by Nevil Shute
He sighed. ‘I don’t know. There may not be any gas. I’ll see if I can think of something.’
He went out to the garden and continued digging in the falling dusk. He dug till he could not see what he was doing any more. Then he stopped, sweating and very tired, and went to have a word with Mr. Littlejohn. He found him knocking off work.
‘Eh,’ said the builder, ‘I’m not the man I was. I haven’t dug like this for twenty years. Time was, I’d have sunk a little hole like that in a couple of hours.’
He had done about as much as Corbett, about four feet deep, but very much neater. ‘I was looking for something to put over it,’ he said. ‘Make a roof for keeping out the rain. Splinters, too. But I don’t seem to have anything up here—unless I unscrewed a door….’
‘Drive the car over it,’ said Corbett.
‘Eh,’ said the builder slowly, ‘that’s a good idea, that is.’
He rubbed his hands together. ‘What say if we have a Guinness?’
Corbett smiled. ‘That’s the most sensible remark I’ve heard to-day.’
It was practically dark in the garden. There had been isolated aircraft in the air most of the day; now with the coming of the night there seemed to be a great deal more activity. A squadron of nine machines passed above their heads, flying at a low altitude.
The builder glanced up at them. ‘Aye,’ he said without rancour. ‘There’s plenty of them now. But I’d like to know where them chaps were last night.’
With the evening the clouds were rolling away. In the deep blue of the sky the few stars were showing; it was clearing every minute. They stood together in the garden looking up.
‘Going to be a clear night,’ said Corbett.
Mr. Littlejohn nodded soberly. ‘That’s bad,’ he said. ‘Clear nights is what they like. Remember how they used to come over, moonlight nights, in the last war?’
Corbett nodded. ‘But it wasn’t clear last night,’ he said.
They moved towards the house. ‘That’s right,’ said the builder. ‘Raining cats and dogs, it was—all night.’ He paused. ‘Did you get to hear anything about the raid—I mean to say, how they done it? I didn’t hear any aeroplanes at all, last night. And how did they know what they was bombing at?’
Corbett shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve not met anyone who does.’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Littlejohn, ‘if they did that to us last night when they couldn’t see nothing, we’ll cop it properly to-night when they can see what they’re doing.’ He sighed. ‘I ought to try and get a bit deeper with my hole, I suppose.’
They went into the house, and sat down in the florid sitting-room; he produced cigarettes and Guinness. A copy of the paper lay spread out upon the table. The builder laid his hand on it.
‘All this is to say about enlisting,’ he said slowly. ‘Are you going to do anything?’
Corbett was silent for a minute. ‘I don’t see how I can, just yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what would happen to my family. Joan couldn’t get on by herself, with three kids to look after, and all this going on. I don’t know what she’d do, if I wasn’t here.’ He raised his head. ‘It isn’t that I’ve got the wind up. But one’s got to see one’s wife and kids right, first of all.’
The builder nodded. ‘You don’t want to think of it,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be proper for you to go away and leave Mrs. Corbett to struggle along on her own. You don’t want to think of enlisting till you’ve seen them right.’ He took a drink of stout. ‘I been feeling the same,’ he said. ‘There’s only the two of us, Mr. Corbett—just me and the missus. And last time I enlisted right at the beginning, August the 7th it was, and went right through. Wounded twice, I was. In the fat part of the leg—that wasn’t nothing—and one right through here.’ He tapped his left shoulder. ‘And I’m not that old I couldn’t go again. I’m forty-eight.’
He paused. ‘I been thinking about it all the afternoon,’ he said. ‘And I made up my mind, Mr. Corbett. I’m not going—not till I can see my way a bit better. It wouldn’t be fair on the missus leaving her alone, with raids like that we had likely to happen any night. We’ve been together all these years, and I’m not going to leave her at a time like this. It wouldn’t be right. Of course,’ he said, ‘if I could get to see her settled and comfy in a little house somewhere where it’s safe, then it’ld be another matter.’
Corbett laughed shortly. ‘Somewhere safe and comfy,’ he repeated. ‘It seems to me that’s going to take a bit of finding.’
The builder stuck his chin out. ‘That may be. But till I’ve got the missus properly fixed up they’re not going to get me to go soldiering again.’
Corbett finished his glass, and got up. ‘I’ve got to go on,’ he said. ‘Let me know if I can do anything to help in the night. And thanks for the drink.’
Mr. Littlejohn came with him to the door. ‘You been out this afternoon? I took a walk round. They’ve been getting on fine with all these holes in the roads. I reckon the Corporation have done champion. Another two or three days will see it all cleaned up, the rate they’re getting on.’ He laughed. ‘That’s if they don’t have it all to do again, after to-night.’
He looked up at the sky, brilliantly clear and starry. ‘Good luck, Mr. Corbett,’ he said soberly. ‘Remember that I’m just over the way, if you want any help.’
Corbett went back into his house. Joan came to meet him, looking tired and worn. ‘I’ve got the children into bed,’ she said. ‘They were awfully disappointed that they weren’t going to sleep in the garage. We had tears about it. Peter, do you think they’ll come again to-night?’
‘It’s a bright, starry night,’ he said. ‘It must be perfect for a bombing raid. I’m afraid they may.’
She nodded. ‘I thought that, too. I’ve been looking out what we’ve got for first-aid, if we wanted it.’
‘That’s a good idea. How are we fixed?’
‘Not so bad. We’ve got a lot of bandages and cotton-wool, and some iodine and plaster. I keep it for the children, knees and elbows. And one could always make a splint out of something or other. The only thing we haven’t got is any sort of sedative—morphia, or anything like that.’
He eyed her. ‘Do you think we need it?’
‘Well—do you?’
She hesitated for a minute. ‘They say the maid at that house down the road lay out in the front garden for three hours before the ambulance came. It’s like the war, Peter. I do think we should have something of the sort.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll have to get it from a doctor. I could go round and see if Gordon’s in.’
The surgeon had been godfather to his son. They were great friends, a friendship born of week-ends spent together on the little yacht, fishing and bathing in the Solent. Corbett walked round to his house, a quarter of a mile away, and told his need to Mrs. Gordon. ‘I’ll see if he’s awake, Peter,’ she said. ‘I think he is. But he was up at the hospital all night, and he didn’t get back till nearly midday.’
‘Don’t wake him, Margaret, whatever you do.’
She shook her head. ‘I won’t do that.’
She went upstairs; in a few minutes the surgeon came down in his shirt-sleeves. ‘I was just getting up,’ he said. ‘My God, Corbett—what a night! Are your people all right?’
The surgeon rubbed his hand across his eyes. ‘You never saw anything like it at the hospital,’ he said. ‘Two hundred and thirty major operations in seven hours. Each of us had two tables going—operating on the one while they were getting the other ready. God help us if there’s another raid to-night. We haven’t been able to evacuate them yet, and we’re in an awful jam. They’re lying all along the corridors on mattresses.’
‘I’d no idea that it was anything like that. How many casualties do you suppose there were?’
‘The inside of a thousand—say one for every bomb. Of those about three hundred must have been killed outright. We had five or six hundred at the hospital.’
Corbett sa
id: ‘You must be frightfully tired. I won’t keep you.’ He explained his need for morphia.
The surgeon scribbled a prescription. ‘Get this at the chemist,’ he said. ‘One tablet only, in water. Not more, in any circumstances. And look, this is important. Get hold of a blue pencil, and chalk a big cross on the patient’s cheek if you’ve given it.’
‘What about the children?’
‘Half a tablet—not that unless you absolutely must. Don’t give it to the baby at all.’
Corbett thanked him, and walked down into the town to find a chemist. Over his head in the clear night the aircraft roared on their patrol; in the distance an occasional search-light shot a white beam to the deep blue sky. As he went, he saw the progress that had been made with the craters in the streets since morning. There were none now that had not been attended to; those that had not been filled in were boarded over, and the flow of water to the gutters had been stopped.
In one part of the town the electricity was on. The street-lamps were turned out and all lights were subdued by curtains, but the mere fact of the light being there at all gave promise for the future.
He visited the chemist, and got his morphia. As he was leaving the shop he ran into a young man whom he knew slightly, who worked in the office of the Town Clerk at the Civic Centre. He talked to him for a few minutes about the state of the city.
‘The electricity is pretty straightforward,’ said the young man. ‘It’s on now over a good part of the town. The telephone should be all right to-morrow—we got a line to London restored this afternoon. Gas—Lord knows when we’ll get the gas again. Sewers—well, they work in some parts. But it’s the water that’s the real difficulty now. There’s no water to speak of in any part of the city, and what there is just bubbles up out of the pavements and runs away to waste.’
He paused. ‘Good class houses have storage tanks, of course—the sort of house that you live in. But some of the poorer parts are in a terrible way for water, really they are. In Chapel and in Northam, down behind the docks, they’ve been scooping up the water from the gutters where it came up out of the road, and drinking that. If this goes on we’ll have to start carting water in from the country.’
‘It’s not only Southampton,’ he said. ‘It’s the same all over. Every city in the country seems to be the same for water. We’re all in the same jam.’
He swayed a little as he stood, and caught at the chemist’s door. He laughed shortly. ‘I’m about done in, I don’t mind telling you. I’m one of the Air Raid Wardens—I was up all last night. And after that, a day like this in the office … I hope to God that they don’t come again to-night.’
Corbett went back through the dark, unlighted streets to his house. Joan had a hot meal ready for him; they sat down together. ‘I’d never have believed the town would rally round so well, and get the mess cleared up so quick,’ he said. ‘But everyone’s tired out. If they should come again to-night—it’ll be just too bad.’
Over their heads the sky seemed full of aeroplanes, passing and re-passing in the night.
After his supper, Corbett went out to the garden, and dug for another hour at his trench. He was so tired at the end that he could hardly lift the pick; he got down to a depth of about five feet below the surface. Finally he could do no more. He went and got the car and drove it over the flower-beds into the garden, crossing the lawn till it straddled above the trench. Then he went back to the house, utterly exhausted.
Joan met him in the hall. She had collected in baskets all that they were likely to need during the night: the gas-masks, first-aid kit, food, and whisky. These she had put ready in the hall. Corbett went over to them. ‘God!’ he said. ‘Fancy having to do this sort of thing!’
They stared at each other in wonder. ‘It’s all happened in so short a time,’ said the girl. ‘Like being in a different world.’
He nodded. ‘Well, there’s nothing more that we can do. Now we’ve just got to wait for it.’
She laid her hand upon his arm. ‘You must go to bed and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘I’m going to sleep upstairs with the children. Get some sleep, anyway, before anything happens. I’ve put a bottle in your bed.’
He kissed her. ‘You’ll come and wake me if you should hear anything?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘I wouldn’t take off too many clothes, if I were you,’ he said. ‘Be so that you can get out in a hurry, if we have to.’
He went upstairs and lay down in his underclothes. Over the house the aircraft droned in the dark night; there seemed to be great numbers of them in the air. ‘They’re on the spot all right to-night,’ he muttered to himself. Then he rolled over on his side, and sank into a heavy dreamless sleep.
When next he stirred and opened his eyes, the day was bright.
He blinked, leaned up on one elbow, and looked at his watch. It was seven o’clock. A shaft of sunlight, nearly horizontal, was streaming into the room; he sat up and rubbed his eyes. Then it came to him that there had been no raid, and that he was sleeping in his clothes.
He got up and went to the window, feeling rather foolish. He saw his garden and the ruins of his lawn, the piles of raw clay on the grass, the car perched drunkenly above the trench, the pick and shovel lying discarded in a rose-bed. He passed a hand over his face, and went to the wash-stand for a drink of water.
He went to have a bath, still half asleep. He remembered the water shortage before turning on the taps, however, and did his best with a cold sponge. Then he went back to his room, and dressed in a dark business suit.
Joan came to him as he was dressing. ‘There wasn’t any raid,’ she said. ‘I slept right through. Did you?’
‘Never had such a night.’ He turned to her. ‘I believe we’ve been making altogether too much of this thing,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault—I should have had more confidence in the defences. I ought to have known they’d never get away with it a second time.’
‘You mean, they got through with the first raid just because they took us by surprise?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘They had perfect weather for a raid last night. But with the aeroplanes there were about, they couldn’t possibly get through again. I think we shall be all right now.’ He smiled, a little ruefully. ‘But just look at the mess I’ve made of our lawn!’
She came and looked out of the window with him. ‘It is a mess,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Never mind, dear—I’ll get the gardener to put it right. It was the right thing for you to do.’
‘You think so? I’ve been thinking we got rather carried away.’
‘I don’t think we did. After all, they might have come again. We couldn’t know.’
He nodded. ‘I suppose we couldn’t. Anyway, you’d better get the gardener for another half day this week.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I rather like to feel it’s there. Don’t let’s be in too much of a hurry to get it filled in.’
‘All right. Go on and get the children up, and I’ll start cooking breakfast. What have we got—bacon and eggs? I wish we’d got some maids back.’
‘They’ll probably be back to-day.’
Breakfast was a tricky, tiresome meal, complicated by lack of milk and by the requirements of the children. Before it was over tradesmen started to arrive at the back door, amongst them the milkman. Corbett finished his meal as soon as possible and then, on plea of urgent work, made his escape to the office.
‘I’d like to have the car this morning,’ said Joan. ‘I’ve got a lot of shopping I must do, and I’ll have to take the family with me, baby and all. I can manage if I have the car. Shall I come and pick you up for lunch?’
He nodded. ‘Look in about one o’clock. I’ll come home if I can.’
He walked down to the office. In the streets the trams and omnibuses were running normally; in spite of the boarded windows and the gravel-filled craters in the roads the city seemed to have regained its usual atmosphere. He bought a paper at the first shop th
at he passed and stopped for some minutes on the pavement reading about the war. It seemed that we had carried out a great reprisal raid, but the communique was short; there had been no time for any great detail.
‘Hope our chaps got away with it as well as they did,’ he muttered.
He went on to the office. There was a very big mail waiting for him on his desk, two days’ post in one. His partner, Bellinger, who lived at Bishop’s Waltham, came into the office; they exchanged experiences and discussed the war news for a few minutes, then separated to deal with the arrears of work. They were seriously inconvenienced by the absence of Miss Mortimer, their secretary; Bellinger sent Duncan, the managing clerk, into town to find and engage another girl. Corbett spent the morning laboriously typing answers to a dozen letters, and in drafting out a partnership agreement.
Towards lunch-time he was startled and pleasantly surprised to hear the telephone-bell ring. He went to the switchboard himself and answered it. It was Gordon, speaking from the hospital.
He said: ‘Is that you, Corbett? It’s Gordon this end. Thank God this thing’s working again. You got that prescription all right? Fine. Look here. I want you to see that every drop of anything your family have to drink has been boiled. Yes—boiled. We’re getting posters out about it in the town this afternoon, but I wanted to ring you and tell you personally. It’s really important. Tell Joan as soon as you can. She’ll have to boil all milk, and especially all water, before she uses it. And try to keep her off raw vegetables and fruit.’
‘I’ll tell her. But what’s it all about?’
‘I can’t tell you over the telephone. And, anyway, we’re not quite certain yet ourselves. But there’s a lot of sickness in the Northam district that’s come up quite suddenly, and we’re a bit worried about it. You’d better tell your staff about boiling the water. Don’t make it alarmist.’
‘I won’t do that.’
‘Good man. It’s probably nothing at all—just a scare, you know. Doctors who’ve been out East get funny notions, sometimes. But tell Joan to boil everything she can.’
