Free The Infinite Air by Fiona Kidman

had trespassed, while Jean, sensing the atmosphere, was unwilling to upset her mother so soon after their reunion. She would have liked to run back and given Belle a hug, not that they were in the habit of touching each other.
    As they crossed the harbour, Jean said, ‘Did John get my letter?’ She hadn’t dared to ask about her father, although when Nellie had referred to Fred as her husband in the conversation with Belle, her hopes had soared.
    ‘Letter? Oh, I shouldn’t think so. John has gone.’
    This was how Jean learned that John was no longer in Auckland. Harold had reappeared but had been vague about his whereabouts. He had been working down south, building bridges, he told his father, who at some stage had passed this information on to Nellie. No, of course he hadn’t been in Australia, and yes, he saw that stupid thing in the newspaper because the man he was working for had told him about it, and to be honest, he could have wished for any name except Batten. He’d taken to calling himself Fred; he might as well get some benefit from the connection. In fact, he was going to adopt that name for good, seeing that it was his first given name anyway. Of course, Nellie still referred to him as Harold, which, she imagined, the family always would.
    Fred did tell her, over tea and cakes when they had met for what she described as a ‘civilised conversation’, that he had been worried by Harold’s apparent envy of the plan to blow up ships. It was something he might have done if he’d thought about it, but anyway, it wasn’t all bad because there’d been plenty of explosives used on the jobs he did, blasting rocks along riverbanks in preparation for bridge building. Fred had said that, really, he had no idea if a word of it was the truth. Not long after Jean had left Auckland for Birkdale, Fred had presented both his sons with fifty gold sovereigns and told them to go and find their fortunes in Australia. There was, he said, so little work to be had in New Zealand, they might as well go. For Jean, Harold had lost his substance, turned into a shadowy figure who had come and gone for years now. His presence wasn’t one she thought she would miss. But the disappearance of John shook her.
    ‘Well,’ Nellie said, as she recounted all this to her daughter, ‘I said he wouldn’t be able to manage those boys. Now he knows what I had to put up with. At least John came and said goodbye.’

    NELLIE AND JEAN HAD CHRISTMAS DINNER at a hotel where they were staying, just the two of them eating roast poultry and plum pudding. Jean was overtaken with longing for her father, but knew better than to ask further. He had found himself quite a fancy flat, her mother said. Trust him to fall on his feet, he always did. But over dinner, Nellie seemed in high spirits. They would shortly be moving to a house in Remuera, then Jean would start at her new school. In the meantime, she declared gaily, they would go to the races together and have a flutter or two.
    In the weekends that followed, they travelled often by train to the Ellerslie racecourse, where the crowds of people, mostly men, seemed immense. Nellie, in her finery, knew her way to the ticket window, a list of horses’ names and numbers clutched in her hand. She was familiar with foreign-sounding terms like quinellas and trifectas. It wasn’t clear how Nellie picked horses, but she often backed winners. A horse with a good eye and nice shoulders, she would say in passing. ‘A man I knew in Rotorua gave me some tips. Do you remember, Jean, the white horse we rode? Wasn’t it handsome?’ There were times when Jean was almost overcome, caught in a claustrophobic crush between the bodies of men leaning towards the fence in unison, their arms raised, voices hoarse, not seeing her, the rough tweed of their jackets against her face. They roared and waved their hats in the air, shouting and swearing as the horses thundered past. Nellie watched more quietly, but her cheeks