by Nevil Shute
A hand steadied him as he got into the boat, as he sat down at the stern. “Sit stiff and upright — so,” a voice whispered. “That is the way they sit in boats, those swine.”
They pushed off, and rowed out into the harbour to the black sardine-boat lying at the mooring.
On the quay the tumult soon died down. Bozallec stood with Simon leaning on the rail, looking out over the harbour. One by one the fishing-boats were slipping their moorings, backing and turning, moving out into the bay towards the shepherding Raumboote. It was already evening.
Bozallec said presently: “That is the one. That one going astern behind the tunnyman.” He looked round at the weather. “Rain to-night,” he said. “It will be easy for them to work out to the north. To-morrow morning he will be in Falmouth.”
He turned to Simon with something like reverence. “What will you do, monsieur?”
Simon stirred. “I shall go up to the hotel,” he said. “The Hôtel du Commerce. I want to sleep in a bed for to-night.”
He was still in the fisherman’s clothes that they had all worn upon Geneviève. He had a few hundred francs in French money; he went up to the market-place and bought himself a suit of clothes, a new shirt, and a collar and tie. He bought a very cheap fibre suitcase to put the other clothes in, and carrying that he walked along to the hotel.
He spent the evening in the hotel, as he had spent so many other evenings of his life in France, sitting in the café reading a paper, smoking, drinking Pernod, and watching a couple at the next table play a game of draughts. The proprietor was not there that evening, and no one noticed him. He dined well, with as good a bottle of Burgundy as the house could produce, and went up early to his bed.
He slept late, and it was after nine when he came down to the café in the morning. He called through the kitchen door for a cup of coffee and a brioche; the proprietor brought it to him himself. He stared at Simon when he saw him.
“Monsieur has stayed with us before?” he enquired. “Your face is familiar.”
Simon said: “I was here in February last, on business. You told me then about Father Zacharias, and the little boy, Jules.”
“I remember,” said the innkeeper. “You were travelling in cement.”
He left Simon to his coffee, but presently he came back again, carrying a big black book. He opened this and laid it on the table, with a pen and a bottle of ink. “Monsieur did not register last night,” he said. “If he would be so good. Name, Christian name, occupation, and address.”
Simon took the pen and put down “Simon — Charles.” Then he glanced up at the innkeeper. “My occupation is that I am an officer in the British Army,” he said, “and my address is in London. Shall I put that down?”
The man stared at him. “Charles Simon,” he breathed. “Are you crazy? I remember now — that was your name before.”
“It is still my name. I have never had another.”
“You do not understand. The Germans come each day to see this book.” He stared at the entry. “There are only three names above. I will take the page out, and three separate people can then write the names again.”
“What time do the Germans come?” asked Simon.
“After déjeuner, always at the same time.”
Simon got to his feet. “It will not matter to me if they see it then,” he said. “Do as you like about the book.”
The man said: “Where are you going to? Stay here, indoors, and I will arrange something. There are people in Douarnenez who will help you, monsieur.”
Simon said: “The people here are in trouble enough over me. I am going first to the presbytery.”
He went out; the innkeeper followed him to the door and stood watching him as he went down the street. The morning was bright and sunny after the rain, the streets swept by a fresh, keen wind from the Atlantic. Half-way to the presbytery a man stopped him, asking for a light for his cigarette.
Simon passed him a box of matches; the man stooped by him to shield the flame. “They got away,” he said. “One of the boats was missing when dawn came. The fleet has just come into harbour. The Germans are very angry about it.”
He straightened up. A German sailor passed by them in the street going towards the harbour. The man lit another match and flipped it at him scornfully. The German scowled angrily at them. The man spat on the pavement at his feet, and gave the box of matches back to Simon.
Simon said: “That is good news for Douarnenez, and for all France. One day the English will come back, and bring their fire again.” He smiled gently. “Charles Simon says so.”
He went on down the main street past the great church to the small house beside it, and knocked at the door of the presbytery. It was opened to him by Father Augustine himself; when he saw who it was he pulled Simon inside quickly and shut the door. They stood together in the narrow passage.
Simon said: “Father, all has gone as we had planned. By now my friend will be in England and in hospital in his own country. There is an officer at the British Admiralty who will be looking after him. His little friend, his fiancée, will be with him and he will be happy. All this is due to you, and I want to thank you for it.”
The priest said: “We are all instruments of Almighty God. Give your thanks to Him.”
Simon inclined his head.
“And you, my son?”
“My time is getting short. I want to cleanse my soul, father.”
The priest said gently: “You could have escaped with your friend quite easily. Why did you not go with him?”
There was a little pause. Then Simon said: “I am practically a Frenchman, father, though I have British nationality. But all my life I have thought of myself as English. I wanted to be English, as my father was. Now, for eight months, I have been an officer in the British Army. A proper British officer would not go away and leave these hostages. I do not want women and little girls of seven to be killed so that I may go free.”
He left the presbytery half an hour later, and walked down to the harbour. All his life the sight of boats had fascinated him, the smell of tanned sails and salt water, the lap and shimmer of the waves. He spent an hour down at the waterside in peace, storing up memories. He walked out on the jetty, still black from the fire, and wondered what had happened to his own four-ton yacht at St. Malo. Then he went back into the Café de la République and drank a glass of Pernod.
Presently he left the café and walked up the hill, towards the German headquarters.
Under the great swastika flag he turned in at the door between the sentries, stiff and erect with rifles and steel helmets. There was a desk in the front room; behind it was an Unterfeldwebel of the German Army, and a private.
“I have come about the thirty hostages,” Simon said in French. “You can let them go. I am a British officer, the only one who landed in Douarnenez.”
12
IT TOOK RHODES about three-quarters of an hour to tell me what he knew, and he was very weary by the time we had finished. Towards the end the nurse kept looking in every two or three minutes, mutely begging me to pack up and go. I made it as short as I could, and got to my feet.
“You’d better rest now, Rhodes,” I said. I hesitated, and then said: “I shall be in touch with Dartmouth. Would you like to see Miss Wright?”
He said: “She’s just had leave, sir. They wouldn’t let her come down here, would they?”
I laughed. “I’ll certify it as a service journey. You’d like to see her, wouldn’t you?”
He flushed. “I don’t know if you know. We got engaged — just before this show.”
“She told me,” I said. I picked up my cap. “I’ll see about that, Rhodes. Come and see me in London when you’re on your feet again, and we’ll talk about what you are to do next.”
I left the ward, and went back to the surgeon’s office. There I scribbled a message for him to get telephoned to Dartmouth, and left in a hurry for the station. I got the London train by the skin of my teeth, and sat all morning as it wandered o
n through Cornwall.
The train drew into Newton Abbot station early in the afternoon; Leading Wren Wright was on the platform there to meet me. It was my fate to tell her things on Newton Abbot platform, in the clamour of the trucks and milk-cans, the hissing of steam heat from the carriages, and the bustle of the crowd. I got out quickly and went up to her.
“Look, Miss Wright,” I said. “You got my message?”
She stammered: “He — he’s all right, is he, sir?”
I said: “He’s not a bit all right. He isn’t going to die, but he’s got a very nasty and neglected wound in his left shoulder. He’s in Falmouth Hospital, and he’d very much like to see you down there.”
She said: “Would I be able to get leave?”
I had written a note in the train, and now I gave it to her. “Take this to the commander,” I said. “Give him my compliments and tell him that I’m sorry I haven’t been able to telephone him. I’ve asked if he can spare you for a week to be with Rhodes, in this letter. But it rests with him entirely, you know. I can’t give you leave.”
She said ingenuously: “I’ll get it if you’ve said you want me to have it, sir. He thinks an awful lot of you. They all do.”
“I’ve done nothing in this show,” I said. “Nothing but sit on my backside in an office and watch other people do the work.”
There was a short pause. “Do you know what happened to Captain Simon and Lieutenant Boden, sir?” she asked.
I said: “Simon got on shore all right” — I dropped my voice— “but he’s still over on the other side. Keep your mouth shut about that. I’m afraid it’s very nearly certain that Lieutenant Boden was killed.”
She nodded; she had evidently expected that. “I was sure it must have been him,” she said. “He was the man with the Tommy-gun, when she was floating upside down?”
“I think he was,” I said.
She raised her head. “It was the best thing,” she said. “He’d never have settled down, after the war.”
I did not agree with her. “People get over things.”
She shook her head. “Not Boden. He was hurt too much.”
It was not a matter one could argue, especially on Newton Abbot platform; besides which, she was more his age and knew Boden better than I did. Behind me a porter was shouting out for passengers to take their seats, and slamming doors as he passed down the train. I moved towards my compartment. “Look after yourself and see that doesn’t happen to Rhodes,” I said.
She said: “It might be the other way about.”
Down at the end of the train the guard blew his whistle, waving his green flag. I got into my compartment and leaned out of the window for a few last words to her. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “He’ll never go to sea again — he never should have gone this time. Rhodes is a Special Branch officer — green stripe. He’ll be on shore for the remainder of the war.”
She said: “He’ll hate that, sir.”
The train began to move. I grinned at her. “I know he will,” I said. “But you won’t.”
She laughed at that; it was the first time that I had seen her laugh for weeks. The last thing I saw of her was that she was still laughing on the platform, waving to me with the letter in her hand that was to give her leave. I’m not sure that it’s correct for a Leading Wren to wave like that at a commander.
I saw McNeil that evening in his office in Pall Mall, and told him what I had been doing, and what I had learned from Rhodes. It took about half an hour to tell the story as I then knew it. In the end I said: “Simon is still in France, apparently. We might hear from him before so very long.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was a message in to-day about him.” He unlocked a drawer and passed me one of his MOST SECRET flimsies that I was beginning to dislike. It read:
DOUARNENEZ. The thirty hostages which were to be executed on November 15th were all released on November 14th. A British officer named Charles Simon is said to have surrendered to the Germans on that day. This man is said to have been a survivor from a British ship sunk in the Iroise, and to have been concerned in some way with the recent fires in minor German war vessels. Ends.
I passed it back to him in silence. “That’s the end of that,” I said heavily at last. “We shan’t see him again till after the war.”
“No,” said the brigadier. He said no more than that. It seemed to me that there was nothing more to say.
I left him and went back to my normal work. Nothing happened after that for the best part of a fortnight; indeed, there was nothing more to happen. That party was all cleaned up, or so I thought. Colvin came out of hospital about the end of November and came up to see me at the Admiralty one afternoon. I made him sit down and smoke, and we chatted for a short time about this and that.
Presently I said: “What’s your position now, Colvin? They’re giving you a decent spell of leave?”
“I wanted to see you about that, sir,” he said. “The surgeon-commander down at Haslar, he’s being mighty particular. I get a month’s leave now. Well, that’s okay, although I don’t know what in heck you do with a month’s leave in this country in December. But after that, he says I’ll be for light duty on shore for six months at least, ‘n possibly for longer. That don’t seem reasonable to me.”
“How do you feel yourself?” I asked.
“I must say I get mighty tired with little things,” he confessed. “Walking upstairs, ‘n that. And shaving, I keep cutting myself. But that’ll all go off, after a month.”
“How old are you, Colvin?”
“I’m forty-eight.” He hesitated. “I did knock off five years, but the commander at Haslar, he got hold of all my papers when I was in hospital.”
“Bad luck,” I said.
“You see the way it is, sir,” he explained. “I don’t want to get stuck down in one of them places like the Clyde or Liverpool, not knowing anybody in this country, ‘n nothing to do but get into trouble. I’d be better off at sea.”
I bent down and opened one of the drawers of my desk. I pulled out a little box. “By the way,” I said. “I got your watch back. I think it’s all right now.”
He was very pleased. He took the box and opened it. The London Chronometer Company had done a good job on it; they had given it a complete new movement and polished it up till it looked like new. They had even sent it back in a little wash-leather bag.
“Say,” he said, “that’s dandy.” He put it to his ear and listened to it ticking. And then, unable to resist, he turned it over and read the inscription that he must have known by heart: “Jack Colvin from Junie, September 17th, 1935.”
“I certainly am grateful, sir,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I got the admiral’s secretary to take it on his petty cash account.”
He said: “That’s mighty nice of the admiral.” He paused. “It worried me more ‘n anything else,” he said, “the way I’d used this watch. But now it’s better ‘n it ever was before.”
I turned back to the job in hand; I had other things to do that afternoon besides settling up Colvin. “Look,” I said. “There’s a shore job that I think might suit you. It’s the armouring of merchant ships — wheel-houses, gun zarebas, and all that. It wants somebody who knows merchant ships, to go on board each ship and say in each case what has to be done — and then to see the work is done right. It’s not difficult work, but it wants a chap like you to do it. It means rowing in with each skipper, talking it over with him, and then modifying the standard scheme to suit the particular conditions in each ship.”
I paused. “Could you tackle that?”
“I guess so. It sounds the sort of thing I used to do when I was Marine Superintendent over on the coast.”
I nodded. “That’s what I had in mind. And more than that, it seemed to me you might have local contacts that would help you.” He looked up, puzzled. “These are the Lease-Lend ships I’m talking about,” I said. “This jo
b would be on the west coast of America. Your headquarters would be in San Francisco.”
There was a momentary silence. “Have I got this right?” he asked. “You mean you want me to go out to ‘Frisco for this job?”
“If you want to go,” I said. “It’s an opportunity I thought perhaps you might like.”
“Would I like it!” he breathed. “Say...” And then he stopped and said: “Who put you up to this one, sir? Who told you that I wanted to get back to ‘Frisco? Was it young Boden?”
“He said something about it. I was very glad to know.”
He stared down at his finger-nails. “He was a mighty fine kid, that,” he said. “They don’t make them any better.”
He raised his head and looked at me. “I do want to get back to ‘Frisco,” he said quietly. “I got a personal reason, sir — nothing to do with the Navy.” He was still holding the watch in his hand. “I said I wasn’t married when you asked me, first of all,” he said. “That’s right enough, if you go by the law. I couldn’t have drawn marriage allowance — at least, I reckon not. It wasn’t regular, you see.”
“I understand,” I said. “This is Junie, is it?”
“Aye,” he said, “it’s Junie. Seems to me some folks get married and it takes right off, and they don’t get no more trouble. Young Boden, he was one o’ them, I guess. But others never seem to hit it right.”
I could not comment upon that.
“I been married a lot of times,” he said simply, “and each time it finished up in trouble, up till the time when I paired up with Junie. We got married by a minister as if it was all regular, but it wasn’t regular at all, on account of all the other times.” He paused. “Later on, and when this war came, I’d have give my eyes if it could have been made a proper marriage. But that’s what you can’t do.”
“You lived together for four years, didn’t you?” I asked.
“More like five,” he said. “Close on five, it was. I don’t want any better time than that.”
“Do you think she’ll be there still?” I asked. “Two years is a fair time.” I meant, a fair time to expect a girl to hang around without a letter and without marriage lines, but I didn’t say so much.
