Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “It’s not,” she replied. “But we outgrew that sort of trouble centuries ago.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  There was a pause, and then he said, “He’s a shrewd and a clever man. And he’s a good one, too, and he’s got nothing to lose. He didn’t ask to be made Governor General of England, and if he gets the sack I don’t suppose he’ll burst into salt tears. He’s free to do exactly what he thinks is the right thing, and if he gets bumped off or gets the sack for doing it, that’s too bad. But he’s got nothing to lose.”

  “No,” she said. “He’s got nothing to lose.” She paused, and then she said, “I wonder if that’s what’s been wrong with the Monarchy in England? Too much to lose?”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  She said slowly, “It’s only the Monarchy that holds the Commonwealth together. If there was no Monarch the countries of the Commonwealth would fall apart, and each go its own way. The Queen knows that well enough, and she’ll never have that happen. She’d never force a quarrel with the House of Commons to the point when she and all her family would abdicate, because that’d mean the destruction of the Commonwealth. I wonder if that’s prevented her from ruling England as a Queen should rule?”

  “You mean, Iorwerth Jones could twist her tail as much as he damn well liked?”

  She flushed a little. “I think that’s what I mean.”

  “Well,” he said, “he won’t twist Tom Forrest’s tail. If he wants a head-on collision with the Governor General he can have it any time, and it looks to me as if he’s got it now.”

  She said, “I wonder . . .” and then stopped.

  He glanced at her in enquiry. “What do you wonder?”

  She smiled, a little whimsically. “It’d be a funny thing if England got a King again this way. A King that could really rule by staking his job against these whippersnapper politicians, and keep them in their place. A real Monarch for a change, the first since Queen Victoria.”

  They sat in silence for a time. “I wonder what’s going to happen on Monday?” he said at last. “When Parliament meets? He’s giving them the Governor General’s Speech in person — didn’t he say that? Where does he do that?”

  “In the House of Lords,” she replied. “That’s what the Queen used to do. I suppose he’ll give them another dose of the same medicine then. Electoral reform, or they can kiss the Queen good-bye. I wonder how he dares to say a thing like that! I wonder if she knew about it when she left, that he was going to carry on like this?”

  A phrase came back into the pilot’s mind. “ ’That while Her Majesty would wish to visit every one of her Dominions from time to time, she would devote the greater part of her attention to those Dominions most advanced in their political development.’ ”

  “That was it,” the girl said. “How dare he say a thing like that!”

  He grinned. “He’s got guts, and he’s injuring nobody if he gets sacked. You can say a lot of things and get away with it if you’re a free man.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. “Stirring times,” he said at last. “I don’t suppose anything like this has happened for a long, long time in England.”

  “No,” she replied. “We’re living in history, Nigger. What’s happening now will be in all the history books in twenty years’ time, for better or worse. And we’re in the middle of it, you and I. We shan’t be in the books, because we’re not very important people. But we’re in it just the same, in it up to the neck and all the time.”

  He took her hand. “Too right,” he said. “Wouldn’t it rile you?”

  “What, David?”

  He smiled down at her. “To have all this nonsense going on just as we decided to fall in love.”

  “It’s more important than us, David.”

  “Not to me, it isn’t,” he replied.

  They went to breakfast together, and afterwards he saw her off to Tharwa in the car. He did not see her again till dinner time, when they met in the lounge. She was evidently tired, but not exhausted. Over the meal she told him what she had been doing. “I’ve got a new office, with three typists from the pool,” she said. “In the South Block, up on Capital Hill.”

  “Not at Tharwa any more?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “It’s the correspondence. There were over eighteen hundred letters in the post this morning, most of them from cranks. We can’t cope with that in the Residence. Turnbull and I have been doing nothing else all day but glance them through, and sort them out into the ones that need a special answer and the ones that don’t. She took about a hundred and fifty of the most important ones out to Tharwa to Macmahon this evening. Tomorrow I’ll start answering the others with the girls from the pool.”

  He stared at her. “What a job! I suppose you use a standard letter for each one?”

  She shook her head. “She won’t have that. They’ve all got to be individual, but we try and get it into one sentence, or two at the most.” She paused. “They all start, ‘I am commanded by Her Majesty the Queen,’ of course. One’s bound to say the same thing over and over again, but we try and vary it as much as possible. There just aren’t enough words, though, to make each one different.”

  “How long will it go on for?” he enquired.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Macmahon thinks we’ll probably be back to normal in a month. They’ll probably go on at the rate of a thousand a day for the next week, and then they’ll start tailing off.” She smiled. “But we’ve only got ten thousand sheets of the Royal notepaper, so we’ll get a break in a few days. We sent off the printing order today, but it may take a fortnight. It’s the holiday season here, of course.”

  He asked in wonder, “How many did you get done today?”

  “Oh, hardly any,” she said. “We’re only just getting organized. A good girl can do about a hundred and fifty a day. I’ll probably ask for a couple more girls if we get a heavy mail tomorrow. It’ll ease up before long.”

  He saw little of her for the rest of the week. The Consort turned up at the aerodrome unexpectedly with Frank Cox on Friday, apparently for no other purpose than to look at the aeroplane and to give David a general invitation to use the swimming pool at Tharwa any time he cared to do so. This was a good offer, because at the New Year Canberra was hot with the thermometer over ninety in the shade each day, and the city had grown more quickly than the swimming pools. Tharwa was twenty miles out, it was true, but when you got there the pool was a pool to dream about, shady and spacious and deserted, at the bottom of the rose garden.

  The pilot said, “It’s very good of you, sir. Can I take Miss Long?”

  “Of course.”

  They walked around the aeroplane for a few minutes, watching the polishers at work upon the wing. David asked, “Any idea when the next job’s likely to be, sir? If there’s likely to be a fortnight or so, I’ll give some leave.”

  Frank Cox said, “Stay in readiness for a bit longer, Nigger.”

  “Very good.”

  The Consort asked, “Could you make Kenya direct from here, Captain? It may be necessary for you to go and fetch Anne from Sagana, and bring her here.”

  “I can’t make that direct from here,” the pilot said. “We’d have to refuel somewhere on the way. Keeling Cocos islands would be best for that, I think. From here to Nanyuki would be about fourteen flying hours.”

  “Not more than that?”

  “No, sir. It’s very far.” He paused. “I was looking at that route the other day, as a matter of fact.”

  “There’s no difficulty about it?”

  “None at all,” the pilot said. “We’re ready for that any time you say.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Rosemary had an afternoon off on Saturday because the pool typists did not work at the week end. She did a little in her office, and David picked her up at the South Block at about twelve o’clock and drove her out to Tharwa. They lunched with Macmahon in the Secretary’s apartments, and changed there, and went out in
bathing costumes and dressing gowns down through the rose garden in the hot sun to the pool.

  They spent the afternoon there, alone and undisturbed. Sitting in deck chairs by the water’s edge they talked a little about great affairs. “I haven’t seen her since we arrived,” the girl told him. “But Macmahon and Turnie say she’s looking very much happier. She talks to Lord Marlow in London on the telephone every evening, and she’s had one talk with Tom Forrest. She got a great bundle of the London papers by air yesterday, and there was another today. There’s an awful lot going on apparently, about electoral reform.”

  David asked, “Multiple voting, like we have?”

  “I think that’s the idea. I haven’t seen the papers myself. Macmahon says it’s a pity that Tom Forrest said what he did about the secret ballot and the woman’s vote. He thinks that may have got people’s backs up in England.”

  “Why would it?”

  She looked up at him, smiling. “You can’t expect England to tag along after Australia all the time, Nigger.”

  He laughed. “Not all the time,” he said. “Just once more. After all, we’ve tagged along after England in a thousand different things, and very glad we’ve been to do it.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s true enough. But English people may not see it quite that way. To them, culture and political development is a one-way street.”

  In the evening he drove her back to Canberra. Macmahon had told them that the Queen was going to the new cathedral, St. Mark’s, on Sunday morning, her first public appearance since her arrival in Australia. David and Rosemary went to swell the entourage, and sat in a pew immediately behind the Queen and the Consort, with Miss Turnbull and Macmahon and Dr. Mitchison. Rather to David’s surprise the entire crew of Tare turned up, led by Ryder, and by a quick adjustment of the seating by the sidesmen they were seated in the next pew again behind the Queen, so that in all three pews the worshippers gave thanks for a deliverance they could not talk about.

  She would not go driving with him after lunch. He wanted to take her to Letchworth where a new estate of houses of a good class was going up in the Yarrow Road just outside the Federal Territory, hoping to tempt her with one of them, but she wouldn’t play. “I’ve got to work this afternoon, Nigger,” she said. “It’ll be quiet in the office, and I can get ahead with some of the mail. One really hasn’t time to give each letter proper attention when you’ve got five girls to keep going. Jennifer Menzies is coming in to help me.”

  “Who’s Jennifer Menzies?”

  “She’s some connection of the old man — great niece or something. She’s one of the pool typists.”

  “Is she good?”

  The girl nodded. “She’s absolutely first class — a head and shoulders above the rest. It was her idea, this going in this afternoon to get down to it quietly.”

  “Australian?”

  “Yes. She’s a Sydney girl. She was in England for three years, at Girton.” She hesitated. “It just crossed my mind that if I turned the job in, in a few months’ time, she might be the right person to take it on.”

  He grinned. “I’m glad to see you’re thinking on the right lines.” He thought for a minute, and then said, “Would she be the first Australian ever to work on the Queens personal staff?”

  “There’s you,” she said.

  “Apart from me. I mean, on her private affairs.”

  “I think she would,” the girl said. “I can’t remember having heard of anyone except English people. I don’t think that should be an obstacle, though.”

  He grinned at her again. “It sounds to me a very dangerous experiment.”

  “You’re a pig to laugh at me,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I believe the Queen would like her.”

  He saw little more of Rosemary till dinner time on Monday evening, when they met as usual in the lounge. “I’m going out to Tharwa this evening,” she told him. “There’s a car coming for me at eight o’clock.”

  He was concerned for her. “There’s such a thing as limiting the hours of work,” he remarked. “You won’t do anybody any good if you crack up.”

  She smiled. “I shan’t crack up,” she said. “But this is the big night.”

  “Tom Forrest’s giving his Governor General’s Speech?”

  She nodded. “Nine o’clock by our time. She’s speaking to Lord Marlow after it’s over, and she wants us to take down the conversation so that she can look it over quietly. Then the debate in the Commons begins at one in the morning by our time, and she’ll be speaking to him every hour or so from then on. She wants all those conversations taken down.”

  He could not interfere in such affairs. “You’re not going to get much sleep,” he said gently. “Is there anything at all that I can do to help?”

  She pressed his hand. “Dear Nigger. No, you can’t do anything, no more than I could help you when you stalled the Ceres. We’ve each got our job that we can do for her, and mine will be over before long. Nobody thinks the debate’ll run into a second day. It’s one thing or the other now.”

  “He’ll never unseat the Government,” he said. “They’ve got a majority of over two hundred in the House of Commons.”

  “I know,” she said. “But he’s gone over the head of the Government by broadcasting to his people. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but everybody thinks it’s going to happen quickly.”

  He gave her dinner and took her to the car and saw her off for Tharwa. He gossiped with Frank Cox for a time, and together they explored the possibility of listening to Tom Forrest making his Speech in the House of Lords. But either no broadcast was taking place or the Australian stations were not relaying it, and presently David went to bed. He had a copy of the Reader’s Digest, and he read this for a time in bed, and presently he slept.

  He got up at six o’clock. He had arranged with Rosemary that she would slip a note under his door when she went to bed if there was any important news, but there was no note there. If the House of Commons met at one o’clock in the morning by Australian time, they would have been debating for five hours. He decided that they would probably go much longer than that, and went and had a shower, and shaved, and dressed.

  While he was putting on his jacket a note was pushed under the door. He opened the door, and there was Rosemary. “It’s over, Nigger,” she said. “The Government was defeated on an amendment to the Address in Reply.”

  She was pale and tired, with dark rings under her eyes, but she was jubilant. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Iorwerth Jones’ Government has resigned,” she said, “or it’s resigning now. It’s all over bar the shouting.”

  He was amazed. “But how did that happen, with the majority they had?”

  She laid her hand against the jamb of the door to steady herself in her fatigue. “Nearly half the Labour members voted for the Opposition amendment,” she said. “Two hundred and nine of them voted against their own party, and fifty-eight abstained. There was a majority of over two hundred and fifty for the amendment — that’s for electoral reform.”

  “Why did they do that?” he asked.

  “It’s the Queen,” she said. “It’s been a terrible shock to the people, the Queen going and the Governor General being appointed. We’ve not heard the whole story yet, by any means. But the bulk of the Labour back benchers knew the feeling in their constituencies, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it now. The country wants electoral reform.”

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  “There’ll be another Labour government,” she said. “It’s only on this one issue that the country differs from Iorwerth Jones. Tom Forrest’s going to send for Mr. Grayson and get him to form a Labour government pledged to introduce a multiple voting system.”

  He made a gesture of distaste. “Another Labour government?”

  She nodded. “It’s the only thing for England, Nigger. When things are really tough you’ve got to pull together, and share what you’ve got. It’s g
ot to be another Labour government. But from now on, things will get better and better. England’s on the right road now, at last.”

  He nodded. “Maybe.” And then he said, “You’ll have get to bed and get some sleep.”

  She nodded. “I’m going to pull down the blinds, and sleep all day.”

  He took her to her room. “Have you had any breakfast?” he asked.

  She said, “I had some snacks in the middle of the night.”

  He paused at her door. “Can I get you something now — a tray?”

  She smiled at him. “Dear Nigger. I could drink about a pint of milk and eat a few biscuits. I don’t want any more than that.”

  He nodded. “You get to bed, and I’ll get it. How long will you be?”

  “Five minutes,” she said. “I shan’t be longer than that.”

  He went to the kitchen, and met the staff just coming on duty. He persuaded them to give him a jug of cold milk and a plate of biscuits, and carried them through the hotel back to her room. She was in bed and sitting up in a hot weather nightdress which rather disturbed him, but she was evidently very tired and he repressed the sally that came into his mind. “I got your breakfast,” he said. He put it down upon the bedside table.

  She said, “Thank you so much. I’m going to sleep the clock round, I believe.” She took a sip of milk. “David, have they said anything to you about going anywhere?”

  He nodded. “We’re staying in readiness to go to Kenya to fetch Princess Anne here.”

  “Oh — they’ve told you. She’s going to have a talk with Anne this morning. Charles is on his way here now, with Wing Commander Dewar.”

  That was news to the pilot. “Is he?”

  She nodded. “She spoke to him about an hour ago, just before I left. She’s getting them all together for a sort of family conference.”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow, then. Coming by way of Christmas Island?”

  “I don’t know — I suppose they would be, wouldn’t they?” She paused. “You may get your orders today, Nigger, and be off before I come to life again. If that’s so, I shan’t see you till Thursday, probably.”