by Nevil Shute
“I’d like that.” So they sat in the cockpit while the girl cooked dinner, appearing now and then for a glass of sherry with the men and going down again, while the captain drank pink gins and David drank tomato juice.
For half an hour they chatted. Then his host said, “There’s one thing about Australia I wish you’d tell me. How does your multiple vote work? It’s quite an issue here in England, as perhaps you know.”
The pilot raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that. You don’t have it, do you?”
“No. How does it work out in practice?”
“I don’t really know,” said David. “I’ve never thought about it much.”
Captain Osborne asked, “Have you got more than one vote, yourself?”
The pilot nodded. “I’m a three-vote man.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions,” the captain said. “It really is getting rather important now in England.”
“I don’t mind,” David said. “The only thing is, I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. I’ve never bothered.”
“What do you get your three votes for?” the captain asked.
“Basic, education, and foreign travel.”
“The basic vote — that’s what everybody gets, is it?”
“That’s right,” the pilot said. “Everybody gets that at the age of twenty-one.”
“And education?”
“That’s for higher education,” David said. “You get it if you take a university degree. There’s a whole list of other things you get it for, like being a solicitor or a doctor. Officers get it when they’re commissioned. That’s how I got mine.”
“And foreign travel?”
“That’s for earning your living outside Australia for two years. It’s a bit of a racket that one, because in the war a lot of people got it for their war service. I got mine that way. I didn’t know anything about the Philippines, really, when I came away, although I’d been there for three years, off and on.”
“You had a wider outlook than if you’d stayed at home,” the captain said. “I suppose that’s worth something.”
“I suppose it is.”
“So you’ve got three votes. How does that work out in practice, at an election?”
“You get three voting papers given to you, and fill in all three, and put them in the box,” the pilot said.
“You’re on the register as having three votes?”
“That’s right. You have to register again when you get an extra vote — produce some sort of a certificate.”
They sat in silence for a time, looking out over the crowded harbour in the sunset light. Rosemary came to the saloon ladder and spoke up to them. “You can get more votes than three, can’t you?” she said. “Is it seven?”
David glanced down at her. “The seventh is hardly ever given,” he said. “Only the Queen can give that.”
She nodded. “I know. We get them coming through the office. I should think there must be about ten a year.”
“The others are straightforward,” David said. “You get a vote if you raise two children to the age of fourteen without getting a divorce. That’s the family vote.”
“You can’t get it if you’re divorced?” asked Rosemary, smiling.
“No. That puts you out.”
“Do you both get it?”
“Husband and wife both get it,” David said.
“What’s the fifth one?” asked the captain.
“The achievement vote,” said David. “You get an extra vote if your personal exertion income — what you call earned income here — if that was over something or other in the year before the election — five thousand a year, I think. I don’t aspire to that one. It’s supposed to cater for the man who’s got no education and has never been out of Australia and quarrelled with his wife, but built up a big business. They reckon that he ought to have more say in the affairs of the country than his junior typist.”
“Maybe. And the sixth?”
“That’s if you’re an official of a church. Any recognized Christian church — they’ve got a list of them. You don’t have to be a minister. I think churchwardens get it as well as vicars, but I’m really not quite sure. What it boils down to is that you get an extra vote if you’re doing a real job for a church.”
“That’s an interesting one.”
“It’s never interested me much,” said the pilot. “I suppose I’m not ambitious. But I think it’s quite a good idea, all the same.”
“So that’s six votes,” Captain Osborne said. “The basic vote, and education, and foreign travel, and the family vote, and the achievement vote, and the church vote. What’s the seventh?”
“That’s given at the Queen’s pleasure,” said David. “It’s more like a decoration. You get it if you’re such a hell of a chap that the Queen thinks you ought to have another vote.”
“Aren’t there any rules about getting it?”
“I don’t think so,” said the pilot. “I think you just get it for being a good boy.”
From the cabin hatch Rosemary said, “That’s right, Uncle Ted. It’s given by a Royal Charter in each case.” She added, “I’m just dishing up.”
They went down into the cabin of the yawl and sat down to the ham toasts. For a time they talked about yachts and the Solent, and of Rosemary’s cooking, and of English food, but Captain Osborne was absent-minded. Presently he brought the conversation back to the Australian system of voting. “About this multiple voting,” he said. “They do it in New Zealand, too, don’t they?”
“I think they do,” said David. “Yes, I’m pretty sure they do.”
“They do it in Canada,” said Rosemary. “Most of the Commonwealth countries have the multiple vote in one form or another, except England.”
David smiled. “You’re pretty conservative here.”
The naval officer nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “We don’t take up new things like that till they’re well proved.” He paused, and then he said, “Of course, you’ve got your States. You can try a thing like that out in your State elections, and see how it goes.”
“That’s how women got the vote in the Commonwealth,” Rosemary said. “New Zealand started it, in 1893, and then South Australia gave women the vote in 1894. When the Australian federal constitution was drafted in 1902 they gave women the vote. They didn’t get it in England till 1918.”
David stared at her. “Is that right? Where did you get that from?”
“It’s right enough,” the girl said coolly. “I did history at Oxford, and women take an interest in the women’s vote. But it was the same with the secret ballot in elections. South Australia started that in 1856, but English voters didn’t get a secret ballot till 1872.”
“Some time like that,” the pilot said. “A bit before my time, and I never did much history. I remember when the multiple vote started, though. It was when I was in Townsville in 1963. They brought it in for West Australia.”
“Why did West Australia start it?” asked Rosemary. “Why not New South Wales, or Queensland?”
“I don’t know,” said David. “Labour was very much against it.”
“They’re against it here,” said Captain Osborne drily.
“West Australia was always pretty Liberal,” the pilot said. “People had been talking about multiple voting for a long time before that. I reckon it was easier to get it through in West Australia.”
“How did it come to be taken up by the other States, if Labour was so much against it?” asked Rosemary.
“Aw, look,” said David. “West Australia was walking away with everything. We got a totally different sort of politician when we got the multiple vote. Before that, when it was one man one vote, the politicians were all tub-thumping nonentities and union bosses. Sensible people didn’t stand for parliament, and if they stood they didn’t get in. When we got multiple voting we got a better class of politician altogether, people who got elected by sensible voters.” He paused. “Before tha
t when a man got elected to the Legislative Assembly, he was an engine driver or a dock labourer, maybe. He got made a Minister and top man of a Government department. Well, he couldn’t do a thing. The civil servants had him all wrapped up, because he didn’t know anything.”
“And after the multiple voting came in, was it different?”
“My word,” said the Australian. “We got some real men in charge. Did the Civil Service catch a cold! Half of them were out on their ear within a year, and then West Australia started getting all the coal and all the industry away from New South Wales and Victoria. And then these chaps who had been running West Australia started to get into Canberra. In 1973, when the multiple vote came in for the whole country, sixty per cent of the Federal Cabinet were West Australians. It got so they were running every bloody thing.”
“Because they were better people?” asked the captain.
“That’s right.” The pilot paused. “It was that multiple voting made a nation of Australia, I think,” he said. “Before then we weren’t much, no more than England.”
Miss Long laughed. “Thanks.”
He was confused. “I’m sorry — I didn’t mean it that way.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve never yet met anybody who could defend our way of doing things.”
She switched the conversation, and began to talk about boats; no more was said of politics. Later in the evening, when he said good night to go back to his own vessel, the captain stayed below and Rosemary went up on deck to see the pilot into his dinghy. The moon was rising over the little town; the harbour bathed in silvery light reflected from the water. The pilot stood on deck, looking around him at the many yachts, the harbour, and the down. “My word,” he said quietly. “It’s a beautiful place, this.”
Beside him the girl said, “You don’t like England much, do you?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I love the scenery, like this. I’d always want to come back here again to see what’s new in aviation, or in engineering, or techniques.” He hesitated. “I don’t like what I’ve seen of the way you govern yourselves. I think a lot of that is obsolete and stupid.”
“Maybe some of us think that ourselves,” she said.
He glanced at her, slim and straight beside him in the moonlight, holding the ham wrapped up in greaseproof paper. He took the ham from her. “Your uncle seemed very interested in our way of voting.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s coming to be quite an issue here, like the women’s vote was back at the beginning of the century. I suppose history’s going to repeat itself — it usually does. We’ll end by copying Australia.” She turned to him. “Be careful how you go, Nigger,” she said. “Some of the politicians don’t much care for the Dominions getting into the Queen’s Flight. Be careful not to get mixed up in anything.”
He smiled. “I’m here to fly the aeroplane,” he said. “I don’t intend to get mixed up in British politics.”
He stooped and untied the painter of the dinghy. “Thanks for everything, Rosemary,” he said. “See you some time at Buck House.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t go bumping on a rock, or on the Beaulieu spit,” she said. “And don’t let anybody get you into anything.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Good night, Rosemary.”
She said, “Good night, Nigger.”
4
DAVID TOOK DELIVERY of the Australian Ceres for the Queen’s Flight in September, a fortnight after Dewar had taken over the Canadian one. Before delivery both crews had put in a month of intensive work upon the crew trainer, a full scale representation of the flight deck of a Ceres set up by the manufacturers in a vacant hangar; when the time came to take over the aircraft and to fly it away from Hatfield the crew knew their job.
Besides familiarization training with the aircraft, the crew had to be trained to work as a team in radar-controlled landings carried out in fog or bad weather. They were all experienced individually; indeed their experience of bad weather flying had been one of the chief factors in their selection for the Queen’s Flight, but now they had to be exercised together on the Ceres till they could put it down upon the runway accurately and safely in the thickest fog, at night. They did this at the B.O.A.C. training aerodrome at Hurn, in Hampshire; twice a week they would fly down there to practise their blind landings all night long. Being members of the Royal Australian Air Force no civil certificates were issued to them, but Group Captain Cox kept them at it till he was assured that they were equal to the best B.O.A.C. pilots in this technique. Throughout their time in the Queen’s Flight, they went to Hurn for a refresher course once a month, whenever they were in England.
It was the Queen’s wish that year to spend the late fall in Canada, and it was proposed that she should leave England in the Canadian Ceres on the evening of the twelfth of November and fly direct to Edmonton to open the Clearwater hydro-electric scheme, a flight of about eight hours, go on to Vancouver for a few days’ holiday and then back to Ottawa. It seemed desirable to make a trial flight over this route before starting with the Queen, and the Canadian machine was quietly prepared to make this flight, carrying the Australian crew as passengers for general experience.
Before this trial flight took place, the crews of the Queen’s Flight were plagued with visitors, exalted personages who took the afternoon off from their offices to motor down to White Waltham in the fine autumn weather to see the new machines. The High Commissioners were fair enough, because they after all had paid for the aeroplanes as representatives of their countries. Air Chief Marshal Sir William Bradbury came frankly for the drive in the country, and said so. So did eight civil servants from various ministries on eight separate visits, but they did not say so. All these people had to be entertained. Finally Frank Cox received a telephone call from the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Coles of Northfield, to say that he was coming down that afternoon.
He broke the news to the Canadian and Australian captains. “Lord Coles is coming down this afternoon.”
“For the love of Pete,” said Wing Commander Dewar, “what’s it got to do with him? We aren’t in his parish.”
“I am,” said Cox. “So is the aerodrome.”
“Well, hell,” said the Canadian. “Let him inspect you and the aerodrome and leave us be. I’ve got the radar schedule three to do this afternoon. I can’t have people in and out of the machine.”
“He’ll have to look at Nigger’s aircraft,” said Cox. “I’ll tell him yours is just the same.”
“Who is Lord Coles?” asked David. “Apart from being Secretary of State for Air?”
“Shop steward at an iron foundry,” said Dewar. “He’s been a good union man, and got to be head of the Royal Air Force.”
David’s lips tightened, but Frank Cox was there, and the Australians and Canadians were careful not to say what they might think about the British system of government. He turned to the Group Captain. “I can show them Tare,” he said. “The upholsterers are in the port cabin, and they’re checking the flap indicators, but that doesn’t matter.” They spoke of the Canadian and Australian machines as Sugar and Tare respectively, from the last letters of the registration call signs.
The Group captain nodded. “I’ll keep him in my office for a few minutes when he arrives, and send a message over — you’ll be on the aircraft? Come over to the office, and we’ll show him the machine together. Better warn Ryder.” Flight Lieutenant Ryder was the Australian second pilot of Tare.
David was working with his crew on the machine when he saw the telephone girl crossing the floor of the hangar to him, in the middle of the afternoon. He went to meet her. “Want me?”
She said, “The Group Captain said I was to tell you that the Prime Minister is in his office, with Lord Coles.”
David started. “Iorwerth Jones?”
“Yes, sir. The Prime Minister.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in just a minute. I’d better wash my hands.” As he did so, he speculated gluml
y on the afternoon before him. The Prime Minister of England had never been out of England but for one short holiday at Dinard, and he thought little of the Commonwealth; in return the Commonwealth thought little of him. Born in a Welsh mining valley, he had worked as a miner for some years and as a youth had been a member of the Party; Communism was no longer politically expedient in England since the Russian war and he had long abandoned it, but the class hatred of his youth still hung around him and influenced all that he did. In energy and in intellectual capacity he was a giant, a head and shoulders above the remainder of his cabinet. He had sat in Parliament representing South Cardiff for twenty years, and he would sit there till he died.
David went into the Group Captain’s office and was introduced. He had not met either of the two visitors before, though he had seen pictures and movies of the Prime Minister many times and was familiar with the broad, white face, the iron grey shock of hair, and the glowering eyes. He did not know Lord Coles at all, and found him to be a tubby, rubicund little man who liked his beer and carpet slippers, and who knew absolutely nothing about aircraft or the Royal Air Force.
After the introductions, David said, “Tare is all ready, sir. There are men working in her; shall I get them out of the machine?”
Lord Coles said quickly, “Working bonus or piecework?”
David glanced at him uncertainly. Frank Cox said, “No, sir — they work time rate on the maintenance.”
The Secretary of State for Air was pleased. “Eh, then, give them a stand easy,” he said. They went out into the hangar.
The hangar doors were open, and Tare stood just inside, a great smooth gleaming mass of bright duralumin, white painted on the upper surfaces. Outside on a concrete circle off the runway Sugar stood lined up upon the radar target on a mast a mile away upon the far side of the field. It was easier to see the shape and lines of the machine upon the distant aircraft, the delta wing, the long protruding nose, the buried engines indicated by the air inlets. The two officers stood for five minutes describing the form of the machines and their general characteristics to their guests, as they had so often had to describe them before, and as they talked they knew that what they said meant very little to these politicians. Once, when they said that the range of the machine was about eight thousand nautical miles the Secretary of State for Air asked if that was far enough to take the machine to Aden without landing. They told him that it could safely fly as far as Colombo without landing and still have a forty per cent reserve of fuel, and he asked if Colombo was further than Aden.