The Infinite Air (10 page)

CHAPTER 10

JUST HOW NELLIE INTENDED TO GET JEAN OUT
of the boarding house and make an aviator out of her was unclear, nor was it in the weeks that followed the meeting with Kingsford Smith. Shame of one kind or another had brought them low, but they were not on their own.

In spite of the lavish dinners the rich could still afford, the slump, as they called it, was biting hard. The grey faces of the unemployed began to haunt the streets of Auckland. The normal things of life were slipping away — the chance for jobs, even the hope of getting married. Men could no longer afford to support their families. Nobody trusted the banks any more. If they go under, people said, we’ll lose everything. We’ll wake up in the morning and our last sixpence will have disappeared.

All the same, Jean wondered if her mother might have something up her sleeve. In the weeks that followed the momentous dinner, they returned over and over again to the subject of Jean learning to fly. The unspoken matter was that of Fred’s opposition. Jean supposed he might have grounds for cutting off their allowance, let alone providing money for lessons. But Nellie was writing mysterious letters and posting them off. She was studying the newspapers, too, and talking to the tobacconist at the corner. Hot tips, some insider information perhaps. He was a man who followed the horses.

Jean still saw Fred from time to time. They were visits he expected of her, and, in spite of herself, she still felt herself drawn to him. Love, she supposed, was what children should feel for their parents, though what she felt for Fred didn’t resemble how she felt about Nellie. There was something complicated about it. She remembered
blue days by the lake when she was a child, the nights when it was all right for him to tuck her into bed, the contours of his knees when she sat in his lap. On one of her visits, she brought up the subject of flying once again.

‘What have you got against it?’ she asked him.

Fred ran his hands through his hair. ‘Haven’t I told you,’ he snapped. ‘Flying is men’s business. It’s too dangerous by far. Remember how I told you about the planes falling out of the sky when I was in France. Besides, there was talk there of prostitutes taking up the job. There was a Frenchwoman who was straight out of a brothel when she found herself a rich man with an aeroplane. The fool married her.’

‘Marthe Richard,’ Jean said. ‘She set a record. I read about it.’

‘And her poor sod of a husband was killed in the war. Then she married a spy. Is that the kind of person you want to be?’

Jean was silent then. Her mother would call this dirty talk. Her father was agitated, his eyes narrow. After a while he went along the passageway to the kitchen he shared with other tenants on his landing, and came back with tea and some toast spread with home-made blackberry jam. A treat, he said.

That morning, before Jean had gone out, Nellie had put on a stylish hat and picked up the big bag. ‘I’m gone for the day.’ When she returned, her face was lit with a small, understated smile of triumph.

‘We’re going to Australia,’ she said.

NELLIE HAD DECIDED THAT IF CHARLES KINGSFORD SMITH
could teach Jean to fly, all would be well. She had written to him, on the strength of the meeting the year before. She knew, Nellie said, as if she understood more about him than Jean, that he was a
happy-go-
lucky man, keen to offer flights to people. ‘You’ll see, when he meets you on your own, away from all those people, he’ll see how smart you are, how much you really want to fly. Aren’t you pleased?’ Nellie’s eyes glowed with excitement.

‘I’d never have asked him,’ Jean said. She was over-awed that her mother had had the nerve to do this.

‘No, of course you wouldn’t. But I have.’ Nellie produced tickets from her bag. ‘We’re booked on a steamer that leaves tomorrow, and a week from now you’ll go for a flight in the
Southern Cross.
What d’you say to that?’

‘I’m so happy.’ Jean was caught up in the contagious warmth of her mother’s excitement. ‘I’m the luckiest girl.’

When Kingsford Smith saw her, he scratched his head, a
roll-your
-own behind his ear, and grinned, appearing to remember her. ‘I don’t know what to make of you. You’ve got a mind of your own, I’ll give you that.’

They had gone to the aerodrome of the Royal Australian Air Force near Sydney at eight that morning. Nellie and Jean’s ship had berthed the night before, but neither of them had slept well in their hotel, afraid they would wake too late. ‘I want to fly,’ Jean said to the pilot. This time she didn’t feel shy. On the journey over she had sat on the ship’s deck and looked at the sea and the sky, and it seemed as if they were sailing to her destiny. She had dressed with care for this adventure, in a blue knee-length coat with a pleated skirt that would allow her to move easily as she climbed into the plane, a plain cloche hat that fitted snugly over the tops of her ears, and flat sensible shoes.

‘Well, we’ll take the old bus up for a spin, eh?’ Smithy took the cigarette from behind his ear and pointed to where the
Southern Cross
stood on the tarmac.

‘Just you and me?’

‘You scared of me, eh?’ He chuckled at himself. ‘I can’t do much while I’m flying a plane.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’ Jean blushed.

‘Don’t worry, my mate here’s coming along with us.’ Then she recognised Charles Ulm, who had also been at the dinner in Auckland. He had been Kingsford Smith’s companion when he set his records. His black hair was tangled with wild curls, his complexion olive. He made flourishes and gestures with his hands, in a way that reminded
her of her brother John, only more instinctively sexual. His voice held a faint exotic trace of an accent.

‘Is Maman coming with us?’ Ulm asked.

Jean shook her head. She and Nellie had already decided that she would make the flight alone, lest it be thought that Jean lacked courage. Her mother was ensconced in the clubhouse, watching through binoculars. ‘You’re French?’ she said.

‘My father,’ he said. ‘An artist who ended up in Australia.’

‘Take your eyes off her,’ Kingsford Smith said. ‘He’s trouble with women, I can tell you.’

‘You play the piano and dance as well?’ Ulm said.

‘Who told you that?’ She had asked her mother not to tell the men what she did in New Zealand: she did not want to seem unsuited for flying.

‘We did our homework,’ Kingsford Smith interrupted, and that was all either of them would say. ‘Mind you, I can’t blame my mate here.’ He offered her a hand up, still grinning. ‘The best-looking skirt we’ve had in the old girl.’

‘I expect you say that to all the girls who fly with you,’ she said lightly, surprised at herself, yet not wanting to prolong the banter. She remembered Kingsford Smith’s appraising look at the dinner in Auckland. She was flattered that he had remembered her, but all she wanted was for the plane to lift off, to carry her into the sky.

‘You get to sit up front with me.’ Smithy laughed, and touched her back lightly as she settled in beside him.

As the plane hurtled along the runway, she was overtaken by delirious joy. And then they were airborne, banking away over the city and heading north, climbing higher and higher, and before long the Blue Mountains lay beneath them in the glittering air. Whatever else had occurred in her life until now became insignificant. The sense of speed and of power almost overwhelmed her. Everything that had been dull and ugly ceased to exist. She cried out aloud at this sensation of flight, her face rapt with pleasure. The plane swooped down towards the mountains, the blue gum trees filled with coruscating silver light, and she glimpsed the floor of
the world through their leafy branches, before the plane banked and rose again through the sky, seeming to ride the edge of a cloud. ‘This is it,’ Jean shouted above the roar. ‘This is what I have to do.’

When they were back on the ground, she turned to Kingsford Smith and said, ‘Will you teach me to fly?’

He scratched his head again and lit the cigarette that had stayed in position throughout their flight. ‘I dunno about that. Look at you, you’re just a slip of a girl. We’ve got a lot on, some big trips planned. You serious about this?’

‘Never more serious in my life. I know how to use a compass.’

As if sensing that his friend was going to make a commitment he might regret, Ulm said, ‘You’re too pretty for this game. If you’ve got a gift for music you should make use of it. I can see you in a concert hall. All you’d have to do is smile and you’d be a star.’

‘I don’t see that my looks have got anything to do with it,’ Jean said hotly. She felt a tension in herself as he looked at her.

‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ he said.

‘
Twelfth Night.
Act one. Opening line.’ She understood that she could have him if she wanted. For what, she wasn’t sure, but he was there for the taking.

‘Quick,’ he said, impressed. ‘This one’s got flavour, Smithy.’

But Kingsford Smith hesitated. ‘You say you know how to use a compass, eh? Get yourself some flying lessons. There’s a flying school in Auckland. Come back at the end of the year and let me know how you’re getting on.’

‘So that’s your advice,’ Jean said, downcast.

‘Yeah, well, a couple of things. If you do take up flying, don’t ever fly at night, you won’t be able to get your bearings. And don’t go after men’s records. Blokes make the records.’

Ulm took her by the shoulders and kissed her on either cheek before they parted, holding her a moment longer than was necessary. Kingsford Smith said, ‘See you, kid.’

Jean hoped that the backing of her hero would soften her father’s heart, but within weeks of her return to New Zealand, Australia
was rocked by a scandal involving Kingsford Smith and Ulm. The pilot and his crew set off at the end of March to fly from Sydney to England to arrange for the purchase of more planes. Kingsford Smith was at the controls when the
Southern Cross
was forced to make an emergency landing on a desolate mudflat near the mouth of the Glenelg River in Western Australia. They were lost for a fortnight, during which time the crew lived on a diet of coffee and brandy. Two airmen, Keith Anderson and Bobby Hitchcock, who had joined the ensuing search, crashed and died in the desert from heat and thirst.

It turned out that, at the beginning of the 1928 endeavour, when Kingsford Smith and Ulm made the flight from the United States, these two men had been part of the original crew, but they had fallen out. Anderson sued his former friend for breach of promise, bitter because he had not shared the glory of the epic flight. Kingsford Smith had made an out-of-court settlement for one thousand pounds, with which Anderson and Hitchcock had bought a small touring plane, intended for sightseeing. It was this they used to look for Kingsford Smith and Ulm.

The
Southern Cross
crew were accused of staging a forced landing as part of a publicity flight that had gone wrong, and, as quick as an ocean wind, the saint turned sinner in the eyes of the public. Anderson and Hitchcock had sacrificed their lives for the sake of a cheap stunt. Or so it was now said. An inquiry was called for. Again, tabloid headlines stared back at Jean on street corners, dubbing the scandal the
Coffee Royal
incident. The affair raged all year as Kingsford Smith faced his inquisitors.

‘Where did you go?’ Freda quizzed Jean, after her return to Auckland.

‘Australia,’ Jean replied shortly.

‘Quite a holiday.’

‘My mother had a windfall.’

‘Oh well.’ Freda put her chin in one hand, her eyes narrowed. ‘As a matter of fact, Jean, I’m going to Australia next week, too.’ Her voice was flat. They were sitting in Milne and Choyce’s having tea.
Jean hadn’t been keen to have this conversation. If word got about that she had been flying, Fred would be furious, as would Alice Law.

Besides, she and Freda seemed to have drifted apart. It was hard to put her finger on what was wrong — perhaps her interest in aeroplanes rather than dance? But Freda had pressed the invitation, as they changed into their street clothes at Madame Valeska’s: ‘Please Jean, I do need to talk to you.’ Her face was pale and set.