Flight to Australia

FLIGHT

to

AUSTRALIA

ROGER CROOK

Smashwords Edition

Copyright, 2012, Roger Crook

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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I

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roger Crook was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1938 and spent a lot of his early life in North Wales. After a spell in the British Army with the famous Black Watch and then agricultural college, he came to Western Australia with his wife Lynne and infant daughter in 1967.

He has spent the last forty years working in agriculture, from the West Kimberley to the Western Australian wheat belt and for twenty of those years in international agribusiness.

Roger and Lynne have two daughters and three grandchildren and lives in Albany on the far south coast of Western Australia.

II

Out of Ireland have we come,

Great hatred, little room.

Maimed us at the start.

I carry from my mother’s womb

A fanatic heart.

W.B. Yeats 1865–1939

III

DEDICATION

For Ida and Sidney

Who gave me the fanatic’s heart.

Does God have a library?

For Lynne

Who keeps that heart alive.

Chapter 1

Day 1

David McGonigal helped his wife Barbara into the first class cabin of a BOAC Boeing 707 at London Heathrow Airport. He sat down in the comfortable, dark blue and gold, what seemed to him velvet upholstered seat. Barbara sat next to him as the cabin attendant put their two black leather cabin bags in the overhead locker and gently clicked it shut, leaving them alone in the cabin. David is ex SAS, ex Home Office Counter Terrorism Unit and son of Brendan McGonigal, an Irish cattle dealer and wealthy, influential farmer in North Wales. His Welsh mother Phyllis is now a Professor of Obstetrics of Liverpool University and founder of the biggest private clinic in the United Kingdom, researching human reproduction.

On the drive down to London in his father’s Jaguar through a wet, slate-grey, early November day in 1969, he had started to brood. There were just the four of them in the comfortable, warm car. He had sat and watched his mother unwrap barley sugars and pop them into his father’s mouth, just touching his lips with her fingers, and he had watched him smile. As he watched, the more resentful he became; it started to border on malevolence. He wanted to stop the car and go back to Wales, but he knew he couldn’t. No matter how he looked at it, he was on the run. Forced to leave the Wales he loved because he’d shot and killed a man who tried to kill his mother. A mad, would-be Catholic priest driven to insanity by the belief that the work his mother did, leading the world in birth control research, made her the devil, the Antichrist.

The man he’d shot, Thomas Flynn, had avoided all efforts to capture him until he rose out of the crowd at the opening of his mother’s new clinic, ranting and raving and pointing a gun. It was then that David had shot him.

From pictures in the press depicting David as a local hero, old enemies in Ireland had recognised him and sworn revenge. Even though Flynn had been disowned in Ireland because of his extremism, he was still one of ‘theirs’ and he still had a family and he was, after all, still Irish.

The hunt for Flynn had also resulted in an IRA cell, the elite of their ‘soldiers’ in the United Kingdom, being captured. They were in jail awaiting trial and a long prison sentence.

Since that fateful day, they had tried to kill David once and failed; they had shot his wife by mistake. She was now fully recovered and three months pregnant.

David’s grandmother, a woman of great influence in the Republic of Ireland, had brokered a deal with David’s enemies. Forty years before, two gunmen in Dublin had shot and wounded her stepfather, a judge and her eldest son Brendan, then a law student and now David’s father. The gunmen were no more than boys; one of them had been a Kieran Flynn, a relative of Thomas Flynn. The other had been Brendan’s cousin Paul. David’s grandmother and her mother spirited the two boys out of Ireland. Both had been given money and passage on a ship out of Liverpool. Kieran Flynn had gone to America, Paul McGonigal to Australia.

For decades, the Flynn clan had believed that the McGonigal clan had killed Kieran, and there had been bad blood between them. Grandmother McGonigal had traced Kieran in the United States and believed he was still alive, or at least the place of his resting could be found.

That was the deal: David and his wife of just a few months were not to be seen in the United Kingdom for at least two years, except for short visits that would for now satisfy the IRA. His grandmother was to find out what had happened to Kieran Flynn so old scores could be settled peacefully.

Paul McGonigal prospered in Australia and it was to join him that David and Barbara were being sent.

‘David, you’re brooding. What’s wrong?’

‘No, I’m not. I’m pissed off.’

‘So, what are you pissed off about?’

‘Well, here we are on the plane. The time has finally come to leave and I’m pissed off because I can’t help feeling that I’m running away. And I’ve never run away in my adult life.’

Barbara took his hand. ‘David, we know that this is for the good. At least you won’t be always looking over your shoulder in Australia and that will make me a lot happier.’

‘I know that, I’ve gone over it a hundred times. But now that we’re doing it, it’s started to sink in through my thick skull. We’re going to Australia to stay with someone nobody knows. We don’t know where we’re going to live. It might be out in … what do they call it? The bush? Miles from bloody anywhere, for all we know, just to get away from a gang of mad Catholic terrorists who are the scum of the earth.’

‘Who want you dead.’

‘Yes, yes, I know, Bar, they want me dead.’ There was now an air of resignation in his voice. ‘What’s more, they’ve tried once and missed me and got you, I know, and I know there’s no telling if or when or how they might try again. That doesn’t make it any easier, but I’m still running.’

‘Like your grandmother said, the Irish have long memories.’

‘Isn’t that the truth?’

‘You almost sounded Irish then.’

‘Half of me is – that’s the trouble. Which half, though? It’s easy to be one of them, believe me. We call them terrorists and my cousins probably call them freedom fighters, soldiers.’

The pitch of the engines changed as the throttles were pushed wide open and the plane started to rush down the runway. The noise increased as every join in the runway reverberated through the fuselage, crockery rattled, an overhead locker dropped open and a life jacket fell out. Then, as they became airborne, the rattling and banging stopped and all they could hear was the engines thrusting them into the fast approaching night sky then two thuds as the undercarriage was retracted and they banked steeply to the right.

Out of the window, Barbara could see the lights of London, then they were in the clouds and England had disappeared. She looked at David and saw that his eyes were closed and his lean face expressionless. His thick, black, curly hair was already turning prematurely grey at the temples. Absentmindedly she thought that in another ten years or so, by the time he was forty anyway, he would be grey-haired like his father.

He wore a light blue, short-sleeved cotton shirt and no tie; hand tailored, dark grey woollen trousers; on his feet a pair of handmade, slip-on, black brogues. She looked at the scars on his sinewy forearms and wondered why he wouldn’t tell her how he got them. His hands were folded in his lap and she saw his long fingers and thought of her mother’s hands caressing her violin, then she thought of David’s hands caressing her and she wanted to lean over and kiss him.

A bell rang once and startled her out of her reverie. The seatbelt sign went off as a pretty young stewardess came into the first class cabin, picked up the life jacket that had fallen out of the locker, closed the locker and, still smiling, followed the pre-recorded message showing them what to do in the case of an emergency. Barbara looked at David and saw that his eyes were still closed and he was paying no attention to the stewardess’ instructions.

The next voice over the speaker was the captain of the plane. He introduced himself as Captain Ian Metcalf and welcomed everyone aboard, informing them that they were climbing to their cruising altitude of 24 000 feet. This time when Barbara glanced at David, she saw that his eyes were now wide open and he was staring at the door leading to the flight deck.

She reached over and took his hand and he looked at her and smiled in spite of his mood. He saw a beautiful, elegant woman, his wife of just a few months, someone who had aroused in him feelings of love and tenderness that he did not know he had. He had never really understood his parents’ love for each other until he met her.

Short, blonde hair; blue eyes; tanned, flawless complexion; a lean physique that David thought was perfectly proportioned. Her long legs were hidden by a pair of fine, grey wool slacks tailor-made by Jacob Braun so that they would accommodate at least a few of the early months of her pregnancy. Her pale orange silk shirt contrasted sharply with the black shawl given to her by David’s mother, Phyllis, that night of their tearful farewells at The Cat & Fiddle, high on the moors in North Wales.

‘Mr and Dr McGonigal, my name is Adam Baker. I am the chief steward and I will be taking care of you for the first leg of the journey,’ a pleasant English voice interrupted their thoughts. They looked up and saw a man of about fifty; short, bald and with a big smile.

‘Mr McGonigal, this letter came for you just before we departed. It came by Foreign Office courier, I’m told. I’m sorry that I couldn’t give it to you before.’ He handed David a brown manila envelope with ‘OHMS’ on the top.

The concern on Barbara’s face was palpable as he ripped the top off the envelope. Inside there was a handwritten note which said: David,

I guarantee that Adam can provide whatever you desire from the drinks cupboard. Test me, I dare you. The airline has also agreed that you will have first class to yourselves through to Perth; they just made tourist class bigger. If you have to leave the plane to stretch your legs, Adam or his replacements will arrange, so do as you are told and please me. You will not see them, but my men occupy the first two aisle seats back in the cabin. They will be there through to Perth. They were going to Perth anyway in a couple of weeks to brief our Australian colleagues, so we brought their trip forward.

When you get to Perth, you will get VIP through customs. I think that I should get you used to ‘See ye later, digger, or sport’ or something. By the way, I think I am coming to Western Australia next year when the PM goes to Canberra. I think our future king has some ideas of going feral for a while in WA. That means headaches. Oh, by the way, I have moved on; the pictures of me at your mother’s place caused some concern upstairs. Overseas stuff now – come and join me? Just joking. Aye, John.

PS. Sorry I didn’t spend much time with you in departure. There was a bit of flap on. Some Irish TV station had got word that you would be there at the airport. We had to make sure that it was just the press. We sent them to the other gate.

J.^pDavid looked up and saw that Adam’s face was expressionless. He handed the note to Barbara without comment and, looking at the Chief Steward, said, ‘I’ll have The Dew, with ice please, Adam,’ then half apologetically he added, ‘It’s a dare from a friend. Bit childish, really.’

‘Of course, Sir. Dr McGonigal?’

‘The same, please, but a very small one and a glass of mineral water, please.’

‘Of course, Madam.’

‘David, what does this note from John mean?’ asked Barbara, still scanning the note.

‘Don’t know. Something is going on or he would’ve left us alone. Adam is probably one of John’s men – who knows? That explains those two motorcycle police who picked us up coming into London. Quite a performance, that escort. Thought Dad was going to have a fit. I recognise the name of the Captain too; he usually flies in the Royal Wing. I bet my boots he’s RAF, not BOAC. Why, it looks like they even have The Dew. Nice touch by John if they have. Means Dad has another convert.’

The door from the flight deck opened and a man with the captain’s stripes emerged and looked directly at David.

‘Good to see you again, Mr McGonigal. Last time we met was under different circumstances – Aden, wasn’t it? Dr McGonigal, welcome aboard. My cabin crew will take good care of you. If you want to come onto the flight deck, just ask the chief steward.

‘I’m sorry, Dr McGonigal, we haven’t met. My name is Ian Metcalf. I shall remain as captain right through to Perth. May I call you David and Barbara? We will spend the next thirty hours or so together.’

‘What’s going on, Ian?’ said David.

‘No idea, old son. You know the system; all I do is do what I’m told. Must go and show the flag through the rest of the plane. See you later, enjoy the flight.’ With that he moved away through the curtains that divided first class from the rest of the plane.

Adam Baker reappeared with the two drinks they had ordered on a silver tray together with a small bottle of mineral water. Before David could move, he pulled out the small tray in the armrests of their seats, put down two drinks, the mineral water and two small plates of hors d’oeuvres.

David smelt the light amber fluid in the glass. With a sigh of resignation, he said, ‘Nice one, John, you win.’

The look on Adam’s face confirmed that the result was a foregone conclusion. He then reached over them, turned on the two overhead lights and with a ‘Enjoy your drinks. Just ring when you want a refill. Dinner in about an hour,’ disappeared into the back of the cabin.

They sat in silence, sipping and savouring their Irish whiskey and ignoring the delicacies on the plates. David was the first to speak. ‘I think it’s just John being careful yet again. If they’ve gone to all this trouble then it means they’ve vetted all the passengers, so there’s nothing to worry about. In another thirty hours or so, we shall be on the other side of the world and away from all that mayhem at home. So let’s just relax and enjoy the ride.’

He took her left hand and held it to his lips for a moment. When he looked at her, he could see that she was holding back the tears. ‘Its all right, Bar, honestly. I was just being grumpy before.’

She took a small lace hanky from the sleeve of her blouse and dabbed her eyes. ‘I know, David. I wanted to get away, but now that we’ve done it, I feel a bit empty. I miss your mum and her strength and we only left them a couple of hours ago. I keep on thinking about our last night with her and Brendan and all the people at the party.’

‘You’ve lived in Wales for too long. That’s what’s wrong with you.’

‘Well, how do you feel now?’

‘Like I said before, but I’ve had my moan. Now I’m looking forward to getting there, whatever it’s like. The pressure will be off and that’s what we both need. Summer sun, maybe the beach and a bit of diving, thousands of acres of farming and if Gran was right, millions of acres of grazing – hard to imagine that.’

‘We owe your grandmother a lot.’

‘That we do. Imagine keeping secret for more than thirty years all that information about who shot my dad. Didn’t even tell my grandfather because it would’ve destroyed the family. I’m glad she’s on our side.’

An hour later, they had finished their dinner complemented by some fine French wine. They both resisted the offers of meringues and chocolate mousse and decided on cheese and coffee together with some old and smooth French cognac. From the array of English and French cheeses, they chose runny brie and a crumbly white Cheshire and Jacob’s Water Biscuits.

‘I wonder if you can buy Cheshire cheese in Australia?’ David asked. ‘I suppose we will have to get used to not seeing all those things we’ve grown up with.’

‘And these biscuits, and brie. We could even get them in Kenya, but that was only because of the ex-pats.’

‘We’ll have to do what they did in India and place an order with Fortnum & Mason. Imagine the cost. No, I just hope the cheese isn’t the same as the Australian cheddar we got in the army. You could sole your boots with it and carry your rations on your feet.’

‘That bad?’

‘That wasn’t the worst. The powdered potato was by far the worst; it had the consistency of bread dough. It was so elastic that when you lined up at the cookhouse, they had to cut the mashed potato as it was spooned onto your plate. Our training depot cook was an Evans – Taffy Evans, Staff Sergeant Evans – same as my mother’s maiden name. His speciality was cheese and potato pie. So, powdered potato and Australian processed cheddar in great big baking trays was what they trained the British Army on. Even after this fine meal in the luxury of a first class cabin, I can still smell that foul concoction.’

‘Did you eat it?’

‘My word, we did. I wouldn’t eat cheese of any kind before I went into the army. By the time Taffy had finished with me, I found that if you were hungry, you’d eat anything, even Taffy’s cheese and potato pie and his fish pie. Oh, jeez, the fish pie. I’ve just remembered that. God, that was foul. You could smell it a few hundred metres away from the cookhouse. Same rubber potato, but this time with fish, canned fish. Taffy always said it was Canadian salmon. If it was, it had swum the Atlantic and thrown itself on the beach on a suicide mission to help the war effort. Many of the rations were leftovers from World War II, you know?’

‘Now I think you’re exaggerating, David. They wouldn’t feed you wartime rations.’

‘As God is my witness, they did. The cans were marked, stamped with the date. From memory, the potato was dated 1943. The cheese wasn’t dated, so that was probably 1914 – First World War stuff!’

‘Now I know you’re joking.’

‘The cheese maybe, just maybe, but not the other stuff. The first pair of boots that I had were dated 1943, and my battle dress 1944. The boots were that hard that when they became comfortable, it coincided with when they wore out. We tried everything to get them comfortable including peeing in them. Nothing worked.’

‘You didn’t pee in your boots!’

‘We did. Never did find out whether it was an old soldier’s tale or whether it was supposed to work. Thank God we never had to go to war with those boots or we would have all been cripples before a shot was fired.’

‘What was the rest of your equipment like?’

‘Old, cold, ill-fitting to the extent that near enough was good enough. My basic training was done in the middle of winter. Battle dress – that coarse wool, khaki uniform – was only for best, so all training was done in denims, they were called. So, we spent most of the first ten weeks cold, wet, miserable and often constipated due to Sergeant Taffy’s culinary incompetence, only to be cured by spoonfuls of some foul, utterly foul concoction dished out by the MO’s assistants who all had a first-class degree in sadism.’

‘How did you manage? You were so young when you went in.’

‘For the first three weeks, I was in a daze. Every minute of the day, someone was shouting at you – do this, do that, turn left, turn right. Then in about the fourth week, I decided I was not going to let the bastards beat me with all their taunts about being a Taffy, a sheep shagger, anything else the instructors could lay their tongue to.’

‘So, what did you do?’

‘I decided I was going to be the best. The only way I could stop the abuse was to do everything perfectly – practise, practise and more practise. I had one objective and that was to one day be in a position to shout at those who made my life a misery shouting at me.’

‘Did you succeed?’

‘No, I finished top of my intake, then I got sent off to see if I was suitable for the SAS.’

‘What happened then?’

‘It started all over again, only this time I found out what tough really meant. The one objective was not to see if they could break you, but how long it took. This time it was physical and I revelled in it.’

‘The rest, they say, is history. Did you enjoy the SAS?’

‘Who wouldn’t enjoy being the best in the world? We compared ourselves to everyone else – the Americans, the French, everyone – and one for one, we proved we were the best.’

‘Did you ever get back at those instructors?’

‘Not really. One fellow by the name of Corporal Campbell had been the bane of my life in basic training, always in my face, always calling me Jessie. He was Scots and apparently that was like calling someone a sissy, or worse. He would shout on the parade ground when we were drilling, always calling me Jessie.

‘Anyway, he turned up one day. He’d volunteered to be evaluated for the SAS, and I was the first face he saw when he arrived at our barracks and checked in at the guardroom. When he saw me, his face fell a mile. He had no rank for evaluation; he was just another squaddie, and I had two stripes.’

‘What happened then?’

‘He passed, we became the best of friends, he died in Cyprus. Terrorists shot him in the back, together with two army wives.’

‘Were you in Cyprus?’

‘Couple of times. Flew in and flew out after a few days or weeks. Lovely country, but those Greeks and Turks, they’re worse than the Irish and that’s saying something, and I’ve had close contact with both.’

The chief steward cleared away the last of their dishes and they both declined any more cognac. The first class cabin seats were big and comfortable. Without asking, they were given cabin blankets and pillows and before the lights had been dimmed in the rest of the plane, they were both asleep.

With the first class cabin to themselves, there was enough room to move around and keep long-flight stiffness out of their joints. They both ate sparingly and drank plenty of water and it was not until they got to Singapore, the last stop before the run down to Western Australia, that they asked if they could leave the plane to stretch their legs.

Their new chief steward had joined the flight at the first stop. Braden Carter was the complete opposite to Adam. Where Adam was round, Braden was slim. Adam was bald; Braden had a mane of blond hair. Adam had the gait of a sea captain; Braden floated along like a ballet dancer and he had a voice to match, cultured and a little effeminate.

When they landed at Singapore, the curtains were closed, preventing the tourist cabin passengers from seeing David and Barbara, disembark first, complete with cabin bags. Waiting in the tunnel were two airline staff with a trolley for the bags and two plain-clothes policemen. They were quickly ushered through the tunnel and out onto the concourse and the airline staff set off at a brisk pace, beckoning David and Barbara to follow.

After about a five minute walk, they arrived at the VIP lounge where they were given a private room with a shower. A hot shower and a change of clothes made them both feel better. After a quick cup of tea, they did the return sprint to their plane and embarked before everyone else.

Chapter 2

Day 2

For the first time since they’d left London, it was daylight. As they lifted off from Changi Airport, David looked out of the window and what he saw reminded him of Borneo and his first covert operation in the jungle. He thought of leeches, dripping foliage and a dampness that got into everything and turned into mould, where scratches festered overnight and leeches left holes in the skin. Then he looked at the scars on his arms.

After nearly thirty hours since leaving Wales, it seemed impossible that they were now on the other side of the world. As the plane climbed, scattered islands gave way to just a great expanse of blue water and blue sky that went on and on and on.

Finally the Captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, those on the left of the plane can now see the coast of Western Australia. We have made landfall just north of Carnarvon and we will follow the coast south to Perth. We are slightly ahead of schedule; we caught a jet stream across the Indian Ocean, so our estimated time of arrival in Perth is 1300 hours, or one o’clock in the afternoon.

‘The weather in Perth is fine with an estimated temperature when we land of thirty-two degrees Celsius. Please pay particular attention to the instructions from the cabin staff about Australian quarantine regulations. I hope you enjoyed your flight with us and we look forward to seeing you again.’

David moved to another seat by the window and all he could see was a jagged coastline, blue water, sparse scrub and red soil. There were no roads, just tracks.

Barbara was sitting on the land side of the plane and he joined her and looked out of her window. All they could see was a vast expanse of uninhabited land, all the way to the horizon.

Barbara said, ‘It reminds me of Kenya during a drought. It looks so dry down there. I just looked at the map. Do you realise that it is seven hundred or so miles from Carnarvon to Perth? That’s like Lands End to John O’Groats and then some. I wonder what the first settlers thought when they named that place Carnarvon?’

‘It probably had something to do with homesickness. Maybe the Hiraeth. It’s hard to imagine two places so different, at least from up here anyway,’ David said. As he looked at the dry and parched landscape, all he could think of was his brief spell in Oman with the SAS, training for spending weeks in the desert. Images formed in his mind as he silently reminisced. The heat, foul tasting drinking water that was always tepid, flies, parched lips that cracked and bled; and the sun, always the sun, beating down, reflecting off the rocks; and the sand, creating mirages that could deceive and trap you. Savage sandstorms that could bury you in minutes. Nights that could chill and days that could burn your eyes out of their sockets.

He looked again at the barren moonscape. At least when he was in Oman, he knew when he was going home, but now he had no idea when he would next see the soft-green fields of Wales.

Soon the landscape changed and they could see what looked like fields with irregular shapes. Some were a dark grey, others a pale gold to yellow which David guessed were grain crops of some kind.

As their ears popped, indicating that they were losing altitude, the landscape changed again. This time to forest with houses scattered among the trees, all of which seemed very close. Then the ground suddenly dropped away. As they cleared the Darling Scarp, they could see Perth. They heard the wheels lock down for landing and with the runway rushing up to meet them, their journey was over. They were in Australia.

Again they were first off the plane. Passports were quickly stamped and they were waved through customs and shown to the VIP arrival lounge.

David would have recognised Paul McGonigal in a football crowd; his likeness to his father and grandfather was uncanny. Tall, about six foot, grey-haired, thinner than his father but with the same nose and forehead. The same broad smile and dancing, dark eyes. He was dressed in a light blue, long-sleeved shirt with two breast pockets; white, slim-fitting trousers that fitted over what looked to David like tan, highly polished riding boots. When he spoke, the Irish brogue was still there, but his forty years in Australia were evident in his slow and measured drawl.

‘David, Barbara, welcome to Australia. I am so pleased to see you.’ He shook hands with David and gave Barbara a kiss on the cheek. ‘Come along. My car is outside and if they’ve done their job, your suitcases should be in the corridor, just outside.’

He held open the door for Barbara and then motioned for David to follow. As he’d predicted, their suitcases were waiting. David pushed the trolley down a short corridor as a member of the airport staff opened the door to the concourse.

After days in a cool, dry, airconditioned plane, the glare of the November sun made David and Barbara squint and the dry heat of the afternoon took their breath away.

Before David could help, Paul had the boot of his white Mercedes 300SEL 3.5 open and he was loading their suitcases. David mumbled an apology as he helped stow the last case before Paul closed the lid. Paul then moved quickly to the pavement and opened the back door of the big saloon.

‘Barbara, you ride in the back. David can come with me in the front. I must take care of you. I understand there is a baby on the way. Fancy that, an Australian McGonigal. That will be quite an event.’

As Barbara got in, she noticed that the leather seats were fitted with white sheepskin covers, both front and back. It was hot in the car and as she moved to open the window, Paul turned the ignition and she immediately felt a cool breeze on her cheeks.

‘I bought this car from Germany last year and had an airconditioner factory fitted. Apparently they fit them into the cars they export to America. They should be standard in this heat,’ said Paul.

He drove out of the airport and turned left. ‘This suburb is called Belmont and this highway carries a lot of traffic north and east. I suppose we should get the formalities over with. Everyone calls me either Paul or Boss. My farm and station staff call me Boss, at least to my face.’ He smiled as he said it and David again saw his father. ‘Everyone else, unless they are being very formal, calls me Paul. Are you too cold in the back, Barbara?’

‘No, I’m fine, Paul.’

‘Good, good. We’re now approaching the fair city of Perth. On your right is the rubbish dump. We must be the only city in the world that welcomes people with a rubbish dump on the banks of one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. They say they are going to close it, but they’ve been saying it for years. The Lord Mayor is coming to dinner tomorrow night so I can have another go at him. I think he expects it now.’

Before them they saw a wide river and the city beyond. The sun danced on the water beneath a cloudless blue sky. As David looked at this foreign land, he asked, ‘Is it a holiday today, Paul?’

‘No, why do you ask?’

‘Well, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but where’s the traffic?’

‘Get used to it, David. This is Perth, not London. We have about another hour before the rush hour. That only lasts for about an hour and then there’s even less traffic than there is now.’

As they crossed the causeway leading to the city, David could see small boats, and people waterskiing, on the clear blue water of the Swan River. They forked left and Paul continued.

‘This is St George’s Terrace, where the business is done. We are just beginning to see the development of some very big iron ore and mineral deposits in what we call the Pilbara. That will transform this sleepy little State of ours. You’ll get the chance to meet some of these pioneers over the next few weeks.’

Perth reminded David of a quiet English market town in summer. There were a couple of buildings that had more than five or six storeys; the rest were smaller and their design reminded him in some ways of the buildings in the business end of Liverpool, built in the early part of the twentieth century. The big difference was that Perth was clean and bright where Liverpool was permanently grey and dirty.

Barbara looked at the people and noticed that none of them had the pallor of the Northern Europeans; everyone was tanned. Many of the men wore short-sleeved shirts and shorts, with white socks. The young women wore light summer dresses that showed off their tanned legs and arms and she was again reminded of Kenya.

Paul continued, ‘Up the hill here, you can see the Barracks Arch. Now that’s a story that will take a long time to tell, and beyond the arch is Parliament House. As you probably know, Australia is a federation of States within the Commonwealth of Australia. In Western Australia, we have two Houses. A lower house called the House of Assembly and an upper house; a house of review called the Legislative Council. Pretty much like your Houses of Parliament with the House of Commons and the House of Lords.’

We have a State Parliament in each State, some with two houses, some with one. Then we have a Federal Parliament, again with two houses, all for less than seventeen million people. We must be the most over-governed country in the world. I nearly forgot; we also have the territories – that is, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. Confusing? You’ll get used to it. We love governments in Australia.’

At the top of the hill past the Barracks Arch, Paul turned left into a tree-lined road with lawns and flowerbeds. ‘This is Kings Park, one of the showpieces of Perth. A couple of thousand acres of native bush and gardens. It is, I think, one of the most beautiful parks in Australia. I can’t say the world because I’ve never been out of Australia, except for the war.’

‘I didn’t know you’d been in the war, Paul,’ said David.

‘Nobody knows back in Ireland. I only mentioned it because our war memorial is just up ahead where some of my mates are remembered. I went to New Guinea where we lost so many men and where young boys quickly became men.’

By this time, he’d stopped the car in the shade of a tree and as he was getting out, said, ‘Just come and have a look at this, then we’ll go home and have a cup of tea. You must be tired.’

David and Barbara followed Paul to the war memorial where they stood in solemn remembrance. Stepping forward a matter of metres, Paul led them to the cliff-edge lookout where they took in the breathtaking panorama of Perth and the Swan River below. In the distance to the east, they could see the Darling Scarp they had flown over an hour before. In the other direction, they could follow the Swan River downstream, almost to Fremantle and the open sea.

As Barbara and David gazed at the huge vista, Paul put his arms around each of their shoulders and said, ‘Welcome again to Australia. You have no idea what it means to me to have family here in Australia. I have so much to show you. Come, let’s go home and let you get showered and changed. Long plane trips can be exhausting, they tell me.’

Barbara kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Paul.’ On his saying, ‘Come, let’s go home’, Barbara was sure there was a catch in Paul’s voice.

Having exited Kings Park, Paul pointed out the buildings of the University of Western Australia, each neatly spaced amid green lawns and shady trees. Just past the university, they branched left and again they were on the bank of the Swan River. Elegant houses sat behind well-manicured lawns with sprinklers showering everywhere, and everywhere green. As they drove up the slight incline, the river shone beneath them. Barbara marvelled at the contrasting scene to her first sight of Australia when in the plane just a few hours before. She thought she had never seen anywhere so beautiful in her life.

Paul turned off the road into the short, palm-lined drive leading to a spacious, single storey bungalow of red brick and wide verandas with a corrugated iron roof. As they opened the doors of the Mercedes, the heat of the day enveloped them. Barbara could smell frangipani and eucalyptus.

David had said nothing since leaving Kings Park and he quickly got out of the car to get their bags out of the boot. ‘Leave them,’ said Paul. ‘Domenic, my gardener, will get them.’ Then, apparently talking to no one, he said, ‘Dom, where are you?’

‘Here, Boss,’ said a smiling, black-skinned, grey-haired man of about sixty, dressed in shorts and sandals, as he emerged out of the shadows.

‘Dom, this is David and Barbara who I told you about.’

‘David, Missus, welcome to Australia.’

‘Thanks, Domenic,’ said David, holding out his hand which Domenic shook limply, not taking his eyes off the ground.

‘Dom, put Barbara’s and David’s bags in the blue guest rooms, will you, please. We’ll go and see if Elsie has boiled the billy.’

Paul led the way up three steps to the polished boards of a wide veranda, pushed open the unlocked front door and held it open for them to enter the cool hallway.

The first things Barbara noticed were the strange paintings on the walls, many of them seeming to be just a series of coloured dots in intricate patterns of red, yellow and white. She paused to look at one large canvas and Paul, noticing her interest, said, ‘These are all Aboriginal paintings, mostly done by the people on the station. That one was done by Elsie who, with a bit of luck, has made us some tea. Elsie, you got the billy on?’

The door at the far end of the hallway opened, flooding the passage with light. Silhouetted in the doorway was a short, dark-skinned, well-proportioned figure pushing a tea trolley over the highly polished floorboards.

Paul opened the first door on the left and, holding it open, said, ‘In here, Elsie, then I can go out on the veranda for a smoke and stop you complaining.’ Turning to David and Barbara, he said, ‘Elsie rules me with a rod of iron. The two places where I can smoke are outside and in my study. Anywhere else and I get told off. Isn’t that right, Elsie?’

‘Yes, Paul.’

‘Leave the trolley, I’ll pour. Did Janet come in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, tell her four for dinner. Just something light, maybe fish. Give Bec a ring and check what time she will be home, will you?’

‘Sure.’

All the time Paul had been speaking to Elsie, Barbara had watched the communication between them. They were both easy and relaxed and there was no sign of what she expected of an employer-black servant relationship. She also saw that Elsie had a badly deformed hand which she knew to be caused by leprosy. She had seen leprosy in Kenya and had no idea it was in Australia.

Apart from her one disfigurement, Elsie was a strikingly handsome woman of about forty. Dark-skinned, but not as dark as Domenic, she almost looked Asian. Her black hair in one long plait wound around her head was fastened with a mother-of-pearl clip. She was dressed simply in a long blue dress with pink roses of an uneven design.

Her bare feet made no sound as she crossed the room, pushing the tea trolley. Reaching the light by the French window leading to the veranda, she parked the tea trolley and let herself out.

Barbara turned to Paul. ‘Paul, I see that Elsie has had leprosy. I didn’t know it was in Australia.’

‘Oh, yes, Elsie is from Broome. The reason she’s down here is that Elsie and Domenic have a child that needs care – constant care.