by Nevil Shute
Bill had got rather English in the five years he had been away from home, I think, or perhaps he had been lonely. At home I don’t think he would have made a pet of a mongrel dog like Dev, short for de Valera. Dev was an Irish terrier by courtesy that had strayed into their camp one day, probably about two years old, probably a part of some military or naval unit that had moved away. He had adopted Bill and Bill had adopted him and made a pet of him, and now he was adopting Janet, too. At home Dev might have been a candidate for the rabbit pack; he would certainly never have been allowed inside the house. I doubt if he’d have made the grade for the rabbit pack, though. He wasn’t fierce enough; he was one of those bumbling, good humoured, rather incompetent dogs, good for a lonely man or girl to look after.
They had Dev in the boat with them that day when we went round from Lymington to Keyhaven, sitting up in the bow looking out forward, ears pricked, obviously enjoying his trip. “I think he’s a love child from an unsatisfactory family,” Janet said, explaining him to me. “He’s such a fool you can’t help liking him.”
When we reached the entrance to the Lymington River she turned the boat to the west and we began to skirt the marshes on the north shore of the Solent. The sea was rough outside, but moving along close inshore we were in calm water. “We’ll keep fairly close in because of your uniform,” she said. “Keep a lookout for snags or stumps or anything sticking up out of the mud. I’ll get in a fearful row if I knock a hole in this boat on a trip like this. It’s not as if I was a boat’s crew Wren, even.”
Bill and I stood up and watched the water ahead. I asked, “How did you manage to get hold of a boat at all?”
She grinned. “I’ve been here long enough to know the ropes. As a matter of fact, they’re not very fussy on Sundays when the boats aren’t being used.”
We had great luck with the weather, for it was a warm, sunny day. We skirted along the mud flats for the best part of an hour under the lee of the long spit that terminates in Hurst Castle, and then turned in to the next river to the west of Lymington, which led to Keyhaven. We went up between the mud flats till we came to a tumbledown jetty at the end of a track across a meadow; Janet brought the boat alongside this and we made her fast, and went ashore. We had brought lunch with us from the hotel and three bottles of beer, and on shore we settled down to lunch and talk and smoke, lazing upon the short grass in the sun not far from the boat, looking out over the Solent. It was so seldom in the war that I had had the chance of a day like that.
As we ate she said curiously, “Bill told me you were at Oxford before the war.”
I nodded. “I was at the House.”
“Were you really? What were you reading?”
“Law,” I said. “You live in Oxford, don’t you?”
She nodded. “My father’s a don at Wyckham. We live in Crick Road.”
“I know Crick Road,” I said. “It’s a nice part.”
“I’ve lived there all my life,” she said. “What made you come to Oxford? Can’t you do Law in Australia?”
“I did a little Law at Melbourne University,” I told her. “I’m an old, old man. I don’t know why I came to Oxford, except that I wanted to. I got a Rhodes scholarship, and it seemed a waste not to use it.”
She opened her eyes, for this meant something to her. “You’re a Rhodes scholar?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was a bad year for the selectors.”
“Did you go into the Air Force when the war broke out?”
“I was in it before, in a way,” I said. “I was in the University Air Squadron.”
“Bill said you were in the Battle of Britain.”
“I suppose you’d call it that,” I said. “I did two operational tours on fighters, the first at Thorney Island and the second in the Western Desert. I did a bit of instructing in between. After the second one they sent me up to Fighter Command.”
“Do you like it there?”
I shook my head. “I want to be operational again. My present job comes to an end when the balloon goes up. I’ll put in for an operational posting then.”
She said, “Will they give you a wing?”
I laughed. “A wing commander doesn’t get a wing, and I’m only acting, anyway. I’ll have to drop a rank. Lucky if I get a flight to command.”
She said in wonder, “It’s a bit hard to have to come down in rank. Does it make a lot of difference in the pay?”
“A bit.” I said. “But I’ve had the office.”
“Are you going back to Oxford after the war?”
“I don’t know. I think I’d like to go back for a bit and take a degree. They had a sort of shortened course for Service people after the first war.”
“Wouldn’t you find it awfully slow, going back to school, after all this?”
“I’d like to finish off what I began,” I said. “One doesn’t like to leave a loose end hanging out.” I glanced at her. “What will you do?”
“I was going to try and go to Lady Margaret Hall,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d have got in. I can’t see myself getting in there now. I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t thought about it.”
Bill laughed. “We’ll all get bumped off when the balloon goes up,” he said. “Then it’ll be decided for us.”
A new sort of landing craft came down the Solent. I forget what it was; it wouldn’t have meant much to me anyway, but it was of great interest to Janet and to Bill. They began to talk about it, and about other sorts of ship that were novel to the invasion, and I had leisure to lie quietly on the grass in the warm sun and study her. I wanted to do that because it was pretty clear to me that this girl was to be my sister-in-law. True, they didn’t appear to be engaged and she wore no ring, but from the way she talked to him and the way he looked at her it was clear that they were very much in love. When the balloon had gone up and they had more time for personal affairs they would almost certainly become engaged, and they might marry before the war was over. I thought of that one and approved the idea. Bill was tired and strained with the exacting work he had been doing, and a long engagement could only mean an added strain. I had seen some of that in the RAF and I had become fanatically opposed to long engagements in wartime. If they were going to marry, let them marry and have done with it.
When they became engaged or married my mother would want to know what the girl was like. She could not come twelve thousand miles from Australia in time of war to meet Bill’s girl, nor could she leave the property even if travel had been possible. She would want my assurance that this girl would make Bill a good wife, and studying her quietly as she talked to Bill I felt that I could make my mother happy on that score. She wasn’t a good-looker. Her face was too square and homely, her shoulders too broad; her short, dark hair had little wave though there were pretty darkbrown lights in it. I could assure my mother, anyway, that Bill hadn’t fallen for a glamour girl.
I tried to visualize her as the mistress of Coombargana in the future, to speculate on how she would be able to adapt herself to the Western District. She had strength of character and a directness of speech that would make her good with the men; she would be able to control the station hands all right when Bill was away. She was a good shot with a gun, which would help her prestige a little. She probably couldn’t ride a horse, but she was young and quite capable of learning to ride. In any case, that wasn’t so important as it used to be in the old days. She was very practical, which was the important thing, and she was fond of dogs. She might well become really interested in the cattle and the sheep, and in the conduct of the work on our big property.
On the social side, she was probably adequate. She would never be much interested in any social functions, perhaps never dress very well, never take much pleasure in the organization of charity balls or Red Cross garden parties. Her interests would probably lie more in the home; she might become a typical homestead wife. She would always be a pleasant hostess to visitors to Coombargana but she would never want to give great entertainmen
ts there, unless she changed very much. She was much more likely to develop an interest in Australia itself, and to want to travel widely over our vast country. She might want to keep a seagoing motor yacht or something of that sort, and if so Coombargana could afford it.
My report on Janet Prentice to my mother would be wholly good. She was not the sort of girl my mother would have visualized or expected as a daughter-in-law, but I was confident that she would grow to like her and to appreciate her very solid virtues. She would make a good mistress of Coombargana in the future, and a good wife to Bill, and lying there upon the grass at Keyhaven that day I thought he was a very lucky man.
I listened unashamedly while she talked to Bill, half oblivious of my presence. The dog, Dev, had laid his head upon her knee as she sat upon the grass, in sentimental affection, and she was fondling his ears. “You’re very lucky to be able to keep a dog,” she said to Bill. “I wish we could.”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone has tried. I don’t believe the captain would allow a dog in Mastodon. Everyone would want to have one if he did.”
Bill nodded. “We wouldn’t be allowed dogs if we weren’t in such a lonely place. I don’t know what’ll happen to him when we get moved on.”
“Are you likely to be shifted soon?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We seem to be able to do everything by going off on a party from here. We’ll get moved on some day, of course.” There was no permanency in the Services. He looked down thoughtfully at Dev. “I don’t know that it’s really a good idea letting us have dogs,” he said thoughtfully. “You get too fond of a dog, and then you’re in trouble when you get moved to a place where you can’t have one.”
“You can’t send him home, of course,” she said. “Not to Australia. Haven’t you got any relations in England you could send him to?”
He shook his head. “No one like that.”
She said, comforting, “If you’re stuck I might be able to get Mummy to have him.”
“Difficult, with the rationing,” he replied.
“I know. If Daddy’s home I think he might quite like to have him, though. It’s worth trying, if you get in a real jam.”
“I thought your father was in Oxford all the time,” he remarked.
She turned to him, fresh and animated. “Oh, I forgot — I haven’t told you. There was a letter waiting when I got back on board last night. Daddy’s probably going on the party.”
He stared at her. “Not this party?”
“This party,” she told him, laughing. “He’s gate-crashed it. When the balloon goes up, Daddy goes too.”
“Over to the other side?” he asked incredulously.
“Over to the other side,” she said. “At least, he’s put in to go. He doesn’t know yet if they’ll have him.”
“But what’s he going as?”
“Aircraft identifier in a merchant ship,” she told him. “They’re putting one or two people from the Observer Corps in every merchant ship to stop the DEMS gunners firing on our own aircraft. They’ve asked for volunteers and Daddy’s put in for it.”
“But how old is he?”
“About sixty-three, I think,” she said. “He seems to think that doesn’t matter. I think it’s the funniest thing ever.”
Bill turned to me. “Have you heard anything about this, Alan?”
As a matter of fact, I knew quite a lot about it, for some of the papers concerning it had passed across my desk. So many cases of our fighters being fired upon by friendly ships had occurred that we had stuck our heels in, and demanded better aircraft identification before we laid on close support over the beaches by our fighters flying low over a thousand ships. I rather think that the suggestion to put members of the Royal Observer Corps in to the merchant ships had come from us. “I did hear something vaguely,” I admitted.
“It’s a good show,” said Bill. “A good show for a man of sixty-three.”
“I think it’s the limit,” the girl laughed. “Here I’ve been in the Wrens three years but no one ever asked me if I’d like to go to the party. Daddy comes along at the last minute and walks right in.”
“Are any Wrens going?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I haven’t heard of any. They won’t let us do anything operational, or anything that means living in a ship. We’re all shore based.”
I asked her what she did in the navy and she told me answering my questions with the candour born of competence in her job. “It’s quite good fun, and closer to operations than most of the jobs we get,” she said. “Not so good as being a boat’s crew Wren, but better than being a steward or a cook. It’s a bit of a mike at times, but when you get a dud gun changed in a ship you feel you’ve done a bit to help.”
Bill asked, “Do you get a lot of trouble with the Oerlikons?”
She shook her head. “Not much, and then it’s mostly through bad maintenance. Last week an LCT came in and the captain said his port gun jammed its breech block solid after twenty rounds and they had to wait half an hour till it cooled down before they could free it. It did, too. I cleaned it down and went out to the Needles in the ship and fired it myself, and it was just like they said. The tolerances were wrong or something. It was one of the first ones they made in England. They’d put in several reports about it and nobody believed it wasn’t just that they’d let it get rusty. They’ve got a new one now.”
We went on chatting about Service matters most of the afternoon, sitting there upon the grass at Keyhaven. I had arranged with the WAAF driver of the car to pick me up at the hotel in Lymington at six o’clock for I was dining at the aerodrome that night with a couple of group captains and a colonel in the USAAF and going through the papers in my brief case with them after dinner. By four o’clock we had to make a move. We rounded up Dev from some rabbit holes among the gorse bushes, mud all over his nose, and got him into the boat, and cast off from the little jetty, and made our way down to open water and along the mudflats to the Lymington River and so back to the quay.
I said good-bye to Janet Prentice then, because she had to take the boat back up the river before meeting Bill again to spend the evening with him. I shook hands with her in the boat before getting out. “It’s been a grand day,” I said. “The best I’ve had for years. Thanks so much for the boat, and everything.”
“Boats are meant to be used,” she laughed. “Especially on Sundays. Good-bye, sir. Don’t go and prang yourself on the way back to London.”
“I take that as an insult,” I said, laughing. The “sir” to my uniform hurt a little, but after all, she was Bill’s girl, not mine. “Good-bye, Janet.”
She sheered off from the quay and went away up river through the bridge with Dev still with her in the boat, standing up in the bow and looking forward. Bill and I watched till she was out of sight, and then turned up the long hill of the main street to the hotel. “Well,” he asked presently. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re bloody lucky,” I told him.
“So do I,” he said. “It’s not in the bag yet, though.”
“You’ve not said anything to her?”
“She knows, all right,” he said. “We’ve fixed to go on leave together after the balloon goes up, and sort things out then. We’ve both got too much on our plates just now to think about the future.” He grinned. “Maybe there won’t be a future. If there is, we’re going off on leave together somewhere. That’s the way it stands.”
“Sounds all right to me,” I said.
He glanced at me. “Think there’ll be an uproar at home?”
I shook my head. “There’ll be no uproar,” I told him. “She’ll go down all right.”
He nodded. “I think so, too.” He hesitated. “You won’t say anything about this in your letters? I haven’t said a word about it yet, and I shan’t, not till it’s all buttoned up.”
“I won’t say anything,” I told him. “Let me know when you put out a communiqué
, and then I’ll write to Mum and say she’s okay.”
“That’s good of you,” he said gratefully. “That’ld help a lot. I want her to start off on the right foot with Mum.”
My RAF car was waiting outside the hotel when we got here, with the WAAF driver sitting in it. I said good-bye to Bill on the pavement. “I don’t know when we’ll meet again,” I said. “I shan’t be able to take another day off till the balloon’s gone up. Some time after that, I should say.”
He grinned. “Some time after that I’m coming on leave.”
“All right,” I laughed. “I won’t come and peep through the keyhole.”
On that note we ended, and he went off down the hill to meet his Janet at the boatyard and to spend the evening with her. I stood watching him till he was out of sight, while my WAAF driver waited for me.
I can see him now.
I think it was only a few days after that that the JU. 188 came over Beaulieu. Viola Dawson told me a good bit about that when we met in 1950, and May Cunningham, then May Spikins, told me about it, too, when I had tea with her at Harlow. After that I got in touch with Tom Ballantyne who had been with me in Fighter Command, and who in 1951 was a group captain doing a term at the Air Ministry. He was very helpful and put someone on to dig into the records, and found the accident report, and showed it to me in his office.
What happened was this. On a Saturday morning at the very end of April the Ordnance Officer at Mastodon sent Janet down the river with four Sten guns and four boxes of ammunition for the LCT’s. It had been suggested that after the first landing in Normandy the Germans might counterattack and re-take a beach while the tank landing craft were stranded, and it was thought that the ships ought to have some more adequate weapons on board for close range fighting than revolvers. Sten guns were in good supply, and these were being issued for the first time to the officers of the ships.
