by Nevil Shute
He laughed at her gently. “Australia is cold and wet in the winter,” he said, “and there are dirty railway stations in Australia, too, and dirty streets.”
They walked to the cloak-room and he handed in the ticket; they stood waiting while the porter went to fetch his bag. “Carl,” she said. “Your hut up in the Howqua—that’ll be all right, will it?” She looked up at him half fearful. “You don’t think it’s like the other Charlie Zlinter’s hut, with a door swinging open and a green loaf in the cupboard, and a possum or a rat nesting in the bed?”
He pressed her arm. “I also thought of that,” he said. “I left everything there very clean, with no bedclothes or cloths at all, and with insect powder sprinkled all over. Billy Slim is to go there once each week and light a fire and open all the windows, and he has money for repairs, also. It will be there clean and waiting for us when we can get back to it, when we can get away from Europe for a second time.”
“We’ll get back to it, all right,” she said. “Some day, somehow, we’ll get back there again.”
THE END
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2010
Copyright © The Trustees of the Estate of Nevil Shute Norway
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by William Heinemann in 1952 and subsequently published by Vintage Books, a division of Random House Group Limited in London in 2009.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-47405-6
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