The Rainbow and the Rose (8 page)

When we were on our estimated time of arrival we had been flying for an hour and forty-three minutes. We should be a little faster going back, I thought, but the margin on
our fuel was short and we had no more than ten minutes in which to find the strip and land the doctor. I approached the coast in the murk well throttled back. It was featureless, fairly low, but the cloud ceiling was only about four hundred feet. There was no sign of any river mouth. I turned right and flew along the coast, getting a bearing of its run; south of the Lewis River it turned sharply east, but here we were still flying on a course of about 16°. We were probably still to the north of it, and I went on southwards, one eye on my watch. Things were getting terribly tight for us.

It began to rain harder than ever, and the visibility grew worse. I had stopped talking to the doctor, and he to me. The cliffs got higher till their tops were in the cloud; I sat tense and anxious. Then they dipped down, and there was a river entrance between black reefs boiling with surf. It didn’t look a bit like the entrance to the Lewis River as I had seen it about three hours before, but it probably was the same, seen from a different viewpoint, under different circumstances. If that were so, the doctor was now within a couple of miles of Johnnie Pascoe.

I flew across the river entrance at a safe distance in case there was a headland sticking out in front of us, and then I turned back and flew across it somewhat closer in. I pulled the little data sheet of the airstrip out of my pocket, that the controller at Essendon had given me. It showed the river entrance. It was probably the same, but it was hard to say. If it were, the course from the entrance to the airstrip would be about 110°.

Over the sea the cloud ceiling was now about three hundred feet. It might be a little higher over the land, I thought; there is usually a hundred feet or so of clear in weather like that. It’s only in a calm that the cloud descends on to the ground in the form of fog. I turned westwards and flew out to sea for a couple of miles on the reciprocal course, and then turned in again and flew towards
the coast on 110°, climbing into the murk till I could only just see the sea.

The first rocks passed beneath us and I sat tense, ready for anything. We came to the cliff and crossed it, and now button grass was very close beneath my wheels. There was no clear air, or if there was, I was not game to try and find it. With my heart in my mouth I thrust the throttle hard forward, eased back on the stick, and climbed up into the murk. I sat waiting for the crash till the altimeter showed seven hundred feet. Then I relaxed and put her in a slow turn to the right to find the sea again, flying completely blind between the hills.

I said to the doctor, ‘I’m afraid this is no good, Alec. I think we’re right over the Lewis River, but we shan’t be able to make it.’

He said, ‘If there was a beach, perhaps I could get out on that.’

‘I haven’t seen one,’ I replied. He didn’t know what he was suggesting, although, as a Tasmanian, perhaps he did. If so, he was just brave and that’s all about it. I couldn’t have guaranteed my position within ten miles; we might be playing about over some other river, not the Lewis River at all. If I found a level patch where I could put him out as I had tried to on the airstrip, I should be leaving him stranded in quite uninhabited country in the worst weather with no provisions or equipment at all. That wasn’t practical.

I started to let down towards the sea when I judged that it was safe, watching the altimeter. ‘I’m going back,’ I said. ‘Back to Buxton. We’ll have to wait until this weather moderates again.’

We came out at about a hundred and fifty feet over a black, rough sea and started flying northwards. We were going a bit quicker, but the visibility was worse than ever, and it was raining harder. I could only see a few hundred
yards; I went on for ten minutes keeping the coast in sight on my right hand, seen dimly through the rain.

Then it suddenly loomed up dead ahead of us; we seemed to be flying straight into a cliff. I flung the machine round in a violent turn to port, and we missed it by about a hundred feet. We were so close that I could see the mutton birds on the rocks; I even fancied I could see their little eyes and their claws. It was as near as that. I steadied on a course westwards, straight out to sea, and pulled out the map. ‘That was Penguin Head,’ I said as calmly as I could.

If we went on following the coast like that we should be dead before we got to Buxton. We had practically no fuel for deviations, but they would have to be made. A course of 315° for eighty-six minutes would take us clear of all dangers and would land us ten miles out to sea off the mouth of the Arthur River, with Buxton about sixty miles away downwind to the north-east and all low country in between. I explained the position to the doctor and showed him what I was going to do, and then I started in to fly my compass course about a hundred feet up over the sea.

We were pretty cold and miserable by the time I made my turn, nearly an hour and a half later, and I was getting very worried indeed about the fuel. However, in a few minutes we passed over the beach and went on across an undulating country. The clouds were rather higher here than they had been further south, and we could fly at about seven hundred feet most of the way. We went on at a good speed over the ground, but now the gauge was jumping on the zero stop again. I said to the doctor, ‘Tell me if you see anything you recognise.’

I decided to give it another five minutes, and glanced at my watch. There was still a light rain falling, but we could see more than a mile ahead. At four minutes we came to a weatherboard farmhouse, white-painted. It stood in flat paddocks, and it had a few trees round it as a windbreak. I
could probably land here, and when I realised that, I knew that I wanted very much to be down safely on the ground. A line of poles ran from it to a road; I looked again, and saw another set of poles; it was on the telephone. I went into a turn and said to the doctor, ‘Do you know that place?’

He said, ‘I’m not sure, but it looks rather like Jeff Duncan’s property. If it is, they’re patients of mine.’

‘How far would that be from the aerodrome?’

‘I should think about twelve miles.’

The needle of the gauge was solid on the zero stop. ‘I’m going to put down there,’ I said.

There was a little plume of wood smoke from the kitchen chimney, which was a help, and a paddock of ten or fifteen acres downwind from the house; the trees would make a shelter for the aircraft on the ground. I dropped off height and turned low over it; there were some sheep there but the surface looked all right. I picked a clear patch between the sheep and brought her in and put her down, thankful to be out of the air. Some people came running out of the house as I taxied slowly forward to the shelter of the trees, the doctor got out and went to one wing strut, a young lad to the other, and we got her into shelter and tied her down to a harrow and a disc plough.

It was Jeff Duncan’s farm all right, and they all knew the doctor. He was soaked to the skin, and stiff with cold, and trembling. We all went into the kitchen and stood by the wood stove; they gave him dry clothes to wear and hot whisky and lemon to drink. I drank tea because there was more flying to do, and rang up Billy Monkhouse at the aerodrome and asked him to bring over a jerrican of petrol. He told me that the Proctor had arrived and Dr Parkinson had gone in with his pilot to the police station to speak upon the radio. I told him to call in on them on his way out with the petrol and tell them that, again, I hadn’t been able to land the doctor.

When I got back to the kitchen after speaking on the telephone I found the doctor standing by the stove; they had opened up the front of it and stoked it up with wood so that it made a warm blaze. He had his second whisky with hot lemon in his hand, half consumed, and he was looking a great deal better than he had a quarter of an hour before.

He said, ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t manage it, Captain. The weather wasn’t very good, was it?’

I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t …’ It seemed to me an understatement.

‘What will we do now? Wait till it gets better and try again?’

I had very nearly killed him twice, at least, that day. ‘Do you want to try again?’ I asked. ‘Dr Parkinson’s in Buxton.’

‘He’d be much better at dealing with a fractured skull than I would,’ he said. ‘He’s had much more experience. But I’d be quite willing to try again, so far as the flying goes.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve got a sort of thing about this now,’ he said. ‘I want to see it through.’

I nodded. ‘So do I. I’ll have to get my head down for a bit, though, before going out again. We’ll find out what the Met has to say, and then go for the next clear patch.’

After a time Billy Monkhouse arrived in his old car. We all went out with him to refuel the machine for me to fly back to the aerodrome. I asked him, ‘Have you heard anything from the Met? Any more breaks coming?’

‘They won’t say,’ he replied. ‘Nothing in sight immediately, anyway. They’ve started a ground party to walk in through Kallista.’

‘I’ll have to get a room at the hotel and get some sleep,’ I told him. ‘Who flew the doctor up from Hobart?’

‘A young chap called Phil Barnes,’ he told me. ‘Assistant instructor at the club – came out of the R.A.A.F. about a year back. He knows the country.’

I nodded. ‘He can carry on while I get some sleep. I suppose I can get into that hotel?’

He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know that you can. They let four rooms. They’ve got the boss’s mother in one and his wife’s sister and her little girl in another. Then there’s Dr Parkinson and Phil Barnes, each got a room. They turned out the little girl for one of them and put her in her ma’s room.’ He paused. ‘The best thing you can do is to go in Captain Pascoe’s house,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t mind.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Last house out of town before you get to the ’drome,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right there.’

‘I’ll be all right anywhere, so long as there’s a bed,’ I said.

As soon as she was refuelled I got into the machine to take her off light from that paddock and fly her back to Buxton. The doctor was to go back with the ground engineer in his car. The Duncans herded the ewes over to one side of the paddock and I got into the air and flew back to the aerodrome. I landed just outside the hangar, the boys came and caught the struts, for the wind was still high, and we put her inside. My job was over for the time, and I could rest. Great gusts of rain were blowing across the fields.

I got out of the machine and stood on the damp concrete floor, cold and unhappy. There was no car there, for Billy Monkhouse had taken his over to me with the petrol, and he was not back yet. I rang up the police station while I was waiting for him and spoke to the sergeant, and told him the position. He said that the Met report was discouraging. There was no break in sight. Dr Parkinson and his pilot had gone for dinner at the hotel, with the lady.

‘What lady?’ I asked.

‘A lady came just after you took off,’ he said. ‘A Mrs Forbes. Something to do with Captain Pascoe, I think. She flew across to Launceston from Melbourne first thing
this morning, and got a taxi here. She’s going to stay at the hotel.’

‘Is she a relation?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know that,’ he said. ‘She might be. I didn’t give her much attention, what with other things.’

I rang off, and soon after that Billy Monkhouse drove up with the doctor. I told him what I had done, and that a woman had arrived. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘She come just as you were taking off.’

‘Do you know who she is?’

‘She didn’t say. A cousin, perhaps. I dunno.’

There was no point in bothering with her; she couldn’t help us. I said, ‘Show me which is Johnnie’s house. Can I get something to eat at the hotel?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Not at this time, you can’t. Dinner’ll be off. Mrs Lawrence’ll fix you up something. She does for Captain Pascoe – lives next door. I’ll take you there.’

I got into his little car with the doctor He said that he would look in at the hotel and see Dr Parkinson, which would save my going into town. I think he saw that I was just about all in from the strain of flying in difficult conditions and the lack of sleep, and indeed I think I actually fell asleep in the three or four minutes that it took us to drive from the hangar to the first house on the edge of the little town, because I know I woke up with a start.

We went and spoke to Mrs Lawrence in the next house, a fat, comfortable woman washing up after their midday dinner. ‘I think he’s got some bacon and eggs in the house,’ she said when the position was explained to her. ‘I could come over in a minute and do that, if that would be enough.’ I said anything would do. ‘I’ll bring over some bread and some milk,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to be in tonight I could go in and get a bit of steak.’ She paused, and then she said, ‘We’re all so sorry about the captain.’

‘We’ll get a doctor in to him before long,’ I told her. ‘As soon as this weather lifts.’

She nodded. ‘I never knew it be so crook. It’s been like this for days. You go on over and make yourself at home, and I’ll be over in ten minutes. There’s a fire laid all ready in the lounge.’ She took a key down from a nail over the sink and gave it to me. ‘That’s the back door key.’

Monkhouse drove the car on to the town with the doctor, splashing on the dirt road through the sheets of rain, and I went over to the other house. The door opened into the kitchen and I shut the rain out. I was cold and wet, and the house seemed chilly and unlived in. I went through into the lounge and dropped down on my knees before the fire, and lit it. There was wood in the wood box and a good pile outside the back door. There was no need to stint myself of warmth; I stayed on my knees in my leather coat for some time piling on the twiggy bits and then the rather larger pieces and finally the logs. With the shelter from the weather and the increasing glow from the fire a little warmth began to creep back into me, and presently I noticed that my coat was dripping water on the fire-irons and the fender. I stood up stiffly, and took it off, and went and hung it on the back of the kitchen door. Then I came back to the fire and looked around.