The Rainbow and the Rose (36 page)

She said, ‘If the doctor jumps, I jump.’

There was a sudden resemblance to Johnnie Pascoe in the set of her chin, the line of her jaw, the wrinkling of her eyes. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you the right moment when I’m going as slowly as I can, and then you decide for yourself, like the doctor.’

The roar of the engine slowed to a tick-over as I was speaking, and then stopped as the engineer switched off. ‘That’ll be best,’ she said. ‘I’d like to practise getting out a few times, before we start.’

We walked round the hangar to the machine. Billy Monkhouse was getting out of the cabin. ‘Morning,’ he said in the darkness. ‘She’s all ready for you.’

‘Flares?’ I asked.

‘I got them laid down on the aerodrome. They’re upwind from the thorn tree in the far hedge. I’ll nip out in the car and put a match to them when you’re ready.’

I nodded. ‘Thanks. How much petrol did you use for running up?’

‘Gallon. Maybe a gallon and a half.’

‘Get a can and top her up,’ I said.

He went off for a can, and I put the nurse in the back seat, and got into the left hand seat in front of her myself.
I made her practise climbing over into the front seat, and then practise getting out of the machine. The doctor helped her. ‘Right foot out upon the step. Swing round. Hold the door frame –
there
, and the seat –
there
. Change feet. Now, left foot on the step, swing round, and face forward. That’s right. Now, jump out and let yourself fall limp on your right side. That’s fine.’

I watched this going on in deep concern. It looked horrible, but they knew what they were in for and they were both quite prepared to do it. The final decision lay with me, however; if it seemed to me too dangerous I could veto it by not going near the ground. Only if I put the aircraft on the little runway could they do this thing. Mine was the responsibility, and mine alone. The feeling was still strong in me, however, that everything was all right now. Everything was going to be all right this time.

The girl practised it half a dozen times, the doctor once or twice. The extra petrol was put in, and we were ready to start. It was still dark, but a paler tinge was showing in the black sky over to the east. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

They got into their seats, and I got into mine, shutting my door beside me. Billy Monkhouse swung the little propeller and the engine caught; I sat there studying the instruments in the dashboard lights while he drove out to light the flares. When the first flare flamed up I waved the chocks away and turned, and taxied out to the far hedge.

The wind was light now, no more than a gentle breeze. I took the full length of the aerodrome, for the little aeroplane was heavily loaded and it was pitch-dark beyond the line of the flares; I could not even see the hedge I had to take off over. I lined up beside the line of flares, checked everything once again, and satisfied myself that both my passengers were strapped in and comfortable. Then I opened up the throttle steadily, and we moved off.

I got the tail up as soon as I could and trimmed her so,
and then I sat and let her fly herself off the ground. She took quite a long run but we came unstuck at the fourth flare and we were a few feet up at the fifth. The hedge flashed by twenty feet below. I trimmed her for seventy and got on course, for it was all clear ahead of us for fifteen miles or so, and presently I throttled back to cruising revs.

It was pretty dark still, for the moon had set, but as we gained altitude the grey light to the east increased and I could see the line of mountains stretching out ahead of me in a clear sky. I could go over everything this time, and there would be no creeping round the coast in the grey muck. The Gipsy engine only had to keep on turning and I had no fear of that, and we should be okay. Everything was going to be all right, this time.

I kept her on a steady climb up to about five thousand feet. It was terribly cold at that height without the door on the starboard side. It must have been way down below freezing, and the wind beat and whistled around us in the cabin. There was no icing on the aircraft for there were no clouds, but ice formed from my breath upon the muffler round my throat and on my eyebrows. I became seriously concerned about this jumping out of the machine if my passengers were frozen stiff with cold; as soon as possible I must get down to a lower altitude and give them a chance to thaw out before they had to do their stuff. Yet we must take the most direct course that we could, lest we should be in trouble over petrol again before getting back to Buxton.

I compromised, and deviated slightly to the west and began to let down before we got to Macquarie Harbour, scraping the bush-covered hills with only a hundred feet to spare. It was full daylight by the time we passed over the east end of the harbour and the mountains were high above us on our port hand; we were down to two thousand feet or so and it was getting warmer, though the sun was not yet up. I headed for the coast ahead of us, and
presently I checked her at a thousand feet, and we went on like that.

Presently I saw the Lewis River and the house, and at the same moment the doctor pointed it out to me. We went on looking for some indication of the wind, and seeing none. There was heavy surf against the rocks upon the coast but I judged this to be more from a ground swell than from any wind. I saw no white horses on the sea out from the shore; if there was wind, as there must be, it was impossible to say from which direction it was coming.

When we were a mile from the house I saw the woman come out of the door and look towards us; she had heard our motor. She went back, and came out again carrying a bundle that must be the windsock, and I was grateful for her intelligence. She hurried with it up the hill to that desperate little airstrip that looked more like a very short length of cart track than ever, and as I turned upon a circuit she was busy with it at the flagstaff. She hoisted it, and it hung limp and vertical along the spar. There was no wind at all.

I stared at it for half a minute, incredulous, watching for the gust to blow it out. No gust came; the sock hung motionless. I turned to my passengers, elated. ‘Money for jam,’ I said. ‘I’ll make one dummy run, and if it looks all right I’ll land upon the strip. Keep your belts done up.’

The sun was coming up over the mountains to the east as I turned on to final. There was no wind at all to hinder us in landing. The only problem now before me lay in coming in slow enough to put the wheels down within a few feet of the near end of that short strip, and so to stop her before running off the far end of it. But Austers had landed there before in good conditions like we had, and I was feeling fine. I had had a good sleep and I was right on the top line. Everything was going to be all right, this time.

I lined up on the strip to come in for my dummy run,
throttled back a bit, and put my hand up to pull down half flap. I brought her in upon the throttle, watching it ahead of me. There was a little stunted tree with a bush beside it about seventy yards from the end of the strip; if I pulled down full flap there when I was about six feet up, ready to catch her with a burst of throttle, I should just about make it. I shot a quick glance at the flagstaff and the sock to make sure there was no sudden gust of wind.

There was something funny there. I took my attention from the runway and looked at the sock properly. It was hanging vertical, but it was only half way up the mast. Then the woman caught my attention. She was standing by the mast and waving both arms horizontally.

I turned back to my flying, and moved the throttle forward. We passed over the strip twenty feet up as I gently raised the flaps. I turned to the doctor by my side. ‘See that?’ I asked.

‘You mean, the sock? It was at half mast, wasn’t it?’

I nodded.

‘Was she trying to tell us not to land?’

‘I think so. She seemed to be waving us off.’

I put the machine on a climbing turn and turned to the nurse in the seat behind the doctor. ‘It doesn’t look so good,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry.’

She had gone rather white. ‘That’s all right,’ she muttered.

We circled round. ‘What would you like to do?’ I asked the doctor. ‘I can land there normally, but I don’t suppose that I can stay there very long. This calm won’t last longer than an hour, at most.’

‘I think I ought to have a look at him, perhaps,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t take very long.’

The girl leaned forward at my shoulder. ‘I want to land, please, Captain Clarke.’

I nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll do another dummy run, and then run in.’

I turned on final again and brought her in. It was still calm; I used half flap, touched my wheels a few feet from the near end of the strip, and took off again. There was plenty of room to pull her up if I did it like that again. I brought her round, lined up again on final, put full flap down at the little tree, and plumped her well and truly down in the right spot. We came to rest about thirty yards from the far end. I glanced at the windsock; there was still no wind. The woman was running towards us.

I turned to the doctor and the nurse. ‘Be as quick as you can,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay with the machine.’

I left the engine ticking over, and we all got out. The woman, Mrs Hoskins, came panting up. ‘I tried to stop you landing,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I suppose you didn’t see.’

The doctor asked, ‘He’s dead, is he?’

‘I’m sorry to say so. You took off before the radio schedule, or I’d have let you know. I told them, so they’re not sending the Lincoln.’

‘What time did he die?’

‘A little after four, it must have been,’ she said. ‘A quarter past, perhaps. It’s hard to say exactly when he went, you know.’

‘I’ll just come down with you and have a look at him,’ he said.

Beside me, Sister Dawson stirred. ‘Have you got any news of the ground party?’

‘They’re a little way this side of Gordon River,’ she said. ‘They don’t think they’ll be here today – tomorrow dinner time, they thought. Some of them, the doctor and another, I think they’ll go back now. But I said I’d like someone to come on.’ She hesitated. ‘I mean, there’s things to be done.’

The girl asked, ‘Is there a burial ground here?’

The woman hesitated, and then said, ‘Well, there’s a nice
little place where we put Grandpa, looking out over the sea. It’s not consecrated, of course, but he could lie there, by Grandpa, if you think that’d do. Or they could take him out … But it’s a long way.’

The girl said, ‘We’ll bury him here.’ She had taken charge completely of the situation. She turned to the doctor. ‘I’d like to go down now. Then you can get away with Captain Clarke, and I’ll stay here and do what’s necessary.’

They all went down to the house and I was left alone with the Auster, its engine still ticking over, on the little airstrip on the ridge above the sea. The sun had come up and it was very beautiful there between the mountains and the Southern Ocean in the blue dawn. I walked a little way back along the strip and stood looking down upon the wreckage of the other Auster at the foot of the little cliff; then I climbed down to it. The engine was worth salvaging, but there was nothing else worth bothering about in that locality. I stood sadly for a few minutes, thinking back. He had been a great influence upon me in my youth; he had been part of my whole life. I would have said I knew him pretty well, if I had thought about it at all, but now it seemed to me I knew him much, much better.

I climbed back to the little gravel runway. The strip was too narrow for me to turn the Auster in the normal way, so I carried the tail round and taxied down to the lee end. I turned her in the same way there and carried the tail back till the main wheels were at the extreme end of the strip, gave the motor a burst to clear the plugs, and shut down to wait.

The doctor came up from the house presently, just as I was beginning to get worried about a little rising air that moved the limp windsock. He was carrying the battered suitcase that we had dropped on the scrub the day before. I took it from him. ‘Did anything get broken?’

‘One bottle,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter now, of course.’

‘Is Sister Dawson coming back with us?’ I asked.

‘No. We’re taking the child back to hospital, for observation. There’s not much wrong with her now. The mother’s just dressing her up in warm clothes.’

‘She’ll have to hurry up,’ I said. ‘I can’t stay here much longer.’

‘She knows that. She’ll be here in a minute.’ And as he spoke I saw the woman leave the house carrying the child, and come hurrying up the hill.

‘How is Sister Dawson going to get out?’ I asked.

‘She’ll come out with the ground party, or else by sea. Probably the ground party. She wants to stay here for the burial.’ He hesitated, and then asked, ‘Is she a relation, do you know?’

I faced him. ‘She’s his illegitimate daughter,’ I said. ‘Don’t go telling everyone.’

‘Are you quite sure of that?’ he exclaimed.

‘Quite sure,’ I said.

‘However did you find that out? You only met her this morning!’

‘I knew her mother,’ I said. ‘She was a fine woman. I remember when this girl was born. They had pretty bad luck.’ I paused. ‘I’ve known Johnnie Pascoe a great many years. We were old friends. There are some things a friend ought to know.’ And then I wondered why I had said that, and where I had heard it before.

I turned to the aircraft. ‘Here she comes. Let’s get in now, and get going before the wind gets up again.’

I started the motor, and we got into the machine. The woman came up and handed the child to the doctor, who took her on his lap, wrapped in about three blankets. I ran the engine up, checked everything, and took off down that appalling little strip. We made it all right with a bit to spare; I turned over the house and set a course for Buxton. We flew back up the coast without incident though the weather was
closing in and the wind getting up again, and landed back upon the aerodrome under a grey sky at about half past eight.

I taxied to the hangar and stopped the motor. Billy Monkhouse, the ground engineer, came up to the machine as I was undoing my belt. ‘You heard the news?’ I asked.