The Infinite Air Read online

  On Sundays, Nellie had still another interest. She began to play the piano at Golden Lights, the little spiritualist church in McKelvie Street, where she hoped to find the voice of her baby who had died. So far she had not heard from him, but she believed it might still happen. Somewhere, Nellie thought, her child might have continued to develop a mind beyond this life. It was, she explained to Jean, not so far removed from Christianity, just a little more free in its expression. And what she liked, in particular, was that women got to stand up and speak. ‘We do believe in God, the Infinite Intelligence,’ she said. ‘But we know that God listens to the voices of women as well as those of men.’

  She didn’t invite Jean to the church, and Jean guessed that if she did and was found out, Fred’s three pounds a week might quickly be withdrawn. It was, Nellie said, a simple plain little place, not showy like the big churches, but perhaps for the moment Jean should focus on her religious curriculum at school. ‘You don’t need to tell your teachers about this,’ she said. ‘Or about the movies.’

  Jean had no intention of doing so. She knew that her teachers would have disapproved of the way she and her mother spent their time. If anything, this double life inspired her to work harder at school. Literature was easy. From the beginning she was in thrall to the poets. Glory be to God for dappled things … Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold / And his cohorts were gleaming in silver and gold … Lord Byron. She hugged that one to her heart. Not bad choices, her teacher said, although, of course, Hopkins was a Roman Catholic and Byron a hedonist, but she should judge the text, not the man.

  As Sarah Jones had predicted, Jean was learning to dance, as well as to play the piano, and also to speak like any English lady. Her elocution lessons were going so well that she was frequently asked to do the daily reading at school assembly. When she read a psalm, she felt her mouth releasing a volley of perfect vowels. Her music teacher said she had the making of a great concert pianist; the dance teacher wondered aloud if Jean should consider going to England to train at the Royal School of Ballet. The shorthand and typing teacher, a young man with a thin moustache, said she would make an excellent secretary for any man, and reddened when she said that women might require secretaries in the future, too. Her coach in speech and drama told her mother that Jean not only had an excellent accent, stripped of any unpleasant New Zealand vowels, but a remarkable beauty which should stand her in good stead, should she decide to go on the stage, not that that was quite what was expected of the pupils of Ladies College, but of course times were changing.

  Her prizes accumulated: top in scripture, English literature, history and botany, and special prizes in music. Half the girls in Jean’s class were in love with the young curate who taught scripture, but it was in Jean that he seemed to find the most spiritual qualities. This was the way he put it. He gazed at her like a man who needed meat. He feels very spiritual about you, someone said at lunch, and laughed, which made Jean blanch. She thought her mother’s activities were a secret, but it had been a joke, not freighted with meaning. Life, on the whole, had a glittering quality. It seemed she could do anything she wanted. On days when parents were invited to the school, Jean’s classmates waited for Nellie to arrive, eager to see what she was wearing, always something more vibrant and interesting than the other mothers, a frill tucked into some unexpected place, an impossibly large ostrich feather on her hat. Jean didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pleased. Nellie was the only mother who wore lipstick. Fred didn’t appear at school again.

  Once or twice, Nellie said glumly that there was talk of films getting sound, and characters talking. Of course, she added, she was only playing for pin money, their clothing allowance. She didn’t know what they would do if the money ran out. Go around looking like gypsies, she supposed. Meanwhile, she sat, magisterial, before pianos in darkened theatres, dressed in dramatic dark skirts, a fur stole around her shoulders. Women in the audiences who had taken to slim-lined dresses with revers and box-pleated skirts, long beads and cloche hats looked at her with curious gazes.

  While Nellie worried about the death of silent movies, Jean began to wonder how much more Ladies College could offer. There were glimpses of the future: a debutantes’ presentation ball, marriage to the right kind of man. But who would present her and, more than that, who would marry her? If anyone suitable turned up, he need only peel the first layer off the onion to see what lay inside the Batten family’s lives.

  And, although for a time she had friends, they were not friends she invited home. There was no real home for them to visit. Nellie had fallen out with the milliner and they had moved on, to another, cheaper place. It took four men to shift the piano. Jean visited girls whose parents had houses with gardens and tennis courts, and maids who served dinner in covered dishes made of silver. When the invitations were not returned, the friendships began to drift away.

  Fred seemed to guess this, even though he stayed away from the school. He surprised Jean, the year she turned fifteen, by offering outings to the beaches for Jean and the girls whose friendships had survived. That summer, the last before she left Ladies College, she could invite the Hermiones and Winifreds, the Annabels and Doras, on excursions. Fred’s sister and her husband, who had come to live nearby, had a yacht, and at weekends Fred and his brother-in-law sailed them all across the shining harbour, stopping at small secluded bays to sunbathe and eat and drink. The sun blazed down. While the men smoked and drank beer from heavy brown bottles, the girls rubbed Helena Rubinstein’s Sunbathing Oil on each other, swam and larked about, building sandcastles like children, although most of their talk as they burrowed and tunnelled was about boys they knew, about kisses snatched at the end of gardens during their parents’ weekend parties, about what it must be like to lie in bed with a man. Fred, bare-chested in his swimming trunks, made jokes, talked to the girls as if they were grown-ups. Jean had never loved him more nor hated him so much.

  THERE WAS A DAY WHEN THE SEA WAS AS BLUE as gentians and warm as a tub of bath water, the sky bleached with spare white light. The sand was toast beneath their feet. They photographed each other, taking it in turns so that everyone got in one of the pictures, the girls and the man posing in crocodile formation on rocks in a bay where they had anchored. The girls’ bathing suits showed their long golden legs and bare backs. In one photograph, Jean sat at the front, hands on her hips as if preparing to dance, the other girls behind her, the two brothers, her father and uncle, at the back. Something was happening behind her, she wasn’t sure what it was, but the air was charged, as if the other girls were aware of something she was not. When the picture was taken, she turned to see her father with his hands still resting on the hips of a girl. He saw that she saw and didn’t move. The girl looked back at her, a smile hovering in the corner of her mouth. Everyone but the girl and her father stood and ran down the beach. Fred lifted his face towards the sun, arching his chest muscles, his penis tilting languidly in his bathing trunks. The girl got up and followed the others. All of this happened in the space of seconds, yet when her friend walked away Jean found herself staring at her father as if she had seen him for the first time. She thought, he knows this girl better than the rest. It made her shiver in the heat.

  An image rose in front of her, seemingly from nowhere, but it was perfectly clear. The family was at the bath house in Rotorua. It was a Sunday night, and the children had gone on ahead to change. She must have forgotten something, a towel perhaps. Or it could have been that her parents had stayed a long time in the tub and she was looking for them. When she returned, her mother had released her breasts from her costume. They floated like two milky cradles in the water, their nipples upturned and rosy. Fred was behind her, his knees gripping her hips, hands caressing her. Then they had seen her. Fred had sworn and the two of them, in some guilty way, had jumped from the water, her mother covering herself as she did so.

  As the launch sped over the water on the return journey from the bay, a turbul
ence of waves rocked the boat from side to side, the girls shouting with laughter, the men more subdued now, looking their age again.

  The next time a boating trip was proposed, Jean turned it down.

  Fred shrugged, letting his disappointment show. After a while, she thought she must have imagined what she had seen. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Too many scripture lessons. Too many things not understood, half-remembered. Too much already that she would like to forget if she could.

  By then it was too late to change her mind. Fred didn’t offer to take the girls sailing again.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE BEWILDERING CLOUD OF DARKNESS REAPPEARED. As before, it was like fog, something she couldn’t brush away. She was aware of a spreading silence within herself. At night she wrote lists in a notebook of her defects. She was too fat, her breasts were too large, even though they were barely evident, her hair she described as messy and had it cut short. When Fred next saw her he was aghast, as if she had had an amputation. This disapproval gave her an odd sense of pleasure.

  None of it mattered, she said, when the subject of the new school year arose, because she had decided to leave.

  ‘Did your mother put you up to this?’ Fred asked.

  This was more or less what Nellie had asked in reverse order. Had Fred put her up to it? Had he said that he didn’t have enough money to keep her at school, and if so why hadn’t he talked to her about it?

  But Jean said, to both of them, no, it wasn’t any of those things, and she didn’t know exactly why. If they would just leave her alone she would get a job as a secretary. Fred asked her then, would she like to go back and stay with Belle.

  ‘That’s what you’d like, wouldn’t you?’ Jean snapped. ‘Get rid of me, just like the boys.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ Fred said. ‘After the money I’ve spent.’

  ‘You know,’ Jean said, ‘you and my mother, that’s all you can think of, isn’t it. You’re as bad as each other.’

  ‘Have it your way,’ he said, wearying of her. ‘Get a job. Find out what it’s like to earn money.’

  There was something appealing about the idea of going back to Belle, of simply fading into the backwater of Birkdale, of being soothed and fed and reassured. But it occurred to her that now that she was, as she styled herself, an adult old enough to leave school, she might not get away with this. Besides, she sensed in her mother some vulnerability that hadn’t existed before. Her mother’s visits to the races had become more furtive. Perhaps Nellie’s luck had run out. Jean often wondered where John was, if he might ever come home. Her mother said he was learning to be an actor, so she supposed he must be following in her footsteps, but she wished he would consult her about this, because there was much that she could tell him about the profession.

  Harold had already returned to New Zealand with an Australian wife, a woman called Alma. With the help of Fred’s war pension, they had bought a piece of land up north near some caves. The question of Harold seemed to be settled.

  Nellie and Jean moved again, the beginning of a succession of boarding houses, each one a little shabbier than its predecessor. As they moved, the number of their possessions grew steadily smaller, making it easier to up sticks and leave. The tall vases, the rugs and the pictures Jean dimly remembered had been sold long before. The chairs and tables that had once furnished the family homes had gone to Fred’s flat. Nellie did carry clean sets of bed linen in her suitcase, and her own egg-beater, but little more, except for a hat-box. They must keep up appearances, she told Jean. No matter where we live, we must dress as if success is just around the corner. Jean lay in the cramped bedrooms they now inhabited, overcome with the desire to sleep, as in the bad time when she was younger. The triumphs of school days seemed far away. Nellie wanted her to see a doctor but she said that she didn’t need one and would Nellie please please please leave her alone. Nellie didn’t, of course. At nights, when she came home from the theatre exhausted, she sat by Jean’s bed, while her daughter pretended to be asleep because, having dozed all day, she couldn’t rest at night.

  IN THE SPRING OF 1926, THE DANCER Anna Pavlova came to town with her company. Nellie queued for five hours in order to buy tickets in the gods at His Majesty’s Theatre for sixpence apiece. Together they watched Pavlova dance her famous Dying Swan role. For an evening it seemed to Jean that it was possible to suspend belief, to enter another world. The words gossamer and fragile as a butterfly would shimmer through the newspaper reviews.

  ‘Did you see?’ Jean said, turning to her mother. ‘She flew.’ The crowd was stamping and roaring, flowers raining on the stage, a wild dark stain of red roses spreading across the boards. Pavlova came back time and again to take curtain calls. She picked up handfuls of petals and threw them back into the crowd. We love you, the audience shouted. And then they simply chanted, ‘Pavlova, Pavlova, Pav-lo-va’; the longing for the magic to stay almost unbearable.

  ‘You could do that,’ Nellie said, as they pushed their way through the crowded streets, back to their lodgings. ‘Your teacher used to say you were a wonderful dancer.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Jean said, tired, and suddenly cross. ‘Of course I couldn’t.’

  ‘Pavlova wasn’t perfect when she began dancing. It took her a long time to find her feet, in a manner of speaking. I’m not going to let it rest there. You enjoyed yourself tonight. I saw that.’

  One day soon afterwards, when Nellie left to do what she termed some business, Jean got up and walked to the wharves at the end of Queen Street. She looked at the sea, wondering if it would be such a bad thing after all just to keep walking over the edge of the wharf and let the water wash over her. She thought then that this was some form of madness, that it was not the first time it had happened, and that she must save herself. She shook herself, as if to rid herself of the unnameable dread that had filled every waking moment for months.

  As she retraced her steps to the boarding house, Jean looked for signs in the windows, advertising for staff. She came to what she was looking for, a notice for a lady secretary to a gentleman accountant, thirty shillings a week, must have shorthand and typing skills and be well spoken. Nellie was still out when Jean got back to their room. She washed her face and changed her clothes, before setting off to apply for the job. On meeting her, the gentleman accountant threw up his hands and said that he had given up hope of finding the right cultivated sort of young woman. A portly man, he had sleek grey jowls and pale plump fingers. He was eating gingernuts that crunched as he chewed and fell in crumbs on his waistcoat. Her lovely diction was admirable, he declared, waving her in the direction of the plate of biscuits, and the job was hers to start the very next Monday if she wished. He would be happy to give her a week’s pay in advance. After some hesitation, Jean said that that wouldn’t be necessary. She would, she said, like to talk it over with her mother first. All the same, she felt light-headed with relief. The problem seemed solved, like a skein of wool that she had suddenly untangled. It was possible to save herself.

  But, as it turned out, Nellie had a new plan. At the Majestic, some nights earlier, she had met a woman who would be the perfect dance teacher for Jean. Her troupe had provided a Russian dance as an opening to the new Rudolph Valentino movie.

  Valeska’s interpretation had been dramatic, quite passionate in fact, and Nellie knew she would liven things up for Jean. ‘Darling, you need livening up,’ she interrupted, when Jean began to tell her about the job. ‘I’ve been to see her. Now tomorrow, you’ll go and meet her. I couldn’t face her at the theatre if you didn’t go, not now.’

  Valeska, a fair, solid woman, past her own dancing best, wore a fitting dress with black lace sleeves. ‘I danced with Diaghilev’s company in Europe, you know, as of course did Pavlova,’ she said when she and Jean met. ‘Now Pavlova is supreme, there is nobody in the world who can surpass or even touch Pavlova, but you will learn from me to dance as nearly as possible like her. At the same time, you will learn, too, a variety of styles. Fancy
dancing of every kind, jazz, tap and circus dancing, too. You never know what sort of a show you might be called on to perform. Ballroom, too, of course. Young ladies and gentlemen are expected to waltz these days. You will know, of course, a young lady like yourself, how to waltz and foxtrot?’

  ‘I do know how to waltz, although I’ve never danced with a man,’ Jean said.

  ‘Ah well, it’s time you did. You can show the young chaps how to lead, before they lead you. And I hear you’re talented on the piano?’

  ‘People have been very kind in their comments,’ Jean said. Although her words were modest, she was aware of how confident she sounded.

  ‘A concert pianist in the making, I hear.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘I see, Miss Batten. And do you say so?’

  ‘I can play whatever I’m called on to perform.’

  ‘Excellent. Then you can play as an accompanist to my classes, it’ll save you your tuition fees. You need somewhere to store your piano?’

  Jean saw that it had all been arranged. Valeska had not been in business long. A spare piano would be useful and she would be useful to the teacher. Still, she felt anticipation flood through her. The office job looked less attractive than it had. Less famous. She had envied the roses pelting the stage around Pavlova.

  Nellie had been busy indeed. As well as Madame Valeska, she had been to see a music teacher named Alice Law, who had also agreed to take Jean as a private pupil. Noted for her talent, she had once taught at Ladies College before studying in England. The music teacher at the college had persuaded her that Jean was a special case, that it would be a tragedy if she were lost to the world of music. The fees Nellie had negotiated were modest.