The Infinite Air Page 27

  There were more gifts and honours before she left, bouquets by the hundred, receptions by the dozen.

  On 6 December, she set sail for London, the Gull perched on the ship’s wide deck. The thought of flying back had crossed her mind, but she dismissed it with a speed that surprised even her. She had made a promise to herself, and to Beverley Shepherd, that sooner or later she would return safely to Australia.

  And, somewhere, in the warm green Andaman Sea, Smithy, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, lay lost forever.

  CHAPTER 28

  MONSIEUR LOUIS BLÉRIOT WAS THE MOST ELEGANT of the gentlemen gathered at the Sorbonne to honour Jean. Blériot himself, the man whose picture Nellie had pinned above Jean’s cot. He was still youthful in appearance, with a full head of hair and a spectacular moustache that showed no trace of grey, his eyes bright under heavy lids. His suit fitted him with a particular stylish grace, his tie was striped with golden fabric, his socks silken and fine. Beside him, Jean shimmered in a white evening gown and a white mink stole.

  ‘Mademoiselle, you look like Anna Pavlova,’ he murmured.

  ‘Thank you, that’s a great compliment. I saw her dance when I was a child in New Zealand. She was exquisite.’

  ‘You have an interest in dance?’

  She hesitated. ‘I was a dancer,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed? That explains many things. Your grace, the way you carry yourself when you walk into a room. You’re quite a small lady, if I may say so, but your presence is immediate, powerful. You are the kind of person who inspires others to dream.’

  ‘As you are, monsieur.’ She explained then how her mother had pinned the newspaper clipping above her cot when she was an infant, the way his name and deeds had followed her all her life.

  He gave her a long considering look.

  ‘If you are free, I should be honoured if you would dine with me and Madame Blériot at our residence.’

  It was February, and the Gull was being overhauled in preparation for Jean’s flight to New Zealand. An invitation had arrived inviting her to Paris as a guest of the Aéro Club de France for a month. After many receptions, the prospect of a quiet dinner with her hero was as delightful as it was unexpected.

  Blériot took her first to his salon. Straightaway, she noticed a glass case filled with gold, silver and bronze medals from almost every country in the world. His eyes followed hers. ‘They are important,’ he said, ‘but they are not the journey.’ Before them, on a table, stood a large glass globe. ‘This is where I follow your journeys,’ he said.

  ‘You actually follow me?’

  ‘But of course. You can have no greater admirer than me. There are many fine fliers in the world, but I’ve come to the conclusion that you must be one of the greatest navigators of all time. You appear to have an instinctive sense of direction that is extraordinary. Like an extra sense, a special power. You make me feel humble. Come, I have something else to show you.’

  Just off the carpeted hallway, a door opened to reveal a small room, devoid of furniture except for a chair or two. A wooden bench extended its entire length, and on it were various tools, and lengths of spruce. Many blueprints and drawings, and photographs of early planes, covered the walls.

  Madame Blériot had followed them into the room. ‘Sometimes we have receptions here,’ she said, ‘and I’ll look up and he’ll be gone. I make a hasty excuse, say to our guests, forgive me, my husband has had an idea. And of course, he will be here. People of intelligence, the kind of people we invite here, understand ideas.’

  She appeared as delighted by Jean’s company as her husband. She had made their dinner herself: fish soup — soupe aux poissons — followed by roast veal, fromage, always les fromages, the beautiful cheeses of France that Jean was learning to appreciate, an apple tart, the making of which Madame Blériot described in loving detail. She had made her husband one exactly the same as a treat, the day he flew the English Channel. ‘But there, you’re not here to talk about the recipes,’ she said, ‘you’re here to talk about aviation. Oh it’s a day I’ll never forget, my husband flying across that stretch of water. I was on the deck of a battleship that was following him, and then — pouf — he disappeared. For ten minutes nobody knew where he was. I could have cried when he was sighted, safe and sound. And you weren’t even born then. How do they bear it, those people who love you, when you vanish across such vast oceans as the Atlantic?’

  ‘I think my mother worries a little.’

  ‘Your mother worries? My dear, you have a talent for understatement. How terrifying for her. Do you have a dear love in your life?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Jean said. ‘But it’s a secret. He is a young man, and learning to be a flier. It’s important that he succeeds on his own account, or that’s how I feel.’

  ‘That is so wise,’ her hostess said. ‘But he watches over you, when you set off on your flights?’

  ‘He’s in Australia,’ Jean told her. ‘I’ll join him soon.’ She did not say that Beverley now had a commercial licence and that she didn’t hear from him as often as he heard from her, that a sense of urgency to be on the other side of the world was fast overtaking her. She had so much to relate day by day, while he had a life in Sydney, not as different moment by moment as hers. He had sent her a picture of himself in his Australia Airways uniform, and she could see that he was changing, his profile less boyish. And he was attractive. She knew how girls liked a man in uniform. It made her uneasy, and she disliked herself for feeling this way. There were times when she thought that the flight to South America had been a mistake; it was not what she had promised when she left him in Australia the previous year.

  Madame Blériot looked at her husband. ‘Shall we show her our secret room?’ she said. When he nodded, with a look of merriment, they led her to their bedroom, a room with bare walls and ceiling all painted sky blue. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘even in the midst of winter, even when there is fog outside, I wake up and the first thing I see is clear blue sky. It never leaves me.’

  Jean felt that her hosts in France must have been pleased with her. When she was back in London, a letter arrived advising her that the French government wished to bestow on her the French Légion d’Honneur, the first British airwoman to be honoured by France. Before it could be awarded, the permission of the King must first be obtained. While this approval was being sought, Jean and Nellie flew together in the Gull for a holiday in Majorca.

  As Jean began the physical preparation she undertook before a major flight, the daily skipping and swimming. they explored the island from end to end, the wild flowers, and the giant olive groves, took a trip into the mountains to the monastery at Valldemosa, where Chopin and Georges Sand had lived together for a short time. They stood in the room that housed Chopin’s piano. ‘This is where he composed the “Raindrop Prelude”,’ Jean said, wishing she could sit where the master had. Her head filled with the swarming opening notes.

  It was outside the monastery that they encountered a dog. The large bull mastiff materialised apparently out of nowhere, bounding along at speed, pulling up short of them, teeth bared in a snarl. Jean gave a terrified scream.

  ‘Stand still, Jean,’ Nellie said, her voice firm. ‘You must not move, do you hear me? Don’t look in its eyes.’

  The dog had crouched, ready to spring, when a man appeared from behind the monastery wall, shouting commands. The dog sank onto its haunches, saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth. The man led the dog away, muttering apologies in Spanish.

  Later, that evening, as they sat on the balcony of their hotel, Jean said, ‘You were so brave, Mother. How did you know what to do?’

  ‘There were dogs running loose in Rotorua. Don’t you remember? Oh, perhaps not, you’d have been too little.’

  ‘I remember the swans.’

  ‘Well you chased them away.’

  ‘Dogs are different.’

  ‘True, these ones are. I’ve read about the dogs on this island, Ca de Bestiar is the breed — they�
�ve been here for hundreds of years. They used them for hunting, and bull fights. The dog held the bull until the matadors could finish it off.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Jean said. ‘I’ve had a few frights in my life, but nothing like that. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been there.’

  ‘Just remember not to challenge a dog. If you look it in the eye it’ll think you want a fight. Look away.’

  Jean shivered. ‘I’ll try to remember that advice.’

  Nellie seemed unruffled, the incident of little consequence. ‘I should so love to live here,’ she said, over breakfast on the sun-drenched terrace, a day or so later.

  Jean looked doubtful. ‘Well, perhaps you could,’ Jean said, as the coffee was poured. This was not the first time the subject of where Nellie would settle once Jean and Beverley were married had arisen. ‘We could visit you.’

  ‘You don’t sound keen.’

  ‘Yes, I do like the island. Truly, Mother, we could help you find a place here later on.’

  ‘You don’t want me to live in Sydney then?’

  ‘Mother, you know I always want to be near you. You just said you liked it here. But you know there’s talk of a war in Spain.’

  ‘Pray God, it won’t happen,’ Nellie said.

  They left it at that. The holiday was almost over. This, Jean thought, would be a time she and her mother would remember as their own. They would meet for lunch in Sydney, perhaps, in years to come, and Jean would have her children with her. ‘Remember that time in Majorca?’ they would say and it would come back to them, the scent of orange blossom rising up to meet them in the mountains from the valley floors, the rustle of leaves in the olive groves, the dark layers of blue in the ocean beyond the white beaches, the music of Chopin. Her mother was right, the dog was not important.

  That night there was a blood-red moon, casting a mysterious light over the sea.

  THE FLIGHT TO NEW ZEALAND WAS DELAYED AGAIN. Jean had been made a Commander of the British Empire, and the King now required her presence. In the interval, in order to maintain her fitness for the journey, Jean organised a rigorous eighty-mile walking tour for herself and Nellie, through the South Downs. Her mother’s eyes had widened at the proposal. ‘If you think you’re old, that’s what you’ll be, I suppose. I’m not ready for that yet,’ she said, as they set off. She was sixty-two.

  While they were away, they heard that New Zealand runner Jack Lovelock had won the mile race at the Berlin Olympics. He was already famous, and now he and Jean vied for being the best-known New Zealanders in the world, if the newspapers were to be believed.

  ‘I’m glad to leave the limelight to him,’ Jean said.

  ‘Something’s bothering you, Jean. What is it? Are you worried about the flight?’ They were walking from Eastbourne, but had stopped for a light lunch in a pub.

  Jean fiddled with the handle of her teacup. ‘I just want it over with now,’ she said.

  ‘Are you worried about Beverley?’

  ‘I told him I’d get back there safely. But then there’s the Tasman to cross. It’s a flight all in itself.’

  ‘Don’t do it if you’re that concerned.’

  ‘Don’t do it? What do you mean? Mother, of course I’m going to do it. That’s what I said I was going to do.’

  ‘Then I don’t know why we’re having this conversation,’ Nellie said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ Jean said, as they gathered up their packs to start walking again. ‘Sometimes it all seems to have got too big.’

  Some people, it seemed, were destined not to grow old. Back in London, news arrived that Louis Blériot had died of a heart attack in Paris. He was sixty-four.

  ‘Everyone I touch,’ Jean cried, in disbelief and pain. ‘Why him?’

  But she still had the King to meet and, although her pleasure was dimmed, her spirits rose at the prospect. And with this behind her, there lay the flight ahead.

  The new decoration glowed back at her, sitting in a box alongside her Brazilian and French orders. She remembered what Blériot had said. ‘They are important, but they are not the journey.’

  It was 5 October 1936 when she at last left on the first leg of her journey south.

  At Lympne, in the early hours of the morning, reporters and a camera crew flocked around her. She was in no mood for making speeches, but agreed to make a short one before the filming of the takeoff.

  As she climbed into the cockpit, a desperate-looking young man waved to her in a frantic manner. Thinking there was some emergency, or a problem with the engine, Jean got out of the plane. The cameraman had forgotten to turn on the sound. ‘Please Miss Batten, would you repeat your speech for us.’

  She heard herself, imperious and suddenly angry. ‘There’s no time. I have a schedule,’ she said, turning away.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please. I’ll lose my job if I don’t capture your words.’

  Jean looked at his dazed and pleading face. This might be the only job he had ever had.

  Leaning into the cockpit, she turned off the engine. ‘All right then. Make sure this time, please. I want to leave England today.’

  As she spoke, she tried to modulate her voice, to keep it slow and calm, aware of the rising panic inside.

  CHAPTER 29

  JEAN LANDED AT DARWIN IN THE EARLY HOURS of the morning on 11 October, five days and twenty-one hours after leaving England. She had lowered the solo record for both men and women by a day.

  The continent of Australia now lay between her and the hosts of people who awaited her in Sydney. Again, the rooftops were crowded with onlookers, as she circled the city, the harbour bridge.

  ‘The flight isn’t finished yet,’ she told the crowd at Mascot, over the massed swelling roar of their voices. ‘I have yet to fly to New Zealand.’

  AS THEY HAD ARRANGED, BEVERLEY WAS WAITING for Jean at the Hotel Australia, in a suite of rooms booked for her. It was better, they agreed, that their reunion was out of the public eye. It would be brief. If the predicted weather conditions were accurate, she would be on her way again in two days.

  Beverley seemed taller in his uniform. His fine, fair hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, making him appear older than when she had left him. He put his arms around her and held her within their circle.

  ‘I thought you’d never come back. I was so afraid for you.’

  ‘I promised you,’ she said.

  ‘And now you’re here, I’m not going to let you go any further.’

  She took a step backwards from him. ‘What do you mean, Bev?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you to go on. Why not rest on your laurels and just stay here?’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’ She felt her voice rising.

  ‘There’s already talk in the newspapers. There was a headline this morning, suggesting that it was madness to carry on over the Tasman. You know it’s one of the most dangerous seas in the world.’

  ‘That’s part of the challenge. I’ve crossed that water often by ship. I know what the storms are like out there. I’ve studied the charts. What do you think I’ve been doing all these years?’

  ‘You have been known to crash.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ she said, still trying to keep her voice down. She knew people would be within earshot.

  ‘Jean, you’re not to go. I’m telling you.’

  ‘Nobody tells me what I’m allowed to do.’ He looked as if he were about to walk out of the room. She could hardly believe that this was how her sprint across the world was ending. ‘Beverley,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘this was always the plan.’

  ‘What’s the reward of trying to link England and New Zealand if you end up losing your life? What will you gain?’

  ‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘I think we need to talk about this tomorrow.’

  They ate together that evening. He gave her news of his family, talked about the passenger route he was flying on from Sydney to Brisban
e. It was a peaceful sort of route, he said, over the mountains, the gum trees a sea of moving colour. He loved it — all the adventure he needed.

  ‘It was rough over there today,’ she said. ‘I had trouble keeping the Gull level as I came into Sydney.’

  ‘That doesn’t happen often.’

  He left her then. She needed to sleep, he could see — or this is what he told her. Nothing had been resolved. It felt as if they had quarrelled, even though the subject of the Tasman crossing had been dropped.

  But, in the morning, nearly two thousand telegrams awaited her, hundreds of them from people begging her not to make the flight. This seemed incomprehensible. The Tasman had now been flown seventeen times. But not yet by a woman, or, as some of her opponents pointed out, by a plane that had just flown across the world. Some said she must surely be tired. This was true, but she was not going to admit it to anyone. At a newspaper interview, a reporter asked, ‘Miss Batten, if you fail at this attempt, surely it will be a terrible setback to aviation in both Australia and New Zealand?’

  ‘In that case, if I succeed, the reverse must be true,’ she snapped. ‘I’d say it will give a tremendous impetus to aviation.’

  A headline the next morning, contained an appeal from the Governor-General’s wife: WOMAN TO WOMAN, I URGE YOU NOT TO GO ON. In New Zealand, Fred Batten had announced his opposition to her flight. His daughter had been ‘a sweet little girl’ he told the reporters, but she always had a mind of her own. This was a step too far in his opinion.

  The Civil Aviation authorities stepped in, and announced that they would not permit a takeoff with an overload of one thousand pounds, unless she could produce a certificate of airworthiness with an endorsement authorising her to do so. She produced the special permit she had obtained from the Air Ministry before leaving England, and the tone of the argument changed.

  The RAAF stepped in and offered her the use of their runway at Richmond, so that she could take off on a hard surface, rather than grass. They would also light a flare path to guide her on the early morning departure. This seemed a good omen. It was at Richmond that she had had the first flight of her life with Smithy and Charlie Ulm.