he said to Beverley, ‘I’m going to have a crack at the record by the end of the year. It’s there to be taken, although Scott and Campbell were pretty sharp, I’ll give them that. If I can crack that one, well, perhaps we can all sit back and relax, eh Mary?’ His eyes rested on his wife. ‘All I want is to stay at home now.’

  ‘You’ll use the Lady Southern Cross?’ Jean asked.

  ‘I reckon she’ll do the job. I can tell you, I was brassed off not making it to the MacRobertson. Ten thousand quid. I could have used that. Bloody hot, isn’t it?’ He stood up, shaking himself a little, as if his joints were stiff. ‘Couple of beers, whadya reckon?’

  This conversation played over in Jean’s mind. How long would it last, this life she was leading? She must place her trust in Beverley waiting for her. Jean wrote several drafts of a letter, screwing up balls of paper before she was satisfied.

  My dear Ted,

  Thank you so much for caring about me enough to want to marry me. I am grateful for your patience and kindness. I think it only fair to tell you I have decided against marriage and would like to return the ring you gave me when I get back to London. I have still some goals I want to achieve. I cannot commit myself to matrimony while I pursue what, I suppose for want of a better word, you could call my ambition to succeed. I want to be the very best aviator in the world but I’d make a rotten wife. I have made a choice. Count yourself fortunate.

  Yours, with affection,

  Jean

  Then she put the screwed-up pieces of paper in the rubbish bin. As she went out to post her letter on her way to the Shepherds’, her mother gave her a knowing look. ‘Be careful of what you want. Sometimes you get more than you bargain for.’

  Jean left without replying.

  ‘I wrote to Edward this morning. I’ve broken off my engagement,’ she told Beverley.

  ‘About time.’

  ‘But I am getting my Moth overhauled. I gave instructions to start work on it yesterday. I’m going to fly it back to England. Bev, don’t look like that. When I’ve flown from England to New Zealand, we’ll get married. I promise. Promise. Stop frowning. You’ll be a pilot, and I’ll be your good little wifey, and we’ll have babies.’ She laid her cheek against his. ‘I know this is best for both of us.’ She felt wise and mature. They would grow old and happy together and
he would be glad.

  As she rode the ferry back across a glittering Sydney Harbour, later that day, she steeled herself to tell Nellie about the broken engagement. Her mother had made baked chicken and jacket potatoes for dinner, an appeasement for their earlier sharp words.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Jean began.

  Nellie put a finger to her lips. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  ‘No, Mother, I am not.’

  ‘All’s well then. I take it you’re not going to marry the stockbroker?’

  ‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Are you angry with me?’

  Nellie gave a short laugh. ‘I wanted you to be sure. As a matter of fact, I’m glad. A cold fish if ever I saw one. A bit of an odd cod. Are we going back to England, or are you staying here with this new boyfriend of yours?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘We need to book a ship then?’

  ‘You do. I’m flying.’

  Nellie shook her head. There had been enough arguments that summer. The following weekend, Nellie paid a call on the Shepherd family. As the ceiling fans turned in Sydney’s heat-laden summer air, she looked around the room, taking in the cane and silky oak furniture, the paintings and rugs, then accepted tea and almond cake, served from a Georgian platter that Beverley’s mother had inherited from a relative in England.

  ‘He’ll do,’ she said, when she brushed Jean’s hair that evening.

  Word got around: Jean was going back to London. As she walked down Circular Quay one morning later in the week, a headline on a billboard caught her eye: WILL JEAN BATTEN MARRY?

  Somewhere in a newsroom, a reporter had decided that she was returning to England to get married. What was worse, a newspaper in London had already interviewed Edward about why she was going back. He had said, testily, it appeared from the report, that he really didn’t know whether the wedding was on or off. Clearly, he had not received her letter.