Читать книгу Bangalore - Roger Crook - Страница 1

Just another day at Bangalore.

It was an hour before dawn; there was a faint streak of grey in the eastern sky. It was hot and stiflingly humid. A galah screeched and a mob of magpies warbled their morning song. In the distance a black crow mournfully replied. He wondered if the crow could read his mind and the galah was laughing at him. The magpies were just being magpies, calling to each other, fooling around, celebrating another day. They didn’t care.

It had been one of those summer nights without end. It had been too hot with the overhead fan off and too noisy with it on. The noise of the fan had never bothered him before.

Grumbling to nobody he went through to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. The effort made him sweat. He took his tea into the shower and let cold water run over his sweaty body. Without drying himself he put on an old khaki sleeveless shirt and faded pair of blue shorts. Eventually he found two matching socks and put them on. Why they had to match he didn’t know. It was that kind of morning.

He put a change of clothes plus a pair of denim jeans into an old canvas holdall; two towels and a ready packed toilet bag out of the linen cupboard completed his needs for the trip. He smiled to himself that Alice had remembered to pack the toilet bag for him. She never forgot.

Back in the kitchen, Angus Lachlan Sinclair sighed. It was going to be a long trip. There were stock-watering points to check and that normally meant with no breakdowns and no windmill repairs, driving all day in the heat on rough tracks and corrugated roads.

This trip was different; it wasn’t going to be normal mill run. There were sheep yards to repair at ‘Queens’, the shearing shed at the other end of the property. A couple of days work at least, and that meant camping out under the stars unless the forecast thunder storms eventuated and then he would camp in the shearers’ quarters.

He went over again in his mind that he’d packed his tucker box and fridge with enough food and supplies and a few cans of beer for an couple of extra days – just in case the unforeseen happened. As he drank his tea he cut a few sandwiches. Home-made bread, cold mutton, and a smear of mint jelly. Then tomato and cheese with plenty of salt and pepper and lastly a hunk of cake for lunch and smoke-o. He packed them into a small Esky with a plastic ice block, leaving just enough room for a couple of oranges.

It was too hot for breakfast so he decided on another cup of tea in his ‘sipper-mug’, which would at least keep him going for the first half-hour of the drive.

The dawn came bright red in the eastern sky as he filled his two canvas water bags from the rainwater tank outside the back door. Angus was ready for the day. He checked the tools and spare parts in the back of his Land Cruiser tray-top for what must have been the umpteenth time. Tools, pipe wrenches, block and tackle, spare pump buckets, bits and pieces for pump-rod repairs, oil and grease. Fencing materials for the yards. Two-stroke petrol and oil for the chain saw. Assorted drill bits, shovels, crowbar, forty litres of water in two old plastic drench drums.

In the vehicle toolbox, fan belts, hoses, Gaffa tape. He knew they were all there but he checked them just the same. He opened the passenger door and his old kelpie, Charlie, jumped in, sat looking through the windscreen ready, as always, for the off. The heat was causing Charlie, to pant and slobber on the canvas seat cover. Angus put the Esky he’d packed on the front seats where he could easily reach it.

Four days later at five-thirty in the afternoon it was still hot. The late February sun shimmered off a red gravel road somewhere in the Gascoyne Region, more than a thousand kilometres north of Perth in Western Australia. Heading for home as fast as the road would allow, his Land Cruiser created swirl of red dust that hung in the still air.

Angus had enjoyed being on his own for a few days. Working quietly, without distraction. The heat of the day had been intense; at night, the storms had stayed away so he’d camped out down by the dry creek, in the same place that he’d camped as a child with his father.

Cooking their evening meal over the campfire. Lying under the stars so bright you could almost touch them, as his father told stories of the old days that he, in turn, had learned from his father. They had talked until he had fallen asleep in his swag to dream of camels and Afghans and droughts. Sometimes, Alice had been there.

Then when shearing time came around his father would wake him with a mug of black billy tea and then it was off to the shearing shed to have breakfast of mutton chops, eggs and piles of toast with the shearers, roustabouts and shed hands as they sat around the big table talking quietly.

The shearers telling ‘lies’ about how many sheep they had shorn, their tally, at the last shed, joking, smoking and trying to get their bodies, their stiff muscles moving for another day of the intense physical effort needed to shear a couple of hundred sheep in an eight-hour day – in the heat.

Then, when the wool classer rang the bell at seven-thirty the shearing shed was transformed. Shearers pulling sheep out of the pens, roustabouts picking up the fleeces and throwing them onto the wool-tables, other roustabouts sweeping the board clean before they got pushed aside by a shearer dragging out another sheep, trying to achieve a tally bigger than the day before.

He remembered how he would rush around with his father, pushing unshorn sheep into the shearing shed and driving the shorn sheep away. Dogs barking and running along the backs of the sheep, nipping ears, pushing them ever closer to the shearers. Dogs lying in water troughs to cool off. How he would stand listening as his father talked to the wool classer about the clip, the quality, and the fleece weights.

Then, at nine-thirty the bell would ring again and the frantic activity would stop. Half an hour for smoke-o. More tea, sandwiches, fruitcake. A good cook meant a happy team. Some of the shearers lay on the floor; others sat and cleaned their shearing gear as the half-hour break ticked away and their bodies recovered. Then, as ten o’clock approached the shearers would line up by the catching pens ready to dash in and grab another sheep as soon as the wool classer rang the bell.

So it went on every day, day after day after day, until it was finished. There were three shearing sheds, fifty thousand or more sheep to be shorn. Four two-hour ‘runs’ a day. Start at seven-thirty finish at five-thirty. At the end of the day he always had to wait until all the shearing team had had their shower, which always meant that the water was cold when his turn came. Clean clothes for dinner with the shearing team, listen to the stories as they drank their beer and then down to the creek to lie under the stars as his father talked him to sleep.

Now forty years on, as he drove north and the sun sank lower in the western sky its rays gradually crept across the cabin of his Land Cruiser. Charlie, to get out of the heat, abandoned the seat for the floor, where he lay panting.

Angus reached down and scratched the dog’s head and got a lick on the hand in return. They had been together for nearly fifteen years and knew each other well. The dog sighed. Angus squinted at a mirage that danced on the gravel road ahead. He thought he saw the dust of another vehicle, but wasn’t sure. It could have been a little whirlwind, a ‘willy-willy’.

A dry, rough creek bed tested the Toyota’s suspension. The steel boxes full of hammers, pipe-wrenches, assorted tools and pipefittings, rattled in the back.

Angus changed down a gear, then another, as he negotiated the steep bank out of the creek; his attention was momentarily distracted by a couple of kangaroos startled by his sudden appearance. They stopped and looked at him. He thought about a feed for his dog and for himself if he shot the young one. The kangaroos sat up and watched him. It was getting late and he couldn’t be bothered spending half an hour butchering, so he took one hand off the steering wheel and gave them a wave. They seemed to understand and hopped off.

As the Land Cruiser climbed out of the creek, a blue, new model Volkswagen Beetle going in the opposite direction startled him as it passed within inches of his door mirror and disappeared into the dry creek bed he had just negotiated. He stopped, and as the dust cleared he saw the Volkswagen make it safely to the other side and keep going.

All he’d seen of the driver was sunglasses and a bright red baseball cap. He thought it was a girl or at least female. “Don’t think she saw me, Charlie; bet that creek bed rattled her,” he said to the dog who had now jumped back up on to the seat and was looking out of the back window as the little car disappeared in its own dust. “Gets more like bloody Hay Street every day; next thing you know we’ll have busloads of tourists wanting to experience the magic of the bush in summer.” Charlie pushed his nose under Angus’ arm and grunted in agreement. Angus scratched him behind the ears. Satisfied that his comments had been accepted the dog jumped back on to the floor and sighed again. “One more mill, old timer, and then back for a cold beer.” Charlie sighed again.

The last mill, the last watering point of the day, was about 200 metres off the road. Angus checked the water tank and it was full. The mill creaked in the afternoon breeze and with each rotation of the big fan it moved the pump rods up and down and the pump lifted more water from deep below ground and into the tank. Because the tank was full, an overflow pipe directed the water back down the bore.

Soon the sheep would be in for their drink at sundown and they would half empty the tank to quench their thirst. So, he calculated if the mill broke down when the tank was full there was two days’ water in reserve. If it broke down after the stock had watered, then there was only a day. Angus thought about that and casually wondered whether his life was half-full or half-empty and decided he didn’t know. The question was too much after a long day in the sun. Would the mill break down? He didn’t know. But then it could. Then again it never had and it was well maintained, so probably not.

Angus knew he had too many sheep on the one watering point and the tank wasn’t big enough. He knew, and that he really should move some sheep away or put in a second, mobile tank. But his best ewes and rams, what he called his ‘Commercial Stud’, were benefiting from the good feed in the river valley, and shearing was only about four maybe six weeks away if the shearers turned up on time; then he could split the mob and take some pressure off the watering point. His life, he reflected, was full of ifs.

He decided to take the easy way out, he would check the tank every couple of days; it was only a short drive from the homestead. If he got time he would bring out an extra tank. His decision nagged a little. Making too many easy decisions? Avoiding the obvious?

He unscrewed the plug out of the end of the trough and using a long-handled trough brush, scrubbed the trough clean, forcing the rubbish that had accumulated out through the plughole together with the dirty water. Charlie lay in the dirty water as it ran over the dry red soil and he grunted with pleasure.

Clean water flowed and when the trough was clean, Angus replaced the plug. Then for no reason that he could later recall, he decided to climb up the windmill tower, perhaps it had been to check the oil? The fan was about ten metres off the ground. As he climbed the ladder on the tower up to the fan he heard a vehicle. As he got to the small wooden platform just underneath the fan he again saw the blue Volkswagen, this time going in the opposite direction, the same direction as he was heading. It was still going hell for leather. He watched as it disappeared, hidden in the vortex of its own dust. The faint breeze had exhausted itself and the fine red dust hung in the air.

It was not all that unusual to see other vehicles on the road. Tourists, prospectors, government employees, shearing teams all used the road. What was unusual was to see a vehicle, a little Volkswagen, with apparently a female driver, charging up and down the road with the sun rapidly setting and the nearest petrol pump a one hundred and fifty kilometres away at Gascoyne Junction. And it was summer and hot, too hot for travellers. He just hoped that whoever it was had told someone where he or she was going.

He climbed down the mill and Charlie watched him and made sure he was going to the Land Cruiser before he left his cool spot in what was now mud. Satisfied that they were off again Charlie got up, shook himself and followed. Angus opened the passenger door and without being told Charlie jumped inside and lay on the floor. Wet and muddy, he knew the seat was off limits.

Back on the road the dust from the Volkswagen had mostly drifted away; traces of it still hung in the hollows. In just twenty kilometres he would be home, back to Bangalore. He thought about the Volkswagen and rather than make the call from his vehicle decided to ring the police station in Carnarvon when he got back to the homestead. He needed a beer. There was nothing he could do anyway. If whoever it was in the little car was lost, if they stayed on the main road they would finish up in Gascoyne Junction, if not tonight then in the morning. If they didn’t turn up by mid-day the next day then the police would make inquiries.

He looked north and saw clouds on the horizon, big thunderheads rising, catching the setting sun. It was still hot. A faint breeze had picked up again and it was now coming from the direction of the clouds; occasionally a stronger gust raised a bit of dust off the road. He looked down at the dog, “Might get a thunder storm Charlie, cool the place down a bit. God, I’m ready for a beer.” Charlie grunted.

Every time he drove off the road, over the cattle grid and into the driveway of his home, Bangalore Station, passed the now-faded sign that said ‘Bangalore Station-Circa 1880’, he thought of his great grandfather and the vision that he must have had over a hundred and thirty years before.

He never failed to marvel at the man’s foresight in those harsh pioneer days – days before cars, before phones, before anything really. Just days filled with hard work, family, horses, camels and sheep – but most of all planning for the future.

Big palm trees lined both sides of the narrow straight drive, their fronds nearly touching high overhead, providing instant shade for the weary traveller. The palms must have been collected at the coast, hauled by camel train for probably two weeks, carefully tended en route to keep their roots alive and then planted and watered by hand until they were established. No more than a metre high when they were planted, they now stood tall and proud and nearly ten metres high.

Over the years, they had withstood flood and drought and more than one cyclone. When his great grandfather died they were probably no more than a couple of metres high. Like everything else on Bangalore, what had been done in the early days had been done for the future.

The driveway forked about a hundred metres from the homestead and he took the left fork to take him round the back of the old house. Had he driven to the front he would have been welcomed by sweeping well-manicured lawns, rose beds and a small fountain standing in front of the five wide wooden steps leading to the four-metre wide veranda. Bangalore was an oasis in a hot and potentially hostile land.

The only building close to the back of the house was a bough shed, built to house the light horse carriages of another time; it now served as a three-vehicle carport. He reached over and opened the passenger door and Charlie jumped out and headed for the back door of the old house. He opened his own door, got out, took two canvas water bags off their clips behind the cab and followed his dog.

Angus could smell the cooking before he pulled open the flywire door. Alice, his housekeeper was standing at the sink in the big kitchen. A tall statuesque woman, now in her late sixties but looking twenty years younger, smiled at him. Her dark-brown skin contrasted with her perfect white teeth. Her grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun accentuating her long neck, her dark dress, as always, nearly touched the floor.

Alice’s great grandfather had been an Afghan camel driver, one of the famous cameleers, part of the folk law of the pioneering of the West Australian outback. Her family had lived on Bangalore from the beginning. Their ancestors, Angus’ great grandfather Lachlan Sinclair and his Afghans, had built Bangalore, and the ‘Bangalore Afghans’ had never left.

Alice dried her hands on a tea towel. “There’s someone here to see you.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know, Angus. Young lady, good looking, got here about half an hour ago.”

“What does she want, petrol?”

“Not as far as I know; she asked for you by name.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I expected you back this evening if you had finished your work but that you might not be back until tomorrow. I gave her a cup of tea and she’s out on the front veranda.”

“I’d better go and see what she wants then. Is she driving a blue car?”

As he opened the door from the kitchen into the long hallway he heard Alice say, “Yes, blue Volkswagen”.

Angus pushed open the flywire door leading from the cool hallway and stepped out on to the polished floor of the veranda and into the last of the day’s heat. A young woman was sitting in one of the armchairs and she stood up. Tall, very slim almost thin, mousy blond hair cut quite short. Her face was tanned and she wore no makeup. A faded blue shirt and equally faded loose-fitting jeans and brown elastic-sided boots completed the picture. She was, he thought, thirty – early thirties?

Angus smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Angus Sinclair.”

Her handshake was firm and she looked him in the eye as she replied, “I’m Patricia Fawcett.”

“Pleased to meet you, Patricia.” He raised his eyebrows trying to ask the question as to why she was there.

“I’ve been trying to ring you for three days. Couldn’t get through so I decided yesterday to drive up here. I missed the gate the first time; there was another vehicle, one of those road trains, and I got lost in the dust and must have driven right past.” She was rushing her words and she seemed a little agitated. First impressions were that she was calm and composed. Now that was changing.

Angus, sensing her mounting distress, said quietly, “I’ve been out on the mill run and doing some yard repairs for a few days, but I’ve had my satellite phone turned on all the time; must be on the blink, sorry about that. But what brings you all the way out here?” He spread his hands palms up, “I’m sorry you have me at a loss.”

“I spoke to your wife.”

“Ex-wife.”

“I’m sorry, ex-wife, and she said she’d been trying to reach you as well and that you could be anywhere for all she knew. She seemed very exasperated with you. So I decided to take some leave and come up here, I felt someone had to find you and tell you.” She made a conscious effort to stand up straight; she pulled her shoulders back and looked at him.

Angus saw this and again said quietly and with a lop-sided grin, “Michelle is always exasperated with me. You still haven’t answered my question though, Patricia. What really brings you to Bangalore? You could have rung the police if it’s an emergency. They would have found me. You could have kept on ringing the homestead number.”

“Ewen hasn’t told you then?”

“Ewen, like his mother doesn’t tell me very much. Like mother like son. We spoke just before he left for Afghanistan for his current tour with the army. Even army pilots are secretive buggers you know?”

“I know. You haven’t heard about Ewen then?”

She was looking at him without blinking. He could see tears welling in her eyes and a cold shiver ran down his back. “Heard what?” He didn’t want the answer.

Visibly holding her emotions in check, very slowly she said, “Ewen is missing, more than a week now. The army didn’t say anything for a few days; security reasons they said, apparently, Ewen’s helicopter took unfriendly fire on a mission. They put down with little damage and came under even heavier fire. Some of the troopers made it back; some didn’t, though nobody saw anybody killed. They split up to distract the Taliban. I think they’ve sent a search party out today their time. My Commanding Officer said he would ring here as soon as they hear anything, but if your phone isn’t working…”

Now she lost her composure and tears filled her eyes and she sniffed as her nose ran in sympathy. She felt her pockets for a handkerchief and couldn’t find one. Angus gave her his; it was big and red and white and a little oily in places. She wiped her eyes and left a smudge of oil on one cheek. She blew her nose and went to hand the handkerchief back and then changed her mind and hesitated.

“Keep it; stick it in the laundry basket in the bathroom later. You must stay the night of course. Sorry silly thing to say, where else could you go? Didn’t mean that either. I don’t want you to go anywhere. I’m grateful that you have come all this way to tell me. The reason you haven’t had any reply from this phone is because Alice only got back from Carnarvon this afternoon. Been away for a week or more seeing her relations and it seems that my phone in the Ute is on the blink. Sorry if I’m not making much sense, I’m trying to get my mind round what you’ve said. Would you like a drink?” She nodded. “Whisky, gin and tonic, beer?”

“Whisky please.”

“Ice, water, straight? I think I’ll join you, the need for beer seems to have gone.”

“Lots of ice please.”

Feeling inadequate but trying to comfort her he said, “Good girl, only way to have it. Go and sit down again and I’ll fetch the drinks.”

Angus’ mind was in turmoil as he went back into the house and then into the lounge to the drinks cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker, two tumblers, opened the bar fridge and half-filled both tumblers with ice. He heard Alice, barefooted, softly pad into the room behind him.

“Is something wrong, Angus?”

“Yes, Alice, Ewen is missing in Afghanistan.”

“My God, the poor boy, when did this happen?”

Alice, standing close to the doorway switched on the light. Her ancestors had come from northern India and not Afghanistan and she had never been to either country – yet in Australia they had always, wrongly, been called Afghans. The shock and the pain were evident in her face at the news. She had read about the Taliban and the things that they did. She had seen them on television. She had been a second mother to Ewen. Maybe even his mother in every way except that she hadn’t given birth to him.

Thoughts of Ewen rushed through her head. She thought about his mother, Michelle, who, almost from the beginning, had been too busy for children, too busy for Bangalore except when it suited her. She had insisted that the children went to boarding school as soon as they were old enough. ‘Just babies really,’ thought Alice.

Then in the nineties when wool prices crashed due to the stockpile, Michelle left Bangalore for good, preferring to live in their house in Claremont, one of the better suburbs in Perth. But Ewen and his sister Rachael stayed in boarding school.

Both schools were no more than five minutes’ drive from where Michelle lived, so when she could spare the time, which wasn’t often, she saw them at the weekends. As these thoughts rushed through her head, Alice thought about her poor Ewen lost somewhere in that foreign land – maybe dead.

Bottle and glasses in hand, Angus looked at the pain in Alice’s clear blue eyes. He’d never seen her cry and now she stood there looking at him, tears welling in her eyes, not knowing what to say.

“He’s just missing as far as I can tell. They’ve gone looking for him now. The girl out the front is an army pilot as well, I think. I gather she must be Ewen’s girlfriend.”

“She’s wearing an engagement ring.”

“I hadn’t noticed. Maybe more than a girlfriend then. I must take these drinks out. Help yourself will you, and excuse my manners this once?” He smiled at her and she touched his arm.

“Away you go, Angus, and take care of the young lady. I already have one in the kitchen, God bless Johnnie Walker, I say.” She turned and walked quietly back to the kitchen wiping her eyes with the tea towel.

Angus found Patricia standing at the top of the veranda steps looking over the small fountain and beyond down the drive between the two rows of palm trees. The last rays of a fiery red sunset were shining straight up the drive silhouetting the palms and giving them a majestic red glow.

She turned as he approached and he saw that she was more composed; then she turned to look at the garden again, “Is this sunset just by accident or did someone know what they were doing?”

“The sunset up the drive and on the palms? I suspect old Lachlan, my great grandfather, like with everything he did, knew exactly what he was doing.”

“It’s quite beautiful, almost majestic.”

He held out a glass. “Say when.” He splashed whisky over the ice cubes.

“When, thank you.”

For the first time he saw her smile. He noticed that like Alice, her eyes were blue, a pale blue. He poured himself a good measure and put the bottle on a small table between two big cane armchairs. They stood looking at each other, neither knowing how to re-start their conversation.

Like Alice had said there was a ring on her engagement finger. She watched him waiting for the question and when none came she said, “Ewen and I got engaged the day before he left. We decided not to tell anyone. Ewen insisted that he wanted you to be the first to know. This is the first time I've worn the ring. We chose it at Rosendorfs. It’s an Argyle diamond.” She held out her hand for him to look.

“I’m no judge of these things, Patricia, as my ex will confirm, but it looks quite beautiful. Did you tell Michelle?”

“No.”

“I must ring his sister. She’s in Sydney, doing another degree or diploma or something. She’s a doctor, something to do with babies this time, I think. She and Ewen are very close; I think they relied on each other all through school. I was up here and their mother… well, that’s a long story. I’ll ring her in the morning. Her mother will have told her by now I would think.”

“Mr Sinclair, can I call you Angus?”

“Of course you must, I’m sorry I always forget the formalities. Do you get called Patricia or Pat?”

“Pat. Only my parents call me Patricia.”

Alice appeared at the doorway. “Angus, I’ve put your dinner out on the table in the breakfast room. It’s cooler in there. All you have to do is carve; it’s a bit of beef fillet. I brought fresh salad back from Carnarvon; what’s in the garden is just about finished. I’ve got my dinner and I’ll take it down to my cottage and leave you two in peace.”

Angus beckoned Alice forward. “Alice, this is Patricia Fawcett, known as Pat. She and Ewen are engaged and I’m sorry I haven’t introduced you before.”

Alice smiled warmly. “Welcome to Bangalore, Pat. I’m sorry about Ewen. Such a dear boy. Like us, you must be terribly worried; all we can do is wait, isn't it? I’m sure… I pray he’ll be all right.

“I’ve put towels out in the first bedroom on the right through this door. You have your own shower and toilet, so don’t worry about having to wander round this old house in the dark. I’ve also put a dressing gown on the bed; such bulky things to pack, good towelling robes, I always think. Good night Angus, Pat, God bless.”

Angus beckoned Pat to follow Alice down the long hallway to the back of the house. Just before they got to the kitchen he said, “Next on the right.” She pushed the door open into what Alice had called the breakfast room. It was quite a small room; the walls were painted a pale blue that contrasted with the clear varnish on the dark-brown skirting boards, door and polished floor. A small, what looked like very old, oak dining table that would easily seat four was in the middle of the room; on it Alice had set two places, a big bowl of salad together with a small fillet of beef on a carving plate.

“Wine, Pat?”

“Yes please.”

“Red or white? I can open both.”

“Red please.” As she was speaking she was gazing at the walls of the room that were hung with what seemed dozens of photographs. Camel trains with bales of wool. Men on horseback, many of them with fine beards and moustaches. Men wearing strange headdresses attending to camels. Men on big four-wheel drays loaded with bales of wool. Beautiful dark-haired, dark-skinned women, some wearing what looked like saris and then the same women dressed in Victorian-style clothes. Mostly the women were unsmiling, just looking at the camera, sometimes just a hint of a smile, but always beautiful.

There was a faded picture of what she recognised as the front of Bangalore homestead under construction. Men leaning on shovels, holding hammers, some of the men with pipes in their mouths. Her attention was drawn to the man at the front of the picture. Tall, slim, almost laconic in the way that he stood and looked at the camera; she thought she could see Angus in his eyes. Then she saw a picture of Ewen in uniform.

“That was taken at his passing-out parade, ten years ago, maybe more. That’s his mother and my mother. That’s my father standing at the back. I took the photograph.” The similarity, the almost unreal likeness between the grandfather, son and grandson was striking.

“Are your parents still alive?”

“My word they are. Both in their eighties, fit as fiddles, though the old man claims that his longevity is due to a lifetime of drinking whisky and smoking a foul black shag that he stuffs into his pipe. Mother is from an old English family with French origins. She has distant relatives here in WA, all from the French stock; they’ve been in WA as long as the Sinclairs.

“My mother and father met during World War Two. Dad was a pilot. Mum was a nurse. They live in Perth now, a house in Dalkeith by the river. Come and sit down. This fine fillet is nearly cold but it’ll still be the best you’ve ever had, I guarantee.”

Before he joined her at the table Angus turned down the lights that illuminated the walls; just one light was left on over the table. They sat facing each other. They helped themselves to salad and Angus passed the dish of carefully carved pink slices of fillet. He poured her a glass of red wine and one for himself. He looked at her and smiled. She saw the face in the old photograph. He raised his glass. “To Ewen, a safe return, back to you, Pat, where he belongs.”

She smiled and raised the glass to her lips. As she looked at him again she saw Ewen in the dark eyes. “This is a lovely wine.”

“Made by a bloke I went to school with. Made a packet in the eighties, most of it legal, I think. But then again, you could float a sinking ship on the Stock Exchange in those days. Anyway, he made some serious money and cashed up and went with his third wife, I think, to Margaret River.

“Happy as pigs they are down there now. He keeps me in wine and fossicks around the other wineries for anything else that he thinks I might like. He sends me far too much, but he’s seen the big cellar under this house and he insists that it must be stocked. The way I’m going, my heirs will be able to drink themselves silly and not spend a dollar.”

The mention of his heirs took the smile off her face as she thought about Ewen somewhere in the moonscape of Afghanistan. Angus saw her expression change and said softly, “He’ll be all right, Pat. We must be positive.” Scared to admit a shiver had gone down his spine as well.

She gazed into the red wine in her glass and, without looking at him, said quietly, “I know. I’ve been there. To Afghanistan…it’s such a hostile landscape to fly in…never mind the Taliban; they just make it infinitely worse. But the troops have very sophisticated communications…even personal satellite phones.”

Angus put a little more wine in his glass. “So if Ewen and his mates are out there then they, his commanders, will know?”

“Yes, they will – getting them out is the difficult part. Nobody knows where the Taliban are, not for sure anyway. They, the Taliban, have some quite sophisticated weapons and communications as well. Some left behind by the Russians, most from over the border in Pakistan, probably bought with US aid money. The other trouble is, it’s an SAS operation, so they could be anywhere, even in Pakistan.”

“If they are in Pakistan, what does that mean?”

“I’m not sure, but I gather it would save a lot of trouble if they could get back into Afghanistan. There seems to be a fine balance between the war against terrorism and invading Pakistan’s airspace and all the diplomacy that would involve. I’m only just another pilot, Angus. I can only tell you what we have been told when flying out there.”

‘What was Ewen flying?’

“Who knows? They were probably flying at night using night-vision. Low-level stuff. Not without danger at the best of times.”

A moth attracted by the light fluttered around the hot light globe. It clung to it for a moment and then, damaged, fell to the table, still fluttering, not dead but disoriented. They both watched it struggle back into flight and back into the heat of the globe only to fall again.