can't sell it. But don't just leave it there. So now it's the same price as the Australian.' He paused. 'Let me pour you a glass, Alan. It's in the most beautiful condition.'
'I'll have one later. Tell me, didn't I hear you say once that Bill Davidson was a relation of yours?'
The old man nodded shakily. 'Relation, or connection. Connection, I think. His mother married my… married my- No, I forget. I don't seem to remember things like I used to.'
'Do you know his daughter Moira?'
'A nice girl, but she drinks too much. Still, she does it on brandy they tell me, so that makes a difference.'
'She's been making some trouble for me.'
'Eh?'
'She's been to the Minister, and he sent her to me with a note. She wants us to open the trout season early this year, or nobody will get any trout fishing. The Minister thinks it would be a good thing to do. I suppose he's looking to the next election.'
'Open the trout season early? You mean, before September the first?'
'That's the suggestion.'
'A very bad suggestion, if I may say so. The fish won't have finished spawning, and if they have they'll be in very poor condition. You could ruin the fishing for years, doing a thing like that. When does he want to open the season?'
'He suggests August the tenth.' He paused. 'It's that girl, that relation of yours, who's at the bottom of this thing. I don't believe it would ever have entered his head but for her.'
'I think it's a terrible proposal. Quite irresponsible. I'm sure I don't know what the world's coming to…'
As member after member came into the room the debate continued and more joined in the discussion. Mr. Sykes found that the general opinion was in favour of the change in date. 'After all,' said one, 'they'll go and fish in August if they can get there and the weather's fine, whether you like it or not. And you can't fine them or send them to jail because there won't be time to bring the case on. May as well give a reasonable date, and make a virtue of necessity. Of course,' he added conscientiously, 'it'd be for this year only.'
A leading eye surgeon remarked, 'I think it's a very good idea. If the fish are poor we don't have to take them; we can always put them back. Unless the season should be very early they won't take a fly; we'll have to use a spinner. But I'm in favour of it, all the same. When I go, I'd like it to be on a sunny day on the bank of the Delatite with a rod in my hand.'
Somebody said, 'Like the man they lost from the American submarine.'
'Yes, just like that. I think that fellow had the right idea.'
Mr. Sykes, having taken a cross section of the most influential opinion of the city, went back to his office with an easier mind, rang up his Minister, and that afternoon drafted an announcement to be broadcast on the radio that would constitute one of those swift changes of policy to meet the needs of the time, easy to make in a small, highly educated country and very characteristic of Australia. Dwight Towers heard it that evening in the echoing, empty wardroom of H.M.A.S. Sydney, and marvelled, not connecting it in the least with his own conversation with the scientist a few days before. Immediately he began making plans to try out Junior's rod. Transport was going to be the difficulty, but difficulties were there to be overcome by the Supreme Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces.
In what was left of Australia that year a relief of tension came soon after midwinter. By the beginning of July, when Broken Hill and Perth went out, few people in Melbourne were doing any more work than they wanted to. The electricity supply continued uninterrupted, as did the supply of the essential foodstuffs, but fuel for fires and little luxuries now had to be schemed and sought for by a people who had little else to do. As the weeks went by the population became noticeably more sober; there were still riotous parties, still drunks sleeping in the gutter, but far fewer than there had been earlier. And, like harbingers of the coming spring, one by one motorcars started to appear on the deserted roads.
It was difficult at first to say where they came from or where they got the petrol, for each case on investigation proved to be exceptional. Peter Holmes' landlord turned up in a Holden one day to remove firewood from the trees that had been felled, explaining awkwardly that he had retained a little of the precious fluid for cleaning clothes. A cousin in the Royal Australian Air Force came to visit them from Laverton Aerodrome driving an M.G., explaining that he had saved the petrol but there didn't seem to be much sense in saving it any longer; this was clearly nonsense, because Bill never saved anything. An engineer who worked at the Shell refinery at Corio said that he had managed to buy a little petrol on the black market in Fitzroy but very properly refused to name the scoundrel who had sold it. Like a sponge squeezed by the pressure of circumstances, Australia began to drip a little petrol, and as the weeks went on towards August the drip became a trickle.
Peter Holmes took a can with him to Melbourne one day and visited John Osborne. That evening he heard the engine of his Morris Minor for the first time in two years, clouds of black smoke emerging from the exhaust till he stopped the engine and took out the jets and hammered them a little smaller. Then he drove her out upon the road, with Mary, delighted, at his side and Jennifer upon her knee. 'It's just like having one's first car all over again!' she exclaimed. 'Peter, it's wonderful! Can you get any more, do you think?'
'We saved this petrol,' he told her. 'We saved it up. We've got a few more tins buried in the garden, but we're not telling anybody how much.'
'Not even Moira?'
'Lord, no. Her last of all.' He paused. 'Tires are the snag now. I don't know what we're going to do about those.'
Next day he drove to Williamstown, in at the dockyard gates, and parked the Morris on the quayside by the practically deserted aircraft carrier. In the evening he drove home again.
His duties at the dockyard were now merely nominal. Work upon the submarine was going very slowly, and his presence was required upon the job no more than two days in each week, which fitted in well with the requirements of his little car. Dwight Towers was there most days in the morning, but he, too, had become mobile. The First Naval Member had sent for him one morning and, with poker face, had declared that it was only fitting that the Supreme Commander of the U.S. Naval Force should have transport at his disposal, and Dwight had found himself presented with a grey painted Chevrolet with Leading Seaman Edgar as the driver. He used it principally for going to the club for lunch or driving out to Harkaway to walk beside the bullock as they spread the dung, while the leading seaman shovelled silage.
The last part of July was a very pleasant time for most people. The weather was seasonably bad with high winds and plenty of rain and a temperature down in the low forties, but men and women cast off the restraints that long had galled them. The weekly wage packet became of little value or importance; if you went into the works on Friday you would probably get it whether you had worked or not, and when you had it there was little you could do with it. In the butcher's shop the cash desk would accept money thrust at them but didn't grieve much if it wasn't, and if the meat was there you took it. If it wasn't, you just went and looked for somewhere where there was some. There was all day to do it in.
On the high mountains the skiers skied weekdays and week-ends alike. In their little garden, Mary and Peter Holmes laid out the new beds and built a fence around the vegetable garden, planting a passion fruit vine to climb all over it. They had never had so much time for gardening before, or made such progress. 'It's going to be beautiful,' she said contentedly. 'It's going to be the prettiest garden of its size in Falmouth.'
In the city mews John Osborne worked on the Ferrari with a small team of enthusiasts to help him. The Australian Grand Prix at that time was the premier motor race of the Southern Hemisphere, and it had been decided to advance the date of the race that year from November to August the 17th. On previous occasions the race had been held at Melbourne in the Albert Park, roughly corresponding to Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London. The organizing club would have liked to race for the last time in Albert Park but the difficulties proved to be insuperable. It was clear from the outset that there would be a shortage of marshals and a shortage of labour to provide the most elementary safety precautions for the crowd of a hundred and fifty thousand people who might well be expected to attend. Nobody worried very much about the prospect of a car spinning off the course and killing a few spectators, or the prospect of permission to use the park for racing in future years being withheld. It seemed unlikely, however, that there would be sufficient marshals ever to get the crowds off the road and away from the path of the oncoming cars, and, unusual though the times might be, few of the drivers were prepared to drive straight into a crowd of onlookers at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Racing motorcars are frail at those speeds, and a collision even with one person would put the car out of the race. It was decided regretfully that it
