Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  She lay awake in silent agony all night.

  The Wrens were up at dawn next morning clustering around the radio in their recreation room, listening to the news of the invasion put out by the BBC. Janet went down to the hard at Lepe after breakfast, but there was nothing to do there except listen again to a small wireless set, talk interminably about the position on the various beaches, and wait for the landing craft to come back for another load. There was little chance that any of them would return before nightfall; at dinner time the Hardmaster dismissed his staff till seven o’clock, advising them to get some sleep.

  Janet took three aspirins and lay down in her bunk in the Wrennery, and pulled a blanket over her, and slept till six. It was the last spell of heavy, refreshing sleep she was to have for several days.

  At half past ten that night the first LCT’s came back to Lepe. They came from Nan beach in Juno sector, near the small town of Courseulles in Normandy. Janet heard something of their landing from a tired young rating as they lugged a box of Oerlikon ammunition on board together. “They got land mines, old shells, anything to make a bang, tied on them beach obstacles,” he said. “Three of ours got it and sank in about two foot of water on the beach; I don’t think anyone got hurt. Time we come to go in the Jerries was a bit back from the beach; I reckon they’re a mile or two inland by this time. They didn’t put up much of a fight, not in our sector. I did hear it was worse for our chaps at Bernieres and down that way.”

  About German aircraft all he had to say was, “One or two come over, strafing the chaps on the beach. Everybody had a bang at them, but I never see one come down.” He had fired off two and a half drums; while the LCT was embarking vehicles and refuelling Janet helped him to grease the rounds and reload the drums. May Spikins was working at the same jobs on another LCT on the other side of the dolphins that ran down the middle of the hard; Janet finished her work and crossed to help May out with hers, and while she did so the first LCT backed off and was replaced by another empty one. Officers and ratings in these ships kept watch and watch, taking what rest they could while the flotilla was on passage.

  Reloading, refuelling, and rearming that flotilla took five hours. When the last ship backed off the hard at half past three in the morning there was a pause. Janet and May went wearily to the Hardmaster’s hut where there was tea brewing, and bully sandwiches. There was no indication when the next flotilla would arrive though it was expected soon; the tanks and motor vehicles were jammed tight down the lane leading to the hard. The Wrens wrapped themselves in their duffle coats and lay down on the camouflage nets at the back of the hut, and slept.

  They were roused again at about six and came out bleary-eyed in a cold dawn to see another lot of LCT’s from France at anchor in the Solent, and the first two craft slowly nosing their way in to the hard. The Wrens gulped down a cup of tea and went to work. At eight o’clock the Hardmaster called them off for breakfast for half an hour; then they went on with the job. The last craft of the flotilla backed away at noon but there was another flotilla already anchored in the Solent waiting to come in to load; the Wrens swallowed a hasty dinner in the hut, brushed the hair back from their foreheads with filthy hands, and went to work again.

  That was Wednesday, June the 7th. That afternoon Viola Dawson took the cutter down the river to Lepe and lay alongside one of the LCT’s for a few minutes, using it as a quay while they unloaded some equipment they had brought down to the hard. Janet broke off, and went over to the boat. “Viola, be a darling. You’ll be back at Mastodon tonight?”

  The coxswain nodded. “As far as I know. Can I bring you down anything?”

  “It’s not that. Viola, I shan’t be able to get up to see Dev till Lord knows when. Will you see he gets his supper tonight? Look, ask that Leading Wren in the galley — Rachel Adams — ask her if she’ll see he gets his food for the next few days, while I’m down here. She knows what he has.”

  “I’ll look after him, old thing. Would you like us to bring him down here in the boat one day, or don’t you want to be bothered with him?”

  Janet said, “I couldn’t look after him with all this going on — he’d better stay up at Mastodon. But I’d love to see him if you could bring him down and take him back again.”

  Viola said, “Okay, I’ll do that. Hope it lets up soon, Janet.”

  “It’s going on forever, by the look of it,” Janet told her. “I don’t mind. It’s the build-up that’s important. Commander Craigie says the Jerries are four miles inland now — that’s in Juno sector.”

  She left the cutter and went aft to the wardroom to find the first lieutenant of the ship.

  All day and night through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the build-up continued. The flotillas came in to load irregularly and without previous notice; so long as the flow of tanks and Priests and trucks kept coming down the road, directed by the army, so long the LCT’s would keep on coming to the hard. The girls ate and slept irregularly in the Hardmaster’s hut, taking food and sleep as they offered, working in a daze of fatigue. Troubled, the Wren officers from Mastodon offered relief to the Ordnance Wrens; as there was no one else to do their job the Ordnance Wrens refused. “I’m quite all right, ma’am — it’s nice down here. I had a lovely sleep last night, and another one this morning.” Working in a daze of exhaustion they went on with their job.

  The boat’s crew Wrens brought Dev down to the hard each day standing proudly in the bow of the cutter; he would jump on board the LCT they came alongside and frolic in and out among the tanks and trucks till he found Janet; then he would be all over her. She would give him biscuits and knock off for a few minutes to play with him, fondling his ears; then Viola would take him back into the boat and Janet would go on, cheered and refreshed by the short interlude with her dog.

  On the morning of Saturday June the 10th Third Officer Collins rode her bicycle from Mastodon down to the hard, her pretty young face troubled and upset. She leaned the bike against the hut and went in to the Hardmaster. “Where’s Prentice, sir?”

  He pointed at an LCT loading on the hard. “In that one, I think.”

  “Could you send for her, do you think? I’ve got to see her, and I’d rather do it here, not in the ship.” She hesitated. “We got a message from her mother. Her father’s been killed.”

  When Janet came, wondering, to the hut Miss Collins said nervously, “Prentice, I want a word with you. Come out here.” She led the way down on to the strip of beach below Lepe House. “I’m afraid there’s been some bad news, Prentice,” she said. “It’s about your father.”

  Janet said quickly, “Has Daddy bought it?”

  “Well — yes, I’m afraid that was what the message was, my dear. Somebody rang up trying to get hold of you, speaking for your mother.”

  “He’s killed, is he?” Janet asked directly.

  “I’m afraid that’s what the message said.”

  Janet walked on in silence for a minute. In the back of her mind she had been ready for this, because God’s judgments were just and she deserved His punishments. Ever since she had heard that motor transport ships had been beached upon the coast of Normandy on Wednesday to unload their trucks with their own derricks on to the sand, she had known that her father was not far from the German Army. She was too tired to grieve, too dazed with work and little sleep, too much obsessed with the thought that she had left her job with the breech out of the port Oerlikon and, as like as not, without her help the rating wouldn’t be able to put it together again. Daddy had bought it; when she was rested perhaps tears would come and she would want to go to church. Now it was just a matter of brushing off Third Officer Collins and getting back on to the LCT to put that breech back.

  She said quietly, “Thank you for telling me, ma’am. It was good of you to come down.” She stopped, turned round, and started to walk back towards the hard.

  The officer said, “I’ve arranged forty-eight hours’ leave for you, Prentice. I’ll just see the Hardmaster; then you can come
up to Mastodon and change, and go off on the 1400 ferry. You can take my bike and go on ahead, if you like. You’ll find your pass and warrant on my desk; if they’re not there, ask Petty Officer Dowling for them.”

  Janet said, “I don’t want to go on leave.”

  The Wren officer was nonplussed. “They said on the telephone that you’re her only child in England — that’s why we put it through. Of course, you must go, Prentice. You must go home and see your mother.”

  “I couldn’t go till this flap’s over,” Janet said stubbornly. “Not unless you can get me a relief.”

  “Don’t you think Spikins can carry on alone, just while you go home for forty-eight? You’re working independently; she can carry on without you.”

  Janet said, “It’s just a question if she can carry on with me, ma’am.” She quickened her pace towards the hard. “She’s just about all in. No, honestly, I’ll be all right. There aren’t any reliefs. Is it true that it’s all coming to an end tomorrow?”

  “Tuesday, I think,” Miss Collins told her. “There’s a buzz that there’ll be no more loading here after Tuesday.”

  Janet said, “Well then, I’ll go home on Tuesday.”

  “You’d better telephone your mother, anyway, Prentice.”

  Janet hesitated. “I would like to do that,” she said. “I must go back on to that LCT now, ma’am, because I’ve got the port gun dismantled; the sear was very dry and sticking down. They’ll be casting off any time now. I must just get on board and see to that. Do you think I might make the call from here after I’ve done that?”

  “I’m sure you can,” the officer said. “I’ll go up to Lepe House and see if I can get a post office line for you. Come up there directly you’ve finished on this ship.”

  A quarter of an hour later Janet, stony-faced, dry-eyed, her hands black with ingrained grease, was speaking to her mother. “Mummy dear,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I just can’t realize it yet. How did you hear? . . . Oh, how kind of him. I know — well, I’d better not say that over the telephone. Look, Mummy, who’s with you now? . . . Will she be able to stay over the week-end? Mummy, I want to come home but I just can’t leave here before Tuesday. It’s the invasion, Mummy — I haven’t been to bed for four days. We’re going on day and night. I think I’ll be able to come home on Tuesday. . . . Oh yes, I’m very well. . . . We sleep all right but it’s in little bits, you know, between the flotillas. . . . I’ll tell you when I come home. I’ll try and get some long leave as soon as this is over, Mummy, but I can’t come till Tuesday. Daddy wouldn’t want me to. I’ll tell you when we meet. On Tuesday. Look after yourself, Mummy. I’ll be home on Tuesday, probably rather late. I’ll ring you up again tomorrow or on Monday.”

  She had been speaking from a room on the ground floor that had been the office of a captain, now vacated because Captain J3 was on the other side of the Channel. She sat for a moment, weary, after putting down the telephone. From the window she could see another LCT nosing in to the hard below, and a long line of loaded trucks and Bren carriers waiting to embark. Presently she got up stiffly and went out into the corridor. Third Officer Collins was watching for Janet from the wardroom opposite, and came out to meet her. “You got through all right?” she asked.

  Janet said, “Yes, thank you, ma’am. Thank you for letting me use that room and make the call from here. Do you think I could possibly speak to her again tomorrow?”

  “Of course, Prentice — I can fix that for you. What time do you want to call her?”

  “I think about teatime would be best. She’s always in then.”

  The officer said, “I’ll come down here at about four o’clock and see that everything’s all right for you. You wouldn’t like to come back to Mastodon and rest a bit?”

  “I’d rather go on here, if you don’t mind. There’s another LCT just coming in.”

  She went back to her job, her mind in a daze. In the roaring of engines as the trucks and carriers backed in to the LCT she started working with the ratings to get the ammunition on board. There was a short pause half an hour later while that ship backed off the hard and another one came in to load, sufficient time for her to smoke a cigarette but not to grieve. Then she went on again. That flotilla was finished by three o’clock in the afternoon and she went up to the hut and had a couple of bully sandwiches and a piece of jam tart with two cups of tea for her dinner; then she lay down to rest till she was needed again. She was too tired to think clearly, too weary and dazed to cry. She lay in unhappy suffering for a time, and presently she slept.

  The Wrens were called to work upon another flotilla at about eight o’clock that evening, and they worked till one in the morning. They had a short sleep then, but another flotilla came in with the first light of dawn, at half past four, and they went on again. They finished that one at about nine in the morning and had breakfast; by the time they had finished eating a fresh pair of LCT’s were nosing their way in to the hard, and a mixed lot of tanks and carriers and Priests was waiting in the lane to be embarked.

  About the middle of the morning the cutter came down river with Dev standing proudly in the bow; Viola brought her alongside the LCT that lay at the west side of the hard dolphin. Janet was working on the other ship, on the east side of the dolphin. Dev, who knew his way around, jumped on to the LCT and from there to the hard, and began running round on the hard amongst the tanks and trucks looking for Janet. Presently he got under a Sherman.

  Viola was still down in the cutter, and she never learned exactly how it happened. She heard a sudden shrill, agonized yelping above the roaring of the engines and the grinding of the tank tracks on steel decks, and put her head over the side of the LCT. She saw Janet running from the ship on the east side. The Sherman moved on backwards to the ramp, probably quite unconscious of what had happened. On the hard Janet found a small, concerned group of army NCO’s and privates grouped around the dog, struggling on his forepaws with both hind legs broken, yelping in agony.

  Janet cried, “Oh, Dev, darling!” and dropped down on her knees beside him. He knew her and stopped screaming for a moment, and sniffed her hand, but he screamed again when she touched him. She raised her eyes from him in distress and saw a revolver belted at a knee, and looked higher; it belonged to a young army captain.

  “Please,” she said. “Please, will you shoot him?”

  The young man hesitated. “Who does he belong to?”

  “He’s mine,” she said. “Please shoot him for me.”

  He glanced around; the hard was paved with concrete, and crowded with men and tanks and trucks. “I can’t do that here,” he said. “We’ll get a ricochet. We’ll have to move him, I’m afraid.” He touched her on the shoulder and made her get up. “Look, go up to the top of the hard and try not to listen. I’ll look after this for you.”

  She took one last look at my brother Bill’s dog, then turned away and went up between the tanks and trucks, tears streaming down her face. She heard the agonized screaming of the dog as the soldiers moved him to the soft sand of the beach, and then two shots. With those two shots her service in the Wrens came to an end.

  Years later Viola Dawson told me about that day, as we lingered over coffee in the restaurant in Earl’s Court after dinner. “I couldn’t wait then,” she said. “I had to take some officers back up the river. I managed to get down to Lepe again early in the afternoon, and when we’d moored the cutter I went on the LCT’s looking for Janet, but she wasn’t there. I found May Spikins, and asked where Janet was.”

  “She’s not here,” she said. “She’s gone sort of funny, Viola — crying all the time. Look, be a dear and find her — she’s somewhere about. Take her back to Mastodon with you. She’ll have to report sick.”

  Viola found Janet sitting at the head of the beach about a couple of hundred yards from the hard, the tears streaming steadily and quietly down her face. She had borrowed an entrenching tool from one of the soldiers and buried the dog there in the soft sand. Viol
a said, “Come on, old girl. It’s no good sitting here.”

  Janet sobbed, “I ought to be working but I can’t bloody well stop crying.”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Viola. “I’m going to take you back up river in the cutter to the Wrennery.”

  “I can’t leave here. May Spikins can’t do all these ships alone.” She wept again.

  “Of course she can,” said Viola. “They’re not using any ammunition. They haven’t fired a round for the last two days, and you know it. Besides, there’s no more loading here after tonight.” She offered her own handkerchief, rather dirty. “Here, take this. I’ll go and see the Hardmaster and tell him.”

  She found him on the hard outside the hut. “Leading Wren Prentice seems to be a bit upset, sir,” she said. “Could she have the rest of the day off? I could take her back up river in the cutter, to the Wrennery.”