In the Wet

  “I love it,” she said. “We often come here. Do you have this sort of harbour for yachts in Australia?”

  “Not quite the same,” he said. “You do in Tasmania. But the coast of Australia hasn’t got the same number of inlets—you’ve got to go further between harbours. It’s not quite the same as it is here—you don’t get so much small yacht cruising there, Miss Long.”

  “Where did you learn your sailing, then, Commander?”

  He smiled. “I was in a place called Townsville when I was a boy,” he said. “That’s on the coast of Queensland. I went there when I was twelve years old to work in a shop, delivering the groceries. I used to go sailing a lot at Townsville, out to Magnetic Island and the Barrier Reef, in all sorts of old wrecks. That was before I went into the R.A.A.F.” He paused. “I’ve had several boats at one time or another. I had an old Dragon before coming to England, when I was at Laverton.”

  “Have you ever done any ocean racing?” she asked.

  “I sailed in the Hobart Race two years, in a boat called Stormy Petrel,” he said. “We didn’t do any good, but it was fun. It takes about six days usually—Sydney to Hobart.”

  She smiled. “Hard work?”

  “Too right,” he said. “You get a lot of gales down there, without much warning.” He paused. “Will you have a cup of tea, Miss Long—or a glass of sherry?”

  “Sherry’s easier,” she said. “I’d love a glass of sherry.” She hesitated, and then said, “The name’s Rosemary.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Yours is David, isn’t it?”

  He went down into the saloon and found the bottle and the glasses, and passed them up to her with an open tin of tomato juice. “I’ve got a cake, or I’ve got a pineapple,” he said. “Which would you rather have?”

  “A pineapple!” she exclaimed. “Wherever did you get that from?”

  “Brisbane,” he said. He grinned up at her from the saloon. “The R.A.A.F. do what they can for officers who have to come to England. I’ve got a ham here, too.”

  “Not a whole ham?”

  “I’m afraid so. I keep it tucked away in greaseproof paper in case I get murdered for it.”

  “I haven’t seen a pineapple for years,” she said. “I’d like a bit of pineapple with my sherry if you can spare it, David.”

  He cut a round off the pineapple on the cabin table. “David’s the name,” he said. “But most people call me Nigger. Nigger Anderson.” He passed the pineapple up to her in the cockpit on a plate, with a bowl of sugar and a knife and fork.

  “Why do they call you that?” she asked.

  “Because my mother was a half caste,” he replied. “I’m a quadroon.” He climbed out into the cockpit and filled her glass with the sherry and his own with the tomato juice. He raised his to her. “Here’s to the black and white.”

  “It’s pretty mean to call you that,” she said. “Not many people do that, do they?”

  “Everybody,” he said cheerfully. “Everybody calls me Nigger Anderson. I rather like it.”

  “I can see that you put up with it,” she said quietly. “I can’t believe you like it.”

  “Well, I do,” he said. “I don’t know much about the white side of my family, but on the black side I’m an older Australian than any of them. My grandmother’s tribe were the Kanyu, and they ruled the Cape York Peninsula before Captain Cook was born or thought of.”

  She smiled. “And Wing Commander Anderson doesn’t give a damn who knows about it.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t. I’d rather people called me Nigger Anderson than that they went creeping round the subject trying to avoid it.”

  “I see you’re big enough to carry it now without it hurting,” she said. “It must have hurt a bit when you were younger. Or didn’t they do it then?”

  “I used to fight them if they said it to hurt,” he replied. “I suppose I was rather a tough little boy. I was brought up on the station, because my Dad was a stockman. I could rope a steer from horseback when I was ten, and I won a prize at the Croydon rodeo when I was twelve for staying on a bullock. I don’t remember fighting very much, but when I did I think I generally won.”

  She said, “What does it mean, to rope a steer? It sounds like something on the movies.”

  “It’s when you’re mustering,” he said. “To brand the calves, and mark them. You drive a mob of three or four hundred into a stockyard built at the station or out in the bush if it’s a big place that has several; then a couple of you go in amongst them on horseback and chuck a rope lasso over the head of the one you want. The other end of the rope is made fast to a horn on the saddle, and you fight him with the horse and tow him out of the mob to the branding posts, and there the stockmen grab him and throw him to be branded. It’s easy enough when you know the knack of it, but you want a good, steady horse.”

  She stared at him. “Do you mean to say that you were doing that when you were ten?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “With little steers—not full grown beasts. My Dad was head stockman on Tavistock Forest, and he taught me.”

  “But however old were you when you learnt to ride a horse?”

  “Three or four, I suppose,” he said. “Dad told me once that he thought a boy shouldn’t ride alone before he’s five because if he fell it might put him off it, but I was riding much sooner than that. I don’t think I could mount a horse alone before I was about seven, though, because of reaching the stirrup.”

  She said curiously, “Did you go to school at all?”

  “Not what you’d call school,” he replied. “Mrs. Beeman used to teach us—she was the manager’s wife, and she’d been a teacher before she married. She had a class for all the kids upon the station. I was up to average when I went to Townsville, I think. They had evening classes there—I went to those.”

  She sat in silence for a minute, looking at the familiar harbour scene, the crowded yachts. What he had told her all seemed very strange and foreign. “How are you liking England?” she said at last. “It must be very different to Australia.”

  “It’s different,” he said. “But Australia isn’t all cattle stations and horses, you know. I left the Gulf Country when I was twelve and I’ve not been back since, except for six months in the R.A.A.F. at Invergarry. It’s over ten years since I was astride a horse.”

  “Are you liking it over here?” she asked again.

  He smiled. “Not very much. The job’s a bonza one—I wouldn’t give that up. But one day I’ll be glad to get back home.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Five months.”

  “Do you know many people in England?”

  “Not many,” said the pilot. “But that doesn’t worry me. I don’t know many people in Australia.”

  “Are you alone on board now?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “She’s all right for two, but you’re on top of each other all the time. I generally cruise alone.”

  “Would you like to come and have supper with us, in Evadne?” she asked. “There’s only my uncle and me—he’s a retired captain, R.N.”

  He hesitated. “It’s very kind of you to ask me,” he said. “What about the food, though?”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of tins.”

  “Shall I bring my ham?” he suggested.

  “We couldn’t eat your ham,” she said. “We’ll be all right. There’s heaps to eat on board.”

  “I’d better bring the ham,” he said. “It’ll go bad if it’s not eaten. The last one did.”

  She was startled, and a little shocked. “Went bad?”

  “I couldn’t get through it,” he explained. “I had to throw half of it away.”

  What was normal to him seemed an inconceivable blunder to her. “If that’s what’s going to happen we’d better help you eat it,” she said firmly. “Let’s have a look at it.”

  Down in the saloon they held a small conference ov
er the ham, an enormous mass of meat to her. “How big is it—Nigger?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Eighteen pounds—Rosemary.”

  “Whatever are you going to do with it? It’ll take you months to get through that alone.”

  He looked puzzled. “I don’t think so. One eats a pound or so a day. The other only went bad because I was away.”

  “You couldn’t possibly eat that!”

  “Why—I should think so. Look, that bit that’s cut—that was supper last night and breakfast this morning.”

  “Just you alone?” He nodded, and she stared at the gap: what he said was probably true. “I suppose we don’t eat so much meat in England,” she said.

  “Too right,” he remarked drily. “I’ve noticed that already.”

  They wrapped the ham up and took it up into the cockpit. “How long have you been working at the Palace?” he asked.

  “Three years,” she said.

  “Like it?”

  She nodded. “One feels so much in the centre of things. It would be awfully flat working anywhere else, after being there.”

  He said curiously, “Do you see much of the Queen?”

  She laughed. “Not me. Miss Porson takes her letters if she ever wants to write one herself, to be typed. Mostly she writes in her own hand, or else one of the Secretaries writes for her.” She paused. “I’ve seen her often enough, of course—taking things to Major Macmahon when he’s in with her, or passing in the corridor. I don’t think she knows my name.”

  “What’s she like?” he asked. “I’ve only seen her on the pictures.”

  “You’ll be meeting her before long, of course,” she said. “She’s much smaller than you’d think from photographs.” She stared out across the harbour. “She’s a very wonderful person,” she said quietly. “She’s got such courage …”

  “Courage?”

  “That’s what I said.” She turned to him, smiling a little. “We’re gossiping too much,” she said. “That’s one of the things we have to learn in our job—not to gossip about our betters. And when I say betters, I mean betters.”

  She turned to her boat. “Come over about six o’clock,” she said. “Uncle Ted wants to go on shore first, but we’ll be back by then. I think I’ll make some ham toasts of this ham. I won’t take too much.”

  She rowed off in her dinghy, and David watched her thread her way between the yachts and climb up on to the deck of the yawl.

  He rowed across later in the evening, and was met by the uncle, a man of about seventy still lean and athletic, called Captain Osborne. He greeted the Australian warmly, and offered him a drink, but the pilot refused. “I don’t at all,” he said. “I never have. But please don’t let me stop you.”

  From the saloon Rosemary said, “I’ve got some tomato juice. I could make you a tomato juice cocktail.”

  “I’d like that.” So they sat in the cockpit while the girl cooked dinner, appearing now and then for a glass of sherry with the men and going down again, while the captain drank pink gins and David drank tomato juice.

  For half an hour they chatted. Then his host said, “There’s one thing about Australia I wish you’d tell me. How does your multiple vote work? It’s quite an issue here in England, as perhaps you know.”

  The pilot raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that. You don’t have it, do you?”

  “No. How does it work out in practice?”

  “I don’t really know,” said David. “I’ve never thought about it much.”

  Captain Osborne asked, “Have you got more than one vote, yourself?”

  The pilot nodded. “I’m a three vote man.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions,” the captain said. “It really is getting rather important now in England.”

  “I don’t mind,” David said. “The only thing is, I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. I’ve never bothered.”

  “What do you get your three votes for?” the captain asked.

  “Basic, education, and foreign travel.”

  “The basic vote—that’s what everybody gets, is it?”

  “That’s right,” the pilot said. “Everybody gets that at the age of twenty one.”

  “And education?”

  “That’s for higher education,” David said. “You get it if you take a university degree. There’s a whole list of other things you get it for, like being a solicitor or a doctor. Officers get it when they’re commissioned. That’s how I got mine.”

  “And foreign travel?”

  “That’s for earning your living outside Australia for two years. It’s a bit of a racket, that one, because in the war a lot of people got it for their war service. I got mine that way. I didn’t know anything about the Philippines, really, when I came away, although I’d been there for three years, off and on.”

  “You had a wider outlook than if you’d stayed at home,” the captain said. “I suppose that’s worth something.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “So you’ve got three votes. How does that work out in practice, at an election?”

  “You get three voting papers given to you, and fill in all three, and put them in the box,” the pilot said.

  “You’re on the register as having three votes?”

  “That’s right. You have to register again when you get an extra vote—produce some sort of a certificate.”

  They sat in silence for a time, looking out over the crowded harbour in the sunset light. Rosemary came to the saloon ladder and spoke up to them. “You can get more votes than three, can’t you?” she said. “Is it seven?”

  David glanced down at her. “The seventh is hardly ever given,” he said. “Only the Queen can give that.”

  She nodded. “I know. We get them coming through the office. I should think there must be about ten a year.”

  “The others are straightforward,” David said. “You get a vote if you raise two children to the age of fourteen without getting a divorce. That’s the family vote.”

  “You can’t get it if you’re divorced?” asked Rosemary smiling.

  “No. That puts you out.”

  “Do you both get it?”

  “Husband and wife both get it,” David said.

  “What’s the fifth one?” asked the captain.

  “The achievement vote,” said David. “You get an extra vote if your personal exertion income—what you call earned income here—if that was over something or other in the year before the election—five thousand a year, I think. I don’t aspire to that one. It’s supposed to cater for the man who’s got no education and has never been out of Australia and quarrelled with his wife, but built up a big business. They reckon that he ought to have more say in the affairs of the country than his junior typist.”

  “Maybe. And the sixth?”

  “That’s if you’re an official of a church. Any recognised Christian church—they’ve got a list of them. You don’t have to be a minister. I think churchwardens get it as well as vicars, but I’m really not quite sure. What it boils down to is that you get an extra vote if you’re doing a real job for a church.”

  “That’s an interesting one.”

  “It’s never interested me much,” said the pilot. “I suppose I’m not ambitious. But I think it’s quite a good idea, all the same.”

  “So that’s six votes,” Captain Osborne said. “The basic vote, and education, and foreign travel, and the family vote, and the achievement vote, and the church vote. What’s the seventh?”

  “That’s given at the Queen’s pleasure,” said David. “It’s more like a decoration. You get it if you’re such a hell of a chap that the Queen thinks you ought to have another vote.”

  “Aren’t there any rules about getting it?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the pilot. “I think you just get it for being a good boy.”

  From the cabin hatch Rosemary said, “That’s right, Uncle Ted. It’s given by a Royal Charter in each case.” She added, ??
?I’m just dishing up.”

  They went down into the cabin of the yawl and sat down to the ham toasts. For a time they talked about yachts and the Solent, and of Rosemary’s cooking, and of English food, but Captain Osborne was absent minded. Presently he brought the conversation back to the Australian system of voting. “About this multiple voting,” he said. “They do it in New Zealand too, don’t they?”

  “I think they do,” said David. “Yes, I’m pretty sure they do.”

  “They do it in Canada,” said Rosemary. “Most of the Commonwealth countries have the multiple vote in one form or another, except England.”

  David smiled. “You’re pretty conservative here.”

  The naval officer nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “We don’t take up new things like that till they’re well proved.” He paused, and then he said. “Of course, you’ve got your States. You can try a thing like that out in your State elections, and see how it goes.”

  “That’s how women got the vote in the Commonwealth,” Rosemary said. “New Zealand started it, in 1893, and then South Australia gave women the vote in 1894. When the Australian Federal constitution was drafted in 1902 they gave women the vote. They didn’t get it in England till 1918.”

  David stared at her. “Is that right? Where did you get that from?”

  “It’s right enough,” the girl said coolly. “I did History at Oxford, and women take an interest in the women’s vote. But it was the same with the secret ballot in elections. South Australia started that in 1856, but English voters didn’t get a secret ballot till 1872.”

  “Some time like that,” the pilot said. “A bit before my time, and I never did much history. I remember when the multiple vote started, though. It was when I was in Townsville, in 1963. They brought it in for West Australia.”

  “Why did West Australia start it?” asked Rosemary. “Why not New South Wales, or Queensland?”

  “I don’t know,” said David. “Labour was very much against it.”

  “They’re against it here,” said Captain Osborne drily.

  “West Australia was always pretty Liberal,” the pilot said. “People had been talking about multiple voting for a long time before that. I reckon it was easier to get it through in West Australia.”