I took a drink from my cup. ‘I’m changing my opinion of Dr Turnbull,’ I said presently. ‘I didn’t think a lot of him at first. But I’ll say this for him. He’s got any amount of guts.’
‘I think he’s very good,’ she said slowly. ‘We were talking about the operation, what he’s got to do. I’ve never seen him operate, of course, but I think he’d be very steady …’ She glanced up at me. ‘I’ve seen so many young house surgeons,’ she said. ‘And of course, we talk about them in the sisters’ home. They seem to get into their stride after they’ve done a few major operations successfully – if they’re the right sort.’
‘Is he the right sort?’ I asked.
‘I should think he is. I’d rather see him operate on Captain Pascoe than that Dr Parkinson.’
I finished my drink, and put the cup down. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear you say that,’ I said. ‘All we’ve got to do now is to keep our fingers crossed and hope that I can put you out upon the airstrip.’ I crossed to the window and looked at the weather again. ‘It’s getting finer all the time. Thank God for that.’ I turned back from the window. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed now, and see if I can get a bit more sleep.’
‘Sit down there for a minute while I make your bed,’ she said.
‘Oh – that’ll be all right,’ I objected.
She went to the door. ‘Sit down there. You’ll sleep better if I make it.’ She was very much the nurse, and I had no option but to obey her. I sat down again in the warm glow of the fire; in the next room I heard her slamming the pillows about, and the rustle of sheets and bedclothes. Once she appeared in the doorway with a rubber hot water bag in her hand. ‘This was hanging behind the door,’ she said. ‘Shall I fill it for you?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I never use one.’
‘Are your feet warm?’
I smiled. ‘Quite.’
She nodded. ‘All right. I shan’t be a minute now.’ She went back into the bedroom. She was an effective girl, I thought, and probably efficient at her job. She was evidently well impressed with the young doctor, as he was with her, and it occurred to me how very fortunate we were that she had happened to turn up at the right moment. Without a good surgical nurse at his side Dr Turnbull might well have been fumbling and immature, but with this girl beside him as he operated Johnnie Pascoe’s chances were a great deal better. A first-class nurse in the theatre, I thought, could almost certainly improve a surgeon’s skill by taking all irrelevant responsibilities off his mind. I felt that the surgical side of this thing now was probably as good as we could hope to get it. It only remained for me to get them to the Lewis River and land them safely.
The girl came back into the room. ‘All ready for you, sir,’ she said.
I got up and went into the bedroom, and she followed me. The bed was very white and clean and neat, just like a hospital bed, no wrinkle on the folded sheets or on the pillows. It was, in fact, just like being in a hospital because the nurse was waiting there to tuck me up. She took Johnnie Pascoe’s dressing gown as I slipped out of it and hung it up behind the door, folded his bedclothes over me and tucked them in professionally as I lay in his bed. Then she stood back. ‘All right now?’ she asked.
‘Quite all right,’ I said meekly. ‘Thank you very much.’
She picked up his alarm clock. ‘I’ll take this with me into the next room. Don’t bother about waking up – just let yourself sleep through. I’ll come and call you when it’s time to get up.’
She turned out the light and went out of his room, closing the door softly behind her.
I lay in the darkness, warm and very comfortable, thanks to this efficient girl. The hot drink was still warm inside me and my mind was at ease. The weather was improving and conditions for flying when I woke again would probably be a great deal better than I had anticipated. The wind about the house was less than it had been, and now there was a gleam or two of moonlight in the room through chinks in the curtains. There was a break coming in the weather, and it might well be sunny at dawn for a few hours. We had a good young surgeon and a first-class nurse, and everything was going to be all right.
I lay drifting into sleep, thinking about Johnnie Pascoe whose pyjamas I was wearing and about this nurse who had worked in the same aircrew for ten months in AusCan. The old Canadian senior pilot of the line, due for retirement before long, and the Australian nursing sister who had joined his crew as senior air hostess. Ten months together in a D.C.6b, flying the Pacific route – Vancouver, Honolulu, Fiji, and Sydney. Crews in AusCan are rigorously controlled to prevent pilot fatigue. They fly no more than eight hundred and forty hours in any year; after each twelve hours of flying they must have twenty-four hours free of all duty. From Honolulu to Nandi Airport in Fiji takes about twelve hours, so that a rest there is obligatory; another eight hours flying takes the machine to Sydney. The schedules of the flights each week combined with the necessity to rest the crews necessitate a complicated system of crew changes; in AusCan crews are based at Vancouver and at Nandi in Fiji. For ten months I had lived in close association with this girl, on the flight deck over the great wastes of the Pacific, in the coconut groves and on the coral beaches of Fiji when we were resting as we did for four days out of every week. I had come to know her very well indeed.
She came to me in the Superintendent’s office at Vancouver Airport. For three years I had been flying the northern route, Vancouver-Frobisher-London. Now Jock McCreedy’s wife had had another baby and had come back to Vancouver, so that it was all rather difficult for him to go on on the southern route. I was unmarried so I didn’t care where I went, and the northern route had now become a track so well known and so well provided with navigation aids that it wasn’t necessary for me to stay upon it any longer. Nandi would suit me very well for my last year in AusCan; it was warm there, and closer to Tasmania, where I was thinking of retiring. We were reshuffling the crews to make these changes possible, and Bill Myers had lent me his office.
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 resp
onsible 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 de
ck. 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.