The Infinite Air (36 page)

‘Tell me then, when was your last flight?’

‘I flew back from Sweden, right at the outbreak of the war.’

‘Hmm, I see. That was over Germany. You must have been the last British plane to fly over Germany?’

‘Possibly.’

‘How on earth did you get permission?’

‘I had friends.’ She fell silent again, sensing that Fleming knew more about her than she did about him.

‘Oh, now who might that have been?’

‘Really, Fleming, my dear chap. Surely Miss Batten doesn’t have to be interrogated at the
dinner
table,’ Coward said.

‘Axel Wenner-Gren,’ Jean said carefully. ‘He was suspected of being a spy for the Germans. I didn’t know that at the time.’

‘Ah, Göring’s mate,’ Fleming said. ‘You know he lives in the Bahamas now?’

‘I haven’t followed his movements. They don’t interest me.’ Jean returned to her meal.

The conversation continued, while Jean picked around the tentacles of the octopus. If Fleming noticed his guest’s lack of composure, he made nothing of it.

Suddenly she asked, ‘Mr Fleming, who did you spy for?’

He looked at her and snorted what might have passed for a laugh, although there was a touch of contempt in it, too. ‘I’ve had Violet mix a special cocktail,’ he said. ‘We call it Poor Man’s Thing. Orange and lemon skins. A bottle of Three Daggers rum. In a minute she’s going to bring it through and set it alight. I’m sure you’ll like it, Miss Batten. Jean, you said I might call you Jean?’

COWARD WAS APOLOGETIC ABOUT HIS FRIEND FLEMING.
He had finished showing them around his own house, and they were settled in deep comfortable chairs. The fourth chair was occupied by a young man called Graham Payn. ‘What could I call this place, except Blue Harbour? Look at it, isn’t it magnificent? Well, blue horizon, blue harbour, we’re not meant to be original here. Mind you, Graham’s here to work, aren’t you? Graham’s got two new films coming up. He has to rehearse his lines. Don’t you, Graham?’

‘I am, I am, I’ve been at them all day.’

‘You have to practise. You can’t carry the script around when the action starts. I’ve written this screenplay with Graham especially in mind.’

‘How immensely fortunate to have a film written for you,’ Nellie said. ‘What’s it called?’

‘
The Astonished Heart
,’ Coward said. ‘I’m going to be in it myself.’

‘It’s quite gloomy,’ Graham said, frowning a little. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite me.’

Coward looked at his watch, and then at the door. ‘Graham, be a dear and fetch us some water please.’

Graham stood up in one quick, graceful movement. He wore a deep purple shirt and a gold bracelet. Jean noticed that Coward was wearing a similar bracelet.

Nellie raised her eyebrows slightly. Coward inclined his head towards her, as if to say that it was all right, it wasn’t catching. Or that’s what Jean thought.

‘Fleming will be joining us soon. He’s a good chap, really,’ he said, during Graham’s absence from the room. ‘He’s had a spot of bother. His little girl died shortly after birth.’

‘That’s dreadful,’ Nellie said. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Mr Fleming was married.’

‘He’s not. This happened some little while ago, you understand, but the trouble still raises its head.’

‘So — where is the mother of the little girl now? Is she all right?’ Nellie asked.

‘She hasn’t been well, but I hear things are improving. She’s at home in London with her husband. This is between us, you understand. But you might find the situation here a little unorthodox. You’re bound to come across Ann, that’s the lady’s name, if we’re all going to visit one another. Something I should like, by the way.’

‘Ann? It’s an ordinary enough name. Would we know her?’ Nellie asked.

‘She’s the Viscountess Rothermere. Before that she was Lady O’Neill. Her first husband was killed in action. Goodness knows who she’ll end up as, but I do think she’s rather set on Fleming.’ He put his fingers to his lips, motioning them to silence.

Fleming had appeared at the door, dressed as he was each time they had met him, in baggy pants and a loose blue short-sleeved shirt.

Graham returned, bearing a tall jug of iced water, floating with slivers of lemon.

‘Well, here we are all together,’ Coward said. ‘Sit down, Ian. We’re not having one of our edgy days, are we?’

‘I was reading a good book,’ Fleming said. ‘I almost couldn’t put it down.’ He sighed, and cast his eyes around the room. ‘Your collection of colonials is assembled.’

‘Now, now, that’s enough. I want you to be civil to my guests. Better than that, I want you to be nice. Graham is from South Africa, you understand,’ their host said, by way of explanation to Nellie and Jean. ‘Which reminds me, what’s happened to that brother of yours, Miss Batten?’

There was a silence that neither Jean nor Nellie was willing to fill. ‘Do you mean my brother John?’ Jean asked, finally.

‘Yes, of course. He did that rather good war movie,
For Those in Peril
. I hadn’t seen him acting in anything for years.’

‘We don’t hear much from him,’ Nellie said. ‘He joined the navy as a dental mechanic. We heard he served on the
Achilles
.’

‘With distinction, I gathered. And then they released him to do the movie.’

‘He seems to live his own life,’ Nellie said.

Coward gave her a curious look. ‘Well, I suppose his divorce was inevitable. I mean to say …’

‘Madeleine was a flighty girl,’ Nellie said stiffly.

‘We used to bump into him from time to time, didn’t we, Graham? I gather he’s gone back to New Zealand.’ Coward looked at the two discomforted Batten women, with a faintly apologetic, or was it amused, expression, and changed the subject. Had Fleming been writing any articles today, he wondered aloud.

Ian Fleming looked weary, his gaze not leaving Jean’s face, his expression impenetrable. He shook his head.

After dinner, Coward asked Jean to play his piano, and accompany Graham while he sang. They produced sheet music, mostly of Coward’s own songs, and finished the evening all singing ‘London Pride’ together, even Fleming.

‘I sometimes wish we could go back,’ Nellie said. ‘We had such a nice time in London, didn’t we, Jean? Before the war.’

The fragrance of frangipani was heavy on the air as they took their leave, the petals glimmering in light falling from the doorway as Coward and Payn bade them all goodnight.

IN THE MORNING, JEAN DROVE TO GOLDENEYE,
parked behind the house and walked around to the front verandah. It was past eight. Fleming was sitting with a mug of shaving water beside him, lathering
his face. His expression darkened when he saw Jean.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘I don’t have sex before breakfast.’

‘That’s not what I came for.’

He completed the lathering, took up a razor and began shaving. ‘You see,’ he said, stopping between strokes, ‘I have my rituals in the morning. I go for a swim out to the reef at seven. I come back and I shave. Then I have my breakfast in the garden. In a minute, Violet will bring me some paw paw and scrambled eggs, and coffee. I like to do this in isolation, except for the company of the birds. You see the humming birds out there? I like to watch them. I feed the kling klang. If I wanted company I would find it for myself. What do you know about the kling klang?’

‘The black birds that come to the garden? I don’t like the sound they make, it’s very shrill.’

‘Not if you feed them nicely. I like the blackness of the kling klang. I like birds.’

‘So do I. They tell you when land is close when you’re far out at sea and believe yourself lost. I’ve studied birds, too, Mr Fleming, more than you might believe.’

‘Oh yes, the aviator, I almost forgot. Birds of the air. You haven’t always been rich and idle, Miss Batten.’

‘Rich? You call me rich. You have no idea.’

‘Of what? You weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth?’

‘If you call living on three pounds a week in London, year after year, rich, well that’s over to you. To tell you the truth, people around here make me sick. If it’s silver spoons in the mouth, you were all born with them welded into your fillings.’

Suddenly he laughed. ‘Oh that’s quite a nice line. Do you want to have breakfast with me?’

When they had finished eating and Violet had cleared up, with a flounce and raised eyebrows at the sight of Jean, he took out a cigarette. ‘Why don’t you like men?’

‘Because they die. Every man I’ve ever got close to has died.’

‘So that’s why you won’t go to bed with me? You’re afraid you might kill me off.’

‘You have no idea what it’s like.’

He leaned forward. ‘I know about death, in the same way you know about birds. More than you think. I’m willing to take a chance.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no.’

‘I’d like to sleep with you. You’re a bit past your prime but I think you could still make it a pleasant enough pastime for both of us. I could whip you if it would make you feel better about all those dead blokes. I like whipping women.’

She stood up. ‘You’re disgusting. I have to go.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you came.’

She took a deep breath. ‘The Swede. Axel Wenner-Gren. I knew nothing about his connections with Germany. I swear that.’

He tapped another cigarette on the table, his fourth since her arrival. ‘We decided he probably wasn’t a Nazi agent anyway. What does it matter now?’

‘What does it matter? I lost everything, every last thing that I valued. There was nothing more to hold onto.’

‘You got paid for your plane.’

‘It didn’t bring it back.’

‘Buy another one.’

She clenched her fists. ‘Stop it. Just stop.’

As she got into her car, he called out to her. ‘Let me know if you change your mind about anything.’ She saw his face behind the flame of his cigarette lighter.

THE WAR. IT WAS STILL THERE, BEHIND HER EYES
some mornings when she woke. The war where she never truly belonged. She believed herself patriotic. When she made her speeches she had spoken about the ties of empire, which she had helped to foster.
The King and Queen had received her as if she were a friend. It was no time to abandon her country, but her country seemed to have abandoned her. She turned to the French, whom she was sure would find a role for her. The Anglo-French Ambulance Corps ran a mobile hospital in France, staffed by some British doctors and nurses. The French did indeed welcome her, and she was soon wearing their uniform, driving ambulances in Britain, in preparation for being mobilised to France. Before that could happen the German army had over-run France and that door was closed behind her. She found herself working in a munitions factory in Poole in Dorset, inspecting the guns that were used on Spitfires. Her twelve-hour days on the assembly line began at 7.30, six mornings a week. At nights, pieces of plaster from her bedroom walls fell around her ears during the German bombing that Poole suffered night after night. When she had leave, she retreated to the Hertfordshire countryside, where Nellie was now living. She would be waiting with whatever nourishing hot soups her ration cards could run to, pressing her daughter to go to bed and sleep. While Jean slept, she sat beside her bed and watched.