Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  He stood for a few minutes on the tarmac talking with the Princess Royal and her husband, and with the sleepy children only just awake. Then they got into their cars and were driven off towards Sagana and the Royal Residence, and the Australians were left to make their way on to Nairobi for refuelling, and thence to England. They accepted an invitation to breakfast from the local police commissioner who had it organized for them, and they showed a few local farmers and planters over the machine, including two Negroes who spoke perfect English. Soon after eleven they took off for Nairobi, and put down there half an hour later.

  They refuelled the machine and went to the Norfolk hotel in which accommodation had been booked for them. By seven o’clock next morning, local time, they were in the air on their way back to England. They put down at White Waltham shortly after noon by Greenwich time, and David had the Ceres refuelled and inspected that same afternoon, Sunday, December the 17th, and made ready for another flight. That evening he rang up Group Captain Cox, and reported readiness again.

  To his surprise, he found Sugar in the hangar, back from Canada. During a pause in the work he asked Wing Commander Dewar what had brought him back.

  “Brought the Governor General,” the Canadian said laconically.

  “Tom Forrest?”

  “Field Marshal Sir Thomas Forrest to you,” said the Canadian.

  “What’s he come back for?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Anyone come with him?”

  “Nosey. No, he came alone. How did your trip go?”

  “Just like that,” said the Australian. “We got there, put some juice into the thing, and turned round and came back.”

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” said the Canadian.

  “Like hell. Give me Luna Park.”

  Later on, he talked privately to Dewar in the office. “I got the wire there may be trouble in this bloody country,” he said. “There’s just a possibility of sabotage on one or other of our aircraft. Seems like the Monarch’s getting a bit too independent in her movements, with our aircraft here, to suit some of the Pommies.” He told Dewar about his precautions with the fuel. “I’m worried about people getting in at night,” he said. “There’s only the one watchman.”

  The Canadian said, “Think some of us ought to be here nights?”

  “I think we should. Run some kind of a guard.”

  “I’ll row in while I’m here, with my boys,” said Wing Commander Dewar. “I’m going back to Ottawa tomorrow, though. Seems like I’ve got to stand by there for quite a while. I’ll keep half of my crew on guard tonight, though.”

  David thought for a moment. “Better not if you’re flying tomorrow. I’ll keep half mine here, to watch the two machines. I’ll fix up something better in the morning. Are you taking anybody over with you?”

  The Canadian shook his head. “Going over empty, far as I know at present.”

  David stayed in the hangar that night with three of his crew, running a four-hour watch with two awake on guard and two asleep in the flight deck of Tare. By eleven o’clock next morning he was in Australia House, waiting to see Vice Admiral Sir Charles O’Keefe of the Royal Australian Navy. Charlie O’Keefe knew all about Nigger Anderson, and had flown with him once in the third war. He greeted him cordially, and offered him a cigarette.

  The pilot said, “I’m in a bit of a spot, sir, and I can’t say much about it, I’m afraid. What I want is a guard for my machine, in the hangar at White Waltham, and I don’t want to ask the R.A.F. for it. The aircraft is Australian property. I was wondering if you could spare a party from one of the Australian ships over here.”

  “I see,” said the Admiral. “How long do you want them for?”

  “Till after Christmas,” said the pilot. “Say about three weeks, to make it safe.”

  “GONA’s in Portsmouth dockyard till the middle of January. When do you want them?”

  “This afternoon if I can have them, sir. I’m afraid I’ve got no accommodation, though.”

  “They can sling hammocks in your hangar?”

  “Oh yes, they can do that.”

  “Can do. Two officers and fifty ratings be enough?”

  “That’s ample, sir.”

  “They’ll be there this evening, Wing Commander. You don’t have to say any more.”

  Three trucks full of sailors, rations, and hammocks turned up at the hangar that afternoon, and took a load off David’s mind. In the evening he drove over to the little Grace and Favour house that Frank Cox lived in on the edge of Windsor Great Park, and presented the fait accompli to his chief. “I hope you don’t mind all these Australian sailors in the hangar, sir,” he said. “You see, Tare’s the property of the Australian Government, and I wasn’t quite happy about things.”

  “I see,” said the Group Captain quietly. “That’s the line you’re taking, is it? That they’re just there to look after the property of the Australian Government?”

  “That’s right, sir. I hope you don’t think I’ve been acting out of turn.”

  “Of course you have,” the Group Captain said. “It’s absolutely watertight.” He paused, and then he said, “How did you get the idea that a guard might be a good thing?”

  “I’m a very nosey person, sir,” the pilot replied. “I’m not an English gentleman.”

  Frank Cox laughed. “An Aussie bastard is the right term, I believe.”

  “That’s right,” said the pilot equably. “I’m an Aussie bastard, so I’ve got a nose for what the other bastards may be up to.”

  He drank a tomato juice cocktail with his chief before starting back to Maidenhead. “Got anything to tell me about this other job?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I suppose Tom Forrest will be going back to Ottawa some time. Will we be taking him?”

  “You’re fishing,” said the Group Captain. “I don’t know myself yet, Nigger, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you or anybody else before it’s necessary.”

  The pilot laughed. “Sorry. I wasn’t fishing really. I’d like to take Tom Forrest somewhere.”

  With most service men of that generation, he had a veneration for the Field Marshal. Like Nigger Anderson himself, Tom Forrest had come up from the bottom. Tom Forrest was the son of a man who ran the boilers of a little laundry in Roundhay, a suburb to the north of Leeds. He was a Territorial week end soldier before the second war and rose to the rank of corporal in the first days of the war; by the end of it he was an acting Brigadier. In 1946 he succeeded in staying in the army with a permanent commission as a captain, and he entered the third war as a major. He came out of it as a Lieutenant General, and it is perhaps an indication of the quality of the man that all through his career, from laundry to General, he had been known to everybody as Tom Forrest. Such political opinions as he held were mildly socialist as would be expected from his origin, but he was the confidant of Princes, and in particular he was a great friend of the Prince of Wales. In another sphere, he was liked and respected by most of the members of the Cabinet, and he was generally with Iorwerth Jones to watch the Cup Final at Wembley. He was now sixty-one years old and he had been Governor General of Canada for about two years, a competent and a popular representative of the Queen in the Dominion.

  That day was December the 18th, a week before Christmas. David drove back from Windsor in his little sports car, and deviated from his road home to Maidenhead to look in at the hangar at White Waltham aerodrome. A hundred yards from the hangar a naval sentry stopped him, a dark figure in a long blue coat with a white webbing belt, and David saw the rifle with fixed bayonet pointed at his chest. He was held there while a runner went to fetch the officer, to his intense pleasure. The sub-lieutenant came and released him, with apologies, and got told to do that every time.

  Presently David found himself back in his little flat. He cooked himself a scratch meal; in normal times he would have gone and had a meal at one of the hotels, but now he preferred to stay at home rather than risk contact with a possib
le reporter in a public place. When he had eaten and washed his few dishes, he settled down to read the papers for an hour before bed.

  That day was a Monday, and he had taken Princess Anne to Kenya with her family on Friday night, too late for editorial comment in Saturday’s Press. Monday’s papers, which he was now reading, reflected a growing uneasiness about the movements of the Royal Family. It was right, said the Times, that the family should make frequent visits to the Dominions and no doubt the clear air of Sagana would be good for little Alexandra’s cough, but it would be regretted that circumstances prevented the reunion of the Monarch with her family for the festivities of Christmas; it would be the first time within living memory when the Royal Family had not been together in England at this season. Moreover, said the Times, there were certain dangers apart from the breach of precedent in too wide a dispersal of the Royal Family within the Commonwealth; it did not require a very vivid imagination to visualize a chain of events which could leave England with no Monarch and no heir in the country, and without even a Council of State.

  The Express-Mail was more outspoken. It carried a banner headline right across the page, PRINCESS ROYAL TO KENYA. It followed with a factual account of the departure of the Princess with her family for the Royal Lodge at Sagana, and reminded its readers that the Prince and Princess of Wales had left for the Royal Residence at Gatineau a few days previously. The editorial was headed succinctly, HAPPY CHRISTMAS? It pointed out that the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal preferred to spend Christmas in the Dominions rather than in England. No doubt, said the Express-Mail, many readers would agree with them, for after thirty-seven years of Socialist mis-rule England was no longer the happy place it once had been. Yet, said the leader, the hearts of all right thinking people would go out to the Queen, separated from her family at the time of the greatest festival of the Christian year. It would be a sad thing for England, said the Express-Mail, if it should come to pass that in future years the Royal Family should find themselves assembled at this joyous season in one of the Dominions, if the Christmas broadcast of the Queen should be delivered at the Royal Residence at Tharwa near Canberra, and recorded, and relayed to England at a suitable time distorted with howlings and half incomprehensible with static.

  David laid down the paper thoughtfully, wondering if the Express-Mail had hit the bulls eye. It was very possible they had. He and his crew of Australians, and the aircraft, were at readiness to fly at any time, a fact that might well be known to the staff of the Express-Mail. It was difficult to keep a thing like that entirely secret from an experienced and skilled reporter. It would easily be possible for the Queen to get to Tharwa before Christmas, and Australia was now the only major country owing her allegiance that had no member of the Royal Family in it. He sat for a long time, troubled and thoughtful, and then picked up the Mirror.

  The Mirror at that time carried no leading articles, but merged its reporting with opinion. It printed a three-column heading, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH ENGLAND? It said that plain, honest working men could see no sense in gallivanting off to places like Canada and Kenya for Christmas. Let the Royal Family go to these places if they must, said the Mirror, but the British working man would spend his Christmas in the way that suited English people best, in the good fellowship of the village inn or in the happy relaxation of the cinema.

  David dropped his eyes to the bottom of the page, to the strip cartoon of Jane, still in the throes of an adventure that had deprived her of most of her clothes.

  That week was an uneasy week in England. Every visit to Buckingham Palace seemed to make the headlines, and the visitors were many, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Tom Forrest, from Iorwerth Jones to Group Captain Cox. In general the leader writers kept silence, so that an impression was created in the country that something was about to happen, though nobody quite knew what it was likely to be. Gradually the rumour spread around that something serious was likely to be announced by the Queen in her Christmas broadcast speech. Nobody knew where this rumour had come from, but it was widely repeated, and added to the tension of the week.

  On the Wednesday David began to be troubled by reporters, when a representative of the Mirror called at his flat and asked if he had any statement to make about future journeys. He said he hadn’t and referred his visitor to the Queen’s private secretary, but when he went out to get his car from the garage to drive to White Waltham a photographer was waiting and took a number of pictures of him as he walked down the pavement and got into the car.

  He rang up Rosemary that day, and dined with her at Mario’s in Shepherds Market in the evening. He found her looking white and exhausted, and decided at first sight of her to cut the dinner short and take her back to the flat directly they had dined. Because of her evident fatigue and strain he did not broach the subject of their job, but talked to her about boats and cruising grounds around the coast of England most of the time.

  She said once, “I went home last night, just for a few hours.”

  He was surprised, for it was the middle of the week. “To Oxford?”

  She nodded. “I shan’t be able to get down there next week end, or for some time after that.”

  He nodded, thought for a minute, and then said, “Will we be together?”

  She smiled at him. “I think so.”

  He smiled back at her. “Well, that’s all right. Things might be a lot worse.”

  She found his hand and pressed it. “I know.” And then she said, “You’ve not had any orders yet, Nigger?”

  He shook his head. “So far as I’ve been told, we’re here for the next six months.”

  She nodded, and then she said, “I hear you’ve got a lot of Australian sailors in the hangar guarding the machine.”

  He grinned at her cheerfully. “Somebody told me to be careful,” he remarked. “I can’t remember who it was.”

  She smiled. “We’re a couple of busybodies, I suppose. But I’m glad you did it.”

  “Does the Consort know about it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think they know. Frank Cox told Macmahon, but I don’t think he let it go any further. I think he was quite pleased you’d done it. It’s one anxiety removed, at any rate.”

  They talked about other things, and presently she said, “Where will you be on Friday, Nigger?”

  “At White Waltham,” he replied. “I don’t know that I’ll be anywhere else.”

  She said, “My father’s coming up on Friday. I would like you to meet him, and there may not be another chance.”

  “I want to meet him. What’s he coming up for?”

  “He’s got a meeting with Tom Forrest on Friday. I think he’s lunching with him at the Athenaeum.”

  “Does your father know Tom Forrest?”

  “Daddy’s met him once or twice. But he wants to meet Daddy now. Daddy’s Professor of Political Economy, you know. He rang up Daddy, and so Daddy’s coming up on Friday.”

  “I see.” Wheels within wheels; was Rosemary’s father mixed up in the English crisis? No business of his, however. “It’s going to be difficult for me to get up here on Friday,” he said, biting his lip. “I told Ryder he could have Friday evening off to go and see some friends in Hampstead. We can’t both be up in London at the same time. When’s your father going back?”

  “He’s got to get back to Oxford on Friday night.”

  The pilot sat in brooding thought for a minute. “I can’t make it,” he said at last. “I’m sorry, Rosemary. I’ll have to be at home on Friday night, sitting at the telephone. I can’t risk not being there if any orders come, with Ryder out that night.”

  “Of course not, Nigger.” She paused, and then she said, “If I came down with Daddy by train to Maidenhead, could we have dinner in your flat?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Could you get off for that?”

  “I think so,” she replied. “I do want you to meet him before we go.”

  He did not care to pick her up upon her indiscretion. “
I could get one of the boys to drive him on to Oxford in my car after dinner,” he said, “and bring the car back. He could drive you to the station, too, to get a train back here. But it’s an awful bind for you, at such a time as this.”

  “I’d like to do it,” she replied. “It’d make a bit of a change.”

  He took her back to her flat after dinner, and helped her out of the small car on to the pavement in Dover Street. She asked if he would like to come up for a little, but she was obviously tired, and he refused. He kissed her in the darkness of the doorway and said good night, and she opened the door with her latch key.

  “Good night, Nigger darling.”

  “Good night, Rosemary. Sleep tight.”

  The uneasy days went by, and at ten minutes to seven on Friday night David stood in the cold, windy darkness upon the platform of Maidenhead station, waiting for the electric train from Paddington. It came in with a glow of lights and a sighing of pneumatic brakes, and he stood by the ticket collector watching for Rosemary with her father. She was not there, but an elderly man in an old raincoat and a battered felt hat stopped by him. “It’s Wing Commander Anderson?”

  He glanced sharply at the man, and saw her features in his face. “That’s right,” he said. “Are you Professor Long?”

  “That’s right. Rosemary said I was to tell you that she’s got to go back to the Palace tonight. So I thought I’d better come and meet you, anyway. We may not have another chance for some time. I knew you by the colour of the uniform, of course.”

  David said something or other in reply, and guided Rosemary’s father to the car. As they drove the short distance to his flat he said, “I’m sorry she’s got to work tonight. She’s working much too hard.”

  “Ah, well,” her father said, “it’s not much longer now.” The pilot did not answer that.

  In the flat he gave Professor Long a glass of sherry, and with his own tomato cocktail in his hand he turned to face him. “In a way, I’m glad you’ve come alone this evening,” he said. “We’ll probably be able to talk more freely. Did Rosemary tell you that we want to get married?”