The Infinite Air (37 page)

‘I’m not going to be invalided out, Mother,’ Jean said once, opening her eyes unexpectedly. ‘I told you, I’m not sick.’

Perhaps she was not. Perhaps it simply happened that way, but Jean would wonder if her mother had a hand in what happened next. An organisation called the National Savings Committee was raising money for the war effort. They saw, in Jean, an ideal person to promote their message. The Air Inspection Directorate, to whom she was responsible, opposed her discharge from the factory, but in the end the committee won the day. And so, as she told Fleming, and repeated the next time she confronted him, she had travelled the length and breadth of the country.

He had narrowed his eyes through cigarette smoke. ‘But I knew all that,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I sought you out? You were bloody brave. Now tell me something I don’t know.’

HE DIDN’T LIKE TO BE BORED. ‘TELL ME A STORY,’
he would say on the days when Jean came and sat on the edge of his verandah. So she would tell him. About how she came from a little country far away on the edge of the world. About caves and glow worms. About wanting to fly, and running off to Australia to meet up with Smithy, and ride in his plane. About Stag Lane, and rolling the Prince of Wales into the back of a laundry van, and the day she saw the R101 on her first solo flight. Of the nights stranded in the desert, alone with the Baluchi men in their robes. Most of all, she recounted the way she was supported by a frail wooden craft in the limitless dark nights, the immensity of the sky by day.

‘You knew Kingsford Smith?’ Fleming said, awe in his voice.

‘But of course I did.’ She told him then about the ups and downs of her hero’s life, and the Coffee Royal scandal, and how it altered the course of her own life — things she hadn’t written in either of her two books.

Fleming had laughed when she told him that she had written her autobiography when she was twenty-nine. ‘How could you have thought that your life was over then?’ he had asked her.

‘It was,’ she said, putting her head in her arms. ‘Believe me, it was.’

‘But that was before you lost your plane.’

‘That was the last straw,’ she said. She didn’t tell him about Beverley.

There were some things she couldn’t say to Fleming, whatever the things were that she could do with him.

‘WE DON’T REALLY WISH TO RECEIVE MR FLEMING
and his wife,’ Lady Mitchell said. ‘Mrs Fleming, of course, knows everyone in society, but I think she’s beyond the pale now.’

Sir Harold Mitchell and his wife, Mary, owned Prospect Plantation near Ocho Rios, a thousand acres planted in pimentos, allspice and lemons. Their house was a vast eighteenth-century mansion set among gardens tended by dozens of West Indians.

Mary Mitchell was as close to a friend as Jean had had, apart from her mother, since her years in Auckland. Mary’s husband had made his fortune from coal and oil, coffee and farming, in widespread interests across the world. He had withdrawn his money from Great Britain when a rail company he owned was privatised after the war. The couple had a daughter, a little girl called Mary-Jean.

The child had taken an instant liking to Jean, following her about and asking questions.

‘I think she sees you as her aunt,’ Mary said.

‘She’s a beautiful little girl,’ Jean said. Mary-Jean made her think of her brother’s children, and the summer she had spent with them. ‘Do you think she’d like to learn dancing? I could teach her, if you like.’

This was an arrangement that suited everyone. Jean called more and more often at Prospect, and Mary-Jean’s dancing improved with every visit.

‘I hope you don’t mind that I see Mary-Jean so much,’ Jean said, on one of these occasions.

‘Mind? Of course I don’t mind. Why should I? She adores you.’

‘I have to remind myself sometimes that she’s your little girl.’

‘You’d have liked one of your own?’ Mary said.

‘I would have liked children,’ Jean said, her voice suddenly wistful.

Important guests arrived in a steady flow at Prospect. Mary faithfully invited the Battens to dine on each of these occasions. Often, they declined, and Mary never seemed ruffled. The invitations still came. Nellie’s eyes sparkled when Charlie Chaplin was about to be entertained, but when it came to the point she begged off. She was coming down with a cold, she decided.

Winston Churchill was a different matter. There was no question but that they would attend. Already Nellie had bought herself a new,
fitting black velvet dress, with full silk net sleeves. It was this occasion that had Mary worrying about the Flemings.

‘What else could Rothermere do but divorce her, when she got pregnant again?’ Mary pondered. ‘All so quick, so public. And now here she is, six months gone, and the pair of them holed up there at Goldeneye, as large as life. Or in her case, rather larger. Have you met her?’

‘Yes. She looks remarkably like the Duchess of Windsor,’ Jean said, without elaborating further. She had, indeed, met the
sharp-tongued
woman with shrewd green eyes and a bright red mouth. Noël Coward had insisted that they pay a visit. Coward had been shaken by his part in the drama. Ann, it seemed, had been saying for years that she was visiting him in Jamaica when really she was with Fleming. It had been an embarrassment. Fleming was disturbed by the prospect of marriage. He was forty-four and he’d managed to evade it up until now. Yet Coward had been a witness at the wedding, one of the two people present.

Now his friend was writing a book to help him get over the loss of his bachelordom.

‘I think we should put him off the whole idea, don’t you?’ Coward said to Jean.

When they arrived at Goldeneye, Ann Fleming was sitting in front of an easel dabbing away with a paintbrush, a palette perched in her hand. On the verandah, Fleming sat with his cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, typing at furious speed on a gold-plated typewriter.

‘I’m writing a novel,’ he said to Jean, without really pausing. ‘It’s a spy story called
Casino Royale
. Sound familiar? Royale-des-Eaux, it’s the name of a town in France. I’ve just made it up.’

‘And the hero is called Ian Fleming, I suppose?’

He stopped typing and grinned. ‘I reckon James Bond sounds good. I’ve pinched it from some ornithologist fellow. You know I like birds.’

‘Won’t he mind?’

‘Oh, who cares? I don’t expect he’ll ever read it. Anyway, my chap’s got a code name. It’s 007.’

Ann turned her head in Jean’s direction.

‘Get rid of her,’ she said.

NELLIE STRUCK UP AN INSTANT RAPPORT
with Winston Churchill. She told him her age, something she called her ‘state secret’. Churchill was seventy-eight. During a conversation with his host, he turned in Nellie’s direction and remarked: ‘I am the oldest person here. By two years.’ He raised his glass to Nellie. ‘To the most beautiful woman in the room,’ he said.

Nellie raised her glass back to him, with the air of a girl.

Noël Coward rushed over and kissed her while she pretended to faint with delight.

‘It doesn’t come much better than that,’ Nellie said, as they drove home later that night. ‘Did you enjoy the evening, Jean?’

‘Oh, it was pleasant enough,’ Jean said, keeping her eye on the winding road unfurling beneath them.

‘Not a sign of the Flemings,’ Nellie said.

‘I’d say she was a little overripe for dancing right now, wouldn’t you?’

‘From what I’ve heard,’ Nellie said.

‘You know, I think I’ve seen enough of the people here,’ Jean said. ‘The same people, every time. Don’t you ever get sick of them?’

‘Just like that? We had such fun tonight.’

‘Perhaps that’s as good as it gets.’

‘What would you like to do instead?’ Although her voice was cautious, Nellie’s interest had quickened.

‘Europe should have calmed down by now. We could have a look around.’

‘I would like to go back, yes. There are a lot of places we haven’t seen.’

‘Just you and me, darling, just you and me.’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,’ Nellie said.

‘I’ll miss Mary-Jean,’ Jean said softly. ‘I’m sure we’ll keep in touch.’

THE GATE WAS UNLOCKED, JUST LIKE THE FIRST TIME
Fleming had let himself in. Nellie and Jean were surrounded by boxes and packing cases.

‘You didn’t have to go,’ he said to Jean.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘You knew I would.’

‘The publishers like my book.’

‘Well, congratulations. You must send me a copy. Send it care of Thomas Cook.’

‘I’m writing another one.’

‘You must have found your vocation at last.’

He came up and stood close to her. ‘There’s a beautiful woman in it, with dark hair. She wears white silk dresses, and she doesn’t like men. Or so she says.’

‘How fascinating.’ Jean didn’t look at him.

‘Her name is Solitaire. A game for one player.’

‘Goodbye then, Mr Fleming,’ she said. ‘Or should that be 007?’

He narrowed his eyes against a coil of smoke. ‘Jean, I could never figure out,’ he said, ‘why you put a swimming pool between your house and such a beautiful stretch of the sea. Was it something you were afraid of?’