by Nevil Shute
They went out for a waltz. He was not a bad dancer, and like most girls of her class she was very good. They were together well by this time, and went drifting round the floor weaving in and out of the crowd in a slow, graceful rhythm. A faint fragrance came up from her hair into his face; he was quite suddenly immensely moved.
He said, “You’ve done something to your hair.”
She laughed. “I had it washed.” She paused, and then said, “Do you like it?”
“Smells all right.”
“You do say horrid things. I never met a boy that said such horrid things as you.”
He squeezed her as they danced. “It’s the stern brake I have to keep upon myself. If I told you what I really thought about you you’d slap my face and go home.”
She laughed up at him. “I’ll slap it now, just for luck.”
“Then I’ll have you arrested. You can’t do that to an officer in war time. It’s high treason.”
Presently they went and sat down again for a time. He lit a cigarette for her, and said, “What else did you do today, besides getting your hair washed?”
“Did the shopping for Mother, before going to the snack bar. We open at twelve-thirty, you know. Then in the afternoon I had my hair done, and went home for tea.”
“And back to work again.”
“That’s right. What did you do?”
He considered. “Did a spot of flying. Just scraped clear of a blazing row.”
“What about?”
“Only something to do with the work. Then I worked on the galleon for a bit.”
“How big is it?”
He showed her with his hands. “About like that.”
“What are you going to call it when it’s done?”
“Mona.”
She was pleased. “You do talk soft — really you do. What else did you do after that?”
“After that? I — oh, by God, yes — I came into Southsea and bought a rabbit.”
She stared at him in amazement. “A rabbit? Whatever are you going to do with that?” And then she said, “You’re just kidding again.”
“You hurt me very much when you say that.” He turned and rummaged in the pocket of his long blue overcoat. “You don’t deserve to see it.”
He pulled out the carton. She bent across the table curiously, her head very close to his. He opened it and took out the lamp, clicked the switch, and the rabbit glowed with light.
She breathed, “Isn’t it lovely! Wherever did you get it from?”
He told her. “I went in there to get a lipstick, and saw it on the counter.”
“A lipstick?”
“I’ve got it on now.” He took the mirror from her bag and looked at himself. “I think it’s rather becoming.”
“You are the silliest thing ever. You don’t use lipstick.”
“That’s all you know. They told me it was kissproof in the shop. Do you mind if I try and see?”
“Yes, I do.”
They went and danced again. The dance was coming to an end; the quickstep accelerated to a wild gallop round the floor. Then the music stopped, the band stood up, the men drew stiffly to attention and the girls tried to imitate them as God Save the King was played. Then the gathering of coats and bags, and they were out in the car park by the chilly little roadster.
Chambers said, “I’m not quite sure how it’s going to go tonight. It’s been rather bad recently.”
The girl said, “It’ll go if you want it to.”
They got into it. “I expect you’re right,” the pilot said. “If it stops we’ll just have to sit and wish, and wait for it to start again.”
She said, “I don’t believe that it’d ever start that way. The only way to make it start would be to get out and walk home.”
He shook his head. “If it should stop — and mind you, I don’t suppose it will — we’d better try my way first.”
The girl said, “We’ll try yours for ten minutes. After that, we try mine.”
“All right.”
The engine stopped beneath the trees a quarter of a mile away.
Twenty miles out to sea, a tired sub-lieutenant shoved his way into the cramped, dimly lit listening cabin. The man with the headphones raised his head. “Nothing yet, sir,” he said in a low tone, half whispering. “Single-screw steamer bearing east north east — that’s all so far.”
The officer put on the headphones. “Give you a spell.”
They changed places and the listener went out; in the dim light the officer sat down before the instruments and turned the condenser slowly, searching round the dial. Outside in the utter darkness the waves lapped against the hull; a small tinkling came from a loose shovel in the engine-room each time the drifter rolled. These mingled with the hissing in the headphones, and a rhythmic beat at one position of the condenser knob that was the steamer, far away. There was no other sound.
In the imagination of the sub-lieutenant there came a vivid picture of a German listener in a similar dim cabin curved to the shape of the hull, slowly turning a similar condenser knob on a similar apparatus.
“Bloody thing must know we’re here,” the tired officer muttered to himself. “He’ll probably stay where he is until tomorrow night. . . .”
In the dark privacy of the little car parked snugly underneath the trees, Chambers said softly, “The girl told me it was kissproof in the shop. Shall I strike a match and see?”
The girl nestled closer into his arms. “No. You do talk silly.”
A thought struck the pilot. “What about yours?”
“My what?”
“Your lipstick. I’ve got to go back to the mess before I can wash my face.”
She rippled with laughter, against his heavy overcoat. “Mine comes off like anything. You’ll look a perfect sight. All the other officers will know what you’ve been doing.”
“I’ll get cashiered.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sacked.”
She said, “I’ll wipe it off for you in a minute, when you take me home.”
“In half an hour.”
“In a minute,” she said firmly.
“Then we’ve not got much time to waste.”
Presently she said, “It’s been a lovely evening, Mr. Chambers. I have enjoyed it, ever so.”
The pilot said, “My friends all call me Jerry.”
“I can’t call you that.”
“Jerry.”
“All right then. Now go on and take me home.”
“Jerry?”
She laughed softly. “Go on and take me home, Jerry.”
“When are you coming out with me again?”
“You haven’t asked me yet.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I can’t tomorrow. Uncle Ernest, in the Iron Duke — he’s coming to see us tomorrow night, and I said I’d be home early. His ship came in yesterday. He’s Daddy’s brother.”
“What about Thursday?”
“All right.” She wriggled erect in the seat beside him. “Let me clean your face.”
“Better do that when I get you home. It might get dirty again.”
The worn engine of the little car came noisily to life and they drove through the black, windy streets to the furniture shop that was her home. There the engine came to rest, and the little car stood against the kerb, motionless and silent. Five minutes later the girl got out onto the pavement, stuffing a soiled handkerchief into the pocket of her coat.
She turned back to the car, and stooped to the low entrance. “Good night,” she said softly. “It’s been lovely.”
“Good night, Mona,” he said. “Thursday.”
“Thursday,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
She stood for a moment fumbling in her bag for her latchkey; then the door opened, and she vanished inside. Chambers sat watching her till she was out of sight, then started up the engine and drove off.
The girl ran quietly upstairs to her room and shut the door behind her. It was
not the first time that she had been kissed in a dark motor car on the way back from a dance, but she had never been much moved by it before. It had never produced in her such a mixture of feelings. She felt safe with him, queerly safe, though with her reason she reflected that his motor car was hardly a safe place for her. She understood him better than she had ever understood the others; there was no guile about him. His irresponsible talk sometimes puzzled her because she wasn’t used to it, but in this his mood was very like her own. She felt that she could fall into his ways very easily. He never worried her at all.
She got into bed and pulled the clothes around her, happy and a little thoughtful. She was not quite in love with him, but she knew that she could be very deeply in love with him if she were to let herself go. She did not quite know if she wanted to do that. She was a sensible girl, and older than her twenty-one years in experience. She knew very little of him, or his background. He had been to Cranwell, the cadet college; she knew that. That meant he was an officer of regular Air Force, in it for a career, not just a temporary officer for the war. She knew that she was not quite of his social class, and she did not resent it. Her father had risen from the lower deck and kept a little furniture shop in a back street. They were different; you couldn’t get away from that. She knew that her father and mother would disapprove of her going about with an officer, especially a regular officer. They’d say that no good would come of it. Probably it wouldn’t. But she was going to meet him Thursday, all the same.
She drifted into sleep, happy and smiling to herself.
Chambers drove back to the aerodrome, still tingling with the warmth of the girl’s presence. He reflected semi-humorously as he went that he was probably making a fool of himself. He had no sisters, and he had not had a great deal to do with girls. His family comprised a widowed mother, who lived in a suburb of Bristol, and an older brother.
Instinctively he knew that he was dangerously close to a real love affair. Never before in his life had he thought much about marriage, but he was thinking of it now. His reason told him that marriage was absurd. He was far too hard up on his pay as a flying officer even to think of it; moreover, from all he had heard, you didn’t marry barmaids — you seduced them. He shied away from that; he had a poor opinion of it as a hobby, and he wouldn’t have known how to set about it. It disturbed him that he should feel rested when he was with her. He could say whatever came into his head without fear of misunderstanding. She was young, and she was healthy, and to him she was very beautiful.
He drove into the car park of the mess, moodily cursing his lot as an officer. He didn’t think that it would be a very good thing to marry a barmaid if he wanted to get on in the Royal Air Force. He felt resentful; the world should have been organized upon some different basis.
He parked the car, draped the rug over its bonnet, and lit the rabbit lamp to find his way through the bicycles. It glowed lambent in the darkness of the blackout, a luminous ghost rabbit. Its red eyes led him to the back door of the mess.
In the anteroom he paused and looked at the operations board. Cloud, it appeared, was to be nine-tenths at two thousand feet during the morning. That was better, but the wind with it was thirty miles an hour from the south-west — not quite so good. Instinctively he visualized the conditions; a wintry, gusty day with fleeting glimpses of the sun. He ran his eye over the other notices; there was nothing new but one:
No submarine is to be attacked tomorrow, December 3rd, in Area SL between 1200 hours and 1500 hours, in Area SM between 1400 hours and 1530 hours, and in Area TM between 1430 hours and nightfall.
A. S. Dickens, Wing Cdr.
Chambers stared at this for a moment; he would copy it into his notebook in the morning. It affected his own zone. He wondered sleepily what lay behind it; it was like the wing commander to keep his own counsel. Damn silly, Chambers thought, but discipline was frequently like that. There was nothing else upon the board to interest him, and he turned away.
Then he remembered the Lochentie, and a gust of irritation at official stupidity swept over him. “Let the bloody thing get away,” he muttered to himself. “Old Hitler just makes rings round us. . . .”
He went up irritated to his room, his nerves on edge, suffering a little from reaction after an emotional evening. At school he had read a little poetry of the more conventional sort, and a familiar stanza came into his head as he undressed:
Ah love, could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire —
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.
He smiled a little as he put on his pyjamas. “Like hell we would,” he muttered to himself. He got into his bed, still smiling at the thought. Very soon he was asleep.
Next day was the change-over in patrol. The flight, under Hooper, were to take the afternoon patrol for the next month, the variation being designed to break the monotony of the routine. Chambers was able to sleep relatively late. He woke punctually at six o’clock, according to the habit of weeks, and dozed in bed till eight; then he got up and had a bath. He had finished breakfast by nine, and walked over to the pilots’ room in the hangar.
Hooper met him there. “Sergeant Hutchinson’s gone to hospital,” he said. “What about it, Jerry?”
Chambers grunted. “Good job, too,” he said. “He’s been breathing influenza germs all over me for the last two days. Who can I have instead?”
The flight lieutenant said, “Nobody.”
“Well, that’s a bloody fine show. Am I supposed to go without a second pilot?”
“I don’t know who there is to send with you. Do you?”
There was a momentary silence. There had been a spate of transfers from the station to the Bombing Command in the past week, to fill vacancies that had resulted from an injudicious raid on Heligoland Bight. The reinforcements from the flying training schools were due to reach them in a day or two, but in the meantime there was a shortage of second pilots.
Chambers said discontentedly, “I suppose that means I’ll have to take the thing alone.”
“Send Corporal Sutton with you, if you like?”
The flying officer shook his head. “I’ve got Corporal Lambert for the back gun, and the wireless operator. He can pass me up the charts.”
The flight lieutenant understood this well enough. The presence of a fourth man in the aeroplane who was not a pilot or a navigator was a hindrance rather than a help; he tended to get in the way of the quick movements of a pilot who was flying the machine and navigating at the same time. It was better to make the radio operator hop around a bit.
Hooper said, “O.K. If you go alone today I’ll let you have Sergeant Abel for tomorrow.” The offer meant that he himself would fly alone on the next day.
Chambers said, “We’d better have a round of Santiago for it after dinner.” They were great hands with the poker dice.
He set to work to copy out the orders for the day into the notebook that he would strap onto his thigh in the machine, including the order prohibiting the bombing of submarines. “Thank God it’s better visibility today,” he said when he had finished.
The flight lieutenant nodded. “Don’t want any more Lochenties.”
Jerry said sourly, “The whole sea might be stiff with Lochenties and submarines for all it matters to us. We’re not allowed to bomb the bloody things if we do see them.”
He left the hangar and went back to the mess, irritated and a little depressed. The mention of the Lochentie had brought back to his mind the memory of the conversation of the night before in the Royal Clarence bar. He heard again the voices of the trawler officers describing what they had seen. In his mind’s eye again he pictured what had been described. Old women in lifebelts washed and battered in a rough, grey, breaking sea, dying of cold and choked with fuel oil. . . . And then on top of that, this order about not attacking submarines!
He had a cup of Bovril and a few biscuits
in the mess at eleven o’clock, since he would miss his lunch. Then he went back to the hangar. The aircraft were out upon the tarmac with the engines running to warm up; the crews were moving about them. In the pilots’ room the six pilots were putting on their flying clothing, two for each of the other three machines. He joined them, put on his flying suit, boots, helmet, and muffler, and strapped his notebook to his thigh. Then he went out to meet his crew.
They took off at eleven forty-five; the strong wind helped them off the ground. From a thousand feet the visibility was about five miles, uneven and much influenced by streaks of sunlight that came down occasionally through the patchy clouds. The flight kept a loose formation till they reached the coast, passing the morning patrol on its way back to the aerodrome. At the coast they split up, each proceeding independently to his own area.
Behind him, Chambers heard the clatter of the gun as Corporal Lambert fired his usual burst into the sea to test the gun. He turned in his seat and motioned to the radio operator; the lad left his seat and handed him the chart that he required. The pilot spread it awkwardly upon the folding seat beside him and picked off his course for the French coast. He set it on the verge ring of the compass and climbed up to fifteen hundred feet, the lower limit of the clouds.
All afternoon they swept backwards and forwards above the cold grey sea, coming down near the surface to inspect each ship they saw, noting her name and nationality, her course and speed. Once in each half hour they approached the coast, the French coast to the south of them, and the English coast to the north. They did not cross the land; they came near enough to establish their position accurately upon the chart, then turned to a reverse and parallel course. After three or four of these flights Chambers had gauged the wind correctly, and each succeeding flight took place exactly down the plotted line upon the chart.
The machine swept backwards and forwards over the grey sea all afternoon. The crew grew gradually colder; they sucked peppermint bull’s-eyes, suffered the cold, and watched the clock. At this time of year, in December, darkness would release them before their allotted time; that was a compensation for the cold. Sunset that day was at 3.53. They would land at about 4.15.
