No Highway

by Nevil Shute

  He said, “I would be so grateful. It’s so hard to find out, and one doesn’t think, I suppose.” He hesitated. “Could you stay with her till I get back tomorrow evening, possibly? I can fix up something else by then.”

  “I could stay till Sunday night if you like,” she said. “They won’t want me at the Airways before Monday.”

  His face lit up. “I know Elspeth would like that,” he said. “It would be horribly dull for her to be in bed alone here, even if I could get back for lunch.” And then he looked troubled. “I don’t know if that would do, though, would it?”

  She said, “You mean, for me to sleep here?”

  “That’s right.”

  She considered for a minute. “Not if the neighbours are going to start talking,” she said. “I suppose they wouldn’t like it at the R.A.E. either.”

  He stared at her. “I wasn’t thinking of that. It wouldn’t matter what anyone at the R.A.E. thought, and I don’t even know the neighbours. Elspeth knows the people in No. 23, I think, but I don’t know any of them.”

  She laughed. “Well that’s all right then. Were you thinking about me?”

  He nodded. “You don’t want to get a bad reputation,” he said awkwardly.

  She smiled. “Would it be all right if I put on my nurse’s uniform?”

  He stared at her. “Well, I suppose it would. That’s rather funny, when you come to think of it.”

  “I’ll do that if you like,” she said. “It means I’ll have to go back home and get it.” She paused. “If you like, I’ll sleep at home and come over each day.”

  He smiled slowly. “It’s an awfully long way.”

  She met his eyes. “I think so, too. I don’t mind if you don’t”.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Think about yourself,” she said gently. “Think about what you want for a change what you want out of life.” She put the plates together on the draining-board. “I’ll do these in the morning before breakfast. You go to bed now, or you won’t be fit to go into the office in the morning. And I know you’re dying to do that.”

  He smiled. “I did look in for just a minute after we landed, this evening.”

  “I might have known it. Go on up to bed. It’s all made up and ready for you.”

  In the door he paused. “Good night, Marjorie,” he said.

  “Be off with you,” she laughed. “Good night, Theodore.”

  He was very tired, but he lay awake in bed for some time thrilled and excited by the thought that Marjorie had come to stay with him, to take some of the aching responsibility for Elspeth off his shoulders, if only for three days. He was deeply grateful to her; from the first moment in the Reindeer when she had talked to him about the weather they would have upon the crossing, he had known that she was naturally kind. He had been right in that; at the first hint of trouble she had come to his house to help him in his absence; she had cared for his little daughter and played with her; she had washed his floors and made him supper in the middle of the night when he had turned up hungry. Now she was going to go through Elspeth’s clothes and tell him what to buy.

  Only one woman in his life had treated him like that before. Some girls radiated kindness; this one was fit to set beside the memory of Mary.

  He drifted into sleep.

  She would not let him help in getting breakfast; instead she sent him up to sit with Elspeth, who was wide awake and sitting up in bed. She told him what had happened to her. “There was a burglar,” she said, “so I put on your warm dressing-gown and then. I fell downstairs. And then when I woke up I was in Mrs. Scott’s bed and I was sick seven times and once the basin wasn’t there and Dr. Scott wiped it up and said it didn’t matter.”

  Honey said, “Oh dear. I am sorry that happened.”

  She reassured him. “He didn’t mind a bit, Daddy, honestly he didn’t. He said he could remember being sick in a motorcar when he was a little boy and he wasn’t ill at all. He was just sick. I do like Dr. Scott. He’s nice, isn’t he?”

  He nodded. “You like Mrs. Scott too, don’t you?”

  “I like them both, and Monica and Marjorie. Can Marjorie stay till Sunday, Daddy? She said she could if you said yes. Then she’s got to go to Canada in the aeroplane but she’s coming back on Thursday and she said she’d come down and see me again. Would that be all right?”

  He said, “Who’s Monica?”

  “Monica Teasdale. She was nice, too, but she’s old. She reads out loud awfully well and she kept calling me honey. Why did she do that, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know. Is she still here?”

  The child shook her head. “She went away the day before yesterday. She said I was to come and spend a holiday with her and go on a dude ranch. What’s a dude ranch, Daddy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said vaguely. “Something they do in America, I suppose.”

  Marjorie called him for his breakfast, a better one than he had tasted in that kitchen for years. She took up a tray and got Elspeth started; then she came down and smoked a cigarette while he finished his. And presently she pushed him off to the office just as Mary used to do, and he with difficulty restrained a crazy impulse to turn and kiss her in the doorway, as he had used to kiss Mary. He walked down to the bus with his old felt hat crammed untidily on his head and his brief-case in his hand, very thoughtful.

  He went to the Director’s office as soon as he got to the R.A.E., and stood for a few minutes nervously explaining what had happened at Gander. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said unhappily. “Dr. Scott had said that it was so important that the aircraft shouldn’t fly if there was any risk. And I couldn’t make them understand why it shouldn’t go on. But I do realise that it has made a very awkward situation, sir. I sent my resignation in to Dr. Scott.”

  The Director said, “I know—he came and saw me about it. He tore your letter up.”

  “My letter of resignation, sir?”

  “Yes. It’s not going to help anybody if you resign and afterwards it turns out you were right, Honey. It only makes the matter worse. Leave that for the present and go on with the trial on the Reindeer tail. I won’t pretend that I was pleased when I heard what you did at Gander—it’s made a lot of trouble. But if it turns out you were justified—well, there’s an end of it, of course. And that we ought to know quite soon. I’m expecting a cable from Scott tomorrow or the next day, when he’s been up to the wreckage.”

  There followed two halcyon days for Mr. Honey. At the office he dived straight back into his routine; while he had been absent a report had come in of some work carried out in Oslo on the strain energy absorption of copper alloys with particular reference to high tension electrical conductors, and this report blew a small sidewind on the fatigue investigations. He plunged deep into consideration of what this might mean, and dismissed the Reindeer altogether from his mind; it was for other people, me particularly, to deal with trivial matters like the fate of C.A.T.O.’s North Atlantic Air Service, while he got on with the real work, the stuff that really mattered. That did not prevent him, however, from leaving the office punctually at half-past five. He found that Shirley had been round to tea with Marjorie and Elspeth and that they had all been playing Monopoly on Elspeth’s bed, a game new to Mr. Honey. Elspeth insisted that he should play too, and ruined him without the slightest difficulty, and by the time they all woke up to the time it was half-past seven.

  He supped simply on a fish pudding and stewed fruit with a milk pudding, all cooked by Miss Corder, and it was with a sense of internal well-being and ease unusual for him after a meal that he sat down with her when they had done the washing-up to study Elspeth’s clothes. “She’s all right for winter things,” Marjorie said, “but really, she’s got practically nothing for the summer. Those flannel pyjamas that she wears must be lovely in the winter, but she’s awfully hot in them now. And she’s got no frocks at all.…”

  He went through the list with her and she priced
the various garments for him. “She doesn’t need all of these at once, of course,” she said. “In fact, two frocks would do to start with if you could get the washing done at home.” She turned to him. “I was thinking we might get her up on Sunday for a bit. If we could get her some of these things tomorrow afternoon for her to get up into, it’ld give her a tremendous lift.”

  Mr. Honey said, “We’d better get them all at once, hadn’t we? I’ll have to go to the bank, but I think there’s plenty of money. Plenty for this, anyway.”

  “I think we’d better get just what she needs for the moment,” the girl said. “Later on, when she can get about, it would be fun to take her up to London to the big shops; I saw some lovely children’s frocks in Barker’s the other day, awfully cheap. And she’d get a great thrill out of buying her own frocks in a big shop.”

  The week-end passed in quiet, happy intimacy. On Saturday afternoon the Transatlantic stewardess and the research scientist on whose work depended all the lives of people travelling in Reindeer aircraft went out with a string bag to go shopping together down the High Street of the little Hampshire town, and came back loaded with brown paper parcels like any other suburban couple living in more regular circumstances, to have tea in the kitchen and turn over their purchases on Elspeth’s bed, and watch the child’s delight. Then Honey went down quietly to the front room to consider his more recent calculations on the Pyramid, and presently became immersed in them till Marjorie put her head into the door to tell him supper was ready. And after that, he told her all about it.

  On Sunday morning they got Elspeth up after breakfast in her new print frock and sat her in a chair in the garden while Mr. Honey mowed the lawn and Marjorie weeded and cooked alternately. They made Elspeth lie down on her bed after dinner while they dozed in the garden in deck-chairs, and then they all had tea together on the lawn. Then it was time for Marjorie to go; in order to be at Heath Row by eight-thirty in the morning she would have to sleep at home in Ealing.

  Elspeth said, “Please, will you come down on Thursday, like you said?”

  She glanced at Honey. “If your father says I may.”

  He said, “Oh please do. I do wish you could stay on now. It makes such a difference.…”

  She shook her head. “I wish I could. But I’m almost sure they’ll have a trip for me tomorrow. That means Montreal on Tuesday morning and back again on Wednesday afternoon. I ought to be able to get down here again by tea-time on Thursday,” she said to Elspeth. “But don’t worry if I’m late, because I might not get down till Friday morning. But I will come. I promise you.”

  They left Elspeth sitting in the garden with a rug round her and went together to the front door. “Let her have a little of the semolina pudding for her supper, with some of the jam,” she said. “I wouldn’t give her any more. And she ought to be in bed by seven—it’s her first day up, you know. I’d give her her supper in bed.”

  He said, “I do wish you were staying. It’s such a help, and it’s been so lovely having someone.…” He hesitated awkwardly. “Someone to talk to.”

  She met his eyes. “If by any chance they don’t want me at the airport,” she said, “may I come back?”

  He said earnestly, “Please do.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do that if they don’t want me, Theodore. But I’m afraid they’ll have a trip for me, and in that case it’ll probably be Thursday evening.”

  He said simply, “We shall be looking forward to that, both of us.”

  She left him, and walked down the road to catch the Green Line bus for London. She hated the thought of going back to work. For her the run to Montreal held little charm; she was tired of serving coffee and biscuits with a smile, like any waitress in a café. The glamour of an airline stewardess was dead for her; she could not rate it equal in importance with the job of making something out of Elspeth Honey, of broadening her warped, one-sided life. For Honey himself she had a deep respect, verging upon love. He seemed to her to be the most unassuming, the bravest, and the cleverest man she had ever met, and she knew that her own qualities could help him tremendously. She was shrewd enough to know that she would never equal him in mental power, but with her cooking and her care behind that power he could do great things.

  On Monday morning Mr. Honey went into the office thinking mainly of the strain energy absorption factor of copper-tungsten alloys, with a side thought or two to Marjorie Corder; I think he had forgotten all about C.A.T.O. and my mission in Labrador. It was quite a surprise when he received a message in the middle of the morning that the Director would like to see him; he blinked and wondered what it could be all about, and then remembered that there was some trouble going on about the Reindeer, trouble that was really nothing to do with him at all. He went to the office unwillingly, reluctant to be dragged into the Reindeer controversy again.

  The Director said, “Oh, Honey, I want you to keep au fait with what Dr. Scott is doing about this Reindeer accident. Quite a lot has happened over the week-end. To begin with, this radiogram came in on Saturday night.”

  He passed the slip across the table. Mr. Honey took it, blinking. It was headed IVANHO P.Q.

  “What does this word Ivanhoe mean, sir?” he asked, puzzled. “Isn’t that a book or something?” It seemed to him to be some kind of code, and he was intrigued.

  “It’s a small town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” the Director said patiently. “It is a book as well, but it’s the name of the place Scott sent that cable from.”

  “Oh.”

  The message read:

  Have visited crashed Reindeer but broken stubs of tailplane spars have been removed with hacksaw stop local evidence states that these and other portions of the wreckage were removed by Russian personnel visiting the scene to recover body of M. Oskonikoff for reburial at Moscow stop suggest demand these parts from Russians as difficult country will make finding of port tailplane uncertain if not impossible stop cable further instructions to me at Ivanhoe—Scott.

  Mr. Honey handed this back to the Director. “It’s very unfortunate if these parts have been lost,” he said.

  “Very,” said the Director dryly. “I spoke to D.R.D. about it yesterday morning as a matter of urgency and, to cut a long story short, a cable about the matter went off yesterday to our Embassy in Moscow. But I’m sorry to say that the Russians don’t seem to be very co-operative in the matter.”

  I doubt if he knew more than that himself; it was weeks later that I got something of the story of what had happened in Moscow. The story as I heard it was that Sir Malcolm Howe had rung up M. Serevieff immediately he got the cable and asked for the parts to be sent to England for a further examination. M. Serevieff had countered by saying that he was glad that Sir Malcolm had raised this matter, which was one of some moment. It was certainly the case that the Russian burial party had included certain members of their Accidents Bureau; he could not say whether any parts had been removed and anyway, that was a matter of no importance. What was important was that the British Government had tried to trick the Russians, to conceal the evidence of their crime. The body handed to the Russian mission in Labrador was not that of M. Oskonikoff; the dentures did not correspond, and expert examination of the body in Moscow had proved it to be that of a considerably younger man. Would the Ambassador kindly explain this action of the British Government? His manner left no room for doubting that the Russians thought that the accident had been contrived to secure the murder of their Ambassador in a remote place where detection would be difficult, and that the substitution of another body was all part of the plot. Indeed, M. Serevieff said so, in so many words.

  I need hardly say that this charge raised considerable stir in diplomatic circles, to the extent that it was impossible even to try any further to make the Russian disgorge the bits that they had taken from the crash. I don’t know how it all ended; I doubt if anyone outside the Foreign Office and the Cabinet knows that. I only know that, on that Monday morning, the Director with Mr. Honey blinking at
his elbow concocted the following cable, which reached me a couple of hours later at Ivanhoe, in the; telegraph office of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:

  Foreign Office consider it inadvisable to press for recovery of Reindeer parts from Russians as wider issues are involved stop it is therefore imperative to locate and examine missing port tailplane however long this takes rely on you to do your utmost. R.A.E.

  They sent that one off to me, and Mr. Honey went blithely back to his office and the copper-tungsten alloy papers, relieved that he had not been called upon to do something in a matter that held little interest for him.

  I got that cable about breakfast time, when by reason of the difference in local time Mr. Honey was just going home to lunch to get Elspeth out of bed for the afternoon. The Mounties called me into their office as we were walking from the store where we had slept again in our hammocks, walking down the sunlit main street of that small Canadian lumber town to the café with the French-speaking waitress. I took the message slip from them and read it in dismay, and showed it to Hennessey and Russell and Stubbs in the middle of the street.

  Russell went up in a sheet of flame, rather naturally. “My Christ!” he said. “The British Foreign Office must be nuts. They just don’t know the way we’re fixed out here! If that tailplane came off in the air the way you think it did, it might be twenty miles away from the rest of the machine. How do they think we’re going to find that in this type of country? Do they suppose a street cleaner ’ll find it and bring it in?”

  I stared at him in despair. “I don’t know what they think.”

  We went and sat down at the stainless bar and ordered flakes and eggs and bacon from the French girl. I studied the message again, and compared it with the copy I had kept of my previous one to the Director. I pointed out to them, “See, I said ‘finding of port tailplane uncertain if not impossible’.”