In the Wet (18 page)

She took him to the beach and showed him her boat; they rigged it together and waded out with it, scrambled aboard, and sailed for an hour in the Itchenor and Bosham channels while he got the hang of the boat. She let him sail it, and offered to let him sail it in the race that afternoon, but he refused, saying that he did not know it well enough and that they would do best if she had the tiller and he crewed for her. So they landed before the club, and went up to the bar for a sandwich lunch. She introduced him to a number of her friends. They raced that afternoon with eleven or twelve other boats of the same class, twice round a long course that took them practically down to the harbour entrance. They came in fourth, and went ashore for tea and gossip; then they took the sails off the boat and put them away, and rowed out to his little yacht for supper.

Again she exclaimed at the amount of meat he had aboard. “We can’t possibly eat a quarter of this, Nigger,” she said. “You’re a floating butcher’s shop.”

“There’s tomorrow,” he replied. “You wouldn’t have me starve on the way back to Hamble?”

“You won’t starve,” she said. “What time have you got to go?”

“I’ll have to get away after breakfast,” he replied. “The tide will be making eastwards by eleven o’clock.” He hesitated, and then he said, “You wouldn’t like to come with me?”

“I’ve got to be back in Dover Street without fail tomorrow night,” she said. “I go to work in the morning.”

“We should be ashore at Hamble by six,” he said. “I’ve got the car there. I can run you home. I’ve got to be on the job on Monday morning bright and early, too.”

“It would be an awfully long way out of your way to take me up to Dover Street,” she said. “You could put me on the train at Guildford.”

He grinned. “We’ll argue about that. But would you like to come?”

“I’d love to, David,” she said. “I’d love a day out in the Solent in this boat.” She paused. “I’ll have to put my fourteen footer in the shed and hose her down before I go,” she said. “I shan’t be sailing her again this season, because of Canada.”

He nodded. “I’ll come on shore and give you a hand in the morning. About half past eight?”

“Come and have breakfast at the club.”

“All right. When is the Canada trip starting?”

“Wednesday morning of next week—in ten days’ time,” she said. “She’s opening the hydro-electric thing on Thursday.” The girl paused. “What’s Edmonton like?”

“We didn’t go in from the aerodrome,” he replied. “I only saw it from the air. It looked just like any other town.”

“I’m longing to see it,” she said. “I’ve never been to America at all before. What’s the Ceres like to travel in?”

“She’s very comfortable,” he told her. “No noise to speak of, and no vibration. The party seemed to like her all right.” He poured her out a glass from the bottle of sherry he had bought for her, and a tomato cocktail for himself.

She nodded. “They liked what they saw,” she said. “The Queen’s been talking about nothing else.”

“What did she say?”

The girl laughed. “I wasn’t there, of course. I only hear that sort of thing third or fourth hand. Gossip of the servants’ hall, David.” She raised her glass. “Here’s luck to Tare.”

“I’d rather not trust to luck.” He drank with her. “I’m taking Tare off on a trial next Wednesday. We’ve never flown her longer than an hour and a half, and we’ve never flown either of them in tropical conditions. The manufacturers
did tropical trials on the prototype, of course. But I think we ought to see one of them function in the tropics before taking our sort of passengers about the world.”

“Are you going far?” she asked.

“We shall only be away one night,” he said. “I’m going down to Gambia, to Bathurst on the west coast of Africa, and spending the night there. Then next day we’ll go north eastwards across Africa to Cyprus, turn there without landing, and back to White Waltham. That makes about a nine hours’ flight, getting on for the maximum safe operating range.”

She said curiously, “Do you feel that you’re really travelling, on an enormous flight like that?”

He shook his head. “You’re just flying. Usually you can’t see the ground because of the cloud layer, and if you can you’re ten miles up, so you don’t see any detail. The sky is almost black, and the sun’s much brighter. You can’t see much.”

“Do you get bored sometimes?”

He shook his head. “It’s what I like doing. I never get bored.”

Presently they went down into the little cabin and began to fry the steaks over the oil stove, with a few potatoes sliced. “One day if you get to Australia, I’ll show you how a steak ought to be cooked,” he said.

She smiled. “How’s that?”

“Grilled, over a fire of gum tree twigs. It’s very quick.” He paused. “It’s the best way in the world to cook a steak, and so far as I know you can only do it in Australia.” He turned to her. “It’s like sugaring in Canada.”

“What’s that?”

“You go up through the snow on skis to a little hut in the woods, and there you find an old man boiling down the sap out of the maple tree to make maple syrup.” He told her all
about it as they cooked their dinner: the bright snow, the bright sun, the wood fire under the evaporating pan, and the heavenly smell. “All countries have one taste or smell that others can’t equal,” he told her. “Grilled steaks are Australia to me. Sugaring is Canada.”

Presently they took their plates and sat down at the little table to eat their meal, one on each side of the cabin. They topped up with bread and honey, and with a mug of coffee made out of a tin; then in the warmth and intimacy of the little lamplit room they sat smoking together.

“The Prince said one thing that I didn’t understand,” he told her presently. “When they came to see the aeroplanes. He said, if Frank Cox was away and something happened at White Waltham that I couldn’t handle, I was to get in touch with him at once.” He paused. “What do you think he meant?”

She smiled at him. “Just what he said, Nigger.”

“What sort of thing?”

She opened her eyes wide. “He didn’t tell me.”

He laughed. “All right, you win. I suppose I can put two and two together for myself.”

“I expect you can,” she said. “You won’t get far upon that flight from Gambia to Cyprus and White Waltham unless you can do that.”

She stayed till about half past nine, and then made off for the shore in her dinghy. David watched her rowing off in the bright moonlight, thinking how well she managed her boat, how well her job.

He went ashore for breakfast with her and helped her with the business of putting her dinghy away for the winter. Then they sailed in
Nicolette
for Hamble, passing down the long channels of the harbour under sail this time with Rosemary on board as pilot, out through the entrance and straight out to sea over the bar, finally bearing away
towards the forts at Spithead at the entrance to the Solent, with a light southerly breeze. All day they sailed together in close contact of a little yacht, doing the thing that they both loved to do, happy together.

They passed into the Hamble River at about five o’clock, and took down sail and put the sail covers on as they motored up the river to the mooring. By quarter to six they were on shore packing their luggage into the little car. They had a snack meal at: the Bugle Inn upon the foreshore. While they were eating, David said, “We never saw Judy Marsh in
Red Coral
. What about going to see that before you go to Canada?”

She hesitated. “When could we go? I can’t tomorrow night, or Friday. I’m going home this week end.”

“I’ve got this trial—the Gambia affair.” He thought for a moment. “I’d better get to bed early on Tuesday. Wednesday, Bathurst, and I’ll probably be a bit tired on Thursday night.”

“I should think you might be,” she said drily. “It would have to be next week, we go off on Wednesday.”

“What about Monday?”

“I should think Monday would be all right,” she said thoughtfully. “Will you ring me at the Palace about lunch time? If there’s an awful lot of work before we go, I might have to wash it out, David. You’d understand that, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll get seats anway, and ring you lunch time on Monday.”

He drove her up to London and deposited her outside her flat in Dover Street, still in her salt spotted blue jeans and rough blue jersey. She asked him in, but he refused that, thinking that she had to work next day and ought to get to bed. He drove back to Maidenhead in a dream, and thought of nothing else but Rosemary all night.

That week, with Frank Cox in command and carrying the Canadian crew as passengers, David flew Tare from London to Bathurst in five hours. They stayed, as usual, in the R.A.F. station for the night having refuelled the machine and loaded up with pineapples for private use. They took off at dawn next day and flew to Cyprus in about five and a half hours, turned over Nicosia, and landed back at their home aerodrome in England at tea time, with nothing particular the matter with the aeroplane.

He cruised alone in the Solent that week-end and found it cold and lonely.

He picked up Rosemary on Monday evening and gave her a couple of pineapples in spite of her protests that she wouldn’t have time to eat them before leaving for Canada. “You can try,” he said firmly. “I brought them from Bathurst specially for you, and I’m not going to have them thrown back in my face.” They went and dined at the R.A.C., and this time, having no confidential business to discuss the dinner was a success. They went on to the movies to see Judy Marsh in
Red Coral
and sat very close together for two hours.

Coming out, he said, “You don’t have to go home yet, do you? Let’s go to the Dorchester and dance.” So they went up to the Dorchester and danced together for the first time, and enjoyed it, and laughed a great deal, till the orchestra played God Save the Queen and woke them to the realisation that it was two in the morning.

He drove her back to Dover Street in his small car and parked outside the entrance to her flat; for a time they sat talking in the car, reluctant to break it up. “I have enjoyed this evening, David,” she said. “It’s been fun, every minute of it. It was sweet of you to take me.”

“Pity it’s going to be some time before we can do another,” he said. “How long is she staying over in Canada?”

“About a month,” she said. “I don’t know the exact date when we come back, but it’s before December the twentieth anyway, because her appointments start again here then. It’s not so long.”

“I’ll probably be in Singapore or in Nairobi,” he said gloomily. “Charles will want to go and shoot an elephant or something.”

She laughed. “He’s got to stay at home and hold the fort,” she said. “He’s not allowed to go away.”

“Will you have dinner with me when you get back?” he asked. “The first free night, and tell me all about it?”

“I’ll have dinner with you, Nigger,” she said, “but I don’t suppose I’ll tell you about it. I never met such a nosey man as you are.”

“I don’t mean what the Queen did,” he said. “I’m not interested in that. I mean, what you did.”

“I can tell you that now,” she said. “I sat in an office and took letters down for Major Macmahon, and typed them out, and put them on his desk for him to sign. Eight hours a day, when it wasn’t ten.”

“Doesn’t he ever give you a holiday?”

“I get three weeks holiday a year,” she said. “Sometimes Major Macmahon gets a bilious attack and then there usually isn’t any work to do. That’s an extra. They don’t make me count it as a day of my three weeks.”

“Perhaps he’ll get a bilious attack over in Canada. Canadian food is full of grease and calories.”

“I’m sure it’s not.”

He was very conscious of her close beside him in the little car. “What sort of scent is that you’re using?”

“Bonne Nuit,” she said. “It’s French. It means Good Night.”

“Fancy!” he said.

She stirred a little and reached for the door. “I’m not
going to sit here talking about my scent at three in the morning when I’m going away tomorrow,” she said. “You can raise the matter again when I get back if you’re still interested.”

He got out and walked round the car, and helped her out on to the pavement. They stood together in deserted Dover Street in the pale moonlight. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “I’ll write it down in my little book.”

She said, “I expect you’ll have more to tell me when I get back than I have to tell you.”

“And how,” he said. “More than you bargain for.”

She laughed a little self-consciously, and moved towards her door, fumbling in her bag for the key. She found it and unlocked the door, and stood for a moment in the doorway.

“Look after yourself, Nigger,” she said. “And thanks again for such a lovely evening.”

“Thank you for everything,” he said quietly. She paused, uncertain, on the threshold for a moment; then she went inside and the door closed behind her.

On the Wednesday the Queen left for Canada. The Press and the newsreel cameras were at White Waltham very early, photographing the machine and the Canadian crew. The minor members of the entourage arrived in several cars, amongst them Rosemary, who waved to David as she passed into the aircraft. Finally at ten o’clock the Royal car arrived carrying the Queen and the Consort, and followed by two other cars, one bringing the Prince and Princess of Wales and their two boys, the other bringing the Princess Royal with her husband, the Duke of Havant, and little Alexandra. There were a few minutes of Royal leavetaking and then the Queen went up the three steps into the fuselage, followed by the Consort and escorted by Frank Cox.

Dewar was waiting at the door to welcome them; in the
cockpit Johnnie Clare, the second pilot, broke out the Royal Standard at the mast at the exact moment that the Queen entered the machine, while cameras whirred and clicked outside. The door closed, and presently the machine moved forward on the taxi track towards the runway’s end. The Ceres lined up on the runway, the mast and standard sank down into the fuselage, the outboard engines started, and then it was accelerating smoothly with the white plumes from the rockets leaving a long trail behind. It was airborne very quickly and the undercarriage disappeared into the wing; it put its nose up in a great climbing turn and vanished into the clouds towards the north.