In the Wet

  “I believe that’s what she thinks,” the girl said slowly. “I’m not sure that isn’t why she likes it here.”

  She turned to him. “What day is this, David?”

  He thought for a minute. “Christmas Day was Monday,” he said. “This is Wednesday morning.”

  “Then it’s this evening that Tom Forrest is broadcasting in England,” she said. “Can we listen to that?”

  “Oh yes—it’ll be put out on the short waves and rebroadcast here—a thing like that. The A.B.C. will have it on their programmes. What time is he speaking?”

  “At nine o’clock—after the nine o’clock news.”

  “That will be seven o’clock tomorrow morning here,” he said.

  “Will it? Can we listen to it here?”

  “I’ll find out about it,” he assured her. “I’ll see if I can borrow a portable. It’s going to be very important, is it?”

  She nodded. “He seems to have got Daddy on the brain. I don’t know what he isn’t going to say, now that he’s left alone and in the saddle.”

  “Probably a good thing.”

  “I think it may be,” she said slowly. “I think it may be time that somebody spoke plainly to the people.”

  They sat in the quiet darkness for a time, not speaking, listening to the tinkling of the water. Presently she said, “We must go to bed, David. You must be terribly tired.” She got to her feet. “Come on, or you’ll be asleep here.”

  He got to his feet with her. “I’m right,” he said. “I shan’t want rocking, though.”

  She looked at her watch. “What’s the time? I’ve still got London time.”

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t know. Some time in the middle of the night.” He yawned. “Perhaps you’re right about bed.”

  “Sleep in tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to. She said she didn’t want any of us up at Tharwa till the day after—Thursday.”

  He said reflectively, “She’ll have heard Tom Forrest by that time. Does she know what he’s going to say?”

  “I doubt if she does. She doesn’t usually know what a Governor-General’s going to broadcast, not in any detail.”

  He took her arm. “Go on to bed,” he said gently. “There’s no sense in brooding over what’s happening twelve thousand miles away.”

  “No sense,” she repeated. “No, no sense at all.”

  She turned to him. “David, were you very frightened when you found that thing in the machine?”

  “I think I was,” he said. “I thought that we were all going to be killed.”

  She nodded. “Would you have minded very much?”

  “I would,” he said. “Very much indeed.”

  She leaned a little towards him. “I don’t think I would. I’m not sure that she’d have minded, either. It’s such a sad time, this. Everything changing and coming to pieces in England. I sometimes feel I don’t want to see any more of it.”

  “I’d have minded,” he said. “If she’d been killed in my aeroplane, with me, it would have been my fault. I was the captain, and she was my responsibility. I wouldn’t want to die like that.” She nodded. “And there’s another thing.”

  “What’s that, David?”

  He smiled down at her. “If I’d been killed I couldn’t have married you and bullied you into giving me a family. And I’m still hoping to do that one day.”

  “What a thing to say!” She slipped into his arms and put her face up, and he kissed her. “I don’t think it’ll be long now,” she said at last. “I think she’ll probably be here for something like six months. If that’s right, I could chuck the job in and not hurt her.”

  He kissed her again. “It can’t be too soon for me.”

  Presently they walked arm in arm to her bedroom door, and kissed again in the passage. “Good night, David,” she said. “I won’t ask you in. Not while I’m on her staff.”

  He grinned. “No,” he said. “You watch your step when you hand in your notice, though.”

  She laughed. “Good night, Nigger, dear.”

  “Good night, Rosemary. Sleep well.”

  He did not see her before he went out to the aerodrome next morning at about ten o’clock, to put in hand the routine inspection and refuelling of his machine. In the R.A.A.F. mess he got hold of a copy of the Canberra Times, black with headlines about the Queen’s Christmas broadcast, about her arrival in Australia, about the appointment of Tom Forrest and about the political repercussions in England. In the mess he found the officers talking of nothing else, but conversation ended suddenly as he came into the ante-room, and everybody studiously avoided asking him any questions. It was a heavy, embarrassing atmosphere, and he was glad to leave after lunch. He went back to the hangar for an hour and did the necessary paper work in connection with the flight, and then he left for the hotel in one of the two cars allocated to the Queen’s Flight.

  Rosemary was out, and he did not find her again till he was sitting in the lounge before dinner, relaxed in a loose tropical suit beside the great Christmas tree decorated with tinsel and cotton wool snow. She came to him there, cool and fresh. “I went down with Gillian to bathe,” she said. “We had a lovely swim. Have you been back long?”

  “I came back about four o’clock,” he said. “I got a portable radio. He’s coming on the air about quarter past seven tomorrow morning, by our time. Where would you like to listen?”

  “Not in a public place,” she replied. “I think we may be going to get a bit of a shock.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That so?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a very strong character, and Daddy’s been stuffing him up with all his ideas. Let’s listen in one or other of our rooms, Nigger. I’ll be up before then.”

  He nodded. “All right. I’ll bring it along to your room soon after seven. What do you want to do tonight?”

  “Let’s do something to take our minds off it,” she said wistfully. “Let’s try and think of other things tonight.”

  “Like to go to the pictures?”

  “Wouldn’t it be awfully hot?”

  “No,” he said. “There’s an open air cinema—you’ll probably want a coat. It can get chilly in the evening here, even after a day like this. We’re two thousand feet up, you know.”

  “I’ve never been to an open air cinema,” she said. “Do you know what’s on?”

  “Vivienne Walsh and Douglas Mason in Heart’s Desire,” he told her. “I don’t think it’s one of the best.”

  “Vivienne Walsh is good,” she replied. “Let’s try it, Nigger. We can always walk out if it’s too awful.”

  “I don’t think people do that here,” he replied. “I think that’s a Pommie habit. We’ll probably get a reputation for snootiness. Douglas Mason’s from Adelaide, you know. Local boy makes good.”

  She laughed. “Let’s go, anyway.”

  So they went to the movies after dinner and sat holding hands in the cool darkness under the stars while the Californian idyll unfolded before them. They sat it out in unsophisticated pleasure, insulated by it for the moment from the great events developing upon the other side of the world in the bleak wind and sleet of London in December. It stayed with them while they walked back arm in arm to the hotel through the scented night, while he kissed her good night before her bedroom door.

  He went to her room next morning just after seven o’clock, fully dressed and carrying the radio, which he had already tried out in his own bedroom. She was dressed and waiting for him, but her room was still in intimate disarray, the bed unmade, her pyjamas thrown down upon the sheets, the faint scent of her powder in the air. He forced his mind from these distractions, and put down the radio and turned it on. “He’s coming on in a few minutes,” he told her. “They announced it at half past six, and again at seven.”

  Operatic music filled the room; he adjusted the volume and they settled down to wait. Presently the announcer spoke, and then, after a pause the room was filled with the harsh, virile tones of the Field Marshal
who had risen from the laundry.

  They sat listening in silence. Reception was fairly good, and only a few sudden surges in the volume indicated that the speaker was on the far side of the world.

  Once Rosemary said impetuously, ‘But he can’t do that,’ and David grinned, and said, “He’s done it.” Then they were silent again.

  Twenty minutes later the harsh voice ceased, and David turned the radio off. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “He’s given them electoral reform, or else.”

  “He’s got no right to say a thing like that,” she expostulated. “England is the Commonwealth. He’s got no right even to suggest that the other countries could do without her.”

  “He didn’t exactly say that,” the pilot replied thoughtfully.

  “It’s what he meant,” she said indignantly. “He as good as said that if they didn’t do something about electoral reform they’d never see the Queen again! He needn’t have said that about the secret ballot and the women’s vote, either.”

  David grinned. “He certainly hits pretty hard.” He sat in silence for a minute. “Did you notice that he said that ‘I have summoned my Parliament to meet on Monday’. His Parliament. I suppose it is, now.”

  “I think it’s simply outrageous,” she said angrily. “It’s the Queen’s Parliament, not his.”

  “He’s her representative.”

  She paused for a moment. “I suppose legally he may be right, but it’s not the thing to say. He’s not the King, and he’s no right to speak like one.” And then she said, “Parliament is in recess till January the 24th. He can’t go summoning them back like that, at three days’ notice.”

  “He’s done it,” David said again. “I suppose he knows his stuff upon the legal side.”

  She said thoughtfully, “The Monarch can summon Parliament at any time, of course, and tell them to debate anything. But he’s not the Monarch—or is he?”

  He laughed. “He’s certainly behaving like one.”

  “But he’s running directly against all Government policy. This Government won’t support that kind of an Address from the Throne, or Governor General’s speech, rather.”

  “He’ll probably get himself another Government, then.” He paused. “I never did much history,” he said. “But I reckon that it’s no new thing for the King to be up against the House of Commons.”

  “It’s not,” she replied. “But we outgrew that sort of trouble centuries ago.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  There was a pause, and then he said, “He’s a shrewd and a clever man. And he’s a good one, too, and he’s got nothing to lose. He didn’t ask to be made Governor-General of England, and if he gets the sack I don’t suppose he’ll burst into salt tears. He’s free to do exactly what he thinks is the right thing, and if he gets bumped off or gets the sack for doing it, that’s too bad. But he’s got nothing to lose.”

  “No,” she said. “He’s got nothing to lose.” She paused, and then she said, “I wonder if that’s what’s been wrong with the Monarchy in England? Too much to lose?”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  She said slowly, “It’s only the Monarchy that holds the Commonwealth together. If there was no Monarch the countries of the Commonwealth would fall apart, and each go its own way. The Queen knows that well enough, and she’ll never have that happen. She’d never force a quarrel with the House of Commons to the point when she and all her family would abdicate, because that’ld mean the destruction of the Commonwealth. I wonder if that’s prevented her from ruling England as a Queen should rule?”

  “You mean, Iorwerth Jones could twist her tail as much as he damn well liked?”

  She flushed a little. “I think that’s what I mean.”

  “Well,” he said, “he won’t twist Tom Forrest’s tail. If he wants a head on collision with the Governor-General he can have it any time, and it looks to me as if he’s got it now.”

  She said, “I wonder …” and then stopped.

  He glanced at her in enquiry. “What do you wonder?”

  She smiled, a little whimsically. “It’ld be a funny thing if England got a King again this way. A King that could really rule by staking his job against these whippersnapper politicians, and keep them in their place. A real Monarch for a change, the first since Queen Victoria.”

  They sat in silence for a time. “I wonder what’s going to happen on Monday?” he said at last. “When Parliament meets? He’s giving them the Governor-General’s speech in person—didn’t he say that? Where does he do that?”

  “In the House of Lords,” she replied. “That’s what the Queen used to do. I suppose he’ll give them another dose of the same medicine then. Electoral reform, or they can kiss the Queen good-bye. I wonder how he dares to say a thing like that! I wonder if she knew about it when she left, that he was going to carry on like this?”

  A phrase came back into the pilot’s mind. “ ‘That while Her Majesty would wish to visit every one of her Dominions from time to time, she would devote the greater part of her attention to those Dominions most advanced in their political development.’ ”

  “That was it,” the girl said. “How dare he say a thing like that!”

  He grinned. “He’s got guts, and he’s injuring nobody if he gets sacked. You can say a lot of things and get away with it if you’re a free man.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. “Stirring times,” he said at last. “I don’t suppose anything like this has happened for a long, long time in England.”

  “No,” she replied. “We’re living in history, Nigger. What’s happening now will be in all the history books in twenty years time, for better or worse. And we’re in the middle of it, you and I. We shan’t be in the books, because we’re not very important people. But we’re in it just the same, in it up to the neck and all the time.”

  He took her hand. “Too right,” he said. “Wouldn’t it rile you?”

  “What, David?”

  He smiled down at her. “To have all this nonsense going on just as we decided to fall in love.”

  “It’s more important than us, David.”

  “Not to me, it isn’t,” he replied.

  They went to breakfast together, and afterwards he saw her off to Tharwa in the car. He did not see her again till dinner time, when they met in the lounge. She was evidently tired, but not exhausted. Over the meal she told him what she had been doing. “I’ve got a new office, with three typists from the pool,” she said. “In the South Block, up on Capital Hill.”

  “Not at Tharwa any more?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “It’s the correspondence. There were over eighteen hundred letters in the post this morning, most of them from cranks. We can’t cope with that in the Residence. Turnbull and I have been doing nothing else all day but glance them through, and sort them out into the ones that need a special answer and the ones that don’t. She took about a hundred and fifty of the most important ones out to Tharwa to Macmahon this evening. Tomorrow I’ll start answering the others with the girls from the pool.”

  He stared at her. “What a job! I suppose you use a standard letter for each one?”

  She shook her head. “She won’t have that. They’ve all got to be individual, but we try and get it into one sentence, or two at the most.” She paused. “They all start, ‘I am commanded by Her Majesty the Queen,’ of course. One’s bound to say the same thing over and over again, but we try and vary it as much as possible. There just aren’t enough words, though, to make each one different.”

  “How long will it go on for?” he enquired.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Macmahon thinks we’ll probably be back to normal in a month. They’ll probably go on at the rate of a thousand a day for the next week, and then they’ll start tailing off.” She smiled. “But we’ve only got ten thousand sheets of the Royal notepaper, so we’ll get a break in a few days. We sent off the printing order today, but it may take a fortnight. It’s the holiday season here, of course.??
?

  He asked in wonder, “How many did you get done today?”

  “Oh, hardly any,” she said. “We’re only just getting organised. A good girl can do about a hundred and fifty a day. I’ll probably ask for a couple more girls if we get a heavy mail tomorrow. It’ll ease up before long.”

  He saw little of her for the rest of the week. The Consort turned up at the aerodrome unexpectedly with Frank Cox on Friday, apparently for no other purpose than to look at the aeroplane and to give David a general invitation to use the swimming pool at Tharwa any time he cared to do so. This was a good offer, because at the New Year Canberra was hot with the thermometer over ninety in the shade each day, and the city had grown more quickly than the swimming pools. Tharwa was twenty miles out, it was true, but when you got there the pool was a pool to dream about, shady and spacious and deserted, at the bottom of the rose garden.

  The pilot said, “It’s very good of you, sir. Can I take Miss Long?”

  “Of course.”

  They walked around the aeroplane for a few minutes, watching the polishers at work upon the wing. David asked, “Any idea when the next job’s likely to be, sir? If there’s likely to be a fortnight or so, I’ll give some leave.”

  Frank Cox said, “Stay in readiness for a bit longer, Nigger.”

  “Very good.”

  The Consort asked, “Could you make Kenya direct from here, Captain? It may be necessary for you to go and fetch Anne from Sagana, and bring her here.”

  “I can’t make that direct from here,” the pilot said. “We’d have to refuel somewhere on the way. Keeling Cocos islands would be best for that, I think. From here to Nanyuki would be about fourteen flying hours.”

  “Not more than that?”

  “No, sir. It’s not very far.” He paused. “I was looking at that route the other day, as a matter of fact.”

  “There’s no difficulty about it?”

  “None at all,” the pilot said. “We’re ready for that any time you say.”