Long Flight Home

by Lainie Anderson

  We stood quietly for a while.

  I tugged a frangipani flower from a nearby branch, and as the pungent sweetness washed over me I thought back to Helena in our Sydney hotel room.

  She’d asked me to close my eyes while she undressed, and before I knew it she was tucked up in the narrow single bed, with the covers under her chin and a big, silly smile on her face.

  ‘How come you get to watch me undress?’ I’d asked, sitting on the side of the bed to tug off my boots.

  ‘Lady’s prerogative,’ she’d said, biting her bottom lip as she reached out a smooth, white arm to gently rub my back.

  Shadows flickered on the bare walls from a single candle.

  Her dark hair was loose against the cream pillow. I’d leaned over to softly kiss her, and she’d put her hand behind my neck and pulled me in tight.

  Then she’d pressed her lips to my ear and whispered, ‘Get a move on, Private Shy-ers.’

  I sighed, tucking the frangipani flower in my pocket before taking a sip of whisky.

  I’d come too far and risked too much to go home now.

  ‘I’m in, Captain,’ I said. ‘And you know you can always count on my total commitment.’

  ‘Thank Christ, Wal,’ he said, looking up. ‘Just look at the size of that sky. I’m going to need you lads to get me through it.’

  Chapter 9

  ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1919

  For the first time in four and a half years I’d been ordered to sleep in, but there was little chance of that. I was in England, land of kings and castles, staying at Biffy Borton’s family estate, Cheveney. It even had its own name, like it was a person.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d woken in my own room, free from a dawn chorus of Benny’s farts. Instead there was birdsong: shrill whistles and tweets and rat-a-tat-tats. In the distance a rooster crowed.

  I pulled the quilt higher and surveyed the room. I was in the servants’ quarters, not far from the garage. The room was only tiny but it was bright and white, from the walls to the floorboards to the quilt and the chair. Only my filthy kit bag was out of place. My nose crinkled at the sight of it in the corner. ‘Don’t give up on an old mate so quickly,’ I told myself. ‘That kit bag will follow you home. Nothing else here will.’

  The night before, Benny and I hid in a stuffy broom cupboard deep in the stern of a ship while we waited for Biffy’s orders on how to smuggle ourselves onto the Southampton docks and into Britain. ‘Just walk through the galley and down the services plank,’ Biffy had told us. ‘Don’t talk to anyone, don’t explain anything. The ship’s captain says the less everyone knows, the better. Turn left in the first alleyway and stay out of sight until my car appears. We’ll see you back at Cheveney and worry about the paperwork later.’

  We’d waited and waited, and just when we were getting desperate the headlights appeared. And we’d bundled ourselves and our kit into a Ford motor car fit for King George.

  ‘Heads down,’ the chauffeur ordered as we turned a corner and drove past milling Tommies.

  We shrank down to the floor, heads almost touching, and Benny whispered, ‘Bloody hell, Wal. Welcome to Blighty!’

  I rolled onto my side in the bed, making a cocoon of the thick quilt, and stretched out an arm to run my finger along the floorboards. No dirt floor. No dust. No rocking of a ship or seasick guts.

  The late-night supper of sausages and mash had settled me down already, just as Edie said it would. Dear old Edie. It was past midnight when we arrived, but Biffy’s family cook still insisted on preparing us supper. She’d hugged us when she said goodnight, too, said it was a blessing to have young men in the house again. Four Cheveney workers had been killed in the war—two blown up in the same week at the Somme.

  I rolled myself tighter still inside the quilt, thinking about Helena and wondering if she’d received my letter yet about entering the race. Over many glasses of rum on the voyage from Bombay, Benny had convinced me there was still hope. And anyway, we’d be heroes soon. What woman could deny a hero? My mind wandered to what Helena and I might buy with my share of the •10,000 prize money. A nice little home. A garage business in Sydney, maybe. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, Wal,’ I told myself. ‘Pride comes before a fall from the sky.’

  I looked out the window and saw blue sky through the leaves. A tractor started up and way off in the distance a cow mooed. I sat up, scratched, and opened the door a crack to find a pile of freshly laundered clothes folded on the floor. Still warm. Edie again. My clothes smelled of lavender and home. I hoped Helena was as excited about our future as I was.

  It was chilly outside, despite the clear skies. To get a full view of the house, I had to walk quite a way back. The lawn was bigger than Narrandera cricket oval, with a lake down the far end lined with oaks and pines and silver birch. There were even two miniature cannons. I’d expected the wealth, but the colour shocked me. The England I imagined as a kid was grey. Towering factories billowing smoke. Grand civic buildings surrounded by cobblestones. Grey and urban, not tranquil and green.

  Cheveney was magnificent. Two-storey in the Tudor style. It had high-pitched roofs, but it was homely too—lived-in somehow—maybe because it was all so higgledy-piggledy. It had clearly been built in stages, with panelled gables of varying sizes rising to the sky above grand picture windows. Ivy covered the right wing and a covered courtyard out the front was filled with worn wicker chairs arranged casually around a central table. You could imagine the parties that went on out there: dapper men, beautiful ladies. I knew I’d never join them.

  I was standing there with arms crossed, counting the chimneys, when an elderly man came striding across the lawn, waving a finger at me. There was no doubt he was Biffy’s father. He had the same wide forehead and hair slicked back from a middle part, only the hair was white and thin. Similar moustache, only bushier. Same height, only thicker-set. I immediately thought I was in trouble—I should have known better than to stand on the grass. But before I could move, he’d grabbed my hand and was shaking it with purpose. Same energy as Biffy, too.

  ‘Ah, you’d be one of my son’s men from Australia,’ he said. ‘Colonel Arthur Borton. Welcome to Cheveney.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ I said. ‘I’m Wally Shiers. Thank you for having me.’

  He looked back toward the house. ‘So what do you think of the old place, eh? Bit worse for wear after the war.’

  I followed his gaze. ‘It’s magnificent, sir.’

  He smoothed down his moustache with thumb and forefinger, exactly like Biffy did. ‘Yes, the Tudor style is impressive. Elizabethan, technically, the original farmhouse on the left at least. Parts of the building date back to the fifteenth century. Let me show you around the lake.’

  He walked briskly, firing questions about my war service, the air race, the Captain and Benny. He listed off various trees and plants in the collection, bird species too. He told me about his oldest son Arthur, who’d won a VC in Palestine. Told me he couldn’t be more proud of his sons. Made me wonder if my own dad ever spoke that way about us boys. I hoped so.

  When we got to the other side of the lake, the Colonel stopped and pointed out the vast hedges fringing either side of the estate.

  ‘Lost four of our workers in the war, Wally. Brave young lads, every one. Don’t know how I’ll ever get the yew hedge tidied up.’

  I thought about my little room down the back of Cheveney. It probably belonged to one of those blokes once.

  ‘I know a thing or two about gardening, sir,’ I said. ‘Feel free to use me while I’m here.’

  He clapped me on the shoulder and beamed, all white moustache and crow’s-feet. ‘I think we’re going to be fine friends, young Wally.’

  On the walk back, he prioritised jobs that had been neglected around the garden, and after a bowl of porridge with Edie, I was back outside attacking a hedge a mile long.

  Captain Smith and Biffy were working on securing an aircraft for the race and Benny was in the garage.
I’d bet him a pound he couldn’t keep his hands off that Ford for more than 24 hours and, lucky for him, old Tom the chauffeur was happy to share.

  I spent the morning alone with my shears, dreaming about the race, life’s possibilities, Helena, Bondi Beach. Must have been around midday, when I was drinking a glass of water, surveying the small section of hedge I’d tamed throughout the morning, when the Colonel called out from the house and waved me inside.

  ‘Take a break, Wally,’ he said as I removed my shoes in the mud room. ‘I’ll tell Edie to send the housemaid with some sandwiches. And there’s quite the parcel arrived for you.’

  I looked down at the bench and saw a package wrapped in paper, tied with string. ‘Helena,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘Helena, eh?’ said the Colonel. I felt my face go red. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I thought as I sat down. And I suddenly felt exhausted. After all these months she’d finally found me.

  When I turned over the parcel, I saw Fred’s handwriting. Not Helena’s.

  I untied the string and tore open the paper and there was no hint of lavender. Only my own letters returned unopened. My package with the linen napkins was there. So were the packages with the pashmina shawl and the silk pincushion. I rummaged through the pile, feeling increasingly hopeless as envelopes dropped to the ground at my feet, and finally I found a letter addressed to me from Fred.

  July 6th 1919

  Wally old friend,

  I hope this finds you well. This is a bastard of a job, but it’s not fair to leave you in the dark.

  Helena says it’s over. She doesn’t think she can ever trust you again. She won’t listen to reason. For months I’ve tried to explain everything you did for me while I was sick, but she won’t hear it. I’m afraid she hasn’t opened one of your letters since you wrote to say you were staying on to fly to India with Ross Smith. She says you can have them all back. She gets furious if I press her on it, and then Mum hears and gets upset too, and that’s the last thing we need because Mum’s crook, Wal. She beat the influenza but she’s not the same. It’s like the light’s gone out of her. Rarely leaves her bed. And I can’t even bloody help to lift her because my left arm’s useless. Her bedsores would make you weep. Helena’s exhausted looking after us both. I spent years wishing I was home and now I’m back and it’s shit, Wal. You should see the way people look at us blokes who fought for king and country. Only place I feel normal is in the pub with the others. How am I ever going to get farm work again with a crook arm? Be better off if that Hun bastard had shot straight and killed me good and proper. Anyways, Wal, I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Helena. I don’t know what else to say. Bloody wish you’d come home, but if the shoe was on the other foot I’d have stayed too. There’s nothing here for us now.

  Take care, Walter Custard. Let me know what you’re up to.

  Freddy Houdini

  Fred’s letter was dated July and the package had been redirected from India. So they didn’t know I was in England or planning to fly home in the world’s greatest air race.

  Not that it mattered. All was lost. I slowly piled up the letters and wrapped them up again in the brown paper.

  Denny the housemaid arrived from the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches and lemonade. ‘Gosh, Wally, you’re popular,’ she said with a sweet smile when she saw the package. And suddenly I was homesick. What was I doing here, on the other side of the world? Trimming hedges like some damn country squire? What a fool. Ashamed, I covered the package with my arm and cleared my throat.

  ‘Yes, it’s always nice to get news from home.’

  I took the sandwiches outside and hid them deep inside the hedge.

  Chapter 10

  ADELAIDE, 1968

  Someone yells for the television in the corner to be turned up. There’s a news story about the Vietnam War. ‘Get you another beer, sweets?’ asks Delvene behind the bar. She’s a good sort, our Delvene. She lost her first husband in New Guinea. I glance up at the telly—women are marching against the war in Washington and LBJ’s wringing his hands again. ‘Boys,’ I say, drawing them back in. ‘In Palestine we knew exactly who the enemy was. Johnny Turk. Fritz. But in London—that’s where it got tricky.’

  ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1919

  ‘Welcome to a Borton breakfast tradition, chaps,’ Biffy said. He waved us into two vacant seats at the round mahogany table. ‘Dad reads out a snippet from the Morning Post and those of us feeling so inclined make an attempt at verse.’

  Confused, I looked across the table to Colonel Borton, who poked his head briefly from behind his newspaper. ‘Morning, gentlemen,’ he said brightly, returning to rifle noisily through the pages.

  Beside him, his wife Mrs Laura Borton had her chair pushed back and was almost completely hidden behind a large shaggy black poodle sitting upright on her lap. She peered around the dog to smile, before continuing to pull burrs from its coat.

  Benny shifted uncomfortably on his seat beside me.

  Ten minutes earlier we’d been sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea from chipped mugs and discussing the relative merits of the Ford, the Lancia and the Austin in the garage. Then Denny poked her head around the door, saying Colonel Borton requested our presence for breakfast. ‘Oh God, no,’ Benny said under his breath. We quickly rose, tucking in shirts and smoothing down hair, before following her along a sloping corridor to the dining room.

  Biffy reached for the teapot. I was still getting used to seeing him in civvies, and I’d never noticed so much Brilliantine on one man’s head. ‘Help yourself to tea, lads,’ he said. ‘Ross is on the telephone.’

  ‘Yes, do make yourselves at home,’ said Mrs Borton in a soft English accent. ‘Denny shan’t be long with breakfast.’

  I’d met Laura Borton and her shaggy poodles Banshee and Marmaduke in the garden the previous afternoon. She’d come out to do some weeding while I was trimming the hedge. Nice lady. Tall. Elegant despite the holes in her brown cardigan. She’d converted the village institute into a hospital during the war, to care for ‘the Colonel’s cripples’, as she called them. Denny had told me later she was actually Biffy’s stepmother. She’d married the Colonel after the death of his first wife, though she’d known the family forever.

  I sized up my china teacup, its red pastoral scene matching every piece of crockery in the room. In the middle of the table was a careful arrangement of silver centrepieces, delicate painted pheasants and a splendid glass fruit bowl. Any one of those items would have been worth more than my annual salary. Carved wood panelling lined the walls and an oriental rug lay underfoot. I glanced up at the exposed wooden beams, easily two feet thick.

  ‘Impressive, what?’ Biffy said, startling me. ‘There’s graffiti on beams in the attic dating back to the seventeenth century.’

  He pointed to a large oil painting of a formidable-looking man with muttonchops and full military regalia. A picture of wealth and power. ‘And that’s dear old grandfather General Sir Arthur Borton, Governor-General of Malta, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, St Michael and St George.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Became quite the mouthful, really.’

  I noticed the old Colonel glance up from his paper to nod at the portrait. ‘One can’t beat the panache of the red coat,’ he said.

  Biffy chuckled. ‘Scarlet tunics would have been a tad foolhardy in the Sinai though, eh Dad?’

  Denny came around a green baize screen hiding the servants’ entrance to the kitchen, carrying two white serving platters: fried eggs and grilled tomato piled on one, bacon and sausages on the other. The plates looked so heavy, it was all I could do not to jump up and take them out of her hands. She moved around the table and we served ourselves, before she left the platters warming above small burners on the huge oak sideboard.

  I realised I was starving.

  Suddenly the Colonel cried out, ‘Aha, this one’s just the ticket! Are we all at the ready?’

  He smoothed his newspaper before him: ‘A Mr
Day of Coventry is due to wed a Miss Week of Maidstone. A Mr Day. A Miss Week. Marriage.’ Then he began jotting notes in its margin with a tiny nub of pencil.

  Biffy leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin, deep in thought. A notepad and pencil sat untouched beside his place setting.

  I looked at Benny, who made a face of mock terror as he sipped his tea. The china cup looked ridiculous in his huge brown hands.

  Something moved on the floor next to Mrs Borton and I realised the other family dog, Marmaduke, had been asleep at her feet. She whispered to the dog and he settled again.

  ‘Any takers?’ the Colonel asked, after a minute or two of furious scribbling. I’d seen enemy soldiers look less combative at Romani. ‘Wally?’

  He was looking right at me.

  ‘Um.’ God, I’d never written a poem in my life. My mind raced to remember the clues. A Mr Day. A Miss Week. Marriage.

  ‘I’ll give you another minute, son,’ the Colonel said.

  The room fell silent. A clock was ticking. No. Two clocks. Ticks and tocks slightly off.

  I could hear Banshee panting on Mrs Borton’s lap. The dog was hot—it needed to run outside on the green lawn. I knew how it felt.

  A teacup rattled into a saucer.

  A Mr Day. A Miss Week. Marriage.

  Had it only been a day since Fred’s letter? Felt like a year. Mum flashed into my head. Her face in a white coffin. Scarlet lipstick. Red coat.

  Helena’s face looking up from Sydney wharf. Black umbrellas. Rain. A punch in the guts.

  A Mr Day. A Miss Week. Marriage.

  Marriage. Gone. Gone to sit at this table. To fail. To feel like a fool. No, to feel like an old fool.

  Where was that boy from Sydney wharf, the one who promised marriage? Where was he?

  He was gone. Gone four years ago. Four years.

  Not days. Not weeks. Not marriage.

  ‘There once was a man called Day …’