Authors: Nevil Shute
He shook himself, and went to bed, troubled and depressed. It was his duty to protect himself, his crew, and his machine against anything that the British might do in the first angry shock. But now, whatever they might do, he felt he would be sorry for them.
Next day was Saturday, the day before Christmas Eve. Normally he would have given the crew Saturday and Sunday off, but he had arranged to have them at the hangar that week end. He was at the hangar as usual at half past eight; at ten o’clock he got a telephone call from Frank Cox asking him to come to London, to St. James’s Palace.
He went into the office in Engine Court an hour later. Frank Cox was waiting for him, and he closed the door carefully behind the Australian. “They’re leaving for Canberra on the evening of Christmas Day, Nigger,” he said. “Is that going to be all right with you?”
The pilot nodded; everything that he had heard in the last few days had led him to expect this. “We’ll be right,” he said. “What time do they want to go?”
“What time is best for them?”
“Any time would suit us,” David replied. “Do they want to stop in Colombo?”
“Not this time,” said the Group Captain. “They owe Ceylon a visit, and they’re planning to go there for a fortnight or three weeks in February. But she’s altogether too tired now for that. She wants to go straight through to Tharwa and rest there for a time.”
The Australian nodded. “Allowing an hour for refuelling at Ratmalana, if we took off at nine o’clock, after they’ve had dinner, we’d get to Canberra about four in the morning. I told her that once before, and it’s probably the most restful way for her to tackle it. But we can take it any way she likes.”
Frank Cox said, “She’s doing her broadcast at three in the afternoon, as usual. She’s going to speak for about twenty minutes. Philip wants to get her away fairly soon after that. Not immediately, but fairly soon. How would take off at six o’clock suit you?”
“Suit me all right,” the pilot said. “We’d refuel at Ratmalana about breakfast time and get to Canberra about one in the morning. It would be dark then, of course. We couldn’t have the fighter escort that they like to give her.”
“She doesn’t want it, Nigger. Not this time. She doesn’t want any ceremonial at all. She’s a very tired woman.”
David nodded. “It might be rather a good thing for us to put down at one in the morning,” he remarked. “Not many people will turn out at Fairbairn in the middle of the night.”
“No. I’m seeing Philip this afternoon, and I’ll suggest take off at six o’clock on Christmas evening. Now, how little notice do you have to give your crew?”
“How little?”
“Yes, for security. It’s very important that nothing of this should leak out before.”
The pilot stood in thought for a minute. “I’d like to have Shell check our fuel again before the flight,” he said. “Pump it all out and pump it in again, like they did before. If they start on that on Christmas morning they’ll be finished by dinner. I could warn the crew then, and send them back to get their gear. That’s enough notice for them.” He paused. “There’s the food, of course.”
“I’ll see to the food.” The Group Captain stood in thought for a minute. “Too bad if anything happened to the crew,” he said. “Could you send them all round together in a truck, with two or three of your Australian ratings with them? Let them go to each man’s lodgings in turn?”
David nodded. “I’ll think up something on those lines. Leave it with me, sir. I’ll have the machine and the crew in readiness for take off at six o’clock. We don’t have to tell them before dinner time.” He paused. “Luggage at about five-thirty?”
Frank Cox nodded. “I’ll be having the whole party assemble at the Palace with their luggage. Send it all down together.”
“How many in the party?”
“Identical with the last Canberra trip. Eight persons and myself.”
“Miss Long coming this time?” He could not resist that.
“Oh yes—she’s coming.”
They talked for a little longer about the practical details of the flight, and then David took his leave. As he was going out of the door, Frank Cox said, “Oh by the way—have you seen
The Sun
?”
“No.”
The Group Captain turned to his desk, and opened the paper in the middle. There was a very large picture of
David, looking rather annoyed, striding down a Maidenhead pavement to fetch his car. Underneath was the caption, “WHERE WOULD HE BE GOING TO? Wing Commander Anderson R.A.A.F. of the Queen’s Flight.”
David looked at it in silence for a minute. “Not much secrecy about our movements now,” he said.
“I know,” said Frank Cox wearily. “But we’ve got to go through the motions.”
In Engine Court David hesitated, irresolute, wondering whether to ring up Rosemary and try to make a date with her for dinner. In the end he decided to leave her alone; with only two days to go she would be working at top pitch and an interlude with him would only upset her at a time when she could not afford to be upset. He took a taxi from the bottom of St. James’s to Shell House and found an official in the Aviation department keeping watch over the holiday, and through him he arranged for the work down at White Waltham upon Christmas morning.
He drove down to the aerodrome and warned the crew for a day-long inspection of the aircraft on Sunday. That day they worked from morning till evening, Christmas Eve, and found nothing wrong. They left the Ceres all night guarded by the sailors, and on Christmas morning they returned for the work of emptying the fuel, analysing it, and refuelling.
At midday the Shell employees drove away in their empty tank waggons to a belated Christmas Day, and David assembled his crew in the fuselage of the aircraft, with the door shut. “We’re going home this evening, boys,” he said. “Take off at six o’clock, with the Queen on board, via Ratmalana.” He told them of the arrangements he had made for them to collect their gear. “I want the truck back here by a quarter to three, and after that nobody’s to leave the hangar.”
Flight Sergeant Syme said, “Can we listen to the Queen speaking, Cap?”
He nodded. “There’s a radio in the office. We’ll listen to it all together there.”
That afternoon they assembled in the bare, utilitarian little office in the hangar, seven young men and one girl, in the dark blue uniforms of the Royal Australian Air Force. Outside the office, the silver bulk of the Ceres loomed immensely, fuelled and ready for flight. The young men stood or sat upon the edge of tables, grave and serious, aware that they were to hear something very important, not knowing what it was.
The radio boomed out the striking of Big Ben, the announcement was made, and the familiar voice began to speak to them, stumbling a little now and then from sheer fatigue.
By the time she had finished, Gillian Foster was in tears.
A
T five o’clock they pulled the Ceres out of the hangar with the tractor, swung her round, and ran the engines. They shut down after a short trial, satisfied that everything was in order, and David sat on in the pilot’s seat for a time, his mind running over the machine searching for anything that might have been neglected, any inspection that had been left undone. Below upon the tarmac the Australian sailors had been thrown round the machine in a cordon, to prevent anybody from approaching it in the darkness.
An airline bus from B.O.A.C. came to the hangar presently, a device adopted by Frank Cox to avoid notice. He was travelling in it himself with all the passengers except the Queen and the Consort, and with all the luggage. David went down to meet them, and watched Ryder as he superintended the loading of the suitcases into the aircraft. He said a word or two to Dr. Mitchison and to Macmahon, and suggested that they get into the aircraft out of the cold wind. Then he turned to Rosemary.
“You’d better get in, too,” he said. “You’re looking very tired.”
She said, “I’d like to stay out here for a few minutes. It’s fresh here. I’ve been cooped up in the office for so long.” She paused, and then she said, “You heard the broadcast?”
“We heard it all together in the hangar here,” he said. “It was very moving.”
“Was it a surprise to you?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I knew more or less what was coming. I don’t think any of the boys did, though.”
“How did they take it?”
“You mean, about Tom Forrest? They thought it was a grand idea. But they’re Australians, you see, and we’re used to having a Governor-General. I don’t think it matters how they took it. It’s how the British are going to take it that’s the important thing.”
“I know.” She stood for a minute bareheaded, letting the clean, cold air blow through her hair, refreshing her. “I believe the people of England are adult enough now to realise that it’s necessary,” she said. “They certainly weren’t when she came to the throne, thirty years ago. Daddy says they’ve changed a great deal in her reign, since he was a young man.”
“It was a marvellous speech,” he said. “Who wrote it for her?”
She sighed. “Everybody,” she replied wearily. “Lord Marlow wrote one and the Consort wrote another. And then Tom Forrest had a talk to Daddy, and he sent in one that was practically pure Daddy—every word of it. Major Macmahon had a go at putting them all together for her, and then old Sir Robert Menzies wrote her about three thousand words from Melbourne, some of it quite good. We’ve been working at it for a fortnight, Nigger. I must have typed it fifteen or twenty times. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, over and over again, and found myself repeating bits of it.”
He pressed her hand in the darkness, and she smiled up at him. “It’s over now,” he said. “It’s a marvel that such a fine speech could be made up out of so many bits and pieces.”
“It wasn’t,” she replied. “She scrapped the whole lot on Sunday morning, and sat down, and wrote it in her own words, in her own handwriting. After that, she wouldn’t let anybody change a thing. I typed it out from what she wrote on eleven quarto sheets of notepaper, and there wasn’t an alteration or an erasure in the whole of it.”
They stood there in the darkness, hand in hand. “You were right about Tharwa,” he said presently. “Right about it being kept open, I mean. She’ll only have been away about three weeks.”
“I know. It’s better for her to be out of England now, and see what boils up under Tom Forrest. Some of the Labour back-benchers will be furious.”
“With her?”
She looked up quickly. “Oh—no. With the Government. With Iorwerth Jones.” She paused. “A good bit of it leaked out yesterday, and there was a lot going on behind the scenes. But it was too late then.”
“I see …” He knew too little of the British political scene to venture any comment. All he said was, “Tom Forrest’ll have quite a bit to do.”
She nodded. “
He
won’t care. He’s speaking on the radio on Wednesday night.”
“Do you know what he’s going to say?”
She shook her head. “If he says all that he put into her draft speech, he’ll start something. And he’s quite capable of doing it. He’s a fan of Daddy’s.”
A chilly December wind blew in a sharp gust round about them, and she drew a little closer to him. “You ought to get inside,” he said gently. “You’re very tired, and you’ll catch a cold if you stay out in this. When you get out of the machine it will be warm and sunny, with all the flowers out. Remember the courtyard of the Canberra Hotel?”
She nodded. “I hate leaving England,” she said in a low
tone, and he bent to catch her words. “But this is an end to all the backward glances and irresolutions. This is the end of something that began in 1867, when a lot of generous idealists gave one vote to every man.”
He led her to the aircraft and up the steps into the cabin, and Gillian Foster took charge of her and took her to her seat. David went down again on to the tarmac and glanced at his watch; ten minutes to go before the Royal car was due. He walked underneath the engines, vaguely uneasy, and stood looking up at each of them in turn. It was quite unusual for him to have the needle before a flight; he had flown so often and so far that he was long past that. Everything had been inspected and everything was right, but he was troubled by an anticipation of danger. The tyres, perhaps. He walked over to the great wheels and passed his hand over the treads, from the ground in front to the ground behind, standing upon tiptoe to reach the topmost point. The tyres were perfect, as with his intellect he had known they were. And still he had the sense of danger strong upon him.
He walked over to the gangway where Frank Cox was waiting for the Queen, and stood with him. Exactly at six o’clock the lights of the big Daimler appeared upon the road outside. It stopped at the sentry post where the naval officers were waiting for it, and then came on, and drew up by the aircraft. The two officers stood at the salute as the Queen and the Consort stepped out.
The Queen said good evening to them, and walked to the gangway; Frank Cox escorted her up into the aircraft. The Consort stopped for a moment and spoke to David. “Where did all these naval officers and ratings come from?” he enquired.
“They’re from H.M.A.S.
Gona
, sir. She’s in Portsmouth now.”
“Did you produce them?”
“I asked Vice-Admiral O’Keefe for them. They’ve been here a fortnight.”
“They’re all Australians, are they?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Perhaps that was wise. Thank you, Wing Commander.”
He went up the steps into the machine, and David followed him. Jim Hansen, the steward, closed the door behind them, and David went forward to the cockpit to join Ryder. Frank Cox came forward in a minute. “Take off in your own time, Captain.” David nodded, and started the inboard engines.
Ten minutes later they were on the climb, heading rather to the east of south upon a course for Cyprus. They flew through layer after layer of cloud in the darkness, till finally they broke out into moonlight and clear skies at about twenty-two thousand feet over northern France. The pilot sat motionless at the controls as the machine climbed higher, still troubled and uneasy in his mind, with the sense of danger strong upon him still. He was one quarter Aboriginal, not wholly of a European stock, and in some directions his perceptions and his sensibilities were stronger than in ordinary men, which possibly accounted for his excellence in flying and for his safety record. That evening he sat at the controls with the unease growing stronger in him every minute, and when at last they reached their operating height and levelled off to cruise, somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Constance, he handed over the control to Ryder, and went aft.