In the Wet (28 page)

A considerable crowd had collected at the aerodrome by that time, with a number of pressmen, for the news of the Queen’s visit had got out. Rosemary passed through the crowd unchallenged and got into the machine, but David had to submit to the photographers and to an interview. He cut it short and went into the machine to see about his business, and presently the Queen and Consort drove up and posed for a moment for the cameras, and then got in. Frank Cox came forward and spoke to the pilots, and David swung the Ceres towards the runway and presently took off. At ten minutes to seven, in the evening light, he put her down at Canberra.

Next day Frank Cox came to him at lunch time in the mess at Fairbairn aerodrome. “It’s back to London next,” he said. “Tomorrow or the next day. They want a proposal for the best time to take off.”

The pilot nodded. “They’ll want to get back in the evening, I suppose?” he said. “Land at White Waltham about seven o’clock?”

“I should think so. That would give them a night’s rest before they start on anything.”

“Ten hours time difference,” said David. “Refuel at Ratmalana. Two equal legs of about ten hours, allowing for average headwind going westwards. Do they want to stop in Ceylon?”

The Group Captain shook his head. “They want to go straight through, and get back to London as soon as possible.”

“Well, say an hour at Ratmalana. That makes twenty-one hours on the way, less ten, leaves eleven. I’d like an hour
for contingencies, perhaps. Take off from here at seven in the morning would get them to White Waltham at seven in the evening.”

“Daylight all the way?”

“That’s right.” The pilot paused. “You can usually do a daylight flight going westwards, with our cruising speed.”

“I’ll tell them. They’d better have a cup of morning tea at Tharwa, and then breakfast on board.”

“That’s right,” David said. “Breakfast at eight o’clock, when we level off for cruising. It’s a bit awkward for them on the climb, because of the tables.” He thought for a moment. “Twenty hours,” he said. “Breakfast and four other meals. What’ll we make it? Four lunches?”

“I should think so. See if you can make them a bit different.”

David nodded. “Two hot and two cold. I’ll see the stewards, and get that worked out. When can you let me know the time of take off definitely?”

“No snags with the machine?”

“No. We’d be ready to go now. It’s just the food.”

“I’ll ring you about four o’clock this afternoon.”

He rang later, and confirmed the flight for England for the next day. David briefed his crew; in the evening light they had the Ceres drawn out of the hangar and did an engine run, and finally topped up with fuel for the flight to Colombo. It was seven o’clock when he got back to the hotel; he found Rosemary waiting for him in the lounge as he passed through.

He stopped by her. “I won’t be a minute,” he said. “I’ve just got to wash.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I saw the head waiter, and they’re keeping dinner for us. Australians dine early, don’t they?”

He came back to her in five minutes, and they went in to
the meal. The dining room was emptying; he glanced around, but there was no one seated near them. “Back to London,” he said. “Has it been announced yet?”

She shook her head. “It’s to be released for the nine o’clock news. It’s going to cause a lot of disappointment here, they say.”

He nodded. “It’s bound to. She’s not been here for two years, and it’s much longer than that since she was over in West Australia. Now, when she does come, she has to go back to England after less than a week. People are bound to be disappointed.”

“Australians aren’t the only ones to be disappointed,” the girl replied.

“Who else?”

“She is,” the girl said. “She’s not going back to England for a holiday.”

“I suppose not.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Rosemary said, “Tharwa isn’t going into mothballs.”

“What’s that?”

“The cars are staying in the garage and the staff are being kept on in the house. It was all on a care and maintenance basis before we arrived. They had an awful job getting it ready for her this time—everybody worked all through the night. If we hadn’t stopped at Christmas Island nothing would have been finished. It’s not so easy on the domestic side when she can suddenly make up her mind in Ottawa that she’s coming to Tharwa after two years, and she can arrive less than a day later.”

“I never thought of that,” he said. “The house isn’t being put on care and maintenance this time?”

She shook her head.

“Does that mean that she’s coming back here pretty soon?”

“It could mean that,” she said. “It may be Charles or Anne. But anyway, the house is being kept open.”

He smiled. “Perhaps Uncle Donald’ll see the Ceres after all.”

“Perhaps I shall see Uncle Donald,” she remarked.

He glanced at her. “If she comes back here after doing what she’s got to do in London, would you come with her?”

“I might. It’s all worked quite smoothly this time. Macmahon seems to be able to handle all her work, and if he came he’d probably want me. I can’t see Lord Marlow travelling about much, at his age. Besides, I don’t think he’d go down so well here as Macmahon. He’s too much the old aristocrat.”

David nodded. “He wouldn’t go down here. Macmahon’s all right.”

They finished the meal, and went out into the cloister around the garden courtyard, and sat down in long chairs with their coffee. “I’m going to bed as soon as I’ve drunk this,” the pilot said. “I’ve got a call in for five o’clock. There’s a car coming for me at five-twenty.”

The flower beds were scented in the warm darkness. “We shan’t be able to sit out like this tomorrow night,” the girl said. “It will be nearly midwinter—only three weeks before Christmas.”

“I bet we strike a packet of misery going in to White Waltham,” David remarked. “We’ll have a freezing fog and zero visibility. If it’s like that, I’ll probably divert and take them in to London Airport, where there’s proper ground control for radar landings.”

In spite of the early hour, there was quite a crowd at Fairbairn aerodrome next morning to see the Queen depart. When the Royal car drew up before the aeroplane the Queen and the Consort got out and talked for a time with the
Governor-General and the Prime Minister while the cameras whirred and flash bulbs exploded around. Then they got into the Ceres and the door closed behind them; Frank Cox came forward and spoke to David, and the pilot started the inboard motors and swung the machine towards the runway. Five minutes later they were in the air with a fighter escort at each wing tip, climbing to operating altitude over New South Wales.

The weather was bright and cloudless over central Australia. Over the scarred earth of Broken Hill they levelled off for cruising; the Queen sent a radio message of thanks to the fighter escort, who peeled away and went down to land, and the Royal party went to breakfast. Oodnadatta on the railway line that runs south from Alice was passed at about nine o’clock, and then there was nothing before them but the golden and pink wastes of the Australian desert. They flew on steadily, monotonously, and came to the Indian Ocean at about eleven o’clock near a place called Marble Bar, and the sea lay in front of them. David handed over the control to Ryder, lunched, and went to lie down for a time. They passed over the other Christmas Island and flew roughly parallel to the coasts of Java and Sumatra and about a hundred and fifty miles south of them, droning along in a cloudless sky all the afternoon. At four o’clock by Canberra time they began to lose height for the landing at Colombo and had afternoon tea, and an hour later David put the Ceres down upon the runway of Ratmalana aerodrome, ten hours out from Canberra. It was then a little after noon, by local time.

At the Queen’s request no announcement of her passing visit had been made to the Press and there was no crowd at the aerodrome, and only one photographer exercising his scoop, but there was a little party grouped around the Governor-General and the Prime Minister waiting to
welcome her upon the tarmac. The Queen and Consort got out and stood talking with them in the shade of the airport buildings while the Ceres was refuelled and inspected; in fifty-five minutes David reported to Frank Cox that they were ready to go. Ten minutes later they were in the air again, and climbing up to operational height over Cape Comorin on a course for the Persian Gulf and Cyprus. A direct course would have taken them over Kurdistan and the Black Sea, still territories that were somewhat hostile and disturbed, and better avoided by the Queen of England in her flight.

It was about eight o’clock in the morning by Greenwich time when they took off from Colombo. They moved on across the Arabian Sea, weary now; most of the passengers were dozing in their seats, and the Queen and the Consort had retired into their cabins. On the flight deck Frank Cox and David and Ryder were taking three-hour watches at the controls though there was little to be done; the machine flew steadily upon course in the control of the automatic pilot. At half past eleven they came to the Gulf of Oman at the entrance to the Persian Gulf and passed over the town of Muscat; at one o’clock they flew over Kuweit. An hour and forty minutes later Cyprus was beneath them and they altered course for London. At four o’clock they were in the dusk a little to the south of Belgrade and an hour later, in the vicinity of Munich, David started to let down upon the long descent at the flight end. And here they ran into trouble.

They had advised the London Area Control for air traffic of their estimated time of arrival, and had asked for weather ‘actuals’. The radio operator passed a slip of paper to David in a few minutes, and he bent over it upon the chart table, with Frank Cox by his side.

They studied it together in silence. “Typical December
evening,” the Group Captain said. There was low cloud over the whole of southern England with fog patches; at London Airport the cloud base was at eight hundred feet and visibility upon the ground six hundred yards. There were icing conditions at two thousand feet.

David nodded. “I think we’ll ask to be diverted to London. I don’t like White Waltham much for instrument landings in this sort of stuff. London’s better for us on a night like this.”

The Group Captain nodded. “I agree.”

David made his signal, and waited for the answering approval and information of the other traffic in the air. No answer came for ten minutes, during which they were approaching England at six hundred miles an hour and losing height at the rate of a thousand feet a minute. The pilot frowned a little, and repeated his request for a diversion to London Airport, stating his altitude and his position, and his estimated time of arrival.

The answer came at last. ‘Maintain altitude thirty thousand feet diversion approved to Driffield, Yorks, cloud base at Driffield three thousand feet visibility five miles.’

The two officers stared at this in consternation. “For Christ’s sake,” said Frank Cox. “We can’t take them to Yorkshire!”

The pilot bit his lip. “That’s what it says.”

“Is airline traffic going in and out of London?”

David turned to the radio operator. “Airline traffic seems normal at London, Cap,” the man said. “I can hear them talking on the V.H.F. They’re landing normally.”

“Make this signal,” said Frank Cox. “ ‘Request permission to land at London Airport with Royal passengers.’ Sign it, Captain of the Queen’s Flight.”

David said, “Shall we level off at thirty thousand, sir? We’re getting near that now.”

Frank Cox hesitated. In the air and approaching a congested traffic area at night it was imperative that the instructions of the ground control should be obeyed implicitly; no one knew that better. He nodded, unwilling. “Level off at thirty thousand, but hold your course,” he said.

David went and spoke to Ryder at the control, and came back to the chart table. The answering signal came back in a couple of minutes.

It read, ‘Permission not, repeat not, granted to land at London Airport because of unknown experience of Australian crew. Proceed to Driffield and state estimated time of arrival.’

David flushed angrily. “I think you’ll have to handle this one from now on, sir,” he said.

“It’s a put up job,” said the Group Captain quietly. “Somebody’s out to make trouble for them.” He thought for a minute. “Make this signal: ‘Australian crew full trained instrument landings by B.O.A.C. to B.O.A.C. standards. Request permission to land at London Airport.’ ”

The officers waited in silence by the chart table till the answer came. It read, ‘Names of crew do not appear on current certification lists. Permission not, repeat not, granted for landing London account of deteriorating weather conditions. Proceed to Driffield and state estimated time of arrival.’

Frank Cox said, “Alter course for Driffield, Nigger, and give them your E.T.A.”

The pilot went in silence to the chart table, and ran out the new course, and made the signal, and gave the course to Ryder at the control; then he relieved him and slipped into the first pilot’s seat himself. He was no longer angry, because he knew that no complaint could lie against him, or
against his crew. He knew that the B.O.A.C. training staff at Hurn, at an investigation, would vouch for their competence. This was something bigger than that. This was some petty mind at work, some small, powerful official saying to the Queen, “Well, if you insist on flying with these Colonials you must expect to suffer some slight inconvenience, you know. Why can’t you leave the Commonwealth alone, and stay in England?” David wondered if Lord Coles was the small, petty mind.

Behind him, Frank Cox took the signal log from him and went aft with it. David turned in his seat to look after him, and through the open door that led into the cabin he saw him knock at the Consort’s door. He tightened his lips at the thought of this welcome home that England was giving to the Queen, and turned to his job with a heavy heart. Here was no fighter guard of honour for the Queen, here was no Prime Minister waiting on the tarmac to greet her. Here was something very, very different.

He broke through the cloud ten miles short of Driffield at about two thousand five hundred feet, and the aerodrome lay before him, the runways and the taxiways lit up. Driffield was an R.A.F. station, and David wondered why it had been chosen for the diversion of their flight, unless it was that it was nearly forty miles from the main railway line at York, and so presented the maximum fatigue and inconvenience to the Queen at the end of her long journey. He brought the Ceres round upon the circuit, lined her up three miles outside the boundaries of the aerodrome, and put her down upon the runway, twenty-one and a half hours out from Canberra.