by Nevil Shute
Within five minutes the US Military Police were hammering on his door. He heaved himself out of his chair and went to open it; he was faced by a sergeant with a couple of soldiers at his back, all armed to the teeth.
The sergeant said: “We got to search this house for a nigger. You got any niggers in here?”
“Nobody in here but me,” said Mr Frobisher. “Not unless my daughter’s upstairs in her room.”
“Well, we got to search this house,” the sergeant said, and made as if to come in.
The landlord said slowly: “Here, steady on a minute. What’s all this about?”
“One of your village girls got raped or near raped by a nigger,” said the sergeant. “The lieutenant said: Search all the houses in this block.”
Mr Frobisher said: “You got a search warrant?”
The sergeant stared at him nonplussed. “We don’t need no warrant.”
Mr Frobisher said: “Well, you can’t go searching houses in this country without you’ve got a warrant. You ought to know better. There’s no Negro in this house now, anyway. They all went at ten o’clock.”
“For crying out loud,” the sergeant said. “You going to let us in here, or not?”
“You got to have a warrant if you’re going to search my house,” said Mr Frobisher firmly.
One of the men behind pushed forward. “Let me see what I can do, Sarge.” The sergeant gave place to him; Private Graves had lived and worked in England for five years.
“Say Mr Frobisher,” he said. “We’ve got no warrant to search your house. But one of your young ladies has complained a nigger stopped her and did something to her in the street, and he’s run away. We thought maybe he might be hiding in your back yard or some place. Mind if we come in and have a look?”
“Sure,” said the landlord, “go ahead. Why didn’t you say that first of all?”
Slightly bewildered, the sergeant led his men into the house; they spread out quickly, looked into the ground floor rooms, and went out into the yard. Mr Frobisher said to Private Graves: “Take a look upstairs if you want to.” He went with him and knocked on his daughter’s door. She answered from inside: “Who’s that?”
“Come on out a minute,” he said. She appeared in a kimono, and saw her father standing with an American soldier. He said: “This gentleman wants to know if you’ve got a nigger in there.”
She said: “Why, Daddy, what a thing to say. You’d better go to bed.”
He was quite unmoved. “Well, that’s what they want to know.” In a few words he told her what was happening. “You’d better let him take a look.”
A very much abashed military policeman put his head in at the door and looked around, while Bessie regarded him as so much dirt. He went downstairs again with Mr Frobisher and the girl slammed her door. The sergeant left one military policeman in the yard and moved on to the next house; a few minutes after that there was the noise of a jeep being started up, a challenge, and two shots. In the street outside there was turmoil. Cars filled with running men and roared off in the direction of Penzance. Quite suddenly the street was quiet again, still and deserted in the bright moonlight.
Mr Frobisher shut the street door carefully, and shot the bolts one by one. Then he turned, and Bessie was standing half way down the stairs, in her kimono. “Was that shots fired?” she asked, and there was wonder in her voice.
“Aye,” said her father heavily. “It won’t do no good, that.”
The girl said: “Lor . . .” And men she asked: “Who was it got assaulted, do you know?”
“I dunno.”
“Do you know which of the boys did it?”
“I dunno. One o’ them called up from the cottonfields, I should think. Some o’ them don’t seem ever to have been educated at all, not to speak of.”
She tossed her head. “Even so, a girl what’s got her head screwed on right doesn’t have to get assaulted, not unless she wants to.”
“Aye,” he said, “that’s right.” They went to bed.
Lieutenant Anderson of the US Military Police did not get a great deal of sleep that night. He was a decent man, and secretly concerned at what he had found in the air-raid shelter. Easing his way cautiously around the buttress, gun in one hand and torch in the other, with a sergeant with a submachine gun at his back, he had found a young Negro sitting on a seat, his head bowed down on his knees, and drenched in his own blood. He had put away his gun in favour of a first aid kit, and rushed the lad in a command car to the nearest hospital in the next street, and left him there under guard. He then had an awkward five minutes with a British sergeant, who turned up and wanted to know all about it. Lieutenant Anderson was well aware that the British civil police had funny ideas about shooting. They went unarmed themselves, and seemed to have no difficulty in dealing with the pansy British criminals that way.
This police sergeant was a man of fifty, unimaginative and difficult. “Was that your men shooting in the street just now?” he asked.
“That’s right,” said the lieutenant.
The sergeant said ponderously: “Well, you can’t do that here.” He reached for his black notebook. “Can I have your name and unit?”
“Say, what is this?” said the lieutenant unhappily. “We’re the military police. We don’t have to make any report to you.”
“Maybe not,” said the sergeant equably, “but I got to make a report about you. You can’t go shooting off guns in the street like that, not in this country you can’t. You might ha’ killed somebody.”
Lieutenant Anderson realized that some explanation was required from him. “Maybe you wouldn’t know about the color difficulty,” he said patiently. “It’s kind of different when you’re dealing with a nigger. They don’t react until you show a gun.”
“Was this Negro armed when you found him?” asked the sergeant.
“Only just his knife,” said the lieutenant. “But the boys wasn’t to know that.”
The sergeant wrote it all down laboriously in his notebook. Again he demanded the lieutenant’s name and unit, and got it, and wrote it down. “It don’t seem to be anything to do with us,” the sergeant said at last. “I’ll have to make out a bit of a report because of the firing, but I don’t suppose you’ll hear no more about it.” He went away at last, leaving Lieutenant Anderson irritated and slightly worried.
He drove back to his camp and, before going to bed, questioned Sergeant Burton rather closely. The sergeant, fat and forty, did not know the name of the girl, but he had seen her in the street several times, and knew where she lived. It seemed to Lieutenant Anderson that before he made out his report to Colonel McCulloch he should make the matter watertight by getting evidence from the girl, and at half past eight in the morning he was knocking on her cottage door, with Sergeant Burton at his side.
Mr Trefusis, signalman upon the railway, had already gone to work; Mrs Trefusis opened the door to them, full of feminine indignation. Gracie had come in crying shortly after ten o’clock and had been closely questioned by her mother. She had told her mother that she had been grabbed and kissed by a Negro soldier, and that she had screamed, and a sergeant of the US Military Police had come running up and saved her. In her confusion and distress she thought that this was true.
“And let me tell you,” said Mrs Trefusis, arms akimbo on her hips, “if you think you can bring them black savages into a decent town like this and let them run amuck, you’re very much mistaken. It’s just the mercy of Providence the poor girl isn’t lying in her grave this very minute, and a lot any of you would care about it. But you ain’t heard the last of this, you mark my word. Fine goings on, when decent girls can’t go out after dark ‘n come home safe. Fine goings on!”
Lieutenant Anderson’s spirits rose; this was just what he wanted. If there was any difficulty about the charge or the shooting he could bring the colonel down, and let him listen to the mother of the victim. “I guess we’re all real sorry this has happened, lady,” he said meekly.
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sp; “And well you might be, young man,” she replied indignantly. “This is a decent town; we don’t have them goings on here, you know, however you may carry on at home where you come from. We don’t want any o’ your Wild West manners here. What do we have to do? Keep our girls in of an evening ‘case the niggers get them? I never did hear such. The poor child hasn’t slept a wink all night and didn’t eat no breakfast, and now late at the shop and all. I told Mr Trefusis, I did, I said we ought to have a doctor to her, that we did. That’s what I told him. But he didn’t pay no attention to me.”
She stopped for breath.
The lieutenant said: “You don’t have to worry any more. We got the nigger, and you can depend upon it there won’t be no more trouble of that sort, no ma’am. He’ll be up for court martial that nigger will. He’ll get sent up for about ten years. As for your daughter, ma’am, I’m here to tell you that we’re real sorry in the US Army this thing had to happen. I guess there’s nothing we can do will ease the little lady’s feelings, but if there’s anything she needs, or anything that we can get her that ‘ld take her mind off it, I’d be real glad if you’d tell me.”
Mrs Trefusis said: “I dunno. If you’ve got him and he’s going to be court martialled . . .”
The lieutenant laughed shortly. “Don’t you worry about that. We’re going to make an example of that nigger. This isn’t going to happen again.” He hesitated. “Could I see the little lady for a minute? I’d like to know if she can identify him.”
“Come in.” She showed them into the parlour, and went to find her daughter, washing up the breakfast dishes in the scullery. “There’s a couple of American officers come in about last night, dearie,” she said. “Ever so nice they are. Wipe your hands, and come on in and talk to them.”
The girl said: “I don’t want to see them, Ma.”
“Come on, dearie — they won’t hurt you. They just want to know you can identify the nigger that they’ve caught.”
“I don’t want to identify anybody. Why can’t they leave it be?”
Her mother said firmly: “The guilty have to take their punishment. Now wipe your hands, ‘n come along. It won’t take but a minute.”
“Oh, Ma!”
When she appeared behind her mother in the parlour she was practically inarticulate with embarrassment and fright. The lieutenant glanced at her, pretty and blushing and very young, and a momentary wave of fellow feeling with Lesurier swept over him; she certainly was a lovely little piece of work. It was succeeded by a virtuous resolution to make very sure the Negro got the limit.
He said: “I’m here for the US Army, Miss Trefusis, to apologize for what happened last night. We’re all real sorry about it, and we hope you won’t think too badly of us over it.”
The girl blushed, and was silent. Her mother said kindly: “She don’t bear no ill will, do you, Gracie?” The girl whispered: “No.”
The lieutenant said kindly: “Did you ever see this man before, Miss Trefusis?”
Her mother said: “Speak up, Gracie, and tell the gentleman.”
She whispered: “I see him in the shop.”
“Did you ever go out walking with him, Miss Trefusis?”
She shook her head. Her mother said: “She don’t go out with boys. Gracie’s always been a very good girl, Captain.”
The lieutenant thought: A darn sight more backward than some. I could teach her plenty.
Aloud, he said: “Do you know his name, Miss Trefusis?”
She shook her head, and whispered: “I heard someone call him Dave once, in the shop.”
Sergeant Burton said: “That’s right, lieutenant — Dave Lesurier.”
“You’re quite sure it was the same one that troubled you last night?” the lieutenant asked. She nodded.
“Did you ever speak to him outside the shop?” he asked.
She shook her head. Her mother said: “Speak up, Gracie, and answer the gentleman when he speaks to you.” To the lieutenant she said fondly: “She’s lost her tongue.” The girl cleared her throat, and said: “He used to come in and buy Player’s. I never spoke to him except for that.”
The lieutenant said: “Just tell me in your own words what happened, Miss Trefusis.”
She said: “I come out of the Hall and went along the pavement, and he was there, all alone. There was no one else about, ‘n he said something, I forget what he said. And then he put his arms round me and kissed me.”
Lieutenant Anderson asked: “Did you know he was going to do that?”
“Oh no, sir.”
“What did you do?”
“I struggled to make him let go, and cried out. And then” — she indicated the sergeant— “he come running up and the nigger let go, and I ran away.”
The sergeant was about to say something, but the lieutenant checked him. “You never gave this nigger any encouragement?” he asked.
“Oh no, sir. I only see him in the shop.”
Lieutenant Anderson began to take his leave, well satisfied that he had got a cast-iron case to give the colonel. In the jeep as he drove off, the sergeant said: “There’s just one thing about all that, Lieutenant. I heard her cry out to let go when I was round the corner, and the next I knew she come running flat out into me. She got away from the nigger before ever he saw me.”
“Shucks,” said Lieutenant Anderson, “he’d have caught her again, easy enough, if you hadn’t been there. Good thing for her you was.” They drove back to the camp.
The identity of the victim percolated through the village in the course of the morning. Bessie Frobisher, who went out every morning to do the shopping for the White Hart, came back and reported to her father that Gracie did not look very much the worse for her assault. “Doing up the rations like she does every day,” she said. “She hasn’t got no bruises on her face, or anything.”
Jerry Bowman came at midday with a load of beer; he parked the lorry and rolled down the casks with Mr Frobisher to help him, and came into the bar for a plate of bread and cheese and a pint of his own cargo. “Had some trouble here last night, they tell me,” he said affably.
“Aye,” said Mr Frobisher. “Just outside here by the gate into the back yard, round the corner. They got the Negro, did they? In Penzance?”
“They’ve got him in the hospital,” said Mr Bowman. “You know he cut ’is throat?”
Mr Frobisher stared at him. “No!”
Mr Bowman told him what he had learned at the Sun in Penzance, which was not a lot. Private Dave Lesurier had got through the night with the help of a transfusion, and would live; he had not at that time developed septicaemia. In the White Hart that dinnertime the case made a first class sensation; it made a bigger one that evening when the Negroes came down after work
Sergeant Lorimer was worried and distressed. He leaned over the bar, his great black hands clasped round a tankard, talking to Mr Frobisher and Bessie. “It don’t seem to make sense, anyway you look at it,” he said. “If it was some of these sharecropper boys, now, it ‘ld be different because some of them might not know better. Even so, colored boys have been treated real nice in this place; I don’t think even the sharecropper boys ‘ld do a thing like that. But Dave’s got education; he’s a mighty nice sort of boy, is Dave. I can’t see that he’d ever do a thing like that, no sir.”
Mr Frobisher said: “Well, what did he do, anyway? I haven’t heard that yet.”
“They say up at the camp he’s being charged with an attempt at rape. That’s a mighty serious offence to charge a decent boy with, Mister Frobisher.”
Bessie said: “It must have been something pretty serious, Sam, or he’d never have cut his throat. A boy don’t go and do that for nothing.”
“I dunno. That boy acted mighty highstrung, now and then. He’s got education.”
“Well, anyway,” said Mr Frobisher, “I’d like to know just what it was he did.”
He thought about it for an hour or two, while he served beer across the bar and listened to the Negroes as
they discussed it. He found that one and all they took it cynically. They linked it with the conduct of the military police. “They been waiting for a case they could go to court martial on,” one said. “They hate like hell to see us walking with white girls. Now they got one, and they’ll make it plenty tough for that nigger. Yes, sir, they been out to get a colored boy upon a color charge for a court martial, ‘n now they’ve got one. That boy’s certainly going up for a long stretch.” There was sullen agreement in the bar with this view.
They displayed complete revulsion from the war. When the nine o’clock news came on the radio, one said: “Aw, turn the blame thing off. Let the white men get on with the white man’s war, ‘n leave us be.” Nobody wanted to hear the news, and after an uncertain pause Mr Frobisher turned the knob to the light programme and got dance music for them.
The landlord’s mind worked rather slowly, but along fairly straight lines. This thing concerned the village, and anything that concerned the village concerned him. At ten past nine he said to Bessie: “Slip up and see Ted Trefusis, ‘n ask him if he’d care to step over for a pint in the back parlour.”
Mr Trefusis came, a lean, grey-haired man, responsible and serious as a signalman must be. Mr Frobisher took him into the back parlour and brought a jug of mild in from the bar. Mr Trefusis said: “Glad to get out of the house, straight I am. The way the wife’s been going on, you’d think the end of the world was come.”
Mr Frobisher said: “Aye?” And then he said: “Well, I dunno that it’s what one would choose to have happen in the family.”
Mr Trefusis lit a cigarette. “No,” he said, “but it might ha’ been worse. After all, there’s no harm done.”
Mr Frobisher cocked an eye at him. “Gracie all right?”
“Be all right if her mother ‘ld stop putting a lot of fool notions in her head. After all, many a girl been kissed in a dark corner before now, and will be again.”
