The Infinite Air Read online

  ‘You made model aeroplanes,’ Jean said.

  ‘Oh yes, there was that. But I collected butterflies and moths, too. That’s why I call my planes Moths,’ he said. ‘And now I’m setting them free. Go well, Miss Batten.’

  Jean stowed her parcel in a tiny compartment she had made behind the headrest in the rear cockpit. She leaned against Victor for a moment, sheltered by his arm, then it was time to go. Victor’s own plane had been wheeled out and he followed her across the London sky to Kent.

  He and Nellie and Jean stayed at a nearby hotel, each with a bedroom of their own. Jean found it hard to concentrate on conversation of any kind. Before long she crept up the stairs to her room. Victor followed her up to the bedroom door. He kissed her chastely on her forehead and wished her a good night’s sleep. Victor had not asked Jean to his bedroom since they met, as if sensing her reserve. She was hardly settled before Nellie tapped on the door and allowed herself in, sitting down beside Jean on the bed.

  ‘I’m scared, Mother,’ Jean said in a small voice.

  ‘I know.’ Nellie’s voice was trembling. ‘Darling, we’ve had such good times together, haven’t we?’

  ‘We’ll have more,’ Jean said.

  ‘Promise me you won’t take any risks. I can’t imagine my life without you.’

  ‘I’ll always come home to you, darling.’

  ‘If you should change your mind about going,’ Nellie said, ‘you only have to say.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. It’s all right, Mother.’

  ‘You’re right. Of course you won’t. I’m just being selfish. You’ll see it through. You and me together. Now go to sleep, my lovely daughter.’

  Nellie sat holding Jean’s hand until she felt the deep, even breathing that was so familiar to her in all the strange rooms the pair of them had inhabited.

  THE SUNDAY DISPATCH REPORTER had made the most of his story. The headline read GIRL’S LONE FLIGHT — TO AUSTRALIA IN THE PRINCE’S OLD PLANE.

  Underneath it was a picture of Jean looking glamorous, if a little uncertain, as she leaned against her plane. Although it was still early morning, more reporters had gathered as she made her way to the hangar. If she had been afraid the night before, the presence of this attention encouraged her to stand tall, and answer questions in a firm voice. There was no turning back. Victor got in on the act as well, telling one reporter how his fiancée Jean had lived so frugally, going without new clothes and nice cosmetics, a real rags-to-riches story, and soon she would show the whole world how fast she could fly. She winced a little at that. She was wearing a touch of the Chanel No. 5 he had bought her, but she wished he hadn’t drawn attention to her past cheapness. Besides, she muttered to Nellie, when they found themselves alone for a moment, he hasn’t actually proposed. Who says I’m his fiancée?

  ‘He probably thinks he has,’ Nellie said.

  ‘You don’t forget things like that.’

  ‘Hush, you’re nervous, you both are,’ Nellie said in her most soothing tones.

  Victor walked over to join them, and gave Jean a final embrace.

  On 9 April at 6.30 a.m. Jean taxied out onto the airfield at Lympne. She rose into the air, circled the aerodrome once in salute, and set a compass course for France. Before long her vision was obscured by fog. She flew by instruments across the English Channel, climbing to an altitude of four thousand feet, high above the clouds, where the sun shone brilliantly. Near Paris, the fog cleared and the city lay beneath her. She drew a sharp intake of breath and flew low in order to catch a glimpse of the spring lilacs in bloom along the Champs-Elysées. Jean imagined their heady scent in the streets of Paris. Then the city was behind her, and a pastoral landscape unfolded.

  She climbed again as she headed towards the Chevenne mountains. At five thousand feet she was struck by the intensity of the cold, but the countryside she flew over was so beautiful that it seemed of little consequence. She crossed the mountains, passed over Lyons and down the Rhône Valley. The river threaded its way along the valley floor, appearing, from this height, to slither along like snail tracks. A wild sense of exhilaration now overtook her. Six hours had passed since she left Lympne and so comfortable was she with her flying, and with enough petrol to take her to Rome, she decided not to land. Instead, she set a direct course for Italy, four hundred miles away over the Gulf of Genoa.

  This was the longest distance Jean had flown over water, and before long there was no land in sight. She flew on in a bright blue sky, with little wind, no sound except the purring of her engine. When it felt like lunchtime, she ate a leg of chicken, tossing the bone over the side. Pouring coffee without spilling it proved so difficult she drank directly from the Thermos. Even so, when she hit an air pocket, she was showered with liquid, and wondered if she had broken a tooth when it connected with the lip of the Thermos.

  The clear sky was interrupted by a bank of cumulus nimbus clouds, forcing her to fly low. Suddenly Corsica lay beneath her. The island, almost completely covered by snow, was surrounded by the deep blue of the Mediterranean. From above, its mountains looked like some strange and beautiful spectre risen from the sea. Many small islands lay beneath her now. She skirted the island of Elba with care, for it was forbidden to fly over it, since the Italian government use it for political prisoners. As she landed in Rome, she noted that ten hours had passed since she had left Lympne. She was greeted with the news that she was the first woman to fly non-stop solo from England. Already she had broken a record.

  It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in Rome. She had come earlier than expected and nobody was available to fuel her plane. The gauge still showed enough petrol to take her on to Naples. The day was so beautiful, her spirits so high, that she decided to take to the air again. Her route now lay along the coast of Italy, the Appenines forming the country’s backbone, rising in great heights against the skyline, white and then pink as sunset overtook them. The sea turned crimson and gold. Here and there, she saw tiny ruined cities, then strips of bone-white beaches with fishing smacks drawn up as evening closed in, and the fishermen’s nets, like hairnets from this distance, hung out to dry. In the far distance, she saw a long line of smoke, and against the darkening sky she distinguished the outline of Mount Vesuvius. Smithy’s words flashed before her: Never fly at night.

  Darkness was almost upon her as she flew over Naples.

  In the last of the twilight, she saw a cluster of lights and made out the aerodrome of Capodichino where she landed safely.

  She sent a telegram to Victor. First record fallen. Leaving at dawn for Syria.

  CHAPTER 19

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS LATE IN THE EVENING when she arrived in Naples, Jean now set to work on the plane’s engine. Before she left England, she had worked out a daily routine of engine and aircraft maintenance that she resolved to keep at all costs. The Italian ground mechanics, apparently full of admiration for her day’s flying, drained the oil for her, while she cleaned the petrol filter. She suggested they refuel and put new oil in the engine, so that she could start at dawn. Her plan was to fly to Aleppo in the north of Syria the following day, a journey of some thirteen hundred miles.

  ‘Not possible,’ the helpful mechanics indicated, shaking their heads sadly. While it was true that they were on duty, the petrol man had gone home early because it was Sunday. He always took the petrol key with him. No, they did not know where he lived, so sorry, signorina.

  What was worse, the petrol man did not arrive until 8.30 the next morning. And no, they did not know his address. All of this discussion had taken place with signs, and gesticulations, and pointing at watches. Some Italian air force officers now appeared. One of them spoke some French, and he and Jean had a halting conversation. He could, he was sure, track down the fuel agent’s home address and persuade him to come in early in the morning. It was near midnight when Jean slid into bed at a small inn not far from the aerodrome. She set the clock for 4.30 a.m.

  In the half-light of early morning she hailed a taxi outside the inn
. She was already wearing her fur-lined flying suit and helmet and goggles.

  ‘Aeroporto,’ she said to the driver. He was a fierce-looking bandit of a man, complete with a heavy moustache, and a blue bandana tied around his head.

  ‘Aeroporto,’ he responded, smacking the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. ‘Si, signorina, aeroporto.’

  Just to be sure, she had written down the directions. ‘Si, si,’ he said, waving the piece of paper away. ‘Aeroporto. Qui si va.’ Here we go, or so she understood.

  Off they went, at speed across the cobbles, the taxi bumping and swaying. The ride was longer than she expected, and although she had not been able to see her surroundings the previous night as she was driven from the aerodrome, she had the distinct feeling that they were travelling in the wrong direction.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she shouted from the back seat.

  ‘Aeroporto. Non ti preoccupare!’ From which she took it that the driver had everything under control. Within a minute or so they had drawn up with a jolt at the end of a wharf.

  ‘Porto Napoli,’ the driver cried.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she cried. ‘I do not want the Port of Naples.’ She flung open the door of the taxi and leapt out. At that moment two policemen walked past. ‘Un momento, prego,’ she called, using most of the Italian she had absorbed in the last hours. She opened her hands imploringly, indicating the taxi driver who now stood looking sheepishly at the beautiful bay of Naples, which held no appeal for her at all at this moment. ‘Aeroporto,’ she said, adding a wail to her voice.

  The policemen looked at her, taking in the flying suit, and the piece of paper she was brandishing, and began to laugh. But when they spoke to the taxi driver, their voices were sharp. The driver took her to the aerodrome, without another word passing between them.

  The air force officers she had met the night before were waiting for her, looking crestfallen. They hadn’t been able to find the fuel officer. She would, after all, have to wait until 8.30. It was nine that morning before she left. Syria was beyond her reach before nightfall. Instead, she set a course across the Adriatic Sea, heading for Athens.

  On the island of Corfu, she spotted a seaplane base, and flew down low over it. For an instant, she was back in Auckland, a child on the beach, demanding her turn to look inside the Walsh brothers’ flying boats. She saw John and Harold racing ahead, their faces streaked by the sun. And now here she was, absolutely alone in the sky, in command of this plane, circling a seaplane base on the other side of the world and the mysteries of her brothers’ lives lost to her. John, who had buried some secret in his marriage to Madeleine Murat; Harold married to Alma, blasting rocks out of hillsides, in whirling dust and half-light, the outsider, the wild card, the brother whom she still found it in her heart to love. For all his strange ways, she found it easier to think of Harold with a gentle heart than she did John.

  She flew over the Corinth Canal. Soon, between the purple mountains that bound three sides of the city, she sighted the white marble buildings of Athens, the Parthenon gleaming high on the hill over the city, and, on the fringe of the city, the military aerodrome of Tatoi.

  In darkness, at 3 a.m. the next day, she took to the air again, heading for Aleppo and, just as she had done on her first night flight, she used a torch to see the instruments, taking off holding the throttle lever and the torch in her left hand, while controlling the joystick with her right. She circled higher and higher in order to gain sufficient height to cross the mountains, and set off towards the obscure shadows over the Aegean Sea.

  The night felt cold enough to strip the skin, but the sky was burning with stars, the moon coating her plane with ghostly rays. To the south a few lights still blinked from the heart of Athens. When they were behind her, and there was nothing but darkness all around, and the sea below, she was overwhelmed with such loneliness that it was like an arrow, as if the cold had turned to ice and was slicing through her with a peculiar pain that was not physical. Her only company was the blast of the four flames from the stub-exhaust pipes of her engine, and the purr of the engine itself. She was surrounded by cauldrons of stars and wastelands of blackness. Again she tried to summon the faces of her brothers, of her mother, and of the man, Victor, with whom she might be in love. The image of her father, with his small serial betrayals, was elusive. It was Nellie’s face that stamped itself before her in the blistering chill of dawn light, and the dwindling of the stars.

  It surprised her that she was not afraid of death, and she found herself wondering if Bert Hinkler had been fearful, whether he knew what lay ahead, and wanted to turn back. She thought of herself as a person who lived on the fringes, but here, over the austere land of Greece, she felt that she was reaching into the deep centre of herself, a lonely place indeed, but one that was, after all, without fear. This, perhaps, was what would keep her safe. To be afraid in a crisis was one thing, but the fear of death itself would never betray her. It occurred to her that it was loss that frightened her, although the loss of what exactly was amorphous, something she dimly understood.

  On an island beneath her, someone must have heard her engine, and began signalling with a torch in Morse code. She tried to signal back a few letters in response. What language would her friend below be using? They wouldn’t understand each other, perhaps, but it was enough. There were people down there, and the world was a real place, not just a dark canyon lit by unimaginable galaxies of distant planets. She felt her other self returning, a pilot on a mission, the excitement of the next destination.

  Turkey, and the plane hit bumps, encountering a downdraught of huge intensity, dropping two thousand feet in seconds. Her Thermos and maps, some oranges and her sandwiches were hurled onto the cockpit floor, as gravity dragged her against the straps that held her in. Dangerously close to water, she gave the engine full throttle, then followed a steep climb over a range of mountains, one country after another seeming to dissolve behind her.

  And there was Syria. She whooped, chanting aloud, The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold … What would Lord Byron make of a woman, little older than he was when he wrote his poem, shouting his words five thousand feet above the green fields of Syria? Like him, she was a free spirit. She allowed herself an unladylike spit over the edge of the cockpit.

  She reached Aleppo, staying less than two hours, then flew on, on towards Baghdad, across a desert where columns of dust rose a thousand feet in the air, the sand tearing at her face and lips, the plane tossed around into an upward roll, the next instant spinning towards the earth. Just when she believed she had cleared the sandstorms, another one appeared, so dense that the sun looked like a black sphere. She flew now by her instruments, trying to take a short cut that would enable her to fly around the storm, but the landscape grew darker. Then as suddenly as the storm had hit her, she passed through it, only to discover that it was night again.

  Now she was faced with a decision: to fly on towards Baghdad, without knowing if she might encounter more storms, or to land in the desert. The moon was very bright; beneath her she saw a stretch of smooth earth that she would learn later was a camel track. An attempt at a landing seemed her only choice. Turning off the engine, she allowed the plane to glide towards the surface and land. She remained seated for a few minutes, her eyes closed. Her body was bruised, her face cut by the sand, her tongue so dry and parched that it was difficult not to drink all the water in her Thermos in one long gulp.

  She walked a little way along the track, trying to determine how much firm ground there was before her. Something soft barred her way. On closer inspection in the moonlight, she saw that it was a dead camel. Something crept away in the darkness, causing her to shiver. By the light of her torch, she saw that it was a land crab of some description. Returning to the plane, she took the cushions out of the cockpit and spread them beside the fuselage. As soon as she lay down she fell into a deep sleep.

  When she woke, the sun was blazing fiercely, and eight Arabs were sitting around
her in a circle. As she scrambled to her feet, they all rose as one. Were these the Assyrians?

  Once, when they were children, Harold had read from one of his encyclopedias what to do if accosted by a sheik. The advice was to shake hands, and say ‘Salaam’.

  ‘Salaam,’ she said in a shaking voice to one of the Arabs, an olive-skinned man with heavy eyebrows, who appeared older and more richly dressed than the others. He wore a long white flowing robe with a head-dress of striped material kept in place by a twisted cord. He seemed astonished when she grabbed his hand and began to shake it effusively. After a few moments, when nobody seemed to move, she thought of a better, more immediate plan and returned to the plane. From the cockpit, she seized a tin of cigarettes, opened it and, with trembling hands, lit one before passing it to the man she assumed to be the sheik. Smiles of pleasure now covered the faces of the onlookers, and before long they were all seated again, smoking with her.

  She was still wearing her heavy flying gear. She had intended to change into tropical kit, but this was impossible in sight of the tribesmen. She decided now that she must get airborne as quickly as possible and began to swing the propeller of the plane. Although the heat was now rising, there had been frost in the night that had settled in the engine. She swung the propeller for nearly half an hour, dashing backwards and forwards to the cockpit to switch the engine on and off, sweat pouring off her.