The Infinite Air (31 page)

She heard herself, imperious and suddenly angry. ‘There’s no time. I have a schedule,’ she said, turning away.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please. I’ll lose my job if I don’t capture your words.’

Jean looked at his dazed and pleading face. This might be the only job he had ever had.

Leaning into the cockpit, she turned off the engine. ‘All right then. Make sure this time, please. I want to leave England today.’

As she spoke, she tried to modulate her voice, to keep it slow and calm, aware of the rising panic inside.

CHAPTER 29

JEAN LANDED AT DARWIN IN THE EARLY HOURS
of the morning on 11 October, five days and twenty-one hours after leaving England. She had lowered the solo record for both men and women by a day.

The continent of Australia now lay between her and the hosts of people who awaited her in Sydney. Again, the rooftops were crowded with onlookers, as she circled the city, the harbour bridge.

‘The flight isn’t finished yet,’ she told the crowd at Mascot, over the massed swelling roar of their voices. ‘I have yet to fly to New Zealand.’

AS THEY HAD ARRANGED, BEVERLEY WAS WAITING
for Jean at the Hotel Australia, in a suite of rooms booked for her. It was better, they agreed, that their reunion was out of the public eye. It would be brief. If the predicted weather conditions were accurate, she would be on her way again in two days.

Beverley seemed taller in his uniform. His fine, fair hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, making him appear older than when she had left him. He put his arms around her and held her within their circle.

‘I thought you’d never come back. I was so afraid for you.’

‘I promised you,’ she said.

‘And now you’re here, I’m not going to let you go any further.’

She took a step backwards from him. ‘What do you mean, Bev?’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you to go on. Why not rest on your laurels and just stay here?’

‘You can’t be serious.’ She felt her voice rising.

‘There’s already talk in the newspapers. There was a headline this morning, suggesting that it was madness to carry on over the Tasman. You know it’s one of the most dangerous seas in the world.’

‘That’s part of the challenge. I’ve crossed that water often by ship. I know what the storms are like out there. I’ve studied the charts. What do you think I’ve been doing all these years?’

‘You have been known to crash.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ she said, still trying to keep her voice down. She knew people would be within earshot.

‘Jean, you’re not to go. I’m telling you.’

‘Nobody tells me what I’m allowed to do.’ He looked as if he were about to walk out of the room. She could hardly believe that this was how her sprint across the world was ending. ‘Beverley,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘this was always the plan.’

‘What’s the reward of trying to link England and New Zealand if you end up losing your life? What will you gain?’

‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘I think we need to talk about this tomorrow.’

They ate together that evening. He gave her news of his family, talked about the passenger route he was flying on from Sydney to Brisbane. It was a peaceful sort of route, he said, over the mountains, the gum trees a sea of moving colour. He loved it — all the adventure he needed.

‘It was rough over there today,’ she said. ‘I had trouble keeping the Gull level as I came into Sydney.’

‘That doesn’t happen often.’

He left her then. She needed to sleep, he could see — or this is what he told her. Nothing had been resolved. It felt as if they had quarrelled, even though the subject of the Tasman crossing had been dropped.

But, in the morning, nearly two thousand telegrams awaited her, hundreds of them from people begging her not to make the flight. This seemed incomprehensible. The Tasman had now been flown seventeen times. But not yet by a woman, or, as some of her
opponents pointed out, by a plane that had just flown across the world. Some said she must surely be tired. This was true, but she was not going to admit it to anyone. At a newspaper interview, a reporter asked, ‘Miss Batten, if you fail at this attempt, surely it will be a terrible setback to aviation in both Australia and New Zealand?’

‘In that case, if I succeed, the reverse must be true,’ she snapped. ‘I’d say it will give a tremendous impetus to aviation.’

A headline the next morning, contained an appeal from the Governor-General’s wife:
WOMAN TO WOMAN, I URGE YOU NOT TO GO ON
. In New Zealand, Fred Batten had announced his opposition to her flight. His daughter had been ‘a sweet little girl’ he told the reporters, but she always had a mind of her own. This was a step too far in his opinion.

The Civil Aviation authorities stepped in, and announced that they would not permit a takeoff with an overload of one thousand pounds, unless she could produce a certificate of airworthiness with an endorsement authorising her to do so. She produced the special permit she had obtained from the Air Ministry before leaving England, and the tone of the argument changed.

The RAAF stepped in and offered her the use of their runway at Richmond, so that she could take off on a hard surface, rather than grass. They would also light a flare path to guide her on the early morning departure. This seemed a good omen. It was at Richmond that she had had the first flight of her life with Smithy and Charlie Ulm.

The newspapers had not finished with her yet:
Miss Batten seems oblivious to the vast amount of money and resources, and the risk to the lives of others that would be involved in a search for the Gull if it goes down in the sea
.

In the afternoon of that last day in Sydney, Fred Batten rang his daughter from his dental practice in Auckland, with reporters listening in.

‘Do you promise not to take off unless the weather’s perfect?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Dad, I promise.’

‘Are you feeling up to it?’

‘Dad, I’m in the pink,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in Auckland about four tomorrow afternoon. No, Dad, no. I won’t come if the weather is bad.’

She had a late lunch with Beverley in the seclusion of her rooms. He had wanted to take her to Darling Point to see his mother, but she reminded him she had to get to Richmond, where she had been offered a bed in the officers’ mess, and some sleep. ‘I’m still waiting,’ he said, as he kissed her. It was a peace offering of sorts.

‘I love you,’ she said. But already he had gone.

At Richmond more telegrams were waiting. All these wished her good luck, and Jean wondered if the secretary who had been assigned to her had sifted out all the negative messages. One from Nellie:
My prayers go with you and I am confident you will succeed
. Telegrams from Lord Londonderry, and Viscount Wakefield, from the French Air Minister, and a group of ex-servicemen.
Good on you, Jean
, they said.
Don’t be put off by all the Jeremiahs. You will make it all right
. She laughed out loud.

At half past two she rose and spent a long time looking at the weather chart. An intense depression was moving over her route. The decision had to be made quickly: wait for the weather to pass, or alter her course and land at New Plymouth. In the back of her head, a small voice was asking why Smithy had not listened to the weather report that he must have surely received that morning in Allahabad.

‘I’m going,’ she said.

The Gull was wheeled out. She did the last check of her maps and charts.

A long line of flares burned brightly along the runway, lighting a path in the darkness. A small crowd had assembled. As she turned the Gull into the wind, pausing to make a final check, a man ran forward with a microphone. ‘Say a few words, Jean,’ he shouted.

‘Very well,’ she shouted above the roar of the engine, ‘but I want the group captain to hear what I have to say.’ She cut the motor and spoke to tense white faces looking up at her. ‘Listen, if I go down
in the sea no one must fly out to look for me. I’ve chosen to make this flight, and I’m confident I can make it, but I have no wish to imperil the lives of others or cause trouble or expense to my country. Goodbye for now. I’ll be back.’

She released the brakes, gave the engine full throttle. The bright line of flares flashed past. Nearing the last one, she eased the plane off the ground. The Gull climbed swiftly through the darkness.

CHAPTER 30

IN LONDON, NELLIE BATTEN LEANED CLOSE
to the radio to hear the broadcast from New Zealand. The announcer was honking with excitement.

‘Jean Batten is arriving. They can just see her way down on the horizon, right away, miles away, but she is coming along very fast and bearing straight down on the clubhouse, coming straight through. Here comes Jean Batten right now … her silver plane is shining away there and round she comes. She’s taking a circle round the aerodrome and losing height and round she comes.

‘… the first message we got was that she was sighted from New Plymouth flying north at 4.04. She did not land at New Plymouth. The next message we got was that she was … Mokau 4.15, then … three miles south of Kawhia at 4.35 and well out to sea.

‘Here she is, coming just past the tent now on the right-hand side. She is coming over the crowds and is losing height all the time. Everybody is tensed up and they are all ready to cheer her. It won’t be long before you won’t be able to hear me for the cheer they give Miss Jean Batten, the New Zealand aviator … The crowd surges forward, a large crowd of police, mounted police, foot police and traffic inspectors and they are having a great job to keep the crowd back. Here’s Mr Batten very anxious to get down and meet her.

‘Here she is coming down, she is down about twenty feet now, about ten feet, she is nearly on the ground, just very near the tops of those motor cars and nearly touches them. A beautiful three-point landing she is going to make … Here she comes … I don’t know whether you can hear me or not … We can see a white … a white helmet …’

IN AUCKLAND, THE SPEECHES HAD BEGUN.
First the mayor spoke. ‘Words fail me to express adequately to you the feelings of all the persons here today. But Jean, you are a very naughty girl, and really I think you want a good spanking for giving us such a terribly anxious time here. We knew you could do it, but we did not want you to run the risk.’

Jean decided to let this go. What was the point of a quarrel when she had barely landed? In Australia, she had been reminded forcibly that, here in the Antipodes, she was in a man’s world.

This had been one of the loneliest flights of her life. The storm had broken soon after she left Richmond. The rain was intense, just like the tropics, only very cold. The cabin began to leak, and the water soaked her shoulders. She was flying blind in low cloud. An albatross provided some company for a few moments. Soon after, emerging from the cloud, she had looked down at what appeared like a wreath in the water, and saw that it was a whale swimming just beneath the surface, so that its back looked green. She thought of the spirit of Moby Dick, and wished intensely that she could see land. At this time of year, whales swam through Cook Strait, and she had a sudden fear that she was passing through the strait and out beyond towards the Pacific Ocean. In a few minutes, in teeming rain, she had seen that her course was true, as she flew over New Plymouth.

She was tired and cold, and there were still speeches from dignitaries of every kind, the government, and women’s organisations, and the air force. There were cheers for her father, whom it seemed must now be counted as one of her very best friends in the world.

Finally, her teeth chattering with cold, she was able to speak. ‘Ever since I had my very first flight,’ Jean said to the huge gathering, ‘I had in mind the linking of Great Britain and New Zealand by air. I left England on October fifth, and although I wasn’t trying to break the solo record to Australia, I was able to break the men’s record and
arrive in Australia just a little over five days after leaving London’.

The crowd screamed with delight, an animal herd braying.

‘By continuing my flight from Darwin the following day I was able to fly on to Sydney and arrive there from London in the fastest time ever — one week. Before I left England I didn’t think of the Tasman as a separate flight but just as one hop of the complete flight, and I had in my mind the thoughts that, as you all know, New Zealand is the only dominion of Great Britain that has not yet been linked, that had not yet been linked to Great Britain by air in direct flight.

‘I’m very happy to arrive in New Zealand today, and incidentally, nine and a half hours after leaving Australia, thereby creating another record, and actually today I am just ten days, twenty-one hours out from England, so in this flight, I was able to fly through from England to New Zealand in the fastest time in the history of the world.’

The mob had become hysterical. Ambulances were moving in to pick up people who were being trampled.

‘I don’t need to add how pleased I am to see you all here to greet me, and I think I can say without doubt this is the very greatest moment of my life.’

The crowd now began to sing ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. The mounted police carved a path through the crowd as she was driven in a motorcade to her hotel. If it were peace she was seeking, it wasn’t there. Already, the first of thousands of telegrams and letters had begun to arrive. The reception area was heaped high with flowers. Within a day or so, four secretaries would be employed by the government to help her deal with the correspondence.

The London newspapers had new classical names for her.
The Times
dubbed her the
New Diana
, while the
Morning Post
referred to her as the
Atalanta of the Air
. She wasn’t sure that either of these descriptions applied to her, but the image of herself as Atalanta, the virgin huntress, unwilling to marry, was particularly unsettling.

There was a cable of congratulation from Beverley, followed by his silence.

NEWS OF FRIENDS AND FAMILY BEGAN TO SURFACE.
Harold had gone bankrupt and shifted further north. John and Madeleine were living in Tahiti, where Madeleine could write in peace and the living was cheap. Fred was cagey about this. He said something to the effect that Madeleine was planning to spend some time on her own. Freda Stark was working as a clerk somewhere. There had been a scandal when Thelma Trott, Freda’s lover, was murdered by her husband Eric Mareo. Freda had been a star witness for the prosecution. Valeska said Freda was thinking about dancing again, and how nice it would be if they got together. Jean agreed, but there were days when she was overcome with a great lethargy, and when she thought about the drama of Freda’s life, and that of her own, she found it hard to muster the energy to pursue this meeting. Malcolm MacGregor, whom she had got to know in the days following the Melbourne Air Race, had died in an air crash in Wellington. She had heard this, of course. He was part of the roll call.

Fred Batten, now a doting father, appeared at her door late one afternoon. He had special access to his daughter, and nobody questioned his right to knock whenever he came up the stairs by the side entrance.

‘A quiet word if I may,’ he said to Jean. ‘Something private.’ He looked around with a meaningful glance at the secretaries, and a photographer who had just finished a sitting with Jean.

‘I wish you’d called up, Dad,’ Jean said when the room was cleared. ‘You can see what a lot I’ve got to deal with. Is this about the family?’

‘It might be if something isn’t done.’ He held his hat by its rim and turned it around carefully with the tips of his fingers. ‘I had Frank Norton to see me this morning.’

‘Frank
Norton
? That man …’

‘I seem to remember you liked him well enough once.’

‘I can’t bear to even think about him. What does he want?’

‘He tells me you owe him a lot of money. Five hundred pounds.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘He says he paid for your commercial flying lessons.’ There was a silence. ‘Well, Jean?’

‘It’s not quite like that, Dad.’

‘I have to know.’

‘Why? Why do you have to know?’

‘Because he’s downstairs now, and he says he’s going to the press if you don’t pay up. He says he met some woman he wants to marry and that it’s impossible because all his pension is gone, and he can’t support a wife.’

Jean jumped up from her chair, shaking, her fists clenched, the muscles in her neck taut with fury. ‘The pig. The rotten blackmailing pig. And don’t you look at me like that. I’m not your sweet little girl any more.’ She collapsed onto a sofa, and put her face in her hands. ‘He did help me with some money. It wasn’t five hundred pounds, nothing like it. He had five hundred when he came out of the RAF. God knows what he did with it. Drank it, probably.’

‘Why didn’t you pay him?’

‘He had his money’s worth.’

‘Jean. What are you saying?’

‘Oh, never mind. You say he’s downstairs?’

When her father nodded, she said at last, ‘Tell him I’ll bring him down a cheque in a few minutes. Please, stay with him. Don’t let him near me. Do you promise?’

After her father left the room, she gathered herself together as best she could. Her hands were still shaking as she wrote a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds. As she emerged from the lift, she saw the two men talking, and wondered what Frank had told her father. He looked at her, his face bloated and red.

‘Hello, Jean,’ he said, his voice too hearty.

Jean held out the cheque without saying a word, turning away without waiting to see what he made of it and retreating up the stairs. As she left, she heard him say, ‘Well, I know when I’m beaten. She
always was a tough bitch. A man-eating bitch, if you’ll forgive me, Mr Batten.’

Her father returned to her room.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

‘I came to see if you were all right. I’m worried about you, my little Mit. Look at you, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Your little Mit, no, I told you those days are over. You shouldn’t have interfered.’

‘I didn’t ask to be in the middle of all this,’ he said, his tone sharp. ‘I’d been quite content with my life until you brought all this on me.’

‘You should go now.’

They stood gazing at one another, her expression steely, until he made a futile gesture and left.

THE TOUR OF THE COUNTRY SHE HAD PROMISED
to make now began, but the crowds turning up to hear her were not as great as in the past. There was a certain dull resentment in the eyes of some in her audiences. She was rich and they were on the bones of their backsides. The prospect of flying around the country was daunting. She couldn’t understand why she felt so tired. Instead, she asked that she go by train or by car from one destination to another. She made it to Hamilton on the train; from there she was driven by a chauffeur to Wellington. In the middle of the Desert Road, with the mountains high and white in the distance, and the purple heather dark with spring growth at the edge of the red clay banks lining the road, a car came towards them. The chauffeur called out to say that he knew who it was.