Girl with Wings

by Jennifer Bradley

  “You mean you’ll really help me?” Jess’s eyes glowed with excitement.

  “Yes,” said Mum, “we will. We’ll help our children become whatever they want to, as far as we can.” She did not add that becoming a female pilot was not going to be easy, even if her family supported her ambition.

  “And what about Grandfather? Do I tell him that I’m still going to become a pilot whatever he says?”

  Dad sighed. “I think Jess, you’re old enough to be sensible about this. I’d keep quiet about it. For now, anyway. You don’t have to lie, but I doubt he’ll ask you. He’ll just assume he’s made his views clear and that you’ll do as he says. In any case, there’s not much you can do about it for awhile yet. And who knows what will happen before you’re old enough to get a licence.”

  “Yeah,” said Billy. “Grandfather could die.”

  “Billy!” thundered his father.

  “Well, he could.”

  “Or he could learn to think that planes are wonderful and want to have a pilot in the family.”

  “And pigs,” said Billy emphatically, grabbing another piece of sultana cake, “could fly.”

  Jessica had a lot to think about that week. She set herself the goal of taking maths seriously and tried really hard to listen in class and to do her homework. She still found adding up boring, and she knew that the next stage of long division was even more boring, not to mention a lot more work. But she’d show her family that she could do what it took to become a pilot.

  Chapter Six

  The next Sunday morning, Dad woke Jessica up early. “Come and have some breakfast, then we can go down to the airstrip.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a surprise.” The airstrip, about two miles north of Argyle Station, was an ordinary, flat piece of land, graded smooth for planes. Narromine was one of the first towns on what was called the New South Wales plains, about 280 miles west of Sydney. To the east, one could see the occasional hill which gradually became the Blue Mountains of the Great Dividing Range. This day the strip was crowded with people as they waited for a plane to land, watching westward for the first sight of wings against the clouds. To the west, it was completely flat; nothing appeared to break the monotony — apart from trees — between Narromine and the horizon.

  In summer the view was often hazy with the red dust that arose with any wind, but today the broad expanse was clear. Jessica’s mother said it was so flat that your feet seemed to be sucked over the horizon if you watched it, like being at the end of the world.

  “Who is it, Dad?” Jessica was jumping up and down with excitement.

  “It’s Mr Lester Brain, with the photos of the Southern Cross after they found it in Western Australia.” The whole nation had been holding its breath when Charles Kingsford Smith’s plane disappeared on a flight from Australia to England. With their emergency supplies stolen, they lived on water from a muddy creek and some baby food for days before they were found. Many people had given ‘Smithy’ up for dead when the plane was sighted with Kingsford Smith and his crew.

  Mr Brain was on his way to Sydney with the photos and had stopped to refuel. Everyone in Narromine who was interested in aviation had taken the opportunity to meet the plane and see the photos. Jessica, being short, needed her father to lift her up to see Mr Brain climb down from the plane, photos in hand, but she was able to catch a good glimpse of some of them.

  “Lucky to survive that,” said someone behind her. “Smithy’s invincible.”

  Mr Brain did not stay long and was soon taxiing for takeoff. Jessica joined in the farewell waves. When the crowd was thinning, Dad took her hand and went over to a group of men talking together. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d like to introduce my daughter Jessica, who wants to be a pilot when she grows up.”

  “Crikey, Angus, you do start them young, don’t you?” The other two laughed.

  “Yes, Tom, but it was all her idea. So how can we help her?” Tom Perry and Bowden Fletcher were aviation personified in Narromine. Mr Perry had given the land for the airstrip and Mr Fletcher, who had flown in the War, wrote a weekly column for the newspaper. They knew everyone in the district with an interest in planes. They looked at each other and then at Jessica. Neither laughed or called her a little girl. She returned their scrutiny.

  After some time, Mr Perry spoke. “What do you think, Bowden? Introduce her to Max McCutcheon and the inside of an airplane engine?”

  “Yes, I think that’d be the ticket.”

  So Jessica became a girl apprentice to Max McCutcheon and two afternoons a week she went to his garage on her way home from school and began the messy and complicated business of learning about engines. Her mother made her a couple of overalls from plain curtain fabric and her father bought her a notebook so she could record things she needed to remember as she became familiar with carburettors, tappets, propellers and the roles of oil and petrol.

  That night, her father asked her mother, “Is this my fault? Would Jessica be interested in flying if I hadn’t dragged her to watch planes from the time she was a baby?”

  Ellen shrugged, dragging the brush through her hair. “Maybe, but whatever caused it, she’s keen. Remember that toy plane she took to bed with her?”

  Angus brightened, “Yes and left all the dolls higgledy-piggledy on the floor.”

  “So, don’t worry about it. All right?”

  Chapter Seven

  Narromine, September 1929

  For those first few weeks, Jessica seemed to spend a lot of time cleaning pieces of engines. The garage was a drafty tin shed, icy in winter. Mr McCutcheon was a man of few words, most of which explained how the various bits worked. Jessica stared at the strange pieces of metal, held together by cogs and oil. It was hard to imagine them combining to take a pair of wings into the sky. Jessica puzzled over the shapes, feeling them, getting used to the smell, putting them together with other pieces and seeing what happened.

  She wasn’t sure that she yet understood anything about them. But she did understand that flyers needed to know how engines worked, especially if they landed in the outback of Australia (or elsewhere) and had to fix an engine to fly out. There were many stories about pioneer aviators who had died where they landed and Jessica had no intention of being one of them.

  The easiest part was the cleaning, even if it was messy, because it allowed Jessica to think about other things while she worked. This afternoon she was imagining herself as Bert Hinkler, the young Australian aviator whose talents were recognised in his teens. Jessica had become interested in him when he flew a little Avro Avian solo from England to Australia the previous year. When he arrived at Mascot airport in Sydney a huge crowd greeted him, singing:

  “Hinkler, Hinkler, little star,

  Sixteen days and here you are!”

  Hinkler’s fame had begun early, when he built a glider at 14, but there was another story that interested Jessica even more. In 1912, a man called Wizard Stone was showing off a fragile flying machine called a Bleriot in towns in Queensland, where people paid money to admire its exploits.

  In Bundaberg, the plane refused to start. When the disappointed watchers left, one skinny nineteen-year-old boy remained.

  “I know why the plane won’t go,” he told Mr Stone, “I can fix it.” Bert had worked in a foundry and studied aviation by correspondence, but he had a practical flair that made sense of the theory.

  Jessica saw herself explaining the problem to the Wizard. “It’s the carburettor,” she mouthed. “It needs cleaning, see?” She picked up a rag and demonstrated what she meant. Just as Mr Stone was praising her and saying that she was a miracle, she was interrupted.

  “Jess,” Mr McCutcheon was beginning to clean his hands with a rag, “I want to leave early tonight. There’s a meeting to set up an aero club and I don’t want to miss it.”

  Jessica pulled her head out of the engine, wiping a streak of oil across her cheek. “Tonight?”

  “Yes, so you might as well clean up too a
nd get an early mark.”

  “Right.” Jessica grabbed a rag and began the laborious task of cleaning off all the oil and grease. The overalls kept her body clean but some always got on her face, and her hands were the worst; grimed, right into the nails. She winced as she scrubbed the first layer off, then began on the next using the special cleaning stuff Mr McCutcheon kept for engines. It dried the skin, but it was efficient. Then she used a bar of Sunlight soap and a nailbrush. It always took ages. By this time her hands were red and dry but even the nails were clean, so she lathered on a good layer of the lanolin Mr McCutcheon kept on the shelf.

  While she rubbed she thought about his news. An aero club in Narromine! She wondered if she could join and hurried changing so she could get home and ask her father. “Dad, Dad,” she yelled, skidding along the hall.

  Her mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “For goodness sake, am I ever going to make a lady of you?”

  Jessica ignored the silly statement. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Still out somewhere, I think the fourth paddock, but he’ll be in soon so you can wait. In the meantime, how about getting ready for tea, so we can start as soon as he arrives.”

  “Oh, Mum.”

  “Come on Jess, get a wriggle on.” On the afternoons she was at the garage, Jessica had no other chores until after dinner, when she helped with the washing up. On other days, she had to help with the gardens, weeding, watering, cutting vegetables for dinner, feeding the chooks, collecting eggs or feeding animals. Whatever she did, she had to wash and change before dinner. (Cleanliness, said her grandmother, is next to godliness. Her mother agreed and made sure Jessica and her brother and sister were scrubbed before they sat down to eat.)

  Tonight she rushed, ripping off her tunic and putting on a dress, then running down the stairs, trying to button up the back as she went. She ran her fingers through her hair and went out to meet her father. He came in slowly, his limp obvious after a long day delivering bore water to the newly sprouted wheat. His eyes were tired and his face covered in dust, but Jessica saw none of that. “Dad, there’s going to be an aero club. Can I go to the meeting? Please?” Jumping up and down, she twitched with excitement.

  “Oh Jess, there’s a love, just let me clean up for dinner and then we’ll talk.”

  Jessica could hardly wait, even though her mother kept her occupied with bringing the dishes to the table. “Well, can I?” she repeated as soon as they sat down.

  Her father ran a hand across his face and grabbed his knife. “Jess, I think it’s too late for you to be out on a school night,” he began.

  “Oh Dad, it’s not, really it’s not. And I want to go. I want to join the aero club. Please? Dad, please?” She sensed her father wavering, but her mother picked up the conversation.

  “Jessica, no. Not tonight. You know the rules. You don’t go out on a school night.”

  “But Mum it’s really, really important.”

  “Yes, I know, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t go tonight. Now eat your dinner.”

  “But Mum ...”

  “No Jess. Not another word until you’ve finished your plate.” Jessica could hardly concentrate. She twitched in her chair, wriggled, picked at her food until her mother became exasperated. “Jessica, enough of this please. It’s final. You are not going anywhere tonight.”

  “In any case,” added Dad, “I’m going and I can tell you all about it. Your mother’s right. You shouldn’t go out on a school night and the meeting’s really far too late for you.”

  “But what if I can’t join if I don’t go tonight?”

  “I doubt that would happen,” Dad said considering. “I bet they’ll keep trying to get as many people as they can. There’ll be others interested who can’t go tonight. You’ll see.”

  “But I really want to go.”

  “No, and that’s the last word on the subject.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dad went off to the meeting in the truck straight after dinner and Jessica helped clean up; not very efficiently and not with good grace. Finally, her mother sent her off to her room to do her homework. She hoped to stay awake to talk to her father when he got back, but fell asleep long before.

  The next morning she rushed down to breakfast early, hoping to find out everything that happened. Her father came in, dressed but not yet shaved, and rubbed his whiskery face across her cheek.

  “Oh give over, Dad. What happened last night?”

  He yawned. “Let me get my breakfast and then I’ll tell you.”

  Mum came over to the table with bacon and eggs for both of them. “Sit down and eat. I don’t want any of this getting cold.”

  But Jessica had had enough of things being put off. “But I want to know now.”

  “And so you shall,” Dad put a crisp forkful of bacon into his mouth and chewed it. “Well, it was a meeting and all meetings are boring so I’ll tell you the interesting bits. Yes, Narromine now has its own aero club. Mr Tom Perry’s the president and Mr Bowden Fletcher is Secretary.”

  “What are you, Dad?”

  Dad swallowed a piece of toast with egg before replying. “I’m going to be a member of the committee. And you, Jessica Mackay, are the first junior member.”

  “Oh, does that mean I’m not a real member?”

  “No, it just means you’re under 21. I thought it’d be a good idea, and there are certain to be other youngsters in the town who want to join.”

  “Oh.” Jessica decided to finish her own breakfast while she thought about things.

  In a few minutes, however, Dad began to talk. “There’s this other thing, though, Jess, that you’ll like. They’ve decided to plan an air pageant for next year, probably in autumn. But there’s a catch. They don’t want to set a date until there’s more rain. This drought’s left the ground rock hard and there’s less money around. But everyone’s praying for rain so maybe we’ll be lucky.”

  Jessica dropped her fork onto her plate and raced around the table to hug her father, knocking his toast onto the floor.

  “That’s enough, Jess,” said her mother. “It’s time you got ready for school.” As Jessica began to dance out the door, her mother added, “ … when you’ve cleaned up the mess you just made on the floor.”

  Jessica had no idea what happened in school that day as her head was full imagining an air pageant. She doodled a leather helmet onto her page in English, dripped ink from her pen over her geography book and drifted off into a vision of herself piloting a shiny biplane. Even being kept in at recess did not bother her. All she could think about was the air pageant.

  Her mother was less impressed that afternoon when Jessica was weeding the vegetables, pulling out a few young carrots that were far too small to eat. “For goodness sake, Jessica, could you pay some attention to what you’re doing?”

  “Sorry Mum.” Although she tried to concentrate, she still pulled a few more young plants out before her mother gave up and sent her in to change for dinner.

  Over the next few weeks, she calmed down and her excitement over an air pageant died down as the drought continued and no one wanted to agree to anything until there was rain. But she still talked to her father about what she could do.

  “Well, for a start, you can help me. I’ve got to organise people for the gate and to guard planes overnight.” That sounded very uninteresting. Jessica imagined herself as the famous girl pilot, helping passengers into the back seat of her plane, flying them in loops above the town, winning air races and acclaim as the youngest pilot in the whole world. She saw herself as master of the tiny monoplanes and biplanes, with their fragile bodies and clacking engines. And this air pageant was just the beginning.

  Chapter Nine

  Narromine, Spring–Summer 1929/30

  Every night in her prayers, Jessica asked God for rain. She had no doubt that others did as well. The farmers needed rain to begin planting and the whole town depended on wealth from the crops. On Sunday at church,
the Minister prayed for rain, although Grandfather tartly asked why God would listen to him, when he’d seemed deaf to everyone else. Gran poked him firmly in the ribs, gesturing towards the children. Jessica’s mother wondered — out loud — about a rain dance and grinned when her husband suggested that everyone might have to be naked for it to work.

  Everyone seemed to be on hold waiting for the rain, but Jessica knew that Mr Fletcher was still planning for an air pageant, just in case. Her father took her to the aero club meetings with him a few times, where everyone talked about the plans. But until they had a date, they could only make notes and lists, not actually DO anything. And while they all waited, the business of the town and the farm had to continue.

  At the end of September, Jessica arrived home from school to find her mother out and her grandmother minding Elspeth. Before she’d finished afternoon tea, there was a knock on the door. “Get that will you, Jessica?”

  Standing outside was a swaggie, dirty and ragged, his belongings tied in a roll with an old army blanket. “Could you spare a cuppa, dear?” His voice was rough and sounded like the workingmen Jessica knew on the farm.

  “I’ll ask my Gran,” she said, backing away. When she reported back, her grandmother quickly went to the hall.

  “If you go around the back, I’ll bring you a cup and something to eat.”

  “But Gran, he’s dirty and smelly.” Jessica had always been told not to talk to strange men and she’d never seen anyone like this up close before. She had seen swaggies from a distance and sometimes crept away so they would not see her. Billy would say that meant she was scared, but she wasn’t. Really. She was just not sure what to say or do. She watched as Gran filled a large enamel mug and took a teapot out in case he wanted a refill. She added a tray of thick sandwiches with cheese.

  “Jessica, there’re many men down on their luck; seems to be getting more each day. Lots of them were soldiers who came back with wounds. I always think of Angus when I see one of them. With his eye and limp, he could easily have ended up unemployed.” She then went out again to offer him a bed in the shearers’ quarters for the night and called one of the men to show him the way.