The Rainbow and the Rose (37 page)

He nodded. ‘They got it from the Lewis River soon after you took off. Too bad it had to happen.’

I nodded, and got out of the machine, and looked around. Something was missing. I asked, ‘What’s happened to the Proctor?’

‘They took off about an hour ago for Hobart,’ he said. ‘Wanted to get down while the good weather lasted. The woman, Mrs Forbes, she went with them.’

‘Damn good job,’ I said.

‘You left the nurse there?’ he asked.

I nodded. One of the boys was near us, and I took the old ground engineer to one side. ‘Look, Mr Monkhouse,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen here now. I mean, about these two aircraft, and the house, and all the rest of his stuff. I don’t know if he made a will, or if so, where it is.’

‘Mr Dobson would have it, if there is one,’ he remarked. ‘He’s the solicitor.’

‘You’d better go and ask him if he’s got one. If there is, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’s left everything to Sister Dawson.’

He stared at me. ‘You mean – this nurse – here?’

I nodded. ‘She’s visited him before, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes. She’s been here two or three times.’ He hesitated. ‘Looks a bit like him.’

‘Well, there you are,’ I said. ‘That’s none of my business, and none of yours. But she’ll probably be telling you what she wants done here.’

He asked, ‘What’s the other machine like – the one he piled up in, at Lewis River?’

‘The airframe’s a write-off,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be worth trying to bring that out. The engine didn’t look too bad. It would be worth going in for that some time, and bring it out by sea.’

We talked about that for a minute or two. Then he said, ‘What will you be doing now, sir?’

‘I’ll get some breakfast somewhere and pick up my haversack,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll get back to Melbourne. There’s nothing else that I can do here.’

‘Mrs Lawrence is over in the house, waiting to cook you breakfast,’ he said. ‘I got that fixed for you.’

‘You’ve told her about Captain Pascoe?’

‘Aye, I went over and told her. It’ll be better if you have your breakfast in the house. They’re a nosy kind of party, up at that hotel.’

The doctor joined us, and I told him what I was going to do. ‘I think there’s a plane from Devonport today about the middle of the morning.’ The old ground engineer nodded, and said, ‘Eleven thirty-five.’ The doctor said, ‘I’ll run you over in my car.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ I paused and then I said, ‘I understand that there’s some breakfast going in Johnnie’s house. Would you like to join me?’ So we went together to the little house by the aerodrome that I had left so full of quiet hope before the dawn, only a few hours before.

Mrs Lawrence was in the kitchen, looking as if she had been crying. I told her we’d be glad of breakfast for two, and she started in to get it. The doctor and I threw off our coats and went to wash and clean up, and presently we were sitting down to breakfast at the kitchen table.

Mrs Lawrence had gone over to her own house next door taking the child with her, after telling us to leave everything as it was. She would come in later to wash up the breakfast and clean up the house. We said little while we ate, but after we had finished and were smoking at the table over a final
cup of coffee, the doctor brought the subject up that was on both our minds.

‘I’ve been thinking over what you told me about Sister Dawson,’ he said. ‘After I’ve taken you to Devonport, I think I’ll go on home. I’ll leave Betty in Hobart with her father on my way through. We’ve got a place down on the Huon. Then when the ground party come out from the Lewis River I could meet Sister Dawson with my car at Kallista and bring her back up here.’

It seemed to me that that meant leaving his practice to look after itself for three or four days, but that was his affair, not mine. ‘That would certainly be a help to her,’ I remarked. ‘I think she’ll want to come back here.’

‘She’ll have to,’ he said. ‘She left a suitcase at the Vicarage.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Of course, I could take that down with me in the car.’

‘I should do that,’ I observed. ‘By the time you meet her she won’t have had a change of clothes for three or four days, and she’ll have walked about forty miles through the bush.’

‘Of course. I’ll take it with me.’

‘I think she’ll want to come back here, in any case,’ I said. ‘There’s probably a will, and Johnnie probably left everything to her. She’ll have to come and settle up what’s to be done.’

He nodded slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that …’

I glanced at him. ‘You’ll be seeing a good deal of her?’

He met my eyes. ‘Probably.’

‘Well – look,’ I said. ‘She won’t have a lot of money to throw around. She’ll want to sell the two aircraft that are here. She doesn’t have to pay a pilot to fly them away. I can get over here for nothing, any time, and I’d be very glad to fly them to Moorabbin to be sold. I shan’t be seeing her again, but will you tell her that? I’d like to do that for her.’

‘That’s really very kind of you,’ he said. ‘That’s a very generous offer.’

I flushed a little. ‘Her father was a very old friend,’ I said. ‘It was he who taught me to fly, back in the dark ages. And the girl’s a good type, too.’

He said quietly, ‘I think she’s a very wonderful person.’

‘She’s going to be a very lonely one now,’ I said practically. ‘I don’t think she’s got a single relation left in the world. Except, perhaps, some second cousins up at Colac.’ I grinned at him. ‘Good luck.’

He smiled, a little self-consciously. ‘Thank you.’

I got up from the table. ‘I’ll give you a ring in a few days’ time when you’ve got back here, and you can tell me what the form is.’

He drove me to Devonport and put me down at the aerodrome. Then he went on southwards, while I waited for the midday plane. I got back to Essendon about half past one, reported at the office, and told them what the form had been at Buxton. They had a crew fixed up to do my flight to Sydney that afternoon, Flight 82, so I got the day off; I had a late lunch in the restaurant and walked out to my car. It was only about thirty-six hours since I had left it in the park, but when I unlocked the door and got into it, it seemed like so many years.

There was nobody at home when I got back to my house in Essendon. Sheila sometimes did the shopping in the afternoon before fetching the children home from school, and I guessed that that was where she was now. She must be walking, because I had had the car locked up in the car park, and I was sorry about that. I put down my haversack and leather coat and wandered round the house, fingering the children’s toys, Sheila’s fur stole that I had saved up for for so long, the small tools in my workshop. Johnnie Pascoe had been a better man than I, but he had never had the little benisons of life that I had got. I hoped his daughter would be
luckier. She would be, I thought, if the doctor had anything to do with it.

I got the cutter, the half-moon thing with the long handle, and began to trim the edges of the lawn.

Sheila came home with the children before I got it finished. They were surprised and glad to see me, and came running to hug me. When the children were sent into the house to take their coats off, Sheila said, ‘He died, didn’t he? They said so on the wireless.’

I nodded. ‘We couldn’t get in to him yesterday. It clamped right down. I got a doctor and a nurse in there at dawn today, but they were just too late.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said softly. Peter came running from the house towards us. ‘Tell me about it after they’re in bed.’

We went into the house together because it was a bit cold in the garden for the children, and I lit the fire in the sitting room, and we had tea. Then Diana showed me her latest paintings and Peter showed me the arrows he was making for the bow that he had made, and I helped him a bit with that. Bed-time was coming near and it was time for me to read to them, and I took Diana on my knee and read to her from
Doctor Dolittle
as we always did on Fridays, my day off, till it was time for her to go with Mummy to her bath, and after that I read
Coot Club
to Peter. When he was off to bed I laid the supper table and got a glass of sherry for us both, and sat on the edge of the kitchen table talking to Sheila while she grilled the steak. Somehow, I felt that evening that I had never appreciated my home so much.

We ate our steak and apple pie, and washed the dishes up. Then in the sitting room, smoking by the fire, I told her everything factual that had happened in Tasmania. I didn’t tell her anything about my dreams because people who insist on telling you what they dreamed are a bit of a bore, and anyway, they didn’t mean a thing.

When I had told her everything, and we had discussed it
all, I said, ‘I’ll probably have to go over there again, and fly the aircraft to Moorabbin to be sold. I offered to do that. I’d like to do that for him.’

She nodded. Then she said, ‘You’d known him a long time, hadn’t you?’

‘Nearly thirty years,’ I said. ‘I never knew till now that we were such close friends.’