Free A Cry from the Dark by Robert Barnard

Katie had gone through to the kitchen she said, “Katie is an old friend.”
    She had thought it was the right tone to adopt, but she sensed uneasily that it had not gone down well with her guests. “Not really a servant, but a friend who helps out now and then” should, surely, have been acceptable to democratic Australians, and it was nothing but the truth. She had the idea, however, that her daughter had diagnosed hypocrisy—thought that it was better if you paid anybody to do things for you that you spoke of them, thought of them, and treated them, as servants.
    Talk about theater and concerts lasted them until dinner. Bettina told them what she’d got tickets for, and got them the theater pages of the Times to show them what else was on. As they went to table Bettina realized she hadn’t asked them about their flight over.
    â€œWell, I’m real glad we decided to stop over a night,” said Ollie. “If we’d just had the normal half hour or so in Singapore airport I think they’d’ve had to drag me back onto the plane.”
    Bettina sympathized.
    â€œYes, people tell me it sounds like a good idea to do it all in one go, but that really it isn’t. I always went back to Australia by sea, but I do remember one long-distance flight long ago—I think it must have been to California, or maybe Rio—and on that you had bunk beds for sleeping.”
    â€œThings have got worse rather than better, then?” asked Sylvia.
    â€œOh much. Take food. Now you get tiny little pieces of this and that on a plastic tray. Then you had proper meals served from salvers. The only thing that I can think of that’s got better is the air hostesses. You do get real women now, often older ones, not overpainted dummies.”
    â€œGoing by sea must have been wonderfully different,” said Sylvia.
    â€œIt was. Three weeks was fine, but if it took five that was too much of a good thing. I wished I’d got off at Perth and taken the train—dry, very dry, land instead of water would have been a nice change.”
    â€œDid you go back to Australia often?”
    â€œDeaths,” said Bettina briefly. “Mum had cancer, but I had plenty of warning and got there in time. Dad had a minor heart attack, then another three days after I arrived. That hurt. I would have so liked to have had plenty of time with him before…before it happened. I loved them both, but Dad believed in me so much.”
    â€œHe was always talking about you,” said Oliver.
    â€œYes—I’m sorry about that.”
    â€œNo, not at all. It was always interesting, learning what you were like. In fact, I knew you from what Dad told me, rather than from my memories. Those ended when war came…or at least when you came to Europe.”
    â€œThat’s right. I did that at nineteen. We’d been talking about war so long I’d already made up my mind: I knew that being part of it was the right thing. Then quite soon it was war correspondent in Europe, then the army, and that was my fate sealed.”
    Or not quite, she thought, as perhaps Sylvia thought too. That summary missed out one or two important developments.
    â€œHere’s the stew,” said Katie, coming in and plonking it down on the table. “Smells horrible rich.”
    â€œThat’s the brown ale it’s cooked in,” said Bettina.
    â€œHmmm. Personally I think alcohol is for drinking,” said Katie, “or using for a rub.”
    â€œWell, I’ll drink to drinking alcohol,” said Bettina, raising her glass. Her thoughts were on the track of old times, as they were every day as she wrote, and she said, “Perhaps it was best that I didn’t see too much of Dad before he died. I have the feeling that he was putting on a last show for me, that he must have been broken, defeated.”
    Oliver shook his head vigorously.
    â€œNo—not Dad. Why did you think that?