Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  From time to time they heard the wailing of a siren on some ambulance or police car. The sound of distant gunfire was continuous, and very occasionally they heard the droning of airplanes. The wind sighed past them and the rain made little liquid noises; no other sounds shared the night with the shattering concussions of the bombs.

  At last there came a long interval. Corbett looked at his watch; it was a little after three. He was dazed and stiff. “It lasted three hours last time,” he said. “This may be the end.”

  Joan stirred beside him. “How long ought we to wait?”

  “We’ll give it half an hour.”

  Towards the end of that time he got out of the trench and went to the garden wall. Mr. Littlejohn was standing on his lawn, looking about him at the sky.

  “Seems as if it’s over,” he said. “You’d think they’d give an ‘all clear’ signal of some sort, wouldn’t you?”

  “They didn’t give any sort of ‘take cover’ signal,” said Corbett.

  “That’s so. Seems like they don’t know when it’s coming or when it’s over, don’t it?”

  “Do you think it’s over now?”

  “I don’t know. I believe I’ll get the missus indoors, and chance it.”

  Corbett went back to Joan. “We’ll give it a few minutes longer,” he said. He got out the basket of provisions and gave her a drink of whiskey; the children drank a little milk and nibbled a sponge cake.

  Presently they got out of the trench, and went back into the house.

  Apart from the windows, no more damage seemed to have been done to the house. Corbett helped Joan to put the children back into their beds in the darkness; they fell asleep almost instantaneously. They did not go to bed at once themselves, being hungry; instead, they went down to the kitchen, lit the Primus stove, and fried a little meal of bacon and eggs. They consumed this in the dim light of an ecclesiastical candle; the electricity was dead again. The food made them feel better.

  Corbett lit a cigarette from the candle, and stared reflectively at his wife. “I don’t know what you think,” he said. “But I’m getting a bit tired of this.”

  “You couldn’t be more tired than I am. How many more raids like this do you think we’re going to get?”

  “Lord knows. I think we ought to think about clearing out into the country.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been feeling like that, too. But where would we go? To the boat?”

  “It’s the only place we’ve got.”

  He gave her a cigarette, and held the candle for her while she lit it; they sat and smoked in silence over the remains of their meal. “It’ld be awfully difficult,” she said at last, sighing a little. “I mean, three children on a little boat like that!”

  “It would be possible,” he said. “Put Phyllis and John in the companion bunks, and rig up a sort of cradle in the forecastle for the baby.”

  “Over the lavatory, I suppose.”

  “That’s right. Then you and I could sleep in the saloon.”

  She shook her head. “It would be awfully difficult. There’s such a lot of washing to be done for the baby, and you know what it is, carrying water on board. Besides, what would we do for milk?”

  “Use tinned milk. But anyway, we’d be at Hamble. That’s in the country. You might be able to get milk more easily there than here.”

  “You should be able to.”

  “As regards the water,” he said, “it seems to me that wherever we are we’ll have to start carting it before long. I haven’t noticed any water coming in here yet, except the rain. I don’t know how much there is left in our tank upstairs, but I bet it’s not much. We might get better water there than here.”

  He paused. “You couldn’t wash the nappies out in salt water, using salt water soap?”

  Joan wrinkled up her nose. “Not much. What about this, though? Suppose we sailed the boat up a river — right away from the sea? Where she’d be floating in fresh water?” She paused. “We’d have all the water that we wanted, then.”

  He sat for a minute, deep in thought. “It’s an idea,” he said. “I don’t know where you’d find a river like that on the south coast, though. A river deep enough to float our boat, where the water wasn’t salt.”

  He got up from the table. “Let’s sleep on it,” he said. “We’ll make a decision in the morning.”

  She lingered for a moment in the dark, shadowy entrance hall as they made their way upstairs. “It’s horrible even to think of leaving,” she said slowly. “I mean — this is our home.”

  He took her hand. “Never mind. It won’t be for long.”

  She went up to the nursery to sleep with the children. He turned into his own room and took off his shoes and coat, then he threw himself on the bed in his clothes and pulled the blankets over him. Very soon he was asleep.

  He slept late. Joan, taking the children downstairs to cook their breakfast, looked in on him; she did not wake him. It was not till ten o’clock that he awoke, thrust his feet into his shoes, and went downstairs.

  “You should have waked me,” he said to Joan. “I’d have given you a hand.”

  She smiled at him. “Come and eat your breakfast.”

  He rubbed a hand over his unshaven chin. “Have you heard anything of Littlejohn?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “I’ll just go in and see if they’re all right. Then I’ll come along. You can leave the washing up — I’ll do that.” He had no thought of going to his office.

  He went out of his front door. In the street he met Mr. Littlejohn returning to his house, grey and troubled. He said, “You’ve heard the news?”

  “No,” said Corbett.

  “Cholera,” said Mr. Littlejohn.

  Corbett stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “There’s been an outbreak of cholera down Northam way. Over seventy cases, so they say. They’ve got patrols on all the roads. Nobody’s to leave the city till he’s been inoculated.”

  3

  WHEN LIVING DANGEROUSLY, there comes a time when extra risks are taken as a matter of everyday occurrence; the mind has become inured to them, and they are hardly thought about. Corbett was not particularly upset by the news that he had heard. He questioned Littlejohn about it, but the builder knew no more than the bare facts, which he had got from a policeman that he knew.

  Corbett went back into his house and sat down to his breakfast. After a little reflection, he came to the conclusion that there was no point in trying to conceal the cholera from Joan. He finished his meal, lit a cigarette, and asked her, “Do you know anything about cholera?”

  She stared at him, puzzled. “Cholera? It’s a thing they get in India. Black men die of it in heaps. And pukka sahibs go and stop it. Why?”

  “We’ve got it in Southampton.”

  She stared at him. “Cholera?”

  He told her what he had heard from Littlejohn.

  “What is cholera?” she asked. “Is it catching?”

  He said drily, “I imagine so.” And then he said, “This must be what Gordon meant.”

  She was puzzled. “But you don’t have cholera in countries like this, Peter. It only happens in the East, doesn’t it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Look and see if there’s anything about it in the encyclopedia.”

  He went and fetched the volume from the drawing room; together they bent over it.

  Five minutes later, he stood erect. “Well, that’s it,” he said, a little heavily. “There seem to have been plenty of epidemics of it in this country before. Bunches of them. It comes from water contaminated with sewage.”

  “You’ve got to have a case to start it off, though.”

  He shook his head. “Not necessarily.” He laid his finger on a line; she bent over it to read the small print. “Plenty of carriers in a seaport town like this.”

  “Is that a carrier, like a typhoid carrier, Peter?”

  “That’s right. It might be a Lascar sailor.�
��

  She looked at him seriously. “You think it’s happened just because the drains are broken up?”

  “I suppose so.”

  She turned again to the book. “It says here, case mortality fifty per cent. In plain English, does that mean what it seems to mean?”

  He smiled, a little grimly. “I should think it probably does.”

  She stared up at him, wide-eyed. “But, Peter, what ought we to do?”

  He laid his hand upon her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll have to get inoculated as soon as we can. I’ll go out and find out what’s happening as soon as I’ve done the washing up.”

  He hesitated. “I wouldn’t let the children go out today, if I were you. Keep them in the garden.”

  “You bet,” she said. “Peter, I’ve been thinking about the boat. It’ld be frightfully inconvenient, but I believe I’d really rather we were there.”

  He nodded. “I know. This puts the lid on it.”

  More in hope than in confidence he went and tried the telephone. He found it out of order.

  He did the washing up with Joan, and shaved, and dressed. He went out to the garden and had a look at the trench; there was standing water in the bottom of it. He decided to leave the car over it as some protection from the rain, and walked down to the town. On his way, he was shocked at the condition of the town. The damage was of the same character as after the last raid, but he noticed that there were far fewer people in the streets. The cumulative effect of the damage, coupled with the rain and the deserted aspect of the streets, gave to the town a ruined and a desolate appearance.

  He went first to his office. From the street he saw that there were broken windows; he let himself in with his key and made a quick inspection of the rooms. Practically all the windows had been shattered. The rain streamed in onto his desk; the sodden papers and the broken glass gave to the room an atmosphere of squalor and depression. He set his lips and moved all his documents to an untidy heap at the far side of the room, remote from the window. Then he did the same in Bellinger’s office.

  There was nothing else to be done. There was no post to go through, no newspapers to be read. He did not think that there was any likelihood of clients coming in. He went out into the street again, locking the door behind him.

  Andrews’ car was standing outside his office. Corbett went in and found the accountant alone, moving furniture away from the windows in much the same way as he had been doing. Corbett sat down on the edge of a desk.

  “Well,” he said, “we’re in a pretty pickle now.”

  “Right in,” said Mr. Andrews grimly. He offered him a cigarette.

  They sat smoking in silence for a minute or two. “Bloody things seem to come over and do just what they like,” said the accountant at last.

  “How the hell do they do it?”

  “I met an Air Force chap since I saw you last,” said Mr. Andrews. “He said that in the first raid they came at some colossal height, fifteen or twenty thousand feet, and just bombed through the clouds. No pretence of aiming at anything — they just dumped the stuff. What he couldn’t tell me was how they knew where to dump it.”

  They sat in silence again. “I suppose that’s against all the rules of war?” said Corbett.

  “I suppose so. Anyway, nobody bothers about that sort of thing these days.”

  There was a pause. Corbett said, “Are your people all right at home?”

  “So far. You didn’t know the Rossiters?”

  Corbett shook his head.

  “You’ve missed your opportunity,” said Mr. Andrews.

  He stubbed out his cigarette half smoked in an ashtray, hesitated for a minute, and lit another. He flicked the match away, and stepped nervously over to the shattered window. “I’m not going to go through another night of it. I’m getting my family out of it this afternoon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  The other shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t suppose one will be able to get in anywhere. I’ve got a tent. I’m taking that with me.”

  Corbett told him about the cholera, and the cordon that had been put upon the roads. “It’s reasonable,” he said. “If this really is cholera, they want to localize it.”

  The accountant’s lips set in a thin line. “Nobody’s going to localize me,” he said. There was an ugliness in his manner. “Inoculated or not, I’m getting out.”

  Corbett nodded slowly. “I’m going over to the Civic Centre to see if I can find out how one gets the inoculation done.”

  He walked across the park to the new buildings. He found the Centre in a ferment, the car parks jammed with little air-raid fire engines, lorries, and ambulances. The group of buildings had been hit in one or two places; one wall had slipped, revealing the teeming office life inside like a section of a hive of bees.

  He had two or three friends in the Town Clerk’s department, and he was well known to the minor officials. He made his way into the corridors and waited till he found an opportunity. Presently he met a young man that he knew, who drew him into an office away from the crowd. Corbett offered him a cigarette.

  “I came to see if I could find out anything about this cholera inoculation,” he enquired. “Where one gets it done?”

  The young man laughed, without humour. “They’re hoping to set up a clinic to do the whole city.”

  Corbett eyed him keenly. “A big job. When will that be?”

  “When the serum comes.”

  “I see,” said Corbett quietly.

  The young man explained, “They’ve got any amount of stuff for typhoid — or so they say. And anyway, that seems to take a longer time to incubate. But they’ve used up what little they had for cholera already, on the patients’ families. Now they’ve got to wait till they can get some more.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In fact, we’ve been caught napping?”

  “Seems like it. But who’d ever think of cholera? I thought that was a thing you only got in India. Typhoid and diphtheria — yes. But not cholera.”

  Corbett shook his head. “There used to be a lot of epidemics of it in this country.”

  The young man sighed. “Well, it looks as if we’ve got another one.” He paused. “Somebody was saying this morning that they’ve got it in Bristol, too.”

  “Seaport town,” said Corbett. “That might be.”

  He turned to the young man. “This cordon on the roads,” he said. “Is it still working?”

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t see how they can keep people in the town tonight, to face another raid. They’ll have to let them out, inoculated or not.”

  The other agreed. “Well, that’s what I think. But they’re very keen to keep the cholera from spreading. And if we aren’t careful it’ll be all over the country.”

  Corbett nodded. “It’s difficult,” he said, a little heavily. “Do you know what they’re doing about it?”

  “They’re having a conference upon it now, in the Town Clerk’s office. There’s someone down from the Ministry of Health, and the Town Clerk, and the M.O.H., and General Fitzroy.”

  “General Fitzroy?”

  “The military have taken over the cordon for the police. Didn’t you know?”

  Corbett went out into the town. The damage to the houses and the shops was much more extensive than it had been after the first raid. There seemed to have been a certain amount of looting; in one or two places there were constables on guard over badly damaged shops. He tried to sort out the new damage from the old, but found it practically impossible to differentiate. All he could say for certain was that the town now was very gravely injured. It seemed to him that in the centre of the city nearly one building in five had suffered serious damage, apart from broken windows which were everywhere. He did not think it was so bad in residential districts such as he lived in.

  Once more the roads were full of bomb holes; this time, however, little water came from them. A
gain in the centre of the town squads of men were working at the repair of mains, cables, and sewers; again, parties of workmen were boarding up windows that had been smashed. He got the impression that the work was not so active as it had been after the first raid. The squads seemed weaker in numbers, more dispersed. There did not seem to be the same enthusiasm to get the city right again that he had noticed formerly.

  He noticed many soldiers working with the corporation squads. He noticed also, and very definitely, that the town smelt. It was difficult to define the smell. It was not wholly drains. It seemed rather to be an atmosphere of mustiness and squalor, such as you might find in a poor, dirty house with tight-shut windows. Not very nice.

  He made his way back home on foot. On his way he passed a garage and saw cars being filled up. He went inside and found the proprietor, whom he knew.

  “I’ll put six gallons by for you, in cans,” the man told him. “But you must come and get it before dinner time, Mr. Corbett. I’ll be sold right out by that time at this rate, and I may not be able to keep it. Some of the chaps get real nasty if they think you’re holding any back.”

  He saw the gas put in cans and placed beneath the desk of the small office; then he went on. He reached his house to find his wife with Mrs. Littlejohn, doing the baby’s washing.

  “It don’t take but a minute,” said the older woman, “rinsing out a few little things like this. Many hands make light work, that’s what I say.”

  He took Joan into the next room on some pretext. “She’s been such a help, Peter,” said the girl. “I’d have been off my head with the children and the washing if it hadn’t been for her.”

  He told her what he had learned in the town. “We’ll never get to the boat while they keep this cordon up,” he said. “And Lord knows when we’ll get inoculated.” He paused. “I might creep through alone, or you might, if we thought it was worth while to try. But we’d never make it with three children and the car.”

  “I don’t want to separate, Peter. There’s no point in that. Let’s stick together.”

  “All right.”

  “That means we stay here for tonight, does it?”