In the Wet (16 page)

“One of the bits of information that one picks up and remembers,” she said. “I’m a woman, so I take more interest in that than you would.” They smiled. “I did History at Oxford.”

“You went to Oxford, did you?”

She nodded. “I was at Somerville.”

“Did you get this job from there?” he asked. He wanted to find out how old she was.

“Not quite,” she said. “I did a course of shorthand typing and then got a job in the Foreign Office. I was there two years, and then I heard there was a vacancy in the Secretaries’ office, and I went to see Miss Porson, and I got it.”

His guess had not been very far from the mark; she would be about twenty seven. He asked, “Is your home in London?”

She shook her head. “My father and mother live outside Oxford, at a place called Boar’s Hill. He’s a don at New College.”

“Do you sail every week end in the summer?” he asked.

“Whenever I can get away,” she said. “I spend one
week end in every four on duty at the Palace. I get Monday off instead. I generally go home those week ends, and come up on Tuesday morning. I’m usually at Itchenor for the others, in the summer, or else out with Uncle Ted.”

“It’s dinghy sailing at Itchenor, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “I’ve got an International fourteen footer down there, that I race with another girl, Sue Collins.” She hesitated. “We were very lucky in the crash,” she said. “We didn’t lose quite all our money. We lost most of it, but not quite all.”

“The 1970 crash?”

She nodded. “Most people I know lost everything.”

“Was it as bad as that?” he asked. “I was a boy, of course—I’ve only heard about it vaguely.”

“It was bad,” she said. “Most people had a little money saved in one form or another up till then—insurance policies or something, but after that I don’t think anyone had anything. I don’t remember it personally—I was too young. But it was very bad.”

“What caused it?” he enquired.

“I think it was the emigration,” she said. “When people began emigrating it was all right at first. But then when four or five million people had left England there began to be an empty house in every street, and when that happened houses weren’t worth anything, any more. Before that, people used to buy their houses—that’s the way they saved money. Well, then house property went down to nothing, and that money was all lost.” She paused. “Office buildings, too—they weren’t worth anything, with empty offices everywhere. It ended in a general financial crash, and everyone lost all their savings.”

He nodded slowly. “I don’t think we’ve had anything like that in Australia,” he said.

“I don’t think you have. You’ve been very lucky.” She
smiled at him. “The funny thing is, I don’t think it hurt anyone very much. Everyone was in the same boat, and the houses were still there, and most people’s jobs were still there, too. It meant that the government had to take over all the buildings in the country, of course, or they’d have fallen down for lack of maintenance. That’s why practically every house and office building in the country is government owned today.”

“Is that the reason?” he enquired. “I wondered about that. I thought it was just Socialism.”

She shook her head. “Actually, I think it was the second Eden Government that did it.”

“Are any houses being built in England now?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s been a new house built in England for the last ten years.”

“We seem to be doing nothing else,” he said. “New houses going up everywhere.”

“Can anybody build a house?” she asked.

“Why—yes, if you’ve got the money.”

“How much does a new house cost?”

“An ordinary, three bedroomed, small house costs about four or five thousand pounds. That’s built in weatherboard, of course.”

“What do you have to do to build a house?” she asked. “How do you get the land?”

He glanced at her. “You just buy it.”

“Just like that? Buy it from somebody that owns it, himself?”

“That’s right.”

“And then pay a builder to build the house?”

He nodded. “If you haven’t got the money you go to a building society and borrow part of it. You’ve got to have
some
money.”

“Can ordinary people save enough for that, out of what they earn?” she asked.

“I think so,” he replied. “I’ve saved about two thousand pounds since I joined the Air Force.”

She stared at him, amazed. “Two thousand pounds! But how much do you get paid?”

“As a Wing Commander, with allowances, I get about eighteen hundred a year,” he said. “That’s two thousand seven hundred sterling, in your money.”

“But that’s half as much again as Frank Cox gets!” she exclaimed.

He grinned. “I didn’t know that, but I guessed it.” He paused. “It’s a pity, but that’s the way it is. It’s mostly due to the depreciation of your pound.”

“You’re earning more than double what a Member of Parliament gets in England,” she said. “I had no idea Australian officers were paid like that.”

“Our members of the House of Representatives get about four thousand, I think,” he said. “You see, it’s a whole time job with us, and if you want first class men to run the country you’ve got to pay a first class wage.”

“Ours is a whole time job, too,” she said a little sadly. “But we don’t pay Members of Parliament like that.”

He did not answer her, repressing the comment that came quickly to his mind. They sat sipping their coffee in silence for a time, and smoking. “It must be rather fun having a new house, that nobody’s lived in before,” she said at last. “You can have it built just as you want it, I suppose?”

“Of course. Most people build their house when they get married. They have great fun planning it, when they get engaged.”

“People do that, do they? Build a new house and get married into it, and start off with everything clean and fresh?”

He nodded. “A lot of people do that. The parents usually help with the cost of it.”

“Because the young man hasn’t saved up enough money?”

He smiled. “Give him a chance. We marry a good bit younger than you do here.”

“How old are people when they marry in Australia?”

“Oh—I don’t know,” he said. “I think they marry younger than they did when I was a boy. The average young man can afford the expenses of a family by the time he’s twenty four, I think. I’d say that was a likely sort of age.”

“And the girl about twenty?”

“I suppose so. I don’t really know.”

She smiled at him. “It didn’t happen to you?”

“It’s a bit different with me,” he replied, “because of the colour.” He grinned at her. “I get the money instead.”

“I don’t believe that’s anything to do with it,” she said. “You just keep that as an excuse.” She paused. “I suppose that explains why your population’s going up so fast, if people marry so young.”

“I should think so,” he replied. “Most families I know seem to have four or five children.”

They sat in silence for a minute. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a new house,” she said at last. “I was just trying to think. I suppose you can have all the modern built-in furnishings and ventilation that you see in American magazines, if you build a house for yourself.”

He glanced at her. “You
must
have seen a new house!”

“I suppose I have,” she said. “I must have as a child. I can’t remember one, though.”

“Haven’t you seen them abroad?”

“I’ve only been to France,” she said. “It’s the exchange difficulty, of course. I think I’ve seen new houses there.”
She turned to him, smiling, “I suppose this all sounds terribly insular to you.”

“Different,” he said. “All my life, I seem to have been on the move. It’s like that, when you’re in a bomber squadron. I’ve never been in South America or Russia, but I’ve been to most of the other countries. But one airstrip’s just like another, and one Air Force station like the last. I don’t think I know half so much about the world as you do, sitting here in London. I mean, what makes it tick.”

“I expect you do.” She paused, and then she said, “I believe I’m going with the Queen to Canada.”

“On this next trip—next month?” She nodded. “That’ll be fun for you. You’ll be going in Sugar, with Jim Dewar.”

She nodded. “It’s not quite certain. But Lord Marlow’s getting a bit old and he’s not got over his operation yet. The Queen said he’d better stay and hold the fort with the Prince of Wales, and she’s taking Major Macmahon as secretary. Miss Porson has worked for Lord Marlow for forty years. She’s very fit—you’d never think that she was fifty nine. Miss Turnbull comes next, and she’s going with Major Macmahon, and Miss Porson’s staying with Lord Marlow and Prince Charles. They want another girl to go to do the donkey work, and Miss Porson asked if I’d like to go with Miss Turnbull.”

“That’s fine,” the pilot said. “You’ll have a wonderful time.”

“I’ll have a lot of hard work at my typewriter in offices where I don’t know where anything is,” the girl said practically. “I’ll be glad if it comes off, of course, because one should get
some
time off. But it’s not in the bag yet. It’s got to go before the Queen.”

“I shouldn’t think there’s much for you to worry about,” he said. He glanced at her, and as she was looking at the
stove he let his gaze dwell for a minute. She was pretty and dignified, and thoughtful, and efficient and self-effacing; he could not imagine a better member for the Royal party. It was a pity, he thought, that this was going to be Dewar’s trip.

Time to go, if he was thinking things like that. He put his cup down, and got to his feet. “I’d better be off,” he said. “I’ve got to get down to Maidenhead, and I don’t want to be late.”

She got to her feet with him. “Why don’t you come round to Itchenor in your boat one week end and have a go in my fourteen footer?” she suggested. “They’re good fun to sail.”

“Can I anchor there?” he asked.

“Moorings,” she said. “We can fix you up one way or the other. You might have to lie alongside another boat.”

“I’d like to do that,” he replied, and he was suddenly unreasonably happy. “When are you going to be there?”

“Not this week end,” she said. “I’ll be on duty. I’ll be going down there to the club next Friday night—Friday of next week.”

“We shan’t be back from Canada,” he said. “We’re taking Sugar over on this trial flight. Dewar has timed the take off for ten o’clock on Thursday morning.”

“How long will it take you?” she asked.

“To Edmonton? About seven and a half hours, I think. There’s eight hours’ time difference, so we’ll get there about the time that we took off, and have lunch there, and get on to Vancouver in the afternoon. We spent the next night there, and Friday night at Ottawa, and land back here sometime on Sunday morning.”

“Do you know all those places?” she asked curiously.

“I’ve never been to Edmonton. I know Vancouver and Ottawa.” He paused. “It’s a pity about that week end,” he
said. “Will you be going down to Itchenor again! I’d like to have a go on your fourteen footer.”

She turned to a calendar on the mantelpiece. “I’ll be down there the following week end,” she said. “After that I’ll probably have to lay her up, because of going to Canada.”

“Can we make a date for that one?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Still smoking with the velocity of your flight from Canada.”

“We’ll have had a week to cool off,” he replied. “We’ll have to, because I believe the Queen’s coming to inspect the Flight on the Wednesday after we get back.”

She nodded. “That’s right. She’s looking forward to that very much. She’s been talking a lot about the machines.”

“Will you be coming down with her?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I shall be typing in the office. You can tell me about it at Itchenor on Saturday.”

He moved towards the door. “I’ll do that. Thanks a lot for all you’ve told me, Rosemary.”

“Got all you want to know?” she asked.

He nodded. “I think so.”

“That’s fine,” she said, “because I haven’t told you anything. Good night, Nigger.”

“Good night, Rosemary,” he said.

A
WEEK later, the Queen’s Flight took off from White Waltham for Edmonton upon the training flight arranged. They went in the Canadian Ceres with Dewar and his Canadian crew in control, carrying Group Captain Cox in charge, and with David and his crew of Australians as interested passengers. They took off punctually at ten o’clock G.M.T. and climbed to fifty thousand feet in the first hour, leaving the rain and the clouds far below them. They levelled off at their cruising altitude somewhere over Northern Ireland; an hour and a half later Reykjavik in Iceland was abeam and some two hundred miles to the north. They crossed Greenland from the east coast in the vicinity of Angmagsalik and went on across the Davis Strait to Baffinland. They had a meal as they passed over the north end of Hudson Bay, and here there was no cloud and they looked down with interest at the passing panorama of deserted land. Navigating by Decca and by radio bearings they had little need for landmarks, but they identified the east end of Lake Athabasca and started to lose height. An hour later they came on the circuit of the aerodrome, well known to Dewar, and put down upon the runway at a quarter to ten, local time, a quarter of an hour earlier than their time of take off from White Waltham.

This was the first Ceres that had visited Edmonton, and a
small crowd of pilots and R.C.A.F. officers gathered around it on the tarmac. David turned his Australians on to servicing and inspecting the machine with the Canadian crew, relieving the Canadian officers a little and enabling them to show the aircraft to their friends. No announcement had been made of the flight to the Press; they refuelled untroubled by reporters and photographers, and lunched in the R.C.A.F. mess. The Press caught up with them ten minutes before take off for Vancouver and Frank Cox made a short statement and submitted to be photographed in front of the machine with the Canadians. Then they were in the air again and climbing to forty thousand feet to clear the Rockies. An hour and a half later they put down at the R.C.A.F. aerodrome at Vancouver, and spent the night upon the station there.