The Rainbow and the Rose (35 page)

‘Tell me what actually happened,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps I’ll understand better than you.’

‘You mean, from the beginning?’

She nodded. ‘Tell me everything that happened, right from the beginning.’

I sat for a few moments in silence, thinking back over the years. ‘I was the pilot-instructor at the flying club,’ I said at last. ‘The aerodrome was on her husband’s land, and he was in The Haven. The land had been requisitioned in the war, and had never been de-requisitioned. We paid rent to the Air Ministry, and they paid rent to Derek Marshall. So your mother was our landlord in a kind of way, and one day she came along to see the club.’

She asked, ‘Did she come to fly?’

I shook my head. ‘Not at first. She just came to see what was going on. She never bothered about it till the doctor’s daughter joined the club.’

I went on talking to her in the night on that calm beach of Viti Levu, and it came more easily as I went on talking.
She asked a good many questions and I answered them as well as I could. Sometimes I had to stop and think about the sequence of the things that happened nearly thirty years before, sometimes she asked me things about her mother that I could not answer. I must have talked to her for well over an hour in the calm night, perhaps for nearly two, telling her everything I knew. At last I came to the final scene when she had spun into the deck. ‘She was still alive,’ I said painfully. ‘She was still living, terribly smashed up, when we got her on the stretcher.’

‘Did she say anything?’

I shook my head. ‘She wasn’t conscious. She died in the hangar about ten minutes later, before the doctor came.’

‘You were with her, Johnnie?’

‘All the time.’ I paused, and stared out over the sea. ‘We’d only got blankets and a first aid box – nothing for shock. We didn’t know so much about the treatment of shock as we do now. I sometimes think we might have saved her if we’d had the modern one-shot dopes. I don’t know.’

‘It was deliberate, though, wasn’t it? She wanted to die?’

‘She never even hinted that to me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have let her fly. But – yes, I think she did.’

‘She chose to die rather than go away and live with you, unmarried? Even with me?’

‘I think she did,’ I said. ‘She left a note about you for her mother, but I never saw it.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ she said. ‘Grannie gave it to me. I’ve got it at home, now.’

I glanced at her. ‘Is there anything about me in it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll show it you one day.’

We sat in silence for a long time on the beach. It had grown cooler and we had pulled shirts over our bare shoulders while I had been talking of those far-off, painful days in England. The fishing boat had gone a long time before, and we were quite alone upon the beach. The moon had worked around,
and we were now sitting in the silvery light on the white sand under the coconut palms. I glanced at my wrist-watch presently, and it was after midnight. ‘Time we went back to the hostel,’ I said presently.

‘I know.’ She sat thoughtful, not moving. ‘There’s one more thing I want to say before we go.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘When we started doing things together, in Honolulu,’ she said, ‘I was playing a sort of trick on you, because I knew all about you and you knew nothing about me. I want you to try and understand why I did it.’

I smiled. ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘But you might have given me a hint before I went so far.’

‘I know …’ She sat staring at the distant, moonlit point, not looking at me. ‘I wanted to be friends with you before I told you who I was,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to know everything about me, too, before I told you. I thought that it would make it kind of easier to tell you …’ She paused. ‘Then, when I realised what was happening, I didn’t know what to do.’ She sat silent, and then turned to me. ‘Tell me. Am I like my mother?’

‘Just once or twice, when I’ve been tired and had a bit to drink, I’ve thought that you
were
her,’ I said slowly. ‘You’re not very like her in the normal way. Not in appearance, I mean. But in character – I think you’re very like her.’ I glanced at her. ‘I think that’s been the trouble.’

‘I wouldn’t call it trouble,’ she said softly. She turned to me. ‘Did you know I looked like you?’

I laughed. ‘No, I didn’t. Do you?’

‘Mollie Hamilton says so. There’s been quite a bit of gossip since we started going about together in Honolulu.’

I stirred. ‘Better not let me hear them at it. It’s probably a good thing I’m retiring.’

‘They’ll all be very sorry to see you go,’ she said. ‘It’s been nice gossip.’

‘Make any trouble for you?’

She shook her head. ‘No. If they’ve been saying I’m your daughter, I’ve been proud of it.’

She turned to me. ‘I shouldn’t have let you go on and ask me to marry you,’ she said. ‘I should have turned it off, somehow. I could have done. I want you to forgive me for letting you go on.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said again.

‘It seemed so incredible,’ she said. ‘I knew by that time that there’d been no one in your life since my mother died. And I knew that there must be a good deal of my mother in me …’ She paused. ‘If you were falling in love with me, it could only be that you were falling in love again with what was in me of my mother. I couldn’t resist letting it happen, Johnnie. Because you see, it was the final, absolute proof that everything was quite all right when I was born – but for bad luck.’

‘Bad luck or bad management,’ I said slowly.

‘What do you mean by that?’

I sat silent for a time. ‘I’ve had a long time to think this over, and now I’m an old man,’ I said at last. ‘And what I think is this. When you get to wanting something that doesn’t belong to you so badly that you’ve just got to have it, and you take it – well, that’s stealing. You don’t let yourself get into that state of mind with other things – with money or motor cars or gold cigarette-cases. And you mustn’t do it with love. That’s stealing, just the same. But that’s what we didn’t understand.’ I paused. ‘I think your mother understood it a bit better than I did. We kidded ourselves that love was something different, because it says so on the pop tunes.’

She laughed. ‘If you hadn’t kidded yourselves, I shouldn’t be here.’

‘That’s true. Are you glad or sorry?’

‘Glad,’ she said. ‘Very, very glad.’

I got to my feet, stiff after sitting for so long. ‘Time we were going back,’ I said. ‘If we stay much longer I’ll have to write a confidential note about you to Mrs Deakin – staying out too late upon the beach with men.’

She stretched out her hand and I pulled her up beside me. We gathered our things up from the beach to take them to the car. ‘When you’re at Buxton and I’m back at the Alexandra again, we shan’t be very far away from each other,’ she said. ‘May I come over and see you when I get a holiday?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Come and start a bit of gossip for me there.’ We laughed together.

She turned to me. ‘I’ve been so happy tonight. Everything’s quite all right now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘Everything’s come good at last. It’s quite all right, now.’

We walked slowly from the moonlit coral beach into the deep shadows of the palm tree groves. Our feet made no sound on the ground; we were gliding along as if suspended in the air, floating along. Everything had come good at last, after so many years. I had reached the happy ending of the story, and I was quietly, serenely happy. In the soft, velvety darkness I lay utterly at peace for I had finished with all heartaches, with all pains and worries; nothing could touch me now. I had finished the book but I could take it up and read it over and over again, and I would do so, secure in the knowledge of the happiness in the last chapter. There would be no more misery ahead of me, for everything had come good. Everything was all right now.

There was light all around me, and she was by my side. She was dressed in a blue combination suit of smooth denim cloth over a heavy white polo-necked sweater, stifling in Fiji. I blinked my eyes and muttered, ‘You’ll be much too hot. Whatever are you wearing that for?’

She glanced at me curiously. ‘It’s five o’clock, sir. There’s a cup of tea here.’ I saw she had it in her hand, and she put
it down upon the table by my side, beside the lamp that she had lit. She stood back from the bed, and she was in ski-ing clothes, with heavy ski-boots on her feet. ‘I can get you some breakfast while you’re getting up,’ she said. ‘Would you like bacon and eggs? It’s about all there seems to be.’

I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I had been dreaming. This was Johnnie Pascoe’s room and I was in his bed, in his pyjamas. I was Ronnie Clarke, and I had work to do for him. I rose upon one elbow. ‘What’s the weather like?’

She crossed to the window and pulled up the blind. It was quite dark outside. ‘The sky is clear,’ she said. ‘It’s all starry. The wind has dropped a lot.’

I was still happy, and this confirmed my happiness, for everything was going to be all right this time. ‘Has the doctor turned up yet?’

She shook her head. ‘He said he’d be here by ten to six. How did you sleep?’

‘Never better,’ I said. I was Ronnie Clarke, and she had made me a hot drink in the middle of the night. ‘That’s thanks to your Ovaltine.’

She smiled. ‘How many eggs? I’ll do them while you’re getting up.’

She was the nurse, and she had been a hostess with AusCan; I was awake now. ‘Not bacon and eggs,’ I said. ‘It’s too heavy so early in the morning.’ She nodded. ‘I’d like a couple of boiled eggs, lightly boiled, and some toast.’

‘I’ll have it ready in the kitchen by the time you’re dressed,’ she said, and went out of the room.

I got up in the chilly, spartan bedroom, so much larger than it need have been, and put on Johnnie Pascoe’s dressing gown, and thrust my feet into his slippers. I went to the window and looked out. The night was as she said. There was not a scrap of cloud in sight, and very little wind. In Tasmania they get no actuals from the southwest, and a
high had come along that the Met had not been able to forecast. It might well last for a few hours, long enough for me to put the doctor and the nurse down at the Lewis River. Everything was coming good at last. Everything was going to be all right.

The doctor came while I was having breakfast with the nurse at the kitchen table. We heard his car outside, and I got up with my mouth full and went to let him in. He was in ski-ing clothes as he had been before. ‘The weather’s looking better, isn’t it?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘It’s going to be perishing cold for you without the cabin door,’ I said. ‘But if it’s like this when we get there I think we might be able to put down and land it properly.’

He smiled. ‘Is Sister Dawson up yet?’

‘She’s in the kitchen. She didn’t go to bed. She slept in the chair before the fire.’

‘She told me she was going to do that. It looked a great deal more comfortable than the bedroom.’

He came with me to the kitchen and had a cup of tea while I was finishing my breakfast. As I got up from the table we heard the engine of the Auster start up from the direction of the hangar; Billy Monkhouse was there and on the job, running her up for me. Everything was under control now and coming good. Everything was going to be all right this time.

We went the few hundred yards to the hangar in the doctor’s car. It was cold and frosty in the night with the extra bit of chill that always seems to come before the dawn. We parked the car and got out by the hangar, the nurse carrying a little bundle of clothes tied around with string. There was a Proctor in the hangar, dimly visible in the half-light. Outside,
Billy Monkhouse was sitting in the Auster still running it up; four equal blue flames streamed from the exhausts beneath the engine cowling. The two boys were at the tailplane, their clothes blown and buffeted by the slipstream.

I led the doctor and the nurse round behind the hangar, a little out of the noise, so that we could talk. ‘Now look,’ I said. ‘This wind’s not very strong. If it’s like this when we get down to the Lewis River we may be in trouble again. It may be too strong for me to land upon that little strip cross-wind, and at the same time not quite strong enough for me to hold her stationary across it, like I did yesterday. In that case I’d be moving forward ten or fifteen miles an hour across the strip, and you’ll have to get out damn quick.’

The doctor nodded. ‘I understand that. But I could pretty well fall out, since there’s no door.’

‘That’s what I want you to do,’ I said. ‘I hope we shan’t have to perform like that. But if we should, I want you to fall flat on the ground, so that the tailplane will pass over you. I don’t want that to hit you, for my sake as well as yours.’

‘I understand,’ he said again. ‘I’ve got to go down flat upon the ground as soon as I’m out of the machine.’

‘That’s the shot. Think you can do it? I’m afraid it’s a bit acrobatic.’

‘I can do that all right,’ he said. ‘You think we may be going forward fifteen miles an hour?’

‘It could be twenty,’ I said. ‘I hope it won’t be so fast as that. It could be like getting off a tram going a good bat, and falling down.’

‘Fall limp, and try to guard one’s head,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Look, Captain Clarke, I’ll do my best with it. If I think there’s not a hope that I’d get up without broken bones, then I won’t do it. There’s no sense in loading up the woman with another patient.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I hope it won’t be like that. But if it is, I shan’t think any the worse of you if you don’t jump.’

I turned to the nurse. ‘Sister Dawson, I’ll have you in the back seat, and the doctor beside me. If he succeeds in making it, then we’ll go up again a few hundred feet, and you get out of the back seat and sit beside me, where he was sitting. Then we come in again when you’re quite ready. Before we take off, now, I want you to sit in that seat and just practise getting out.’

She nodded. ‘I’d like to do that.’

I thought for a moment. ‘If it looks too difficult, or if the doctor has a very rough landing, I won’t ask you to jump,’ I said. ‘We’ll try again later in the day, when there’s a bit more wind.’