The Infinite Air Page 12

  As they neared the flying field, they were startled to see the Prince of Wales striding around the perimeter. He wore a top hat, a high white collar, a bow tie and a jacket with satin lapels; a trailing silk scarf was thrown around his shoulders. His long, fair face was flushed with annoyance. The tremendous roar of several engines on test beds filled the air with a high metallic whine.

  He shouted to an engineer dressed in overalls, ‘Why can’t that noise be contained in a soundproof room?’

  The man turned, looked the Prince up and down and shouted back at him, ‘How would you like to be cooped up in this noise for two hours in a closed room?’

  The Prince looked momentarily stunned. ‘My dear chap, I see what you mean. So sorry.’

  A second engineer, who had watched this exchange, now hurried to the first man, and spoke to him in an urgent way. It was clear that, despite the clothes and the top hat, His Highness had not been recognised. The man put his face to his hand and ducked his head.

  ‘No cause, it’s my fault.’ The Prince turned to make a hasty retreat, nearly bumping into the two women. ‘Ladies,’ he said, sweeping off his hat to reveal an immaculate parting. ‘Forgive me, I’ve had a wretched morning. I stayed out hunting longer than I meant to and now I’m running late for an important event. You understand how it is. I’ve brought my plane in for some work. Can’t find my fellow at Hendon, he’ll be hearing from me. Taken the afternoon off, by the look of things. We know each other, don’t we?’ he said to Nellie. ‘Where was it? You’ll have to remind me.’ He glanced with undisguised curiosity at their feet, their shoes muddy from tramping across the damp field.

  ‘It must have been in New Zealand,’ Nellie replied, her voice as smooth as whipped cream.

  ‘Ah, New Zealand, my goodness, that was a long time ago.’ He looked as if he were about to ask more, his eyes intent and admiring as they rested on Nellie, but he was distracted by the appearance of a blue and silver DH 60M Gipsy Moth being wheeled out onto the airstrip.

  The Prince inclined his head, replacing his hat as if it were a crown. ‘We must talk more about New Zealand the next time we meet.’ He walked over to his aeroplane, took off his hat again and exchanged it for a flying helmet. Within minutes he had risen into the sky.

  ‘He liked you,’ Jean said, later that night, when they were going over the events of the day. ‘The Prince is said to like the company of older women.’

  ‘Jean!’ Nellie’s tone was scandalised but suddenly it seemed like the funniest thing, an auspicious start, that had them bursting into laugher every time they thought about it.

  Outside the hangars where Jean and Nellie had met the Prince, stood a whole row of Gipsy Moths, all painted yellow. These were biplanes, flimsy to the casual observer, with plywood-encased fuselages, and fabric covering the rest of their surfaces. Jean was aware of the plane’s design and the way the wings could be detached and folded away, making space in hangars to store several at a time.

  Alongside the Moths, to Jean’s astonishment, a glamorous woman in a striking black and white ensemble, including a huge Eskimo hood made from expensive-looking furs, was posing against a monoplane painted to match her outfit. Her face was very pale and her straight black hair was worn like a helmet on her head. A photographer was taking stills, and a retinue of men in suits scurried around calling out instructions.

  ‘I know her,’ Jean breathed.

  ‘Keep walking,’ Nellie instructed.

  The clubhouse was a modest hut on the far fringe of the aerodrome. They were expected — Jean had written in advance enquiring about membership — and a secretary came out to greet them. Around a fire blazing at the far end of the room stood a group of people, all casually handsome at first glance, the jackets of their flying suits unbuttoned, goggles sitting on top of their heads. There was laughter and blue smoke from cigarettes and pipes. The pipe smoke reminded Jean suddenly of Fred, far away, and not knowing where they were. Nellie caught her eye, as if she, too, had thought of her husband. ‘Somebody just walked over my grave,’ she said.

  The club secretary looked startled, then handed Jean a form to fill in.

  ‘You’re under twenty-one,’ the secretary said, when he looked through her answers. ‘You have to get your parents’ consent to fly.’

  ‘Both my parents?’ Jean asked in alarm.

  ‘One will be enough.’

  Nellie stepped forward. ‘I am Miss Batten’s mother,’ she announced. ‘I take it you’ll accept the maternal signature.’

  The secretary looked amused. ‘Yes, of course, Mrs Batten. Just put your name here.’

  ‘You’re not related to the film star of the same name, by any chance?’ he asked. Nellie reddened and agreed that yes, John Batten was indeed her son.

  ‘He was tremendous in Under the Greenwood Tree. Loved that picture. You must be very proud of him.’ Nellie didn’t tell the secretary that they hadn’t yet seen the film. Instead, she handed over six guineas, three for the entrance fee to the club, and three for a year’s subscription.

  But Jean was emboldened to ask if Louise Brooks, whom she believed she had seen on her way over to the clubhouse, was one of the other students.

  The secretary laughed. ‘Not everyone who comes here wants to fly. The film stars come along to be seen doing adventurous things. They just have their pictures taken. The people who come to fly are in this room. You should meet some of them. There’s Miss Amy Johnson over there — she’ll take you under her wing.’ He chuckled. ‘She’s a true aviator, a star in the making. She’s planning to fly to Australia next month. If she does she’ll be the first woman to make it.’

  Jean froze. A plain woman, she decided, with a large nose, and an overlong upper lip.

  Nellie nudged her. ‘She’s just a typist,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mother,’ Jean hissed. ‘I think we should go now.’

  The secretary had already handed her an appointment time for her first lesson the following morning. Her instructor would be Herbert Travers, a wartime flying ace. He was the best. He’d trained Miss Johnson, and that was some recommendation.

  When they were outside, Jean said, ‘But what if Amy Johnson flies to Australia before I do?’

  ‘Then you’ll have to fly faster,’ her mother said. ‘She’ll probably crash anyway, she doesn’t look very clever.’

  JUST ONE AFTERNOON, AND ALREADY THEIR HEADS were reeling. The Prince. The film star. The rivals. Nellie was calculating again, working out how much of her savings would have to go on better outfits for Jean. A good flying suit was an obvious necessity. Her hands were itching to get her notebook out.

  They had, of course, seen John on their arrival in London even though they hadn’t seen his new movie. Jean had been taken aback by his beauty, as if he were a stranger. It was a graceful, muscular beauty, utterly natural and seemingly without guile, his body light and free, as if it completely belonged to him. He seemed to have grown taller, his eyes intense and glowing, his mouth curved in a deep, expressive line. By now he had appeared in five films and was making his sixth, with another one in the pipeline. The Greenwood Tree was putting him back on his feet, he said. He was living in St John’s Wood, a small flat above a fish shop, the thin blue smell of the unsold merchandise wafting up the stairs in late afternoon before it was sluiced down. There was something familiar about the way the flat was furnished, elegant in its simplicity. A chintz-covered chair, light curtains at the window, dashes of colour in unexpected places. A hyacinth in a dark pot on a tall stand in the entranceway. A room Nellie might have furnished long ago, in their Rotorua days.

  Hollywood had been great, John said, a tremendous place to have fun. He’d made a lot of money and lost the lot. ‘Dud investments, the Wall Street crash,’ he said. ‘You’d know about the slump back home, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Back home,’ Nellie said, marvelling. ‘Oh, you’ve got no idea. Things are bad. Well, John, we hope to make our home here if Jean passes her exams.’

  ‘Dad w
rote and said you’d been doing well with your music. You’ll be my famous kid sister. You always said you’d be famous.’

  ‘I’m going to have to work hard to catch you up,’ Jean said, not giving anything away.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t got much space,’ John said. ‘I should offer you a bed, but I’ve only got the one.’ He gestured to a day bed covered with a deep red spread, in an alcove off the main room.

  ‘No need,’ Nellie said. ‘We’ve taken rooms just off Oxford Street, in the heart of the city.’

  John whistled. ‘Nice address.’

  ‘It’ll probably be temporary,’ Nellie said quickly. ‘But for now it’s very handy to everything.’ The rooms were up five flights of stairs, and very cold, but she didn’t mention these details. John looked relieved. Jean guessed that they weren’t meant to stay anyway, that if they did his delight in their welcome might soon be exhausted.

  They began to take their leave with promises to see each other again soon. John was in rehearsals all day, and shooting was due to begin the following week, but he insisted they must come for dinner at the weekend. A young friend would be coming, a chap called Rex Harrison who’d done some theatre work, but it was his first film, he needed some coaching. They wouldn’t be in the way. Rex was a barrel of laughs. John promised fish, the best money could buy, but he’d get a discount for putting up with the smell. The three of them laughed: dutiful, affectionate, reunited.

  ‘By the way, are you seeing anyone?’ Nellie asked. In the silence that followed, she said, a trifle too sharply, ‘A woman. Some actress or another?’

  ‘No, Mother, I’m not seeing a woman.’

  As if to hasten their departure, he insisted on walking them to the train station. Outside, a fog had settled over the houses, clinging to their hair, seeping under their collars. There was a flower seller’s kiosk on the way to the platform. By way of a peace offering, he stopped and bought Nellie a bunch of freesias, lemony and delicate.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Nellie said, her face flushed, but pleased all the same.

  John kissed Jean on the cheek. ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Do you know what a stunning girl you really are? I bet you don’t, but you’ll find out soon.’

  On the Saturday morning, Nellie had sent a note to say that she was indisposed and was truly sorry that they wouldn’t be able to come for dinner. Perhaps they could meet for a cup of tea some time. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she said to Jean. ‘I know how much you want to see him, but he needs to get used to the idea of you flying when the time is right.’ Her voice was tinged with regret. ‘We can’t really fib away to him all the time. Besides, you can see how busy he is.’

  THE MORNING FOLLOWING HER ENROLMENT AT STAG LANE, Jean made her way back to the aerodrome. Nellie wanted to come, but this time Jean said that she could do this on her own. Besides, she reminded her, only one of them had membership of the club. There were all those shops for Nellie to look at in Oxford Street, and she would need weeks to see everything in the British Museum.

  Herbert Travers was waiting for her, a tall man, dressed in tweeds and plus-fours, his collar and tie immaculate. She wasn’t sure how old he was, perhaps in his late thirties, going by his war record, although he looked older, fair and already going bald. She would begin her lessons in a Cirrus Moth, which was much the same as a Gipsy Moth.

  ‘The first lesson,’ he said, after they had shaken hands, ‘is to discover what the inside of the cockpit of a Moth looks like. I’ll see you in the morning.’ With that she was dismissed.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE FEAR THAT HAD BEEN SITTING AT THE BOTTOM of Jean’s stomach since she woke up threatened to overwhelm her as she climbed into the cockpit of a fuselage at the technical school. This was the moment she had been waiting for all her life, but now it had arrived she felt small and afraid. Worse than that, she felt as if she might throw up and disgrace herself.

  ‘You’re a dainty little girl,’ Travers said, looking her over more closely than he had the day before. ‘Do you think you’re tough enough to be a flier?’

  ‘Very tough,’ Jean said, lifting her chin. ‘How many pirouettes can you do in a row without falling over?’

  He scratched his head and thought about this. ‘You’re a dancer?’

  ‘I was. I sold my piano in order to come here.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘My word. A little ballet dancer all the way from New Zealand who has sold her piano in order to become an aviator.’ She wondered if he were making fun of her. She had heard him addressed as ‘Major’ that morning by fliers on the field. His size and crisp manner were intimidating.

  ‘Well, yes and no. I’m supposed to be in London to become a concert pianist.’ It sounded silly, a little vain. She looked at her hands and wished that she was in Alice Law’s studio practising scales, or along the road at Madame Valeska’s pulling a tutu over her head in preparation for a recital. ‘I’ve flown with Charles Kingsford Smith,’ she said.

  ‘Smithy, eh. Well, well. You’ll know what all these controls are then?’

  She shook her head. ‘It was just the once, to get the feel of flying.’

  ‘So did you learn anything from him?’

  ‘Not to fly at night.’

  ‘Good advice.’

  ‘He suggested I didn’t try to beat men. But I’ll make up my own mind about that.’

  Travers looked impressed, and gave her a sudden grin. ‘Well then, we should begin. Think of this as the barre. Isn’t that where ballerinas go each day to warm up before they practise their routines? Yes?’

  And she thought yes, indeed, this was the right place after all, and that he wasn’t taking her down a peg, the way she’d imagined a moment before. This was where she would go day after day, to learn and remember, this tiny cocoon of the cockpit, greenish-grey inside, the control column between her knees, a polished wooden panel with four instruments in front of her, on which were arranged a quartet of instruments: the engine revolution counter, the airspeed indicator, the altimeter and oil pressure gauges, and in the centre, above them, a small halfmoon-shaped glass tube of liquid with a bubble in it to indicate lateral stability during the flight.

  He explained to her then how the controls surrounding the cockpit operated. The pedals at her feet controlled the rudder at the back of the plane, changing its direction. Had she ever sailed a boat? And when she said that she had, he exhaled a small grunt, indicating that he was pleased. This was the control column, or the joystick if she liked. Don’t ask him why it was called that, he said, but it did two things. If she held it in the middle she would fly level. Push it forward and the plane descended. Pull it back and the plane climbed. That controlled the elevator on the back of the plane. Move it to the left and the plane rolled to the left. Move it to the right and the reverse.

  Was she with him? Good, that was good.

  On the back of the wings were the ailerons that controlled the rolling motion of the plane. The lever on the left was the throttle. ‘On your first flight,’ he told her, ‘you will find that you’re gently using all these controls together.’

  ‘Like playing the piano?’

  ‘Hmm, yes, perhaps, but you don’t have the luxury of making mistakes, not once you’re on your own. You’ve got me in the front to rescue you while I’m training you, but not when you go solo.’

  He showed her the throttle on her left-hand side. She must always remember that the nut in the middle was finger tight. ‘Move the throttle forward to increase the engine speed. The plane might start to climb and you mightn’t want that, so you use the other wheel by the throttle to trim for level flight. If you want to climb or descend, gently use the throttle trim. Gently, always gently.’

  That was the first lesson on the first day, taking her through the controls over and again until she could touch them with her eyes closed and tell him what they were. They still weren’t airborne.

  The next day they were. The w
eather that had threatened to close in with misty rain first thing in the morning had lifted and the air was clear. Travers was not a man to take risks, he told her. There are bold pilots, and old pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. Favourite saying, she’d better get used to it.

  She must also get used to going through a pre-flight check every time she left the ground.

  ‘How will I remember all the checks?’ Jean asked.

  ‘Very good question. Here’s a little phrase that might help you remember. “Too many flying instructors here.”’

  She looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why on earth would I remember that? It sounds ridiculous.’

  ‘Take the first letter from every word. Start with the letter “t”. Throttle nut finger tight. Trim set for takeoff. Next, the letter “m”, mixture control wired back. “F” is fuel sufficient for flight. You see this gauge? You’ll learn over the next weeks to calculate how much fuel you need for a flight, and if you haven’t enough, you may land anywhere but the place you intended. Perhaps in the sea, perhaps in the middle of a forest, or on a busy road. There’s a strong chance you won’t come out of the plane alive. There are plenty of bold pilots who don’t. Do you still want to fly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that.’ He completed the rest of the checklist, and nodded towards the control panel. ‘We should begin our flight, Miss Batten.’

  They took to the air and she shouted with delight, her fingers dancing on the controls. ‘Pay attention,’ shouted Travers through the speaking tube that connected them. ‘You’re not here to have fun.’ They were rising up in the sky, five hundred feet, a thousand, the world getting smaller beneath them, trees shrinking, houses tiny.

  ‘Good, you’re doing well. Now level her out, excellent.’