Authors: Nevil Shute
“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 all 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.
The pilot came to life about an hour before sunset and got up, put on a clean tropical suit, and went into the tiny mess room. He found Flight Lieutenant Vary in consultation with the Philippino cook boy, trying to concoct a dinner worthy of the Royal entourage. It was a task that might have daunted a better caterer than Vary, but he was tackling it with enthusiasm. “I thought we’d start off with crayfish mayonnaise,” he said. “We’ve got some tins of crayfish, and some tinned tomatoes, and we’ve got some real lettuces. We’ve killed a couple of chickens and we’ll have those for the main course, with tinned peas and sweet potatoes. And after that, Aguinaldo knows a wizard sweet made of young coconut, icecream, and creme de menthe.”
“Don’t bother to push out the boat for us,” the Wing Commander said. “We’ll eat what you eat normally.”
The boy looked disappointed. “It’s not much trouble,” he said. “I’d like to try and do things properly, for once. It isn’t often that one sees a girl like Gillian Foster in a mess
like this. Do you know, she comes from Shepparton—her people have a station there, and I’m from Swan Hill, only a hundred and twenty miles from where she lives. Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
It was obviously such a pleasure to him to try and put on a good dinner that David said no more to damp the project, but praised his work. “They’ve got a lot of Chinese lanterns in the store that they bring out for Christmas Day,” Vary said. “I wasn’t here last Christmas, but I’ve seen them. Do you think that’s a good idea?”
Rosemary came into the mess with Gillian Foster and they discussed the Chinese lanterns and decided to have one to shroud the naked bulb that dangled above the table on its length of flex. The stewardess went off to the District Officer’s house to see about her duties over there, and as the sun sank to the horizon David and Rosemary walked along the shore at the head of the beach. They laughed a little together about Mr. Vary. “He’s taking this dinner very seriously,” the girl said. “We must show that we enjoy it. He’s going to such a lot of trouble.”
“He’s having a marvellous time,” the pilot said. “I know what it is. I spent six months once on Keeling Cocos Islands, but this one’s worse. I’d never want to have a job like that again.”
They strolled slowly through the grove of casuarina trees that fringed the sand of the lagoon. The lagoon was roughly square in shape. Two coral reefs ran out from the mainland to the north and to the south, covered in sand and coconut trees, and these formed the entrance to the lagoon facing to the west; in the entrance gap was a small coral island. “That’s Cook Island,” said the pilot. “Captain Cook discovered this place on Christmas Eve—that’s why it’s called Christmas Island.” He paused. “You see the two points of land on each side of the entrance? The north one—that
one—that’s called London. The other one, the south one, that’s called Paris.”
“Who called them that, Nigger?”
“I don’t know. They’re always called London and Paris. Someone who was stationed here, I suppose.”
“He must have been very lonely,” she said.
“Yes. I dare say he was. It’s bad enough now there’s an airstrip here. It must have been lonely here before.”
They strolled on, and now they were in sight of the District Officer’s house. Strolling towards them were another couple, arm in arm, a tall, slight, grey haired man and a short, plumpish woman in late middle age, both dressed in tropical white. The pilot said, “Look. Had we better go back?”
Rosemary said, “No. Just walk past naturally, Nigger.”
The Queen stopped as they came up and said, “Good evening, Captain. Good evening, Miss Long. Isn’t this a beautiful place?”
“I think it’s simply lovely,” said the girl. The pilot smiled. “I’ve been telling Rosemary about London and Paris, madam,” he said.
“London and Paris?”
He explained the names and the Queen laughed. “How absurd!” She asked about the accommodation. “I do hope everybody’s going to be comfortable,” she said. “I’ve been feeling rather bad about it—the accommodation. It’s all right for us, of course. We’ve got the dearest little house.”
Rosemary said, “I think everybody’s very happy, madam. Everyone I’ve spoken to seems to be enjoying it so far.”
David said, “The R.A.A.F. are perfectly delighted.”
“I am so glad. I wish we could see more of these small places. I don’t think any of my family have ever been here, even when it was British.”
Rosemary asked, “When did it become Australian? I’m
afraid I thought up till yesterday that it
was
British.”
“1961,” the Queen said. “Nine years after I came to the throne. We transferred all the Line Islands to Australia in 1961. It makes a much more sensible arrangement.” She paused, and then she said, “Do either of you two play tennis?”
Rosemary hesitated, and then said, “I’m an awful rabbit.”
“I play a bit,” the pilot said. “For fun.”
“I expect you’re much better than we are,” the Queen replied. “We discovered four tennis racquets in the house. Two of them have got broken strings, and they’re all a bit soft; I suppose that’s the climate. Would you two like to come and try a set or two with us tomorrow evening?”
“We’d love to,” said Rosemary.
“Oh, that will be nice. Say about half past four. That will give us about an hour and a half before sunset. I always think that one should try and take some exercise each day when one is in the tropics. But it’s so seldom possible to do it.”
They parted, and strolled on in different directions. For a time David and Rosemary walked together in silence. “She’s such a
human
little woman,” the girl said at last. “It’s bad luck, having a job like hers.”
In the dusk they turned and walked back to the mess. Dinner was arranged for seven o’clock in order that Gillian Foster could get over to the District Officer’s house to help to serve the meal there at eight o’clock. It was a very merry dinner in the mess, with Australian sherry, Australian claret, and Australian port. Under the Chinese lantern the thick plates and the service cutlery looked almost delicate, and the crayfish mayonnaise made by the Philippino boy was delicious, if rather heavily spiced to hide the slight metallic taste. Rosemary said crayfish disagreed with her, and didn’t have any. They drank the health of the Queen with more sincerity, perhaps, than usual in a mess, and then Frank Cox
proposed the health of the Mess President for the good dinner. There was nothing much to do after they had finished eating except to sit out on the verandah and talk, looking out over the lagoon in the bright moonlight. Everyone was tired with the long day and the flight from Ottawa; one by one they made excuse and slipped away. By half past nine David was in bed.
In the middle of the night the pilot had a horrible dream.
He dreamed that he was dying. It seemed to him that he was lying on a bed in a dark room, and he was very cold and sweating at the same time. He had an appalling, tearing pain in his abdomen and his legs seemed to be paralysed, and everything about him stank. His body stank of stale sweat, the bed stank of dirty linen, and there was a vile, unnatural flavour in his mouth and nose. He knew in some way that this disgusting fragrance could relieve his pain and he struggled feebly to move his hands to renew it, but no motion came to his muscles. He knew that whiskey hot and burning in his throat would ease the pain and quench the filthy stink that he was lying in, and he struggled to ask for whiskey, but no sound would come, for he was practically dead.
There was a man sitting by the bed side and holding his hand, and this man was out of his mind. His hand was as hot as David’s was cold, and both were sweating freely so that it was as if they were holding hands beneath the water. This man was ill and wandering in his mind; he was a priest, too, and a good cobber who got beds for fellows with bad ears, but he was away out of his mind now and wandering in a crazy world of harps and angels’ wings.
There was a woman there, a sister from a hospital who could do nothing to relieve his pain because a crocodile had eaten her medicine case, and so she had gone to sleep; she sat there at the table with her head upon her arms, and he was
left alone with the mad priest in the darkness. The place that he was in was a tumbledown house or shack upon an island in the middle of great floods and all the animals in the world had come through the darkness and the floods, running and creeping and hopping and crawling to this small place in the wilderness. They had come because death is a great mystery, and animals are curious about the mystery as well as men, so they had come to see him die. There they were, grouped in a circle round the house in the intermittent moonlight, and they were getting closer every minute because there was nobody but a mad priest awake in the house, and they were not afraid of him. Presently, when he died, they would come into the room to watch him die; he would know the moment when they came into the room, and they were getting closer every minute. The tearing, tearing pain.
Animals were right. Cobbers they could be sometimes; they never did you any harm unless you went for them. Two hundred and thirty horses at Wonamboola station he had had; dumb brutes but they never called you Pisspot, only if they got frightened they might go wild on you and hurt you without meaning. He wasn’t afraid of animals; let them come into the room and watch him die if they wanted. Sooner the better. His body was contorted once again with the intolerable pain.
In the darkness there was a glow of light, like a bloke that might be holding half an inch of candle in a saucer, where the edge of the saucer hid the candle and the flame and you could only see the glow. And in this glow there was a face, yellow and wrinkled, the face of an old Chinaman floating in the air before his eyes. The face floated before his eyes in the darkness, and the lips moved, and they said, “You want a pipe, Stevie?”
The words somehow meant relief. He tried to speak but no sound came; he looked imploringly into the eyes, and the
face said, “Or-right, I get you pipe.” There was a period then, while some familiar movements were going on quite close to him, that promised a relief from pain, and then the vile fragrance that he welcomed was upon him once again, and in his mouth, and in the back of his nose. Now he could relax, free from the pain. Now he could turn to the dream, England, and Ratmalana, and Fairbairn aerodrome at Canberra, all across the world, backwards and forwards, all across the world and carrying the Queen. Christmas Island in the middle of the Pacific, and being in love.
Christmas Island. The pain hit him like a blow, and he opened his eyes, groaning and muttering with the pain. He was in a strange room that he did not recognise, but it was different from the hut in the middle of the floods, and there was moonlight in the room, and a glow of electric light under the door. Through the thin partition he heard a voice say, “Somebody else is having trouble in here. Who’s sleeping in this one?”
He heard Rosemary say, “That’s Wing Commander Anderson.”
The door opened and the light was switched on, and he sat up in bed, his stomach cramped and tense with pain. Dr. Mitchison in his pyjamas stood in the door, with Rosemary in her dressing gown behind him. The doctor said, “Are you feeling all right?”