In the Wet (12 page)

Macmahon held them in conversation for a few minutes, asking the Canadian and the Australian about their living accommodation; Dewar was married, and had taken a small house in Maidenhead. Anderson told the Secretary about his flat; then for a time they talked in general about the aircrews and their accommodation. Finally Macmahon said to David, “Got your boat yet?”

The pilot smiled. “I’ve had her about six weeks. I bought her a few days after we had dinner with Frank. I spend every week end on her.”

“Where do you keep her?”

“In the Hamble River—off Luke’s yard.”

Miss Long asked, “What sort of boat is she, Commander Anderson?” Macmahon said, “Rosemary’s a great sailor.”

The Australian turned to the girl with a new interest. “She’s a Bermudian cutter, five and a half ton. She’s pretty old; she was built in fifty three. But she’s quite sound still. A chap called Laurent Giles designed her.”

The girl nodded. “He was a very good designer in his day.” She paused in thought.

“You sail yourself?” he asked.

“Dinghies,” she said. “International fourteen footers. I’ve got a boat at Itchenor.”

“Where’s that?” he asked.

“Itchenor? It’s in Chichester Harbour. I’ve done a bit of cruising with my uncle in a fifteen tonner—I was out with him last week end.” She paused. “Your Laurent Giles five tonner isn’t painted blue, is she? Blue with tanned sails?”

“Why—yes,” the Australian said. “She’s called
Nicolette
. Do you know her?”

The girl smiled. “It wasn’t you by any chance aground at the entrance to the Beaulieu River last Sunday?”

The Australian coloured beneath his dark skin, and laughed self consciously. “The leading marks are wrong,” he said. “Did you see us?”

“We passed you, going out,” she said. “Lots of people go on to that bank. You took the outer boom for the leading mark probably.”

“I wasn’t bothering,” the pilot said. “Maybe that’s what I did. I thought it was all deep water.”

She smiled. “I hope you don’t do that when you’re flying.”

“I haven’t yet,” said David drily. “You only do that once.”

For the next few weeks the pilots moved between their base at White Waltham, the test establishment at Boscombe Down, and the works of the manufacturers at Hatfield. Two of the 316 aircraft, now known as the
Ceres
, had been set aside for the Queen’s Flight, and these were to be furnished specially, of course. The quarters for the crew remained as standard; the passenger accommodation was remodelled to provide three small single cabins each with a seat facing to the rear that turned into a full length bed at night, a dining room to seat six, and twelve reclining chairs of airline type for members of the Royal household travelling with the Queen. Accommodation was provided for a steward and a stewardess. The crew was to consist of the Captain of the Queen’s Flight, the captain of the aircraft, a second pilot, two engineers, and two radio and radar officers.

All this gave the Canadian and Australian captains plenty to do without being overworked; David found that he could get away for most week ends on Friday afternoon to drive down to his little yacht moored in the Hamble River. He generally went alone for these week ends upon the Solent; he knew few people in England, and he did not cultivate the opportunities for social life that did occur. He was always
quite happy in his boat alone and he preferred it so; from his boyhood he had been accustomed to the sea and boats and his five tonner was no problem for him; he could manage her single handed and the solitude gave him a sense of freedom. In England the sense of people pressing on him from every side worried the Queenslander; alone in his small yacht at sea the pressure was relieved and he felt something of the spaciousness of his own country. His quarter Aboriginal descent may have had something to do with this preference; whatever the cause was, David Anderson preferred to sail alone.

One Saturday morning in July he got up early at his moorings in the Hamble River and cooked his breakfast before seven o’clock. Like many Australian officers serving in England he found it difficult to adjust his habits of eating to the English rationing, and he went to some considerable pains to secure food from home. That week a bomber on a training flight from Brisbane had brought him two hams, a hundred eggs packed in sawdust in a carton, and six pineapples; he had cooked one of the hams in his flat and so he breakfasted that day on ham and eggs. He got under way at about eight o’clock and sailed down Southampton Water past Calshot in a moderate southwesterly breeze, and turned westwards down the Solent with the tide. All morning he beat to the west in tacks; as the sun came up the breeze dropped light, but the tide ran stronger. By lunchtime he was past Hurst Castle heading out to sea. He hove to off the Needles and had a lunch of ham sandwiches and fruit; then for a couple of hours he cruised up and down the steep cliffs to the southwards of the Needles fishing for mackerel. He caught three and gave up, having no use for more, and turned into the Solent again on the flowing tide and made for the small town of Yarmouth for the night.

In that fine summer weather Yarmouth was full of yachts
moored bow and stern two and three deep to the many piles within the harbour. The harbourmaster in a dinghy showed David a berth and took his warp to help him to make fast; in a quarter of an hour everything was snug. He launched his dinghy from the cabin top and put her astern, and then sat in the cockpit for a time, resting and watching the pageant of the vessels as he smoked. England, he reflected, still led the Commonwealth in the design of little yachts, as in most other techniques.

A girl in a thin shirt and abbreviated shorts rowed down the line of vessels in a dinghy, and rested on her oars opposite
Nicolette
. “Hullo, Commander Anderson,” she said quietly.

He stared at her in surprise, and realised that it was Miss Long, in different attire from that which she wore in the Palace. He got to his feet. “Hullo, Miss Long,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t recognise you.”

“I saw you come in,” she said. “I’m with my uncle in the outer tier—the black yawl over there. The one with the R.N.S.A. burgee.”

“Have you been here long?”

“We got in about half an hour before you did. We’ve just been messing about in the Solent. My uncle’s got a mooring in the Beaulieu River—he lives at Bucklers Hard.”

“I came down from the Hamble this morning,” David said. “I took the tide down to the Needles and caught a few mackerel and came back here. Would you like to come aboard?”

She smiled. “I’d love to see your boat.” She gave a couple of strokes, shipped her oars, and laid the dinghy gently alongside; taking the painter she stepped on to the counter and made her boat fast. Then she came down into the cockpit and peered down into the saloon. “She’s very
neat,” she said. She glanced around the deck. “I like your winches.” She fingered the rope knotting on the tiller head. “Did you do this Turk’s head thing yourself?”

He grinned, “I got a book on it. I did that last week end. The first one that I did came off.”

“I couldn’t do a thing like that,” she said. “I can do ordinary splicing, but not the ornamental stuff.”

He reached into the saloon and produced a packet of cigarettes and gave her one. Together they sat smoking in the cockpit, watching the pageant of the yachts and the bustle of the little harbour. “It’s a pretty place this,” he said. “As pretty a little harbour as I’ve seen.”

“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.”