The Infinite Air (26 page)

CHAPTER 24

IT ASTONISHED JEAN HOW EASILY SHE COULD HOLD
people’s attention when she spoke. There would be a great murmur of anticipation. Then she would walk onto a stage and the silence was sudden and immense. When she recounted her adventures, the three attempts on the record, the obstacles to overcome, and the loneliness — yes, sometimes she touched on that, too — there was nothing but a rapturous stillness that ended only as she finished speaking, rent by a vast roar of approval.

There were moments when the loneliness came back. It caught her when she least expected it, in beautiful hotels, where a maid had come in and turned back the bed covers and placed a flower or a chocolate on the silk sheet. This was where she would curl up by herself, with nobody to call out to in the night. Or she would walk into a tiled shining bathroom, the brass taps gleaming, and catch sight of herself in the mirror — the flawless make-up, the perfectly arranged hair, the dress that might be a gift from an admirer (some urged her to go into the best shops and ‘choose yourself something nice, and the bill will be paid’) — and not recognise the person she saw. She would ask herself what she was doing alone with this woman. Who was she? Charlie Ulm’s question, though made in jest, had touched a raw nerve. There were days when she was so exhausted that she wondered how she would get up in the mornings.

She felt this loneliness again when the newspapers ran a story about the aircraft wings she had borrowed from her fiancé, Mr Edward Walter.
FLOWN ON THE WINGS OF LOVE.
Edward had sent her a furious telegram demanding why she had spread their
private business around. She had thought he would be proud. After all, their engagement had been announced.

Boarding the
Aorangi
and leaving Sydney for Auckland had been a relief. As it turned out, Charlie was travelling to New Zealand on business. He was setting up a commercial postal air service between the two countries, and was going to some meetings.

They had time now to talk about what they did and why. His hero, he said, was the aviator turned writer, Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry. It was the French in him, he supposed, but he loved everything he wrote. Jean must read
Night Flight
, a novel about an impossible flight made in Patagonia. The main character, Fabien, flies for the Patagonia Mail Service. His boss wants him to fly in a thunderstorm, then he never comes back, and Fabien’s ghost will haunt him forever. But, Charlie pointed out, Fabien has the choice to turn back and he doesn’t. The story would break her heart, but it might also explain to her why she found it so hard to resist the temptation of danger, why she’d become a slave to it. ‘“Even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life”,’ Charlie quoted. ‘That’s from the book.’

‘Do you believe that?’ she asked.

‘I suppose I must.’

They were sitting on deck chairs, gulls wheeling past, when he told her this, although it was the end of June and they huddled in their coats to keep out the cold. New Zealand would be upon them the next day. Charlie had come across her in one of the saloons, writing in her journal. This was something she had taken up since her arrival in Australia, in spare moments in hotel rooms — an account of her journeys, the three attempts to reach Australia. Writing it had helped her put together notes for the speeches she had been asked to give. Charlie wanted fresh air, he said, somewhere where they could smoke without old biddies waving their hands in front of their faces and sniffing. They were both smoking Camels.

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Jean. ‘You’re leading me astray.’

‘Tobacco’s a dirty weed. I like it. It satisfies no normal need. I like it.’

‘You talk rubbish.’

‘It’s a poem,’ he said. ‘Honestly. “It makes you thin, it makes you lean, it takes the hair right off your bean.” Haven’t you heard that one?’

He turned serious again. Although he was full of quips and flirtatious banter, he saw how she was often troubled. He had had these moments, too, he told her, moments when he didn’t believe in himself, when he’d been judged. The Coffee Royal scandal had altered things, changed how he felt when he saw admiring crowds. They could turn on you in the blink of an eye. And, in a way, it had changed his friendship with Smithy. It was hard not to go back to that dreadful year of the inquiry, the things that were said of them.

His first marriage had ended abruptly. He had married at the end of the war, he explained, when he was just twenty-one. The failed marriage had caused his wife more distress than it did him, because he had a life to go on with, the famous aviator with a career, while she was condemned to the status of the divorced woman. So there was that, too. ‘I couldn’t have stayed alive in that marriage,’ he said. ‘But I did that to her and it stays with me still.’ He had remarried and was happy enough. He and his new wife had custody of his son, his only child, from his first marriage.

‘Divorce is hard on women. I do know that,’ Jean said.

‘I can’t dwell on it any longer,’ he said. ‘It happened and it’s past.’

‘But you do,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve just told me about it. My mother feels like an outcast. Not that my parents are divorced.’

‘Do you ever wish they were? Wouldn’t you like your mother to get married again?’

Jean looked at him in astonishment. ‘My mother remarry? I don’t think so.’

‘She has you?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

He pulled a hungry lungful of smoke and blew it into the sea air. ‘What about you? You’re getting married?’

‘I suppose so.’ She sighed.

‘Hey, don’t pull such a long face.’ He reached out his hand and held hers briefly. ‘You do know you’re gorgeous.’

‘You keep telling me that, Charlie. You’re the nicest man I know.’

There was something about Charlie that reminded her of Savelli, with his European charm, and his nearness. When she thought about Edward, she felt none of this. Nor had she, really, with Victor, who had become a shadowy figure, someone she could no longer visualise. As for Frank Norton, she tried hard to shut out the memory of what she had done with him. That had nothing to do with how she had felt in Rome, and now, here, on board this ship with Charles Ulm. She felt herself trembling.

‘Nice. That’s hardly a compliment,’ he said. ‘I’m a little bit in love with you, you know.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. But we like each other too much to spoil things, don’t we?’

‘That’s very grown up of you, Miss Batten. But yes, you’re right, of course.’

Their conversation turned back to aviation, to Jean’s wish to fly all the way to New Zealand some day, his to open up air routes across the Pacific. In the evening, at the last-night party, they danced close together. Jean put her arms around his neck. He lifted two glasses of champagne from a tray carried by a passing waiter.

‘See you in the soup, old thing,’ she said, laughing as they drew apart and toasted each other. ‘I need my beauty sleep.’

Jean had been assigned a stateroom cabin. Before she climbed into bed, she took some of the
Aorangi
’s headed notepaper and wrote a letter.

In the night the wind came up and the ship pitched and rolled as it made its way down the coast. When Jean heard knocking she thought at first it was a rope come loose somewhere on the ship, but it was someone tapping on the door. Charlie stood there with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

‘I knew you wouldn’t be throwing up. The bar’s a mess.
Mon Dieu
, some people have no stomach at all. I thought you might like a drop.’

‘Charlie, no,’ she said.

‘You want me to go?’

She shook her head and held out her hand.

Towards dawn she slept for a time, her body languid and at ease with itself. He woke her gently, and pointed out the porthole beside the pillow. The ship was sailing into the harbour, surrounded by boats decked with streamers and bunting. Aeroplanes flew overhead. On the quay crowds of people stood waving and cheering.

‘What’s it about?’

‘I think it’s about you, love,’ he said. ‘You should get dressed and go out onto the deck.’

‘Have we missed breakfast?’

‘I’ll order some for you. You can have it when the ship’s berthed; it’ll take a while for people to disembark.’

‘Will you come back and have some with me?’ She grabbed his hand.

‘If you like.’

‘Order me a big juicy steak.’

‘Little savage.’

‘Plus two eggs, sunny side up.’ That was her brother John’s saying, she remembered with a sudden pang, gathered in his Hollywood studio days.

‘Let go of me,’ Charlie said. ‘I need to go to my cabin and change. Make sure Miss Batten keeps her reputation intact.’ He slid his hand out of hers and seized both her wrists, holding them briefly behind her. ‘
Je t’aime
. We can still be friends,
oui
?’

‘Friends? Is that all?’

‘I have a son, remember? And a wife who deserves better than me.’

‘I think she’s lucky.’

‘Jean, look at me: you’ll find somebody soon.’

‘A tall, dark stranger?’

‘I don’t know what he’ll look like, but you’ll know, and you’ll be happy. Now then?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘friends. My best friend.’

When she appeared on the deck, a huge cheer went up. She had dressed in a pale blue woollen suit, with a grey mink fur stole around her shoulders, and a cloche hat, so that people could see her face. For a few minutes she stood and waved. It was cold out there, and impossible to distinguish anyone among the crowd. After a time she went back inside.

Her breakfast was waiting. Charlie stood beside the table, tapping his finger and looking anxious.

‘Where’s yours?’ she asked, seeing the place laid for one.

‘Your father’s looking for you. The captain brought him and your brother aboard. I’m going now. Just eat your breakfast and try not to be afraid. Promise?’

‘Promise.’

She watched him disappear, pushing his mop of hair back with one hand, before turning and blowing her a kiss. Then he was gone.

Within a few minutes, Fred and Harold appeared. Her brother had travelled down by train. ‘We’ve been looking all over the place for you,’ Fred complained. ‘We couldn’t find you anywhere.’ Neither man had changed much — it was still an effort for Fred to do up his coat buttons — but Harold had had his hair trimmed and slicked back for the occasion, and wore a crumpled white shirt beneath his jacket and an uncharacteristic tie, albeit skewed. He seemed curiously shy to see her.

‘How are Alma and the kids?’ she asked.

‘They’re good. Good as gold. The kids did some drawings for you.’ He held out an envelope.

‘That’s lovely, Harold. Tell them thank you.’

‘They’re waiting for you to come out and wave,’ Fred said. ‘When you’ve finished feeding your face.’

‘I was hungry. I can get you something to eat if you like.’ She knew she looked odd, sitting alone in the stateroom at the long, solitary table, dressed in her suit and furs.

‘They’ve been waiting in the cold for hours,’ Fred said. ‘There’re little children out there. Half of them don’t have coats.’

That was the note they started on, bad-tempered from the start, although her father was right. There were throngs of people, women shivering in cardigans, children barefoot, men with cigarettes clamped between their lips. But they wanted to see her. There were banners with her name held aloft, and small bunches of flowers being thrust at her, which she couldn’t take because of the huge bouquet that had now been placed in her arms. A brass band was playing, and coming along the street a pipe band was setting up in opposition. ‘It’s just like when the Duchess of York visited,’ someone said. Jean was afraid the woman might drop a curtsey.

‘I’ll see you later,’ she called to Fred and Harold.

A car and chauffeur were waiting to drive her to the Grand Hotel, although the car had to stop often because of the crush of people.

As they drove away, Jean’s Gipsy Moth G-AARB was unloaded from the ship, ready to be reassembled. Later that day there would be a civic reception. She had lost sight of her father and brother. By the time she saw Fred again, Harold had left for home.

There would be more receptions. Jean would stay in splendour at Government House in Wellington. The Prime Minister, George Forbes, would address the nation, and announce a gift of five hundred pounds to Miss Batten.

In a few days, Nellie would arrive from England.