Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “Of course,” I said. We went on to discuss the details. They were apparently quite prepared to lend me sixty thousand pounds without interest, to be repaid over a period of four years at the rate of £1,250 a month. I told him that I would fly over to Baraka with the statement of my assets on the following Tuesday, and he said that he would have a document ready for my signature acknowledging the loan, in Arabic and in English, side by side. Then he got up to go, and I showed him to his car. He said, “May God protect you,” and got in, and drove away.

  I walked over to the hangar in a daze. Connie had gone home, probably to avoid me, but Gujar Singh had just come in in one of the Airtrucks, and I told him all about it as we walked up and down on the tarmac in the evening light. He was delighted with the news, of course, and he made two comments on it that were both shrewd and illuminating.

  The first thing he said was, “This puts us on very firm ground with the Arabia-Sumatran Company.”

  I blinked in surprise. “How does that come into it?”

  He smiled. “Their refinery at Habban. It’s all his oil, the refinery is on his land, and they pay him the royalty. If they started giving air transport contracts to anybody else, the old Sheikh might lose sixty thousand pounds. They wouldn’t want any trouble with the Sheikh.”

  It was a point, of course, a sort of discouragement to competition.

  The second thing he said was, “Of course, it’s a religious matter.”

  I walked with him in silence for a minute. Then I said, “Shak Lin?”

  “Yes. You say he suggested it to them.”

  I shook my head. The mere idea that Connie would have used his religious influence with the old Sheikh to induce him to lend me money was utterly repugnant. “That’s absolutely wrong,” I said. “Shak Lin could never have done that.” As I spoke, I wondered why I felt so positively about it. It was inconceivable.

  “I don’t say that,” Gujar said slowly. “I think like you, he is too good a man. But this is a religious matter, all the same.”

  I was silent.

  “It is too near a gift for it to be otherwise,” he said. “You have told them, and they must have known before, that if things should go wrong you cannot pay this back. When Sheikh Abd el Kadir dies, he cannot leave a legacy to you or to me. By Moslem law he can only leave his money to his family, or he can leave a legacy for a religious purpose — to build a new mosque, or something like that. They are very strict about such things. Legacies are governed by hadith, based upon the Koran. He cannot even dispose of his money as he likes within the family; his children by his concubines share the inheritance equally with his legitimate family, boys two shares and girls one share. When this old man is dead he could not possibly leave money to you, and as he is so near death now, it would be most improper for him to make you a large gift, or even an unrepayable loan.”

  I wrinkled my brows. “Why is he doing it, then?”

  He said, “I think he must have consulted with the Imam and the Majlis, and made this loan for a religious purpose.”

  We were getting into deep waters. “To buy me another aeroplane?”

  “No. If I may say so, I do not think he cares if you, an Englishman and a Christian, possess another aeroplane or not. But usury in the business that employs Shak Lin ... that is another matter. To him this hangar is a very holy place, and you, and I, and everyone who works here down to Tarik and the babu clerk, we are all touched with holiness. If usury threatens us, it is a pious and a godly act on his part to step in and stop it, that the shrine may remain undefiled. He could devote his money to that purpose.”

  We walked on in silence. “Do you really think that that’s the reason behind it?” I asked at last.

  “I do. I think he has consulted with the Imam and the Majlis before doing this.”

  “I see ...”

  I suppose he saw that I was worried, because after a time he said, “There is no harm in it, and no reason why you should not take his loan. I know it is unusual in the West for men to give large sums for a religious purpose. Perhaps it is more common in my country than in yours.”

  “Perhaps it is,” I said. “It all wants a bit of thinking about.” I left him soon after that, but I thought about it till the small hours of the morning in the hot, brilliant night. I had told Gujar Singh the whole story except two words, which I had kept to myself. Wazir Hussein had referred to Connie as El Amin. El Amin is Arabic, and it means ‘He who is worthy of trust’. Not a bad name for a chief ground engineer, of course, except for the fact that it was one of the names of the Prophet.

  I got the accountant on the job next day, and the figures came out just as I had expected. I thought them over for a bit. In a negotiated sale the business was probably worth more than the book value of the assets, but if some disaster were to force a sale the aircraft might not realise the book value. In the accounts I was writing everything off over five years. I added a note about this to the accounts suggesting an additional depreciation of twenty-five per cent on the aircraft in the case of a forced sale, and then I got into the Proctor and went over to Baraka.

  I circled the palace and the Wazir’s house before landing, and saw a car leave for the airstrip; then I landed and parked the aircraft as the car drove up. I got out and drove to the Wazir’s house. Hussein came out to meet me at the door. It was a two-storeyed house built around a court; one side of this court was a blank, windowless wall behind which lay the harem. Hussein had his son and a secretary with him. He greeted me with a grave courtesy and took me up to a room with a balcony on the first floor; there was practically no furniture in this room except two wooden long chairs, a table, and a very beautiful carpet on the floor.

  We sat down and he clapped his hands, and an Arab servant came with coffee. It was delightfully cool in that top room, with a sea breeze blowing through it. We talked of casual things for a time — the weather for flying, the design of the house, the condition of the airstrip, and presently I produced my accounts and explained them to him. “I don’t want to conceal anything from you,” I said. “This is the true position of the business as I understand it at the moment.” I paused. “Please ask anything which may occur to you. I will tell you anything I can.”

  He asked a little bit about my forward contracts and about my relations with the Arabia-Sumatran Company, and I told him about the long-range work which was developing for them, which had made this new large aircraft necessary. Then he laid the accounts down, and smiled. “I do not think that there is anything further,” he said, smiling. “My master knows of you as an honest man. The money is at your disposal when you need it, sixty thousand pounds. Have you a bank in Bahrein?”

  “I’ve got an account with the Bank of Asia,” I said. “If you would pay it into my account there, I should be most grateful. In that case I shall transfer most of it to a London bank at once and fly to England to place the order.” I paused. “I can only tell you, what I think you know already, that your help is making things very easy for me.”

  He said, “That is my master’s wish.”

  He told me that the Sheikh was anxious to meet me, and presently we went downstairs and walked a hundred yards or so down the lane to the palace. This was a white house standing in a garden of flower beds and date palms just outside the town. It was not very large as palaces go; it was arranged in two storeys around a courtyard and might have had about ten or twelve large rooms in all. It was in a sort of Moorish style with fretted wooden sun-shutters at the windows; there was rather a beautiful little mosque immediately adjacent to it in the garden.

  I had been entertained by sheikhs a good many times since I had come to the Persian Gulf, and there was very little to distinguish this lunch party from many of the others. The old man met us at the door; he spoke no English, and I had to do the best I could in Arabic; from time to time the Wazir helped me by translating when I got stuck. He had a crowd of about fifteen of his ministers and hangers-on with him, and we sat around on hard chairs in a circl
e in an ante-room and made polite conversation until lunch was ready. Then we went through into the dining-room or whatever they call it, where the meal was prepared upon a tablecloth in the middle of the carpet on the floor — a huge pile of rice on an enormous dish with the best part of a sheep boiled and lying on top of it, all very greasy. I knew about this, of course, and had prepared for it by eating nothing that day, and very little the evening before. One goes into training for an Arab feast.

  We sat down on the floor, myself next to the Sheikh, and washed our hands in the bowls that the negro servants brought round. Then the old man tore a bit of mutton off the carcase in the middle with his hands and put it on my plate, and a servant began to hand a multitude of side dishes to me, curries and mushrooms and truffles and dates in sweet syrup and Lord knows what. I’m always very bad at eating with my fingers and I always seem to make more mess upon the carpet than the Arabs do, but I must say there’s a fascination in that sort of a meal. Some of it was perfectly delicious.

  Finally the old man got up, and the servants washed our hands for us, and we went back into the ante-room for coffee flavoured with cloves. It was only then that the Sheikh raised the subject that had brought me there. He said, “The Wazir tells me that your business has been satisfactorily concluded.”

  “There only remains for me to express my very deep gratitude for so much help,” I replied. “I say this not only for myself, but for the pilots and the engineers who work with me.”

  “It is good that men who bring others to the way of God should not be perplexed for money,” the old man said. And I thought, Gujar Singh was right. That’s what is behind it all.

  Presently I took my leave of the Sheikh, and went back with Wazir Hussein to his house. The Sheikh’s eldest son came with us, a young man called Fahad, and at the Wazir’s house we had another cup of coffee and he produced the loan agreement. This was a document written on parchment in Arabic and in English, in vertical columns with the two languages side by side. It only had three clauses and was very simple and straightforward. Fahad, who spoke good English, explained it to me with the Wazir, and I signed it there and then, and they gave me a cheque for sixty thousand pounds. I flew back to Bahrein in the Proctor wondering when I was going to wake up.

  Next day I spent an hour telephoning round to all my clients in the oil companies to tell them that I was leaving for England to bring out another large aircraft; I sent a cable to the Plymouth Aircraft Company ordering a Tramp and saying I would visit them during the following week to finalise the specification and to pay a deposit, and I sent a cable to Dad to say that I was coming home. There was a Dakota of Orient Airways going through to Almaza that day and I got a ride in that, and from Egypt I flew home by B.O.A.C., which had a spare seat in a Constellation of the Australian service.

  It was more than a year since I had been in England, and it was good to be back. It was May, and as I travelled down by rail to Southampton I thought that I had never seen a country look so green and beautiful. I had forgotten that England was lovely. I sat with my nose glued to the window in the train, just looking at the varied greens of the fields and trees and hedges, at the delicate colours of the flowering trees. It was wonderful.

  I went by bus from the station to the gas works, and carried my bag from there. It was evening, and the tall steelwork of the gas-holders and the cranked cranes of the docks were all touched with a golden light. I walked down the familiar streets, through the games of the playing children, in a dream; this was my own place, and I was home again. The places I had worked in were all very wonderful and strange, but this was my town, where I belonged.

  I turned into the door of our house and went into the living-room. Ma was in, as I had known she would be, and Dad wasn’t; he was down at the “Lion” playing darts. Ma came out of the scullery when she heard the door, and she said, “Tom!” And then she said, “Oh Tom, you’re thinner! Whatever have you been doing with yourself?”

  As I kissed her I said, “Am I, Mum?”

  She said, “Of course you are! Have you been ill or something?”

  I smiled. “Not a day. I’m as fit as a flea.”

  “Really, Tom?”

  “Honest, Mum. I’ve not been ill at all.”

  She felt my shoulders. “Well, I dunno. You don’t look ill, I must say, but you must be a stone lighter.” She stood back and looked at me. “You’re looking older, too. Have you been working overtime or night shift?”

  “I’ve been working,” I said. “I expect that’s it.”

  “Well, now you’ve got to stay at home a bit and get rested up,” she said. “How long are you home for now, Tom?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve come home for another aeroplane, but it may be a month or so before it’s ready.” In the correspondence they had said four weeks delivery.

  “Well, then,” she said, “you’ll be able to lie in tomorrow and have a real rest.”

  “I’ve got to catch the seven-thirty-three for Plymouth tomorrow morning, Mum,” I said. “I’ll have to have breakfast before Dad.”

  “Oh Tom! You ought to get some rest. You’re looking quite worn out.”

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  She told me I was sleeping in the same old room, and I took my bag through and unpacked it. None of us children were at home with the old people. Ted had been the last, but he’d gone now. He’d married his Lily as soon as he got out of the Army and he’d got a job driving a truck for a builder at Wootton; they had been living with Dad and Mum up till a week or so before, but now they’d got a council house, because she was expecting. All the kids were out in the world, and all married and settled except me.

  While I was in the back room, Ma sent young Alfie Lamb from next door down to the “Lion” to tell Dad I was home, and Dad came back ten minutes later. Ma got supper for us and we sat and talked till after eleven. I told them everything I could about the business, all except the religious part; I left that out because I didn’t properly understand it myself. I didn’t tell them about the loan I’d got from Sheikh Abd el Kadir, either, and they didn’t know enough about business to be curious about where all the money was coming from. They thought I made it, and I didn’t undeceive them.

  Once Dad said, “How much money have you got now, Tom?”

  “Bloody little,” I said, grinning. “I’ve got about five thousand pounds in the bank.”

  Ma said, “That’s a lot of money.”

  Dad said, “He’s got more than that, Ma. He’s having us on. Just look at him.”

  She said, “Tom, how much have you really got?”

  “That’s all,” I said. “I’ve got some aeroplanes, of course.”

  “How much are they worth?”

  “I’d only be guessing if I told you, Mum,” I said seriously. “They stand me in at about fifteen thousand pounds in the books. If I went bust and got sold up, they probably wouldn’t fetch that much. If I sold the business as a going concern, with goodwill, they’d probably fetch a bit more.”

  Dad said slowly, “So you’ve made twenty thousand pounds, then, have you?”

  “I suppose so,” I said slowly. “It doesn’t feel as if I had. I mean, it just sort of happened.”

  “How much would twenty thousand pounds bring in if it was invested, Tom? Say in a row of houses, like it might be these?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Dad. Something like seven hundred a year, I should think.”

  “Seven hundred a year. You could sell the business and retire and do nothing for the rest of your life, and still have close on twice as much as me each week to live on. You’ve not done bad for yourself, son.”

  Ma said quietly, “Why don’t you do that, Tom, and stay at home, and get a job in England? You could buy a business with that money, and a good one, too.” She meant a shop, of course.

  I said, “It’s not so easy to get out as that, Mum. There’s a lot of other things to be considered. I mean, when you start a thing there’s other people get
mixed up in it, and you can’t let them down. You can’t pick things up and put them down just as you fancy. You’ve got to see things through.”

  “That’s right,” said Dad. “You’ve got to think about the other people in the business. But what your ma says is right, Tom. There’s no call for you to spend your whole life in the Persian Gulf.”

  Ma started to put the plates together. “You want to look about a bit, now that you’re home,” she said. “You want to find yourself a girl and settle down. That’s what you want. We’re none of us getting any younger.”

  I laughed. “Okay, Ma,” I said with mock obedience. “Where shall I start looking?”

  She called from the scullery, “There’s two or three nice girls right in this street would do you very well. You don’t have to look far. If they knew that you’d got twenty thousand pounds we wouldn’t be able to get in or out of the door.”

  “Well, don’t you go telling ’em,” I said.

  I was up early next morning, and took a few things in my bag, and caught the seven-thirty-three for Plymouth. It was a slow journey, and I didn’t get there till after dinner. There was the hell of a fine car with a chauffeur waiting there to meet me, and I was whisked out to the works just as if I was somebody important, instead of being Tom Cutter from the sergeants’ mess out in Bahrein.

  It’s an enormous company, of course, employing over twenty thousand hands in all the various divisions of the business. Like most big concerns, they were quite brutal about the money. Within the first five minutes I had to write a cheque for ten thousand pounds before they’d even talk to me, but when they’d got that in their hands they took me seriously, and were they good! Whenever any of them quoted a performance, or gave a price, or a date, you kind of knew that that was dead right and no bolony. What’s more, they put me through the hoop about my business, to find out what kind of loads I carried or was likely to carry; they weren’t going to have their aeroplane give any trouble because I was using it wrong. When they heard I carried bulldozers they pulled out a reinforced floor scheme, when they heard I aimed to carry pilgrims they pulled out a seating scheme of long, hard dural benches, very light and easily washed down. When they heard I flew normally with a crew of two they pulled out a revised crew accommodation that did away with the radio operator’s position and added a hundred and ten pounds to the payload. It was an education dealing with those people.