The Rainbow and the Rose (28 page)

She came in while I was talking to Dick Scott, my new flight engineer. He had been on the southern route before for a time, and as his parents had a property near Cootamundra in New South Wales he wanted to get back on it. I glanced at her as she came in and asked her to sit down for a minute, and went on with Dick Scott. We were taking a machine down
to the southern route that had been in the shops for three weeks for a five-thousand-hour check; before that I had had it on the northern route, alternating with Pat Bartlett. The aircraft and the engine log books were in a pile upon the desk before me, and I told Dick to have a look through them while I talked to the girl. He settled down to read them by my side, and I called the girl over.

‘Miss Dawson, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes, sir. Peggy Dawson.’

I shook hands with her. There was something vaguely familiar about her, and I decided that I must have seen her at Vancouver from time to time. ‘Sit down, Miss Dawson,’ I said. ‘You’ve been flying Honolulu–San Francisco–Vancouver with Captain Forrest, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why do you want to get on to the southern route?’

‘It’s nearer to my home,’ she said. ‘I live in Melbourne.’

That was reasonable; once in two months a reserve hostess came on and every hostess got a week’s leave in Canada or in Australia. I knew she would know all about that. ‘You’re Australian, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You aren’t afraid of being based at Nandi? There’s nothing much to do there.’

‘I don’t mind Fiji,’ she said. ‘I’d rather like it for a time.’

‘I don’t want anyone who’s going to get fed up with it after a month or two,’ I told her. ‘If you come upon the southern route you’d have to be prepared to stick it for a year.’

‘I know that,’ she said.

‘And you’re quite happy about it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She knew the conditions as well as I did, and she seemed to be a responsible person. ‘I understand you’re a qualified nursing sister,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I was trained at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Melbourne.’

‘Have you worked anywhere else?’

She shook her head. ‘I left there to come to AusCan.’

I had a good report of her from the Chief Hostess, Mrs Deakin, or I wouldn’t have been interviewing her. ‘You’ve been a junior hostess with Captain Forrest, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long?’

‘Four months. Ever since I joined the company.’

I nodded. ‘Well, if you come with me you’ll get upgraded and get a bit more money. I’ll be taking you as senior hostess. Think you can manage it?’

‘I’m sure I can, sir.’

‘All right, you’re in. This is Mr Scott.’

He raised his head. She smiled. ‘Mr Scott and I know each other already.’

She knew Pat Petersen, who was to be my first officer, too, because he had been in Forrest’s crew with her. It looked as if I was getting a well-knit crew together, all of whom were anxious to come on to the southern route with me. I talked to Miss Dawson a little longer and asked if she had any suggestions for a junior hostess. She mentioned an Australian girl from Ballarat, a Mollie Hamilton, who had two years’ hostess experience with Australian Continental Airways, had been with us for about a month, and wanted to get on to the southern route. I saw her that afternoon and took her on, and I took Sam Prescott as my navigator. I had no special views about the wireless operator, and took a lad from Winnipeg called Wolfe. I got a lad called Dixon as third pilot. With him my crew was complete, and two days later we took off for San Francisco and for Honolulu. We rested at the Beachcomber Hotel while the aircraft did another trip to Vancouver and came back to Honolulu, and then took it on with a full load of passengers for Nandi.

I had flown the southern route when AusCan opened it some years before; we had been flying early versions of the D.C.6b in those days and had had to land at Canton Island to refuel. Now with the greater range of the new aircraft we could overfly Canton and go direct to Fiji, and the radio aids were very much better than they had been in those days. In the new machine we: had two bunks on the flight deck so that we could get a little sleep in turn when all was going well on a long flight. I took off from Honolulu Airport soon after nine o’clock that evening, local time, and made a wide sweep on the circuit till we were climbing upon course. I stayed in my seat for an hour till we reached operating altitude and had adjusted for the cruise condition. The weather was clear ahead of us and everything was normal on the flight deck; I handed over to Pat and went aft into the cabin to see what was going on there.

Everything seemed normal in the cabin. The passengers were finishing the light meal that we serve after an evening take-off; the girls had taken most of the trays away and were starting to hand out the pillows and the rugs. It was a busy period for them, and I wanted to see how they handled it. We had tourist passengers in the front part of the cabin, some of them Indians going to Fiji, and first class at the rear. I went slowly down the aisle, stopping to chat with a Sikh family, and with a nervous mother with a baby. In the galley everything was reasonably clean considering the dirty trays that were still coming in. In the first-class cabin we had a couple of Australian statesmen, a chap from the World Bank, and a Swedish pianist. I walked to the rear of the cabin stopping now and then to talk to somebody, looked into the toilets and the washrooms, and went back to the galley. I said to my senior hostess, ‘Everything all right here?’

‘I think so, sir. We’ve got four sleeping berths to pull down. I’ll do those in a minute.’

‘Would you like Mr Scott to give you a hand with those?’ They were high up, and a heavy job for a girl.

She shook her head. ‘We can manage them.’

‘All right.’ I wondered where I had seen her before. ‘Get the lights out when you’ve got them all settled down, and call the flight deck when they’re out. After that, don’t switch them on again without permission from the flight deck.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I like one of you to be awake at night. Take it in turns to sleep.’

I went back to my seat at the controls on the flight deck. Everything was normal, and I sent Pat Petersen off to get some sleep, telling him that I would hand over to him at two in the morning, Honolulu time. I sent the navigator off as well, and sat on in the cockpit alone, with the wireless operator and the engineer at their desks behind me.

I stayed on watch till two o’clock, and then sent Wolfe to call the others. They came to the flight deck and I handed over, and then went back to the bunks that the others had used, to get some sleep. To my surprise the hostess was there. ‘I’m just giving you a fresh pillow, sir,’ she said.

‘Service!’ I laughed. ‘I’ve never had that done for me before.’

She said seriously, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee now before you go to sleep?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What time will you be getting up?’

‘We’ll be coming up to Canton in a couple of hours. I expect I’ll get up then.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and a biscuit.’ I saw her go forward and speak to Sam Prescott.

I took off my jacket, loosened my collar and tie, and lay down with my head on the clean pillow that she had provided for me, with a rug pulled over my body. As I lay composing myself for sleep, I wondered if this girl was going to be a
nuisance. In thirty years of airline flying the hostess who does everything for an unmarried captain and nothing for the passengers was no novelty to me, though in recent years Mrs Deakin had weeded most of them out and it was some time since I had been plagued by one of those. I smiled as I lay before sleep; I was probably flattering myself, for I was fifty-nine and due to retire next year.

I slept a little, and then lay resting in the darkness till Sam Prescott came to tell me Canton was abeam, about a hundred miles away to the south-east. I got up and straightened out my clothes and put my jacket on, and went to the navigator’s desk with him. Everything was in order. I went the rounds, looked at the radio log, the engineer’s log, and the charts. I had a word with Pat at the controls, and went aft again into the cabin.

In the faint blue night-lights everything was quiet and normal. One or two passengers were reading with their shaded lights, but most were sleeping. I walked quietly down the aisle to the galley, where light showed behind the curtain. The senior hostess was there with a cup. ‘I was just going to bring you a cup of coffee, sir,’ she said.

‘Thanks. I’ll have it here.’ I stood cup in hand. ‘Everything all right?’

‘The baby in No. 7 started crying about an hour ago,’ she said. ‘We warmed up some milk food and gave it a bottle. It’s quiet now.’

‘Many people wake up?’

‘Four or five, immediately around,’ she said. ‘It didn’t cry for long.’

I nodded. ‘Miss Hamilton asleep?’

‘I was letting her sleep through till we get busy in the morning,’ she said.

‘You don’t want a spell yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m accustomed to night duty.’

I stood drinking my coffee, nibbling a biscuit. ‘We’ve
got about another five hours to go,’ I said. ‘E.T.A. is seven-fifteen, Fiji time. It will be dawn about an hour and a half before that. Tea or coffee and biscuits when they want it.’ She nodded. ‘What about the forms?’

‘I gave out the health and immigration cards before they went to sleep,’ she said. ‘I’ll start collecting them as soon as they wake up.’

‘Customs declaration?’

‘Yes, they’ve got that, too.’

‘Let Mr Prescott have them an hour before landing.’

‘Just the Fiji passengers, or all the lot?’

‘No – just the Fiji passengers.’

I put down my cup, glanced into the first class, and went back to the flight deck. So far, the cabin work was going pretty smoothly, anyway.

We landed in from the sea upon the long runway amongst the fields of sugar cane in the warm morning light, and came to rest before the airport buildings. The gangway was wheeled up, the port officials came on board and cleared us, and the ground hostess took charge of the passengers and took them up to the hotel for breakfast. We left the machine refuelling in the sun and walked to the AusCan office where Jim Hanson was waiting with his crew to take over from us, and commenced the handing over. Half an hour later we were walking up towards the AusCan hostel with a Fijian boy wheeling our luggage behind us on a hand truck.

The AusCan hostel at Nandi Airport is nothing very much to look at, though it is comfortable enough. It consists of a light weatherboard building heavily braced with outside cables against hurricanes. There is a central lounge room provided with all the out-of-date periodicals from the aircraft and a radio; one end of this large room is set with tables as a dining room on the cafeteria system. There is a small bar. A long corridor extends from each end of this lounge communicating with the bedrooms, one side for men and the
other side for women. The rooms are reasonably furnished, each provided with a firm writing table and a bamboo table and a couple of easy chairs; they are well designed for the tropics with a good through draught and fans. Each room has the same view from the window, over the west end of the airport and the sea. A few of the rooms have private showers, and as a captain I got one of these.

Here we settled down to spend our lives for the next year or so. The schedule that we had to fly was quite a simple one, though liable to be disturbed from time to time when aircraft were delayed. In the normal way we relieved the crew of the machine coming in from Sydney on Tuesday evening and took off for Honolulu at ten o’clock at night. We got to Honolulu about noon next day, but that was also Tuesday for we crossed the date line. We stayed the night at Honolulu in the hotel and left again for Fiji at nine o’clock in the evening of the following day, arriving back at Nandi at seven o’clock on Friday morning, fairly tired after a long night flight. That was our week’s work; Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were completely free.

Not a lot of work for people on our scale of salary, perhaps, but quite enough if we were to keep on the top line. One of our duties on the ground was to take plenty of exercise; hard tennis courts were provided and considerable pressure was exerted on the crews to use them, largely through the captains. In a hot and humid place like Fiji that meant getting in a lather of sweat in the first five minutes, but I played three or four sets a day myself and made my aircrew do the same, girls and men alike. It pays off handsomely, of course; if you keep really fit the flying doesn’t worry you. And down at the airport club there was a first-class swimming pool to go to after tennis.

The crews play a lot of water polo, but I had not played myself while I was on the northern route, and it was nearly five years since I had had a game. I was still very fit, but
age does tell and I didn’t take that up again against the younger men. I was still a good diver, however, and won a diving competition at the pool in the second week we were at Nandi, and I began to have a lot of fun around the reefs with an aqualung outfit that I had bought in the United States. At the age of fifty-nine my chest measurement was still nine inches greater than my waist, and I intended it to stay that way.

The trouble that I had anticipated with my senior hostess didn’t develop. The cabin work went smoothly and well, and though I still got a clean pillow in the bunk when I lay down and still had my desire for a cup of coffee anticipated, I found that I was getting no more attention than the tourist passengers, which is as I wanted it to be. She did her work and kept her place, and on the ground I didn’t see a lot of her. It was not till we had been operating for about three weeks that I had any real conversation with her.

It was by the pool at the airport club at Nandi. I had been in the pool, and had come out and dried myself standing in the sun. Most of the brightly coloured metal tables and chairs beneath the beach umbrellas were occupied, but she was sitting alone at one, reading a novel. I took my lighter and my pack of cigarettes, and towel in hand I walked over to her. ‘Mind if I join you?’