The Rainbow and the Rose Read Free Page A

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 andwent 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 helmetin 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.