The Infinite Air (32 page)

‘Does it matter?’ she said, as he pulled over to the side of the road, hooting the horn.

‘Yes, yes,’ the man said, jumping out to open the door for her. The other car pulled to a halt and the two chauffeurs greeted each other. The passenger, a slim man with a shock of fair curls got out, and
walked towards them. Jean saw no option but to get out, too.

The passenger held out his hand. ‘Hello there, good to meet you, Miss Batten. I’m Jack Lovelock.’

‘Well, what about that,’ Jean said. ‘Goodness, what would the cartoonists make of us now? You should be running and I should be flying.’

He grinned. There seemed nothing more to say. They climbed back into their respective cars, and drove off in opposite directions from each other.

Jean made it to Wellington, but the ominous stretching of her nerves had reached breaking point. Something inside her snapped. It was time to stop. The Prime Minister, Michael Savage, on learning of her state, offered her a holiday at the expense of the government, and suggested that a hotel on the West Coast of the South Island might be an ideal retreat. He had not been told the exact nature of her illness (it was first reported as pneumonia), but he seemed to sense her need to be relieved of the public’s attention. A bachelor who lived a secluded private life, he, too, was mobbed wherever he went. At the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, she might have privacy and complete rest. In the meantime, he intended to take up a public collection on her account.

Fred sent a telegram care of Thomas Cook in London, praying it would find its way to Nellie.
I am worried about our daughter. Please telephone me. Here is my number
. The phone woke him in the early hours of the following day, Nellie’s voice crackling over a distance that seemed as long as the time since they had last spoken.

They spoke at length. Jean could not manage alone, he said, and what he had to offer seemed inadequate. He thought she was half crazy, or worse, and now it had come to this, that the Prime Minister had got involved. Savage was probably a madman himself, who knew, but he was kind. Could they not, he suggested, put their differences aside, and try to help Jean? If they could spend Christmas together as a family, it might heal some of the wounds of the past. There was a very long silence at the other end, punctuated
by Fred saying, ‘Are you there? Are you there, Nellie? Nellie, it’s a bad line, can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you, Fred,’ Nellie said. ‘I understand what you’re saying.’

She was standing in a little booth in the post office at Hatfield. She put the phone down, and paid the postmistress the enormous bill for the call.

When she got back to her flat, Nellie picked up her suitcase, which she kept packed for emergencies, walked out the door and pushed the key through the letterbox, waiting only an instant to hear it land on the floor. She walked to the Tube and caught a train to Kings Cross, where she made a booking. In the morning she boarded a ship bound for New Zealand.

AT FRANZ JOSEF, THE HOTEL WHERE JEAN WAS NOW
in hiding was almost deserted, the winter season over. She walked by the lakes, or watched the great river of ice, framed with dark green bush and ferns, with a fixed fascination. The glacier, pale green, thrust like a gigantic tongue out of the mountains. It was known to advance and retreat, sometimes quickly, other times inching backwards and forwards. When the days were clear in the mountains, the snow-covered peaks of Mounts Cook and Tasman could be seen; as the sun set they glowed with dazzling orangeade reflections, while down below, at the level of the glacier, the evening turned dark purple. On other days, the rain fell in steady insistent downpours and the fog lingered on the valley floors.

The quietness began to fill the empty spaces in Jean’s head. A pure and absolute silence descended on her — a white silence was the way she saw it. She sat for long periods of time, absorbing the stillness. This was how it must be, she thought, time to rest from fame and move to the next chapter of her life.

When she had been there for ten days or more, she wrote a letter:

A few days after this letter had been posted, the Castrol agent in Wellington, a man called Bob Smillie, persuaded his wife Doris to travel to Franz Josef to keep an eye on Jean. He didn’t want to have to account to Lord Wakefield if anything happened to her, and what on earth Savage had thought he was doing, posting the poor girl off to the mountains by herself, he had no idea.

The appearance of Doris put an end to the respite at Franz Josef.
She was kind, to extremes, Jean thought. She felt herself becoming hostile the moment the older woman arrived. ‘You will have to excuse me,’ Jean said after an awkward dinner, on their first night in the yawning cavern of the dining room, ‘but I think I need to lie down.’ She had fallen in love with the darkened corners of the room, lit only by the flickering light of a huge fire on a stone hearth. She wanted them all to herself.

In her room, she paced up and down. She knew that Doris’s arrival marked the end of her stay, but, at the same time, she knew that if she were rude this would be interpreted as a further sign of madness. The best thing, she decided, would be to go along with her presence for two or three days, and fill the time with activities that would distract them both, to prove that she was capable of looking after herself. If she weren’t careful, she would find Doris on board the ship she was planning to take to Sydney.

This ploy worked well. One day they hired horses to ride along guided trails, and another day was spent on a fishing expedition. Jean caught a large trout that the chef cooked for them that night. She declared herself as never better, fit and well, and Doris had to agree that she looked in good health, and it was amazing what a bit of mountain air could do for one.

A letter from Beverley was waiting for her back in Auckland. He was longing to see her too. What was she getting herself all worked up about? He had already booked their favourite restaurant table for the night of her arrival in Sydney:
The one near Circular Quay, where we went on the first night back in Sydney, after the race. Two years ago now, time we got together again
.

So in time to come, that was the week she would remember as the best. The summer beaches and drives in the country, and nights when she seemed lost in who she was, abandoned in him. She didn’t know any longer where she left off and he began. I love you and I love you and I love you, she said to him over and again.

Nellie was happy to rest at her hotel after the voyage, or to spend time at the Shepherds’ house, being entertained by Beverley’s mother.
Jean didn’t ask them what they talked about. Nellie never did tell her that they had started gleeful plans for a wedding that seemed sure to happen.

There were moments when things were not all that they might have been. Like the evening when they entered a restaurant, and the diners got up and applauded Jean.

Beverley looked irritated. ‘So I’m destined to be regarded as Mr Jean Batten, am I?’ he muttered.

‘They will forget who I am in no time,’ Jean said, placating him. ‘Just ignore them.’

But he had insisted on a table where he could sit with his back to the room.

On another afternoon, Jean had agreed to speak to some school children. It was a day when Beverley had taken leave from work. ‘It will only take an hour,’ Jean insisted. ‘I shouldn’t disappoint them.’ Beverley bore it, but only just.

When they parted, he kissed the top of her head and told her not to worry about things too much, everything would be all right in the long run. Just hurry back, he told her.

SOON AFTER JEAN AND NELLIE ARRIVED BACK
in New Zealand, Nellie and Fred met at Smith and Caughey’s. Over lunch, Fred said, ‘Ellen, that girl is sick. There’s something wrong with her.’

‘She gets a bit down to it at times,’ Nellie said. ‘But she’s perfectly fine now. You should have seen her in Sydney, on top of the world.’

‘Things have gone wrong in our children’s lives,’ Fred said. ‘You can’t deny that. There’s Harold.’

She put her cup down. ‘Jean is not like Harold.’

‘Perhaps not. But she’s different, all our children are different.’

‘Well of course, if you’re talking about John, that’s another matter.’

‘John is who he is, Nell, you have to accept that. I didn’t always but I do now. It’s not been easy for him, you know.’ His voice was gently persuasive.

‘I don’t care who John is. He can’t say I haven’t tried. Anyway, he’s got that woman he’s married to.’

‘Yes, but for how long? There might come a time when John’s on his own again.’

‘I thought we’d come here to talk about Jean.’

‘All right,’ her husband said. They stared at each other across the table, until Fred’s eyes fell. ‘I know it was my fault,’ he said. ‘The family falling apart.’

Nellie sat back in her chair as if some small victory had been achieved. ‘Jean will be fine when she’s married,’ she said. ‘Her hormones are all over the place, you know how it is.’ As if to concede a little ground of her own, she added, ‘I suppose mine were, too, when I was young. I did go off the handle a bit.’

‘A bit.’ He chuckled, remembering. ‘You will keep an eye on her, won’t you?’

After Nellie had agreed that she would indeed be around for as long as possible to watch out for Jean’s welfare, they set to planning the family holiday they hoped would right some of the wrongs of the past. ‘Separate rooms, mind you, Fred.’

He looked at her in astonishment, and laughed. ‘Oh, I think so, Nell.’