by Nevil Shute
The Bournemouth business was a good one. It was on the west side of the town out towards Canford Cliffs, in a very good suburban district. It was clean and fairly new, on a street corner on a busy main road with a wide area behind it covered with good houses, all of which would have a car and many of them two. It had four petrol pumps with a good concrete pull in, under cover, and a very good machine shop. About ten hands were regularly employed, and there was a showroom built on to it; they held a sub-agency for Austins. It was a good prosperous modern business going for twenty-five thousand pounds because of the death of the owner; the price seemed a bit on the top side to me. There was no house.
I spent an hour and a half there, and had a long talk with the manager, a smart young chap who’d been in the R.A.F. He’d had a shot at buying it himself, but hadn’t been able to raise the cash. He said there were one or two people after it as an investment. He was quite frank, and showed me everything, but I think he was a bit windy that if I came in I’d turn him out and run the show myself. He was probably about right there, because there wouldn’t have been room for two of us.
We left that place at about half-past three, and drove down to the sea, and went into a cafe for a cup of tea and for Doris to tidy herself up in the ladies’ room. She was very much taken with that garage. “It’s a good business, isn’t it, Tom?” she asked. “It’s all so clean and nice, and in such a good neighbourhood.”
“I should think it’s all right,” I said.
“Would you have enough money for it?”
“I think so. Yes, I think I should.”
She sipped her tea. “I think you’d do awfully well there. It’s big enough to give you plenty of scope.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s big enough for that.”
“What’s the matter with it? You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
I sat in silence for a minute, looking out of the window at a sailing-boat tacking up and down the beach. “Well,” I said at last, “it’s somebody else’s business.”
She wrinkled her brows. “But it’s for sale. If you bought it, it’ld be yours, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded. “The first thing I’d have to do would be to sack that chap who showed us round, because I’d want to run it myself. The money’s nothing. It’s his business, really. He’s worked it up.” I paused. “The money’s just what makes it possible for me to pinch his business off him. That’s all the blasted money does.”
“What a horrid way to look at it, Tom.”
“It’s the right way,” I said quietly. “It’s the truth. It’s a good business, and I’ll think about it. But if I go in there that chap goes out, and he knows it. His staff won’t care about that much, either — he’s got a good crowd there. I don’t know that I want to start off on the job like that.”
“I see that,” she said slowly. “Couldn’t you keep him on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It all wants a bit of thinking about. I couldn’t keep him on as boss, which he’s been up till now.”
We still had one more place to see, in Lymington, and that was on our way back to Southampton. We left the cafe and got into the little Ford again, and drove out through Christchurch. Lymington lies about fifteen or twenty miles to the east of Bournemouth; it is a little town at the west end of the Solent, on a river near the mouth. It’s a great yachting centre, with the unspoilt country of the New Forest all around. I had planned our trip to leave this till the last, because I had a hunch from the advertisement that the Anchor Garage might be what I wanted.
And it was. It was at the end of the town right down on the waterfront. It wasn’t as big as it had been at one time, because in 1943 an ME 109 had come over on a tip-and-run raid and had flattened most of it with a bomb, and killed about fifteen people on the side. Half of it was still standing, and the owner had put up a couple of disposal Nissen huts for machine shop and stores. The same bomb had brought down about six houses beside the garage; the debris had been cleared away, of course, so that there was now a big open space right on the waterfront, suitable for expansion. The garage had two pumps, and a fair amount of car work, but much of the business before the war had been marine, and motor-boat engines were very much in evidence in the showroom.
It was owned by an old chap called Summers, who must have been over seventy. He was a good mechanic himself, and the place was in good order considering the limitations of the premises, but he was tired and wanted to sell out and settle his affairs before he died. He told me that he was leaving everything to his married daughter, but he wanted to leave it in cash. He was quite willing to stay on and help me if I bought it till I got the hang of things. He wanted fifteen thousand pounds, and there was no house.
I spent the best part of a couple of hours there with him. He had bought one of the house sites, and he thought the others could be got without great difficulty. He expected a licence to build within twelve months, but I should have to see the council about that. The bomb had made possible a project that he had always had in mind, a slipway for motor-boats in his own premises, but he would have to leave that to another man to do. He was old now, and wanted to get out.
I didn’t say much, except grunt now and then, or ask a question, because I was afraid of seeming too eager. It was a lovely garage. The one bombed site he’d bought went through to the main road and had a frontage there right on a corner, so you could have the pumps and showroom up there with a good drive in. From that the ground he’d already got ran down to the original premises on the quay, and alongside that, as I say, there was vacant land for expansion along the waterfront. There was any amount of yacht work there, increasing every year as yachting grows in popularity, and yacht work is good work because it’s not so cut price and people will pay for good-quality workmanship in yachting.
It was Saturday evening, and about seven o’clock by the time that I’d learned all I had to know. The old man said that several people had been to see it and were considering it, but I could see that it was rather a big proposition for the average man looking for a garage. Over and above the purchase price, a lot of money would need spending on it in the way of buildings to develop it to what it could be made into, far more than the War Damage compensation. At the same time, there wasn’t much immediate return for the next year or two, till buildings could be got up, so that as an investment it wasn’t so attractive as some others. I said I’d think it over for the week-end and if I wanted to go on with it I’d come over on Monday or Tuesday, and with that I got back in the car with Doris and drove off.
“It’s an awfully pretty place,” she shouted above the rattle of the worn little engine.
I nodded. “We’ll find somewhere to stop and have a pint, and talk it over.”
There is a little pub on the edge of an open heath just the other side of Beaulieu. It was a warm summer evening, and I parked the car on the grassy sward outside this place, and we went in, and got beer and cider and bread and cheese, and took them out on to the bench in front, looking out over the heath. It was very quiet there, and calm, and peaceful. “That’s the place,” I said. “That’s what I want.”
She turned to me, smiling, “Really?”
“It’s marvellous,” I said. “Didn’t you think so?”
“I loved it,” she said. “It’s so pretty, with the water and the boats and everything. But there’s an awful lot needs doing, Tom.”
“That’s what’s going to make it fun,” I said.
She turned to me. “Have you got enough money for it?”
“I’ve not got any yet,” I said. “If Airservice make an offer for my business I’ll hear in the next day or two. If they come through all right, there ought to be enough.”
“There isn’t any house,” she said.
“I thought of that one,” I replied. “There’s a lot of building to be done. I’d like to have a big flat over one bit of the garage, for a start.”
“Oh Tom! Looking out over the water, with the yachts and everything?”<
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I nodded. “That’s what I had in mind.”
She said, “A brand-new flat, that one could plan and have everything just right from the start! You do have lovely ideas.”
“I don’t see why not,” I said. “One’s got to live somewhere and that ground was all housing at one time. I think one ‘ld get a permit to do that all right.”
I thought about it for a minute or two, drinking my beer. “Keep a boat, perhaps,” I said. “I’d like to do that. A little sailing yacht that one could take away for the week-end.”
She said, “It sounds just heavenly ...”
I sat there staring out over the heath. It was as she said, just heavenly, too good to be true. I was getting tired, I suppose, at the end of the day, and I hadn’t slept a lot the night before. It was all within my grasp and I could grab it if I wanted to, and my other life out in Bahrein could go to hell. In time I’d probably forget all that, even if it took a year or two to do it.
I put the tankard down. “Let’s get going,” I said quietly. “Dad and Mum will be wondering what’s happened to us.”
I ought to have pulled up somewhere on the way back, in the shade under a tree in some quiet spot, and given her a kiss or two, and told her that I loved her. It would have made her day perfect if I’d done that, and mine too, perhaps. But it’s no good getting into things too deep unless you’re sure of yourself; I’d done that once before, with Beryl. That was how I started killing her, although I didn’t see it at the time. I wasn’t going to have that happen to Doris. I still had Bahrein on my mind, and so I drove straight on, and presently got home and dropped her at her father’s house.
She said, “It’s been a lovely day, Tom. Thank you ever so much for taking me.”
I smiled. “I’ve enjoyed it. I’ll let you know how things go on.”
I went back to the house, and there was a letter for me from Gujar Singh, and another one from Connie; they wrote to me every two or three days to tell me how things were going. I opened Connie’s first.
There was not much in it except news that his sister was on her way to Bahrein; she was coming in an American ship to Alexandria and from Egypt she would fly. He expected her to arrive in about a week, and said that he had fixed up accommodation for her in the house that he lived in. I wondered how a girl from San Diego would react to the conditions in the souk; it was none of my business, of course, except that I had offered to give her a trial in the office. He said that one of the ground engineers, a chap called Salim, had left and had taken a job with Sind Airways Ltd. in Karachi, and he was looking for another one. I knew that Salim had worked in Karachi during the war, and I was not surprised that he had left to go back there. The rest of the letter was about the routine work going on in the hangar.
Gujar’s letter was more serious. After telling me about the flights that had been made and booked ahead for the next few days, he went on:
“I think it will be better when you can return. The secretary from the Residency, Mr. Connop, came to the office yesterday and asked when you would come back, and when I said a fortnight he seemed angry. He did not say his business, and went away. In the bazaar men are saying that the Resident is angry with you for the loan of money from the Sheikh of Khulal because they say that religious influence has been used to make that old man lend his money. There is much talk about this so that some say that what goes on in our hangar is good and comes from God, and others say that it is evil. I do not think it would have entered anybody’s head that it was evil if the English people at the Residency had not been angry, and the servants told it in the souk. And now there is a great deal of talking going on.
“Shak Lin has told you that Salim has gone back to Karachi. I think he has gone to tell the engineers in Sind Airways our way of doing things, but that is nothing to us, because he is gone. Shak Lin is looking for another one.”
Ma was in the room as I was reading this one. “Bad news, Tom?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just business.” I was furious over what had happened in Bahrein. The loan that had been offered by the Sheikh of Khulal was not of my seeking, nor was it due to any religious trickery on the part of Connie Shaklin. News of it had got to the Residency as some distorted rumour, and they had assumed that we had swindled the old Sheikh with a confidence trick and got away with sixty thousand pounds of his money. If they believed that, of course, it was their duty to commence enquiries because it was their job to do what they could to protect the Arab population from exploitation. They had been ham-handed in the Residency and had talked in hearing of the servants, and now God knew what might be stirring in Bahrein. It might end in religious riots, easily.
I didn’t get much sleep that night, either. I lay and tossed upon my bed all night, wakeful and in a weary, anxious maze. Salim had left and gone to Sind Airways, in Karachi. I knew Salim; he was one of the most devout of our ground engineers. Gujar said that he had gone to teach the engineers of Sind Airways our way of doing things. What way? The religious way? Gujar could hardly mean anything else. Was Salim, then, a missionary, spreading a new gospel amongst ground engineers? Was he starting up a cult of Shak Lin’s teaching in Karachi, as U Myin had started it in Rangoon? What was ahead of us, and where was it all going to end?
If riots started in Bahrein because of Shak Lin’s teaching, how far would they spread? Would the flame run from Bahrein to Karachi, to Rangoon, and on to Bangkok in Siam?
I lay unhappy and distressed all night through in our small slum house in Southampton, between the gas works and the docks. Out in the East the situation might be getting out of control, and here was I in England, away from the job and powerless to influence events. There were eight days to go before the Tramp was ready for delivery.
I got up in the morning, tired and stale. It was Sunday, so we had breakfast late. Over the meal Dad said, “We’ve not heard anything about how you got on yesterday, Tom. See anything you fancied?”
I stared at him; my mind was far away in the Persian Gulf. “Anything I fancied?”
“Any garages?”
Recollection came flooding back to me, but it all seemed unreal now, and vastly unimportant. “Oh — garages. We saw one or two, but nothing very much.”
He grunted. “What are you going to do — go on looking?”
I had to get away and be alone, to think things over. “Yes,” I said. “I think I’ll go out today and look around a bit more.”
Ma said, “Taking Doris again?”
I shook my head. “I’ll go alone. I’ve got a lot of things I’ve got to have a think about.”
She said no more, and I went out after a time and got the car from the bombed site and drove down to the central post office. I sent a very long cable to Gujar Singh from there, two sheets of it. I asked him to let me know at once by cable if I ought to return; I said I would fly back immediately if there was any need, and come back again to England a week later to fetch the Tramp. If everything was quiet and in order in Bahrein, I said, he should fly to England himself by B.O.A.C. on Friday arriving on Saturday, and I would meet him at Heath Row. We would go to Plymouth on Monday morning and take delivery of the Tramp and fly it out to Bahrein as soon as possible.
I sent this off and went back to the car. I had done the right thing, I felt, and I had done what was in my power to take control of the events that I had started, but I was most unhappily aware that I was vacillating wildly. Twenty-four hours before, I had been driving out with Doris Waters to look for a garage and an English home, perhaps with her. Now all that had gone down the wind and was almost forgotten, so that Dad had had to remind me about it at breakfast, and here I was, having just sent off a cable committing myself to go back to Bahrein.
It crossed my tired mind that I could go back for a week or two, perhaps, just to get things straightened up in order to hand over clean to Airservice Ltd.
I drove north that day, through Winchester and Whitchurch, on the road to Newbury. I drove on in a dream, not thinking much wher
e I was going to, not really caring. I got sleepy presently for I had had two bad nights, and so I pulled into the side of the road somewhere and slept in the driver’s seat a bit, nodding forward on the wheel.
I woke up half an hour later with a bad taste in my mouth, and wondered where I was, and what the hell I had come there for. There was no sense in it. I turned the car and drove back south again, and presently I found a pub and stopped, and went in for a pint and a couple of packets of biscuits as my lunch. I felt better after that.
By mid-afternoon I was running south and entering the outskirts of Winchester. I had been a choir boy once, when I was young. When you’re in a bit of trouble I think your mind goes back to childhood, to the time when you had no responsibilities, when all decisions were made for you. That’s a grand time, that is. I got to thinking of my time in the choir that Sunday afternoon as I drove into Winchester. I’d got nothing better to do, and I turned left down the High Street and then right, and parked by the cathedral.
It was quiet, and dim, and cool in the cathedral. I stood at the end of the nave vaguely looking round; it was restful, and a good place to think in. Presently I went into the north aisle and began to walk slowly up it, looking at all the names of famous people on the walls and on the floor I walked on, Sir Henry Wilson who was murdered, and Jane Austen. Maybe they’d had their troubles too, I thought, and like me they’d not known what to do for the best.
There was an old man in a long black cloak at the end of the aisle. He came up to me and said quietly, “The service is in the choir this afternoon, sir. May I show you a seat?” It was on the tip of my tongue to say I didn’t want to go to any service, and then I thought perhaps I did, and so he took me through the carved screen and put me in a choir stall of old, carved wood, with more prayer books in front of me than you could shake a stick at.
There wasn’t anything in particular about that service. Good singing, a hymn or two, an anthem, all in the familiar ritual that I had known as a boy. I was still tired, and once or twice I nearly fell asleep upon my knees. Maybe God did that for me. I know it was over and I walked out of the choir, I was rested and quite calm. I knew what I’d got to do. I’d got to go back to Bahrein and forget about the garage.
