by Nevil Shute
‘How did your Extraordinary General Meeting go off?’
‘Never a hitch. Only about seven turned up, and those principally because they wanted to see the Yard at work. We elected Grierson to the Board, you know.’
Warren nodded. ‘That was the right thing to do.’
‘I think so. Now for the orders in hand. The Laevol orders are much more secure now than when you saw them last — the Delaware Oil Corporation have come in on that, you know. The progress payments are practically up-to-date, and I think those ships will be all right. But if they aren’t, the North Borneos are in the market for two tankers. Hogan reckons he could shift two of them there, if needs be. But I think they’ll be all right with Laevol.’
‘Watch out for trickery on the last payment,’ said Warren. ‘Take nothing but real money.’
Cheriton nodded. ‘After the tankers, we’ve got three small tramps, and one vessel of eight thousand tons — for Carew and Mason. She’s at a fair price — the others aren’t so good. But the real thing is, we’ve got a good chance of a look-in on the Admiralty side.’
‘Rearmament?’
‘That’s right. I went with Hogan to the Admiralty the other day for a formal conference on our capacity. They’ve got us earmarked for a couple of destroyers, if things get too bad politically and they have to accelerate the programme.’
‘That’s very good, if it comes off.’
‘I don’t suppose it will. Now, that’s about all of my news. We’ve got two thousand eight hundred men employed, and that’s about our full capacity, unless we went on night shift and that’s not practical upon commercial work.’
He paused. ‘Now, what I want from you is this, Warren. Have you got any view about our first year’s balance sheet?’
‘Plenty,’ said Warren.
He leaned his arms upon the table. ‘You must make this first year’s accounts as bad as ever they can be,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a marvellous opportunity to do so now, one that you’ll never have again. You must examine every contract that you’ve got, with Jennings, and Grierson must tell the auditors that every contract will be carried out at a loss. He’ll probably be right, of course — but he must pile it on. You’ve got to make reserves this year against every possible contingency, probable or improbable.’
‘I see.’
‘You must show in this year all the losses that you’re going to make next year, and the year after. If you can swing the figure of this year’s loss up to a hundred thousand pounds — that’s grand. If you can get the auditors to make it a hundred and fifty thousand — so much the better.’
Cheriton shook his head. ‘I don’t think we could get it up to that.’
‘Get it as high as you can. In your chairman’s speech, just say that full reserves have been made in this year’s accounts for contracts negotiated by the late chairman. That’s literally all you need to say by way of explanation.’
‘I don’t exactly like the thought of that.’
‘I do. Man alive, you’ve got a chance here to make the Yard secure for the next ten years if you can play your hand the way it should be played. Pile everything into this year’s loss, including a lot that really ought not to be there. If you do that, next year you’ll be bound to show a profit, and the year after, if you’ve done it properly this year. Then, as soon as you’re showing profits and a decent show of orders in hand, get rid of this year’s losses by writing down your capital, pay a dividend, and make another issue to replace the capital.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Cheriton at last. ‘I’ll have to think it over. But we’ve got nobody upon the Board, now that you’re shut up here, to help us in that sort of business.’
Warren smiled. ‘That’s probably a good thing, in itself. It’s possible to be too clever in that way.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Still, I’m sure that what I’ve told you is your proper course. Look, go and have a talk with Heinroth. Tell him that you’ve seen me, and tell him that I’ve suggested this. Get his advice. He’s very close in with the market, and he underwrote the issue, so he’ll want to see it go. He’s a good chap, too. Tell him I want his help in this thing as a personal matter. Take his advice.’
Cheriton nodded. ‘He’s a Jew, I suppose?’
‘He is,’ said Warren firmly, ‘and a damn good chap. I did a lot with Heinroth, and he never let me down.’
Cheriton went away, and Warren settled down again to his quiet life. In a short letter, a fortnight later, Cheriton told Warren that he had discussed the Company with Heinroth, and that they were proceeding cautiously upon the lines that Warren had suggested.
He got another letter, a week after that, from Miss MacMahon. ‘I don’t know,’ she wrote diffidently, ‘if you would like me to come and see you. I’ll understand you if you feel you’d rather not. But Lord Cheriton told me that he’s been to see you, and I understand that you are allowed a visitor every three months. I have to come to London early in the New Year, and I could come on down from there. Get a message to me before then to let me know if you’d like me to come down; you know I’d come a great deal farther than that. But I know you can’t write very often, so I shan’t expect to hear from you before Christmas.’
He had an opportunity that month to include a message to her in a letter written to Cheriton by special permission, on matters connected with the Company. He wrote, ‘Tell Miss MacMahon I agree with her proposal in regard to the man that she wrote to me about, and I should be glad if she would carry on upon the lines that she suggests.’
She came to him on a raw, windy day in January, when he had served seven months of his sentence. She got up from the table as he came into the visiting-room.
‘I shouldn’t have known you,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re looking so well. Henry — whatever have they done to you? You’re looking ten years younger.’
He smiled at her. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. That wasn’t what was meant to happen to me here.’
‘But it has!’ She stepped back merrily, and looked at him. ‘It’s quite absurd. You’ve put on weight, haven’t you?’
He nodded. ‘About a stone. I’m up to twelve stone now.’
‘You should be more than that.’ She came and sat down with him at the table, the warder discreetly in the background. ‘You know, Henry, I was afraid you might be terribly run down. I sort of dreaded what you might be like. One thinks about such horrible things — prison, you know. When one doesn’t know about it.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s very sweet of you to come.’
‘I had to, if you’d let me. And now I find you simply bursting with health like this. My dear, I’m terribly glad. Tell me, do you find the time pass very slowly?’
He shook his head. ‘I did for the first week. But now — I don’t know. It just slips away.’
She settled down to tell him all about Sharples and such items of the business of the shipyard as she knew. He learned that the town was growing almost normal; new shops had been opened, Woolworths had returned, and the trams were running once again. There was a lot of talk that Lord Cheriton was trying to open up the rolling-mills again. Attendances at out-patients were very much down on last year. The first of the oil tankers had been launched shortly before Christmas, and was now finishing at the quayside. There was a lot of talk in the town that they might have to build destroyers for the Admiralty.
The half hour allowed them for the visit, stretched by the warder in charge to forty minutes, was over before she had been able to tell him half of all her news; Warren went back to his cell, cheerful and content. Equally happily she walked back along the Cowes road to Newport station, to begin upon her long journey back to Sharples.
She came to him again in April, and in July, and every three months for the remainder of his sentence. In the intervals she wrote to him each week, long, informative letters designed to keep him in touch with the world of his business interests, to supply him with the information in the newspapers that were withheld from him. She got into touch with Morgan, st
ill secretary of Warren Sons and Mortimer, and learned from him weekly what his chief would like to know. Besides her own news, and the news of Sharples, her letters told him about commodity prices, the Gold Standard, and the rates on Treasury Bills. He learned about the French Budget from her and about the changes in the Government in Greece, and he was continuously informed about the principal movements of the stock market.
In November 1937 Warren was released, and walked out of the prison a free man.
He had told nobody the exact day of his release; he did not know it himself until a few days previously. He went by bus to Cowes, and thence by boat and train to Southampton and London. There he reported to the Criminal Record Officer at Scotland Yard, and went to a hotel.
Next day, he travelled up to Sharples by night. He breakfasted in Newcastle, and took the local train to Sharples. A talkative gentleman, stout and rubicund, got into the carriage with him, observed that it was a fine morning, and extracted from him the information that he was going to Sharples.
‘Eh, Sharples,’ he said, wheezing a little. ‘Wonderful the way that Sharples has come on. Time was — not so long ago, either — there wasn’t a man in work in Sharples. And that’s a fact I’m telling you.’
Warren nodded. ‘I heard it had a bad time in the slump.’
‘Aye. And then there was that financial swindle some years back. One of those fly-by-night City financiers — chairman of the shipyard, too — he got them in a proper mess. Got three years for it, he did, and serve him dam’ well right. But since that time they’ve gone ahead, and they’ve been full of work this long time past. Building destroyers for the Admiralty now, so they tell me.’
‘It’s good to see the work come back again,’ said Warren mildly.
‘Aye. Barlows the shipyard was, before they changed the name. There was seven Barlow destroyers at the Battle of Jutland — did ye ever hear that?’
Warren got out of the train at Sharples, and went walking through the streets towards the Yard. The town was utterly different from his memory of it; in two and a half years it had changed almost beyond all recognition. The streets were full of cars, delivery vans, vehicles of all sorts; the pavements thronged with housewives shopping with their baskets. The desolate air of cleanliness had altogether gone; the sky was grimed with chimney smoke. The children playing in the little streets looked more robust and better clothed, with colour in their cheeks. At every corner there appeared to be a new shop front, trams and buses clanged and screamed along the streets, and around the doors of the re-opened Woolworths perambulators were clustered thickly. He passed a new, large super-cinema.
The clamour of the shipyard beat upon his ears a quarter of a mile away, the surge and ebb of the clatter of the pneumatic riveters. As he approached the gate he saw the half-built ships looming up behind the wall; there was one, half plated on the slips, that was obviously a warship of some sort. He approached the gate slowly, almost diffidently. So much had happened here; it was so different from when he had last seen it. He had the feeling of an interloper in the place.
Upon the blackened, ten-foot wall not many yards from the gate was a sign that he did not remember. Hesitating for a moment to go in, he went across to look at it. It was a bronze plaque, about three feet square, apparently a memorial of some sort, dignified and restrained. As he approached he saw it bore embossed in low relief, the sculptured head and shoulders of a man, in profile. He read the words below.
HENRY WARREN
1934
HE GAVE US WORK
He stood there staring at it for a few minutes, smiling a little; illogically moisture welled into his eyes. A few children, playing some complicated game chalked out upon the pavement, stopped to notice the stranger.
‘Mary,’ said Ellen Anderson in a hoarse whisper. ‘Ma-ree! Coom over here. I got somethin’ I want to tell you.’
‘That bloke there,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the man in the picture.’
‘’Tisn’t.’
‘‘Course it is.’
‘I bet you ’tisn’t.’
‘I bet you.’
‘All right. Now you got to go and ask him.’
Ellen wriggled nervously. ‘You ask him.’
‘You got to ask him. You bet it was.’
‘All right. I will ask him.’ Warren became aware of a very dirty little girl pulling at his sleeve.
‘Please, mister,’ she whispered nervously. ‘Are you the man in the picsher?’
Warren smiled. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m the man in the picture.’
The little girl left him, sped across the road, and into the kitchen of a little house. ‘Coom over here and look, Mummy — quick!’ she gasped. ‘I seen the man in the picsher!’
Warren turned into the Yard, and went down to the office.
In the African bush, and in towns like Sharples, news travels very fast. Warren was hardly at the office building before a dozen women were clustered at the gate, peering at him down the entrance road. He had hardly got to Cheriton’s office before the men upon the ships knew all about it. A chattering and gossiping ran down the streets from house to house; women threw their shawls over their heads, went to the door and out in to the street — to see what was happening. Within the Yard the men upon the ground sidled towards the offices; the men upon the ships, seeing the flow, knocked off their work and paused to watch. The word went round from mouth to mouth that Mr Warren had come back.
Dennison, the foreman plater, stopped a thin trickle of men leaving the job. ‘God love us, men,’ he cried, ‘are ye all daft? It’s twenty minutes yet to go before dinner. Get back on to the job.’
‘They’re saying Mr Warren’s in the offices.’
‘What’s that to you? Get back along, and go on working till it’s time for dinner.’
‘Hoots,’ said one. ‘If it wasn’t for Mr Warren there wouldn’t be no dinner.’
There was a laugh. The stream of men towards the offices grew larger, uncontrollable. In a moment men were streaming off the ships, the foremen pleading with them desperately. Only the fitters in the engine-room of one destroyer stayed at work; their foreman had been middleweight boxing champion in the Navy.
The men surged round the offices. They surged into the time office led by Jock McCoy, a charge hand labourer. The desk clerk rose like a flushed partridge.
‘You’re not allowed in here,’ he cried.
The navvy thrust his way across the room. ‘Git oot o’ the way, ye wee daft fule,’ he said. ‘There ane thing only in this place will tell the toon that Mr Warren’s back, an’ that thing’s gaen’ to wurk. An’ if ye dinna like it, ye can stop yer bluidy earoles.’
The hooter wailed in short staccato bursts. It blew long blasts, short blasts, continuous blasts, intermittent blasts as various hands tried the experience of pulling at the cord. It brought the women to the doors, the shopkeepers out into the streets, enquiring what the noise was all about. It brought a stream of women and children down towards the gates. It brought the farm hands, far beyond the town, to a standstill beside their byres; in the little harbour at the entrance to the river it brought the fishermen together, wondering what the row was all about. It brought the stoker in the shipyard from his boilers in a frenzy, agonized that he was losing all his steam.
It brought the Sisters in the hospital to the entrance of their wards. It brought the porter flying to the Almoner’s little office off the Secretary’s room.
She started in her chair. ‘But it can’t be ...’ she exclaimed. ‘He wasn’t coming here till some time next week!’
She sat hesitant, irresolute, listening to the mad cacophony of the hooter. Out of her window she saw people in the street, all streaming down towards the yard.
Mr Williams came into his office, a sheaf of invoices in hand. He sat down at his table, opened a ledger. Presently he raised his head and looked at her.
‘They’re saying that your Mr Warren’s in the town,’ he said mildly. ‘Are ye no’ going d
own to meet him?’
Then she, too, left her desk, and ran with the rest.
What Happened to the Corbetts (1938)
OR, ORDEAL
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The first edition
Good luck have thou with thine honour: ride on, because of the word of truth, of meekness, and of righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
PSALM XLV.
1
TOWARDS DAWN PETER Corbett got up from the garage floor and, treading softly, moved into the driving seat of the car. Presently he fell into a doze, his head bowed forward on his arms, upon the steering wheel.
He woke an hour later, dazed and stiff. A grey light filled the little wooden building; it was early March. The rain drummed steadily upon the roof and dripped and pattered from the eaves with little liquid noises, as it had done all through the night. He stirred, and looked around him.
Behind him, in the rear seat of the car, lay Joan, his wife, sleeping uneasily. She was dressed oddly in an overcoat, pyjama trousers, and many woolly clothes; her short fair hair had fallen across her face in disarray. On the seat beside her was the basket cot with little Joan; so far as could be seen, the baby was asleep.
He moved, and looked out of the window of the car. Beside the car Sophie, their nurse, was lying on a Li-Lo on the oil-stained floor, covered with an eiderdown, sleeping with her mouth open and snoring a little. Beyond her there was another little bed, carefully screened between the garden roller and a box of silver sand for bulbs. From that the bright eyes of Phyllis, his six-year-old daughter, looked up into his own; beside her lay John, his three-year son, asleep.
Moving very quietly, he got out of the driving seat and stood erect beside the car; he had a headache, and was feeling very ill. From her bed upon the floor Phyllis whispered, “Daddy. May I get up?”
