Girl with Wings

by Jennifer Bradley

  “About 128 miles per hour, but you’re not going anywhere near that fast.”

  “Pity.”

  Mr Butler laughed. “Now just hold your horses, we’re off.” She recognised the sound of the engine. De Havilland had used a Gipsy engine, modified from the Moth. Discretely, she felt the skin of the body. It was fabric, which was still the lightest covering they’d come up with for planes. Even with metal in the frame, it felt flimsy.

  The plane shuddered slightly as it began to lift off, then everything became smooth and light. The ground seemed to retreat, rather than the plane rising from it. It was smoother than the Gipsy Moth and felt more powerful, gaining height much faster. Mr Butler began a wide circle around the town, swooping over Argyle Station, so Jessica could wave at her family, all out watching. Then he lifted the nose and the engine roared as he took the plane up above a few swirling clouds. Suddenly Jessica could see nothing, and the world went silent. Eerie, she thought. It was like being buried in cotton wool.

  As they rose above the cloud, the glare caught Jessica by surprise. She was glad of her goggles. She could see nothing below except cloud. More than eerie, it was a bit scary, as though the world had disappeared. She was relieved when the plane dived down through the cloud and she could get her bearings. There was the Macquarie River, there the main street with its palm trees and that way was north. Good. Around a second time he flew, higher and higher, a special treat for Jessica. They hit a warm air pocket and the plane bucked slightly, before ascending smoothly again.

  Nevertheless, it seemed no time at all when Mr Butler set the nose downwards and slowed for landing. Down, down, engine drone, bump and then the roar of the engine as it was brought to a stop. Sudden and complete silence. “How was that? ”

  As Jessica climbed out, she grinned at him, “Right, Mr Butler. Now all I’ve got to do is learn to fly one. Oh, and thank you, thank you.”

  “Thank you too. Don’t forget to tell me when you’ve got your licence and you can take me on a joy flight.”

  Jessica laughed at him. “Surely, after my family, you can have the first flight.”

  Chapter Twenty One

  Jessica was so engrossed in her thoughts about the visit of Charles Kingsford Smith, that she missed the strange atmosphere around the house. Eventually Billy asked her, “What’s going on?”

  “No idea,” said Jessica but decided she should find out. By asking. “What’s up, Mum?”

  Mum blushed. She murmured something incomprehensible. Jessica snorted. “Right Jess, this is just for your ears. Do not tell Billy. It’s your Aunt Velia ... ”

  “My Aunt Velia what?”

  “She wants to marry Mr Gibson.”

  Was that all? Jessica couldn’t see a problem. Families got into knots over things that were totally unimportant. “So, why is that making you all whisper in corners?”

  “Grandfather doesn’t approve of Mr Gibson.”

  “Why not?”

  “Um, says he’s not her type of person.”

  Jessica laughed. “Oh, dear, and can I guess what’s wrong with him? He came here as a swaggie, sometimes he drops his aitches and his ‘gs’ and he didn’t go to Grandfather’s school.”

  “Something like that.” Mum gave a wry smile.

  “Silly old buzzard. He’s a good man, Mr Gibson and he’s had a hard life. He’s a great carpenter and a good gardener and if he married Aunt Velia, he could stay here forever.”

  “I’m sure your grandfather will cave in at that argument. But he’s still used to deciding Velia’s future.”

  “Can’t she tell him to go jump?”

  “For goodness sake, Jess, be realistic. Velia’s never said no to him in her life.”

  “Then maybe she should start now.” Jessica headed off to her room, calling out as she began to climb the stairs, “And I’m not going to be a bridesmaid. Or a flower girl. She’ll have to have Elspeth.”

  And she would leave her parents to deal with it all. She had her flying to think about.

  For the next two days she bored everyone with tales of Smithy, Air Commodore Charles Kingsford Smith. She had all the details pat, from the time he returned to Australia after the War and began to fly with West Australian Airlines, through the purchase of his Bristol (‘which could carry two passengers’) to his long distance flights in the Southern Cross.

  Her father sighed. “Jess dear, could you give us a break, please. I really do know about Smithy. I’ve been following him for years.” Everyone followed Smithy. He was the great hero of Australian aviation, with his pioneering flights: around Australia, across the Pacific, across the Atlantic, non-stop across Australia, across the Tasman, England to Australia. He’d been keen to set up an airline and invested in Australian National Airlines, which flew between capital cities.

  The previous year, however, the Southern Cloud, one of the five Avro X aircraft owned by ANA, had crashed somewhere between Sydney and Melbourne, with pilot and eight passengers. The wreckage had not yet been found and flying, a luxury for most people, was now seen as a risk. Now Smithy was travelling around Australia, drumming up interest in flying and earning money for whatever he planned next.

  Jessica was not the only one eager to meet this great Australian hero. The townsfolk were used to aeroplanes and to famous pilots landing at their aerodrome, refuelling and flying off again, or occasionally staying longer. But fond as they were of most of them, none had the fame of Smithy, who was almost a member of the family.

  When she saw him, she was surprised. He was shorter than her father and fair, and if you met him in the street you probably wouldn’t have looked again. But when he spoke, Jessica saw the light in his blue eyes, like a beacon to adventure, and she realised why he had captured the nation’s imagination and their hearts.

  He came to Narromine with two planes, the Southern Cross and the Southern Cross Midget, his two brothers, another pilot and a couple of mechanics. Everyone had heard of the Southern Cross, the Fokker in which Smithy had flown across oceans and continents. The Midget was a smaller Avian. Smithy was keen to take people on joy flights and Jessica knew she simply had to fly in his Southern Cross rather than the smaller plane. It was big, towering over everyone on the airstrip. For the record making flights, it had carried two pilots, a navigator and a radio operator. So, with one pilot, it could carry three passengers.

  To fly in the Southern Cross would mean that she had sat where Smithy or Ulm had sat when they set records that were written into history books. The thought sent a shiver of excitement through her body and her stomach began to roil. She wasn’t nervous, she just couldn’t wait.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Jessica, her father and Billy went up together. She had expected that flying with Smithy would feel completely different from anything she had done before, but at first it didn’t. The plane was larger even than Mr Butler’s, but it lifted off the same way. The engine even sounded similar, if louder, and the view from the air was the same she had seen several times.

  But it was different! She was flying with Smithy … Smithy! Half the children in Australia and many of the adults wanted to do this, but she was the one sitting where famous airmen had sat on record breaking flights. That made all the difference. She would remember it when she was a very old woman.

  Smithy was a wonderful pilot and he handled the plane with the expertise she expected. If she shut her eyes, she could feel herself on one of those dangerous flights, across the Atlantic, plotting the route, trying to find a small island from a map that was vague and inaccurate. She watched Smithy as he handled the controls, almost as though he could do it without thinking. The plane responded as if it were a part of him. Smoothly it rose, dropped, banked, turned, took off and landed. One day she would like to be even half as good as him. Even a quarter!

  When the plane came to a stop, Jessica could hardly bear to climb out. She wanted the experience to go on forever, to spend the rest of her life sitting in the Southern Cross with Smithy at the controls
, copying him, learning from him. This flight had, she decided, marked an epoch in her life.

  Even if Smithy had taken up hundreds of people in joy flights, she could still say “I flew with Smithy” and everyone who hadn’t would envy her.

  She wrote those words in capital letters in her diary, adding ‘in the Southern Cross’. She did not go to the dinner and dance held in his honour that night, so she missed out on some of his news, which her father brought home.

  “He’s planning another attempt to break the England-Australia record,” he said. “When someone suggested that he’d done enough and could rest on his laurels, he laughed and said he’d done little enough. Then his brother told the newspaper editor that, at the end of next year, Smithy is going to attempt a new undertaking, something so novel that he wasn’t allowed to divulge details.”

  “Um,” said Mum, watching Jessica’s open mouth. “That’s like those movie serials, with the heroine being tied to the railway line at the end of an episode. We’ll all be watching and waiting to hear what it is.”

  “Maybe, but he also said that Narromine had the best aerodrome in the state.”

  “That’s hardly new,” Jessica commented.

  Dad added that Smithy looked very tired and had a long way to go to raise the money he needed for his next venture, whatever it was.

  Smithy’s visit was something of an anti-climax for Jessica, despite her thrill at flying with him, and she puzzled over why. She didn’t see herself as someone who worried over her own reactions all the time. She saw herself as a person of action. She usually didn’t agonise over her feelings. She just felt them.

  After a couple of days, she realised that she’d been a passenger in planes several times, she’d helped fix them, she’d been part of the Aero Club’s work. And now the time was here when she really — really — wanted to fly one herself. Flying with Smithy was the ultimate in being a passenger and now she’d done that, so it was time for her to be a pilot.

  The next time she turned up to help Mr Grahame, she asked, “Mr Grahame, when we’ve got this one ready for flight again, will you teach me to fly it? Please?”

  “Girlie,” (she’d never managed to cure him of that after all) “you’re still too young for real lessons and I’m not properly qualified.”

  “But couldn’t we make a start? You could let me take over in the air for awhile. I know it’ll take ages before I can take off and land or handle spins but I really, really want to know how it feels to take the controls.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, handing her a screwdriver so she could tighten a couple of screws on the wing that had been broken.

  Which meant, she thought, NO. Adults could be a real pain sometimes.

  That night, when she was talking with her father about flying lessons — not letting on she’d asked Mr Grahame to help her — he told her a story about a pilot who used to give lessons in Narromine a few years before.

  “Let’s call him Fred. He had a Gipsy Moth with dual controls, which meant there were two joysticks. One in the back and one in the front, for the pupil.

  “When the pupil was ready to go solo, Fred had this trick. He’d unscrew his joystick and throw it over the side of the plane, then wave at the pupil and tell him the plane was all his and to go for it. Lots of people got to know about this trick and one day, one of the pupils sneaked an extra stick onto the plane.” He paused, grinning.

  “And then what, Dad?”

  “Well, when the plane was right up in the air, Fred did his usual. Waved the joystick at the pupil, grinned and then with a typical flourish, he threw it over the side. The pupil nodded back at him, gave him a thumbs up, appeared to unscrew his own joystick and held it up with a return grin. Then, copying Fred’s flourish, he dropped his over the side as well.”

  “What did Fred do?”

  “Panicked. Panicked and panicked again. Probably swore. The pupil just smiled and grasped his original joystick, screwed in right where it ought to be, but Fred couldn’t see that. It took Fred a while to realise he’d been tricked as at first, the pupil made the plane swerve and drift. Fred thought this was because there was nobody in control and then he realised that the particular moves could not have been caused by drifting. By the time the pupil landed, Fred was scarlet, with all sorts of emotions I guess.”

  “But did he keep doing it? Throwing the joystick over the side?”

  “They didn’t tell me.”

  “I hope no one ever does that to me.”

  “As teacher or pupil?”

  “Either, but I’ve got to learn to fly first. Would it be all right if Mr Grahame let me try the controls some time?”

  Her father appeared to give it some thought. For Jessica “trying the controls some time” was inevitable and Mr Grahame was as careful a flyer as any he knew. “As long as it’s just a try, Jess.”

  Mum entered, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Jess, isn’t it time you were giving Elspeth her riding lesson?”

  “Yeah, Mum. I’m just going.”

  “Good and use the correct word please — yes, rather than that awful yeah.” Mum never missed an opportunity to correct her speech. It was really annoying. Elspeth loved her riding lessons, so teaching her was not an unbearable duty … or hard work. She loved horses as much as she loved her kittens and was surprisingly good with them. Cabbage seemed to think she was wonderful, whickering with delight whenever she came near and he never shied or bucked when she was on his back. So Jessica’s mind wandered as she kept only one eye on her sister. She thought about the tale of Fred and the spare joystick, and wondered when she would get a chance to try one out — in the air, rather than on the ground.

  “Jessica! You’re supposed to be helping. Not dreaming. So help!”

  “Yes, your majesty.” Elspeth could be a bossy little madam sometimes, but she was becoming a very good rider.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  “Did it feel all right?” Jessica asked Mr Grahame as he climbed down from the Gipsy Moth. Today was the plane’s first time in the air since the tornado. The wing had been tested on the ground and the plane checked and filled and oiled and every screw and strut had been given the once over at least twice. Now Jessica and the other occasional helper, Johnny, were the proud audience for its trial flight. They couldn’t go up in her — even as passengers — until Mr Grahame was satisfied that everything was in tiptop condition.

  He considered, one foot on the ground. “Seems to be. I couldn’t feel a shudder or anything different about her. She’s as well balanced as she ever was and the engine’s as sweet as a nut.” Jessica and Johnny grinned at him, looking expectant. “Just give me a bit more flying time, and then you can take turns to come up with me. All right?”

  Neither was surprised. Mr Grahame was always cautious. He never checked something once, always two or three times. He never set off in the Gipsy Moth without checking everything that could possibly be checked. So when he said the Moth was ready to fly, they could be sure he meant it. They watched him take off and land twice more that day and then helped him store the plane.

  “Now, Saturday, be here early and you can both go up, right? And, if you’re good, I’ll let you take the controls for awhile. But only while everything’s going smoothly. Right?”

  “Who’s first,” asked Jessica, always keen to have such things clear.

  “We’ll flip a penny when you get here.”

  “Right.” Jessica did want to be first, of course. Johnny didn’t really care about being a pilot. He just wanted to work on their engines, so she should really be first. They walked over to Argyle Station together, and Jessica’s mother gave them both milk and Anzac biscuits before Johnny was collected by his father in the market garden truck. Billy came in just as he left. “That your little Chink boyfriend?” he asked, quickly grabbing all the biscuits left on the plate just in case anyone else thought they could get in first.

  Jessica’s mother came in as he was cramming two biscuits into his mou
th at the same time. “Billy, one biscuit at a time please. Now did I hear you right? I will not have you use words like ‘Chink’ in my house.”

  Jessica butted in, her face screwed up in fury. “Boyfriend? Him? You must be kidding. He’s not even a friend, let alone a boyfriend.”

  “So Sis, who’s your boyfriend then?”

  “Don’t be childish, I haven’t got one. I’ve got far better things to do with my time than to moon around after boys. Besides, they’re all like you. Infantile, ha!”

  Jessica’s mother followed her to her room with a pile of clean clothes ready for Jessica to put away. “I know Johnny’s not your boyfriend, Jess. But I think he could do with a friend. The Lees have been here since soon after the gold rush, but they’re still treated as foreigners.”

  “I don’t hate him. He’s all right, I suppose. He helps me with sums. And he’s much better with the engines than I am. It’s sort of instinctive with him and it takes me much longer to learn things.” Her tone of voice was less positive then the words.

  “So, you’re a bit jealous?”

  Jessica didn’t reply, but when she thought about it later, she supposed her mother was nearly right. But she’d say she was envious rather than jealous. She just wished it was all as easy for her as for him. But for a boy, she supposed, Johnny wasn’t too bad and she could talk to him about planes. Perhaps they were almost friends.

  The next Saturday, they were at the aerodrome even earlier than arranged. Mr Grahame pulled out a shiny penny — probably one of the ones he was rumoured to use for Two Up on Anzac Day — and flipped it into the air. Jessica chose heads and Johnny tails, which duly showed up on top. Jessica wished it had been different but flipping the coin had been fair, so she had to put on the face of a ‘good sport’, even when she felt disappointed and — this time — jealous of Johnny. He would have the first opportunity to try flying and it wasn’t fair. He didn’t care about it as much as she did.