Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “The whole party,” said Macmahon. “Eight passengers and the Group Captain.”

  From the background Rosemary said quietly, “Am I going, Major?”

  “Of course. Couldn’t do without you.”

  The pilot said, “I’d better go and do my sums.” He turned to Cox. “Would you ring Ryder for me, sir, and tell him that I’m on my way out? Then if you could check up on the fuel held at Christmas, I can ring you about midnight and we’ll make the definite decisions. Will you be here?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here.”

  David turned to Rosemary. “Thanks for the dinner, Miss Long. See you in the morning.” He put his coat on, and went out.

  A reporter intercepted him while he was waiting for a taxi, and got a rude rebuff. He drove out to the aerodrome and worked for half an hour with Ryder at the navigator’s table in the Ceres, for the maps had been left in the aircraft. They walked back to the mess across the frosty tarmac under a bright moon, and talked again by telephone to Frank Cox in the hotel suite. Christmas Island, it appeared, had fuel; they confirmed the take off time as nine thirty and rang off, Cox to ring the Consort at Gatineau and David to start negotiations with area control for clearance to fly over the United States. Their course crossed the Pacific Coast in the vicinity of Los Angeles.

  He slept then for a few hours, but he was out on the aerodrome at seven with the crew as the machine was prepared for flight, checking the navigation and the flight plan with Ryder. At half past eight he sent the crew to breakfast, and at nine fifteen the machine was drawn by the tractor to the tarmac.

  News of the Queen’s departure had got around, and a crowd of several thousand people had assembled on the aerodrome to see her go. A detachment of the Mounted Police were there to keep the tarmac clear, and to control the press photographers and the television crew.

  It was a bright, sunny morning with a sharp nip in the air. The first car to arrive was that of the Governor General, known to soldiers and airmen throughout the Commonwealth as Tom Forrest. He got out and greeted Frank Cox genially, and walked to the machine, a powerful, fresh-faced, friendly man. He was introduced to David and shook hands with him, and made a quick inspection of the aircraft before the Queen came. Then they went out and joined Mr. Delamain and several members of the cabinet upon the tarmac.

  The Royal car arrived, and the cameras whirred and flash bulbs flared as the Queen stepped out, followed by the Consort. David had only seen the Queen once before when she had inspected the new aircraft at White Waltham; in comparison with her appearance on that happy afternoon she now seemed tired and worn. There was a short period of shaking hands and leave-taking upon the tarmac, and then she hurried into the machine with only a brief smile towards the crowd.

  The rest of the party were already on board. Frank Cox and David followed the Queen and Consort through the door, which closed behind them. David waited till the gangway was clear and the Queen in her cabin; then he went forward and settled into his seat with Ryder by his side. The roof trap above their heads was open, and the Royal Standard flapped above them lazily in the light airs.

  Frank Cox came up the alleyway behind them, and David looked back at him over his shoulder. The Group Captain said, “Ready to go now. Take off in your own time, Captain.” David nodded, and turned to his job.

  An hour later they were cruising at their operating height in brilliant sunshine, above a white, flocculent cloud floor far below. He left the control to Ryder and walked aft down the length of the machine. He stopped and talked to Macmahon for a little and to the middle-aged Miss Turnbull, and finally he came to Rosemary.

  “Getting on all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “Where are we now?”

  “I should think we’re somewhere over the bottom end of Lake Michigan,” he said. “We go a little bit north of Chicago.”

  “You can’t see anything, can you?”

  He shook his head. “You might see something of the Rockies in a couple of hours’ time,” he said. “The gen is two tenths cloud at Denver. But it won’t look very interesting.”

  “Where is Christmas Island, Nigger?”

  “Twenty degrees south of Hawaii,” he said. “We get there in about ten hours from Ottawa, at half past seven by your watch, more or less. But there’s nine hours’ time difference and we’re going with the sun, so it will still be the middle of the morning when we get there.”

  “Oh dear. How long do we stay at Christmas Island?”

  “Only just an hour or so — the time it takes us to refuel. Then we go on again another seven and a half hours to Canberra. We might be there about four in the morning by your watch.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s going to be a terribly long day.”

  “I know,” he said. “We’ll have lunch in about a couple of hours’ time. I should try and sleep a bit, if I were you.”

  He made sure that she knew how to adjust the reclining chair. “I’ll come along after lunch,” he said, “if everything’s all quiet, and you can come up forward and sit there a bit. It makes a change, and I can show you where we’re going on the chart.”

  “I suppose you get a marvellous view from the cockpit?” she said.

  “Too right,” he replied. “Miles and miles and miles and miles of nothing at all.”

  She smiled. “Can’t you see the ground?”

  “Not at midday,” he said. “Not very much. At sunset or at sunrise you see plenty. But at this height the sun’s so bright and the sky so dark — we don’t bother much about the ground.”

  “How high are we?” she asked.

  “About forty-eight thousand,” he told her. “We go up slowly as the flight goes on and the machine gets lighter.”

  He went on aft and spoke for a time to the steward and the stewardess about the meals. Then he asked, “What’s Her Majesty doing?”

  “She’s lying down, sir. I made up her bed.”

  “She’s all right, is she? Not sick, or anything?”

  The girl shook her head. “I think she’s just very tired, sir. She said she hadn’t been sleeping well.”

  The doctor was the eighth member of the Royal party, a Harley Street physician, Dr. Mitchison. David stopped by his chair on his way back to the cockpit and had a word with him, and was reassured. He went on forward; passing the Consort’s cabin the door was open, and the Consort standing in it. He said, “May I come up to the flight deck, Captain?”

  “Sure, sir,” said David. For a quarter of an hour he discussed the navigation with the naval officer, and then for a time they played with the periscopic sextant and took a line of position. The machine hung suspended in the sky, apparently motionless; it needed careful scrutiny of the cloud floor below to detect any forward movement at all. Slowly they crept across Iowa and Nebraska.

  The Consort stayed with David for an hour, sitting in the pilot’s seat, learning the function of the many instruments and flight controls. “I’d like to bring the Queen up here when she gets up,” he said. “She’s a bit tired now.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The Consort went back to his cabin presently, and David sat at the control while Ryder rested on one of the berths at the rear of the flight deck. The stewardess brought him a tray of lunch and he ate it in the pilot’s seat as they passed over Arizona with the grey and red mountains showing far below. Frank Cox came forward and relieved him at the control, and David went down aft to Rosemary. “We’re just going to cross the coast,” he said. “Would you like to come up to the office now? There won’t be anything to look at for a long time after this.”

  She said, “I’d love to.”

  He took her forward to the cockpit and sat her in the second pilot’s seat. Frank Cox retired aft with the expressed intention of going to sleep, and David sat for an hour or so with Rosemary at the control. He showed her everything, but it was academic instruction in a way, because the aircraft pursued a steady and undeviating course in the control of the automatic pilot. “I�
��d let you fly it for a bit,” he said, “but the Queen’s asleep, according to the stewardess. We’d better not wake her up by rocking the ship.”

  The girl said, “Don’t do that. She’s been looking terribly tired the last two days. I don’t believe she’s been sleeping.”

  “She’s asleep now, so Gillian says.”

  “I know. Don’t do anything to wake her.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Charles, I think.”

  “What’s he been up to?” She was silent, and then with a sudden intuition, he asked, “Doesn’t he want the job?”

  “Something like that — I don’t know,” she said. “It’s something very serious, whatever it is. We’d better not talk about it, David.”

  He grinned at her. “What a bloody nuisance children are! I don’t know why anybody ever has any.”

  The girl sat in silence for a minute or two. Then she said, “It’s so awful, David, because she’s such a nice person, herself. If she was arrogant or proud, it’d be easier in a way, because then one wouldn’t feel so terribly sorry for her. But for such a simple, decent little woman to have these huge responsibilities and difficulties, and all the family troubles mixed up and a part of it . . . it’s too bad.”

  “She was brought up to the job,” he said uncertainly. “It’s not so bad for her as it would be for you or me.”

  “I don’t believe that makes a bit of difference, really,” she said. “You can’t train people out of being hurt by things.”

  Presently Ryder appeared to take over the control, and Rosemary went aft to her seat. David lay down on the berth and slept for an hour; when he woke up it was four o’clock and time for afternoon tea. He drank a cup of tea and washed his face, and then went to the navigator’s table and set to work to check up the position. He got a stern bearing from San Diego and a cross bearing from Hawaii and drew a little circle round the intersection on the map, and then took a sun sight with the sextant and worked a line of position. He stood looking at the chart for a few minutes, and worked out an E.T.A. Everything was in order, and he turned to the radio operator. “You should get Christmas pretty soon.”

  “I’ve got them now, sir, but not strong enough to take a bearing. I’ll get a bearing in a quarter of an hour, I think.”

  “Let’s know what it is when you’ve got it.”

  At six-fifteen by Ottawa time the flight deck woke to life. David and Ryder settled into their seats, the flight engineer came to his desk of controls immediately behind them, power was reduced and the machine re-trimmed, and they started to let down towards Christmas Island six hundred miles ahead. The sky was cloudless here, and the sun almost overhead, for it was midday in October practically on the equator. Below them was the hazy cobalt of the sea, merging to grey mist at the horizon all around.

  There was a stir on the flight deck, and David looked round, and the Queen was at his elbow, with the Consort behind her. He half rose in his seat, but she said, “Don’t move, either of you. I can see quite well, standing here.” David sank back into his seat obediently; when climbing or letting down the Ceres was rather less stable than in cruising trim, and he preferred to stay at the controls with Ryder by his side.

  She said, “What a wonderful view you have, Captain. It’s quite the best place in an aeroplane.”

  He said, “There’s not very much to look at now, madam.”

  “I know,” she said. “There never is when you fly. What sort of a place is Christmas Island, Captain? Have you been there before?”

  He said, “It’s just a coral island, rather a big one. I’ve been there several times. It’s got coconut plantations round the lagoon. It’s quite big for one of these coral islands, about fifteen miles long and ten miles wide. The airstrip’s on the north coast.”

  She asked, “Do many people live there?”

  “Not many,” he replied. “When I was there last there were only about fifty natives on the coconut plantations, and an Australian manager. There’s a District Officer, but he lives at Fanning Island about a hundred and eighty miles away; he comes over now and then. There are generally two officers and about fifteen men of the R.A.A.F. on the airstrip.”

  “I’m longing to see it.”

  She asked a few questions about the instruments, but they did not mean a great deal to her, and presently she thanked the pilots and turned to go back to her cabin. As she turned, David said, “Would you like to fly a circuit round the island before we land, madam? I could send and tell you when it comes in sight, if you’d like to come up and see it from here. Or I can fly so that you can see it from the cabin window.”

  She said, “That’s very kind of you, Captain. I should like to come back here.”

  Three quarters of an hour later, at four thousand feet, he asked Frank Cox to tell the Queen that Christmas Island was in sight. She came back to the flight deck and stood between the pilots, staring at the island brilliant in the sun, the emerald and azure tints in the lagoon, the white coral sand. David banked the Ceres round in a wide turn and passed over the airstrip at about a thousand feet. The Queen said, “What a lovely little place! Who lives in the white house by the lagoon, the one with the tennis court?”

  “That’s the District Officer’s residence,” David said. “I don’t know if he’s here now — I don’t think he is. I think if he was here we should see his launch in the lagoon, but I don’t see anything like it.”

  She stood staring at the island, and while she stood looking David went on turning, so that he made two full circuits before she withdrew her gaze. “It would be wonderful to spend a few days here,” she said quietly. “To have a little time.” She turned to David. “Thank you, Captain. You can go in and land.”

  She went back to the cabin, and David flew to the east end of the island with Ryder talking to the control on the radio. He turned over the sea throttling back and trimming for the approach speed of about two hundred knots and came in for a straight approach on the airstrip. Ryder gave half flap and then full flaps, and David motored the Ceres in just above the coconuts and put down on the runway, ten hours out from Ottawa. There was a thatched building with a utility outside it; he turned and taxied over to that while Ryder poked the Royal Standard up through the hatch. Eleven airmen and one officer stood stiffly to attention in front of the building, as a guard of honour.

  The engines stopped; the door was opened and a couple of Fijian natives rolled a gangway forward directed by the officer and the steward at the doorway and the Queen stepped out to receive the salute and to inspect the guard. The rest of the party followed down the gangway, stretching and savouring the earth again, and David turned to the refuelling with his crew. He saw the Queen and the Consort talking to Macmahon and Frank Cox and the local officer. Then they all got into the utility with the Queen and the Consort in the cab with the local officer, and Frank Cox and Macmahon in the truck-like body behind.

  Fuelling was troublesome on Christmas Island. The kerosene was all in forty-gallon drums, and nearly a hundred of these had to be pumped into the machine with a small portable motor pump. It was clear that the operation would take several hours, and David was about to send a message to Frank Cox to tell him there would be a long delay when the Group Captain returned and came to David, working in an overall with his crew.

  He said, “We’re going to stay here a day or two, Nigger.”

  “Thank God for that,” said the pilot. “I was just going to tell you that we can’t take off much before dark, with this pipsqueak pump and all these bloody drums.”

  “Well, you can take your time. We shan’t be going on today. The Queen and the Consort and Macmahon are moving into the District Officer’s house. I’ve fixed up accommodation for the four women in an empty hutment in the camp. You and I, and Ryder, and Dr. Mitchison, go to the mess. The rest go to the camp with the R.A.A.F. bods.”

  The pilot stood in silence for a moment, conning over his various duties that required adjustment. The aircraft would be a
ll right, the accommodation seemed to be fixed. “We’ll have to make a lot of signals,” he said. “We’ll have to make them quick. We’re due in Canberra eight hours from now. There’ll be a scream if the Queen’s missing, oh my word.”

  “I know. I’ll look after those.”

  “What about rations?” asked the pilot. “There’s sixteen — no, seventeen of us. That must double the white population. Is there enough food?”

  “The officer here, Flight Lieutenant Vary — he says that’s all right. They’ve got a lot of tinned stuff in reserve.”

  David nodded; that was likely at a remote staging post like Christmas Island where crews might be stranded many weeks with a defective aircraft, or where strategic movements might bring many aircrews suddenly. “All right,” he said. “We’d better send all the food we’ve got in the machine up to the District Officer’s house. It’ll be better stuff than R.A.A.F. rations.”

  He glanced at the Group Captain. “What’s it all about? Why are we stopping here?”

  “I don’t know.” Frank Cox hesitated, and then he said, “She’s got an awful lot on her plate just at present. I think she wants a rest and time to think about things, where she hasn’t got to meet people and put on an act all the time. As soon as she saw this place she wanted to stop here.”

  Within a quarter of an hour each member of the party was aware of the change of plan. Most of them welcomed the idea of a couple of days’ idleness, bathing and sunbathing on a Pacific island; the most delighted people of all were the R.A.A.F. detachment, who were normally stationed upon Christmas Island for nine months at a time and had seen their last aeroplane five months before when a bomber on a training flight had spent a night upon the airstrip. They were bored with sunbathing, bored with football, bored with playing housey-housey; they crowded round the Ceres to examine it and touch it and smell it. They could not do enough to entertain the visitors in their pleasure at new faces and new voices.

  David knew Flight Lieutenant Vary slightly, a fresh-faced youth spinning out his time upon the island, only anxious to get back to flying duties. He got his crew fixed up in their accommodation; it was arranged that the four women should take their meals with the officers in the little mess, to the evident pleasure of the officer and the disappointment of the airmen. They met together for the first time for lunch about two hours after landing; the visitors were inclined to be sleepy, and with one accord retired to their beds after the meal, to sleep and drowse away the heat of the day.