The Infinite Air (11 page)

Freda had money, as she usually did, and had ordered tea, a plate of sandwiches and a cream puff each.

‘We’ll get fat,’ Jean said, then watched in astonishment as Freda’s eyes filled. ‘Only joking, you’re skinny as can be.’

Freda was devouring the food as if it were her last meal. Cream and jam glistened on her lip. Even so, Jean couldn’t help noticing the beautiful curve of eyebrows, how perfectly she had applied her make-up. ‘You’re not to tell anyone? Jean, you promise.’

‘What’s not to tell?’

‘I thought you might pick it. I’m in the family way. Jean, don’t look at me like that.’

Jean reached out across the table and gripped her friend’s hands in hers until Freda pulled them away. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘People will stare at us.’

Something had happened that Jean couldn’t imagine. Sex, the longing and desire that people had for each other, none of it seemed to have done much good to anybody she knew. It didn’t make sense to her. A dull ache of shame flooded through her, as if she were guilty of some nameless misdemeanour. When Freda had teased her and egged her on to try out the forbidden, she had thought it a joke. But Freda did know.

‘Who’s the father?’ she asked at last.

‘You sound just like my mother. “Oh, the shame of it.” I’ve been hearing that for days. Well, I should be relieved it’s not your mother, she’d be kicking up a worse stink if it were you. Look, it doesn’t matter who the father is.’

‘You’re not going to tell me?’

‘Of course not. I’m not telling anybody.’

‘I don’t understand. Are you getting married in Australia?’

Freda said, ‘I’m getting things fixed up over there. I’m not going to have the baby. I thought perhaps, well, I thought maybe that’s why you’d been to Australia.’

‘Is that why you wanted to talk to me?’

Freda gestured helplessly. ‘Well, you could have told me what they did to you.’

Jean stood up shakily, brushing crumbs from her skirt. ‘As if you would think …’ She stopped, put her hand over her mouth.

‘Well, it seemed surprising. No, of course I wouldn’t think it of you.’ After a moment in which they stared at each other, as if they had never been friends, Freda said, ‘Goodbye, Jean.’

‘You’ll come back?’

‘I don’t know. I might die there, mightn’t I?’

‘I think you’re being dramatic.’ Jean was aware how cold she sounded. It wasn’t how the words were meant to come out, but they did. She walked away as quickly as she could.

MONTHS DRAGGED PAST WHILE KINGSFORD SMITH
and his witnesses were interrogated before the Air Inquiry Committee. In the end he was exonerated, and Jean awaited the outcome with dwindling hope for her own chances. When the outcry, for and against, began to subside she approached Fred again, hoping he would relent and pay for her flying lessons.

‘Don’t you understand the meaning of the word no?’ he said. ‘Look at this thing in Australia. Death and disgrace. If I’d known your mother was taking you to see Kingsford Smith I’d have put a stop to it, I can tell you.’

‘You introduced me to him.’

‘The bigger fool me. I didn’t know what a shyster he was.’

‘He was cleared. He wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

‘That’s enough, Jean.’ He sounded weary of her. ‘Get back to work on your music. You’re not paying attention to what’s important.’

‘Well …’ She hesitated.

‘Well what?’

‘If I’m going to be a concert pianist, perhaps I need more experience. I’ve gone as far as I can with Miss Law. I really need to go to England.’

‘That’s a nice idea. A good dream. A better sort of dream. Not something I can afford.’

‘I can see that, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ve been wondering if perhaps I should sell the piano. It would pay for our fares. Mother would have to come with me, of course. I wouldn’t know where to start without her.’

CHAPTER 11

JEAN CAME TO THE CAVES, NEAR WAIPU,
in the heat of summer before leaving New Zealand. This was where Harold now lived, high on a hill, along a dirt road winding through bush. He collected her from a bus that travelled north out of Auckland, over a mountainous pass opening onto far-flung islands lying in an indigo sea. The small town consisted of a straggle of low buildings along either side of the main road. Harold was dressed in ragged overalls, the bib done up in a loose knot over a checked shirt, the hair touching his collar as dark as Jean remembered it, teeth gleaming in his tanned face. He led her to a flat-deck truck, its tyres bare to the tread, not unlike Belle’s vehicle at Birkdale. They set off, Harold blaring his horn at hens that strayed into his path. He pointed out landmarks — the store at the crossroads, a high, bare house standing back from the road. A tall, slender woman dressed from neck to ankle in black, hair scraped up into a severe bun, was sweeping the verandah. ‘They reckon she’s a witch,’ Harold said. ‘Never talks to anyone.’ Further on, as they moved inland, they passed low-lying farmland, and a river that coiled its way through paddocks of grass and late buttercups. Trees pressed in against the speeding vehicle; it bounced from side to side, leaves whipping the windscreen, stones flying through the air and smacking the glass as they approached another curve. This road led to underground caverns, and fields of limestone rocks with scant blades of grass between them.

The house where Harold lived with his wife, Alma, and their children overlooked a limestone quarry that Harold had developed. This was what he farmed — rocks. Grey-blue rocks that he blasted from the reluctant earth, setting detonators among the gullies. He and
his men ran lines of cordite to the gunpowder that would explode and bring slabs of the limestone crashing down. Harold’s love of explosions had come into its own. The sound of the detonations shook the air as the truck approached the farmhouse, the lime crusher silhouetted against the sky rattled and echoed around the canyons, the engine was a continuous whine, as the clouds of pale dust swept towards them. To Jean it looked like a scene from a hell. Her brother’s darkened face gleamed with an unholy joy, laughter on his lips as he took in her astonishment.

She turned to him, and something about his glee was contagious. ‘Harold,’ she breathed, ‘this is amazing, the most wonderful place.’

‘I reckoned you’d like it.’

‘It’s so dangerous.’

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘A man could die up here in the wink of an eye. Or a sheila.’

His accent had roughened, his vowels mirroring his wife’s Australian twang. Going by a photograph on the mantelpiece of their wedding day, Alma had been a slim, pretty girl then. Broken Hill, she came from, hard mining country. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it all before. But already she was weathering into motherhood, her waist spreading beneath her apron, her hands raw from boiling napkins in the copper, an art Jean would soon learn. As Jean came to know her she would notice an anxious shadow lurking in her expression that never seemed to entirely disappear.

The house was square, three bedrooms, a kitchen that also served as a sitting room, a lean-to where the copper and a tin bath were sheltered and a verandah — more a shelf where Harold could stand and keep an eye on the quarry than a place to sit and contemplate.

‘You don’t mind sharing with one of the kids,’ Alma said, more as a statement than a question, as she introduced the children who clung to her knees. There was another one in a cot. She eyed Jean’s canvas bag with some suspicion. ‘We’re not fancy here,’ she said. ‘We kill our own beef, there’s ripe plums on the tree if fruit’s what takes your fancy. And we share our bath water. No sneaking water. You can
go down the road to the river if you want your own bath.’

‘I understand.’ Jean knew she was being tested to see how much she would accept without demurring, to see whether Harold should turn the truck around and take her back down the winding road.

‘She talks flash,’ Alma said to her husband. ‘She sounds like a Pommie.’

Jean smiled at her. ‘I like it here. I’ve brought licorice all-sorts for the kids. And some cigarettes.’

Alma’s face softened. ‘Ah, those won’t go amiss. I hear you play the piano.’

‘That’s right,’ Jean agreed.

‘The folk down the road say you can tickle the ivories there if you want while you’re here,’ Alma said. ‘There’s a lot of Scots people round here. Most of them came via Nova Scotia. They had hard times. Then there’s the ones that followed their families out from the old country. They keep themselves to themselves until you get to know them. But they all like their music. They’ll take to you if you’re any good.’

Her voice was drowned out by another reverberating roar. ‘Work to do,’ Harold said. ‘Morning until night. I’ll bet our mother wouldn’t have let you come up if she’d known what goes on here.’ His face cracked into another strange gleeful smile.

‘You’re right,’ Jean said. ‘Mother wasn’t so keen.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘So why did she send you?’

Jean busied herself with picking up her coat and bag as if to put them away. ‘She had some business to do with our father. It was his idea that I come.’

‘That figures. Tearing strips off each other as usual. So how is the old lady then?’

‘Don’t talk about our mother like that.’ Jean felt she was always defending one or other of her parents.

They left it there. Jean helped Alma around the house, wiping the children’s snotty noses, rinsing out their handkerchiefs before she put them in the tub, scrubbing grass stains from their shorts. The food was
as Alma had described it: meat with threads of yellow fat from beef cattle they killed on the farm, potatoes that were surprisingly sweet, fresh from the ground. It pleased Alma that the children followed Jean on her walks. These children were her nephews, her flesh and blood, not like the children at Birkdale that she had ignored. She taught them how to make whistles with blades of grass, stretching the blade between thumb and forefinger and blowing on them, the way Fred had shown her when she was a child, and to do cat’s cradle.

This was how the summer passed, among the threadbare rocks, with occasional trips to the township and calls on the neighbours. On the far side of the town, the people took their religion with great seriousness. Harold and Alma didn’t visit there. Along the Caves road there was a mixture of families who drank beer and smoked and swore. Someone, although she couldn’t be sure who, because nobody ever said, had a whisky still: moonshine. The people spoke a mixture of English and half-remembered Gaelic, and late at night they sang. She didn’t understand the songs and didn’t offer to play their pianos. After one of these nights, they would drive back up the hill, Harold and Alma in the front, Jean and the children on the tray of the truck. Later, when she heard Harold’s rough shouts of lovemaking, Jean would roll over and put her fingers in her ears.

It wasn’t until she was invited to the McLeans’ house, in the area known as North River, that she had the opportunity to play. This was a family known for its industry. Their daughter, Kathleen, was a quiet young woman, a little older than Jean, although she had vivacious, dark eyes in a tanned face, her body fine-boned and sinewy from working around the farm. She could have been a dancer, too, the way she carried herself.

‘Why don’t you stay the night?’ she said, late one afternoon. ‘We could play cards and have a bit of a singalong.’ Jean was caught up in Kathleen’s enthusiasm. Besides, it was a long walk back to the caves at this hour.

After the meal, the family gathered around the piano. Jean played some Chopin to polite applause, then Kathleen and her parents took
it in turns to play the piano and sing old songs from Scotland. They didn’t stay up late; there were cows to milk in the morning. Kathleen dropped into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. Jean lay under her eiderdown and listened to the even breathing in the other bed, and to the rustle of the North River night, to the sound of moreporks calling and pukeko in the swamp near the river. This was friendship of a different kind to any she had experienced, warmhearted and uncomplicated. She soon fell into a pattern of practising at the McLeans’ place, and staying overnight. On one of these visits she and Kathleen rode along North River Road towards the little township.

As they came near to the house where the woman in black lived, Kathleen reined in her horse. ‘This is my Aunt Kitty’s place,’ she said. ‘We’re going to collect some butter. She’s famous for her butter.’

‘You mean the witch?’ Jean saw at once, by the look on her friend’s face, that she had said the wrong thing.

‘Kitty’s no witch,’ Kathleen said. ‘She simply prefers her own company. What’s the harm in that? You wait until you taste her lemonade.’

When they arrived at the house, Kitty immediately came out on to the verandah, her face lighting up with pleasure at the sight of her niece, as she gestured for them to sit down.

‘You’ll have to speak up,’ Kathleen said. ‘My aunt is a little deaf.’

Jean found herself tongue-tied with embarrassment, having spoken as she had.

‘Jean wants to know why you live by yourself,’ Kathleen said, laughing at her friend’s red face.

‘Aha, everyone wants to know that. What did you say your name was, girlie?’ She put her hand behind her ear.

‘Jean Batten,’ Jean shouted.

‘No need to shout. I’m not in the habit of discussing my affairs with outsiders.’

Jean dropped her head.

The woman’s voice softened. ‘You’ve got a bonnie face, lass. It’s like this, you see.’ She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘When my
parents died, Kathleen’s grandparents, you understand, I wasn’t of a mind to leave. I missed them a lot. I still do. We came from Gairloch in Scotland. You could say I never really got used to the ways of people here.’

‘Thank you.’ Jean felt that she was being honoured, despite the woman’s strangeness, or perhaps it was just reserve. The lemonade Kitty had given them was very good indeed, cool and freshly made.

‘You see,’ Kitty continued, ‘the months passed and then the years. I like the sea out there, and that big macrocarpa outside my bedroom window. I used to be able to hear it scratching at the window, but I can’t now. Still, I know it’s there.’

When Kathleen had collected the butter, Kitty withdrew soundlessly, without bidding them goodbye, almost as if they hadn’t been there at all.

Kathleen said quietly, as they rode on together, ‘In a funny sort of way, she’s my inspiration. I want to get married some day, but not until I’ve done my nursing training. When I look at her, I know it’s possible to be happy without rushing off and marrying the first person you meet.’

‘But she’s never married anyone,’ Jean protested.

‘I guess she just didn’t meet the right person. I’ll know when I do.’

ONE DAY, NOT LONG BEFORE JEAN WAS DUE TO LEAVE,
the children took her to see the mouth of the caves, picking their way through boulders, the bush hacked away around them. They weren’t allowed to go into the caves, they told her, just to show her where they were. In the side of the hill, the first cave arched over a shallow riverbed. To the children it was just a hole in the ground, and soon they ran off, chasing a rabbit with a stick. When they were out of sight, Jean moved closer into the mouth of the cave. An unearthly stillness surrounded her. The interior was like a magnet, a darkness she wanted to enter. She shivered. Beside the river ran a ledge of
rock. She crawled down the bank and stepped onto the ledge.

Harold’s face appeared above her. ‘I told the kids not to go in there,’ he said.

‘I’m not one of the kids.’

‘You’re not to go in.’ He stood silhouetted against the sky, menacing above her. She drew a deep breath. Harold had got the better of her when she was a child but she decided on an impulse that it wasn’t going to happen now.

‘I’ll do what I like,’ she retorted.

‘Christ, wait for me then. I’ll get a light from the truck.’

He came back in a few minutes, a torch in his hand. ‘You know you’re going to get wet through.’