The Rainbow and the Rose (2 page)

We flew at twenty-three thousand feet, and even at that height we had a rough trip. When we were half an hour from Melbourne I spoke to Essendon Tower and got clearance to let down. We were the only aircraft in the air that night, so when we were steady on the let-down I spoke to the controller again and asked if there was anything fresh on Johnnie Pascoe.

‘We’ve been monitoring their frequency,’ he said, ‘but
there’s been nothing fresh. I don’t suppose there will be till the morning. The woman’s there alone.’

‘What woman?’ I enquired. ‘Over.’

‘They’re tin miners,’ he explained. ‘Mr and Mrs Hoskins and two children. They’ve got a surface working. They just dig up earth and wash the tin out of the soil, I think. They’ve got a diesel-engined boat. Don Hoskins took it round to Hobart a fortnight ago to fetch stores, leaving his wife and children in the house. Now he can’t get back.’

I frowned. ‘They’ve got some neighbours? Over.’

‘There’s not another house for thirty miles.’

‘For the love of Mike!’ I said. ‘Who’s looking after Johnnie Pascoe?’

‘The woman is,’ he replied. ‘She pulled him out of the machine and got him to the house.’

I thought very quickly. ‘What’s the strip like?’

‘They land an Auster there in fine weather,’ he said. ‘Somebody was saying it’s only about a couple of hundred yards long, on top of a little hill.’

‘Is there a data sheet for it?’

‘I think there might be. Would you like me to look and see?’

‘I wish you would. I’ll come up to the Tower when we land.’

We got in to Essendon at about a quarter to eleven. I waited till the passengers were all off and then left the machine myself, hurrying through the rain to our office. The weather was even worse here than it had been at Sydney, as dark as pitch and with quite a high wind. In the warmth and light of the office I glanced at the movements board. There was a Dakota freighter scheduled to leave for Hobart in Tasmania at one o’clock in the morning. I asked the night clerk if that flight was still on, and he told me they were loading the machine.

I left the office and ran through the rain to my car in the
park, and drove to the Tower. The controller was up there waiting for me. He had the data sheet for the Lewis River airstrip on his desk, and he handed it to me. ‘It’s not a licensed field, of course,’ he said.

It certainly wasn’t. The plan showed it as one tiny runway six hundred and thirty feet long, little more than two hundred yards, and only forty feet wide. It ran approximately north-west and south-east, more or less across the prevailing wind. The approaches were quite unobstructed, and it had a hard surface. It was built upon a ridge because the ground fell away quite steeply towards the west; at one point it was marked: ‘Cliff 50 ft.’ only a few yards from the runway. To the east the slope was more gradual and here was the legend: ‘Ground soft and uneven’. The homestead was marked upon the plan about a quarter of a mile from the strip, and a secondary plan showed the general position of this lot in relation to the Lewis River and the surrounding country. There was a mountain two thousand four hundred feet high about four miles to the north-east which might be a bit of a trap for young players in bad weather, and a lot of little hills and escarpments dotted about. The altitude of the strip was five hundred and thirty feet above sea level.

The rain beat and drummed on the glass walls of the control room all around us as I stood looking at this data sheet, taking it all in. ‘It’s pretty small,’ I said at last.

He nodded. ‘They don’t use it much. The Hobart club fly in to take them the mail once a week, but they don’t very often land. Generally they drop the mail and parcels as they fly over. They
do
land light aircraft there, though, in fine weather.’

I waved the data sheet. ‘This is the only strip in the vicinity?’

He nodded again. ‘They used not to have a strip at all. Then they made this about two years ago. I suppose it was
the best that they could do. It’s a big job, of course, just for one man and his wife.’

I stood there, thoughtful, looking down on Runway 260, still lit up. ‘Any more on Johnnie Pascoe?’

‘Not since I spoke to you. I should say they’ve closed down for the night. They’ll be speaking on the morning schedule, at seven o’clock.’

I turned to him. ‘How did all this begin?’

‘The kid got sick two days ago,’ he told me. ‘The mother got on the radio about it, and they got the doctor on the other end. He diagnosed appendicitis, and said she’d got to be brought into hospital at once.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘That’s right. Rhys-Davids knows the form out there better than anyone. He’s the pilot-instructor at the Hobart club. Actually, he’s the only man who’s ever landed an aircraft on that strip, and he’s the one who always takes their mail. He’s in hospital with a hernia, and they won’t let him out till next week. He had the operation on Monday.’

That’s the sort of thing that always happens, of course.

He went on, ‘They sent a machine out from Hobart, twice. They couldn’t make it over the mountains either time, and they hadn’t got the range to go round the south coast in anything that could make a landing on the strip. Then Pascoe said he could make it from Buxton. It’s about a hundred and ten miles from Buxton, flying down the coast from the north. He tried early yesterday morning in an Auster. It was clear when he took off, and raining heavily by the time he got there – visibility less than half a mile. He waited for it to clear, circling over the sea until his fuel was getting low, and then came back to base. He went off again yesterday afternoon.’ He paused. ‘The woman said that he made three attempts to land – touched his wheels each time and took off again. The fourth time, she said, the machine turned upside down in a gust and fell off the edge of the runway.’

‘Over this place where it says, “cliff”?’

‘Could be.’

I glanced down at the paper in my hand. It was several hundred yards to the homestead. ‘She got him to the house?’

He nodded. ‘She couldn’t carry him, of course. But she must be a pretty good kind of a girl. She had the child out there at the runway in her arms ready to pop it into the machine, so that the pilot wouldn’t have to leave his seat. She put the child down and pulled Pascoe out of the wreckage. She says he’s got a big dent in his head where the skull’s caved in, a broken thigh, and possibly other injuries.’

‘Christ!’ I said softly. I could imagine the scene – just one woman in the rain and the wind, with all that on her plate. ‘What did she do then?’

‘She did all right,’ he said. ‘She left him lying on the ground and ran back with the child to the house. Then she ran back again with a couple of hot water bags and blankets. She knows about shock, apparently. Then she ran back to the house again and got on the blower to Hobart. She’s got the standard medicine chest and they told her what to give him – morphia or something. She gave him that and then she went and got their tractor and a sled, and put him on the sled, and got him to the house and into bed.’

It was just about as bad as it could be. ‘He’s unconscious?’

‘Semi-conscious. He asked for a cigarette and smoked it while she was getting the sled.’

‘What’s the form about the weather?’

‘They’re hoping for a few hours clear tomorrow. Then it’s likely to close down again.’

A sudden gust of wind whistled about the Tower. ‘Do you know what they’re planning to do?’

‘I haven’t heard,’ he said. ‘If it clears they’ll almost certainly send out a machine from Hobart. They’ll probably take a doctor.’

‘Is there anyone at Buxton now? I mean, if it
doesn’t
clear? Any other pilot who could fly an Auster down from there?’

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard. They may be sending somebody up there tonight. So far as I know, Pascoe was the only experienced pilot there.’

I stood in thought for a moment while responsibility descended squarely on my shoulders. Johnnie Pascoe had taught me to fly, and whoever they had at Hobart in the absence of Rhys-Davids it was quite unlikely that he’d have one half of my experience. I couldn’t let this rest. I’d have to go over and do what I could to help.

I turned to the controller. ‘Mind if I use your telephone?’

I got on an outside line from the Control Tower and rang Peter Fosdick at his house, our operations manager. He was in bed, but I got him out of that. I told him what the form was, and asked if he could spare me for a day or two to go over on this thing. He grumbled a good bit, but he’d got plenty of time to rearrange the crews because I wasn’t flying till the afternoon. He couldn’t very well refuse, and besides, he knew Johnnie Pascoe, too.

The controller had heard all of that, of course, because I was speaking from his desk. I replaced the telephone. ‘I’m going over on Flight 117, the freighter,’ I told him. ‘There’ll be a change in the flight plan. I’m going to ask them to go in to Launceston and drop me off before they go on to Hobart. I’ll go straight to Buxton and see what the form is. I believe that’s the best place to be. When you’re speaking to Hobart, would you tell them that’s what I’m doing, and I’m on my way? I’ll be talking to them on the land line first thing in the morning.’

I folded the data sheet about that rotten little airstrip and put it in my pocket, and went down to the car. I looked in at the office and told the clerk about the freighter stop at Launceston. I grabbed one of the Tasmanian maps and
went out to my car again, and drove off home. I live in the suburbs at Essendon not very far from the aerodrome, in a fair-sized single-storey house on the corner of two streets. I left the car out in the road instead of driving into the garage, and went into the house.

Sheila had gone to bed; she came out in her dressing gown to meet me in the hall. ‘You’re late, Ronnie,’ she said. ‘Did you have a bad trip?’

‘Not too bad,’ I told her. ‘But there’s been a bit of drama in Tasmania. Johnnie Pascoe’s bought it.’

‘I heard it on the news. I’m sorry. Why did you leave the car outside?’

‘I’m going over there,’ I said. ‘See if there’s anything that I can do. There’s a freighter in about an hour’s time. I want my leather coat and helmet.’

She stared at me, astonished. ‘Your
leather coat
? I haven’t seen that for years.’

‘We haven’t given it away?’

She wrinkled her brows. ‘I don’t think so.’ She stood in thought. ‘I remember wrapping it up in newspaper so that it wouldn’t make other things dirty … I put mothballs in with it … I think it might be in the trunk under Diana’s bed, underneath my stole.’

‘Would the helmet be with it?’

‘It might be. Peter had that last, two years ago, when he went to that fancy dress party at school.’ Diana woke up when we pulled the trunk out from under her bed, and sat up sleepily, ‘Wha’s the matter?’

‘It’s all right, darling,’ Sheila told her. ‘Go to sleep again. We just want Daddy’s coat. He’s going flying.’

At eight years old one is easily satisfied. ‘Is that all?’ she said. She lay down and turned on her side; I pulled the bedclothes over her and tucked them round her shoulders for the night was chilly, and she went to sleep immediately. The coat was there in newspaper and we found the helmet
in the chest of drawers in Peter’s room. Sheila said softly, ‘He puts it on sometimes, in front of the looking glass.’

We closed the door quietly behind us. ‘You’d better have something, Ronnie,’ she said. ‘Dripping toast and cocoa?’

It was a good idea, because I should be up all night. She went into the kitchen and I went into the bedroom and stuffed a little haversack full of pullovers and warm clothes. There wasn’t room for pyjamas but I could do without those in favour of long woolly underwear. Whatever things were like at Buxton, I was going to be damn cold at some time or another. I could see that sticking out a mile.

Sheila was busy in the kitchen. I put the haversack down in the hall beside my coat and wandered out into the workshop. Peter and I were planning a surprise, for Diana, because we were going to build her a doll’s house, a big one with six rooms, for Christmas. I had got the plywood and the lengths of small, sawn timber, and we had laid out the baseboard. I stood looking at the drawing, pondering this thing. I had another project on hand for Peter for Christmas, a flying model aeroplane with a small diesel motor, but that I was building in a corner of the workshop at the aerodrome to make it a surprise.

I stood pondering the doll’s house in the workshop, savouring my home. Sheila came to me in a few minutes. ‘Don’t stand mooning there,’ she said. ‘The toast’s ready.’

‘What colour shall we have the drawing room?’ I asked.

‘Pink,’ she said. ‘Pale pink walls. She likes pink. Now come and eat your toast.’

I left the workshop and went through to the kitchen and ate the little meal she had prepared for me. Presently I glanced at my watch, and it was time to go.

She said a little anxiously, ‘Don’t go and buy it yourself, Ronnie.’

‘I won’t do that,’ I promised her. ‘There’s trouble enough over there already.’

I put my old leather coat on in the hall, and kissed her; she came to the door with me. ‘Will you be able to ring me?’ she asked.

I thought for a moment. ‘After dark,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you after dark tomorrow night and let you know the form.’

I drove back to the airport and locked the car up in the park. In the office the flight crew were getting ready to take off the freighter. We exchanged a few words about Johnnie Pascoe and went out to the machine; we took off on time and settled down to a long flight against the head wind. I sat on the floor with my back against the freight, dozing a little; it was very cold and draughty and noisy in the unfurnished shell. I was glad of my leather coat. It was nearly half past three in the morning when they put her down at Launceston and taxied in.

We had radioed the airport control to ask them to get a car to meet us, to drive me sixty miles to Buxton. It was waiting for us with a very sleepy driver, and I got in beside him and we started off. It was a quarter past five when we got near the little town, and the driver asked me where I wanted to go.