The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  This was how Jack Reason and Jean came to dine that evening with Francesco Savelli. Molly had been invited, but declined at the last minute, citing a headache. Savelli was in his fifties, with a wiry body and direct, clever eyes. His grey hair, cut shorter than the fashion, grew in a peak. At once she was drawn to the Italian; there was something magnetic and charged about him. He held her hand as if it were a porcelain object that might fall and break if he let it go. His touch caused a tremble to run through her fingers.

  ‘So, signorina,’ he said when they were seated, ‘you are already well known for your skills as pilot.’

  ‘I seem to have left them behind me when I set out for Rome.’

  ‘Ah, that was last night. But correct me if I’m wrong, you have flown the fastest time of any woman from London to Rome?’ Again he touched her, this time her cheek, just below her still swollen eye. Although she knew how awful she looked, she felt he was seeing beneath her bruises, to how she might appear on a better day.

  ‘That was a year ago. But it doesn’t seem very important, after what happened last night,’ she replied, Jack Reason translating rapidly between them. ‘Signor, you know what it is that I’m asking for, don’t you? Your wings?’

  ‘Ah yes, my wings, little bird. Let’s eat first and then we’ll talk.’ By then, they were seated in the restaurant. He took her left hand in his again, holding it for some moments before turning it palm down on the table. He fingered the diamond circlet of her engagement ring. ‘Some fortunate man must think a great deal of you. You’re planning to marry?’

  ‘I’m engaged.’

  ‘But the plan is not yet complete?’

  If she had not been so drawn towards Savelli, Jean might have laughed, observing the embarrassment this translation was causing Jack. He looked as if he wished himself anywhere else.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. It was as if she were having the conversation with Wakefield again. What was it that was so obvious when her engagement to Edward was mentioned? But she understood that her head might easily be turned by this stranger, full of assurance and a powerful energy, unlike the men who had courted her in the past. She guessed that he was used to seducing women, but that didn’t seem to matter. She had experienced sex, but not desire. This was new and disconcerting.

  ‘Perhaps, it’s as well,’ Savelli said. ‘Flying is men’s work.’

  ‘Not at all. I don’t know how you can say that, signor. Many women fly aeroplanes. Look at Amy Johnson. And Amelia Earhart. What do you make of them?’

  He shook his head, amused. ‘They all settle down, sooner or later. I expect they’ll make babies and old bones.’

  ‘Surely it’s possible to do both?’

  Savelli shrugged, his hands flung wide in a gesture suggesting a certain regret. ‘No, no, Signorina Batten. That’s impossible. Now I’m ordering,’ he said, as if to distract her from an uncomfortable topic. ‘This dinner is a special occasion to celebrate my meeting with you. We’re going to have zucchini flowers. You eat zucchini flowers in your country? No. Tonight you will. She needs an education, don’t you think, Signor Reason? Artichokes? Yes, we’ll have artichokes. These you will enjoy. They are stripped of their leaves and beaten, dipped in boiling oil. Like the early martyrs.’

  ‘I’ve already heard a bit about martyrs today. Believe me, signor, I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but you must learn to eat with style if you’re to spend time in Rome.’

  ‘Not for long, I hope.’ But as she spoke the food was being delivered, the zucchini flowers first, their trumpets crisp and hot, full of the delicate collapsed flavour of mint and ricotta, then later the artichokes, spread on her plate like the petals of a darkening sunflower. He picked up a morsel on his fork and placed it delicately in her mouth. And she said ‘Ah’, and ‘I can’t believe this’, and when they had drunk some wine it was hard to remember why she was there, or what it was that she wanted from him. Jack Reason and Savelli talked, the former pausing only now and then to explain their conversation. He asked Savelli how he had found Berlin that day, and what he thought about Hitler’s latest plans, and whether Mussolini would go along with them. Savelli brushed the questions off. He did not think Il Duce admired Hitler as much as he appeared to on the surface. Besides, Il Duce was concerned with the Ethiopian question.

  ‘You think he’ll strike there?’

  ‘You ask many questions, Mr Reason. How should I know what Il Duce is thinking? He and his Black Shirts are in charge. The Ethiopians are savages, there’s no doubt about that. Sooner or later he will want to tame the African continent. And your country, signorina, are there black people there?’

  ‘We have a Maori race. They are brown-skinned. I was born among them.’

  ‘You were? Well, that’s interesting. I’m not familiar with the British colonies. The Antipodes.’

  His eyes rested intently on her, as if he could see right through her. Surely, she would think later, he could not have known the deep ache of longing that had possessed her, a sensation that was entirely new. She felt as if she might yield, although to what force she was not exactly sure. But it was something unfulfilled, a sense of submission and desire. The evening had become like flying, wild and exhilarating. Somewhere out in the night, a gramophone was playing Ethel Waters singing ‘Stormy Weather’. Savelli said, ‘Some wild strawberries, perhaps. Picked in the woods this morning. With a small jug of freshly squeezed lemon and a dash of sugar.’

  ‘I love strawberries,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘Miss Batten,’ said Jack Reason, ‘I think you’re very tired.’

  ‘The wings,’ she said. ‘What about the wings, signor?’

  He touched her hand again, and when she raised her eyes, she observed the regret in his, as if he had come to a decision and was sorry. For himself? For her? She couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was the presence of Jack Reason that restrained him. Or he saw how injured she was, and more than a little strange. ‘Oh yes, the wings. Well by all means, you may have them reconditioned.’

  ‘Really, that’s wonderful. Thank you.’ She knew how girlish and breathless she must sound, even as she sensed a certain withdrawal in his manner, a coolness that had descended.

  ‘They’re not a gift, signorina. I expect you to pay two-thirds of the cost of repairing them, and return them to me immediately when you get back to England. Within a month.’

  ‘But I plan to fly to Australia. You know that.’

  ‘And I am offering you the opportunity to take your aeroplane back to London. That is all. It is over to you to decide.’

  ‘Mr Reason?’ she said, turning to him for advice.

  ‘I think Signor Savelli has made up his mind. A final offer?’

  When Savelli nodded, Jean said, ‘Very well, signor. I will return your wings when I get to England next week.’ She tasted sour anger at the back of her throat, the taste of disappointment.

  AFTER THAT EVENING, MOLLY WAS KINDER, as if she had accepted the presence of her house guest. Jean guessed that Jack had told her what had happened. Back at the apartment, Jean had gone straight to bed and slept for twelve hours. When she woke up she couldn’t remember a single dream. Molly brought the English newspapers for her to read, her manner gentle. ‘You’ll see these soon enough,’ she said, ‘you might as well now.’ The headlines shouted Jean’s disgrace: BATTEN GIRL DIVE BOMBS ROME, WHY DOES SHE KEEP DOING IT? BATTEN CRASHES AGAIN. The articles all had a similar tone, implying that she was too inexperienced to attempt the long flight to Australia, and why bother when Amy Johnson had already done it in such style? Although it was not spelled out in so many words, there was another question: Who does she think she is?

  There were telegrams, too. One, from Edward, said: Come home at once. Leave plane behind. In another, Nellie wrote that there would be another time, and they must think of a new plan. Yet another was from Frank: See you are in Rome. Must be in the money. Send what you owe, or else. She felt a shudder of revulsion and tore the cable into
little pieces, as if the yellow paper would contaminate her.

  Molly looked at her curiously. ‘Not bad news, I hope.’

  When Jean didn’t reply, Molly said, ‘Why don’t we go and look at some of the sights? There must be places you’d like to see.’

  ‘The place I’d most like to see,’ Jean replied, ‘is the field where I was forced to land.’

  Molly shook her head in disapproval at first, but then she said, ‘Well, why not? I expect if it were me I’d want to see what happened, too.’

  They set out for the St Palo wireless station, the grassy field surrounded by six masts, each one a hundred and fifty feet tall. There were also numerous high-tension wires overhead that the Moth had glided above, unseen by Jean. She stood and looked at them for a long while, and at the mosquito-ridden marshes through which she had staggered to safety. The area had been drained to make poor farming land, now inhabited by poverty-stricken labourers living in shacks.

  ‘Enough?’ Molly asked. ‘I think you need to see the rest of Rome.’

  She drove them at erratic speeds in her battered Vauxhall. It wasn’t so much that it was old, but that ‘things kept bumping into it’, as Molly put it and they both found themselves laughing. They began to eat at restaurants together. Jean bought bunches of lavender to fill the vases in the apartment, and an air of festivity began to overtake them. Molly, Jean realised, was one of those service wives who went where their husbands were told, with no option but to follow them and make the best of things. The Reasons had two children in English boarding schools. Molly spoke of them with quiet longing.

  OFTEN JEAN WALKED ALONE THROUGH TRASTEVERE or to the markets at Campo de’ Fiori, inhaling thyme, and rosemary, the bundled masses of sweet basil, or climbed the Spanish Steps, banked with massed azaleas. The mist from a hundred fountains brushed her face, reminding her of the lakes of her childhood, their surfaces ruffled by breezes at evening, or of sunny days swimming with her brothers. With her father, too, supine on a rock, droplets of water still clinging to the hairy pelt of his chest as he dried off in the sun. One evening she came at dusk upon the statue of Marcus Aurelius, the bronze horseman looming against the background of the Palazzo del Senatore, and was moved to sudden tears by its detail, its poised splendour, the way the light played on its surface, the green stipple that spoke of great age.

  As she walked, she wondered if she might find Francesco Savelli out strolling, but she didn’t see him again, and nor was he at the hangar when she went on her daily excursions to inspect the progress of the repairs to the Moth. All the same, she understood that the Roman education he had begun the night they dined together was unfolding before her day by day, and she believed that if he could see her he would approve. Had she met Savelli, she knew she would have been drawn to him again.

  At the same time, she seethed at his dismissal of women aviators, and the hard bargain he had struck, believing that he was ending her ambition to fly across the world. He had succeeded in raising doubts in her own mind about whether she could carry on, and she didn’t thank him for that. Or did she? It was possible that, here in Rome, he knew she must face this crisis, the challenge thrown before her.

  Most evenings, she returned to the apartment in time to stand at the window, and look across the rooftops as she had on the first night. Each evening, the woman she had seen at the window still sat reading or, once, sewing perhaps, for the movements of her hands were different. She did not raise her head, or acknowledge Jean, but each time her presence reminded Jean afresh of her mother.

  Edward had cabled that there were no wings available in England either, as her model of the Gipsy Moth was obsolete. As it was, here in Rome, it would take weeks to build new ones.

  One evening, towards the end of the week, the sky had a dark indigo quality, then paler bands of blue, colours such as she had seen in the Mediterranean — a paler scarf of light, like white surf, and beneath, at the edge of the earth’s curve, the glow of the setting sun. Against this rose a huge cloud of birds, a murmuration of starlings, thousands, perhaps millions of them, flying in perfect harmony with each other, expanding and contracting into different formations, becoming so dense that they blotted out the last of the dusk light. Jean had heard of these birds, but this was the first time they had performed their aerial display for her. She felt her spirits lift, as if something had been released in her, watching their matchless flight, the birds wheeling through the infinite air. For an instant she saw herself again in the sky.

  As she watched, she saw a movement in the far window. The woman had been watching the birds, too. She turned towards Jean, raised her hand in greeting.

  The salutation was brief, so that for a moment Jean wondered if she had imagined it. Before she had time to respond, the woman had resumed her position, as if nothing had taken place between them.

  ON THE MORNING OF 6 MAY, Jean sent a cable to Edward. Returning today. Must borrow lower wings from your plane.

  PART TWO

  Flight

  1934–1937

  CHAPTER 23

  8 MAY 1934. TUESDAY MORNING. SEVEN A.M.

  Jean flew to Lympne for clearance once again to fly to Australia. At Brooklands she had collected the wings from Edward Walter’s Gipsy Moth, and had them attached to her plane. She arranged for the return of those belonging to Francesco Savelli.

  Edward had argued with her. ‘I beg you,’ he said, ‘please don’t do this crazy thing. Look at you, you’ve barely recovered from your accident. You’ve been here less than forty-eight hours. Stay here. Marry me. We can have a happy life together.’

  Jean had turned to her mother. ‘Do you think Ted’s right?’

  Nellie had taken a deep breath. ‘I think it’s for you to decide.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mother? You’re the only person in the world who could stop me from going.’

  Edward had barely been able to disguise his anger.

  ‘I’ve told you, you must decide whether you’ve got the strength for it.’

  ‘That’s it then. I’m leaving for Australia.’ She had known that if she faltered for another moment, she was lost.

  Again she kissed her mother, and climbed into the cockpit. Overnight, Edward’s anger had abated. He borrowed a plane from a friend at Brooklands, his own now out of service, with the wings firmly attached to Jean’s plane, and flew to Lympne with her. When the Customs formalities were cleared, he took off again, and flew for part of the way across the English Channel with Jean. She knew how much he disliked flying over water, and sent him a blessing of thanks. He signalled farewell, and she was on her own again.

  At Rome, the ground staff were astonished to see her back so soon. As she left the city at daybreak the following morning she passed near the St Palo wireless station where she had so nearly lost her life. Already that terrible night seemed like a dream.

  So she flew on. From Naples and back to Athens in a gale. From Cyprus to Beirut, and over the Sea of Galilee, in terrible heat and a dust haze. She flew a shorter route this time, going by way of Damascus. She thought again of her brother Harold as she passed over Babylon and felt an ache of sorrow for him.

  She landed at the Iraqi town of Fort Rutbah, after following tracks over the desert. On 16 May she flew from Karachi to the Indian city of Bamrauli, landing at Allahabad airport, a day’s run of 932 miles. She had now flown further than on any of her previous attempts. Even at 6.45 the following morning the heat was intense as she crossed the Ganges, pumping petrol with sweat pouring from her like water. Wish I had automatic petrol pump, she wrote in her logbook. Later that morning, the oil union worked loose and oil sprayed all over the side of the plane, forcing her to land at Calcutta, with only three quarts of oil left.

  On 17 May, three air force planes escorted her for twenty minutes, as she rose to an early dawn start. When they left her, the loneliness she had experienced on earlier flights came flooding back. Lonely now, she jotted in the log, as if writing it and declaring it to herself would make it go aw
ay. Its darkness reminded her of the caves, and the time she had spent with her brother there, the black intensity of the underground space, prickled with the light of the glow worms. She thought then of Kitty, whom she had met on that trip to the north, passing her days alone. Was this what might lie ahead of her, somewhere beyond this empty sky, in this tiny fragile machine?

  To distract herself, she ate her lunch, although it was still only breakfast time.

  Malaya lay below, rubber plantations and dense green jungle stretching for many miles, before she put down at Singapore. At the Royal Air Force aerodrome, all the station’s officers were assembled to meet her, dressed in spotless tropical kit. Her flying suit was stained with oil. ‘I’m a sorry sight,’ she said, as she climbed down from the cockpit. There were now several adjustments and repairs to be made to the plane. As if in anticipation of these needs, a team of mechanics appeared and the plane was wheeled away.

  A group captain and his wife offered her a bed for the night. Within an hour she appeared in the officers’ mess, immaculate in her white silk dress, a glass of champagne in her hand. A maid had whisked her flying suit away to be washed ready for the morning.

  When she got up, it was too damp for her to wear. ‘How about a pair of my husband’s white sports trousers?’ the group captain’s wife suggested. To this was added a white shirt. Jean wore this outfit on the next leg of her journey, as far as Batavia, the trousers held up with a big safety pin, covered by her raincoat. ‘Pretty dashing,’ she said, admiring herself in a mirror before setting off.

  Flocks of parrots rose from the trees, like large red and green clouds, their plumage flashing in the sun, alligators and crocodiles basking on mudflats. At 8 a.m. on 20 May she crossed the equator. She was back in the Southern Hemisphere. The possibility of success began to seem within her grasp.