On the Beach (27 page)

She frowned a little; this wasn’t the Pogo stick? “What about?”

“He wants a couple of days trout fishing before we all go home,” her cousin said. “But he won’t go before the season opens, and that’s not until September the First.”

She stood in silence for a moment. “Well, what of it? He’s keeping the law, anyway. More than you are, with that disgusting car. Where do you get the petrol for it?”

“It doesn’t run on petrol,” he replied. “It runs on something out of a test tube.”

“Smells like it,” she said. She watched him as he levered himself down into the seat and adjusted his crash helmet, as the engine crackled spitefully into life, as he shot off down the drive leaving great wheel ruts on a flower bed.

A fortnight later, in the Pastoral Club, Mr. Alan Sykes walked into the little smoking-room for a drink at twenty minutes past twelve. Lunch was not served till one o’clock, so he was the first in the room; he helped himself to a gin and stood alone, considering his problem. Mr. Sykes was the Director of the State Fisheries and Game Department, a man who liked to run his businesses upon sound lines regardless of political expediency. The perplexities of the time had now invaded his routine, and he was a troubled man.

Sir Douglas Froude came into the room. Mr. Sykes, watching him, thought that he was walking very badly and that his red face was redder than ever. He said, “Good morning, Douglas. I’m in the book.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” said the old man. “I’ll take a Spanish sherry with you.” He poured it with a trembling hand. “You know,” he said, “I think the Wine Committee must be absolutely crazy. We’ve got over four hundred bottles of magnificent dry sherry, Ruy de Lopez, 1947, and they seemed to be prepared to let it stay there in the cellars. They said the members wouldn’t drink it because of the price. I told them, I said: ‘Give it away, if you can’t sell it. But don’t just leave it there.’ So now it’s the same price as the Australian.” He paused. “Let me pour you a glass, Alan. It’s in the most beautiful condition.”

“I’ll have one later. Tell me, didn’t I hear you say
once that Bill Davidson was a relation of yours?”

The old man nodded shakily. “Relation, or connection. Connection, I think. His mother married my … married my … No, I forget. I don’t seem to remember things like I used to.”

“Do you know his daughter Moira?”

“A nice girl, but she drinks too much. Still, she does it on brandy they tell me, so that makes a difference.”

“She’s been making some trouble for me.”

“Eh?”

“She’s been to the Minister, and he sent her to me with a note. She wants us to open the trout season early this year, or nobody will get any trout fishing. The Minister thinks it would be a good thing to do. I suppose he’s looking to the next election.”

“Open the trout season early? You mean, before September the First?”

“That’s the suggestion.”

“A very bad suggestion, if I may say so. The fish won’t have finished spawning, and if they have they’ll be in very poor condition. You could ruin the fishing for years, doing a thing like that. When does he want to open the season?”

“He suggests August the 10th.” He paused. “It’s that girl, that relation of yours, who’s at the bottom of this thing. I don’t believe it would ever have entered his head but for her.”

“I think it’s a terrible proposal. Quite irresponsible. I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to …”

As member after member came into the room the debate continued and more joined in the discussion. Mr. Sykes found that the general opinion was in favour of the change in date. “After all,” said one, “they’ll go and fish in August if they can get there and the weather’s fine,
whether you like it or not. And you can’t fine them or send them to gaol because there won’t be time to bring the case on. May as well give a reasonable date, and make a virtue of necessity. Of course,” he added conscientiously, “it’ld be for this year only.”

A leading eye surgeon remarked, “I think it’s a very good idea. If the fish are poor we don’t have to take them; we can always put them back. Unless the season should be very early they won’t take a fly; we’ll have to use a spinner. But I’m in favour of it, all the same. When I go, I’d like it to be on a sunny day on the bank of the Delatite with a rod in my hand.”

Somebody said, “Like the man they lost from the American submarine.”

“Yes, just like that. I think that fellow had the right idea.”

Mr. Sykes, having taken a cross section of the most influential opinion of the city, went back to his office with an easier mind, rang up his Minister, and that afternoon drafted an announcement to be broadcast on the radio that would constitute one of those swift changes of policy to meet the needs of the time, easy to make in a small, highly educated country and very characteristic of Australia. Dwight Towers heard it that evening in the echoing, empty wardroom of H.M.A.S.
Sydney
, and marvelled, not connecting it in the least with his own conversation with the scientist a few days before. Immediately he began making plans to try out Junior’s rod. Transport was going to be the difficulty, but difficulties were there to be overcome by the Supreme Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces.

In what was left of Australia that year a relief of tension came soon after mid-winter. By the beginning of July, when Broken Hill and Perth went out, few people in
Melbourne were doing any more work than they wanted to. The electricity supply continued uninterrupted, as did the supply of the essential foodstuffs, but fuel for fires and little luxuries now had to be schemed and sought for by a people who had little else to do. As the weeks went by, the population became noticeably more sober; there were still riotous parties, still drunks sleeping in the gutter, but far fewer than there had been earlier. And, like harbingers of the coming spring, one by one motor cars started to appear on the deserted roads.

It was difficult at first to say where they came from or where they got the petrol, for each case on investigation proved to be exceptional. Peter Holmes’ landlord turned up in a Holden one day to remove firewood from the trees that had been felled, explaining awkwardly that he had retained a little of the precious fluid for cleaning clothes. A cousin in the Royal Australian Air Force came to visit them from Laverton aerodrome driving an M.G., explaining that he had saved the petrol but there didn’t seem to be much sense in saving it any longer; this was clearly nonsense, because Bill never saved anything. An engineer who worked at the Shell refinery at Corio said that he had managed to buy a little petrol on the black market in Fitzroy, but very properly refused to name the scoundrel who had sold it. Like a sponge squeezed by the pressure of circumstances, Australia began to drip a little petrol, and as the weeks went on towards August the drip became a trickle.

Peter Holmes took a can with him to Melbourne one day and visited John Osborne. That evening he heard the engine of his Morris Minor for the first time in two years, clouds of black smoke emerging from the exhaust till he stopped the engine and took out the jets and hammered them a little smaller. Then he drove her out upon the
road, with Mary, delighted, at his side and Jennifer upon her knee. “It’s just like having one’s first car all over again!” she exclaimed. “Peter, it’s wonderful! Can you get any more, do you think?”

“We saved this petrol,” he told her. “We saved it up. We’ve got a few more tins buried in the garden, but we’re not telling anybody how much.”

“Not even Moira?”

“Lord, no. Her last of all.” He paused. “Tyres are the snag now. I don’t know what we’re going to do about those.”

Next day he drove to Williamstown, in at the dockyard gates, and parked the Morris on the quayside by the practically deserted aircraft carrier. In the evening he drove home again.

His duties at the dockyard were now merely nominal. Work upon the submarine was going very slowly, and his presence was required upon the job no more than two days in each week, which fitted in well with the requirements of his little car. Dwight Towers was there most days in the morning, but he, too, had become mobile. The First Naval Member had sent for him one morning and, with poker face, had declared that it was only fitting that the Supreme Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces should have transport at his disposal, and Dwight had found himself presented with a grey-painted Chevrolet with Leading Seaman Edgar as the driver. He used it principally for going to the club for lunch or driving out to Harkaway to walk beside the bullock as they spread the dung, while the Leading Seaman shovelled silage.

The last part of July was a very pleasant time for most people. The weather was seasonably bad with high winds and plenty of rain and a temperature down in the low forties, but men and women cast off the restraints that
long had galled them. The weekly wage packet became of little value or importance; if you went into the works on Friday you would probably get it whether you had worked or not, and when you had it there was little you could do with it. In the butcher’s shop the cash desk would accept money thrust at them, but didn’t grieve much if it wasn’t, and if the meat was there you took it. If it wasn’t, you just went and looked for somewhere where there was some. There was all day to do it in.

On the high mountains the skiers skied weekdays and week-ends alike. In their little garden, Mary and Peter Holmes laid out the new beds and built a fence around the vegetable garden, planting a passion fruit vine to climb all over it. They had never had so much time for gardening before, or made such progress. “It’s going to be beautiful,” she said contentedly. “It’s going to be the prettiest garden of its size in Falmouth.”

In the city mews John Osborne worked on the Ferrari with a small team of enthusiasts to help him. The Australian Grand Prix at that time was the premier motor race of the southern hemisphere, and it had been decided to advance the date of the race that year from November to August the 17th. On previous occasions the race had been held at Melbourne in the Albert Park, roughly corresponding to Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London. The organising club would have liked to race for the last time in Albert Park but the difficulties proved to be insuperable. It was clear from the outset that there would be a shortage of marshals and a shortage of labour to provide the most elementary safety precautions for the crowd of a hundred and fifty thousand people who might well be expected to attend. Nobody worried very much about the prospect of a car spinning off the course and killing a few spectators, or the prospect of permission to
use the park for racing in future years being withheld. It seemed unlikely, however, that there would be sufficient marshals ever to get the crowds off the road and away from the path of the oncoming cars, and, unusual though the times might be, few of the drivers were prepared to drive straight into a crowd of onlookers at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Racing motor cars are frail at those speeds, and a collision even with one person would put the car out of the race. It was decided regretfully that it was impracticable to run the Australian Grand Prix in Albert Park, and that the race would have to take place at the track at Tooradin.

The race in this way became a race for racing drivers only; in the prevailing difficulties of transport not very many spectators could be expected to drive forty miles out of the city to see it. Rather unexpectedly, it attracted an enormous entry of drivers. Everybody in Victoria and southern New South Wales who owned a fast car, new or old, seemed to have entered for the last Australian Grand Prix, and the total of entries came to about two hundred and eighty cars. So many cars could not be raced together with any justice to the faster cars, and for two week-ends previous to the great day eliminating heats were held in the various classes. These heats were drawn by ballot, so that John Osborne found himself competing with a three-litre Maserati piloted by Jerry Collins, a couple of Jaguars, a Thunderbird, two Bugattis, three vintage Bentleys, and a terrifying concoction of a Lotus chassis powered by a blown Gipsy Queen aero engine of about three hundred horsepower and little forward view, built and raced by a young air mechanic called Sam Bailey and reputed to be very fast.

In view of the distance from the city there was only a small crowd of people disposed around the three mile
course. Dwight Towers drove down in the official Chevrolet, picking up Moira Davidson and Peter and Mary Holmes upon the way. On that day there were five classes of heats, commencing with the smallest cars, each race being of fifty miles. Before the first race was over the organisers had put in a hurried call to Melbourne for two more ambulances, the two already allocated to the meeting being busy.

For one thing, the track was wet with rain, although it was not actually raining at the time of the first race. Six Lotuses competed with eight Coopers and five M.G.s, one of which was piloted by a girl, Miss Fay Gordon. The track was about three miles in length. A long straight with the pits in the middle led with a slight sinuosity to a left-hand turn of wide radius but 180 degrees in extent enclosing a sheet of water; this was called Lake Bend. Next came Haystack Corner, a right-hand turn of about 120 degrees, fairly sharp, and this led to The Safety Pin, a sharp left-hand hairpin with rather a blind turn on top of a little mound, so that you went up and came down again. The back straight was sinuous and fast with a left-hand bend at the end of it leading down a steep hill to a very sharp right-hand corner, called The Slide. From there a long, fast left-hand bend led back to the finishing straight.

From the start of the first heat it was evident that the racing was to be unusual. The race started with a scream that indicated that the drivers intended to show no mercy to their engines, their competitors, or themselves. Miraculously the cars all came round on the first lap, but after that the troubles started. An M.G. spun on Haystack Corner, left the road and found itself careering through the low scrub on the rough ground away from the circuit. The driver trod on it and swung his car round without stopping and regained the road. A Cooper coming up
behind swerved to avoid collision with the M.G., spun on the wet road, and was hit fair and square amidships by another Cooper coming up behind. The first driver was killed instantaneously and both cars piled up into a heap by the roadside, the second driver being flung clear with a broken collar bone and internal injuries. The M.G. driver, passing on the next time round, wondered quickly as he took the corner what had happened to cause that crash.