The Infinite Air

by Fiona Kidman

  By then, however, he must have anticipated the news, and planned his revenge in advance. The day her letter did arrive, he sent a cable — a bill for the wings of the plane.

  APRIL 1935. THE NIGHT BEFORE JEAN LEFT SYDNEY, she and Beverley talked all night, holding each other, sometimes weeping. She thought again how young he was and felt him struggling against his tears.

  ‘I couldn’t live without you,’ he said.

  ‘You would,’ she said. ‘People go on.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘I can’t, but I have to believe it’s true. I’ll take care of myself. I’ll write to you often, a book just for the two of us, the story of you and me.’

  Deep down, she was hoping to break the women’s Australia-to-England record. The first section of the flight was across Australia’s desert to Darwin. There had been a drought in central Queensland. She flew over lone drovers with great herds of cattle, trekking southwards to greener pasture, and dried-up waterholes, surrounded by hundreds of dead cattle; the stench reached her in the cockpit. From time to time clouds of fine, brick-coloured dust swirled and eddied around her. In an odd sense, she was drawn to the desert, the red heart of the country. A place to burn if you let it catch you. But there was nothing to indicate that all was not well. The journey seemed to be going smoothly.

  As she set out across the Timor Sea, the clouds of dust increased, reducing visibility to a minimum. To take advantage of the following wind, she climbed to six thousand feet, and set off for the island of Timor. The carpet of cloud beneath her was still tinged orange by the dust.

  Around two hundred and fifty miles from land, the engine coughed. At first she thought she must have imagined it. She listened intently. Then she heard it again. This time the whole plane shook. The engine gave a final splutter and stopped. There was nothing but dead silence. As the plane began a slow glide towards the cloud cover, she was overcome by a dreadful sense of helplessness.

  It must be a temporary petrol blockage, she told herself. She gave the engine full throttle, but nothing happened. The only sound was a whirring noise like a sigh, as the plane continued its descent.

  It couldn’t be possible that disaster had struck so soon. There had to be some way out. The altimeter held her fascinated as it fell to five thousand, four and a half thousand, then four thousand feet. She was among the clouds. At three thousand feet she saw the blue expanse of the sea, stretching limitless before her.

  She was possessed by a savage terror. The desire to live had never been so strong. As best she could, she must now prepare to land on the sea. Undoing her shoes and flying suit, she reached for the small hatchet she carried in case of emergency and placed it in the leather pocket at her side. There seemed a last desperate chance that if she were able to land the machine on an even keel, she might be able to cut one wing away and float on it. But who would find her? She carried no radio, no flares. It would be many hours before anyone would think her missing. So much for her promise to Beverley that she would take care of herself. As she neared the water she could see through the waves to the dark eddies and whirls, the vast nothingness beneath. With the propeller still just ticking over, she opened and closed the throttle lever. Still nothing happened.

  And then, with a deafening noise, like a great sob, the engine burst into life again. She hardly dared to breathe, as the engine regained its steady note, and she was able to coax the plane back up to three thousand feet. But the next hours, until she reached Kupang on Timor Island, were still filled with fear that the same thing would happen again. The Dutch ground staff listened in horror as she recounted her ordeal. Volcanic dust must have got into the engine, they suggested, causing a temporary blockage in the petrol system.

  The filter and the jets were thoroughly cleaned, while she faced the prospect of flying on to England. Her confidence had been shaken in a way she had never experienced before. The following morning, it took all her willpower to get back into the plane and set off for Rambang, on Lombok Island.

  It seemed, over the following days, that some demon had entered her plane. From time to time there would be ominous misses in the engine, and then it would revive again, as if she were flying a wind-up toy that might run down at any moment. Sometimes she wondered how much more she could endure. The last engine failure happened in thickening fog as Jean flew up the Rhône Valley towards Dijon. As she approached Chalon-sur-Saône, it cut out again. The Moth was already low, as she searched for a field where she might land, when yet again the engine roared into life. She flew on, hedge hopping to keep the ground in sight, in case she needed to touch down, until more with good luck than skill, she found the aerodrome. There, other planes were fogbound. They all remained in Dijon for another two days until the sky cleared. On the last flight to Croydon, the air was so cold and Jean’s spirits so bitterly low, that she landed at Abbeville in order to buy a cup of coffee with her last two francs.

  It had taken her nearly eighteen days to reach England, far from a record. For all that, she was the first woman to have flown to Australia and back. It was 29 April 1935.

  London was, at that moment, in thrall to the jubilee celebrations for King George V and Queen Mary. As a woman who had flown from one side of the world — or almost — and back, Jean was invited to give an empire broadcast on the BBC the morning after her arrival back in London.

  More invitations poured in. Kathleen, the Countess of Drogheda, one of the people from Stag Lane days, sent an urgent invitation for her to watch the jubilee procession from the balcony of her house in the Mall. The chain-smoking countess had remarried since Jean had first glimpsed her in the clubhouse, and taken to motor racing. ‘Fancy you remembering me,’ Jean said, when she joined the house party.

  ‘Remember you? Darling, I’ve only just heard of you,’ the countess said, half jokingly.

  Wakefield took her to dinner at the Savoy. ‘Will you have a cocktail?’ he asked.

  ‘Champagne, just champagne,’ Jean said.

  ‘I tried a very nice champagne cocktail with a dash of gin and some lemon juice, the last time I was here.’

  ‘Just champagne. I like the bubbles.’ He stroked the back of her hand. ‘I’m so proud of you. You’ve done wonders for Castrol,’ he said. ‘But you look exhausted. You need building up. Oysters,’ he said, perusing the menu, ‘and a nice consommé, followed by filet mignon.’

  ‘Too much food, sir.’

  ‘Miss Batten, what is the trouble?’

  She told him then about the Timor Sea, about her terror, the way she had braced her body in anticipation of death. ‘I want to live,’ she said. ‘I have everything to live for.’

  He turned her hand over on the crisp white tablecloth.

  ‘It’s true, you’re not engaged any more?’

  ‘It is, and I’m glad, but I wish it hadn’t been in the newspapers.’

  ‘But somewhere there is a lucky man?’

  ‘I’m fortunate,’ she said, reddening a little.

  ‘Ah, I see. True love. I like the idea. Let’s raise a toast to romance. But I think you need some rest, my dear, if you’re to get your spirits back. I’ve some friends with a house in Scotland. Viscount Elibank, great chap, he’s in charge of National Railways. He and his wife would be delighted to entertain you.’

  When she agreed that this sounded a charming idea, he looked relieved. ‘We can’t lose you to flying just yet.’

  Back in London, the RAF invited her to give talks to promote a new film. For two weeks she spoke three times a day. The applause was dimmed only by a letter to The Aeroplane magazine, wanting to know why on earth a woman should be associated with a film about the Royal Air Force. In a footnote, the editor agreed with the writer of the letter. Jean cut it out and sent it to her mother, accompanied by a big piece of notepaper covered with exclamation marks.

  She was famous. Truly famous. Or infamous, if the editor was anything to go by. News came of prizes won: the Britannia Trophy from the Royal Aero Club, the Ha
rmon Trophy for the most outstanding flight by a woman. She shared the latter with the American pilot Amelia Earhart, a woman she longed to meet.

  Every day, she wrote to Beverley. My darling, she would begin, in letters that poured forth from her over the year or more that followed.

  Meanwhile, she had begun the hunt for her new plane.

  CHAPTER 27

  SHE CAUGHT HER BREATH WHEN SHE SAW THE GULL for the first time, on her birthday in September, its silver surface gleaming under the hangar’s powerful electric lights. Like, she wrote in her journal, some lovely thoroughbred groomed and polished in readiness for a great race, and straining to be away. When she took to the air, it turned and soared as effortlessly as the seabird for which it was named. It had an automatic petrol pump, and hydraulic brakes, but landing flaps as well and a metal propeller, luxury beyond her dreams.

  Years earlier, when Smithy had realised his ambition to fly to Australia in record time, the aeroplane he chose was a Percival Gull 6. What was good enough for Kingsford Smith, Jean had decided, would be good enough for her, although she had purchased a later model, brand-new.

  She now wrote to Beverley that, although flying to New Zealand was still in her sights, she wanted to test the Gull on a flight to South America, and that she had already begun her preparations for this attempt. There were, after all, some other records to be broken, and this was not such a long journey. She did not add that it was more dangerous.

  It was November when she set off. Nellie, back in London, was there to see her leave. Although she had been so anxious for Jean to follow her ambitions, this new hazardous undertaking had shaken her certainty. ‘Make this the last before New Zealand,’ she said, the night before Jean was due to leave. ‘Please.’

  Some disquieting news had been broadcast the day before: Smithy was missing. He had set out in the Lady Southern Cross with his co-pilot, Tommy Pethybridge, in the attempt to break Scott and Campbell Black’s new record. They had last been seen setting out on an overnight flight from Allahabad in India, to Singapore. There were reports of a typhoon in the area. Smithy had disappeared before, Jean told herself. He would be all right. It was unthinkable that anything could touch him. She vowed to check on the search for him at stops along her route.

  She had hardly left Lympne when hail and cloud set in over the Pyrénées. The old loneliness descended, more swiftly than usual. The possibility that Smithy’s disappearance was real had been growing by the hour, but she tried pushing the thought to the back of her mind.

  In this metal grey space in the sky, with sharp hail like bullets rattling the plane, she was beset with the fear that she might not see Beverley again. She had been side-tracked from her intentions. It was so easy, so beguiling, to be tempted into the drama of risk and glamour. Why had she not said ‘Enough’, the day they all talked on Smithy’s back lawn?

  The hail stopped, and there was no sound except for the thrum of the engine. All she had was this solitary confinement in the cockpit of her plane. It was as if she were the only person alive in the world. She shook herself, took a sip of coffee from her Thermos. She thought of Beverley. He’d said he couldn’t live without her, and for his sake she must survive. High above the cloud layer, a brilliant blue sky emerged. At fourteen thousand feet, the air outside the plane was icy cold, but her fear, and, with it, the loneliness passed.

  She flew over Spain, glimpsing dark green rows of orange groves, castles on mountain tops with roads like cotton threads winding up to them, the shining city of Madrid, on and on, until she landed in Casablanca. Even in the darkness, the city looked porcelain-white. When she landed, there were murmurs of congratulation.

  ‘But I’ve only just begun my journey,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ the French ground staff explained, ‘you have flown the fastest time ever from London to Casablanca. It is a record.’

  She slept for a few hours in a Moroccan hotel, rose again just after three in the morning, and headed for French West Africa, across the Sahara Desert. Nobody at Villa Cisneros on the Saharan Peninsula knew anything about Smithy; they had not even heard of him. A hundred or so miles north of Thies, in Senegal, a vast flock of flamingos rose up, the blood-red undersides of their cape-like wings creating a ribbon of scarlet tulle across the sky. The airport at Thies was smaller and shorter for take-off than Jean expected. The tanks, filled to capacity, made the plane very heavy. She could not afford to shed a drop of the petrol, but some weight had to be lost. Climbing into the cockpit, she removed a heavy signal pistol, a revolver she had been told was essential in Africa, her tool kit and spare engine parts. Only her logbooks, the emergency rations, Thermos flask and two evening dresses were left on the plane. Now all was in readiness for the crossing to Natal in Brazil. The Atlantic Ocean stretched before her.

  The airport commandant said that he had heard some message on the radio about Smithy but the news was garbled. He didn’t think the aviator had been found. She slept for a few hours, at the commandant’s house. When the alarm clock went off at three, she lay and looked at the flickering shadows cast by a lamp across the ceiling, and found it hard to envisage the next leg of the journey. Light rain was falling and the weather report for the South Atlantic was not promising either. But the commandant’s African chef had prepared a packet of sandwiches and cooked a whole chicken for her. At least she wouldn’t go hungry, she told herself with grim pleasure.

  In the plane Jean adjusted the compass, and set her course straight as an arrow to Brazil. The blackness of the night, and the two-thousand-mile stretch of the Atlantic lay ahead.

  Storm following storm battered her, one after another. She flew so low that at times she was only fifty feet above the water, then she lost sight of it altogether. Giving the engine full throttle she pulled the plane up into a climb. The Gull roared up through the dark mass, until at one thousand feet, she put the machine on an even keel. Both her feet were braced against the rudder bar, her hand gripping the joystick fiercely, as she concentrated all her attention on the blind flying instruments and the compass. Heavy rain now thundered against the Gull. Suddenly she saw the compass needle swing slowly around the dial. Imagination, surely.

  But the needle continued its horrible, inexorable progress. Beads of sweat gathered on her face. She was lost. If the compass continued this movement she had gone in a full circle. It had now swung a hundred and eighty degrees. I will not give up, I will not, she cried out loud.

  Then slowly, as if in some miraculous gesture, the compass needle was swinging back to its former position. Once more there was calm sea beneath. It didn’t last long, as dark mushrooms of storm appeared on the horizon again, and she was plunged once more into blind flying through the heaving cloud.

  Twelve and a half hours had passed since she left Africa. She was down to her last petrol tank. And then, slowly, a glimmering yellow line appeared on the horizon. The lonely deserted sand dunes on the coast of Brazil, and the undulating ocean waves breaking on the shore. She saw a slight promontory where, if it were Cape San Roque, the north-eastern tip of Brazil as she believed, there should be a lighthouse. In silhouette, against the sandy background, she saw the wire framework of a red painted structure that held a fixed light. She had made landfall within half a mile of her calculations. She crossed a hill, and there was the town of Natal.

  An English couple, among the handful of mostly French people who greeted her, invited her to stay the night with them. Together they drove over rough roads into the jungle to a large house, surrounded by a beautiful garden, a riot of wild orchids and begonia, and the heavy, sweet scent of tobacco flowers on the evening air. Jean, at her hosts’ invitation, took a long bath, before appearing to join them for dinner in a white silk dress. They looked at her transformation in astonishment.

  ‘If you listen to the radio you might hear the announcement of your flight being broadcast from London,’ her host said, drawing a chair close to the radio. ‘It’s just about time for the news.’

 
The roar of the engine for so many hours had left Jean temporarily so deaf that she had to strain hard to hear the announcer’s voice. And then, there it was: ‘Miss Jean Batten completed her flight from England to South America by landing at the aerodrome at Natal, Brazil, this afternoon. Her total time for the flight from England was sixty-one hours, fifteen minutes, and this lowers by almost a whole day the record held by Mr James Mollison.’

  She learned, too, that no trace of Charles Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot had been found.

  WHEREVER SHE WENT, CROWDS GREETED HER. At Rio de Janeiro, she was presented with a brooch made of a large diamond set in platinum. The British ambassador drove her to the house of the President, where she was shown to a large cool room, with a highly polished parquet floor, brocade-covered furniture and walls hung with many mirrors and portraits in oils. An attaché wearing a dazzling white uniform embroidered with gold cord, escorted her into the presence of Getúlio Vargas, a dictator also known as ‘the father of the poor’, a man said to admire beautiful and glamorous women. He gave her a long look of appreciation. It was the wish of the Brazilian nation, he said, to confer on Miss Jean Batten, the decoration of the Order of the Southern Cross, in recognition of her flight, which had linked England with Brazil in the fastest time in history. Vargas took a green and gold leather case from the desk by his side. Inside it lay a gold cross with a centre medallion of blue enamel, on which were embossed in gold the stars of the Southern Cross. The cross was joined to a pale blue ribbon by a green enamel link representing a laurel wreath. After the insignia was pinned to her dress, she responded in Spanish, and Vargas gave a smile of pleasure, holding her hand much longer than was necessary.