The Infinite Air Read Online Free PDF Page A

Auckland.’
    ‘How did you do that?’ he asked in wonder. When she didn’t reply, he grabbed the torch from her. ‘You monster, you’ve been in my room, haven’t you?’ And Jean, laughing and exultant, rolled away in the grass, crying, ‘Beat you.’
    John jumped up and ran into the house to tell his mother that Jean had been sneaking around, looking at his things. But when the crime was described to her, Nellie seemed pleased with Jean, not angry at all.
    Fred worried about the swing he had improvised in the back yard, suspended from the branch of the pepper tree. Jean swung higher and higher, becoming increasingly reckless. He implored her to let him replace the swing with something stronger, but she told him, ‘I’d rather use this one. It’s lighter, don’t you see, and the angle is just right.’
    When he appealed to Nellie, she said that Jean was a tomboy right now, and she thought she would continue whatever they said. Fred threatened to remove the swing, but Jean took little notice. The sensation of soaring towards the sky was so exhilarating that she couldn’t stop, even when she glanced down and the earth seemed a long way away. She simply waited until Fred was out of sight and resumed her aerial games.
    Still, in spite of her dismissive tone to Fred, Nellie kept an anxious eye out the kitchen window.
    There was talk of war in the air, but nobody believed it would happen.
    Fred still took part in army manoeuvres, on stints of duty for his Taranaki regiment, but what was happening in Europe was so far away from New Zealand, it was impossible to think that anything could make a difference in Auckland. Then the Austrian ruler, Archduke Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated, and all of a sudden the torch was lit, the proclamation made. Britain was at war, and so was New Zealand. ‘There’s nothing for it,’ Nellie cried, her eyes blazing. ‘Of course we should follow the mother country.’ Fred was standing very tall by the breakfast table, his fists clenching and unclenching.
    Harold looked gleeful, as if he could already see himself on his way to fight, no matter that he was still a school boy. He and Auckland Grammar didn’t agree on much; in fact the school would be more than ready to see the back of him. Nothing they could put their finger on, just that he was a disruptive influence in every class, and he had a menacing tongue. Some of the boys were afraid of him, and the ones who weren’t came off worse when they did resort to fists.
    ‘Thank God,’ Nellie said suddenly, ‘none of you will have to go.’
    ‘What sort of talk is that?’ Fred said, shaking his head vigorously.
    ‘I mean …’ Nellie’s voice trailed away. ‘It’s all very well, war, isn’t it? But I couldn’t bear to think of you going away.’
    ‘I’ll have to,’ Fred said. ‘It’s duty, Nellie. One does one’s duty.’
    ‘You’re too old, Fred. Don’t you see?’
    Fred didn’t say a word, just turned and walked out the door.
    The city began to empty of young men. Troops dressed in khaki marched through the streets, hemmed in on either side by cheering crowds. Fred was thirty-five, and nobody expected him to join up. Don’t be ridiculous, Fred, Nellie repeated whenever the subject was mentioned. Fighting was for the young and fit. Still, Nellie watched him anxiously for any sign of a sudden move.
    For a while there was a run of young men getting their teeth fixed before they went overseas, paid for by their parents, or, more often than not, having all their teeth pulled and replaced with artificial ones so that they wouldn’t have trouble while they were away. Sometimes Jean was allowed into her father’s surgery when he was working in theevenings making dentures. The porcelain teeth sat in rows in small flat containers, gleaming like polished fingernails. Fred would pick them out delicately between tweezers, fixing them one after another into the gum that would fit inside someone’s mouth. Jean