Presently David found himself back in his little flat. He cooked himself a scratch meal; in normal times he would have gone and had a meal at one of the hotels, but now he preferred to stay at home rather than risk contact with a possible reporter in a public place. When he had eaten and washed his few dishes, he settled down to read the papers for an hour before bed.
That day was a Monday, and he had taken Princess Anne to Kenya with her family on Friday night, too late for editorial comment in Saturday’s Press. Monday’s papers, which he was now reading, reflected a growing uneasiness about the movements of the Royal Family. It was right, said The Times that the family should make frequent visits to the Dominions and no doubt the clear air of Sagana would be good for little Alexandra’s cough, but it would be regretted that circumstances prevented the reunion of the Monarch with her family for the festivities of Christmas; it would be the first time within living memory when the Royal Family had not been together in England at this season. Moreover, said The Times, there were certain dangers apart from the breach of precedent in too wide a dispersal of the Royal Family within the Commonwealth; it did not require a very vivid imagination to visualise a chain of events which could leave England with no Monarch and no heir in the country, and without even a Council of State.
The Recorder was more outspoken. It carried a banner headline right across the page, PRINCESS ROYAL TO KENYA. It followed with a factual account of the departure of the Princess with her family for the Royal Lodge at Sagana, and reminded its readers that the Prince and Princess of Wales had left for the Royal Residence at Gatineau a few days previously. The editorial was headed succinctly, HAPPY CHRISTMAS? It pointed out that the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal preferred to spend Christmas in the Dominions rather than in England. No doubt, said The Recorder, many readers would agree with them, for after thirty-seven years of Socialist mis-rule England was no longer the happy place it once had been. Yet, said the leader, the hearts of all right thinking people would go out to the Queen, separated from her family at the time of the greatest festival of the Christian year. It would be a sad thing for England, said The Recorder, if it should come to pass that in future years the Royal Family should find themselves assembled at this joyous season in one of the Dominions, if the Christmas broadcast of the Queen should be delivered at the Royal Residence at Tharwa near Canberra, and recorded, and relayed to England at a suitable time distorted with howlings and half incomprehensible with static.
David laid down the paper thoughtfully, wondering if The Recorder had hit the bull’s eye. It was very possible they had. He and his crew of Australians, and the aircraft, were at readiness to fly at any time, a fact that might well be known to the staff of The Recorder. It was difficult to keep a thing like that entirely secret from an experienced and skilled reporter. It would easily be possible for the Queen to get to Tharwa before Christmas, and Australia and New Zealand were now the only major countries owing her allegiance that had no member of the Royal Family in them. He sat for a long time, troubled and thoughtful, and then picked up The Sun.
The Sun at that time carried no leading articles, but merged its reporting with opinion. It printed a three column heading, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH ENGLAND? It said that plain, honest working men could see no sense in gallivanting off to places like Canada and Kenya for Christmas. Let the Royal Family go to these places if they must, said The Sun, but the British working man would spend his Christmas in the way that suited English people best, in the good fellowship of the village inn or in the happy relaxation of the cinema.
David dropped his eyes to the bottom of the page, to the strip cartoon of Jane, still in the throes of an adventure that had deprived her of most of her clothes.
That week was an uneasy week in England. Every visit to Buckingham Palace seemed to make the headlines, and the visitors were many, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Tom Forrest, from Iorwerth Jones to Group Captain Cox. In general the leader writers kept silence, so that an impression was created in the country that something was about to happen, though nobody quite knew what it was likely to be. Gradually the rumour spread around that something serious was likely to be announced by the Queen in her Christmas broadcast speech. Nobody knew where this rumour had come from, but it was widely repeated, and added to the tension of the week.
On the Wednesday David began to be troubled by reporters, when a representative of The Sun called at his flat and asked if he had any statement to make about future journeys. He said he hadn’t and referred his visitor to the Queen’s Private Secretary, but when he went out to get his car from the garage to drive to White Waltham a photographer was waiting and took a number of pictures of him as he walked down the pavement and got into the car.
He rang up Rosemary that day, and dined with her at Mario’s in Shepherd’s Market in the evening. He found her looking white and exhausted, and decided at first sight of her to cut the dinner short and take her back to the flat directly they had dined. Because of her evident fatigue and strain he did not broach the subject of their job, but talked to her about boats and cruising grounds around the coast of England most of the time.
She said once, “I went home last night, just for a few hours.”
He was surprised, for it was the middle of the week. “To Oxford?”
She nodded. “I shan’t be able to get down there next week end, or for some time after that.”
He nodded, thought for a minute, and then said, “Will we be together?”
She smiled at him. “I think so.”
He smiled back at her. “Well, that’s all right. Things might be a lot worse.”
She found his hand and pressed it. “I know.” And then she said, “You’ve not had any orders yet, Nigger?”
He shook his head. “So far as I’ve been told, we’re here for the next six months.”
She nodded, and then she said, “I hear you’ve got a lot of Australian sailors in the hangar guarding the machine.”
He grinned at her cheerfully. “Somebody told me to be careful,” he remarked. “I can’t remember who it was.”
She smiled. “We’re a couple of busybodies, I suppose. But I’m glad you did it.”
“Does the Consort know about it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think they know. Frank Cox told Macmahon, but I don’t think he let it go any further. I think he was quite pleased you’d done it. It’s one anxiety removed, at any rate.”
They talked about other things, and presently she said, “Where will you be on Friday, Nigger?”
“At White Waltham,” he replied. “I don’t know that I’ll be anywhere else.”
She said, “My father’s coming up on Friday. I would like you to meet him, and there may not be another chance.”
“I want to meet him. What’s he coming up for?”
“He’s got a meeting with Tom Forrest on Friday. I think he’s lunching with him at the Athenaeum.”
“Does your father know Tom Forrest?”
“Daddy’s met him once or twice. But he wants to meet Daddy now. Daddy’s Professor of Political Economy, you know. He rang up Daddy, and so Daddy’s coming up on Friday.”
“I see.” Wheels within wheels; was Rosemary’s father mixed up in the English crisis? No business of his, however. “It’s going to be difficult for me to get up here on Friday,” he said, biting his lip. “I told Ryder he could have Friday evening off to go and see some friends in Hampstead. We can’t both be up in London at the same time. When’s your father going back?”
“He’s got to get back to Oxford on Friday night.”
The pilot sat in brooding thought for a minute. “I can’t make it,” he said at last. “I’m sorry, Rosemary. I’ll have to be at home on Friday night, sitting at the telephone. I can’t risk not being there if any orders come, with Ryder out that night.”
“Of course not, Nigger.” She paused, and then she said, “If I came down with Daddy by train to Maidenhead, could we have dinner in your flat?”
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“Of course,” he said. “Could you get off for that?”
“I think so,” she replied. “I do want you to meet him before we go.”
He did not care to pick her up upon her indiscretion. “I could get one of the boys to drive him on to Oxford in my car after dinner,” he said, “and bring the car back. He could drive you to the station, too, to get a train back here. But it’s an awful bind for you, at such a time as this.”
“I’d like to do it,” she replied. “It’ld make a bit of a change.”
He took her back to her flat after dinner, and helped her out of the small car on to the pavement in Dover Street. She asked if he would like to come up for a little, but she was obviously tired, and he refused. He kissed her in the darkness of the doorway and said good night, and she opened the door with her latch-key.
“Good night, Nigger darling.”
“Good night, Rosemary. Sleep tight.”
The uneasy days went by, and at ten minutes to seven on Friday night David stood in the cold, windy darkness upon the platform of Maidenhead station, waiting for the electric train from Paddington. It came in with a glow of lights and a sighing of pneumatic brakes, and he stood by the ticket collector watching for Rosemary with her father. She was not there, but an elderly man in an old raincoat and a battered felt hat stopped by him. “It’s Wing Commander Anderson?”
He glanced sharply at the man, and saw her features in his face. “That’s right,” he said. “Are you Professor Long?”
“That’s right. Rosemary said I was to tell you that she’s got to go back to the Palace tonight. So I thought I’d better come and meet you, anyway. We may not have another chance for some time. I knew you by the colour of the uniform, of course.”
David said something or other in reply, and guided Rosemary’s father to the car. As they drove the short distance to his flat he said, “I’m sorry she’s got to work tonight. She’s working much too hard.”
“Ah well,” her father said, “it’s not much longer now.” The pilot did not answer that.
In the flat he gave Professor Long a glass of sherry, and with his own tomato cocktail in his hand he turned to face him. “In a way, I’m glad you’ve come alone this evening,” he said. “We’ll probably be able to talk more freely. Did Rosemary tell you that we want to get married?”
The older man smiled. “She did say something about it.”
The pilot said directly, “Did she tell you that I’m not pure white? That I’m a quadroon?”
“She did.”
“What do you think about that, sir?”
The professor shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve got a lot of more important things to think about than that. To start with, have you ever been married before?”
“No. I never came within a mile of it. It’s not so easy when you’ve got a touch of colour.”
The other smiled. “You’ve started on the awkward subjects, so we may as well clear the decks of all of them.” He asked two further questions, and the pilot grinned, and answered them. “Well, that just leaves the colour. I think that’s Rosemary’s affair and nobody else’s.”
“You wouldn’t mind about it very much, yourself? I’d rather know now if you take a strong view about boongs.”
“Boongs?”
“Coloured people. It’s a word we use up in North Queensland, where I come from.”
“I see. I think the view I take is this: that if you’re regarded as suitable to serve the Queen as intimately as you do, you’re suitable to be my son-in-law, if Rosemary wants to marry you. That covers it, so far as I’m concerned.”
David had got Jim Hansen, the Australian steward from Tare, to come in and serve the dinner; he sat down with Rosemary’s father to a dinner of clear soup, English chicken, Australian ham, and a fruit salad of mangoes and pawpaw and fresh apricots from Kenya served with Australian cream and sugar. Sitting over coffee at the conclusion of the meal, when the steward had left the room, the older man said, “You’ve had no orders yet?”
The pilot shook his head.
“I think I’d better tell you what I told Rosemary this afternoon,” her father said. “These are difficult times, and she’s mixed up in great affairs. I told her that if she finds herself in some far country where she feels she has to stay for months, or even for years, and if she wants to marry while she’s out there, she mustn’t let thoughts of her mother and myself stand in her way. Naturally, we should like to see her married. But if that’s not possible, she mustn’t hold up anything on our account. Rosemary’s got her own life to lead, and if she wants to marry while she’s out there, she’ll have our blessing.”
David said, “It’s very good of you to take that line about it, sir.”
He asked David one or two questions about his education and his early life and they talked about North Queensland. “Rosemary told us most of this,” the older man said once. “I shall be sorry for our own sakes if she makes her life in Australia, because my wife and I are English. We shall never leave Oxford. But in another way, I think she may be doing the right thing. She’s had a hand in great affairs as a young woman. If she goes to Australia with you, she’s going to the coming centre of the Commonwealth, where all the great affairs will happen in the future, and before she’s old.”
David glanced at him curiously. “You think that, do you, sir? You think Australia will be the centre of the Commonwealth in years to come?”
“I do. What’s the population of Australia now?”
“About twenty-seven million, I think. It’s changing pretty rapidly. It was twenty-three million at the last census, but that’s some time ago.”
The don nodded. “That’s about right. And what do you think it will be, ultimately?”
“It’s hard to say,” David replied. “It’s all a matter of the water, I think. When I was a boy people were still saying that twenty-five million was the limit. But in my lifetime the Snowy irrigation scheme has been completed, and the Burdekin, and half a dozen others, and now they’ve got this nuclear distillation of sea water in the North, around Rum Jungle, and that’s getting cheaper and cheaper. People are saying now that the limit may be fifty millions, but others say a hundred and fifty millions.”
The professor said, “Whether it’s fifty millions or a hundred and fifty doesn’t matter much. England can feed thirty millions, and when the population of this country gets down to that figure things will suddenly improve, and England will be a happy and prosperous country again. But your country will always have the advantage of population, and the great advantage of strategic safety. And on top of that, you’ve got a system of democracy that works.”
“You mean, the multiple vote?”
The older man nodded. “How many votes have you got?”
“Me?” asked the pilot. “I’m a three vote man.”
“Basic and education?” David nodded. “What’s the third?”
“Living abroad,” the pilot said. “I got that for the war.”
There was a short pause. “If everybody of your type in England had three votes instead of one,” the don said heavily, “there’d be no question of a Governor-General.”
David sat silent. So that was what was in the wind. There was to be a Governor-General in England as in all the other Dominions, a buffer between the elected politicians and the Queen, selected by the Queen for his ability to get on with the politicians of the day while serving her. Somebody who could take the day to day hack work of Royalty off her, who could open the Town Halls and lay the foundation stones and hold the Levees and the Courts and the Garden Parties, and leave the Monarch free for the real work of governing the Commonwealth. And as he sat there pondering this information, the pieces of the puzzle fell together in his mind. Tom Forrest was the man chosen to be the first Governor-General of England, Tom Forrest who had worked his way up from the bottom, Tom Forrest who was honoured and respected as the soldier who had led the British people to victory in the last war, who had been Governor-Gener
al in Canada for the last two years, who was a friend of the Prince of Wales. And at that thought, another piece of the puzzle fell into its place; with Tom Forrest or somebody like him between the Monarch and Iorwerth Jones, perhaps the succession would be less distasteful to Prince Charles. Perhaps that was what Rosemary’s father meant. Perhaps a Governor-General in England was a condition that the heirs to the Throne had made, as an alternative to abdication. Perhaps the row over White Waltham aerodrome had been the last straw laid upon Prince Charles by the Prime Minister; perhaps it had even been intended to be so. Perhaps David had flown Prince Charles to Canada to speak both for his sister and himself, to tell their mother that they would not have the job.
All this passed through his mind in a few seconds while Rosemary’s father sat in thought before the fire, heedless of his indiscretion, or perhaps thinking that the pilot must already have heard about the changes that were to be made. “One man one vote has never really worked,” he said quietly. “It came in at a time of liberal social awakening in the middle of the nineteenth century. The governing elements in this country leaned over backwards to redress the wrongs that previous generations of their class had wrought upon the common man, and they made all men equal in deciding the affairs of the country, relying on the veto power of the House of Lords to put a curb on irresponsible elected politicians. The thing looked promising for a time, while the educated and travelled members of the House of Lords still held the veto. But they never reformed the House of Lords, so in the end that restraint had to go, and then the system ceased to work at all.”
He turned to David. “I doubt if history can show, in any country, at any time, a more greedy form of government than democracy as practised in Great Britain in the last fifty years,” he said. “The common man has held the voting power, and the common man has voted consistently to increase his own standard of living, regardless of the long term interests of his children, regardless of the wider interests of his country.” He paused. “When I was a young man we lost the Persian oilfields and the Abadan refinery,” he said. “In the last year of operation of that company the shareholders took four million pounds out of the profits, the Persian Government were given sixteen millions, and the British Government took fifty-four millions in taxation. The Persian Government revolted, and we lost the entire industry, refinery, oil rights, and all, because we were too greedy. Since then it has been the same melancholy story, over and over again. No despot, no autocratic monarch in his pride and greed has injured England so much as the common man. Every penny that could be wrung out of the nation has been devoted to raising the standard of living of the least competent elements in the country, who have held the voting power. No money has been left for generous actions by Great Britain, or for overseas investment, or for the re-equipment of our industry at home, and the politicians who have come to power through this system of voting have been irresponsible and ill-informed, on both sides of the House.”