by Nevil Shute
“Of course I do,” I said. “If it’s not too dull for you.”
She sighed happily. “It’s all so perfect here. It’s going to be the loveliest holiday I’ve ever had.” She rippled into laughter. “Won’t Ethel be jealous when I tell her!” Ethel was her friend who had gone to Scarborough. “And she’ll never believe me when I tell her I’ve been good.”
I laughed and took her arm. “I don’t suppose she will,” I said. And so we went and dined.
I forget what we talked about at dinner that night; I only remember that the telephone bell rang in the middle of it. I left the table and went to it in the library, and it was Joan speaking from her house in Golders Green.
“Is that Malcolm?”
“Speaking,” I said.
“Oh, Malcolm—this is Joan this end.” I said something polite. “What I rang you up about was this: can we come down and spend the night with you to-morrow—me and Philip? We’ve got a couple of days for the Irene, and Philip wants to have a talk with you. Oh, just one minute, he’s here.”
Stenning came to the telephone. “Evening, Stevenson; I say, is it you who’s been putting the C.I.D. on my track again? I had a fellow called Norman call to see me two or three days ago—wanted to know all sorts of things. He said I’d told you, or something. Yes, I met him once before—not a bad cove, is he?” I sometimes think that Stenning must know everybody in the world. “Well, what I thought was this: Joan and I might come down in time for dinner to-morrow night, and we’d have a chat about it before going off in the Irene. How’s that?”
“Quite all right,” I replied. “You won’t be able to have your usual room, though. You’ll have to put up with single ones.”
He asked: “Why’s that?”
Some things can hardly be explained over the telephone. I said: “It’s occupied.”
I heard him laugh. “I remember when I was a young man I used to live in sin a bit myself,” he said genially. There was a scuffling noise at the other end; I could imagine Joan throwing a cushion at him. “That’s all right, old boy—we quite understand.” I smiled; he had an uncanny flair for hitting near the mark. “All right, we’ll be down in time for dinner. Can I land in Thompson’s field?”
“I expect so. I’ll get him to clear that shed. It’s a Moth, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” he said. “All right, I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the receiver and went back to Mollie in the dining-room. “That was my cousin and her husband,” I told her. “Speaking from London. They’re coming down here to spend the night to-morrow.”
She stared at me in alarm. “Coming here?”
I nodded. “I think you’ll like them.”
She waited till Rogers was out of the room, then beat towards me. “Please, Commander Stevenson,” she said, “don’t you think I’d better not be here when your cousins come?” She paused for a moment. “I mean, it looks so funny for you.”
I laughed. “Not half so funny as it does for you.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind a bit about me. But, I mean, it looks so awful for you with your friends, having a strange girl in the house, and everything.”
I buttered a bit of toast. “If my friends don’t like the way I carry on they needn’t come,” I said phlegmatically. “I’d rather have the strange girl, myself.” I paused. “As a matter of fact, you don’t need to worry about these people—really. They’ll only be here for the one night, and you’ll like Joan.”
She asked me: “What’s their name?”
“Stenning,” I said, “Sir Philip and Lady Stenning. I expect you’ve heard about him, haven’t you? The flying man.”
She stared at me, wide-eyed. “I saw him on the pictures once. Is he your cousin?”
“His wife is. Lady Stenning is my cousin Joan.”
“Oh——” She thought about it for a minute, and then she said: “Don’t you think I’d better just go away while they’re here? I mean, I’m sure Lady Stenning will think it awfully funny, won’t she?” She said: “I could just go down and stay in the town till they’ve gone.”
“If you talk like that,” I said, “I’ll ring up and say they can’t come.”
She laughed and said I mustn’t do that, and we went on with dinner, but I could see that she was not at ease. She talked carefully, and a little absent-mindedly, about unimportant things, but said no more about it till the table was cleared and we rose to go into the other room. In the hall she hesitated.
“Please,” she said, “I’ve only got this evening-frock, you know, and it’s two years old.” She looked down at it critically. “It’s terribly grubby. Do you think it will be all right for Lady Stenning?”
I smiled. I think she thought that Joan would look at her through a lorgnette, and that Stenning would wear a morning-coat and talk about the League. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “They’re flying down, so they won’t bring much stuff. I don’t suppose Joan will want to change at all. And anyway, she hasn’t got a dinner-frock that’s a patch on that one.”
She beamed. “I’m glad you like me in it,” she said. “It was awfully pretty, but it’s an old thing now.”
We went into the library and had our coffee sitting on the chesterfield, and over it she told me how she had had that dress in the first instance for a speciality dance she used to do when she was in a Palais in Manchester, and she told me how she had altered it to make it into a dinner-frock. And from that we went on talking about dancing and music, till at last I said: “Wouldn’t you like to play the piano a bit to-night? I’d like it awfully if you would.”
She looked very doubtful. “I don’t play very well, and I haven’t got any of my pieces here. I don’t think I could play anything except dance tunes out of my head. You wouldn’t care so much about those, would you?”
“Rather,” I said. “Play Body and Soul.”
She laughed, and slipped over to the piano. I sat over on the other side of the room with my cigar while she crashed into the jazz melody; she played well, with a spirit and energy which made up in that sort of music for her occasional slips. I moved to a chair nearer the piano and presently, warming to her work, she began to sing the words.
She had a trained voice, and for a time I wondered where she had got it from, until I remembered her early training for the chorus. That night she sang those dance songs with a naïve feeling that robbed them of all crudity and gave them a new interpretation to me. She showed them to me as the folk songs of the people that I know so little of, the working England and America that I scarcely knew. I sat there thinking how much I had lived apart since the war, that I knew so little of her side of life.
The night closed down about us and I lit a reading lamp above her piano. She sat there fingering the keys and talking to me about the songs and dances that she knew, showing me the snap and rhythm of the airs, telling me the steps for each. That subject was peculiarly her own. From the semidarkness of the hall I sat and watched her at the piano, the slim lines of her neck and shoulders merging gently into the silver bodice of her dress. She had gained a colour from her pleasure in the music; in the soft light I saw that she was very beautiful.
And presently she said: “Oh, and I know another one. I do think this is pretty; it comes out of a play called Bitter Sweet. It’s sort of different to the rest of them.” She played the foxtrot air for a few minutes, and then sang quietly:
“I believe in doing what I can,
In crying when I must,
In laughing when I choose.
Heigh-ho, if love were all
I should be lonely!
“I believe the more you love a man,
The more you give your trust,
The more you’re bound to lose—
Although, when shadows fall
I think if only
Somebody splendid really needed me,
Someone affectionate and dear—
Cares would be ended if I knew that he
Wanted to hav
e me near.…”
I sat there very quiet, listening to her; she had grown absorbed in her song. It seemed to me that I was listening to something more than a scene out of a revue, that I was listening to a confession of the philosophy which guided her among the various hazards of the life she had to live. I felt that she was paying me a singular honour in singing that to me, perhaps unconsciously.
Her voice died away into the lonely silence of my house. She dropped her fingers from the keys and sat there motionless. “That was very beautiful,” I said.
She turned to me, her eyes shining in the dim light. “You mean you really thought that?—that it was nice?”
I stirred a little in my chair. “It suited you,” I said.
She sat there gazing down at me, not quite understanding what I meant. “It’s my favourite,” she said at last. “It is pretty, isn’t it?”
She got up and closed the piano; with that song she had finished singing for the night. I crossed to the side table where they leave my night-cap. “You’d like a drink after all that singing,” I suggested. “What would you like?” I eyed the table. “There’s whisky here—and lemonade. Would you like a gin and tonic?”
She hesitated. “Do you know what I’d like—if it wouldn’t be a dreadful trouble?”
I paused. “What’s that?”
“A cup of tea.”
I rang the bell and ordered tea, and we went through into the model room. By the Jane Ellen model case she stopped. “Was this the ship?” she asked.
I nodded. “That was the ship.”
She stood there looking at the model for a long time, very still, one hand resting on the case. And then: “It was a splendid thing,” she said.
I couldn’t argue it, and so I let her have her way. I moved over to the window. “To-morrow we’ll go down to the yard,” I said. “I want to show you all my ships and things. And we’ve not bathed yet, either.”
She beamed. “I’ve got ever such a lovely bathing-dress that I got last autumn in the sales. I haven’t worn it yet—only in my bedroom before the glass. I was keeping it for my holiday.” She paused. “It’s a lovely colour—sort of apple green.”
She looked best in green; all the girls said so. So she had told me. “It sounds all right,” I said.
She dimpled. “You may not like me in it.”
“I expect I shall,” I said comfortably. And so we sat there in the half-light looking out over the harbour, and gossiped, and drank our tea till it was time to go to bed. That night, for the first time since my accident, I slept soundly and dreamlessly till I was called at eight o’clock.
I saw Mollie in the garden that morning while I was shaving, coming up from the fuzzy. She had been down to have another look at the bathing place; so she told me while we were breakfasting. She was itching to go in.
I’d have taken her down to bathe at once, since she seemed to be so keen, but I had to go down to the yard that morning for an hour or so. I made her a promise that we’d bathe before lunch; she was content, and as we breakfasted she told me about everything that she had seen on her morning’s walk—the birds and the flowers and the trees. She had been up at six. Spreading my toast and marmalade, it struck me that she wasn’t missing much.
We went down together to the yard; Sweet Anna was still lying out in the stream at anchor. I am a little short of quayside for the vessels undergoing a refit; I should like to build on, but it would cost a lot. That day there was a smack lying at the shore end of my quay and Pearl Maid at the outer end; we had been setting up her mizzen with new standing gear, so that there was a great smell of Stockholm tar all round the place. Entering the gates one can always tell what work is going on from the smell: paint, the bark we use for tanning sails, wood smoke, tar—all these in turn provide aroma for my yard.
Mollie came with me into the office, and sat quiet in a corner while I did my letters; I think it was a new experience to her. It was certainly a new one to the staff, and must have given them cause for gossip for a week or so. Miss Soames came in and took my letters and never raised an eyelid from her pad; Tillotson came in to talk about his cost accounts, but took no account of Sixpence sitting in her corner trying to read the Marine Transporter’s Journal and Monthly Advertiser. He went away, and I sent for Penhill to tell him that Irene was to be ready for Stenning by the evening and, as an afterthought, told him that I should be wanting Runagate next day. Then a short talk with old Captain Sammy Gore, of Sweet Anna. He wanted new rudder pintles, or thought he did, but I think it was only because some rumour had reached him far away up on the north-east coast that we had given them to Mary Thompson at her last refit. I told him that Sweet Anna was a better built vessel than Mary Thompson, which was nearly true and matched his own belief, and that we’d have a look when she dried out.
Then the watchman came, as watchmen always do, to say that it wasn’t that he wasn’t willing, but he couldn’t work miracles, and he was doing three men’s work and not complaining, and he ought to have some help.
Then I was free to go and bathe.
I took Mollie out of the office and showed her something of my yard and ships. We didn’t stay very long because I knew she wanted to get back; that green bathing-dress was pulling very strongly. However, I found that she was still worrying a little about Joan and Stenning, because she said, quite suddenly:
“Please, Commander Stevenson, about this evening. When Lady Stenning comes, do you play cards—bridge, or anything? Because I’m afraid I couldn’t. I don’t know any card games hardly, except Sevens.”
I thought for a moment that I’d telephone to put them off, to tell them that they’d better sleep in the Irene for the night. And then I thought I wouldn’t. For some obscure reason I wanted Joan to meet her, and there was really nothing for her to be frightened of in meeting Joan. That wasn’t to say that I could prevent her being frightened. It was the title that did it, of course. If Joan had been Mrs. Stenning it would all have been plain sailing.
I smiled. “They don’t play bridge,” I said. “Not unless they’re made to. Stenning’s game is poker—he’s a tiger at that. But they won’t want to play cards, and if they did they wouldn’t get the chance. They’ll just sit and talk. Stenning talks about yachts and flying, and Joan talks about water-colours and Cairn terriers.”
She looked up at me despondently. “I don’t know about either. I mean, not to talk to anyone who does. But I do love dogs.”
“That’s good enough,” I said. “Just say that, and Joan’ll talk for hours.”
We got into the car and went back through the town. Mollie wanted to stop and buy a bathing-cap, and wanted me to come into the ladies’ outfitters and help her choose it. Dartmouth is a small place and I am quite well known; for many years, of course, my life has been something of a scandal and a bye-word in the little town, but always in connection with wine, not women. It took us nearly half an hour to buy that cap and the rest of the things she wanted; by the time we came out and got into the car, Mollie clutching her purchases and laughing with me before all the virtuous housewives of the town, I knew that I had added fresh laurels to my wreath.
We drove up through the town back to my house, left the car on the drive, and went to get our bathing things. Then we went down together through the fuzzy; it was sunny and warm, with the wind somewhere in the south-west so that my beach was in the lee of the cliff. The tide was about half flood; I couldn’t have picked a better day to introduce her to the place.
I gave her the hut to change in, and went and undressed among the trees myself. I was ready long before she was, and I can remember sitting on the rocks in the sun down there waiting for her and wondering how this was going to end. I didn’t get much further with that speculation because I had little experience to guide me; in all my life I had never lived in such intimacy with any girl before. There’s a lot to be said for co-educational schools, I suppose.
She came at last, looking like a coloured picture from a summer magazine. I sat
and watched her as she came towards me from the hut, admiring her slim grace. I can see her now.
“That’s an awfully pretty dress,” I said.
She smiled. “I’m glad you like me in it.” Now that wasn’t what I said at all, although I might have done.
She could dive a little, and chose to go in that way, near the beach. I dived in with her on the seaward side; she was a weak swimmer and made straight for the shore. I followed her, and in the shallows we told each other how cold it was. One more dive, and she was ready to go and sit in the sun; I think to her that was the best part of the game. I fetched her towel and we sat on the warm rocks for an hour or more, sunbathing and watching the small traffic of the harbour mouth, the sparkling sea in the Range, and the white surf around the chequered buoy.
There was a small cloud on the horizon still. She asked:
“Malcolm, when Lady Stenning comes, what ought I to wear? Will the coat and skirt I’ve been wearing be all right?”
I rolled over and looked at her, and grinned. “I’d wear what you’ve got on now, if I were you,” I said. “That suits you best of all.”
She rippled into laughter. “You are awful! I mean, really, what ought I to wear?”
I knew that it would be all right when Joan arrived. “I’d wear something rough and countrified, if you’ve got anything like that,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ve got a terribly old tweed skirt and a jumper, that I had for walking in. Would that be the right thing?” She was very doubtful. “I’ll show it you when we go up.”
I smiled at her. “Just anything you like, so long as it’s not too smart.” She was utterly puzzled. “Don’t make her feel too dirty by comparison. You see, she’s coming down by air—about two and a half hours’ flight in an open machine. She’ll arrive with her face covered in oil, or if it’s not she’ll feel as if it was. She always wants a bath directly she arrives, when they fly down.” I paused. “And anyway, Joan always goes about in the most awful things herself.”
“You don’t think she’ll be dreadfully smart?”
