There was a man sitting by the bed side and holding his hand, and this man was out of his mind. His hand was as hot as David’s was cold, and both were sweating freely so that it was as if they were holding hands beneath the water. This man was ill and wandering in his mind; he was a priest, too, and a good cobber who got beds for fellows with bad ears, but he was away out of his mind now and wandering in a crazy world of harps and angels’ wings.
There was a woman there, a sister from a hospital who could do nothing to relieve his pain because a crocodile had eaten her medicine case, and so she had gone to sleep; she sat there at the table with her head upon her arms, and he was left alone with the mad priest in the darkness. The place that he was in was a tumbledown house or shack upon an island in the middle of great floods and all the animals in the world had come through the darkness and the floods, running and creeping and hopping and crawling to this small place in the wilderness. They had come because death is a great mystery, and animals are curious about the mystery as well as men, so they had come to see him die. There they were, grouped in a circle round the house in the intermittent moonlight, and they were getting closer every minute because there was nobody but a mad priest awake in the house, and they were not afraid of him. Presently, when he died, they would come into the room to watch him die; he would know the moment when they came into the room, and they were getting closer every minute. The tearing, tearing pain.
Animals were right. Cobbers they could be sometimes; they never did you any harm unless you went for them. Two hundred and thirty horses at Wonamboola station he had had; dumb brutes but they never called you Pisspot, only if they got frightened they might go wild on you and hurt you without meaning. He wasn’t afraid of animals; let them come into the room and watch him die if they wanted. Sooner the better. His body was contorted once again with the intolerable pain.
In the darkness there was a glow of light, like a bloke that might be holding half an inch of candle in a saucer, where the edge of the saucer hid the candle and the flame and you could only see the glow. And in this glow there was a face, yellow and wrinkled, the face of an old Chinaman floating in the air before his eyes. The face floated before his eyes in the darkness, and the lips moved, and they said, “You want a pipe, Stevie?”
The words somehow meant relief. He tried to speak but no sound came; he looked imploringly into the eyes, and the face said, “Or-right, I get you pipe.” There was a period then, while some familiar movements were going on quite close to him, that promised a relief from pain, and then the vile fragrance that he welcomed was upon him once again, and in his mouth, and in the back of his nose. Now he could relax, free from the pain. Now he could turn to the dream, England, and Ratmalana, and Fairbairn aerodrome at Canberra, all across the world, backwards and forwards, all across the world and carrying the Queen. Christmas Island in the middle of the Pacific, and being in love.
Christmas Island. The pain hit him like a blow, and he opened his eyes, groaning and muttering with the pain. He was in a strange room that he did not recognise, but it was different from the hut in the middle of the floods, and there was moonlight in the room, and a glow of electric light under the door. Through the thin partition he heard a voice say, “Somebody else is having trouble in here. Who’s sleeping in this one?”
He heard Rosemary say, “That’s Wing Commander Anderson.”
The door opened and the light was switched on, and he sat up in bed, his stomach cramped and tense with pain. Dr. Mitchison in his pyjamas stood in the door, with Rosemary in her dressing gown behind him. The doctor said, “Are you feeling all right?”
“By God I’m not,” the pilot said. “I’m feeling awful.”
“Stay there a minute, and I’ll get you something.” The doctor vanished up the corridor, and Rosemary stood in the doorway looking at him, and she was laughing; even in his pain he thought how charming in her dressing gown she looked. “What’s happening?” he asked.
She said, “It’s the crayfish, I think, Nigger. Everybody’s been in trouble except me—I didn’t have any. It must have been a bad tin.”
He licked his lips to try to clear the foul taste from his mouth. “I had an awful dream,” he muttered.
“What about?”
“I don’t know. I was dying in a hut with a mad priest, and a crocodile had eaten all the medicines.” The doctor came back carrying a tumbler half full of water with a white powder in it, that he was stirring with the handle of a toothbrush. “Drink this,” he said. “If it makes you sick, come along at once and I’ll give you some more.”
The pilot took it from him. “What is it?”
“Diazentothene. It’ll put you right if you can keep it down.”
He drank, and handed the glass back to the doctor, who went out quickly to another patient. David said to Rosemary, “Do you say everyone’s like this?”
“Everyone who ate the crayfish. It’s ptomaine poisoning or something. Mr. Vary and Miss Turnbull are the worst, Nigger. They’re really bad.”
Nausea seized him, and he got quickly out of bed. “I’m another one,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run.”
Nobody in the officers’ quarters got much more sleep that night, except Rosemary, who went back to bed after an hour or two when everything was under control. It was a white and shaken party that crept out on to the verandah one by one next morning as the bedrooms grew too hot to occupy with comfort; they sat in deck chairs in the shade in the breeze in the lightest of clothing, gradually recovering. Rosemary went up and reported their troubles to Major Macmahon at the District Officer’s house, who came down to see them. There was nothing to be done except to let nature and modern drugs take their course. Most of the party lunched on diazentothene and brandy, though the stronger ones pecked at a milk pudding. Rosemary finished up the cold chicken.
David felt better after lunch. He dressed in a clean tropical uniform and went out in the utility to the airstrip to inspect the aeroplane and see that everything was in order there. He came back to the mess at about four o’clock and found Rosemary sitting on the verandah alone. “I went up to the District Officer’s house and saw Philip,” she said. “I asked if we could be excused from tennis, and he said we’d have the mixed doubles tomorrow. I was wondering how you’d feel about a bathe.”
“I’m feeling all right now,” he said. “I’d like a bathe.” So they changed in their rooms and walked down to the beach, and lay together in the lukewarm water on the silvery white sand. There were reported to be sharks in the lagoon from time to time, and so they did not venture far from the shore.
A quarter of a mile up the beach to the north of them were three or four men of the R.A.A.F. detachment bathing in the shallows. A quarter of a mile to the south of them in front of the District Officer’s house a small shade had been created at the head of the beach by slinging a tent fly between the casuarina trees, and in this patch of shade a middled aged woman and her husband were sitting in bathing dress in deck chairs. They had evidently been bathing, because their towels hung draped upon the ropes supporting the tent fly, but now they were just sitting together, looking out over the lagoon.
David rolled over in the water, and looked at them, and said, “I wonder what they’re talking about.”
“England,” said Rosemary. “I wonder if this is a good place to make decisions about England?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She turned to him in the water. “It’s too lovely, I mean, just look at it.” She glanced around at the blue, sparkling sea, the white beaches, the olive green groves of the coconut palms. “It’s like something out of a theatrical set. England is grey industrial cities—Leeds and Bradford, Newcastle and Birmingham. That’s the England that really counts, and it’s got nothing in common whatsoever with a place like this. Do you think that one could make a sound decision on what’s best for Manchester, on Christmas Island?”
He glanced at her, and his glance strayed for a moment to her white s
kin, and the soft curves of her figure. He recalled himself to the subject under discussion. “She hasn’t got to decide what’s best for Manchester,” he said. “She’s got to decide what’s best for the Commonwealth. Quite a lot of the Commonwealth consists of places like this—England’s only just a little of it.” He paused. “And anyway, she can’t sit and think quietly anywhere else, without being badgered all day.”
“I know,” she said. She turned to him. “I went up there this morning to see Major Macmahon, and I asked if there was anything that I could do—washing or ironing her clothes or anything like that while Gillian Foster and the maid are ill. He said he didn’t think she wanted anything, or to be bothered at all. She was sitting out there on the beach with Philip all this morning, and she’s been there all this afternoon.”
“We’ll know some day what it’s all about,” he said. “Forget about it now.” He glanced again at her fair skin, now flushed a little. “You’re burning,” he said. “You’ll be badly burned if we stay out in this sun. Let’s get into the shade.”
She looked down at her arms and legs. “I suppose I ought to. I’m not used to this.” And then she looked at him, “You’re much browner.”
“Too right,” he said equably.
“I didn’t mean that, David,” she said. “You’re sun burnt too, aren’t you?”
He glanced down at his body. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think this is about as pale as I ever get. It’s nearly a year since I left Australia. I go a lot darker than this in the summer, if I do a lot of bathing or sunbathing.”
“You’re looking disgustingly well now, anyway,” she laughed. “You’re looking just like an Englishman who’s come back from a summer holiday in the south of France.”
“Permanent sunburn,” he replied. “I can recommend it. Won’t come off.” He glanced at her. “You’re like something off the lid of a chocolate box.”
She laughed. “Anyway, nobody would think, to look at you, that you’d been writhing in agony twelve hours ago.”
“My word,” he said. “I was crook. The things I dreamed about!”
They sat down on the sand in the shade of the trees. “You said something about your dream last night,” she said. “Something about dying in a hut with a mad priest.”
“My word,” he said again, “it was a bad one, that.”
“Do you dream much in the ordinary way?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me about the mad priest.”
He sat silent for a time, looking out over the lagoon. At last he said, “It sounds a stupid thing to say, but I was very frightened. I don’t know that frightened is the word. It was a sort of horror of the state that I was in.”
She looked at him curiously, impressed by the seriousness of his manner. “Was it as bad as that, David?” He nodded. “Tell me about it.”
He told her.
In the end she said, “Dreams always come from memories, don’t they? Things that have happened to you, and that you’ve practically forgotten. And then they crop up in a dream, all higgledy-piggledy.”
He said, “I know that’s supposed to be the explanation. But none of these things ever happened to me.”
“You can’t remember anything that could be the origin of your dream? Not any part of it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing at all.”
She smiled. “Then I should forget the dream as well.”
“I’m going to,” he said. “I’m going to forget it as quickly as I darned well can. And I can tell you this—it’ll be a long time before I eat another crayfish, even if I’ve seen it caught.”
From behind the point called London at the entrance to the lagoon a big motor launch appeared, a diesel engined vessel ninety or a hundred feet in length. She came in at a smart pace between the land and Cook Island and headed into the lagoon, and revealed herself as a seaworthy, businesslike vessel painted white and in need of a new coat of paint; she flew the Australian blue ensign at the stern. Rosemary said, “Oh, look what’s coming!”
He smiled. “I’ll give you three guesses who that is.”
She said, “The District Officer from Fanning Island?”
He nodded. “Probably. He’ll never have had a thing like this happen in his diocese before, and he never will again.”
“He must have got a shock when he heard that the Queen and the Consort were living in his house on Christmas Island, and he was a hundred and eighty miles away and not there to receive them and do the honours.”
“He probably thinks it’s some sort of a deep plot to do him out of a knighthood.”
The vessel slowed as she came into the lagoon and brown sailors appeared on the foredeck and began to unlash the anchors and take stoppers off the chains. Then Rosemary said, “Oh, David—look!”
She caught his arm, and he thrilled at her touch. He glanced down at her hand, and then up again to see what had excited her. Three white men in spotless tropical suits had appeared on deck, and two white women dressed as for an afternoon function, with wide Ascot hats and gloves in hand, ready to come on shore to be presented to the Queen.
“Oh …” she said. “He’s brought his wife and all sorts of people with him.” There was a world of disappointment in her voice. “Oh David! Even in a place like this she can’t live simply—not even for a day!”
He said uncertainly, “They won’t bother her much, will they? They’ll have to stay on the yacht.”
“They’re lowering a boat,” she said dully. “They’re all coming on shore. She can’t receive them sitting in a deck chair in her bathing dress.” They glanced up the beach, but the deck chairs were empty, the occupants had already gone into the house. She said furiously, “Oh, people are such fools! They won’t give her a chance!”
They sat silent in the shade of the casuarina trees and watched the boat row ashore to the small jetty in front of the District Officer’s house, loaded with the men and the women in their best frocks. Major Macmahon walked down from the house to meet the party on the jetty and stood in talk with them, and Rosemary woke suddenly to a realisation of her duties. “My God,” she said suddenly, “I ought to be there helping to keep these blasted women off her.” She grabbed her towel and ran back to the R.A.A.F. mess. David sat on upon the beach for a few minutes, watching the party as they left the jetty and walked up to the District Officer’s house; then he, too, walked slowly to the camp. He passed Rosemary in a clean white frock hurrying to her job.
That evening before dinner, as David sat on the verandah sipping his tomato juice while the others drank gin, Frank Cox came to the mess and called him aside. “We’re going on tomorrow, Nigger,” he said. “Take off at about nine o’clock.”
“For Canberra?”
“That’s right. Is everything fit to fly tomorrow?”
“Oh yes.” He paused. “She’s going straight to Tharwa, I suppose?”
“That’s right. It’s going to be a bit difficult here, now that these people have turned up. There isn’t really the accommodation on the island for us all.”
“Can’t they sleep on their bloody yacht?”
“Well—they can, but I understand it’s a bit primitive. Anyway, the Queen wants to go on. She can shut herself up at Tharwa and see nobody at all. There’s not the organisation or the layout here to secure her privacy.”
The pilot nodded. “What’s Rosemary doing?”
“She’s been shepherding the women around. She’s gone off to the yacht with them now with Macmahon. They’re having dinner on board.”
“Any idea when they’re coming on shore?”
“The boat was ordered for nine o’clock.”
David nodded. “I’ll walk down and meet her. It’s a bit dark for her to walk back through the trees alone.”
He strolled down after dinner to the jetty and sat on a bollard in the darkness. The rising moon made a glow in the sky behind Paris. The lights of the yacht were bright in the middle of the lagoon, and over the still water he
could hear the sound of voices and laughter. In the District Officer’s house behind him there were now no lights except one in the kitchen at the back of the house. He could not see the deck chairs in the darkness, but he guessed that they were occupied.
Presently, as he waited, there were steps upon the jetty behind him, and he got to his feet. The moon was not yet up, but in its coming light he saw the Consort and the Queen. She said, “Is that Commander Anderson?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I was waiting for Miss Long to see her home.”
“How nice of you. I was so sorry to hear about the crayfish. Are you all right now, do you think?”
He laughed. “Oh, yes. Dr. Mitchison fixed us up. Fixed himself up, too.”
She said, “I was so sorry when I heard about it, because I know you sent us up the tins out of the aeroplane. But for that we might have had the crayfish, too.”
He said a little awkwardly, “Oh, that’s all right.”
They stood looking out over the lagoon as the moon rose in sight. “It’s a very lovely place,” the Queen said. “I’m so glad to have had this time here. Some day I should like to come back here again.”
“It’s the best place to refuel between Canada and Australia,” the pilot said.
The Queen turned to the Consort. “Perhaps we might have a little house of our own, if we come here often. A very little house, with just two bedrooms, where we couldn’t entertain.”
He said, “I should think that would be possible, my dear.”
On the yacht there was a sound of voices upon deck, and a light at the companion ladder showing the boat manned below it. They saw Macmahon and Rosemary get down into the boat, and watched it as it pushed off, with a rhythmic beat of oars.