The Rainbow and the Rose Read Free

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