by Nevil Shute
It would be terribly easy to do, because I’ve got enough of Aunt Ellen’s stuff to kill a horse. You’d just go to sleep and never wake up. It would make the seventh, and that must finish it. All the people that I’ve loved, Bill most of all, and then Daddy, and Dev, and Mummy, and Billy, and Aunt Ellen. I’d make the seventh, and all the people in the Junkers would be paid for then.
The only thing is that it seems so cowardly, as if you can’t face up to things because you haven’t got the guts.
Perhaps the drugs that had been provided for Aunt Ellen were not wholly menacing to her, because the next entry reads, two days later:
May 30th. I couldn’t sleep again last night, just miserably tired and depressed, and about midnight I got up and took one of Aunt Ellen’s things as an experiment, with a glass of water. It was a knock-out drop all right because I didn’t wake up till half past nine — clean out, like a log. I got up feeling fine and it was a glorious morning, sunny and bright and fishing boats on the blue sea in Shilshole Bay. I was too late for breakfast here so walked up to the drug store on West 85th and had a cup of coffee. I’d been so miserable the night before and I was feeling so good that I thought perhaps all I needed was a tonic. And then, rather on the spur of the moment, I rang Dr. Ruttenberg’s office in Tacoma from the drug store and told his nurse he’d treated me before in England during the war, and asked for an appointment to see him. She said to come along at two-thirty, so I drove over in the Pontiac and had lunch in Tacoma and saw him in the afternoon.
He didn’t seem to have changed much in eight years, hair a bit thinner, but he looked as young as ever. He remembered me, and he really did because when we got talking he mentioned Bill and Daddy, and he even remembered Dev’s name — pretty good to remember the name of a dog all these years when he’d only seen me once. I asked how he did it and he said that he’d been very much interested in the case because it was the first he’d come in contact with, where a woman had been exhausted and worn out in service life, and he’d always been sorry that he hadn’t been able to follow the case up. It was just like it was before at Mastodon and I told him everything, about Mummy and Billy and Aunt Ellen and how miserably ill I’d been feeling and that I wanted a tonic. He started asking me things then, about love affairs of which there aren’t any, probably that’s bad, and I was getting too tired to keep up a front any longer and told him about the Junkers and the expiation that had to be made, and there’d been six already and the last one would be me. I said I didn’t know when that would happen, but if I didn’t get a hefty tonic it would happen pretty soon.
He said of course that there was no future in that and that all that was wrong with me was that I’d been spending myself and got myself worn out again, like I had in Mastodon. He said the expiation angle was baloney, that I seemed to have the instincts of a nurse in doing things for people, but a nurse didn’t talk about expiation and go all suicidal after a hard case when her patient died. He said he wanted to see me again and made an appointment for next Tuesday at the same time, and gave me a prescription to get made up at the pharmacy. I did like seeing him again; he gives one such confidence. I was with him for about an hour.
Before her next appointment the doctor wrote her a letter which influenced her a great deal. I found the letter itself among her correspondence, and it reads,
1206 S. 11th St.
Tacoma
June 1st, 1952
Dear Miss Prentice,
I have been giving your case a great deal of consideration in the last two days and would suggest a line that you may care to consider and talk over at our next appointment.
Medically your case is not a complicated one, and as you are aware your trouble is more of a psychological nature. As such it may be somewhat beyond my province, but as a friend can I suggest that you might think over the following?
I do not think that you have taken sufficiently in to account the family of the young man Bill Duncan whom you would have married. If he had lived you would have become a part of that family, and you would have owed duties to your new relations by marriage. I can readily understand that in the circumstances of 1944 you did not wish your love affair to become known to strangers, but the circumstances of 1952 are very different.
As I understand the matter your recent bereavement has given you a small independence so that you are under no immediate necessity to look for paid work. In these circumstances I would say you might seek out the Duncan family and satisfy yourself that they are well and are in no need of help from you, even if this should mean a journey to Australia. From what you have told me both now and in the year 1944 these people are farmers. If with increasing age the father or the mother of your friend Bill should be in any distress it may be that you could assist them, and in doing so achieve a purpose and new interest in your life.
If this suggestion should entail a sea voyage of several weeks from this country to Australia I presume that this would be an interest and an enjoyment to you. From the medical point of view I could advise nothing better for you in your present circumstances.
I look forward to seeing you again on Tuesday next.
Sincerely,
Lewis C. Ruttenberg
The next entry in her diary reads:
June 2nd. I got a letter from Dr. Ruttenberg this morning. It’s given me an awful lot to think about. When Bill got killed it was the end of everything for me. I never thought about it being the end of everything for other people, for his mother, for one. What Dr. Ruttenberg says is absolutely right, of course. If it had happened six months later, after Bill and I were married, say if he’d been killed at Arnhem or something like that, then I’d have been one of his family. My name would have been Mrs. Duncan. I couldn’t have slid off then and kissed my hand to them and never seen them again. Bill wouldn’t have thought a lot of me if I’d behaved like that, and I don’t suppose I’d have wanted to anyway. But that’s about what I did. We’d have got married if he’d lived a few months longer, after the balloon went up. And now I don’t know anything about his father and mother, and I haven’t cared. I’ve been wrapped up in my own affairs and my own grievances, very selfish. I’m so sorry, Bill.
It’s going to be a bit difficult finding out. They may be fit as fleas and perfectly all right; after all I suppose they’ve got brother Alan to look after them and the sister, Helen. I can’t just write and say, well, here I am. You’ve never heard of me, but how are you getting on? I think the doctor’s right, as usual, I’ll have to go to Australia and snoop around, and come away if everything’s all right. Perhaps if I went there I might find brother Alan and have a talk with him. I think he’d understand.
I’ve been wondering what sort of place a sheep farm in Australia can be. I suppose it’s very hot and people riding round the desert in big hats on horses, and boomerangs, and black people. And billabongs whatever they may be, like in the song. I don’t think I’d be much good in a place like that, but I’d feel now that I was letting Bill down if I didn’t go and see if I was needed there at all.
Anyway, it’ld mean another month on a ship. I’ve been down to the library looking at an atlas. Honolulu, Fiji, New Zealand, Sydney, I should think. It would be a marvellous trip, anyway.
On the next page of the diary she had totted up her financial situation to the best of her ability. Her aunt’s house had sold to the Pasmaniks for eighteen thousand dollars. Unravelling her somewhat tangled accountancy and putting together the money from the sale of the house and her English capital, she seems to have possessed a total of about eight thousand pounds in English money, a sum which she considered as indecent riches.
She saw Dr. Ruttenberg again, but there is only a short mention of that meeting in the diary.
June 4th. I saw Dr. Ruttenberg again today. He gave me a medical check-up, stethoscope and blood pressure and all the rest of it and we had a talk about things. I told him I was going to take his advice and take a sea trip to Australia and perhaps meet brother Alan and find out h
ow Bill’s parents were, but I wasn’t going to barge in if everything was quite all right as it probably will be. In that case I should come back to Seattle because I’ll have to come back here, because it will take the lawyers about six months to settle up Aunt Ellen’s estate and they can be doing that while I’m away. He asked me to come and see him when I got back. And then he said that in his experience a woman without family duties was generally an unhappy woman until she got adjusted to what was an unnatural condition, and that was really all that was the matter with me. I suppose he’s right. He generally is.
I went to a shipping office this morning. There’s a ship called Pacific Victor loading bulldozers and earth moving machinery for Sydney which is due to sail in about ten days’ time. She had accommodation for four or five passengers, and they don’t think she’s full up but they’re not sure. They’ve given me a letter of introduction to the captain. She’s in a dock on the East Side somewhere by Lander St. I couldn’t go today because of seeing Dr. Ruttenberg, but I shall go and find her tomorrow and see if she’s got a berth.
June 17th. We sailed from the East Waterways this morning. This isn’t half such a nice ship as the Winterswijk was, much older and dirtier and slower, not so well kept. However, I’ve got a two-berth cabin to myself and it’s lovely being at sea again. It’s two thousand four hundred sea miles to Honolulu and we do about ten knots, so it will take about ten days.
There was nothing of any particular interest in the diary until she disembarked at Sydney. At Suva a young married couple called Anderson came on board for the passage to Sydney; they were English born but resident in Australia for many years. From them she learned a good deal about the country that was useful to her.
August 2nd. We docked today and I got a taxi and went to the Metropole. The Andersons say that anyone can get a job of any sort in this country and it certainly looks like it from the situations-vacant columns in the paper. They say that lots of English girls come out and work here, usually in pairs, flitting about from job to job and seeing the country. I believe that’s the best line. Travelling by bus.
Sydney is rather like Seattle, a bustling sort of place with bits of sea all round. Tomorrow I shall have to find out about buses, and probably leave here on Monday. I asked the Andersons where the Western District of Victoria was, and they said west of a place called Ballarat. I got a map today and found Ballarat. It looks as if it would be best to get to it through Melbourne.
She had a talk with the chambermaid in the Metropole Hotel and learned of the acute staff shortage experienced by all hotels in Australia, and of the considerable wages that were paid. She left Sydney by bus early in the morning a few days later and reached Albury on the borders of New South Wales about the middle of the afternoon. She found Albury to be a prosperous country town, an attractive place with a number of hotels, good shops full of fine fabrics and Swiss watches, and a general feeling of well-being about it. She parked her suitcases in the office of the bus company and strolled out down the street to look for a job. Within half an hour she was a waitress in Sweeney’s Hume Hotel at a wage of twelve pounds a week, sharing a room with a Dutch girl who had been in the country for about three months. An hour and a half later she was serving dinner.
August 5th. When Mrs. Sweeney asked me what my name was I said, Jessie Proctor. It went down all right, and it matches the initials on my case. I want to find out about Bill’s people but if everything’s all right I don’t want to be bothered, and Alan probably told them about me so that they’ll know the name. Everything’s a bit more under control this way.
She stayed in Albury for a fortnight before giving up the job and going on. It was a good experience for her, for it enabled her to find her feet in the new country and to learn a little of its ways. The hours were not long but the work was strenuous; with Anna she was responsible for thirty-two bedrooms as well as serving all the meals and doing a good bit in the kitchen.
She went on by bus to Ballarat, staying one night on the way in Melbourne but not working there. At Ballarat she repeated her experience in Albury; arriving about midday, by three o’clock in the afternoon she was a waitress in the Court House Hotel.
August 25th. It’s bitterly cold and wet here, I always thought Australia was a hot country. They’ve got a Shell map of Victoria in the office and it shows Coombargana as a little spot on a sort of dotted line, near a place called Forfar. It doesn’t look as if Coombargana is a very big place and Forfar isn’t much to write home about. I looked up Forfar in a tourist guide and it’s got one garage and two hotels, the Post Office Hotel and Ryan’s Commercial. The Post Office Hotel is the best; it’s got eight bedrooms but Ryan’s Commercial doesn’t seem to have any bedrooms at all.
I’ve been keeping my ears open to see if anyone said anything about Coombargana, but I haven’t heard anything. I think I’ll go on at the end of the week.
She left two of her three suitcases in the station luggage room at Ballarat and went out in the bus to Forfar.
August 30th. Well, here I am, and I’ve come all this way for nothing. Coombargana isn’t a village, it’s an estate. Apparently it’s a terrific place, one of these enormous Western District stations. Fourteen thousand acres, a big house, and God knows how many sheep. The Duncans are one of the big families of the neighbourhood. They’ve got about twenty men working for them all in houses on the property. Mrs. Collins always speaks of old Mr. Duncan as The Colonel. I suppose that’s Bill’s father.
Well, there it is, and now I don’t know what to do. That’s what Bill meant when he said they had a sheep farm. I wonder if he was afraid of shooting a line?
I’ve got a job here, so I’ll have to stay for a week anyway. I got off the bus and went into the Post Office Hotel and booked a bedroom and had lunch, and after lunch I asked Mrs. Collins if she’d got a job for a week or two. I said I was working my way round Australia and going on to Adelaide, and I showed her the letters I’d got from Albury and Ballarat, saying I was a good worker. She said it was the off season so she couldn’t pay much, but she’d give me six pounds and my keep if I didn’t mind helping out in the bar. I told her I’d never been a barmaid but I was quite willing, only I didn’t know the work. So I went down to the bar and Mr. Collins showed me how to draw the beer and told me how much it was, and I helped him when the evening rush started. Two men came in on horses about five o’clock, tough looking types. They were from Coombargana, boundary riders, whatever they may be. They tied their horses up outside like in the movies and came in and had about six beers each, and then rode off up the lane opposite the hotel. I asked what Coombargana was, and he told me all about it.
I’ve been such a fool. I ought to have known that there was nothing I could do for them.
9
THE DIARY GOES on:
September 1st. I saw Bill’s father today. I was sweeping out the bar directly after breakfast and he drove up in a big car and got out and came in and asked where Mr. Collins was. I said I’d fetch him; he was down the yard feeding his pigs. So I did, and when I got back to the bar Mr. Collins introduced me and told the Colonel that I was English and working my way round Australia. He asked where my home was, and I said London. He said he wished more English people would do that.
He’s chairman of the Shire Council, I think, and he was talking to Mr. Collins about local matters, something about getting electricity to Forfar and financial guarantees. He’s about seventy, I should say, and he doesn’t look a bit well, very white. He’s got a great look of Alan about him, much more than Bill. He drank one small whiskey and water, but refused another.
Alan and Helen are both in England, and have been for some years. Mr. Collins told me that after the Colonel went away. He said that Alan was in Oxford, or had been, but he thought he was in London now. And then he said that Alan had had a crash, flying, towards the end of the war, and had lost both his feet. He came back here after the war and was at home here for a year or two, but they said the accident had changed him a gre
at deal. He didn’t make friends or get about much and he was drinking a good bit, and after a time he went back to England. That was several years ago.
The daughter, Helen, went to England soon after the war and married somebody there, and hasn’t been back since. Mr. Collins said that there had been a younger son, Bill, but he was killed in the war. Coombargana is six miles from here.
Mrs. Duncan has arthritis and they don’t often see her in the village now. The family would be sort of local squires or something in England, but it’s not like that here. When Mr. Collins came into the bar to meet the Colonel he said, “Morning, Dick,” as if he and the Colonel were old friends. The family seem to be very much respected in the district, though. Mrs. Duncan used to run a Sunday School in Forfar up till about two years ago when she had to give it up because she couldn’t get about so well.
I can’t get used to the idea of Alan hobbling about on artificial feet and hitting it up. He was such a terrific person in the war, obviously so good at his job and yet so quiet about it all.
September 2nd. There were a couple of foreigners in for dinner, Lithuanians or something. After dinner they sat in the bar, the man drinking gin and water and the woman drinking beer. He was a weedy, poor looking specimen and the woman the fat, broad-faced, Russian sort of type. When the bus for Ballarat stopped they went away on that, and Mrs. Collins was in the bar and she said, “Well, that’s a good riddance.” I asked who they were, and she said they were the married couple from Coombargana. The Colonel sacked them because they were always on the grog. She said they can’t keep any help in the house because it’s such an isolated place. It’s six miles from here, but the nearest picture theatre is at Skipton and that’s about twenty miles. They’ve got an old cook who’s been with them all her life but it’s a big house and they need more than that, especially now they’re getting old. The girls from the village used to work there before the war, but now they all want to be somewhere near the movies and they can get such good wages in the city. Nobody seems to stay at Coombargana longer than a month or two. It’s not only Coombargana, all the other big properties are in the same boat. All the money in the world with wool up at its present price, but they’ve got to do their own housework just like everybody else.
