by Nevil Shute
He became quite popular in the office. His diversity of experience made him interesting to talk to, and he was always willing to help in tiresome jobs like entering in the part number book or checking details. He gave a cosmopolitan air to this small Cornish drawing office which the draughtsmen rather liked, and which was certainly no hindrance to the management. The managing director, showing a buying delegation from the Turkish Government around the works and walking them through the drawing office, was asked: “You use Africans for draughting in this country?” He replied grandly: “We use anybody in this Company who has the brains we want, white or black. As a matter of fact, he’s an American. He’s a very clever young designer.” It was not, of course, on this account that Jones and Porter got an order for three thousand time switches from the Turkish delegation, but Mr Porter felt that his reply had been, perhaps, a small contributory factor.
Gradually, Dave Lesurier became absorbed into the life of the community in which he moved. He spent much of his spare time with Grace Trefusis, and generally had tea with her family on Sunday afternoons. They very soon discovered that he could play the flute, and in the over-furnished little parlour of the Trefusis home he used to play hymn tunes for them on Sunday evening. On wet days they sometimes got him to go to church with them on Sunday mornings, but he was no great churchgoer and preferred to take his exercise that day. He bought a bicycle, and put it on a Jones and Porter truck that was going up to London, one Saturday, and drove to Plymouth in the truck. He spent two hours there going round the drapers’ shops with a snippet of the dress that Mrs Trefusis wore on Sundays to find a scarf that matched it for a birthday present for her, and rode home in the evening fifty-five miles on his bicycle. He was always doing things like that.
In the spring Dave Lesurier and Grace Trefusis decided to get married; it was a point of dispute afterwards between them which asked which. They did it on the sea front at Penzance after a British Legion dance. Lesurier felt secure in his job with Jones and Porter by that time; he had been advanced to the full rate for his age, four pounds ten a week, and he had joined the Draughtsmen’s Association. He felt that he was in control of his job, able to do the work expected of him, and a bit more. Practically the whole of his spare time had been spent with the Trefusis family while he had been in England; they had lost all sense of strangeness at his colour, and only knew him as a very courteous and pleasant young American, with whom Grace went out every Saturday.
They walked out of the dance hall arm-in-arm at midnight, reluctant to break away to fetch their bicycles and ride home. They stood on the sea front looking out over the moonlit seascape. Presently the Negro said:
“You know, it still seems darned funny to me folks don’t get interfering, when they see you and me dancing together.”
The girl said: “Why should they? It’s got nothing to do with them what either of us do. You got this colour business on the brain, Dave.”
“Maybe,” he replied. “It’s how you’ve been brought up. I know we couldn’t go on like this back home.”
“Well, this is my home, and we can,” she said. She pressed a little closer to him. “You’d better make it yours, ‘n give up worrying.”
“You mean, stay here for good?”
“That’s right. You like it here, don’t you?”
“I like it fine,” he said. “I’d like nothing better than to stay right here for good.” And then he hesitated. “But I guess there’s other things to think about as well.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Place of your own,” he said quietly. “Being married, and having kids and that. You got to settle where you can do that.”
She said softly: “Well, what’s wrong with doing that here, Dave?”
He stared out over the sea. “I guess no English girl wouldn’t want to marry a black man.”
She said: “You haven’t asked one, Dave.”
They were standing arm-in-arm in their heavy coats; he took her other hand and drew her closer to him. “Do you reckon you could ever get around to thinking that you’d like to marry me?” he asked.
She did not answer, but he knew her silences. “I know it’s mighty difficult for a white girl to say yes to that,” he said quietly. “Color’s color, and nobody can’t get away from it. When you marry I guess you’ll want babies, or you wouldn’t be you. And if you marry me, they’ll be black ones, not quite so black as me, perhaps, but mighty black all the same.”
She said gently: “You aren’t all that black, Dave. You don’t want to go exaggerating things.”
He said: “I don’t reckon that I’d pass for white, though, even in the dark.” There was a rueful hint of laughter in his voice. “I guess you know the way I feel about you, ever since those first times we met, in the store. There’s never been another girl for me, not after that. I got enough now with this last raise to ask you, Gracie. If you kind of feel that you can’t fancy it, I wouldn’t blame you. Back home in some States, even saying this to you would likely get me into trouble.”
She asked: “Do you think I’d have come out with you all these times if I cared about things like that?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I never did know rightly what girls care about, Gracie. But getting married to a nigger is a mighty big thing for a white girl, seems to me.”
She said quietly: “Getting married is a mighty big thing anyway, Dave. There’s such a sight of things that can go wrong in a marriage, ‘n I don’t think colour’s as important as some others — getting on all right, and respecting one another, and that. You wouldn’t have asked me if you didn’t think them things were right. And I think they’re right, too.”
His grasp tightened on her hand. “You mean that?”
“O’ course I do,” she said. “I’ll marry you, Dave, if you want me.”
“Do I want you?” And then he said: “You do know what it means? We’ll be all right in England, maybe, but it could be mighty awkward for you if we ever had to go to the States.”
“Who’s talking about going to the States?” she said. “You don’t want to go back there, do you?”
“It’s my country,” he said. He stood for a minute, thoughtful, filled with nostalgic regret for the things that might have been. “I don’t reckon that I’ll ever want to go back there,” he said at last. “I got a good job here, and a darn sight more opportunity than ever I’d get at home. I don’t reckon I’ll ever want to go back to the States.”
* * *
Mr Turner and Mollie waited in the White Hart till half past six, to give Lesurier time to get back from his work and have his tea; then they walked up the road and found ‘Sunnyvale’. It was a drab little slate cottage, but the window frames were freshly painted, and some care seemed to have been taken over the front garden. Mr Turner walked up to the door with his wife at his elbow, and knocked.
The door was opened by a young Negro. Turner said: “Mr Lesurier, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” It was nearly dark, though the room within was brightly lit by a paraffin lamp. The Negro peered at them.
“You won’t remember me,” said Mr Turner, “but I was in the White Hart, and the landlord told me you lived here. We were in hospital together back in 1943, Dave. My name’s Turner.”
Lesurier exclaimed: “Say . . . Captain Turner?”
“That’s right. Not captain any longer, though — just Mr.”
“Come right in, Cap’n.” He led the way into the room, half parlour and half kitchen. “Think of meeting again, after all this time!” He was introduced to Mollie. “Say, sit right down and make yourselves at home a minute, while I tell the wife.” He explained. “She’s bathing the baby.”
They sat down, and he vanished up a flight of wooden stairs contained in a cupboard-like structure at the side of the room; there was a murmur of voices from the room above. They looked around them. The room was fairly spacious for the size of the house, being practically the whole of the ground floor. The furniture was age
d but adequate; a bright fire burned in the small kitchen range; the room was cosy and cheerful with bright, rather gaudy colours in curtains and loose covers. The lamp stood on a large kitchen table still littered with the remains of tea, but the tea things had been pushed to one side, and a pencil, and a cheap exercise book, and a thin book of trigonometrical functions, and a slide rule, and a copy of a book called Transient Phenomena by Steinmetz with a library tag on it showed that the draughtsman was learning the oddities of alternating current circuits. Then he appeared again, clattering down the stairs.
“She’ll be right down,” he said. “Say, I’m mighty glad to see you, Cap’n. You know,” he said, “it’s been bothering me quite a bit I never got to know what happened to you, with that wound you got, and everything. It seemed to me sometimes that we was all in a tough spot together in that ward, even the pilot with his fancy wife, ‘n we ought to have kept up. But I never heard no more of you, or the pilot either.” He laughed. “The way I was fixed myself, I didn’t get much chance to make inquiries.”
“Well, I can tell you what happened to Flying-Officer Morgan,” said Mr Turner comfortably. “He . . .” He checked himself, and looked up at the Negro. “I met him out in Burma,” he said quietly. “It’ll interest you, this will. He got rid of that wife of his, and married a Burmese girl.”
“No!”
“Fact. I met him out there, only a couple o’ months ago.”
“A colored girl?”
“That’s right.”
Lesurier burst out laughing, and slapped his thigh. “Well, what do you know about that? Say, Cap’n, do you think there could have been something catching in that ward? You know I married a white girl?”
“So Mr Frobisher said,” said Mr Turner. “Maybe it is catching. For all I know, it maybe going on all over the world. If so, I shan’t lose any sleep about it.”
Lesurier said: “Say, tell me more about Mr Morgan, Cap’n. How did he come to meet this colored girl he married?”
“He met her out in Burma,” Mr Turner said. He settled down upon the worn settee to tell the Negro all about it; in the middle of their discussion Grace came downstairs, and they all stood up and were introduced. She said: “I’m ever so pleased to meet you. I’ve heard Dave talk about you, Captain Turner, ever so many times, when Mr Brent was here, and wondering what happened to you.” She turned to Mollie. “I just been putting down the baby. Like to take a peep at him before he goes to sleep?”
“Oh, I’d like to do that.” The two women went upstairs, and Mr Turner turned to the Negro. “Did your wife say something about Brent?”
“That’s right,” said Lesurier. “Duggie Brent. He’s the only one of the four of us that I knew anything about, till you came in this evening.”
“What’s he doing now?” asked Mr Turner.
“Got a job at Camborne with a butcher,” said the Negro. “Drives all round this end of Cornwall in the van, he does, selling in the villages. I’ll tell you about him. But go on about Morgan.”
Mr Turner went on talking about Flight-Lieutenant Morgan and Nay Htohn in far off Mandinaung. Upstairs in the little bedroom the two women bent over the cot. The face of the baby showed as a yellowish brown patch on the white pillow.
“He’s ever such a darling,” said the mother softly. “He knows us both already, and he’s ever so intelligent. Got all his father’s brains, he has. He’s going to have a little brother or sister in May.”
“Fancy,” said Mollie. “My dear, I am so glad.”
Grace said: “Well, we thought as he was kind of dark that it ‘ld make things easier if he had two or three brothers ‘n sisters of his own sort along with him, besides our wanting them as well.” She straightened up over the cradle. “I dunno how you think about these things,” she said. “Lots of folks, they think I done something terrible, marrying a Negro. But they never talk that way, not after they get to know him.” She laughed. “Most o’ them say then he’s exceptional, ‘n not like the others. But I dunno. I never had no regrets.”
Mollie stooped over the baby. “He is a darling little chap,” she said, wistful at her own childlessness. “Do you suppose he’ll have much trouble at school, when he gets older, with the other children?”
Grace shook her head. “Not if we keep him to school here,” she said. “There’s one or two more like him in Trenarth, sort of souvenirs of the Americans.” She laughed, and then she said: “Of course, Dave says he will have trouble, on account of his colour. Like he has himself. But I dunno — I don’t think trouble hurts people so much. I think it kind of brings out what’s best in them, don’t you? I know it has with Dave.”
Mollie nodded. “I expect that’s right.”
Grace said: “My dear, I must tell you what the vicar said about him — it was awful. He’s ever such a queer man, Mr Kendall — says the queerest things, right out in the pulpit, sometimes. I suppose that’s why he’s only vicar of a little place like this, they wouldn’t give him a bigger parish. Well, I asked him to come and see baby here before the christening because I thought he might not like it about the colour, and he came, and I asked him. And he said, he was about the colour of babies in the Middle East, in Palestine and that, and then he said, about the colour of Jesus Christ. And he said, if John the Baptist didn’t mind about baptizing Him, he didn’t mind baptizing little David here. My dear, wasn’t that a terrible thing to say? He’s ever such a queer man, Mr Kendall. I shouldn’t think he’d ever get to be a bishop.”
Downstairs, Mr Turner was asking again about Duggie Brent. “He’s getting on all right,” the Negro said. “He comes by here with the van Mondays and Thursdays, ‘n always saves us a nice joint. Grace gets all her meat from him. It’s better meat, and cheaper, too, than any she can get in Trenarth or Penzance. ‘Course,” he said reflectively, “I dare say he goes out of his way with us, because it was through us he kind of got the job, you see.”
Mr Turner asked: “How was that, then?”
It seemed that Badcock’s Fair had come to Penzance in the previous autumn, and Dave had taken Grace to it, and they had been to see the Wall of Death, and there was Duggie Brent, red-headed, dashing round the saucer on a motor bicycle and standing bowing at the bottom in the end while the audience, encouraged by the compère, showered pennies down upon the riders. They had met him after the show and had been introduced to his wife in the paybox, who was evidently going to have a baby pretty soon. They had all gone to the local for a drink, and had got on so well together that on Sunday when the show was closed down for the day the Brents had come out to Trenarth for tea with the Lesuriers.
“That was soon after our David was born,” the Negro said. “They were kind of envious of us having a home like this, although it’s not much. Phyllis didn’t want to go on in the show business with the baby coming and all that, and Duggie — say, that boy certainly was fed up with the Wall of Death. But there wasn’t anything else he could do, except butchering, and his father’s shop in Romsey, that was sold. Well, they went on with the show but we kept thinking about it and how nice it would be if they could be neighbours, because Grace and Phyllis, they hit it off all right. So then I got to hear that Mr Sparshatt over at Camborne was starting his van round again — and say, was it wanted! The meat supply around these parts is just terrible, for all that it’s a country district. Well, Grace knows Jane Sparshatt through being at school together, see? And Jane spoke to her father, ‘n I wrote to Duggie at some hotel in Edgware saying how there was a job there if he wanted it, ‘n he came right down, ‘n Mr Sparshatt took him on for the van round. So now he drives the van round all week, selling the meat, getting back to Camborne every night, of course. He says it’s a darn sight more fun than the Wall of Death, or the Parachute Corps either.”
“Got a house at Camborne, has he?”
“That’s so. Got a little girl, too, Julienne Phyllis. Got another coming pretty soon, too. He’s fixed up all right. Take over the shop someday, after Mr Sparshatt’s time, I’d
think.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Mr Turner. “We all come out all right then, all the lot of us. You’d never have thought it, back in 1943, would you?”
“No,” said the Negro. “We certainly did seem a no-good bunch of bums around that time.” He glanced at Mr Turner. “You got on all right, then?”
“Oh, I done fine,” said Mr Turner. He hesitated for a moment, and then said: “I had a bit o’ trouble after I left hospital, but after that I went ahead in business, ‘n never looked back. I got a nice house in Watford, paid for, too, ‘n a good job. I been mighty lucky, taking it all round.”
“Say, that’s great,” said Lesurier. “You don’t never get no trouble from the wound?”
“Not so’s you notice,” said Mr Turner briefly. “Throbs a bit, now and then, but nothing to signify.”
Lesurier did not feel that he could ask for more detail. To him, his visitor looked to be a very sick man, indeed; there was a thin grey look about him that the Negro did not understand but which seemed menacing, and he seemed only to have partial use of the right hand. He said: “You made a mighty fine recovery, you know. Back in the hospital, one time, they didn’t think you’d live.”
“Born to be hanged,” said Mr Turner comfortably. “That’s what it is.”
The women came downstairs, and Grace Lesurier made a cup of fresh tea while Dave and Mollie washed the old tea things, and they sat talking for an hour. At last the Turners got up to go. “It’s been real nice seeing you again, Cap’n Turner,” said the Negro. “It’s a pity Duggie Brent couldn’t have been here, too.”
