by Nevil Shute
There was a gate at the top of the hill leading into a spinney. We didn’t go in, but sat on the gate and looked out into the blue hazes over Oxfordshire. I finished my yarn there, and told her about the scheme for following the amphibian that we’d been getting out.
‘Will you be flying that machine?’ she asked.
‘With any luck,’ I said. ‘It would be a pity not to be in at the death.’
‘It all turns on the smuggling now, then,’ she said a little later. ‘There’s no question of arresting Roddy for the present, is there?’
‘Not much,’ I said ruefully. ‘He’s rather faded into the background. You see, it’s going to be most frightfully hard to make out a case of murder against him. We may get some decent evidence if we succeed in capturing the ship or the launch, but at present we haven’t got a case against him that will hold water—on the murder charge.’
‘I’m rather glad of that,’ she said quietly. ‘It would be a dreadful thing for him to stand his trial in England.’
I knocked my pipe out sharply on the top rail of the gate. ‘It was a dreadful thing when Compton got it,’ I said curtly. ‘He’s going to stand his trial for that, one of these days. We’ll see to that.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t believe he meant it,’ she said. ‘I never did. He—oh, he was different. Roddy wasn’t like that. He couldn’t have done a thing like that.
‘I went down and saw his mother,’ she said, ‘the day after I met you. She’s too old to understand.’
I glanced at her. ‘This is a pretty miserable show for you,’ I said.
‘It’s like the sort of thing one reads about in the papers,’ she said vaguely, ‘the sort of thing that happens to other people.’ She turned and looked up at me. ‘Why do you say it’s miserable for me?’ she asked. ‘You’ve had as much to do with it as I have—much more.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. ‘They’re your people, for one thing,’ I said. ‘You know Mattani, and you knew Compton.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I don’t know what we should have done without you—by ourselves, just me and Denis,’ she said unexpectedly. She was silent then for a bit. I remember that I sat looking at her, at the soft lights in her hair, at her slim grace. She reminded me of the drawings of a man who used to do things in Punch, a man called Shepperson or some such name. She was just like that.
She continued: ‘I can’t think what we should have done by ourselves. You don’t know what a help you were—in every way. You braced up Denis so.’ She laughed. ‘You know, we were both dreadfully afraid of you. You looked dreadful with that cut over your eye, all bandaged and dirty. And your coat made you so big.… Did you know you drank nearly a bottle of whisky that night? Denis was awfully afraid you were getting drunk, and it didn’t have the least effect. I don’t know what we should have done without you. You came along, sort of grim and efficient, and took everything on your shoulders.’
‘I suppose I’m more used to this sort of thing,’ I said at last.
I looked down, and saw her grey eyes fixed on me. ‘How do you mean?’ she said.
I laughed, and then wished I hadn’t. I didn’t like the sound of it.
‘Birth, education, and upbringing,’ I said, a little bitterly. ‘I was much better fitted for it than either of you.’
She looked at me queerly, and I went on to tell her all about myself, about my father who died on the China Station and my mother that I never remember to have seen. I didn’t dwell very much on my life before I was sixteen because I don’t very often think of it myself; to me it now seems inconceivable that any well-meaning people could have given a boy such a rotten time. But I told her how I cut away from such relations as I had—about the wisest thing I ever did—and how I got a job as odd boy in a motor garage, years before the war. After that I was a chauffeur for a bit, at a place in Herefordshire. And then I told her how Pat Reilly and I started a garage on our own with a capital of forty-one pounds, and how we produced a cycle-car that was the hottest thing in its class for six months—the Stenning-Reilly car. I told her what a corking little car it was, and how proud we were of it, and how it was going to make our fortunes. I still think we could have done it. Then came the war, and I told her how we had chucked it at the beginning of 1915 and joined up. I told her something of what that had meant to us, just as we had got the capital promised for setting up a little factory, just as we were beginning to book orders for the car.
Then I went on to tell her how we had both got commissions before very long, and I told her the story of how Pat was surrounded in his Tank in 1917, and killed. I told her how I had gone on flying all through the war with hardly a scratch. I told her about the life in France, too, where between the patrols I learnt golf from one of the St. Andrews caddies and boxing from an ex-welterweight champion; and I told her of the hectic, miserable leaves from France, when a dozen of us used to come over and plant ourselves at the Regent Palace—never entirely sober from one day to the next. Then I told her how I was sent home early in 1918 as an instructor, and how for me that proved to be the end of the war. I went on and told her about my life after the war—my piloting, my golf, and my little speculations.
I got tired of the sound of my own voice at last, and we stood leaning against the gate for a bit looking out into the fields. Below us the road to Oxford ran down the hill, the road that we had driven on that first morning of all, when she was driving me to Abingdon on the first stage of my run. I was about to remind her of this when she spoke again.
‘You’ve had a very full life,’ she said quietly. ‘You don’t regret that, do you?’
I thought for a minute. I’d never looked at it like that.
‘No,’ I said at last, ‘I don’t. I’ve had a pretty good time, taking it all round, and I don’t know that I’d change it. But if it has been a full life, it has been because I hadn’t the wit to make it otherwise.’
‘How do you mean?’
I glanced at her. ‘Did you know that I had been in prison?’
She looked up at me, and smiled.
‘Yes,’ she said simply.
I didn’t expect that, and it put me badly out of gear. ‘Who told you that?’ I asked.
For a moment I thought that she was going to laugh outright. ‘Sir David Carter,’ she said.
I tried to adjust my ideas a bit.
‘Did he tell you anything else about me?’ I asked weakly.
She nodded. ‘Lots of things that you’ve left out—all the really interesting things.’
I looked at her steadily for a moment, and then towards the path that led down to the hotel. It was what a man like me had to expect, I thought—and I can’t say I found the reflection sweet. It was natural that they should have found out all about me at the Yard. It was natural that Sir David should have told his daughter’s friend something about me when he saw the way the wind was blowing, but—it was bad luck.
I looked at my watch. ‘I’m afraid we ought to be getting back,’ I said evenly. ‘I’ve got to meet a man in Town at six.’
‘Oh …’ She remarked. ‘Sir David didn’t tell me anything as bad as that.’
I swung round, and saw her still sitting on the gate and laughing at me. That stung me up a bit.
‘I don’t suppose he did,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to tell. He probably told you that I’ve been thrown out of half the theatres in London in my time. He may have told you about that business at the Metropole, and I dare say he told you about the row I had at Les Trois Homards. If he told you about that he probably told you about the girl, and how she died.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘He told me about that.’
I turned away.
‘Well, there you’ve got it,’ I said bitterly. ‘There’s nothing sensational—I don’t go in for chicken butchery. I’ve never had anyone to think about except myself. If you like, it’s a record of a mean life, meanly lived. You know how I started. Did you expect any more?’
I knew that I
had hurt her. She slipped down from the gate and came and stood beside me.
‘Philip,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t be so sensitive. You know I didn’t mean all those silly little things. You know they don’t matter two hoots.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What did you mean?’
She glanced up into my face. ‘The other things,’ she said. ‘The things you haven’t told me about even yet. About your D.S.O., and why they gave you the Military Cross.’
I turned and faced her. ‘You mustn’t think about those things,’ I said evenly. ‘That was in the war—nearly ten years ago. But this is peace-time, and those things don’t count for anything now. Or they oughtn’t to. You mustn’t let them.’
‘It may have been years ago,’ she said. ‘But they haven’t forgotten about them at the Yard.’
‘It’s their business to remember things,’ I said.
She came very close to me. It was bright sunlight on the down. I remember noticing a rabbit that came out from behind a patch of furze about fifty yards away and looked at us.
‘Philip,’ she said quietly, ‘you mustn’t talk like that. You know Sir David Carter thinks a frightful lot of you.’
I took her by the shoulders. ‘I don’t care a damn about Sir David,’ I said. ‘But you—what do you think of me?’
She looked up at me gravely. ‘Philip dear,’ she said, ‘I think that you’re the best and truest man I’ve ever met.’
CHAPTER NINE
I WAS pretty busy in the next few days that remained before the 16th. They sent out a chap from the Yard to watch things in Italy, but by the time he got out there the steamer had already left—we presumed for England. I spent most of my time running backwards and forwards between the Yard and the aerodrome.
We had a little trouble with Morris at first, who refused point-blank to charter us a machine for the job. Civil aviation, he said, was a sober and a serious business, and stunts of the sort that we proposed would only serve to hinder progress by frightening away the man in the street, who very naturally regarded flying as the special province of warriors, criminals, and the like.
I made him see reason at last. Then he wanted to make a little money out of us, arguing that the machine was to be utilised against the King’s enemies and so the insurance policy was void. We argued him off this, and finally won his grudging consent. He stipulated:
(a) for the utmost publicity if the affair were a success, and
(b) for complete secrecy if, in his opinion, publicity would cast a slur upon the firm.
I remember this amused Sir David. We could have got a machine from Croydon without all this fuss, but I wanted to have my own mechanic on the job. And I knew perfectly well that if Morris once took it on he’d do his utmost to make a success of it.
I chose one of our light touring machines. She had a turn of speed of about a hundred and twenty miles an hour, and she handled like a fighting scout. She had a cabin to seat four; I decided to fill up a part of the cabin space with extra fuel tanks, and in this way I provided sufficient fuel for seven hours in the air. For a long time I hesitated over the question of taking a passenger as an observer, and finally decided against it. The view from the cabin was very much restricted, and communication with him wouldn’t have been easy. The extra weight would have taken a little off the performance of the machine. It meant letting someone else into the secret, and we didn’t want to do that till the last moment, when, of course, the signallers would have to be instructed in their part of the business.
I had the machine fitted with the standard wireless telephone set. I knew all about that and had used it regularly when I was flying from Croydon on the cross-Channel service. The fitting up of the machine in this way raised very little comment in the works. Morris gave out that I was taking the machine abroad on a journalistic stunt, to rush back the photographs and cinema films of the wedding of an archduke. We often had those jobs to do.
So the days passed in preparing the machine. If what I had heard in Florence was correct, the cargo was to be landed in the Scillies on the night of Saturday-Sunday. On the Thursday afternoon I went to the Yard for a final conference. They had kept me rather in the dark till then, but now they produced all their plans and arrangements and showed me everything.
Norman’s part of the business put the wind up me properly—I wouldn’t have taken on a job like that for quids. He was to be the observer at Marazan. He had had a telephone line run unostentatiously from St. Mary’s to White Island, the rocky and uninhabited island to the north of Marazan Sound. He proposed to take up his position there under cover of darkness on the previous night, and to lie out there for the whole of Saturday to avoid the possibility of being seen on the way to his observation post.
Under the cover of darkness a destroyer and a sloop were to close the islands from the direction of the south-east. During the early part of the night these were to work round and lie off to the north of the islands, showing no lights. Norman, in telephonic communication with Hugh Town and so with the mainland, would watch events in the Sound. Immediately after the departure of the amphibian he was to send up a rocket. On that the sloop and the destroyer were to open up their searchlights and arrest every vessel in the vicinity.
It seemed to me a pretty little plan, and quite likely to go through all right. I must say I didn’t care much for Norman’s job. It struck me that he’d stand precious little chance if the Dagoes happened to find out that he was there.
My part of the business was not so difficult; for one thing, I had plenty of help. My job was to stand by with the machine at a point not very far from Taunton. I had chosen a large pasture there that the machine could operate from, and in one corner of it the Sappers had set up a field wireless station. This was in telephonic communication with half a dozen observation stations up the north and south coasts of Devon and Cornwall. I should wait on the ground till we had some news of the amphibian travelling up the coast; then I should get into the air and trust to luck to be able to pick her up in the dim light of the dawn, keeping in touch with the Sappers by wireless telephony.
At Fowey and at Padstow the Anti-Aircraft lads were setting up sound-ranging stations.
I had only one modification to suggest to these arrangements, but that was one that saved our bacon later. I suggested that a line of posts should be strung out along the Exeter-Barnstaple road that runs straight across Devon from north to south. The Sappers laid a field cable along the whole length of this road on the Saturday morning, and dropped a man every three miles with a telephone that he could tap into the wire. All through they did their part of the business extraordinarily well.
I flew down to Taunton on the Saturday afternoon, taking my mechanic with me. The field that we had picked to fly from was a couple of miles to the west of the town, not very far from the village of Grant Haddon. It was a fine, sunny afternoon. We got down there at about six o’clock after an uneventful flight. I found the field without difficulty, circled round once for a look-see, and put her down gently on the grass.
There was a bell tent in one corner of the field with one or two soldiers beside it, watching the machine. I taxied over to the tent, swung the machine round into the wind, and stopped the engine. As I was slowly unfastening my helmet one of the men came up to the machine.
‘Captain Stenning?’ he said.
I heaved myself up out of the cockpit and dropped down on to the grass beside him. ‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘That’s me.’
I followed him into the tent. He had a vast amount of electrical gear there that he said was a wireless station; I took his word for it. He showed me the land telephone line that connected him up with all the other stations, and then he showed me the petrol that had been provided for filling up my machine. I left the mechanic to deal with this, and went with an orderly to meet the officer in charge.
I dined alone that night, in a little hotel that I found in the village. It was half full of summer residents, a couple of elderly maiden la
dies, an old man who looked as if he’d been missing his Kruschens, and a honeymoon couple. I had nothing to do that evening till ten o’clock or so, and was too restless to spend it in the tent gossiping with the subaltern in charge. I wandered off to the village and found this little place, and ordered a dinner that brought the proprietor hurrying to me in respect.
It was a warm summer evening. I lingered for a long time over my dinner, grateful for the quiet of the moment. I knew that I had a pretty tough night before me; I think that even then I had a dim idea that when the cold dawn came up over the fields I should be fighting for my life. Certainly I made the most of that dinner. They served me well. They had put me at a small table by an open window that looked over a croquet lawn to a little wood; I sat there musing between the courses, my chin upon my hands, staring out of the window, thinking about my engagement, thinking about my golf handicap, thinking what a perfectly corking country England was.
I shall always remember that evening that I spent alone in that little pub, the night before I met Mattani. I had a straightforward job ahead of me, a job that I knew I could do well. I had no worries. I remember that I was most frightfully happy, in a quiet sort of way.
It came to an end, of course. I had my coffee out on the mossy lawn, and then it was time for me to go. I paid my shot in the dusk of the little hall, and strode out of the hotel. I passed the window of the drawing-room as I went by outside; the lights were on and the window open; I paused for a minute in the darkness and looked in. There they all were. The two maiden ladies were sitting together in a corner, one of them knitting, the other writing a letter on her knee. The old gentleman was reading an old book, his spectacles insecurely mounted on the extreme end of his nose. The honeymoon couple were sitting very close together on a settee, reading the same book. It was like a bit of Jane Austen.
I laughed, and swung away to my own life, the life that I knew, and as I went I thought of that same old line of Kipling:
