by Nevil Shute
‘Is that short?’
‘There’s been a great run on it this morning. We shall be out very soon.’
He bought a can, had it filled with paraffin, and took it with him to the office. Then he went out again.
He got a Primus stove with difficulty at a ship chandler’s down by the docks. After trying half a dozen stores, he got some very large candles irreverently at an ecclesiastical suppliers. Fresh milk was unobtainable; it seemed that very little milk had come into Southampton that morning. He got a few tins of condensed milk at a grocer’s shop.
Towards noon he was in the High Street, walking back towards his office. Quite suddenly beneath his feet he felt a subterranean rumble, and a hundred yards away a manhole cover shot up into the air from the middle of the road, followed by a vivid sheet of yellow flame. The heavy cover fell with a resounding clang upon the road, doing no damage. There was a sudden rush of people from the street; one or two women screamed.
There was an expectant pause.
Nothing more happened, and presently the people ventured out into the street again. A little crowd had collected. A harassed-looking policeman with a grey drawn face and dirty streaks around his eyes appeared from somewhere and stood by the open manhole.
‘Move along there,’ he said mechanically. ‘Don’t get crowding round—there’s nothing to see. Keep moving on. Come on, there—keep moving. Bit o’ gas in the sewer. Nothing to worry about now. Move along, please.’
Corbett went over to the hole; the man recognised him as a police court acquaintance, and saluted. ‘Not so good, this,’ said Corbett.
‘I didn’t see it happen, sir,’ said the constable.
‘I was around the corner, in Fishbourne Street. But there have been one or two of these this morning.’
‘Did you say it was gas in the sewer?’
‘Town gas from the mains, they say, sir.’ He said wearily: ‘It’ll take a while to get things properly fixed up, after a night like what we’ve had.’
Near the Civic Centre Corbett bought a newspaper still wet from the press, and read about the war.
The war news was quite short, and made up from the news broadcasts suitably filled out by the local editor. There was an account of similar raids which had taken place in other towns, which did not interest him very much. It left him cold to hear in messages sent out from London that London had been more heavily bombed than any other town. On another page there were full details of the emergency programme of broadcasting, of academic interest only in a town where the electric mains were dead. He reflected for a minute. There was a battery set in his old yacht at Hamble, if he could get to that. But probably the batteries would be run down. He had not used it since the previous summer.
The back page of the paper was given over to a stirring patriotic appeal. It seemed that there were a number of ways in which he could enlist to serve his country. All of them involved leaving Joan and his three children to get along as best they could. His brows wrinkled in a frown; he wanted to think over that. It wasn’t a thing to be rushed into. If there was going to be another air-raid, somebody would have to be at hand to help Joan with the children. Especially if this talk of gas meant anything….
Back at the office his secretary, Miss Mortimer, was waiting for him with her hat and coat on. She got up as he came in.
‘Please, Mr. Corbett,’ she said. ‘Could I have the day off?’
He nodded. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘We shan’t be doing any work to-day. I’m going home myself.’
She sighed with relief. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Corbett. It’s my daddy and mummy, you see. They live all alone, and they’re so old now. I can’t get to know what’s happened to them, or if they want any help, unless I go there myself. I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said again. ‘Where do they live?’
‘Just outside Poole, Mr. Corbett—between Poole and Bournemouth. I’m not sure how the trains are going, but if it comes to the worst, I could get over on my bicycle. It’s only about thirty miles.’
She paused. ‘Of course, I went through the Air Raid Precautions course, and I’m supposed to be working at a First Aid post. But I can’t think of anything else but how Daddy and Mummy are getting on. I do think the old people ought to come first, don’t you, Mr. Corbett?’
‘That’s your own problem,’ he said. ‘I can’t help you there.’
She considered for a minute, and said doubtfully: ‘I might be able to get somebody to take my place before I go.’
She left him, and he turned to the old clerk. ‘We’ll pack up for the day,’ he said. ‘Lock up the office, and get along home and look after your family.’
‘Thank you, sir. But there’s only my wife and myself. The children are all out in the world.’
Corbett nodded. ‘So much the better for you.’
‘I’m sure, sir.’ The old man hesitated. ‘Did you hear where we could get our gas-masks, sir, by any chance?’
The solicitor shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard a word about that yet.’
He went out to the car, laden with his purchases. The rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted a little; over his head a couple of aeroplanes made reassuring noises, crossing, turning, and recrossing the city. He watched them for a minute.
‘Making a photographic survey of the damage,’ he said, half to himself. ‘That’s not a bad idea, for a start.’ He had guessed right.
Outside his office he ran into Andrews, crossing to his car. Andrews said: ‘Been down to the docks this morning?’
Corbett shook his head.
‘I’ve got a job going on down there. You never saw such a picnic.’
‘There’s been a lot of damage?’
‘Not a great deal, really. One of the small Cunard boats—I don’t know which—she’s foundered in the Ocean dock. They were saying that there was another one at Millbrook—a Greek tramp. One or two of the sheds have got it pretty bad. But the trouble is, they’re all trying to get away to sea together, on this tide. Evans told me there are thirty-eight ships docking out this morning—most of them just moving down to anchor in the Solent and Southampton Water. The masters won’t listen to reason, and they’re not giving a damn for anyone or anything. They’re getting their ships out of it before to-night.’
Corbett nodded slowly. ‘They think there’s another raid coming to-night?’
‘Everybody seems to think that.’ He paused. ‘I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it. This wind isn’t helping, either. They’ve had two collisions in the fairway—one quite bad. There aren’t enough tugs to go round. There’s a Dutch ship beached at Cracknore Hard with her stern right out in the channel—I never saw such a pickle.’
They stood in silence for a moment.
‘Heard anything about gas-masks?’ asked Corbett.
‘Yes. I asked about that at the Civic Centre. They reckon they’ll be here to-night.’
They separated, and Corbett got into his car to drive home. As he went, he noted with surprise the progress that was being made in the rehabilitation of the city. Trams were running again northwards from the Civic Centre. In London Road there had been three great craters, half-filled with water. Two of these had already been roughly filled with gravel brought by heavy lorries; in the third a strong gang of men were working on the repair of a sewer. Practically every manhole in the pavements and the roads was up, and occupied by a man working. Clearly it would not be many days before the services would be working again, in that district at any rate.
He drove on into the suburban roads, and there the situation was not quite so good. Most of the houses gaped with broken windows; in the streets the bomb-holes were still streaming water to the gutters.
‘There won’t be any water in the town, at this rate,’ he muttered.
He stopped the car before his garden gate and went into the house, carrying his purchases. Joan met him in the doorway.
‘Peter,’ she said,
‘Sophie’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘She lives at Romsey. She was awfully glum after breakfast, and then she said she wanted to go home. I tried to get her to stay out her week, but she wouldn’t. She just went and got her things on and walked out.’
‘Did she take her clothes and stuff with her?’
‘No. She said she’d send for them, or she’d come and get them. She was in such a state of nerves she didn’t know what she was doing.’
‘Has Annie come?’
She shook her head. ‘She hasn’t turned up to-day. We’ve got nobody at all.’
He laid his hand upon her arm. ‘Never mind. Annie may be in to-morrow. But if she isn’t, we’ll get along all right till things get settled down. There’s nothing doing in the office, so I’ll be able to give you a hand in the house for a bit.’
He mused for a moment. ‘That’s the evacuation of the city, of course,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Sophie’s one of them. I saw a lot of people going out along the London Road. But I don’t know that we’ve really come to that.’
He thought uneasily of the shipping, of the tramps and liners barging against each other and colliding in their endeavours to get clear of the city before night.
‘Oh, and Peter,’ said his wife. ‘The water closet in the downstairs lavatory has been misbehaving. It sort of over-flowed, I think. It’s beastly.’
He went with her to look; they stopped outside the door. The floor of the little room was covered in black, liquid slime, with an offensive smell. The pan was full of undulating sludge.
Joan said: ‘The Corporation ought to come and put that right for us, shouldn’t they? I mean, it ought not to do that.’
He agreed that it ought not. ‘But whether they’ll be able to spare anyone to come and look at it for the next day or two—that’s another matter.’
In this trouble, he went round to see Mr. Littlejohn. He found him with two joiners putting the finishing touches to the matchboarding of his drawing-room and first-floor windows, turning the rooms into dark caverns. ‘Made a nice job of this,’ said Mr. Littlejohn. ‘They’ll be starting on yours after dinner.’
‘It’s awfully good of you,’ said Corbett, and consulted him about the closet.
‘Mine did the same,’ said the builder wearily. ‘Terrible mess it made—all over the place. Unhealthy, too—not what one ought to have about in the house at all. I put down a lot of Sanitas. But see, I’ll show you what to do.’ He took Corbett and showed him how he had taken up an iron man-hole-cover in the front garden. ‘Now if it happens again, it just comes up and flows over in the garden here and soaks into the ground, and don’t hurt nobody.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Leastways,’ he said, ‘it’s better than having it in the house with you.’
Again Corbett told his story of the episode in the High Street, to an enthralled audience. ‘Of course,’ said Mr. Littlejohn, when he had finished, ‘that explains everything, when you get them sort of goings on. Blew the cover right up in the air, did it? Well I never!’
They talked happily about the drains for a time. And then:
‘You thought what you’re going to do if they come back again to-night?’ asked the builder.
Corbett rubbed his chin in perplexity. ‘I did think about a trench,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long it would take me to dig.’
‘Cor,’ said the builder, ‘that wouldn’t take no time, not just a little bit of a thing, like what you’d need. There’s only you and the missus, and the children. You’d want to get about five feet down and big enough to take a couple of chairs, just so that your heads was below the surface, sitting down. It wouldn’t take more than three hours, or four hours at the most, digging a little bit of a hole like that.’
‘Of course,’ said Corbett, ‘the other thing would be to get out into the country for the night.’
‘I been thinking of that,’ said Mr. Littlejohn slowly. ‘But—I don’t know. After all, they wouldn’t come two nights running, hardly—not to the same place.’
Corbett said: ‘I shouldn’t think so. At the same time, I’d sleep happier to-night if I’d got a trench to go to.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Littlejohn. ‘Tell you what. I’ll slip along to my place after dinner, and fetch back a couple o’ picks.’
CHAPTER II
AFTER lunch Corbett started in to dig his trench. The rain held off; before he began he made Joan come with him to the garden to settle where it was to be dug. They debated this for some time. ‘You don’t want to put it in the lawn,’ she said. ‘It’ll look awful when it comes to be filled in. You’d never get the mark out of the grass. Let’s have it in the back bed, along the wall. I don’t mind about the dahlias, and you can dodge the plum tree.’
Corbett scrutinised the nine-inch wall, already cracked in one or two places. ‘I don’t want that wall to come down on top of us,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I think the safest place is in the middle of the lawn.’
She could not deny that; they stood and looked at the smooth turf. ‘It does seem an awful shame,’ she said. She turned to him. ‘Peter, you don’t think we’re making too much of this, do you? I mean, I know we had a terrible time last night. But it’s not likely to happen again, is it? I remember reading about it in the last war. They never came to the same place twice over, did they?’
He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t see why they shouldn’t.’ He laid his hand upon her arm. ‘I think we’ll have it in the lawn,’ he said. ‘It’ll be an awful sweat, but I believe I’d like to have it for to-night—just in case. Look, you go down into the town and see if you can find any milk. I’ll look after the children.’
She nodded. ‘It’s not only milk. There’s bread and meat—oh, and all sorts of things. Hardly any of the tradesmen have been this morning. I’ll have to take the car, I think.’
She turned to him. ‘Baby’s asleep in the pram. You will look after her if she cries, won’t you? And don’t let Phyllis wake her up?’
He smiled. ‘Go on down into the town,’ he said. ‘They’ll be all right with me.’ He very much disliked looking after the children, and she knew it; she smiled at him, and went.
He decided to make his trench six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep. He marked it out on the grass in the middle of the lawn, and commenced to dig. He was in average condition for a young man working all day in an office, but he was tired and stale from lack of sleep. In spite of his fatigue he went at it doggedly; by the end of an hour he had dug about a foot deep over the area that he had marked.
He rested for a little then, and went on. When Joan returned an hour later he was very tired.
She stood and looked at it. ‘It isn’t very deep,’ she said. ‘Is it terribly hard work?’
‘Terribly,’ he said shortly.
She laid her hand upon his arm. ‘Poor old Peter. Come in and sit down for a bit, and I’ll make a cup of tea.’
He stared at the trench dissatisfied. ‘It’s got to be deeper if it’s going to be any good.’
‘After tea,’ she said. They had tea with condensed milk, reserving what fresh they had for the children. She had only been able to get a pint of milk, in an open jug, together with some more tinned milk and a variety of provisions. Most of the latter she had bought from a lorry in the street. ‘The shops didn’t seem to have anything you wanted,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Milk and stuff isn’t coming into the city. Everything’s very much disorganised to-day.’
She said: ‘The fresh bread only came into the shops this afternoon.’ And then she said: ‘Down in the town, everything’s beginning to smell. I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but it all seems sort of fusty—like an Italian town. Horrid.’
He laughed shortly. ‘Well, look at the drains. Our house isn’t just a bed of roses.’
She nodded. ‘Peter, what had we better do? I mean, now you’ve taken up that manhole thing in the front garden?’
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br /> He rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll have to do something about that.’
He did. He took a cane-bottomed chair, a sharp knife, a bucket, and one of the dining-room curtains, and built an edifice behind the garage that would have done credit to Lem Putt. He took Joan out and showed it to her proudly. ‘I don’t say that the City Engineer would view it with enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘But till he comes and puts the drains right, it’ll have to do.’
Joan was not impressed. ‘It doesn’t look very comfortable,’ she said. ‘And it’s going to be horrid when it rains. Can’t you put a roof over it?’
They went indoors, and made a large tea for the children in the kitchen, their last meal of the day. In the middle of that there came a thundering at the front door; Corbett went and opened it. There was a man there, wearing an armlet.
‘Gas-masks,’ he said. ‘How many in your household?’ There was a lorry slowly driving down the street, with men going from house to house.
‘Good work,’ he said, impressed. ‘There’s my wife and myself, and three children.’
‘How old are the children?’
‘Six and three. And a baby.’
The man went back to the lorry, and returned with the masks. ‘Here you are—be careful of them. Don’t use them unless the gas is really there. When you’ve used them for ten hours, come to the Civic Centre and exchange them for fresh ones. There. One large for you, medium for your wife, and two small ones for the children. We can’t do nothing for the baby.’
Corbett met his eyes. ‘What am I supposed to do with the baby?’
The man looked awkward. ‘Everyone asks that. You want to have it with you in a gas-proof room, if you can make one.’
‘That’s not so easy, with the windows in this state.’
‘I know. You might be able to screen off a bit of the cellar with wet blankets, or something of that.’
He moved on to the next house. Corbett went back to the kitchen, detached Joan from the children, and told her about the baby.
‘But, Peter,’ she said, ‘what are we to do? We can’t all sit out in your trench in gas-masks, and the baby not have one.’
