The Infinite Air Read online

  In the front room, someone was playing the piano. Jean tried to ignore the music, but there was something insistent about it that made her open her door. Down the passage, she could see into the room where Belle was quietly playing a slow melody, humming to herself.

  Belle paused. ‘You can join me if you want,’ she called.

  Jean stood still.

  ‘It doesn’t matter about school,’ Belle said, in a voice loud enough to carry.

  Jean walked towards her. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really care,’ Belle said. ‘You don’t belong to me. I don’t have to worry whether you pass exams or not.’

  ‘You were playing Debussy,’ Jean said.

  ‘How did you know that?’ Belle asked, startled.

  ‘I just do know. Modern, my mother used to say it was rather modern.’

  ‘I see. Can you play the piano?’

  ‘Not really. My parents had one before the war, but not now.’

  ‘Perhaps you could pick up a tune. Do you want me to show you what to do?’

  Jean seated herself in front of the piano and ran down some scales. Belle murmured to herself, ‘Hmm, I see. Can you do “Chopsticks”?’

  ‘Yes, but my mother called it “The Flea Waltz”.’

  ‘Do you want to try a duet with me?’ Belle asked.

  So they played together and Jean laughed with excitement as they skipped around the notes.

  ‘There now, that was fun,’ Belle cried.

  Without speaking, Jean began fingering the keys again, the swelling throb of Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prelude’.

  She didn’t know much of it, but what she played was enough to make Belle sit up very straight. ‘Prelude number fifteen. I wish my daughter could play like that. Who taught you all this?’

  ‘My mother. My father. I don’t remember. It was ages ago, when I was little.’ She did remember, of course, her mother on the piano stool beside her, smelling of soap and freshly made bread, a mother who didn’t seem to exist any more.

  ‘You’ve got a gift,’ Belle said. ‘Lots of kids can play “Chopsticks”, but not many can play a Chopin prelude unless they’ve had lessons. Not even a little bit of one. Perhaps you could be a pianist when you grow up.’

  ‘Can you be famous if you play the piano?’ Jean asked.

  ‘You certainly can. Do you want to be famous?’

  Yes, Jean replied, that was what she wanted more than anything else. If she were famous, she explained, nobody would be horrible, people would have to be nice all the time.

  ‘Are people horrible to you?’ Belle asked with care.

  ‘No,’ Jean said swiftly.

  ‘Your brothers?’

  Jean gave her a blank stare. ‘What brothers?’ she said, as if Belle had been rude. ‘I’m just going to be famous, that’s all.’

  Belle laughed. ‘Oh well, I hope so. Perhaps you’ll marry a famous man and get a title.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Jean said. ‘I don’t intend to get married. I’m never going to get married.’

  ‘But why ever not?’ Belle asked.

  ‘People who are married say cruel things.’

  Belle said, ‘But I’m married. My husband and I are very nice to each other. Most of the time anyway.’ She laughed then, amused at herself. ‘Life’s never perfect, Jean.’

  Jean continued to look past her. It was true, some hardness had begun to grow inside her, a resolve to be perfect, whatever Belle said to the contrary. There had to be a way out of the turmoil she had left behind in Auckland. When she had come to Birkdale the depth of her misery seemed bottomless, but it mattered less than at the beginning. She supposed she had moved on into some other state.

  What passed for a guarded friendship was developing between her and the gaunt Belle. One of Belle’s many tasks was to drive a rickety flat-bed truck to the sawmiller’s yard to collect wooden boxes in preparation for the fruit-picking season. Jean admired Belle’s ability to guide the truck over potholes and narrow roads, and back into the yard, as skilful as any of the men in their pick-ups. She helped load and stack the boxes, her strength surprising both of them. On the way back to the farm, Belle would pull over at Verran’s store, and buy ice creams. As they sat on the truck’s running board, the flying boat Jean had seen earlier passed over head again, while the ice cream melted over their fingers in the warm morning air.

  ‘That’s the mail plane to Dargaville,’ Belle said.

  ‘I’ve been in one of those planes,’ Jean told her.

  ‘For a ride?’

  ‘No, but some day I’ll fly. I know I will.’

  ‘You’re going to be busy,’ Belle laughed. ‘Being a famous concert pianist, and flying planes. What else will you think of?’

  As spring went by, and summer’s heat stroked the house, it became harder to recall her parents’ faces. Sometimes, just before the fast, sudden sleep that overtook her nowadays, she saw her mother’s eyes, like a cat’s, glowing in the dark. She tried not to see them. Whatever she did must now be directed towards being the best, somebody who stood out, not just lost among strangers.

  The first harvest of strawberries was gathered. The fields were now filled with people bent over the mounds, their hands flying in incessant rhythm, their heads covered with straw hats as they picked. At the end of the day, when the main meal was cleared away, Belle placed bowls of the scarlet fruit in the centre of the table, still aromatic with the warmth of the sun, along with jugs of cream. The voluptuous scent of hot strawberry jam filled the house. Strawberry stew, Jean said, the first time Belle made it, and everyone laughed, even the brother and sister she so studiously ignored. Around the table in the evenings, talk was turning towards Christmas, causing Jean unease, as if the spell she was under was about to be broken. Christmas meant long summer holidays, and the children here at the house all the time. Jean thought, I should do something to save myself. She sat down that evening and wrote to her mother.

  Dear Mother,

  I have been British every day since my father brought me here. It’s not so bad and the countryside is pretty. But I am not with you and I worry that you are on your own. Perhaps you need me to look after you. I have learned to be useful since I came here.

  Your loving daughter

  Jane (Jean) Gardner Batten

  Not long after this, Nellie did come and take her away. Her appearance in Belle’s kitchen was regal, the Nellie of old. She wore a dark hat with a huge round brim swept back from her forehead, like a tricorne. The collar of her jacket was edged with fox fur, her grey dress with its sweeping skirt cut low over her bosom, amber beads at her throat. Her famous winged eyebrows swept upwards as she took in her surroundings. She clasped Jean to her. ‘I’ll never let you go again,’ she said.

  She barely acknowledged Belle, as Jean’s belongings were gathered together, and turned down the offered cup of tea.

  ‘Your daughter has a talent for music,’ Belle said, her voice tentative.

  ‘But of course, she comes from a very musical family. My husband and I both play instruments. I’ve been on the stage a good deal myself, you know.’

  ‘It would be nice if she could have some lessons,’ Belle went on, determined to make her point.

  ‘Well of course she’ll have lessons,’ Nellie said, impatient now. ‘She’s enrolled at Ladies College in Remuera, starting next term. She’ll have the best of everything — music, dance, foreign languages, etiquette.’

  They left with barely a goodbye to Belle, Nellie not wishing to prolong the conversation, a certain haughtiness in her demeanour, as if Belle had trespassed, while Jean, sensing the atmosphere, was unwilling to upset her mother so soon after their reunion. She would have liked to run back and given Belle a hug, not that they were in the habit of touching each other.

  As they crossed the harbour, Jean said, ‘Did John get my letter?’ She hadn’t dared to ask about her father, although when Nellie had referred to Fred as her husband in the conversation with Belle, her hopes had soared.

/>   ‘Letter? Oh, I shouldn’t think so. John has gone.’

  This was how Jean learned that John was no longer in Auckland. Harold had reappeared but had been vague about his whereabouts. He had been working down south, building bridges, he told his father, who at some stage had passed this information on to Nellie. No, of course he hadn’t been in Australia, and yes, he saw that stupid thing in the newspaper because the man he was working for had told him about it, and to be honest, he could have wished for any name except Batten. He’d taken to calling himself Fred; he might as well get some benefit from the connection. In fact, he was going to adopt that name for good, seeing that it was his first given name anyway. Of course, Nellie still referred to him as Harold, which, she imagined, the family always would.

  Fred did tell her, over tea and cakes when they had met for what she described as a ‘civilised conversation’, that he had been worried by Harold’s apparent envy of the plan to blow up ships. It was something he might have done if he’d thought about it, but anyway, it wasn’t all bad because there’d been plenty of explosives used on the jobs he did, blasting rocks along riverbanks in preparation for bridge building. Fred had said that, really, he had no idea if a word of it was the truth. Not long after Jean had left Auckland for Birkdale, Fred had presented both his sons with fifty gold sovereigns and told them to go and find their fortunes in Australia. There was, he said, so little work to be had in New Zealand, they might as well go. For Jean, Harold had lost his substance, turned into a shadowy figure who had come and gone for years now. His presence wasn’t one she thought she would miss. But the disappearance of John shook her.

  ‘Well,’ Nellie said, as she recounted all this to her daughter, ‘I said he wouldn’t be able to manage those boys. Now he knows what I had to put up with. At least John came and said goodbye.’

  NELLIE AND JEAN HAD CHRISTMAS DINNER at a hotel where they were staying, just the two of them eating roast poultry and plum pudding. Jean was overtaken with longing for her father, but knew better than to ask further. He had found himself quite a fancy flat, her mother said. Trust him to fall on his feet, he always did. But over dinner, Nellie seemed in high spirits. They would shortly be moving to a house in Remuera, then Jean would start at her new school. In the meantime, she declared gaily, they would go to the races together and have a flutter or two.

  In the weekends that followed, they travelled often by train to the Ellerslie racecourse, where the crowds of people, mostly men, seemed immense. Nellie, in her finery, knew her way to the ticket window, a list of horses’ names and numbers clutched in her hand. She was familiar with foreign-sounding terms like quinellas and trifectas. It wasn’t clear how Nellie picked horses, but she often backed winners. A horse with a good eye and nice shoulders, she would say in passing. ‘A man I knew in Rotorua gave me some tips. Do you remember, Jean, the white horse we rode? Wasn’t it handsome?’ There were times when Jean was almost overcome, caught in a claustrophobic crush between the bodies of men leaning towards the fence in unison, their arms raised, voices hoarse, not seeing her, the rough tweed of their jackets against her face. They roared and waved their hats in the air, shouting and swearing as the horses thundered past. Nellie watched more quietly, but her cheeks were pink with excitement. Sometimes, when she was flushed with a win, she would hand Jean some money and tell her how to place a bet. On her first bet, Jean won ten shillings while her mother lost roughly the same. ‘You needn’t tell your father about this,’ she said.

  This at least was news. It seemed she was going to see Fred again.

  CHAPTER 6

  FRED TURNED UP THE DAY JEAN STARTED at Ladies College, to escort her and Nellie to the parent welcome. This new school for Jean stood in formal gardens with sweeping lawns as crisp as ironed sheets. The main building featured an elegant crenellated square tower.

  ‘There are only fifty girls enrolled at the school,’ Nellie said proudly, adding for Fred’s benefit, in case she hadn’t already explained, that there were seven teachers and eight visiting professors. Five of the professors specialised in music. The prospectus declared that the school catered for the new requirements of women, not just in home life, but in business and industries and the arts. Women had new privileges as citizens. Since women had won the right to vote, Nellie explained to Jean, it was easier to choose their own vocations, too. She sounded wistful.

  Months had passed since Fred and Jean had seen each other. Nellie insisted that Fred was not fit company for his daughter. It had been him who had wrenched Jean from her arms and left her in her time of need. How could she trust him not to kidnap her again? Not that anyone observing them would have guessed this state of affairs, so convincingly did he play the role of devoted father, not to mention that of attentive husband. Dressed in his suit, a white handkerchief in his breast pocket and his gold watch chain over his chest, he ambled along the white-pebbled paths, Nellie on one arm and Jean on the other. The three of them posed together in the gardens for a photograph. Nellie spread a blanket for them on the grass in front of a stand of palm trees, edged with begonias. She and Jean sat down, while Fred stretched alongside, pipe in his mouth, his face level with his daughter’s shoulder. He placed his trilby on the ground near Jean’s wide-brimmed Panama.

  ‘Perfect,’ the photographer announced, emerging from under the dark cloth over his tripod. ‘This is a picture for the record books.’

  ‘So, there we are,’ Nellie said, when the man had retreated. ‘That’s us, the perfect family.’ The sarcasm simmered close to the surface.

  ‘That’s not what you said when you took me to court,’ Fred said, without taking his pipe out of his mouth. Nellie put a finger to her lips.

  ‘Three pounds a week, Fred, it’s useful.’ Jean sank her head onto her knees, to hide her face from them, her hair escaping in tendrils from the ribbons holding it on either side of the straight, pearl-white centre parting. ‘Well,’ Nellie continued, briskly, ‘here comes the headmistress. Stand up, Jean.’

  Jean looked up. Mrs Sarah Jones, handsome in a way that was almost a match for Nellie, stood looking at the group as they scrambled to their feet. ‘All well, Mr and Mrs Batten?’

  As he shook hands, Fred said, ‘Our Jean has a delicate constitution.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Nellie said. ‘She’s a very strong girl for her age. You’ve seen her reports. What Jean lacks in size, she makes up for in her natural abilities.’

  Sarah Jones looked from one to the other, her eyebrows slightly raised. ‘I’m sure Miss Batten will fit in very well with our young ladies,’ she said, after a short silence. She clapped her hands at two girls who had strayed onto the smooth green. ‘Ladies,’ she called, ‘paths are where we walk, not on the grass.’ Turning to the Battens, she said, ‘We always address our students as ladies, you see. Ladies are ladies and gentlemen are gentlemen. Not that they will meet any young gentlemen while in my care. Miss Batten has brothers, I believe?’

  ‘John,’ Nellie said swiftly.

  ‘Frederick,’ Fred said in the same breath.

  Sarah Jones’s eyebrows flickered again, as if she had remembered something.

  ‘Two brothers then? John and Frederick?’

  ‘Both Jean’s brothers are overseas,’ Nellie said.

  ‘Yes, I see. Well, there are great opportunities for young men abroad. So there are the two?’

  ‘One of them is studying for the theatre,’ Fred said, with unexpected authority. ‘Our other boy is trying his hand at farming in Australia. We’re proud of all our children.’

  ‘Of course.’ The principal’s face was smooth. She looked Jean over again with a calculating eye. ‘Young Jean has the figure of a dancer. We will make something of her, I promise.’

  Afterwards, Fred returned to his flat, Jean and Nellie to their newly rented home. It was a basement flat in the house of a milliner, not far from the school, but it was a good address. Then, out of the blue, Fred bought Jean a piano, brand-new and stylish with square plain pillars and a very g
ood tone. Jean could practise in earnest and Nellie could play again. She and the milliner had become instant friends. Nellie was an ideal model for her landlady to experiment on; already her hats were more varied and flamboyant.

  Nellie decided that, after all, there was no harm in Jean spending some Saturday afternoons with Fred. These were the days when she dressed with particular care and, carrying the heavy purse over her arm, set off on private expeditions. Some evenings she would come home looking elated, and other times she could barely conceal her despondency, screwing up tote tickets with thinly disguised rage. But she had other preoccupations, too; several evenings a week she went off to work. There were a dozen or more picture theatres in the city, and all of them were crying out for accompanists.

  ‘There,’ she exclaimed with satisfaction, one afternoon, when Jean came home from school. ‘Thank goodness I kept something up my sleeve. You can see the value of learning the piano. I have a real job.’

  Jean’s piano did double duty for them both, for while Jean was at school Nellie improvised and practised a repertoire that suited the dramatic needs of the movies she would accompany. While some of the films came with their own scores, which Nellie was obliged to learn, she was taking an interest in Wagnerian music, understanding the value of leitmotif, recurring melodies that could be associated with a certain character in the film, or a place, or an emotion, subtle hints to audiences following the comic twists and turns of Charlie Chaplin or Rudolph Valentino’s burning loves and hates. Some evenings, Jean would stay home alone and study; on other nights, she watched a film while her mother played. She studied stars like Lilian Gish in Broken Blossoms, and the new Swedish actress Greta Garbo, admiring their poise, the look of them, clear-eyed and delicate, the smoothness of their complexions, the way they carried themselves, the tilt of their heads. In Garbo, she sensed some extra quality, a reserve that suggested more than was at first apparent on the screen, an intensity that shimmered beneath the surface, something that might have passed for pain.