Читать книгу Girl with Wings - Jennifer Bradley - Страница 14

Chapter Eight

Dad went off to the meeting in the truck straight after dinner and Jessica helped clean up; not very efficiently and not with good grace. Finally, her mother sent her off to her room to do her homework. She hoped to stay awake to talk to her father when he got back, but fell asleep long before.

The next morning she rushed down to breakfast early, hoping to find out everything that happened. Her father came in, dressed but not yet shaved, and rubbed his whiskery face across her cheek.

“Oh give over, Dad. What happened last night?”

He yawned. “Let me get my breakfast and then I’ll tell you.”

Mum came over to the table with bacon and eggs for both of them. “Sit down and eat. I don’t want any of this getting cold.”

But Jessica had had enough of things being put off. “But I want to know now.”

“And so you shall,” Dad put a crisp forkful of bacon into his mouth and chewed it. “Well, it was a meeting and all meetings are boring so I’ll tell you the interesting bits. Yes, Narromine now has its own aero club. Mr Tom Perry’s the president and Mr Bowden Fletcher is Secretary.”

“What are you, Dad?”

Dad swallowed a piece of toast with egg before replying. “I’m going to be a member of the committee. And you, Jessica Mackay, are the first junior member.”

“Oh, does that mean I’m not a real member?”

“No, it just means you’re under 21. I thought it’d be a good idea, and there are certain to be other youngsters in the town who want to join.”

“Oh.” Jessica decided to finish her own breakfast while she thought about things.

In a few minutes, however, Dad began to talk. “There’s this other thing, though, Jess, that you’ll like. They’ve decided to plan an air pageant for next year, probably in autumn. But there’s a catch. They don’t want to set a date until there’s more rain. This drought’s left the ground rock hard and there’s less money around. But everyone’s praying for rain so maybe we’ll be lucky.”

Jessica dropped her fork onto her plate and raced around the table to hug her father, knocking his toast onto the floor.

“That’s enough, Jess,” said her mother. “It’s time you got ready for school.” As Jessica began to dance out the door, her mother added, “ … when you’ve cleaned up the mess you just made on the floor.”

Jessica had no idea what happened in school that day as her head was full imagining an air pageant. She doodled a leather helmet onto her page in English, dripped ink from her pen over her geography book and drifted off into a vision of herself piloting a shiny biplane. Even being kept in at recess did not bother her. All she could think about was the air pageant.

Her mother was less impressed that afternoon when Jessica was weeding the vegetables, pulling out a few young carrots that were far too small to eat. “For goodness sake, Jessica, could you pay some attention to what you’re doing?”

“Sorry Mum.” Although she tried to concentrate, she still pulled a few more young plants out before her mother gave up and sent her in to change for dinner.

Over the next few weeks, she calmed down and her excitement over an air pageant died down as the drought continued and no one wanted to agree to anything until there was rain. But she still talked to her father about what she could do.

“Well, for a start, you can help me. I’ve got to organise people for the gate and to guard planes overnight.” That sounded very uninteresting. Jessica imagined herself as the famous girl pilot, helping passengers into the back seat of her plane, flying them in loops above the town, winning air races and acclaim as the youngest pilot in the whole world. She saw herself as master of the tiny monoplanes and biplanes, with their fragile bodies and clacking engines. And this air pageant was just the beginning.