“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.
Five
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.
Jet temperatures on the port inner engine were a little high at altitude, and they spent some time next morning adjusting the fuel pumps and doing engine runs. They took off for Ottawa after an early lunch and landed four hours later in the dark. Next day was a Saturday and they displayed the aircraft to a large number of Canadian members of the Senate and the House of Commons, now seeing the aeroplane that they had given to the Queen for the first time.
It was a disappointment to David that the Governor-General did not come to see the aircraft. Sir Thomas Forrest was a legendary figure at that time to every man who had served in the Russian war, the Field-Marshal who had come up from the bottom, who had risen from corporal to brigadier in the second war, from major to lieutenant-general in the third. At that time he had been Governor-General of Canada for about two years. David had never met him and he wanted very much to do so, but Tom Forrest was away in Winnipeg.
Mr. Delamain, the Prime Minister, entertained the officers to lunch at his residence. He was a small, vivacious French Canadian from Quebec who had worked his way up from the bottom to a commanding position in the lumber industry by the time he was forty five, and had then turned to politics. Auguste Delamain had a fat wife called Marie and eleven children, only two of whom appeared at the lunch table, and he had a fund of amusing anecdotes for the officers.
“Mr. Iorwerth Jones, he is well?” he asked. “Last time I was in England I thought he looks very poorly, and I thought perhaps he is not well. But then I hear that he has tried to nationalise your retail clothing shops and the Trades Union Congress did not approve, and so he was not allowed to do that. I think he was not very unwell, but only angry.”
“The T.U.C. stood out against that one,” said Group Captain Cox. “I expect they were afraid of what their wives would say.”
“I asked him that,” said Mr. Delamain. “I asked how English women would like to wear standard clothes all to one of six or eight designs, and he told me that it was necessary to the economic situation that they should do that. Marie was with me, and she was very rude to him, but she was very rude in French, which he does not understand, and fortunately nobody who was with us offered to translate what she had said. So we are still good friends.”
Within the meaning of the act, thought David.
A little later the Prime Minister said, “Mr. McKinnon has told me that the Queen has had a heavy cold, and that she was looking tired when he saw her last week. I hope when she comes she will take a long rest. I have talked to the Governor-General, and we have discouraged all suggestions for engagements for her. She is to open the hydro-electric scheme at the Clearwater River, and the new Hospital in Vancouver, but after that there is nothing arranged, and I hope that she will take a long rest at Gatineau. It is very beautiful up the Gatineau in the late fall, and the colours of the maples will be wonderful this year, because we have had frost.” He paused. “But she is so energetic—she is always making engagements for herself. But this time she should rest.”
“I wish she would rest, sir,” said Cox. “She’s had a very difficult time recently.”
The French Canadian shot a quick glance at him. “I know that,” he said. “Perhaps one day she will be able to come here and spend a long, long time with us.”
The Ceres crews escaped from hospitality in the middle of the afternoon and went back to the aerodrome to prepare Sugar for the flight home. Refuelling and inspection took an hour and a half; they locked up the machine and went to the R.C.A.F. station for an early meal and bed. They were up at three in the morning and took off at four o’clock in the dark night and climbed to operating height. The sun rose an hour and a half later as they passed above the Straits of Belle Isle between Newfoundland and Labrador and started on the Atlantic crossing; flying against the sun they took five hours on the trip from Ottawa to White Waltham, and put down at the home aerodrome at two o’clock in the afternoon.
David had brought home with him from Ottawa twenty pounds of steak and a dozen bottles of claret, at that time practically unobtainable in England. He drove back to his flat at Maidenhead and put the meat in the deep freeze, and pondered for a time whether he dared call up Rosemary to suggest that she should get on the electric train to Maidenhead to come and share his meal. He resisted the temptation and cooked his steak au vin alone, and spent the evening thinking of all the things that he would have to tell her when he met her next at Itchenor.
The Royal inspection of the aircraft took place at White Waltham a few days later. Frank Cox had had the two machines drawn up outside the hangar and the crews paraded in front of each aircraft; it was a bright, sunny afternoon. The Royal party arrived in a big Daimler, the Quee
n and the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales. Frank Cox went forward and saluted as they got out of the car, and then walked with the Queen as she inspected the parade.
At the end of the inspection she said, “Will you fall the parade out, Group Captain, and introduce the officers to me. Then let each member of the crews go to his own position in his own machine, so that I can see what they have to do.”
David was introduced after Dewar, and the Queen shook his hand. She was not tall and she was definitely plump, but she was still beautiful, and clearly interested in the new machines, even excited. She asked how he was enjoying life in England, and he said, very much indeed, and she smiled, and said that she expected to see a great deal more of him. Then she passed on to the next officer and he met the Consort, a grey haired, handsome, humorous man, who asked him what he got the Air Force Cross for.
“Test flying, at Laverton, sir,” said David.
“In general, or anything in particular?”
David hesitated. “I got a thing down after it got broken up a bit,” he said.
The Prince of Wales beside the Consort spoke up. He was a man of about thirty five, fair haired and pleasant, in the uniform of an Air Vice-Marshal. “Was that the Boomerang?”
David said, “Yes, sir.”
“I remember that, Father,” said the Prince. “The rudder came off in a dive. He landed it without a rudder.”
The Consort said, “It must have been a great temptation to bale out.”
“Couldn’t do that, sir,” said David. “It cost about a million pounds.”
The Consort laughed. “They didn’t give you any of it?”
“No, sir. Not even the grateful thanks of the taxpayer.”
“Ah well, you got the best decoration of the lot.”
He passed on to the other officers, and the Prince stayed and chatted for a moment with David. “We met somewhere in the war,” he said. “I remember your face.”
“At Lingayen, sir. I had No. 147 Squadron of the R.A.A.F. there.”
“I remember.” They chatted for a time about the war. Then the Prince said, “Is everything working out all right here, in this job?”