by Nevil Shute
She stood by him, confused. “I wouldn’t like to think that this kissing business was developing into a habit,” she said.
“It is the usual thing,” he assured her. “In my country we kiss everybody good-morning.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” she replied. “And anyway, this is Australia. If you go round kissing every girl you meet good-morning you’ll find yourself in trouble.”
“I would not want to kiss every girl I meet good-morning,” he said. “Only one.” She made a face at him, and they set off together down the track into the Howqua, all care momentarily put aside.
When they got down on to the river flat where the house had been, they left the baskets and parcels at the end of the wire bridge, and crossed to Billy Slim’s house on the other side. They found him chopping wood in the shade; he straightened up and greeted them. “Morning, Jenny. Morning, Carl. Come fishing?”
“We have not come to fish,” the Czech said. “You remember when last we came here we talked about the town of Howqua, and where Charlie Zlinter lived?”
“That’s right. You was talking of buying an allotment.”
The Czech said, “I have found out now where Charlie Zlinter lived.”
“Where’s that?”
“Number Fifteen Buller Street.”
The forest ranger scratched his head. “Buller Street,” he said. “Somebody once told me where that used to be.... Was it up the hill, off Victoria Avenue?”
“I have here a map,” said Zlinter. “I found one in the Shire Hall at Banbury, and I have made this copy.”
They went into the living-room of the house and spread it out upon the table. “My word,” the ranger said. “All the years I’ve been here, this is the first time I’ve seen a map of Howqua. That’s right, there’s Buller Street, there’s Victoria Avenue, and there’s the river.” He studied the map for a minute. “Aw, look,” he said. “It must have led up the hill just a little way up-stream from the track. Looks like it was the old track down into the town.”
Jennifer said, “Perhaps that’s why he lived there, because it was on the track out of the town.”
“Too right,” the ranger said. “That’s where a bullocky would want to live.”
Carl Zlinter said, “Do you know anything left on the ground from which we could measure, to find where he lived? I have a tape.”
“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” the ranger said. “Let’s get across the river and see. I’d like to have a copy of that map some time.”
“I will make you one.”
Two hours later, two hours that had been spent in measurement and argument over the dim lines on the land and the pencil tracings on the map, they reached agreement. They were standing on the slope of the hill fifty feet or so above the river overlooking the meadow where the town had been. Here there was a small space of flat land, about half the size of a tennis court, in the middle of the woods. “This must be it,” the ranger said. “This’ll be where Charlie Zlinter lived.”
Jennifer said, “It must have been a much larger house than I thought. Mary Nolan said that it was just a little cabin, of one room.”
“Aw, look,” the ranger said, “this wouldn’t all have been the house. He’d have to have had a place to put the wagon, and maybe a store for hay and that. The house would only be on just a little bit of this flat. If you wanted the exact place, you’d have to dig around a bit. You’d find stumps in the ground, maybe, or else the fireplace.”
“I would like to do that,” Zlinter said. “If I come over to your place, may I borrow a pick and a spade?”
“Sure,” said the forest ranger. “Borrow anything you like.”
Jennifer walked with them to the bridge. Carl went across with the ranger to the homestead to get pick and spade, and she picked up the lunch basket and carried it back to the forest flat where Charlie Zlinter had lived. She dropped down upon the grass in the thin shade of the gum trees and sat waiting for him to come back with the tools. She was tired, very tired with sorrow and joy too closely mixed, glad for him that he had found so beautiful a place in which to build his fishing hut, sad for herself that she was never going to see it.
He came back to her presently and found that she had laid a cloth upon the grass and put the food out on it. “We’d better not make a fire here, had we, Carl?” she asked. “I wouldn’t like to see you start off by setting the forest on fire, and we’ve got masses of cold meat here that Jane gave us, without the steaks.”
He looked around. “I would like to find Charlie Zlinter’s fireplace and cook a steak on it, for ceremony,” he said.
She smiled. “We’ll dig around a bit after lunch, and cook a ceremonial steak.”
They ate together on the grassy patch of ground, examining it as they sat and speculating where the cabin had been. Presently Zlinter got up, sandwich in hand, and drove the spade into the vertical hill face, at the end of the plateau furthest from the river. The earth was blackened with soot.
“Here is the chimney,” he said quietly. “By making the house so, against the bank, it was more easy for him; the earth bank itself would make the back of the fire, and the heat would keep it solid. What was above could easily be made of wood. In this way he would need no bricks at all.”
They discussed this as they sat eating; it seemed reasonable enough. “Will you make your cabin like that, Carl?” she asked.
He thought about it for a minute. “I do not know,” he said. “In the winter, when there is no fishing, my cabin may be empty for several months, and then the earth will be wet, and there will be no fire to keep it dry. It might fall in upon the fireplace. I think it will be better if I arrange my cabin differently, and have a brick chimney away from the earth bank, perhaps on that side, over there. I do not think it would be good to build my cabin right against the earth bank, as he did. It would be better to build it here, where we are sitting now, and not use the bank at all. The water might run down and into the cabin when I am away.”
She nodded. “Put the wall about three or four feet from the bank,” she said. “You don’t want to get the other wall too near the outer edge, though. The earth might slide there, mightn’t it, with the weight of the walls?”
He measured it with his eye. “It is to be only a little place, no more than twelve feet long,” he said. “I have not got enough money for a palace.” She laughed. “I think there will be plenty of room. But you are right; the inner wall should be three or four feet from the earth bank, and then there will be room outside the river wall to make a veranda and a bench to sit on and look out over the river, or perhaps a deck-chair.”
She smiled. “You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you?”
He laughed, a little embarrassed. “It is important to me, this, to have a little place that is my own.”
“I know,” she said. “You must have that, Carl, and you’ve picked a lovely place for it.”
They sat smoking together after they had finished eating, discussing the cabin, where the door was to be, where the fireplace, the window, and the bed. Presently they stubbed their cigarettes out carefully and packed away the lunch; they got up and began to investigate the place more closely. Zlinter took the spade and cleared the briars and the undergrowth from the vertical earth face. The sooty, blackened earth extended over about three feet of the face, showing clearly that the fireplace had been there and about centrally disposed upon the end of the flat.
He stood looking at it critically. “The side walls, they would run outwards from the face,” he said, “at right angles. Perhaps one was somewhere here.” He set to work and began slicing the turf and leaf-mould from the level ground; in a few minutes he was rewarded by a charred stump of rotten wood sticking up out of the soil. They examined it together.
“Here was a wall,” he said. He threw off his thin jacket and went on working in shirt and trousers only, and gradually uncovered the remnants of the charted walls, shown mostly by blackened streaks in the top soil. In half an hou
r he had laid bare two rectangles of blackened soil and charred stumps, and rested, wiping the sweat from his neck and arms.
“It’s fascinating, Carl,” the girl said. “It’s like digging up Pompeii or something. What would this one have been?” She indicated the outer rectangle.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps a hay-shed, or a stable. No, he could not have put eight bullocks in there. For hay, I think, and harness.”
They rested together, looking at what he had uncovered. Presently she asked, “Where will your cabin go now, Carl?”
“I must make a drawing,” he said. “I will do that this week, and give an order to Mr. Forrest for the timber and the planking. I think it would be best to have the chimney there, and the door here, opposite.”
She shook her head. “It’s going to be very draughty. You won’t have a warm corner in the place, if the door’s opposite the chimney.”
He nodded. “That is true. I want to keep the outer wall for a window, to see the height of the river when I shall get out of bed, to see if I will fish or stay in bed.” She laughed. “The door should be on this side, but we will put the chimney here, on the side of the earth bank but four feet away.”
“That’s like Charlie Zlinter had it, but moved out a bit.”
“That is right.”
He measured four feet with his eye from the blackened chimney marks on the earth face, and said, “Here will be the new fireplace.” He drove his shovel down into the ground, to mark the place for her.
It hit with a metallic clang on stone. “There is rock here,” he said in surprise; till then he had encountered nothing but soft earth. He sliced away the leaves and top soil and uncovered a smooth face of rock, level with the surface of the ground.
Jennifer cried, “It’s Mary Nolan’s stone, Carl!”
“Mary Nolan’s stone?”
“She said there was a slab of stone in front of the fireplace in his cabin, to keep the ashes back in the fire. She said it weighed four hundredweight, and he used to lift it up and carry it about to show her how strong he was. This must be it.”
He glanced at her. “If it weighs four hundredweight, I do not think that I will pick it up and carry it about to show you how strong I am. I think we will do that another day.”
She laughed. “You’re no man!”
“That is true,” he said. “Nor are you Mary Nolan.” He went on clearing away the soil and revealed at last an irregularly shaped slab of stone about four square feet in area, practically level on the top. A thrust of the spade showed a white residue of ash between it and the earth face. “There was the fire,” he said. “It is as she said it was.”
“That settles it, anyway,” the girl said. “This is Charlie Zlinter’s cabin.”
He nodded. “This is the cabin. I suppose they used to put saucepans and kettles on that, to keep them warm before the fire.”
She wrinkled her brows. “Would there have been a wooden floor?”
“I think so,” he said. “I think they would have had a wooden floor, and not just earth. This stone was to prevent the fire from coming forward to burn the floor. I think that is a good idea.”
“If you’re going to use it again, you’ll have to shift it,” the girl said. “It’s right in the middle of where your fire is to be, now. You’ll have to do what Charlie Zlinter did, Carl — pick it up and carry it about.”
He nodded. “It will have to be moved.” He stood studying it for a moment, and then smiled at her. “I will pick it up and carry it about in my two hands one day when you are not here,” he said. “Then you can come and see it in the new place.”
She looked up at him. “I shan’t be able to do that, Carl,” she said quietly.
He glanced at her. “Why not?”
“I’m going away.”
“But you will be coming back again in your holidays, to stay with the Dormans?”
She shook her head. “I won’t be coming here again, Carl. I’m going home — to England.”
He stared at her in consternation. “To England?”
She nodded. “I wanted to have this last day in the Howqua and tell you about it here, not at Leonora with other people about. I’ve got to go back to England, Carl — at once. I’m going by air on Tuesday, on the Quantas Constellation from Sydney. I’ve got to leave Leonora tomorrow.”
He dropped the shovel, and crossed to her and took her hand. “What is it that has happened, Jenny?” he asked quietly. “Is it something very bad?”
She looked up at him, blinking. “We got a cable last night,” she said, “soon after you’d gone. It was from Daddy. My mother died yesterday, Carl — yesterday or the day before — the times are all so muddling.” She hesitated. “It means that Daddy’s all alone there now. I’ve got to go.” A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek.
He put an arm around her shoulders. “Come and sit down,” he said, “and tell me.”
He led her to the bank and they sat down together. She was crying in earnest now with the relief from keeping up the strain of a pretence with him. He pulled out his handkerchief and glanced at it doubtfully. “You have a handkerchief, Jenny?” he asked. “This one is a little sweaty.” She smiled through her tears and took it; he held her with one arm round her shoulders and wiped her eyes. “I’ve got one of my own somewhere,” she said, but made no effort to find it. “I’m sorry to be such a fool, Carl. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I would never think you were a fool,” he said. “Would you like to tell me what has happened, or would you rather not?”
She took his hand that held the dirty handkerchief, and held it in her own. “I’ve told you most of it,” she said miserably. “Mummy had bronchitis and asthma, and she died.”
A flicker of technical interest lightened his concern for her. “Was she ill when you came away from England?”
“She was always ill in the winter,” the girl said. “Not very ill, you know, but not too good. She didn’t go out much in the worst winter months. I never thought that she was in any danger, or I wouldn’t have come away.”
He nodded, thinking of cases he had known in the camps of Germany; a small additional strain or an infection, and the heart would give out, somewhat unexpectedly. “The paper says that it has been a very bad winter in Europe.”
She said listlessly, “I suppose that’s it.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two. Carl Zlinter sat staring through the trees down at the river, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, thinking of the blank space that would be coming in his life when she had gone. “Tell me, Jenny,” he said at last, “have you got any brothers and sisters?”
She knew what was in his mind, and she shook her head. “I’m the only child. I’ve got to go home, Carl. I spoke to Daddy last night on the telephone and told him I was coming right away. I never should have come out here at all.”
“It was a very good thing for me that you did,” he said quietly. There was a pause, and then he asked her, “Did you really speak to your father, to England, from Leonora station?”
She nodded. “Mr. Dorman said it could be done, and he arranged it all. The call came through at about four in the morning, six in the evening at home; I could hear Daddy quite well. It only cost three pounds ...” She paused. “The Dormans have been awfully kind, Carl. I hadn’t got quite enough money left to go home by air, and it would have taken months to get a passage home by sea. They wouldn’t hear of me going any other way. They’re driving me to a place called Albury tomorrow to get the train for Sydney, and Jane’s coming with me to Sydney to see me off in the aeroplane. They couldn’t have been kinder.”
He looked down into her face. “Are you quite sure that it is the best thing for you to go back?” he asked. “Could not your father come here from England, to join you?”
She shook her head. “I thought of that, of course,” she said, “and I tried to see it that way, but it wouldn’t work. Daddy’s been in practice in Leicester all his life. He doesn�
�t like the new Health Service, but he’d never leave Leicester at a time like this. You haven’t met my father, Carl. He and my mother were so wrapped up in each other, he’ll be absolutely lost, for a time, anyway. But in Leicester he’s got all his interests, and his friends in the Rotary Club, and the Conservative Club, and the Masons, and the British Medical Association, and all the other things he does. He’ll be all right there once he’s got over the first shock, if I’m there to look after him and run the house. He couldn’t leave all his friends on top of this, and come out here to a strange place where he knows nobody. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him.”
“But you,” he said. “Would you rather live in England, or live here?”
“I’d rather live here, of course,” she said. “There’s no comparison. It’s a pity I ever came out here and saw this country, since I’ve got to go back.”
“It was a very good thing for me,” he said again.
She pressed his hand. “I’m sorry, Carl. It’s just one of those things.”
They sat together in silence for a time; she had told him everything now, and he had to have time to digest what he had heard. Presently he asked her, “Do you think you will ever come back to Australia?”
“I shall try,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s all I can say, Carl — I shall try. There may be a war and we may all get atom-bombed in England, or there may not be enough money for me to get back here.” She paused. “If the Health Service keeps on getting worse for doctors it might be possible to get Daddy to think about trying it out here, but he’s nearly sixty, and that’s awfully old to uproot and leave everything and everyone you know. I don’t believe I’ll ever be satisfied again with England, after seeing this. I shall keep trying to get back here, Carl. I can’t say if I’ll ever manage it.”
His hand caressed her shoulder. “Do you know what would have happened if you had stayed here for another year?”
