Trustee From the Toolroom

by Nevil Shute

  His day had been a long one, and at the conclusion of an hour he found that he was growing sleepy. He got out of the captain’s seat, and one of the young pilots took his place. The navigator smiled as he brushed past him, and Keith paused to look at the chart. ‘We’ll be about here now,’ the officer said, putting his pencil on the thin pencil line that led across the North Atlantic to Greenland.

  Keith studied the line. ‘Do we go over Greenland?’ It seemed incredible that he, Keith Stewart, should be doing this.

  ‘That’s right. We might be over the ice cap about one in the morning, Greenwich time.’

  ‘Shall we see it?’ Eskimos and explorers, and the dogs with tails curled up over their backs that they called huskies.

  ‘I doubt it. There’s usually a lot of cloud cover. We might. Like me to call you if there’s anything to see?’

  ‘I would.’ Keith hesitated. ‘Are you going to be up for the next hour or two?’

  ‘Captain’s having a ziz now,’ said the navigator. ‘Supper’s at eleven o’clock, Greenwich. He’s getting up for that. After that I’ll have mine.’

  ‘Don’t wake Dick King to get the supper if he’s asleep,’ Keith said. ‘Give me a nudge. He showed me what to do.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He passed aft to the rest quarters. The captain and the radio operator were sleeping in their clothes in the two bunks. Keith settled down in a vacant chair and pushed it back to the reclining angle. So many technical interests that he could not absorb because of the need for sleep. Janice and Katie in the flat at Ealing all seemed very far away; his many years of work for the Miniature Mechanic were something that had happened in a previous existence, quite unreal. The even murmur of the engines, the motionless flight, wrapped him round, and presently he slept.

  He was roused by Dick climbing over him from the inside seat to start getting the supper. He got up and lent a hand. The whole crew seemed to come to life with the smell of the meal heating on the stove. Captain Fielding and the radio operator got down from the bunks, shook themselves, and put on their shoes. Keith realised for the first time that the aircrew were divided virtually into two watches, that the pilots could do the routine navigation and the routine radio checks. The meal, served in two sittings, signified a change of watch.

  He rinsed the dishes when Mr King went forward, and put everything away. Mr Adams slumbered again, uninterested in the flight, and Keith went forward to the flight deck again. He sat at the navigator’s desk for some time, but presently he grew sleepy and went back to his seat.

  He was roused by the changed note of the engines as they began the let-down an hour out from Frobisher. He knew what was happening from the slight pressure difference in his ears, and from the time. He went and washed his face to clear his mind, and then went forward again to the flight deck. The navigator was back at his desk. ‘Clear for landing,’ he said. ‘Cloud two tenths at three thousand. Temperature on the ground minus ten Fahrenheit. Good and cold - forty-two degrees of frost. I should stay in the machine, if I were you.’

  Keith was startled. ‘What’s the outside temperature here, now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The officer leaned back and glanced at the panel. ‘About minus thirty.’

  ‘I’d like to do anything I can to help - if there’s anything that I can do.’

  The navigator shook his head. ‘It’s just the refuelling, then we’ll be off again. Get your bloody nose frostbitten if you go outside.’

  They landed presently upon a white, snow-covered runway lit with amber lights, using the brakes very little and the engines in reverse pitch a great deal. They followed a blue-lit taxiway to the few buildings constituting the base and came to a standstill in front of the control tower. Steps were wheeled up and the door opened; the captain and the flight engineer and the two youngest pilots put on heavy coats and leather gloves, and went down on to the snow. Keith followed them to the door and stopped in the entrance, checked by the bitterness of the cold.

  The moon was bright upon the snow plain of the airfield and the snow-covered buildings, the lights brilliant. He saw the captain and the navigator hurrying to the control tower. He saw a refuelling truck drive up and stop by the port wing, he saw a ladder erected and Dick get up on to the wing with one of the refuelling crew and commence to sound the tanks. Then he could bear the cold no longer, and retreated forward into the machine across the web of cables lashing down the rotor.

  In the rest quarters warmth still lingered, though cold air was seeping forward from the rear. Refuelling took three-quarters of an hour. The crew made a quick external inspection of the aircraft and came hurrying into the fuselage again. The door was slammed shut, the steps removed, the motors started again, and the machine moved out on to the runway and took off with a slow, careful acceleration on the icy surface till she was airborne on the long flight over the northern wastes of Canada to Vancouver.

  Presently Keith went forward and spoke to Dick King seated between the pilots at the console. ‘What time for the next meal?’ he asked in a low tone.

  ‘Nine or nine-thirty, Greenwich,’ the engineer replied. He pointed to the clock above the navigator’s table. ‘That time, there.’ It showed about five-thirty when Keith looked. ‘We’ll have coffee and biscuits soon as we level off.’

  ‘I’ll start getting that ready. What are you having for the main meal?’

  ‘There’s some pre-cooked steaks in a carton on the left-hand side, up at the top.’ They went on to discuss the detail of the meal. ‘I’ll probably be up for it,’ the engineer said. ‘Get my head down for a bit presently, but I’ll be up.’

  ‘You don’t have to be,’ said Keith. ‘I can do all that.’

  In spite of his bold assertion, he was growing tired. The flight from Frobisher to Vancouver was a repeat of the flight to Frobisher, a night flight without incident, with nothing to be seen. The four pilots, the radio officer, and the navigator took their turns in the bunks; the flight engineer slept in one of the seats. These men were all younger than Keith Stewart, physically more fit and accustomed to long hours of flight and irregular sleep. They seemed to stand it well, but for the first time Keith realised the meaning of crew fatigue. By the time they reached Honolulu, he knew, he would desire nothing so much as sleep in a bed. He could well understand the necessity for two or three days’ rest before the crew flew home again to Blackbushe.

  He slept most of the way to Vancouver, only rousing himself to help to serve the meal. Few of the aircrew ate much during that stage of the flight, but the demand for coffee and biscuits was brisk. They landed in from over sea on the long Vancouver runway in the darkness at about six in the morning of local time, refuelled and inspected the machine in misty rain, and walked wearily to the airport restaurant.

  ‘You won’t get bacon and eggs, English fashion, here,’ the engineer told Keith. ‘Hot cakes and syrup with a side order of bacon. I’ll show you.’

  Where everything was strange this seemed no stranger than the rest; he accepted the North American food and enjoyed the novelty, though Mr Adams grumbled at the little tea bag hanging in the cup of hot water. They ate together sitting up in a long row at a stainless steel counter, while outside the grey dawn showed in the rain. ‘Might as well be in England,’ Mr Adams said.

  The navigator heard him, and smiled faintly. ‘You’ll be gasping for breath tonight in Honolulu.’

  In the grey morning light they walked through the rain to the machine, and settled in their places. The clock over the navigator’s desk showed either 4 or 16; both seemed quite inapplicable to Keith and which it was he had no means of knowing. They took off to the west down the long runway and climbed away over water till they entered cloud. ‘Eleven more hours.’ the navigator told him. ‘Then we’ll be through.’

  Half an hour later they broke out into sunshine over a cloud floor; the pilots reached for their sunglasses and put them on. Presently, while the first cups of coffee were being consumed, the cloud beneath them thin
ned into holes through which they could see the sea, corrugated with waves. By the time the empty cups had been collected, rinsed, and placed in their racks to dry, the cloud had practically disappeared, and they flew on under a cloudless sky, over a blue sea. Later they met cloud again.

  The day passed in boredom and fatigue for Keith. He had long exhausted those technical interests of the aircraft that were within his comprehension, and he was growing very tired indeed. He dozed wearily much of the day with his shoes off, for his feet and legs were swelling with the continued sitting and lack of exercise. He ate little of the midday meal. As the hands of his watch moved gradually past twelve and on to one he began to come to life again, for three was the hour of landing, English time, when this slow purgatory would be over. Since they were nearly half way round the world and they were to land in the late afternoon, he guessed that his watch still cherished the opinion that it was the middle of the night.

  Soon after two activity began on the flight deck, and the let-down began. He went forward, and the captain pointed out a very small cloud dead ahead of them and very far away. ‘That could be over Oahu,’ he said. ‘It’s either that or Maui. But I think it’s Oahu. We’re on the range now.’

  Keith nodded and went back to the navigator’s desk to look at the chart. Honolulu, it appeared, was the name of a town and not an island, as he had supposed. It was on an island called Oahu, by no means the largest of the group. He went back to his seat and sat down, wondering for the first time if he was not absolutely crazy to be here at all. Ealing was his place, and writing articles for the Miniature Mechanic was his job. These wastes of sunlit sea, these islands with strange names like Oahu, were no part of his life. He owed it to Janice to try to get back her inheritance … but still … Ealing was his place. He could stay with the aircraft, of course, and presently the crew would take him back to Blackbushe, only forty miles from Ealing; a truck or a coach would take him up the Great West Road, a red bus up the South Ealing Road, and he would be home again, home in his workshop, in his own routine.

  Abruptly he realised that he was afraid, afraid of the unknown that lay before him. He must do better than that for Janice before he could have licence to go home.

  The island grew ahead of them, and there was more activity upon the flight deck. Dick King was in the folding seat between the pilots and the captain was talking into the small microphone. They dropped off height as they approached the island and approached it from a little to the south of east. A considerable town with docks and shipping lay upon the southern shore, and to the west of this there was an enormous airport, apparently about five miles long. They made a wide circuit of this and approached from the south-west, and touched down upon a runway half way up the length of the field. They taxied to the Customs entry building near the garlanded civil airport building, and stopped the motors.

  Keith asked the flight engineer, ‘What time is it here?’

  ‘Ten minutes to five - in the afternoon.’

  Steps were wheeled up to the aircraft, the door opened, and they made their way out on to the tarmac, carrying their luggage. The humid heat hit Keith like a blow. He was wearing a blue serge suit with a waistcoat, a woollen shirt, and thick woollen underwear, clothes that had been reasonable enough in England thirty-six hours before but which were intolerable in the tropics, where everybody seemed to be wearing a light shirt and trousers and little else. Moreover, he was carrying his suitcase and his raincoat. He stood with the crew in a small group while a small Oriental man in charge of a brawny Customs officer came up and greeted Captain Fielding.

  ‘Very good afternoon, Captain,’ he said. He spoke with a slight American accent. ‘I am Harold Yamasuki, of the Yamasuki Trading Company, Incorporated. We are agents for the tanker ship, the Cathay Princess. You have had a good flight? You arrived exactly on time.’

  Captain Fielding put out his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Yamasuki,’ he said. ‘Yes, we had a good flight - no troubles.’ He turned around. ‘This is Mr Adams, who is to superintend the installation of the rotor. You had a cable about him?’

  Mr Yamasuki stopped shaking hands with the captain and shook hands with Mr Adams. ‘Very glad to know you,’ he said. ‘Yes, we had the radiogram about Mr Adams. He will be great help. Now, everybody must go to the entry formalities with passports and vaccination certificates ready, please, and after that the Customs. You give bags to the boy here and he will meet you with them in the examination room. There are nine? Yes, nine. I will now call the Beachcomber Hotel and arrange accommodation. You will not mind if two must share a room, a room with two beds? I will meet you as you come from Customs, and we go to the hotel. Then we can talk more. Now you go with officer to passport examination.’

  The captain said, ‘They’ll want us to shift the aircraft away from here before we go to the hotel. Are you unloading tonight?’

  ‘It is too late now,’ said Mr Yamasuki. ‘Tomorrow, I think, at seven o’clock we will begin to unload. By the time we could begin tonight it will be dark, and there would be the possibility of accident and damage to the rotor. I think it will be better in the day.’

  Mr Adams said, ‘I’m with you there, mate, all the way.’

  They went from the brilliant sunshine into the cool shade of the air-conditioned examination room. Keith passed through with the crew without difficulty and emerged into the Customs shed with them. Nobody had anything to declare and only a cursory examination was made. The bags were loaded into an elongated motor car, the captain spoke to the control tower and to Shell upon the telephone, and the crew went back to the machine to move it to the park. Keith Stewart went with them, leaving his coat, jacket, and waistcoat in the car. Even so, he sweated profusely as he walked out to the aircraft in his braces and blue trousers.

  There were palm trees by the foreshore, and the sea was glittering and blue. It was incredible that he, Keith Stewart, should be in a place like this.

  Moving the aircraft nearly a mile away and refuelling it took an hour. The sun had set and the quick darkness was covering the airport when the last man got down from the aircraft, slammed the door, and locked it. In the fading light the aircraft movements seemed to be continuous; they took off and landed with their winking navigation lights in the soft, velvety dusk, in what appeared to be an endless stream. Keith stood watching them, fascinated. ‘Busy place, this,’ remarked Mr King.

  The long car appeared with Mr Yamasuki and took them to the hotel. The agent consulted with the desk clerk about the rooms, and then turned to the captain. ‘I will now leave you to rest,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, at half-past six in the morning, I will come back with a car, and the truck will be beside the airplane at seven.’

  They talked about the mobile crane. ‘I will arrange,’ said Mr Yamasuki. ‘One thing. I have called the ship, the Cathay Princess to say you have arrived. I think some of the officers may come here tonight to meet you, and to talk about the electrical work with Mr Adams.’

  As he was going down the steps to the car Keith Stewart stopped him. ‘You can tell me, Mr Yamasuki. Is it possible to get from here to Tahiti?’

  ‘To Tahiti? There is no regular service. The Matson ships, they go Tahiti to Honolulu but not from here to Tahiti. There are rumours that they will change, but I do not know. There are Norwegian cargo steamers which call sometimes from Vancouver to Tahiti. They carry a few passengers.’

  ‘Will one of those be going soon?’

  Mr Yamasuki shook his head. ‘I do not think so. One was here last week. Perhaps in two months’ time. I will find out. Sometimes there is an island trading schooner going to Tahiti. They take passengers, not very comfortable. Sometimes, to sleep on deck.’

  ‘Would one of those be going soon?’

  ‘I do not know. I will ask tonight, and tell you in the morning. You wish to go from Honolulu to Tahiti, yourself?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I do not think it will be easy. But I will ask.’

  Keith Stewart was depress
ed, and tired, and very, very hot in his unsuitable clothes. He went back to the group at the desk and signed his name in the register, and found that he had been allocated to share a room with Dick King. They went up in the elevator to the fifth floor.

  The Beachcomber was a fairly modern hotel on the unfashionable, dockside side of the city, much used by aircrews and ships’ officers on account of its nearness to the airfield and to the docks. It had no swimming pool, but it commanded a pleasant view out over the ocean in the front and the mountains at the back. Keith and Dick King found themselves in a back room with a shower, two beds converted into lounges for the day, and a wide, deep verandah furnished with wicker chairs and table. The door of the room was louvred for the full height, permitting the cool trade wind to blow through the room continuously.

  ‘I’m for a shower,’ said Dick King, throwing off his clothes and making for it.

  Keith Stewart had never had a shower in the whole of his life. He had seen them in shop windows and had read about them, but one had never come his way. As a boy and a young man in Renfrew he had had a bath once a week, and though he had graduated from that to having a bath whenever he felt like it, it would have seemed to him a senseless extravagance to have one every day. He certainly felt like one now. While Dick was in the shower he stripped off his heavy woollen underwear with a sigh of relief, and stood in the cool breeze with a towel round his waist. Presently he opened his suitcase and stood looking at his clothing ruefully. His woollen cricket shirts and grey flannel trousers were the best he could do; they might be tolerable after dark but he knew now that they would be very hot in the daytime. Still, they were all he had.