by Nevil Shute
They got to Coldstone Mill a little late, in time for the first fusillade, which they witnessed from the bridge. A cloud of pigeons shot out from the trees with a great clatter of wings, a blue-grey cloud of birds against a pale blue sky. The sharp crack of Flying Officer Davy’s Service revolver was unmistakable. One pigeon came down with a solid thump, and two more fluttered down wounded.
“I hope nobody’s brought out a Sten gun,” said the Wing Commander. “I’d have to take notice of that.”
They shot all afternoon under the direction of Jack Barton, moving about the farm from clump to clump. They finished up with sixteen pigeons and a cup of tea at the farm in the fading light of evening.
Gervase had shot a pigeon with Gunnar Franck’s borrowed rifle. She went up to him at tea. “It was terribly nice of you to let me shoot,” she said. “It has been fun.”
The broad, red-faced young man went redder than ever. “You shoot ver’ well,” he said. “How did you learn?”
She said: “We live in the country. My father has a rook rifle, and I take a pot at things sometimes.”
“Where I live,” he said, with a touch of nostalgia, “my sister also shoots with bow and arrow.”
“Archery?”
“Jo. She was in the Ladies’ Championship for all Denmark, but she was beaten three turns before the last, the final contest. We were very sorry.”
“She must be very good to have got so far. Where is she now?”
“In Denmark. I have not heard for seven months.”
He began to tell her about his home and his sister and his mother. She listened to him quietly, letting him talk, helping him every now and then with a question. It was obviously a pleasure to him. In five minutes she learned much of his family history and a little of his loneliness.
“I like being in England ver’ much,” he said bravely. “I have now many English friends to go to for my leave, and Danish too. But I like being here the best.”
A thought crossed her mind: this simple red-faced boy with the curly black hair was one of the supermen who went fifty-one times over Germany and Italy. “Which aircraft do you go in?” she enquired. She knew well enough, but she did not want to let him know that she had been out with his captain.
He beamed. “I am with Flight Lieutenant Marshall,” he said. “R for Robert.” He glanced around; the pilot was some way off. “I am ver’ happy to be with him. He is good pilot, good navigator, good captain, good altogether. We have been now together for eleven months.”
The girl said: “That’s marvellous.”
He nodded. “Always he is ver’ careful,” he said. “And practise, practise, practise all the time. Each day we practise some new thing that we have learned from the last op. Sometimes it is on the firing teacher that we practise, sometimes the Link trainer, sometimes in the air. And so when we go out,” he laughed, “sometimes it is quite dull!”
She nodded. Dimly she was beginning to appreciate the hard, slogging work that lay behind good luck on operations. Good luck and safety did not come unless you reached for them, it seemed.
She said: “Aren’t you the crew who are all fishermen?”
He beamed down upon her. “I like ver’ well to fish,” he said. “The Cap, he likes only spinning; he has caught a ver’ beautiful pike last week. Have you seen it?”
“I saw it and I ate a bit of it,” she said. “It was a beautiful fish.”
The Dane said: “I like better to fish for roach, and Sergeant Phillips also. Now we teach Corporal Leech. The flight engineer—he changes almost every flight.” He turned to her. “I think it is ver’ good when all of a crew like the same things, all together,” he said.
If he had been more articulate, less shy of her, and more eloquent in English, he would have said what he meant: that common interests made a bond between the men, a slender, elusive thread making for good team-work in the air. Such crews were generally lucky.
The party broke up presently, and Wing Commander Dobbie drove her back to the camp in the Jeep. On the floor behind them were three pigeons, two of his and one of hers. “Remind me to ask that farmer to the next Ensa show,” he said. “We’ll give him dinner first in the mess. And that chap Ellison, too. Do you know where he lives?”
Gervase said: “I don’t. I think Flight Lieutenant Marshall knows, sir; I’ll get the address from him.”
They reached the camp and parked the Jeep; she thanked him for the lift and carried her pigeon over to her quarters to show it to Section Officer Ford. The sitting-room was empty, so she took it over to the mess and gave it to the cook. As she was coming out of the kitchen Marshall came in, flushed from riding back upon his bicycle. His hands seemed full of pigeons.
She stopped, and was glad to do so. “How many did you get?” she asked.
He said: “I got three and Davy got two.”
“Not with his revolver?”
“No—that wasn’t much good. You got one, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “It was fun. Who are you giving your other two to?”
He said: “Anyone who stands me a beer.”
She hesitated, and then said: “What about Mrs. Stevens?”
He stared at her. “She never gave me any beer. All she did was to make my batwoman cry.”
She said: “Be a sport—give her one.”
There was a momentary silence. “Would you like her to have one?” he asked.
“I think it’d be a nice thing.”
The pilot said: “Heap coals of fire upon her head.” He picked the pigeons over. “That’s the biggest coal.” He gave it to the cook for the Flight Officer’s lunch. “And I hope it bloody well burns her.”
Gervase said: “It’ll probably get you your tea.”
They went out of the mess together, she to go to her quarters and he to put away his bicycle. In the windy darkness outside the mess they paused together for a minute.
“I talked to Gunnar Franck at tea,” she said. “He seems an awfully good sort.”
He nodded. “He’s a very nice chap, Gunnar.” He hesitated, and then said: “I’m glad you came this afternoon. Did you enjoy it?”
She said: “It was wizard. I had an awfully good time.”
They talked for a little time about the events of the afternoon. In the end he said casually:
“I was thinking of going into Oxford on Satuday to see a flick.” He hesitated for a moment. “Would you like to come?”
To gain time while she thought, she asked: “What’s on?”
“Something with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. I forget its name.” He paused, and said: “We could go in independently and meet there for a cup of tea, and throw our flick, and have supper, and come back independently.”
She realised that he had got it all worked out before he spoke to her. She liked him very much; she knew that she would enjoy the afternoon that he had planned for her. She had a momentary sense of something enormous looming up ahead of them that she really ought to pay attention to, but she put it from her mind.
“I’d like to do that,” she said. “I’ve got some shopping that I want to do in Oxford.”
“Okay,” he said. “Where shall we meet?”
“There’s that place in the middle where the cross-roads meet. Carfax, they call it.”
“All right. Four o’clock?”
They agreed on that. And then, for no special reason, in the dim light he put out his hand, and she took it, and shook hands with him, and it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.
He turned away. “I’ll see you then,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ll be there.”
He did not see her to speak to for the next two days, though he was very conscious of her in the mess. He made opportunities to sit where he could see her; every attitude and movement that she made seemed to him to be delightful. He was clever and discreet in this surveillance; it passed unnoticed in the ante-room and even Gervase herself was scarcely aware of it.
On her side, she was inte
rested to find out what bits of information were available concerning R for Robert and its captain. She did not add a great deal to the knowledge that she had. The aircraft had been going for a long time; it had done over four hundred hours. The same crew had flown it most of the time; they came and went with regularity and despatch. She found that there were several crews of that sort operating from Hartley. Nothing ever seemed to happen to Davy, or Lines, or Johnson, or Sergeant Pilot Nutter; those machines appeared to be immune from all disaster. It was not really an immunity. She did not realise how much depended upon the skill and quickness of the captain in the split second of emergency, upon the perfect understanding of the members of the crew between themselves. Johnson had come back with a great hole in one wing and one flap down. She did not yet understand the quick appreciation of the damage and the reaction of the pilot, dazed and stunned by the explosion, that had brought about the instant, sure, and violent movements upon wheel and rudder pedals that had kept the machine out of a spin. All she knew was that these crews were lucky, and went on and on.
They met for the next time at Carfax in the middle of Oxford, under the shadow of an old church at the intersection of two shopping streets. He was there first by ten minutes; she came to him as the clock above his head struck four, carrying a little attaché-case that held her purchases. She smiled at him. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Not long,” he said. “I went and had my hair cut.”
She said: “What’ll we do now? Have you had tea?”
“No—I was waiting for you. What about Fuller’s?”
She said: “That’s all right.” So they walked together through the crowded streets towards the café, each wondering whether they would find it full of officers, W.A.A.F.s, and airmen from Hartley Magna. Marshall for his own sake was unconcerned; it would not have worried him if the whole air station had seen him taking tea with the bearded lady from the circus, but he knew that Gervase was sensitive to station gossip. Gervase, however, was taking it phlegmatically. There was no earthly reason why she should not spend an afternoon in Oxford with a pilot. She did not want the buzz to get around the station much, but if it did—well, that was just too bad. Whatever you did caused gossip at a place like Hartley, where there was nothing else to talk about except the work.
They took a table in the window overlooking the Cornmarket and ordered tea and what passed for sweet cakes and pastries, a thin shadow of the peace-time days. At the beginning of the little meal they talked about the picture they were going to see together; by the end of it they had thawed out and were talking about themselves.
He said presently: “I say, what’s your name?” He knew that perfectly well, but was afraid to tell her so. “I mean, it’s silly to go on calling you Miss Robertson.”
She said: “You could call me Section Officer.”
He said: “If you aren’t damn careful, I will. Look, I’ll do a deal over this. I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.” They were immensely young.
“I know yours,” she said equably. She bit into a bun. “It’s Peter.”
He stared at her. “You’ve been peeping! That’s not fair.”
She laughed, and choked. “I’ve not been peeping,” she said when she got her breath. “Mrs. Stevens always calls you Peter Marshall.”
He nodded. “They all fall for me,” he said. “It’s my fatal attraction.”
She laughed again. “I wouldn’t bank too much on that.”
Their eyes met, and he smiled at her. “What is it, anyway?”
“Gervase,” she said, and wondered why she had given in so easily.
“That’s rather pretty,” he said. “What’s the L?”
She told him, and he offered her a cigarette, and they sat by the window over the remnants of their tea, smoking and telling each other about their brothers and sisters and their homes. And as they sat a half-hour passed unnoticed; they would have sat there indefinitely together, learning about each other, but for sheer decency that made them get up at the time the programme started at their picture-house.
They walked together through the crowded shopping streets to the cinema, not now caring whether anybody saw them or not. In the large dimness of the hall they sat together for three hours, very conscious of each other. They sat through the news, and shook with laughter at Donald Duck, and wondered at a picture about Russia, and thrilled with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. And at the end they stumbled out into the black-out, and he took her up the street to the George restaurant for supper and gave her a gimlet to drink before the meal.
They talked about Oxford across the table. It meant nothing to them academically and they did not clearly understand what went on there in peace-time. Now it was stuffed full of Americans from the Army and the Army Air Corps.
Marshall said: “There was some talk of my brother coming here to one of the colleges. But now he’s been in the Army for three years; I don’t suppose he’ll want to when it’s all over. He’ll be too old.”
Gervase said: “What a shame. What do you think he’ll do?”
He told her about Bill, who wanted to be a solicitor and probably would be one day. And then she asked:
“What will you do when it’s over?”
He said: “I can always go back to the office—they said they’d keep the job for me.” He was not really interested in what might happen to him after the war was over; for most people in his way of life that was an academic question.
He glanced at her. “What about you?” he asked. “What would you do if the war ended now?”
She said: “I did a course of shorthand and typing just before I joined up, and I did a bit of that at first before I was an officer. Then they let me go into signals, and then I got my commission. I think I’d try and get a job as secretary to somebody in the radio business.”
“That means working in a town,” he said. “Would you like that?”
She grimaced and shook her head.
“There’s only one thing for it, then. You’ll have to marry a farmer and settle down in the country.” He did not want her in the least to marry a farmer; already he had other plans for her.
“I don’t know about marrying a farmer,” she said. “I’d like to settle down in the country. But I don’t want to do that yet.”
“Why not?”
She said: “I think when people are young they ought to do an honest job of work. There are lots of beastly things that have to be done, like working in towns, in offices. I don’t think anybody ought to shirk that side of life.”
“I suppose that’s right,” he said. “But most people never get beyond the office and the town.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to get stuck in a groove. I’d like to work in some business for seven or eight years and then marry and go back to the country.”
He said: “I’d like to go on flying with Imperial Airways, or whatever they call it, after the war. But I don’t suppose I’ll be able to. There’ll be an awful lot of us milling after just a few jobs.”
They talked for some time about Hartley Magna, and the people on the station, and the life. He found that Gervase was much more reconciled to life there than when he had talked to her last. “You get to like it,” he said. “At least, I did.”
She nodded. “I’m liking it a bit better now. I suppose it’s because I’m finding more to do, like you and your fishing.”
Peter said: “The fishing ends in a week’s time.”
She knew vaguely that the coarse-fishing season came to an end some time in the middle of March. She said: “You’ll have to think of something else to do.”
“So will the boys,” he said. “I want to go farther up the river one day in the next week, though, and see if I can’t get another pike.”
“How far?”
“There’s a place about two miles farther up, by Riddington, where there’s a little sort of pool. Sergeant Phillips went up there one Sunday after roach. He says he thinks there are pike there. It’s a good long
way to go.”
“Five miles,” she said. “That isn’t much.”
He said: “It may not be to you, but I took to biking very late in life.”
She laughed. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” he said. He glanced at her. “How old are you?”
She said: “I’m twenty-one.” Then they told each other all about their birthdays.
They ate with one eye on the clock, watching the time to catch their bus back to Hartley Magna. Peter said: “Look, Gervase—would you rather that I didn’t come on this bus? There’s that other one at half-past ten; I could come on that.”
She said: “That means you’d have to wait about here for an hour, though.”
“I could go and get drunk,” he said.
She laughed. “You needn’t do that for me, unless you want to for your own evil purposes. It doesn’t matter our going back on the same bus if we don’t sit together. After all, we might have come here quite independently.” She paused, and then she added: “It doesn’t matter a bit, anyway, if people do see us.”
He paid the bill and they left the restaurant and walked towards the market-place, where the bus started. In the dark, crowded street they jostled against people in the black-out; he took her arm to guide her and they walked so to the bus, each thrilling with the contact.
In the darkness, fifty yards from the dim-lighted oblong of the bus, they paused. “We’d better say good-night here,” he said. “It’s probably full of people from the station.”
She turned to him; he reached for her hand, and held it. He did not think that she was ready to be kissed. She said: “It’s been a lovely afternoon, Peter. Thank you for bringing me.”
She had called him by his Christian name. He said thickly: “Thank you for coming, Gervase.” He stood there in the darkness caressing her hand. “You’d better buzz along and get a seat,” he said at last. “I’ll come on in a minute.”
