The Infinite Air (19 page)

But for the moment it seemed that she depended on him. If she
failed the last test, she could not afford to sit it again.

As she made ready for the solo night flight, Travers came hurrying across to her, waving a small torch.

‘You never know when you might need this,’ he said.

Some fifteen minutes after her takeoff, the navigation lights failed. None of the instruments were luminous. She sat in the dark cockpit flashing the torch on the instrument panel, her fear mounting, as she tried to work out how to reach the ground. By now the plane had been reported over Biggin Hill without lights. A red beacon at Croydon appeared. Circling the aerodrome several times, she flashed the torch on and off and, at last, saw in the darkness beneath her a green rocket signal advising that she could land. Throttling back her engine, she glided onto the floodlit runway.

In the morning, she returned to Croydon to complete the final part of the test, a series of spins, seemingly easy after the events of the night before. Victor was at the airport to congratulate her. So, too, was Frank Norton. She kissed each one on the cheek, as if both were mere acquaintances, and moved on. Neither man gave any indication of knowing the other.

The Dorées held a celebratory lunch for her the following Sunday. Already Nellie and Jean had enjoyed Sunday lunches when the married brothers came, bringing their wives, and this Sunday everyone was there. There was laughter, and toasts to Jean. Herbert Dorée sat at the head of the table, smiling around him with pleasure. The table was set with Wedgwood and crystal and silver. Servants glided silently in and out over the thick green carpet.

‘So what next for our little Antipodean?’ Victor’s father asked.

‘I still want to fly to Australia,’ Jean said. ‘I want to be the fastest person who ever flew there.’ She laughed, as if half-joking. It was not the first time she had said this, but always lightly, as if speaking of the impossible.

‘All Jean needs is an aeroplane,’ Nellie said.

‘Of course she does,’ Victor said, turning to his mother. ‘Mater, could you lend us the money? I’ll be Jean’s business partner. She’ll
make a fortune out of speaking tours, you know.’

His mother gave an indulgent smile. ‘Well, you do have a plane dear,’ she said, ‘but I suppose you wouldn’t want to be without it while Jean’s away. Why not? Have you got a plane in mind?’

‘I can speak to Fielden, the fellow who looks after the Prince of Wales,’ Victor said. ‘His Moth is up for sale. The King’s put a stop to his flying. I don’t think he’ll care much about the price.’

‘That sounds perfect,’ his mother said. ‘Dear, do pass the vegetables to Mrs Batten.’

THE COST OF EVERYTHING WAS WORRYING FRANK.
Jean had seen the way he turned his money over these days before he spent it. Sooner or later, she knew, it would run out. He wanted to think of himself as a man of means, like the people he was mixing with at Stag Lane, but it was temporary. There was only so much one could eat and drink and spend on restaurants, and petrol, and flowers, and still have change over from the five hundred pounds he had boasted of having when he arrived in London. Her flying lessons would have added up to just a fraction of this sum. Now that Jean had her licence he told her they should be thinking about booking a passage. He could book for all three of them, if that was what suited her and her mother.

She said again that she wasn’t returning to New Zealand.

‘Jean,’ he said with exaggerated patience, ‘of course you are. But you deserve a holiday first. I want you and me to go away together for a few days. Just the two of us.’

‘Frank, I am not going. Not to New Zealand, not for a holiday. Forget it.’

A dark flash of anger crossed his face. ‘Do your friends at the club know how you pay for your lessons?’ he said.

‘Frank, you wouldn’t tell them,’ she said, her voice urgent. A cold hard knot of dislike tightened in her stomach. It had been there
all along, only she hadn’t seen it for what it was. And now she felt frightened of him as well.

His face had set in stubborn lines. There was nothing for it, she decided, but to motor to Wales with him as he had arranged. There, she would try to work out what to do next. In the mood that he was in, she thought it important not to surprise him. They had to do something alone, he insisted, something they could look back on when they were old, and tell the children about. Nellie, who had already been on one journey with them, didn’t want to go. Driving in the back seat was not her style, and the man was such a bore, didn’t Jean think so?

He had bought them new leather suitcases. The hotel he had booked them into was set far into the Welsh countryside. When they drew up outside, Frank took a ring from his pocket and thrust it on her finger. It was a plain band set with small stones, much as her mother had worn when she still lived with her father.

‘Have you told them we’re married?’ Jean said.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. While she tried to pull the ring off, he said, ‘Jean, you have to leave it on. We mightn’t be able to afford a honeymoon in New Zealand. This is it.’

They were the only ones in the dining room. A small fire spluttered in a grate, but Jean shivered and declared herself not hungry, picking at an indifferent meal of stew. Their conversation was desultory. Frank drank some wine, then retired to the bar for what he described as a quick nightcap. In the bedroom, she took off her clothes and lay down naked on the bed, so that he could see her unclothed, the small apples of her breasts tingling in the cool November damp of the room.

When he came in, he looked down at her, his face flushed. ‘Corker titties,’ he said.

She let him enter her without protest. He made whimpering expressions of gratitude when it was done, and again in the morning when he took her again. She felt neither pain nor pleasure, rather something like resignation. This, she supposed, was what whores did. It seemed futile to complain.

On the way back to London, he held her hand. She let it lie limp in his. He glanced sideways at her several times. Once or twice she thought she glimpsed regret in his profile, his eyes staring at the road straight ahead, as if wondering if what they had done was a mistake.

As they sat in the car, outside the room Nellie and Jean shared, she told him she had acquired a plane to fly to Australia.

His body stiffened in the seat beside her. ‘I don’t believe you. Who would buy you a plane?’

‘A friend,’ she said. ‘You should go back to New Zealand.’

When he began to demur she said softly, ‘You can’t afford all those suitcases, Frank.’

Jean opened the car door and climbed out. She walked away without looking back.

CHAPTER 18

1933. IT WAS A YEAR WHEN ALL KINDS
of things happened. It had hardly begun when Bert Hinkler died. The Australian Lone Eagle who had made the very first solo flight between England and Australia. The man who had been greeted by eighty thousand people in Sydney, singing ‘Hinkler, Hinkler little star’, and now there was a Tin Pan Alley song they called ‘Hustling Hinkler’. You could dance a Hinkler foxtrot or a Hinkler quickstep. The man who had sat on the floor of Parliament in Australia. ‘You know,’ he had said in an interview that day, ‘one day, people will fly by night and use the daylight for sightseeing.’ And now he was dead. Hinkler had crashed in a remote part of the Italian countryside, near Florence. Jean remembered the way he had studied the ibis as they flew in order to understand the nature of flight, before he began his inventions. She shivered when she heard the news. Don’t believe in omens, Nellie told her sternly. Those were for the superstitious.

Charles Kingsford Smith came to town on a brief visit, and gave her some of his maps. He and Charles Ulm, whom she had taken to calling Charlie whenever she saw him, both got in touch with her when they were in London. Jean felt she could confide in them. Victor had suggested that they keep their plans for her attempt on the record to themselves, but these were two men she trusted, and they seemed far away from the tight circles of London gossip. They had their own records to set, their business to pursue. She felt she was one of them now, someone they had put on her way. Smithy no longer told her not to try to break men’s records. ‘Go get ’em, girl,’ he said, when he handed over the maps.

He took her to a pub where they drank to the memory of Bert. When she ordered lemonade, he demanded she try something stronger. ‘I’ll have champagne,’ she said, daring herself to try again. As the bubbles surfaced she felt the spirit of Hinkler rising. ‘To Bert,’ they said, lifting their glasses.

With the help of Group Captain Fielden, Victor had purchased the promised plane from the royal flying unit. The logbook showed the DH60 M Gipsy Moth G-AALG registered jointly in the names of Jean Batten and Victor Dorée. The royal colours were a blue fuselage and silver wings, but a condition of the sale was that the colours be changed. Jean asked that the blue be changed to a lighter shade, with a fine white line running the length of the fuselage.

There were technical matters to be addressed, modifications to be made to the plane. Jean had routes to plan, visas for landing in different countries to arrange, and landing permissions and information about fuel supplies to obtain. In all she would pass through fourteen countries on her 10,500-mile journey.

The Moth’s engine was gravity-fed from a standard tank in the wing. Victor had two extra tanks fitted. The larger, holding an extra twenty-seven gallons of fuel, was placed in the front cockpit and covered over, the second behind the rear pilot’s seat. Victor had a hand pump installed so that the engine could be topped up in flight by pumping from the two new tanks. The flying range of the Gipsy Moth, normally two hundred and fifty miles, had thus been increased to eight hundred. There was very little space left for the pilot.

During the preparation of the Moth, a disagreement arose between Victor and Jean over the safety of the con-rods, which had a record of being prone to metal fatigue where the serial number was stamped. Jean wanted the engine dismantled, and Nellie was all for it, but Victor insisted that the Prince’s plane would not have been released without a complete overhaul. The costs were beginning to mount beyond his and his mother’s budget. They agreed, half-heartedly on Jean’s part, not to pursue the matter any further.

Now that the attempt on the record had become a reality, the need
to keep the flight secret until the very last moment intensified. Jean was concerned that someone with a plane more prepared for a long-distance flight might set out ahead of her. Perhaps Amy Johnson, or Mrs Mollison as she was now known. After three years, she was still the only woman to have flown to Australia, and seemed always ready for new attempts on records.

Jean had begun a regime of exercise. First thing every morning she swam in the baths, then stood in the park and skipped for twenty minutes, just the way she had at Madame Valeska’s dancing school:
Lizzie Borden took an axe/and gave her mother forty whacks …
Over and over. Far into each night, she spread plans on the floor. Nellie kept watch over her, all the while stitching and hemming garments. She turned coats, and trimmed hats, made delicate undergarments. Jean had a new white silk dress that Victor insisted on buying her at Harrods, but not an inch of the silk from the old one would be wasted, Nellie declared. Not that underwear was really a problem either. Victor carried suitcases of silk panties with him on his travels to Australia.

There came a moment when all the preparations were made. Nellie and Jean laid out everything Jean needed for the journey. She would go out to the plane wearing a long jacket with a fur collar, and a beret. You just never know, somebody might get wind of you going, Victor said, and she needed to look her best. Besides, the Dorée family were all planning to turn out. De Havilland, the only other person in on the secret, had intimated that he would like to come. She would change into her flying gear before she boarded the plane, a long leather flying coat, helmet and goggles. Victor had bought her a white helmet for when she reached the tropics, and a white flying suit. Jean wrapped up her belongings in a brown paper parcel, ready to take with her on the flight.

Victor did tell the press at the very last moment. He was, after all, a partner in the undertaking. Nellie had gone on ahead to Lympne airport, where aviators flying abroad had to clear Customs, while Jean collected her plane from Stag Lane. Victor had arranged for her to be
driven there by his chauffeur, as befitted a star in the making. He sat in the front while Jean sat in the back, overtaken by bouts of terror. As they drove to Stag Lane, she saw bluebells in flower, washes of colour beneath the trees. She wished that Nellie was with her. The Dorée family was gathered, and Victor’s father had arranged for a movie camera to record the event. Only the
Sunday Dispatch
had responded to Victor’s press release. The reporter saw it as a scoop, interviewing Jean and eliciting from her the information that the flight had been planned in secrecy for months. De Havilland did turn up, boyish and excited that another of his planes was going to make the long journey to Australia. ‘Did I ever tell you about my hobby?’

‘You made model aeroplanes,’ Jean said.

‘Oh yes, there was that. But I collected butterflies and moths, too. That’s why I call my planes Moths,’ he said. ‘And now I’m setting them free. Go well, Miss Batten.’

Jean stowed her parcel in a tiny compartment she had made behind the headrest in the rear cockpit. She leaned against Victor for a moment, sheltered by his arm, then it was time to go. Victor’s own plane had been wheeled out and he followed her across the London sky to Kent.

He and Nellie and Jean stayed at a nearby hotel, each with a bedroom of their own. Jean found it hard to concentrate on conversation of any kind. Before long she crept up the stairs to her room. Victor followed her up to the bedroom door. He kissed her chastely on her forehead and wished her a good night’s sleep. Victor had not asked Jean to his bedroom since they met, as if sensing her reserve. She was hardly settled before Nellie tapped on the door and allowed herself in, sitting down beside Jean on the bed.

‘I’m scared, Mother,’ Jean said in a small voice.

‘I know.’ Nellie’s voice was trembling. ‘Darling, we’ve had such good times together, haven’t we?’

‘We’ll have more,’ Jean said.

‘Promise me you won’t take any risks. I can’t imagine my life without you.’

‘I’ll always come home to you, darling.’

‘If you should change your mind about going,’ Nellie said, ‘you only have to say.’

‘Of
course
I won’t. It’s all right, Mother.’

‘You’re right. Of course you won’t. I’m just being selfish. You’ll see it through. You and me together. Now go to sleep, my lovely daughter.’

Nellie sat holding Jean’s hand until she felt the deep, even breathing that was so familiar to her in all the strange rooms the pair of them had inhabited.

THE
SUNDAY DISPATCH
REPORTER
had made the most of his story. The headline read
GIRL’S LONE FLIGHT — TO AUSTRALIA IN THE PRINCE’S OLD PLANE.

Underneath it was a picture of Jean looking glamorous, if a little uncertain, as she leaned against her plane. Although it was still early morning, more reporters had gathered as she made her way to the hangar. If she had been afraid the night before, the presence of this attention encouraged her to stand tall, and answer questions in a firm voice. There was no turning back. Victor got in on the act as well, telling one reporter how his fiancée Jean had lived so frugally, going without new clothes and nice cosmetics, a real rags-to-riches story, and soon she would show the whole world how fast she could fly. She winced a little at that. She was wearing a touch of the Chanel No. 5 he had bought her, but she wished he hadn’t drawn attention to her past cheapness. Besides, she muttered to Nellie, when they found themselves alone for a moment, he hasn’t actually proposed. Who says I’m his fiancée?

‘He probably thinks he has,’ Nellie said.

‘You don’t forget things like that.’

‘Hush, you’re nervous, you both are,’ Nellie said in her most soothing tones.

Victor walked over to join them, and gave Jean a final embrace.

On 9 April at 6.30 a.m. Jean taxied out onto the airfield at Lympne. She rose into the air, circled the aerodrome once in salute, and set a compass course for France. Before long her vision was obscured by fog. She flew by instruments across the English Channel, climbing to an altitude of four thousand feet, high above the clouds, where the sun shone brilliantly. Near Paris, the fog cleared and the city lay beneath her. She drew a sharp intake of breath and flew low in order to catch a glimpse of the spring lilacs in bloom along the Champs-Elysées. Jean imagined their heady scent in the streets of Paris. Then the city was behind her, and a pastoral landscape unfolded.

She climbed again as she headed towards the Chevenne mountains. At five thousand feet she was struck by the intensity of the cold, but the countryside she flew over was so beautiful that it seemed of little consequence. She crossed the mountains, passed over Lyons and down the Rhône Valley. The river threaded its way along the valley floor, appearing, from this height, to slither along like snail tracks. A wild sense of exhilaration now overtook her. Six hours had passed since she left Lympne and so comfortable was she with her flying, and with enough petrol to take her to Rome, she decided not to land. Instead, she set a direct course for Italy, four hundred miles away over the Gulf of Genoa.

This was the longest distance Jean had flown over water, and before long there was no land in sight. She flew on in a bright blue sky, with little wind, no sound except the purring of her engine. When it felt like lunchtime, she ate a leg of chicken, tossing the bone over the side. Pouring coffee without spilling it proved so difficult she drank directly from the Thermos. Even so, when she hit an air pocket, she was showered with liquid, and wondered if she had broken a tooth when it connected with the lip of the Thermos.

The clear sky was interrupted by a bank of cumulus nimbus clouds, forcing her to fly low. Suddenly Corsica lay beneath her. The island, almost completely covered by snow, was surrounded by the deep blue of the Mediterranean. From above, its mountains looked like some strange and beautiful spectre risen from the sea. Many
small islands lay beneath her now. She skirted the island of Elba with care, for it was forbidden to fly over it, since the Italian government use it for political prisoners. As she landed in Rome, she noted that ten hours had passed since she had left Lympne. She was greeted with the news that she was the first woman to fly non-stop solo from England. Already she had broken a record.