In the Wet (26 page)

David and Ryder stayed in their seats in the cockpit while Frank Cox ushered the Queen and Consort from the aircraft to face the battery of still, movie, and television cameras, to meet the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Leader of the Opposition, and to inspect the guard of honour. Finally they drove away in state in an open car to the Royal Residence at Tharwa, hiding their fatigue and bowing and smiling to the crowds that lined the road. The rest of the party left the aircraft then and drove away in cars, but there was no rest for the crew of Tare. They had to face what the Canadians had faced at Ottawa, because this was Australia’s own aircraft that Australia had presented to the Queen, flown by Australians and bringing the Queen to Australia for the first time. The Australian Press were out to make the most of it, and David had first to face the cameras and the microphones to make a little speech, praising the aircraft and explaining that the delay at Christmas Island, in Australian territory, had not been due to any mishap or defect, but because the Queen had wanted to visit one of the Line Islands as a part of her policy of getting to know the smallest portions of her Commonwealth.

The welcome went on for hours. Every member of the crew in turn had to go before the cameras and the microphones, and mostly they were eager to do it, knowing that their wives or girls or parents would be proud to see them on the screen in their home town. All the members of the
crew had friends among the R.A.A.F. squadrons stationed on the aerodrome and many of them had relations in the crowd, so that people were in and out of the machine all afternoon inspecting her in every detail. The cabins of the Queen and the Consort were kept locked, on David’s order; he felt that there were limits to the display that could be allowed.

Finally at about five o’clock they put an end to it and cleared the people out. The Ceres was taxied to the far end of the aerodrome and put into the hangar of the Queen’s Flight under guard, to be refuelled and inspected in the morning. David and Ryder drove in an R.A.A.F. car to the Canberra Hotel, where rooms had been reserved for them.

The Royal party were divided between Tharwa and the Canberra Hotel, while the aircrew were accommodated at the aerodrome. Macmahon and Dr. Mitchison were at Tharwa; Frank Cox and David and Miss Turnbull and Rosemary were at the hotel, a pleasant, rambling collection of single storey buildings radiating from garden courtyards bright with flowers. David had a shower and changed his clothes, somewhat tired, more by the welcome to Australia than by the flight from Christmas Island. Presently he went out to look for the rest of the party; sitting in a long chair in the verandah round the garden court from which his corridor radiated, he found Rosemary.

“Hullo,” he said. “Are you here, too?”

She nodded. “I’m in the next corridor. I saw you come in, so I waited for you here. It’s a very lovely place, this, Nigger.”

He was delighted that she should have waited for him, and sat down beside her. “You like it?”

She said, “It’s so beautiful. Nobody ever told me that Australia was beautiful, like this.”

He smiled. “I don’t know that we’re very good at
propaganda. I love it, of course. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But then, I was born here, and it’s my country.”

“Is all Australia like this?” she asked. “All the habitable part?”

“I think Canberra is better than most of it,” he said. “It’s fairly high up, for one thing, and it’s got a good rainfall. All the eastern coastal strip grows flowers like this, of course—or it could do, if people planted them.” He paused. “The middle’s very dry, but bits of West Australia are lovely.”

“Big bits?”

“About as big as England.”

She laughed. “It’s so difficult to realise what distance means in a country like this.”

He nodded. “I hope the Queen will go and spend a few days in West Australia this time. She hasn’t been there for three or four years.” He turned to her. “Have you seen Tharwa yet?”

She nodded. “I drove out there with Major Macmahon this afternoon, to fix up the office. There’s a car calling for us each morning at nine o’clock to take us out there.”

“How did you like Tharwa?”

“I only saw a little corner of the house,” she said. “I just got a glimpse of the gardens and the lawns. It’s a really lovely place, David. Do you know who designed it?”

“They had a prize competition, about 1959 or 1960,” he said. “A chap called Somerset who lived at Wangaratta won it—quite an unknown architect in a small country town. He got the right idea, didn’t he?”

“I should say he did. It’s lovely—simple and dignified. And it fits the landscape so well. Did he do a lot of buildings in Australia?”

“He was just a house designer up till then,” the pilot said.
“He only did one thing after Tharwa—the Town Hall for Port Albert. That’s the port they ship the brown coal from, in Victoria. Port Albert Town Hall’s rather like Tharwa. He died before it was finished.”

She asked, “What happens up in the mountains behind Tharwa?”

“Nothing very much,” he said. “A few sheep stations in the valleys. Some timber cutting in the forests. Trout in the rivers, and ski-ing in the winter.”

“How far does that sort of country go?”

“Behind Tharwa? Oh, three hundred miles or so. Then you’d come to Melbourne.”

“And not many people in all that country?”

“Not many.” He changed the subject. “Have you got any idea how long we’re going to be here?”

She shook her head. “She’s got the Governor-General coming to lunch at Tharwa tomorrow. Apart from that, there don’t seem to be any engagements yet. I think she’s just resting, trying to make up her mind about something.”

“You’d say we’d probably be off within a week?”

“I should think so, David, but I really don’t know. I don’t suppose she even knows herself. I shouldn’t think she’d want to be away from England very long.”

“Africa, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Could we do that direct?”

“We can make Cape Town from Perth,” he said. “It’s just about the limit of our range. Durban would be easier.”

“I think she may want to go home direct from here,” the girl said.

“Too bad,” he replied. “I had hoped that we’d get enough time here for you to travel round a bit. Sydney’s a good city and so is Melbourne. And I’d like to show you just a bit of Queensland.”

She turned to him. “David, have you got any relations here?”

He grinned at her. “You mean, Aunt Phoebe?”

“Besides Aunt Phoebe.”

He shook his head. “We’re all Queenslanders. I don’t think any of my people live so far south as this. My father and my mother are both dead, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve got a brother who makes shoes in a Brisbane factory,” he told her, “and my sister Annie’s married to a chap who keeps a garage in Rockhampton. I’ve got an uncle who keeps a silk shop in Townsville—my father’s brother. That’s about all there are of us—there are plenty more, of course, but those are the important ones.”

“I suppose they’d be thrilled to come down here to see the machine and meet you.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I was asking just now how long we’d be here. Uncle Donald would come down, I know.”

“We may hear something tomorrow,” she replied. “I’ve got a kind of feeling that she won’t stay very long, and she’ll want to get back straight from here to London.”

They dined with the others, and went early to bed.

There followed three days of waiting for the crew of Tare. They refuelled and inspected the machine, and did a little maintenance work, and then there was nothing to be done but to sit waiting for orders and gossiping in the R.A.A.F. mess. Rosemary was out at Tharwa all day, and in the evenings she told David a little of what was going on. On the first day the Queen had seen nobody but the Governor-General for lunch, but the second and third days had been busier. Mr. Hogan the Prime Minister and Mr. Cochrane the Leader of the Opposition had lunched together with the Queen, in itself a curious circumstance, and had stayed for
several hours, till nearly five o’clock. The Vice-Chancellor of the University had dined at Tharwa, and other visitors had been Sir Hubert Spence, a Judge of the High Court, Murray Gordon the research professor of Political Economy at the University, the Professor of History, and several other gentlemen of the same calibre.

At lunch time on the third day Frank Cox appeared in the R.A.A.F. mess. “Got a job for you tomorrow,” he said to David.

The pilot nodded. “London?”

“Not yet. Melbourne.”

The pilot raised his eyebrows. “Not very far. What time do we take off?”

“Ten o’clock. They want to come back in the evening, taking off probably about six o’clock.” He paused. “Which aerodrome will you use?”

“Berwick,” said the pilot. “Essendon and Moorabbin are for regular airlines only. Get the cars to Berwick—oh, about ten forty-five.”

Half an hour later Rosemary rang up from Tharwa. “David,” she said, a little breathlessly. “You know that game of tennis we were going to have? Well, it’s tonight.”

“My word,” he said. “All among the Ambassadors and Prime Ministers?”

“I don’t think so. She came into the office just before lunch and wanted to know if you and I would go up and play tennis with them, and have supper afterwards. I said we would.”

“I’d have thought she’d have forgotten that,” he said in wonder. “She’d have every right to.”

“She’s not that sort,” the girl said. “I didn’t think she’d forget. She wants to start playing about five o’clock. Shall I fix a car for you at the hotel at quarter past four?”

“Thanks, Rosemary. I’ll have to see about borrowing some clothes and a racquet.”

Tennis that evening was not of a very high order. The Queen at the age of fifty-five liked playing on a grass court for an obvious reason, and she played as a plump woman of that age might be expected to play. Rosemary was not a great deal better, sailing dinghies being her pastime, so that the ladies were fairly evenly matched. The Consort, lean and athletic still, played a remarkably good game and kept David on the jump, so that Royalty defeated the common clay six three, six four.

Two sets were enough, and in the fading light they strolled through the rose gardens to the wide lawn before the house, and down towards the river. As they went the Queen said, “Is everything all right for us to go to Melbourne tomorrow, Commander?”

“Quite all right, madam,” he said. “We shan’t be able to get up to operating height, so we shan’t go very fast. It will take us about fifty minutes, I should think.”

“It seems such a waste to take such a beautiful aeroplane for such a little journey,” she remarked. “But it wouldn’t be fair to ask Sir Robert to come all this way.”

“Sir Robert?” he enquired.

“Sir Robert Menzies,” she said. “He’s such an old man; I don’t know how many years he was Prime Minister before he retired. He was Prime Minister when I came to the throne, and before that. I always try and see him when I am in Australia. But he’s eighty-eight this year. He keeps remarkably well, but it’s really not fair to ask him to travel, at his age. So I’m having lunch at his house in Toorak with him tomorrow, and Mr. Calwell is lunching with us there as well. He lives in Melbourne, too.”

“I didn’t know Calwell was alive still,” the pilot said in wonder.

“Oh dear, yes. He’s only eighty-six. So funny. In the House those two were political enemies all their lives. Now they can’t fight each other in the House any longer, so they meet and have a game of chess each week, and quarrel over that.” She paused, and stood staring over to the evening lights upon the wooded slopes of Mount Tennant. “These old men have seen so much, and learned so much,” she said quietly. “I always learn something by talking to old statesmen. They get objective when they’ve been retired a year or two, and then they’re really useful.”

She turned to Rosemary. “This is your first visit to Australia, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve hardly been out of England before.”

They turned, and walked back up the lawn towards the long, white house in the evening light. “Do you like it here?” the Queen asked.

“I’ve only seen Canberra and Tharwa,” the girl said. “What I’ve seen is simply lovely, of course.”

“You should see more than that,” the Queen said. “Why don’t you come with us to Melbourne tomorrow? I expect Commander Anderson would give you lunch in Melbourne, if you ask him very nicely. We shan’t be starting back before the evening.”

The girl said, “It’s terrible kind of you to suggest that, madam. I think I ought to see Major Macmahon, and find out how much work there is to do.”

“We’ll speak to him this evening,” the Queen said. “I can’t believe that there’s a great deal of work when we’re away.”

David said smiling, “It’s a bit unethical for me to leave the aeroplane on a strange aerodrome to take Miss Long to lunch in Melbourne.”

“Oh nonsense, Commander. You’ve got Mr. Ryder to
leave in charge. If you say any more I shall begin to think that you don’t want to take her.”

The pilot grinned. “I wouldn’t like you to think that, madam.”

“I should hope not.”

Rosemary coloured a little; to break the conversation she stopped, and turned, and looked around. It was very quiet and peaceful in the summer evening light, with the gum trees fringing the river, and the blue, forest covered hills around. “It’s a beautiful place,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this in England.”

The Queen said, “No, my dear. There’s nothing quite like this in England. I love England, and English scenery, very very dearly, but I love coming here to Tharwa, too.” They walked a little way towards the house in silence. “I think I like Australia because it’s new,” she said after a time. “It’s like opening your diary at a clean page. I always feel when I come here that I can start again, and try and do a little better in this clean, new place.”

They went into the house, and the Queen took Rosemary away towards the bedroom side, David had brought uniform with him in a suitcase, but the Consort said, “We’re not changing tonight. There’s quite a heavy day tomorrow, so we thought a little exercise and bed early tonight would be about the mark.” So presently they all assembled in the Consort’s study for cocktails and sherry; a liveried manservant was despatched for a tomato juice for David.