Back of Sunset

“Steve.”

He looked up: the other men were waiting for him. Covici had turned round, the black gladstone bag held against his belly; just as Tom McCabe had held his bag in the moment as he turned to say good-bye before he went out on a call.

“I’ll go with you,” Steve said, and stood up: it would be easier to write the letter tomorrow night, he would have more to talk about: she might even read the letter to the dull relations in Auckland, telling them of a night flight to some lonely station in the Kimberleys.

As the four men came out of the cottage, Grace Hudson came across from the hospital, carrying a bottle of plasma. “Kate said you would need this. Do you want one of the girls?”

“No,” said Covici. “Dr. McCabe is going with me. Keep a bed ready. We’ll be back just after daylight.”

At the gate Kate was waiting for them. “I’m calling Dave Keating in fifteen minutes. You can talk to him from the plane, Doctor. I’ve rung Billy to have the plane ready – he’s already out at the ‘drome. Who’s going with you?”

“I am,” said Steve.

“You’ll find this a lot different from a city call,” Kate said, but in the darkness Steve couldn’t see her face clearly: her tongue could have slipped again or she could have been showing her old hostility.

Tristram and Charlie went out with Covici and Steve in the truck. Tristram drove, and Steve could see who had been Kate’s tutor. The few lights of the town blinked out behind them; Tristram drove furiously into the darkness. They reached the airdrome without mishap, but Steve would never understand why.

The plane stood outside the hangar, its engines ticking over. “It’s an old Anson, almost on its last legs,” Billy said. “A real jaloppy.” He looked up at the sky. “Not a peep of the moon, just bloody starlight. Trust you, Doc. Why didn’t you pick a night when there was a cyclone blowing to go out to Emu Downs?”

“Stop laughing,” said Covici, laughing heartily. “One flight a week, and you want daylight and perfect conditions all the time.”

The airdrome was lit by inadequate flares: the take-off strip was just a long stretch of blackness between the pale yellow lights. Billy didn’t waste any time; he took the plane straight down the strip and they were almost immediately airborne. Steve, sitting behind him and Covici, noticed the competent way he handled the plane: he had the same confidence as he had on the ground, but without the brashness. Billy Brannigan was a man made for flying.

He leaned towards Covici, who was sitting beside him. “When we tune in to Emu Downs, give me a minute with him first.” He took the microphone from its hook above the instrument panel. “7AV calling 7KXQ. Can you hear me, Kate? Over.”

Kate’s voice came into the cockpit, faint against the sound of the engines. “This is 7KXQ. I hear you clear, 7AV. Emu Downs is waiting to come in. Come in, 7ED.”

Another voice came into the cockpit, fainter still against the sound of the engines, blurred by static. “This is 7ED. Dave Keating. You on your way, Doc?”

“Hallo, Dave,” Billy said. “This is Billy Brannigan. Look, get out to your strip as fast as you can. Take your truck and park it at the end of the strip. The down-wind end, understand? Park it with its light facing away from me up the strip – I don’t wanna land right into the glare of them. All I wanna know is where is the end of it. Get your blacks to light as many fires as they can along the sides of the strip, with a big one at the end of it. Got that? Over.”

Keating’s voice came back, repeating the instructions. “She’ll be jake, Billy. Is the doc there? Wally looks pretty crook, Doc. Will it be all right to leave him alone while I come out to the strip?”

“There’s nothing else you can do, Dave,” said Covici. “If we can’t get down on the strip, Wally will have to wait till morning to see me. Over and out.”

Billy looked back at Steve. “How you going, Doc? This strip at Emu Downs is about seven miles from the homestead. Even after I get you down, you’re gunna get your guts jolted out in the truck. You should of stayed in Sydney, Doc. You want your head read.”

Conditions were turbulent. The plane dropped and bucked: Steve looked out of the window and thought he saw a star fall, then realised that the plane had lurched sharply upwards. He began to feel a little sick: he was not used to air travel, certainly not in a plane like this. He looked up and saw Covici laughing at him, his huge fat face looking like that of some mirthful heathen idol in the light from the control panel. He’s been doing this for eighteen years and laughing all the time, Steve thought. And that’s how a hero looks: fat, heathenish, his trousers held up by an Old Etonian tie. He grinned back at Covici, and the sickness went, along with the momentary fear he had begun to feel.

Then at last Billy yelled: “There it is! Fasten your belts and hang on to your hats. Here goes!”

He took the plane round in a wide circle, going down all the time, and Steve tried to see out of the window. But he caught no more than a glimpse of some lights: the rest was blackness below. The plane went steeply down and Steve clutched at the edges of his seat. The engines were still going, but Billy had cut their power; inside the plane it was comparatively silent now. The plane dropped suddenly and Steve thought they were down; then the motors revved suddenly and he saw Billy and Covici leaning back in their seats, both tense. The plane rose steeply and Steve, looking out the window, saw the glow of a fire almost beneath the wing-tip and the swiftly vanishing figures of some men.

“Missed the bastard!” Billy yelled, and took the plane up in a wide climbing circle. “Well, here we go again. That bloody hill is the trouble – it’s like coming in over a switchback!”

He put the stick down again and the plane was going down in another steep descent. Steve felt the safety-belt cutting into his lap; he had made it too tight. This will fill two or three pages, he, thought; the relations in Auckland were in for an exciting time.

The plane dropped suddenly, Steve guessed they had come in over the hill, wherever it was, then they had passed over the blaze of a truck’s lights, and a moment later the wheels had touched down.

And then it happened. He heard Billy swear a moment before the plane lurched. One of the fires alongside the strip seemed to rush straight at the plane from the side. There was a terrible grinding sound outside the plane, a ripping as of a giant sheet being torn, and a blinding flash of flame. Steve felt himself lifted and he threw up his hands; then he was hanging upside down and the safety-belt was almost cutting him in half. He could hear someone screaming with pain, taste the blood in his own mouth, and smell the thick acrid smoke that had suddenly filled the cabin.

It took him some time to realise that the plane had crashed, it was on fire and he was going to burn to death.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_a0af47f9-1e6c-59ee-bf91-6c97e50ac7de)

He would never know how he got out of the plane. The belt all at once broke and he hurtled to the roof of the cabin. He landed on his knees and looked up and saw the gaping hole in the side of the cabin. He struggled up, grabbing at the edges of the hole and trying to haul himself clear; and then he remembered he wasn’t alone here in the plane. He looked down past his own body and saw Billy crawling backwards out of the wreckage of the cockpit, pulling something after him.

“It’s Doc!” He coughed in the smoke that now enveloped them: the front of the plane was now just a wall of flame. “He’s out to it!”

Steve dropped down into the cabin again. Something sheared against his leg: he felt a long stab of pain, but somehow it meant nothing now: the pain of fear was stronger. The plane seemed to be crumbling to ash about them; blossoms of flame fell from the steel branches of the struts. The heat was now a physical force, pressing in on them; the skin felt ready to split, the eyes ready to bubble. Steve had once attended a man burned to death: he knew how he himself would look in death: black, bloated, his eyes like jelly on his cheeks. He reached over Billy’s shoulder and grabbed at Covici. Using only his forearms, possessing strength he would never have again, he lifted the huge inert body.

“Get up on top!” he yelled, his voice faint against the roar and crackle of the flames.

Billy clambered through the hole. A sheet of flame stood up behind him and he reared involuntarily, a black silhouette that Steve thought for one horrible moment was already a corpse. Then Billy was reaching down, and Steve was lifting the unconscious Covici. Steve’s lungs were full of smoke, withering inside him with the burning air he was inhaling; he gave a final heave to push Covici through the hole in the cabin and felt the white-hot spear pass through his chest. Then Billy and Covici were gone from above him and he was reaching up for the edges of the hole. He heaved, trying to lift himself, but he had no strength left. He could feel the shirt on his back beginning to smoulder; his trouser-legs felt as if they were already on fire. He looked down and he was standing in the midst of fire, and he thought, what a bloody awful way to go. Then hands were pulling at his arms, he didn’t even have the strength to look up to see who it was, and a moment later he was being lifted down and carried away from the blazing plane that he had already accepted as his pyre.

Billy was bending over him as he lay on the cool, rocky, blessed ground. “You all right, Doc?”

He nodded. His mouth was burned dry and his tongue felt swollen. Then someone was giving him a drink from a water-bottle. He knew it might blister his mouth, but he took it: better to suffer a few blisters than die of thirst. He moved cautiously on the ground, trying to feel if he had been burnt; he touched his shirt and it fell apart in his fingers. He raised his hand to his head; his hair was stiff and dry, but it didn’t come away on his hand. He sat up, and slowly, carefully, he ran his hands over his whole body where he could reach it; then he looked up at Billy and the other men silhouetted against the blaze of the plane.

“I’m all right, I think. I can’t feel any burns. How’s Dr. Covici?”

“No good,” said Billy. “You better have a look at him if you can get on your feet.”

Steve got painfully to his feet. His skin was still too tight on his body; he felt that if he moved quickly he would split like a ripe pod. He looked down and saw the black stain on his leg and recognised it for blood; he could feel another trickle of it from a cut over his eye. He walked slowly over to the still unconscious Covici stretched out on the ground in front of a truck. He was aware of the other men following him, Billy, another white man and four aborigines in stockmen’s clothes, but he took no notice of them. He knelt down, still moving slowly and cautiously, still trying to stay within his tight and hurting skin, and looked at the huge still body, all the laughter burned out of it now.

At last he stood up. “He’s got a broken leg. And he has second-degree burns. Where’s his bag?”

Billy gestured. “It’s gone up with the plane. Everything, including all the emergency stuff we carry. What have you got back at the homestead, Dave?”

Steve looked now for the first time at the white man standing in the glare of the truck’s headlamps. He was not tall, but he was almost as thick as a bullock. He seemed to bulge with muscle; even the muscles in his broad dark face seemed overdeveloped. He was standing close to Steve, and Steve could smell the liquor on his breath as he answered Billy.

“There ain’t much back there. I been meaning to order more stuff for the chest – I’m coming into town for supplies in a week or two.”

“You know bloody well you’re supposed to re-stock as soon as you run low on anything,” Billy snapped. “The doc was on your back about this before.”

Keating mumbled something and looked at Steve. “You a doc? You coming in with me to look at me mate?”

Steve looked down at Covici and as he did the latter murmured and opened his eyes. Steve knelt beside him again. “Keep still,” he said. “You’ve got a broken leg, and some second-degree burns. Do you feel anything yourself – I mean, internally?”

Covici lay silent for a moment. “Too much fat on the outside to get hurt inside.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Pretty bloody.” Covici’s big round face had collapsed; there was an ugly burn on one cheek. “You’d better go in and have a look at the patient. I’ll be all right. Billy can fix a splint for my leg. He’s done it before.”

Steve hesitated, then stood up. There was nothing he could do for Covici right now; and there might be something in the medicine chest at the Emu Downs homestead that would come in useful. He looked at Billy. “Stay here with him, Billy. I’ll go in with Mr. Keating, have a look at the patient, and come back here as soon as I can. I’ll radio back to your sister and see if she can get us another plane.”

“Not tonight, you won’t get one.” The plane still burned, black smoke wreathing away to obscure the stars; Billy was silhouetted against the blaze of it. “It’ll have to come from Port Hedland. It’ll be daylight before it gets here.”