“There’s another thing,” said the Group Captain. “You’ve got a lot of our Conservatives in your country, as emigrants. It’s where they like to go. On balance, you’ve moved further to the Right and we’ve moved further to the Left.”
“I know,” the pilot said. He smiled. “I still don’t have to like it.”
“Do you like the Commonwealth at all?” asked the Group Captain. “Do you want Australia to be independent, or to join up with the States?”
David was shocked. Although he took little interest in politics, he had heard of this heresy, and he disliked it very much. “Of course I don’t,” he said. “We’re part of the old country. I only meant that, personally, I’d rather live in Queensland than in England.”
“You feel that England still does something for Australia?”
“Of course,” said the pilot. “You’ve only got to look at the 316, or at Rolls-Royce. We couldn’t get along without England.”
The Group Captain nodded. “I shall be sorry if you don’t join our show,” he said. “Perhaps England can’t get along so easily without you.”
“Without me?” said David.
“You and people like you,” said Cox. He paused. “You think we want somebody in the Queen’s Flight who knows how to talk to a Duchess. One of the Berkeley Boys, but Australian born. Well, that’s not what we want at all. Australia is giving this machine to the Queen’s Flight, and Her Majesty has asked that the crew shall be Australians. She’s no fool … Nigger. When she says she wants Australians, she means real Australians—not ones that have been brought up in Mayfair. She’s Queen of Australia as well as Queen of England. When she says she wants Australians and Canadians in the Queen’s Flight as well as English, she’s got some very good reason. I don’t know what that reason is. I don’t have to know. I only have to do what she wants, to the best of my ability. If you turn down this job, I shall look for another chap like you whose spiritual home is in Wagga-Wagga or Kalgoorlie. But I very much hope that you won’t turn it down, because I think that you’re the sort of man she has in mind in saying that she wants Australians.”
The pilot grinned. “I’ve got a birth certificate, anyway,” he said. “That’s something.… Can I take an hour or so to think it over?”
“Of course.”
David glanced at his wrist watch. “I’ll give you a ring about five o’clock.”
He left the Palace, and walked along Pall Mall in deep thought. He was vaguely on his way to the club, but when he got near to the R.A.C. and saw the streams of people going in and out, he gave up the idea, and walked on slowly down the street. It was quieter in the street, in that he could think without the chance of some acquaintance bothering him to come and have a drink. He walked on, wondering what Cox had meant by saying that England could not get along without people like himself, what the Queen had meant—if she had meant anything at all. England had plenty of first class pilots in the R.A.F.
It was May, and a warm evening. He came to the National Gallery on the north side of Trafalgar Square and crossed the road, and stood for a time looking out over the square at the corner by Canada House. There was a bus stop near him, and a long queue of white faced, patient Londoners waiting to go home. He thought of the vigour and beauty of the people in similar bus queues in Brisbane and in Adelaide, comparing the tanned skins with the sallow, the upright carriage with the tired slouch. It wasn’t the fault of these people that they looked white and tired; hardships had made them so, and overwork, and the errors of dietary scientists who planned the rationing back in the Forties and the Fifties, when most of them were children. Badly treated people, out of luck, yet with a quality of greatness in them still, in spite of everything. No reason in all that why he should want to live with them, however.
He turned from them, and looked out over the Square, at the sheer beauty of the new buildings on the other side. The new Home Office between the Strand and Northumberland Avenue, the pillared white grace of the Ministry of Pensions at the head of Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue, the straight classic lines of the new Ministry of Fuel and Power at the end of Cockspur Street, still building but already visible through the steel scaffolding. These people were the greatest engineers, the greatest architects in the whole world, he felt, and now that housebuilding was at a standstill all the energy and talent of their building industry was concentrated on these marvellous public buildings, going up all over England. The new London, with its narrow streets and towering white palaces to house the civil servants, was fast becoming the most lovely city in the world, with Liverpool and Manchester not far behind. Sydney and Melbourne were shabby and old fashioned in comparison, and Brisbane puerile, where housebuilding lagged far behind the immigrants.
He turned, and looked at the bus queue once again. It said in the papers that things in England were on the upgrade after many years now that the population had reduced by twenty-five per cent; there was a suggestion that next year a private citizen would be allowed to buy a motor car and petrol for his own use. It might be so, but looking at the bus queue David felt it inconceivable that these tired people would regain the careless rapture of Australians within his own lifetime. And yet from their poverty and hardships they produced these marvellous things, these shining palaces in London, these superb aeroplanes and aero engines. Their radio and television programmes were the admiration of the world. Australia had now nearly as many people and Australia was a happy and a prosperous country, yet Australia did not produce one tenth the marvels that came out of England. Perhaps prosperity itself became a hindrance to great creative genius; raised on the stock route David knew that if a cow became too fat it was difficult for her to get in calf.
He could not make up his mind. He hated these people for their lack of spirit, for their subservience to civil servants, for their outmoded political system of one man one vote that kept them in the chains of demagogues. He venerated them for their technical achievements. To spend three years or more in England would be like living in a home for incurables, but not to do so would be to miss an opportunity he might regret his whole life through. Difficult.
He thrust his hand down into his pocket, grinning a little with his brown face. There were three coins there, two pennies and a shilling. He pulled them out impulsively and slammed them down upon the granite parapet beside him, and withdrew his hand.
The Queen’s head gleamed up at him from all three. The shilling was an old one dated 1963 which showed the head of a young woman; the pennies, one of 1976 and one quite new of 1982, showed her middle aged and mature. He stared down at them, smiling quietly; the omens were definite. He was glad it had turned out that way. He would not enjoy three years or more away from his own country, but it was impossible to put aside this job.
He swept the coins up into his pocket with a lean brown hand, and turned, and walked back to the R.A.C. He stood in the telephone booth at the turn of the stairs and rang up the Group Captain in St. James’s Palace. “This is Nigger Anderson,” he said. “I’ve thought this over, and I’ll take the job if you still want me.”
For the next few months Anderson did very little flying. Deliveries of the 316 could not begin until the prototype was through its trials, and actually it was four months after his appointment to the Queen’s Flight that David took delivery of the Australian machine. In the meantime, however, he found he had a good deal of work upon the ground to do. He consulted with Cox and with his opposite number from Canada, a Wing Commander Dewar, and they set up Canadian and Australian offices in the annexe to the hangar housing the Queen’s Flight upon White Waltham aerodrome. David moved from Boscombe Down to a small flat over a shop in Maidenhead; it was one advantage of life in England that there was never any difficulty now in getting a house or a flat on easy tenancy and at a very low rent from the National Housing Bureau. He began a series of meetings with the Air Attaché in Australia House to get together an aircrew. Then, with Cox and Dewar, he faced up to the problems of accountancy.
&nb
sp; Here he found that they were breaking quite new ground. Hitherto all the expenses of the Queen’s Flight had been passed by Cox straight to the Assistant Private Secretary, Major Dennis Macmahon, who had scrutinised them, queried anything that might seem relevant to him, and passed them for payment. Now a new system had to be thrashed out separating the costs of the Canadian and the Australian machines from the basic organisational costs, and passing those to the High Commissioners for settlement; it was complicated by the fact that spares and fuel and oil were held in common for the Australian and the Canadian machines, necessitating a complete revision of the rather simple system of accounting that had existed in the Queen’s Flight up to date. These matters, with a number of others, were thrashed out at a full dress meeting held in a conference room in St. James’s Palace. It was decided that in principle accounts for each machine should still pass through the Secretaries’ Office in Buckingham Palace for check against the Royal use of the machines, before the separate accounts were sent for payment to the High Commissioners. Within those terms of reference the officers concerned were left to settle the new system in its details.
“Gee,” said Wing Commander Dewar. “This thing ’ll drive me nuts.”
“Too right,” said Wing Commander Anderson.
They had a meeting with Group Captain Cox in Major Macmahon’s office in Buckingham Palace. It was the first time that either Anderson or Dewar had been inside the Palace and they were properly impressed, with a tendency to walk softly and to talk in a low tone of voice. The Assistant Private Secretary had a large, white painted office looking out upon the Park on the north front; he greeted them cheerfully and they settled down to business. He pressed a button on his desk, a buzzer sounded in the next room, and a girl came in, notebook and pencil in hand. “This is Miss Long,” he said. The men got up and bowed. “She’ll be handling the routine work of this thing when we’ve got a system going.”
For an hour and a half they laboured to design a system to deal with matters of accountancy that were simple to the Assistant Private Secretary and Miss Long, but seemed difficult and complicated to the officers. Finally they got it straightened out, and Macmahon told the girl to type a memorandum of the decisions and to circulate it; later he told her privately to make it very simple and to put it in a form that they could refer back to if they had forgotten what to do. The business finished, the three officers got up to go.
Macmahon held them in conversation for a few minutes, asking the Canadian and the Australian about their living accommodation; Dewar was married, and had taken a small house in Maidenhead. Anderson told the Secretary about his flat; then for a time they talked in general about the aircrews and their accommodation. Finally Macmahon said to David, “Got your boat yet?”
The pilot smiled. “I’ve had her about six weeks. I bought her a few days after we had dinner with Frank. I spend every week end on her.”
“Where do you keep her?”
“In the Hamble River—off Luke’s yard.”
Miss Long asked, “What sort of boat is she, Commander Anderson?” Macmahon said, “Rosemary’s a great sailor.”
The Australian turned to the girl with a new interest. “She’s a Bermudian cutter, five and a half ton. She’s pretty old; she was built in fifty three. But she’s quite sound still. A chap called Laurent Giles designed her.”
The girl nodded. “He was a very good designer in his day.” She paused in thought.
“You sail yourself?” he asked.
“Dinghies,” she said. “International fourteen footers. I’ve got a boat at Itchenor.”
“Where’s that?” he asked.
“Itchenor? It’s in Chichester Harbour. I’ve done a bit of cruising with my uncle in a fifteen tonner—I was out with him last week end.” She paused. “Your Laurent Giles five tonner isn’t painted blue, is she? Blue with tanned sails?”
“Why—yes,” the Australian said. “She’s called Nicolette. Do you know her?”
The girl smiled. “It wasn’t you by any chance aground at the entrance to the Beaulieu River last Sunday?”
The Australian coloured beneath his dark skin, and laughed self consciously. “The leading marks are wrong,” he said. “Did you see us?”
“We passed you, going out,” she said. “Lots of people go on to that bank. You took the outer boom for the leading mark probably.”
“I wasn’t bothering,” the pilot said. “Maybe that’s what I did. I thought it was all deep water.”
She smiled. “I hope you don’t do that when you’re flying.”
“I haven’t yet,” said David drily. “You only do that once.”
For the next few weeks the pilots moved between their base at White Waltham, the test establishment at Boscombe Down, and the works of the manufacturers at Hatfield. Two of the 316 aircraft, now known as the Ceres, had been set aside for the Queen’s Flight, and these were to be furnished specially, of course. The quarters for the crew remained as standard; the passenger accommodation was remodelled to provide three small single cabins each with a seat facing to the rear that turned into a full length bed at night, a dining room to seat six, and twelve reclining chairs of airline type for members of the Royal household travelling with the Queen. Accommodation was provided for a steward and a stewardess. The crew was to consist of the Captain of the Queen’s Flight, the captain of the aircraft, a second pilot, two engineers, and two radio and radar officers.
All this gave the Canadian and Australian captains plenty to do without being overworked; David found that he could get away for most week ends on Friday afternoon to drive down to his little yacht moored in the Hamble River. He generally went alone for these week ends upon the Solent; he knew few people in England, and he did not cultivate the opportunities for social life that did occur. He was always quite happy in his boat alone and he preferred it so; from his boyhood he had been accustomed to the sea and boats and his five tonner was no problem for him; he could manage her single handed and the solitude gave him a sense of freedom. In England the sense of people pressing on him from every side worried the Queenslander; alone in his small yacht at sea the pressure was relieved and he felt something of the spaciousness of his own country. His quarter Aboriginal descent may have had something to do with this preference; whatever the cause was, David Anderson preferred to sail alone.
One Saturday morning in July he got up early at his moorings in the Hamble River and cooked his breakfast before seven o’clock. Like many Australian officers serving in England he found it difficult to adjust his habits of eating to the English rationing, and he went to some considerable pains to secure food from home. That week a bomber on a training flight from Brisbane had brought him two hams, a hundred eggs packed in sawdust in a carton, and six pineapples; he had cooked one of the hams in his flat and so he breakfasted that day on ham and eggs. He got under way at about eight o’clock and sailed down Southampton Water past Calshot in a moderate southwesterly breeze, and turned westwards down the Solent with the tide. All morning he beat to the west in tacks; as the sun came up the breeze dropped light, but the tide ran stronger. By lunchtime he was past Hurst Castle heading out to sea. He hove to off the Needles and had a lunch of ham sandwiches and fruit; then for a couple of hours he cruised up and down the steep cliffs to the southwards of the Needles fishing for mackerel. He caught three and gave up, having no use for more, and turned into the Solent again on the flowing tide and made for the small town of Yarmouth for the night.
In that fine summer weather Yarmouth was full of yachts moored bow and stern two and three deep to the many piles within the harbour. The harbourmaster in a dinghy showed David a berth and took his warp to help him to make fast; in a quarter of an hour everything was snug. He launched his dinghy from the cabin top and put her astern, and then sat in the cockpit for a time, resting and watching the pageant of the vessels as he smoked. England, he reflected, still led the Commonwealth in the design of little yachts, as in most other techniques.
A g
irl in a thin shirt and abbreviated shorts rowed down the line of vessels in a dinghy, and rested on her oars opposite Nicolette. “Hullo, Commander Anderson,” she said quietly.
He stared at her in surprise, and realised that it was Miss Long, in different attire from that which she wore in the Palace. He got to his feet. “Hullo, Miss Long,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t recognise you.”
“I saw you come in,” she said. “I’m with my uncle in the outer tier—the black yawl over there. The one with the R.N.S.A. burgee.”
“Have you been here long?”
“We got in about half an hour before you did. We’ve just been messing about in the Solent. My uncle’s got a mooring in the Beaulieu River—he lives at Bucklers Hard.”
“I came down from the Hamble this morning,” David said. “I took the tide down to the Needles and caught a few mackerel and came back here. Would you like to come aboard?”
She smiled. “I’d love to see your boat.” She gave a couple of strokes, shipped her oars, and laid the dinghy gently alongside; taking the painter she stepped on to the counter and made her boat fast. Then she came down into the cockpit and peered down into the saloon. “She’s very neat,” she said. She glanced around the deck. “I like your winches.” She fingered the rope knotting on the tiller head. “Did you do this Turk’s head thing yourself?”
He grinned, “I got a book on it. I did that last week end. The first one that I did came off.”
“I couldn’t do a thing like that,” she said. “I can do ordinary splicing, but not the ornamental stuff.”
He reached into the saloon and produced a packet of cigarettes and gave her one. Together they sat smoking in the cockpit, watching the pageant of the yachts and the bustle of the little harbour. “It’s a pretty place this,” he said. “As pretty a little harbour as I’ve seen.”