The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  I have done the things I wanted to do. The only thing I want now is that you should hold me and tell me that you love me, and that all the dreams we had may still happen. I am looking at this glacier, this huge stream of ice from the mountains, and I feel that for many months now, I have been like ice, not myself at all. It’s as if I’ve taken stage fright from my own life. I want to start it over again.

  My parents have made friends with each other for the moment. It is all about me, I suppose. They are worried. My mother is on her way to New Zealand. I’m going over to meet her when her ship arrives in Sydney on 12th December. I thought I would come a few days early. We’ll stay until we can get the ship back to New Zealand. I have promised to go with the parents to Rotorua, the place where I was born, after Christmas, when I have recovered. I feel I must. Perhaps it is as near to being a family again as we might ever be, even if it is a pretend family. So when I’m in Sydney we can have a whole week together, just you and me, and all that means to us both. Oh how I’ve missed you, my love. Time flees, we mustn’t waste any more of it. Dearest, you have never left my heart. Say that it will be all right. Please.

  Jean

  A few days after this letter had been posted, the Castrol agent in Wellington, a man called Bob Smillie, persuaded his wife Doris to travel to Franz Josef to keep an eye on Jean. He didn’t want to have to account to Lord Wakefield if anything happened to her, and what on earth Savage had thought he was doing, posting the poor girl off to the mountains by herself, he had no idea.

  The appearance of Doris put an end to the respite at Franz Josef. She was kind, to extremes, Jean thought. She felt herself becoming hostile the moment the older woman arrived. ‘You will have to excuse me,’ Jean said after an awkward dinner, on their first night in the yawning cavern of the dining room, ‘but I think I need to lie down.’ She had fallen in love with the darkened corners of the room, lit only by the flickering light of a huge fire on a stone hearth. She wanted them all to herself.

  In her room, she paced up and down. She knew that Doris’s arrival marked the end of her stay, but, at the same time, she knew that if she were rude this would be interpreted as a further sign of madness. The best thing, she decided, would be to go along with her presence for two or three days, and fill the time with activities that would distract them both, to prove that she was capable of looking after herself. If she weren’t careful, she would find Doris on board the ship she was planning to take to Sydney.

  This ploy worked well. One day they hired horses to ride along guided trails, and another day was spent on a fishing expedition. Jean caught a large trout that the chef cooked for them that night. She declared herself as never better, fit and well, and Doris had to agree that she looked in good health, and it was amazing what a bit of mountain air could do for one.

  A letter from Beverley was waiting for her back in Auckland. He was longing to see her too. What was she getting herself all worked up about? He had already booked their favourite restaurant table for the night of her arrival in Sydney: The one near Circular Quay, where we went on the first night back in Sydney, after the race. Two years ago now, time we got together again.

  So in time to come, that was the week she would remember as the best. The summer beaches and drives in the country, and nights when she seemed lost in who she was, abandoned in him. She didn’t know any longer where she left off and he began. I love you and I love you and I love you, she said to him over and again.

  Nellie was happy to rest at her hotel after the voyage, or to spend time at the Shepherds’ house, being entertained by Beverley’s mother. Jean didn’t ask them what they talked about. Nellie never did tell her that they had started gleeful plans for a wedding that seemed sure to happen.

  There were moments when things were not all that they might have been. Like the evening when they entered a restaurant, and the diners got up and applauded Jean.

  Beverley looked irritated. ‘So I’m destined to be regarded as Mr Jean Batten, am I?’ he muttered.

  ‘They will forget who I am in no time,’ Jean said, placating him. ‘Just ignore them.’

  But he had insisted on a table where he could sit with his back to the room.

  On another afternoon, Jean had agreed to speak to some school children. It was a day when Beverley had taken leave from work. ‘It will only take an hour,’ Jean insisted. ‘I shouldn’t disappoint them.’ Beverley bore it, but only just.

  When they parted, he kissed the top of her head and told her not to worry about things too much, everything would be all right in the long run. Just hurry back, he told her.

  SOON AFTER JEAN AND NELLIE ARRIVED BACK in New Zealand, Nellie and Fred met at Smith and Caughey’s. Over lunch, Fred said, ‘Ellen, that girl is sick. There’s something wrong with her.’

  ‘She gets a bit down to it at times,’ Nellie said. ‘But she’s perfectly fine now. You should have seen her in Sydney, on top of the world.’

  ‘Things have gone wrong in our children’s lives,’ Fred said. ‘You can’t deny that. There’s Harold.’

  She put her cup down. ‘Jean is not like Harold.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But she’s different, all our children are different.’

  ‘Well of course, if you’re talking about John, that’s another matter.’

  ‘John is who he is, Nell, you have to accept that. I didn’t always but I do now. It’s not been easy for him, you know.’ His voice was gently persuasive.

  ‘I don’t care who John is. He can’t say I haven’t tried. Anyway, he’s got that woman he’s married to.’

  ‘Yes, but for how long? There might come a time when John’s on his own again.’

  ‘I thought we’d come here to talk about Jean.’

  ‘All right,’ her husband said. They stared at each other across the table, until Fred’s eyes fell. ‘I know it was my fault,’ he said. ‘The family falling apart.’

  Nellie sat back in her chair as if some small victory had been achieved. ‘Jean will be fine when she’s married,’ she said. ‘Her hormones are all over the place, you know how it is.’ As if to concede a little ground of her own, she added, ‘I suppose mine were, too, when I was young. I did go off the handle a bit.’

  ‘A bit.’ He chuckled, remembering. ‘You will keep an eye on her, won’t you?’

  After Nellie had agreed that she would indeed be around for as long as possible to watch out for Jean’s welfare, they set to planning the family holiday they hoped would right some of the wrongs of the past. ‘Separate rooms, mind you, Fred.’

  He looked at her in astonishment, and laughed. ‘Oh, I think so, Nell.’

  IN ROTORUA, NELLIE AND FRED WERE CHARMING and funny and kind to one another, making jokes when they all met for breakfast at the Prince’s Gate Hotel. Jean and Fred played a duo on the hotel piano one evening to great applause, and then Nellie and Jean offered to do high kicks together, something Jean had taught her mother in her dancing days, which caused a riotous party to erupt in the lounge. The manager came in and said that, really, he knew there were famous people present, but some guests had come for peace and quiet as well.

  The lake lay cool and blue in the mornings. They walked in the gardens and swam and fished. Jean said that if she ate another trout she would start to look like one. If Fred had had a past in the town, it was not in evidence, except for the occasional person who stopped him on the street to thank him for the best dentures they had ever had. Te Arawa held another welcome for Jean, this time at Ohinemutu, not far from where the Battens had lived, the village where the children had been forbidden to roam. Nellie’s chin trembled a little when the moment came to press noses in greeting with the chief. Jean was presented with a feather cloak of her own, and bestowed with the name Hine-o-te-Rangi, Daughter of the Skies.

  Beverley, impatient with this extended family reunion, wrote to her regularly, asking how soon she would be back. Now that they had had their time together before Christmas, he knew how much he needed her with him. If she didn�
��t come soon, he would come and collect her himself. She told him that she planned to be back in Sydney in mid-February: Can we meet straightaway? I will be all yours. Let’s meet at our special restaurant again.

  Within a matter of days, the Gull was lifted onto the deck of the ship that would take her and Nellie to Sydney. A huge crowd gathered to say farewell. If it were possible for Jean’s fame to increase, it had in the past week. She had received news that the Royal Aero Club had awarded her the Britannia Trophy for the greatest flight of the year by a British subject, for the second year in a row. And there had been two more trophies.

  When their ship berthed in Sydney on 19 February 1937 Jean and her mother made their way to the hotel, where Jean planned to change and go to meet Beverley. But before she could leave for the restaurant, the doorman asked her casually if she had heard the news. He thought she might be interested, given that it was about a plane.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, impatient to be away.

  A Stinson airliner bound for Sydney from Brisbane was missing, with seven passengers and two pilots aboard.

  ‘Did you say a Stinson?’

  When the doorman agreed that, yes, that was what he had heard, she turned deathly pale. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I have to make a phone call.’

  One of the pilots was Beverley Shepherd.

  CHAPTER 31

  THAT NIGHT, THE NIGHT BEVERLEY SHEPHERD DISAPPEARED, Jean Batten ordered that her Percival Gull be unloaded off the ship from which she had so recently disembarked, and taken to Mascot aerodrome. Mechanics, she insisted, were to work all night to put it together, ready for her to join the search for the missing Stinson in the morning.

  The distance between Brisbane and Sydney is just five hundred miles. Somewhere, in a clearing, the Stinson would be found. It wouldn’t be too hard. She would go to it like a homing pigeon, the first to see it. She would find him. He would stand up, his fair hair shining in the sun, and put his arms out to greet her. ‘I knew you’d come,’ he would say. Everyone aboard the plane would be safe, and she would be glad for them all. But most of all, she would be glad for him. How careless of you to miss our dinner date, she would say, and he would laugh and say that she had kept him waiting long enough. What was another day or so?

  These were the things she told herself as day after day she rose around 5 a.m., before taking off to search over the mountains and rainforests. By now there were dozens of planes in the sky, whirling around in the heat of the summer. They had to watch out for one another.

  Every day she circled the mountainous country, searching ravines and areas dense with ancient beech trees, pigeonberry ash and rosewood. Beneath them grew peach myrtle and everlasting daisies. She remembered the daisies because these cool glades, buried away from the sun’s harsh light, were the only place in the world where these relics of the last Ice Age had survived. This should have told her what was quickly becoming apparent to the searchers — the trees were so dense that the plane might never be found. The trees hid their secrets well. They didn’t admit the sunlight, or the gaze of strangers.

  When Jean had flown for some thirty-eight hours, over five thousand miles of terrain, she stopped to rest, because she could go on no longer.

  In the morning, after her return to Sydney, the Stinson was discovered by a man called O’Reilly, who lived in the mountains. On a hunch, he had gone out on foot to search. The headlines shouted the news. Two survivors.

  Neither of them was Beverley.

  One of the survivors told of how the two pilots had laughed and chatted as they crossed the mountains. They had flown lower and lower. The passenger had grown anxious. He had looked at the face of the co-pilot, a fair young man, and seen that he was worried, too. In fact, he had said, as they boarded, he wasn’t flying on his normal run. He had to get back to Sydney to meet his girlfriend. She’d chew his ear if he didn’t turn up. Fine young fellow. Last thing he remembered before the crash, this young chap had an awful look on his face as he leaned forward to adjust something on the control panel. But it was too late.

  ‘I’M COLD,’ JEAN SAID TO HER MOTHER, again and again. ‘I’m so cold.’

  Outside the temperature was close to a hundred in the shade. Nellie fanned herself, desperate for air, as Jean closed all the windows to stop the draughts.

  ‘You need to get dressed for the service,’ she said.

  ‘Service. What service?’

  ‘You know, dear. You know whose it is.’

  ‘Are you mad? Why would I go to that? It isn’t a funeral, there isn’t even a body. How can you have a funeral when the person is lost in the mountains?’

  The decision had been made to leave the four men who had died at the crash site, buried alongside the plane that had taken their lives. The terrain was too difficult, the forest too dense, and the cliffs and ravines so perilously steep that the call had been made not to bring them out. Some of the families were holding a small service to commemorate their lives.

  Jean wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘I wanted to hold him again. I wanted to touch him.’

  ‘His mother,’ Nellie said, helplessly. ‘We should go for his parents’ sake.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do at their damn service?’ Jean shouted. ‘Press their hands and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And they’ll look at me, sorry for themselves, and sorry for me. Well, I won’t have it, I don’t want their pity.’

  ‘Jean,’ Nellie tried again, ‘it’s not their fault.’

  ‘I don’t care about his parents. I don’t care, do you understand? Get me a blanket if you want to do something useful. You hear me? Get me a bloody blanket.’

  Cold. Everlasting. The everlasting bloody daisies.

  She huddled under the blanket and whimpered. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said in a voice that Nellie could hardly hear.

  ‘What is it, dear? What did you say?’

  ‘My heart. My heart is frozen, don’t you see?’

  ‘It’ll pass,’ Nellie said, trying to hold her.

  ‘I’ll always be on my own now. I didn’t want to be alone.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Nellie said. ‘So long as I live, you’ll never be alone.’

  Her mother brought her hot chicken soup. She rang Fred in New Zealand. ‘No, don’t come,’ she said. ‘I’ll get her back to New Zealand if I can. Treatment? We’ll have to wait and see.’

  In the end, Jean said she just wanted to stay there for a bit, get some sun, swim, try to get warm. The months passed. Some days she drove alone to look at the sea. John and Madeleine were passing through Sydney, on their way from Tahiti to New Zealand. Nellie met them, but Jean said that she would rather go for a drive that day. Nellie could tell her all about them. Nellie reported that John looked very tired. The little girl was a dear wee thing, and seemed very bright. Madeleine hadn’t had much to say for herself. Apart from that there seemed little more to tell.

  Amelia Earhart, the American pilot with whom Jean had shared a trophy, but never met, disappeared in July while on a round the world flight. She and a companion, Fred Noonan, had been flying a Lockheed Electra. They had last been heard of on their radio above the Pacific. ‘It’s what happens to us,’ Jean said, resignation in her voice.

  But Jean didn’t mention the cold again, and Nellie decided that some kind of thaw was setting in. An Australian pilot called Jim Broadbent now announced he was planning to break Jean’s record England–Australia time. He had already set a number of records of his own. This appeared to galvanise Jean into action. She drove to Mascot and ordered the Gull wheeled out. She hadn’t flown it since Beverley’s death. That day, she took to the skies again, flying over the city and above the Blue Mountains. It was a salute and a farewell.

  ‘I’ve decided to fly the Gull back to London,’ she told Nellie. ‘Then I’ll be the first person to hold both England-to-Australia and Australia-to-England records at the same time. Just see if I’m not.’

  Nellie shook her head. ‘There hav
e been too many accidents. I couldn’t bear anything to happen to you.’

  ‘I don’t especially care,’ Jean said. ‘It’s the way to go if one must.’

  Lord Wakefield had continued to write to her from London. He didn’t mention the loss of Beverley, although Jean imagined word might have got back to him. He sent her a diamond brooch. She turned it over in her hands, delighting in the sparkle of the exquisite stones, but wondering if he had forgotten an earlier gift of a brooch. When she wrote to thank him, she told him that he hoped he wouldn’t mind, but she had decided to exchange it for diamond ear clips.

  She showed them off to Nellie. ‘People will be missing us back in London,’ she said. ‘We need to get back, Mother, have a good time, paint the town red.’

  Her mother suggested again that they return to New Zealand. ‘Your father would like to see you.’

  Jean gave her a blank stare. ‘I don’t want to see him. After what he did.’

  Nellie looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You must. He betrayed me to Frank Norton.’

  ‘But you and he were happy when we went on holiday.’

  ‘Holiday. What holiday?’

  ‘Jean. Listen to me. Your father didn’t betray you. He saved you from embarrassment. We all went away together. You do remember that, don’t you?’

  Jean had a bewildered look in her eyes, and shook her head, as if to clear it. ‘You go back to New Zealand if you want to.’

  ‘Jean, listen to me, my darling, I’ve told you, I won’t ever leave you.’

  ‘I know,’ Jean said, and put her arms around her mother. They clung to each another. ‘Best get a ticket for London.’