Chapter 4
The pub was snug, with a roaring fire in the hearth and crimsoncushioned oak settles black with age, as were the ceiling beams and the bar itself, at one end of the long room. The brass handles of the beer pumps gleamed through a haze of pipe smoke.
A dozen men and three dogs turned to stare at the newcomers in their evening frocks and dinner jackets.
Daisy wondered if the Ravens really was the sort of pub where the presence of a strange female was acceptable.
It was all very well for the Misses Tyndall, daughters of the lord of the manor, to waltz in as if they belonged.
In fact, the building might well belong to their father, along with the rest of the village.
The men at the bar looked like local farmworkers and tradesmen, except for one stout fellow in a flashy checked suit, a commercial traveller perhaps.
The checks reminded Daisy of Alec’s detective sergeant, Tom Tring, who was wont to say villains were so stunned by his suits that they didn’t notice who was wearing them until too late, when he collared them.
Maybe the traveller’s clothes had the same effect on his customers—they didn’t notice what they were buying until they’d signed for it.
In the moment taken by this reflection, most of the men had turned back to their beer and chat, and the dogs to their patient waiting for their masters.
A couple of prosperous-looking farmers in leggings, sitting in a corner, stood up and nodded to Babs as she went to join them.
“Evening, Miss Tyndall,” called out the one with a round red face fringed with white.
“Evening, Miss Tyndall.” The second raised a hand in greeting. “Evening, Miss Gwen.”
“What will you have, chaps?” Jack asked them jovially. “Just let me get the ladies settled. Come here by the fire, Mrs. Fletcher. You look half-frozen. What will you have?”
“I’ll stick to ginger beer, thanks.” She sat down, and Gwen took the place beside her.
“Half of cider, Gwen? Right-oh. The usual for you, Miller?” Jack went to the bar.
As Miller joined Gwen and Daisy, she saw a middle-aged couple at a table at the far end of the room from the bar.
They appeared to be finishing a meal, so perhaps they were staying at the inn.
The woman had silver hair piled on top of her head in a loose, untidy bun.
Her face was much more youthful—she was in her early forties perhaps, plump and good-humoured.
She was beaming across the table at her companion, who had his back to Daisy.
He shook his head. Even from behind, Daisy sensed doubt and worry in the gesture.
The woman said something vehement, pleading, and he got up slowly and reluctantly.
A short, stocky man, he wore a new-looking blue suit.
His face was very brown, except for the upper part of his forehead.
He was definitely not happy as he walked towards the bar.
Miller interrupted her thoughts. “We’d like your opinion, Mrs. Fletcher. I’ve invited Gwen to go up for a sight-seeing flight, and she can’t make up her mind. Would you—not at present, I imagine, but in the normal way—would you ever consider going up in an aeroplane?”
“Actually, I already have. A year ago, Alec and I flew right across North America, from New York to Oregon, on the West Coast.”
“Daisy, you didn’t!” Gwen gasped. “Was it fun?”
Remembering that cold, cramped, noisy, endless flight and the hair-raising bits when they zigzagged between the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Daisy said, “I wouldn’t exactly call it fun, not overall.
But the first bit was, and that’s all you’d be doing.
I wouldn’t mind flying to Paris in an ‘air-liner,’ for instance. ”
They peppered her with questions, Gwen about her adventures in America, Miller about the type of aeroplane, flying conditions, American airfields, and similar matters. Daisy was laughingly confessing her entire ignorance of the capacity of the fuel tanks when Jack brought their drinks.
“Half of ginger beer, Mrs. Fletcher. Half of cider, Gwen. Pint of the best bitter, Miller.”
“Thanks.”
“I say, Mrs. Fletcher, would it be frightfully rude of me to go and have a few words with those people over there? They’re from Australia.
I was talking to the chappie, Gooch, at the bar, and he said his wife’s originally from this part of the world.
She’s heard of our Bonfire Night do but never attended and wanted to know if we’d mind their coming along with the village people.
I just want to go and assure Mrs. Gooch that will be quite all right. ”
“Why don’t you ask them to join us?” Daisy suggested. “We—you, rather—could pull up a couple more chairs.”
“They’re not what he calls ‘flash,’ which I take to mean gentry,” Jack warned.
“Jack, how can you say such a thing?” Gwen demanded.
Her brother glanced at Miller and flushed. “Sorry, old chap. The thing is, I forget.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Miller said dryly.
“Ask them over,” Daisy urged. “I’ve never met any Australians, and all is grist to my journalistic mill, you know. Presumably they’re not from the absolute dregs of society or they couldn’t have afforded the passage to England. They look perfectly respectable.”
So Miller brought two more chairs to the table while Jack fetched the Gooches.
Mrs. Gooch was sensibly dressed in a grey woollen frock—merino, thought Daisy, with vague memories of geography lessons—but adorned with a big chunky gold brooch set with a huge blue-green opal.
She appeared to be in quite a flutter, somewhere between nervous and jubilant, more so than the situation warranted.
Jack introduced the couple and seated Mrs. Gooch with all the courtesy of a well-brought-up young man. He sat down beside her and asked whereabouts in the district she came from.
“Evesham,” she said. “You’ve lived all your life here, haven’t you, just up the hill? Did you go away to school?” Her voice, tentative at first, mixed the soft, familiar cadence of Worcestershire and the sharper tones of Australian English.
Mr. Gooch spoke broad Australian. He was sitting opposite Daisy, so she found herself involved in the conversation between him and Miller.
The Gooches now lived in Perth, in Western Australia, he told them.
He had gone west from Victoria in ’92 when the gold was found at Coolgardie, and set up in business in the outback supplying miners with everything they needed.
“Started out with billies and boots and beer. A lot of them wanted to pay with gold, so I told ’em good-oh and got into the gold business.”
“ ‘Billies’?” Daisy asked.
“What you might call a kettle, ma’am, or a teapot, but it’s just a big tin can. Out in the bush, you boil water over a fire and drop in a handful of tea leaves, to wash down the damper and ’roo steak. And I sold ’em the flour for the damper and the knives to cut the steaks.”
“How on earth did you come to meet Mrs. Gooch, out in the wilds?” Miller wanted to know. It seemed as unlikely as his own meeting with Gwen.
“Ellie came out west the year after they put the water pipeline in, in ’04, with a bit of a stake, looking to buy into a business.
She wasn’t hardly more than a girl, but she’s a bonzer businesswoman, my Ellie,” Gooch said with pride and a fond glance at his wife.
“She reckoned there was more opportunity in the west and she turned up just when I was looking for a bit of capital to expand. But Coolgardie ain’t bush, or the wilds, as you said.
She’s a beaut town and only around three hundred and fifty miles from Perth. ”
“Three hundred and fifty miles!” Miller echoed. “They’re both in Western Australia?”
“That’s nothing. From Coolgardie east to the South Orstrilia border is another five hundred miles or so, and north to south, she’s about twice the width. Course, half is desert, but that still leaves a lot of outback to get around in.”
“It sounds as if you’re ripe for air travel.”
“Too right. Fellow started a regular service up in the Kimberley in ’21 and extended it to Perth just this year.”
The men started discussing the future of aviation in Western Australia.
Turning to the other end of the table, Daisy saw that Gwen was listening to Miller with a look of fond pride, very like Gooch’s for his wife.
Jack and Mrs. Gooch were getting on like a house on fire.
It sounded as if Jack was telling her the story of his life.
Daisy thought hers must be much more interesting, but she was listening with apparent fascination to his tales of university life.
Babs, her business completed, came over and was introduced. As soon as she found the Gooches were not involved in farming, she lost interest. “Time we were heading home,” she proposed.
“Not yet,” Jack objected, pulling up another chair. “Have a seat, Babs.”
“I’d rather—”
“I’ll run you all home later, so you don’t have to walk up the hill. We can all squeeze into the old bus.”
“I really don’t—”
“No need to squeeze,” said Mrs. Gooch. “We’ve got a hire car, a big Vauxhall. Jimmy’ll take you, won’t you, Jimmy?”
“Or’right, Ellie.” Gooch sounded resigned. “Let’s have another round, my shout. What’s yours, Miss Tyndall?”
Babs gave in and settled for a bottle of pale ale. Daisy refused another drink, as she hadn’t finished her first. She was making it last, having no desire to have to go in search of what was almost certainly an outside lav, frequented by pub patrons, in the dark.
Polite if indifferent, Babs asked what the Gooches had seen on their visit to England. Since landing at Southampton, they had spent a fortnight in London. In the ensuing discussion of the sights of London, Mr. Gooch stoutly upheld the superiority of Perth on every count save that of antiquity.
“Which I don’t call such an advantage,” he pointed out, “when it means you got a whole lot of crook buildings, dirty, cramped cubbyholes that ought to be pulled down.”