Preservation Read Online Free PDF Page A

glamorous woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn’t get enough of her; and yet she suddenly slipped out of view, disappearing to the Caribbean with her mother and dying in obscurity in Majorca, buried in a pauper’s grave.

    Fiona Kidman’s enthralling novel delves into the life of this enigmatic woman, exploring mysteries and crafting a fascinating exploration of early flying, of mothers and daughters, and of fame and secrecy.



CHAPTER ONE

     
    1934. The young woman, in a sleeveless white silk dress, stood at the window of a small apartment gazing out over the warm organic colours of Rome, its ancient earth and stone. It was evening, and across the roofs of buildings she saw another woman sitting at a window, level with her, looking out as she did. This other woman sat quite still most of the time, reading a book perhaps, for she glanced down at her hands now and then as if turning a page. She wore her hair in a chignon, and from the poise of her shoulders, Jean guessed that she was one of those elegant older women whom she saw making their way to the shops in Trastevere. Jean wished that she would look up, give her a wave, although perhaps that would be considered improper here in Rome. Just some acknowledgement would have satisfied her. She longed for her mother at this moment; the stranger had the same familiar imperious tilt of the head.
    The apartment where Jean Batten stood was the home of Jack Reason, secretary to the air attaché in Rome. The walls were pale and sun lit up the room during the day. Otherwise, it was a plain place with little ornamentation beyond a vase or two, a pretty enough rug and some light raffia furniture, as if the owners were used to shifting house often and everything they owned could be easily transported to some other posting. It had surprised her at first that in spite of the ancient buildings beyond, and the difference of the city, she was surrounded by the odours of tobacco and talcum powder, bacon fat and disinfectant — the smells she and her mother had been accustomed to in London, in cheap, temporary lodgings.
    The trouble had begun in Marseilles, on the first day of theflight. Just a year before she had destroyed a plane in Baluchistan, a plane that had not belonged to her. That had been misfortune, she believed, pure and simple, but this time there was no avoiding it had been her fault.
    The Gipsy Moth had ended up squatting in a field of grass on the edge of the Tiber, its undercarriage shattered, the wings crumpled. As she had glided through the night, with only a torch to show her the way, twisting and weaving, like a firefly in the night, she had somehow avoided tall wireless masts on each side.
    It had been after midnight when she was taken to the Pronto si Corso, a Red Cross station of sorts. The petrol tank had been empty, but then it had been for some time, and that should not have happened. How could she have been so utterly stupid? How could she have failed her mother, whom she loved more than her life, and who had given her so much? But that didn’t bear thinking about. That was the dark bird perched on her shoulder, the haunted dream that made her cry out in her sleep some nights, the creature she had to kill. Her mother knew the bird was there, and only her mother could drive it away. But she was not here, she was in London, waiting to hear that Jean had made the next stage of her journey. What she would receive in the morning was news of a disaster, one that could have been so easily averted, had Jean but listened to the men in Marseilles. Perhaps it was the city of Marseilles itself, unpredictable and dangerous, full of seafarers and gypsies, because she had not wanted to stay in the old port town for a night. But that was not true. She was scared by very little on the ground, it was only in the immensity of the air that she sometimes understood danger. And that was what had driven her on, the need to