AUSTRALIA 1975. 10 A Fleeting Visit

My father worked as a commodity broker in the City of London in a family company started by his great-uncle Leo. Leo was a Jewish immigrant at the start of the twentieth century who went out to the South Seas, visiting all the islands and arranging to buy their ‘copra’ (part of the inside of the coconut) which he then sold to soap manufacturers for its oil.

    My father continued the practice, travelling round the Pacific every few years to renew friendships and contracts, sometimes with my mother who loved sun and heat like me. The islanders called him Mr John and still spoke of Mr Leo and Mr Roy (my grandfather). Australia was part of the itinerary.
 
The letter was from my mother.
    ‘We’re coming out to Australia,’ she wrote. ‘Your father’s doing one of his tours. Can we meet up in Sydney?’
 
What? This was the first I’d heard of the trip even though my mother and I had been corresponding regularly on thin blue ‘aerogrammes’ ever since I’d left the UK. My father’s trips took months to organise and were usually planned years in advance.
    They were coming out to get me back, I knew it.
    But how could I refuse to see them?
    I couldn’t.
 
All my friends came up to the airstrip to see me off and I kissed them all good bye.
    ‘I’ll be back,’ I called as I climbed into the waiting plane.
    Of course I would, one way or another. This was just a fleeting visit.
 
I watched out of the plane window as the moss-like archipelago vanished from view, and steeled myself for the return to civilisation.