by Nevil Shute
Commander Towers felt a little dazed, but refreshed. It was a long time since he had had to deal with this sort of a young woman. “I’ll go along with you,” he said. “I’ve swallowed enough Cokes in the last year to float my ship, periscope depth. I could use a drink.”
“Then there’s two of us,” she remarked. She steered her outfit into the main street, not unskilfully. A few cars stood abandoned parked diagonally by the curb; they had been there for over a year. So little traffic used the streets that they were not in the way, and there had been no petrol to tow them away. She drew up outside the Pier Hotel and got down; she tied the reins to the bumper of one of these cars and went with her companion into the Ladies’ Lounge.
He asked, “What can I order for you?”
“Double brandy.”
“Water?”
“Just a little, and a lot of ice.”
He gave the order to the barman and stood considering for a moment while the girl watched him. There never had been any rye, and there had been no Scotch for many months. He was unreasonably suspicious of Australian whisky. “I never drank brandy like that,” he remarked. “What’s it like?”
“No kick,” the girl said, “but it creeps up on you. Good for the guts. That’s the reason why I drink it.”
“I guess I’ll stick to whisky.” He ordered, and then turned to her, amused. “You drink quite a lot, don’t you?”
“That’s what they tell me.” She took the drink he handed to her and produced a pack of cigarettes from her bag, blended South African and Australian tobacco. “Have one of these things? They’re horrible, but they’re all that I could get.”
He offered one of his own, equally horrible, and lit it for her. She blew a long cloud of smoke from her nostrils. “It’s a change, anyway. What’s your name?”
“Dwight,” he told her. “Dwight Lionel.”
“Dwight Lionel Towers,” she repeated. “I’m Moira Davidson. We’ve got a grazing property about twenty miles from here. You’re the captain of the submarine, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Happy in your job?” she asked cynically.
“It was quite an honor to be given the command,” he said quietly. “I reckon it’s quite an honor still.”
She dropped her eyes. “Sorry I said that. I’m a bit of a pig when I’m sober.” She tossed off her drink. “Buy me another, Dwight.”
He bought her another, but stood himself upon his whisky.
“Tell me,” the girl asked, “what do you do when you’re on leave? Play golf? Sail a boat? Go fishing?”
“Fishing, mostly,” he said. A far-off holiday with Sharon in the Gaspé Peninsula floated through his mind, but he put the thought away. One must concentrate upon the present and forget the past. “It’s kind of hot for golf,” he said. “Commander Holmes said something about a swim.”
“That’s easy,” she said. “There’s a sailing race this afternoon, down at the club. Is that in your line?”
“It certainly is,” he said, with pleasure in his voice. “What kind of a boat does he have?”
“A thing called a Gwen Twelve,” she said. “It’s a sort of watertight box with sails on it. I don’t know if he wants to sail it himself. I’ll crew for you if he doesn’t.”
“If we’re going sailing,” he said firmly, “we’d better stop drinking.”
“I’m not going to crew for you if you’re going to be all U.S. Navy,” she retorted. “Our ships aren’t dry, like yours.”
“Okay,” he said equably. “Then I’ll crew for you.”
She stared at him. “Has anyone ever bashed you over the head with a bottle?”
He smiled. “Lots of times.”
She drained her glass. “Well, have another drink.”
“No, thank you. The Holmes will be wondering what’s become of us.”
“They’ll know,” the girl said.
“Come on. I want to see the world from up in that jinker.” He steered her towards the door.
She went with him unresisting. “It’s a buggy,” she said.
“No, it’s not. We’re in Australia now. It’s a jinker.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “It’s a buggy — an Abbott buggy. It’s over seventy years old. Daddy says it was built in America.”
He looked at it with new interest. “Say,” he exclaimed, “I was wondering where I’d seen it before. My grandpa had one just like it in the woodshed, up in Maine, when I was a boy.”
She mustn’t let him think about the past. “Just stand by her head as I back out of this,” she said. “She’s not so good in reverse.” She swung herself up into the driving seat and tweaked the mare’s mouth cruelly, so that he had plenty to do. The mare stood up and pawed at him with her forefeet; he managed to get her headed round towards the street and swung up beside the girl as they dashed off in a canter. Moira said, “She’s a bit fresh. The hill’ll stop her in a minute. These bloody bitumen roads. . . .” The American sat clinging to his seat as they careered out of town, the mare slithering and sliding on the smooth surfaces, wondering that any girl could drive a horse so badly.
They came to the Holmes’ house a few minutes later with the grey in a lather of sweat. The lieutenant commander and his wife came out to meet them. “Sorry we’re late, Mary,” the girl said coolly. “I couldn’t get Commander Towers past the pub.”
Peter remarked, “Looks like you’ve been making up lost time.”
“We had quite a ride,” the submarine commander observed. He got down and was introduced to Mary. Then he turned to the girl. “How would it be if I walk her up and down a little, till she cools off?”
“Fine,” said the girl. “I should unharness her and put her in the paddock — Peter’ll show you. I’ll give Mary a hand with the lunch. Peter, Dwight wants to sail your boat this afternoon.”
“I never said that,” the American protested.
“But you do.” She eyed the horse, glad that her father wasn’t there to see. “Give her a rub down with something — there’s a cloth in the back underneath the oats. I’ll give her a drink later on, after we’ve had one ourselves.”
That afternoon Mary stayed at home with the baby, quietly preparing for the evening party; Dwight Towers rode unsteadily with Peter and Moira to the sailing club on bicycles. They went with towels round their necks and swimming trunks tucked into pockets; they changed at the club in anticipation of a wet sail. The boat was a sealed plywood box with a small cockpit and an efficient spread of sail. They rigged and launched her and got to the starting line with five minutes to spare, the American sailing the boat, Moira crewing for him, and Peter watching the race from the shore.
They sailed in bathing costumes, Dwight Towers in an old pair of fawn trunks and the girl in a two-piece costume mainly white; they had shirts with them in the boat in case of sunburn. For a few minutes they manoeuvred about in the warm sun behind the starting line, milling around amongst a dozen others of mixed classes in the race. The commander had not sailed a boat for some years and he had never handled a boat of that particular type before; she handled well, however, and he quickly learned that she was very fast. He had confidence in her by the time the gun went, and they were fifth over the line at the start of a race three times round a triangular course.
As is the case on Port Phillip Bay, the wind blew up very quickly. By the time they had been round once, it was blowing quite hard and they were sailing gunwale under; Commander Towers was too busy with the sheet and tiller keeping the boat upright and on her course to have much attention for anything else. They started on the second round and beat up to the further turning point in brilliant sunshine and clouds of spray like diamonds; so occupied was he that he failed to notice the girl’s toe as she kicked a coil of mainsheet round the cleat and laid a tangle of jib sheet down on top of it. They came to the buoy and he bore away smartly, putting up the tiller and letting out the sheet, which ran two feet and fouled. A gust came down on the
m and laid the vessel over, the girl played dumb and pulled the jib sheet in, and the boat gave up and laid her sails down flat upon the water. In a moment they were swimming by her side.
She said accusingly, “You held on to the mainsheet!” And then she said, “Oh hell, my bra’s coming off!”
Indeed, she had contrived to give the knot between her shoulder blades a tweak as she went into the water, and it now floated by her side. She grabbed it with one hand and said, “Swim round to the other side and sit on the centreboard. She’ll come up all right.” She swam with him.
In the distance they saw the white motorboat on safety patrol turn and head towards them. She said to her companion, “Here’s the crash boat coming now. Just one thing after another. Help me get this on before they come, Dwight.” She could have done it perfectly well herself, lying face down in the water. “That’s right — a good hard knot. Not quite so tight as that; I’m not a Japanese. That’s right. Now let’s get this boat up and go on with the race.”
She climbed on to the centreboard that stuck out horizontally from the hull at water level and stood on it holding on to the gunwale while he swam below, marvelling at the slim lines of her figure and at her effrontery. He bore his weight down on the plate with her and the boat lifted sodden sails out of the water, hesitated, and then came upright with a rush. The girl tumbled over the topsides into the cockpit and fell in a heap as she cast off the mainsheet, and Dwight clambered in beside her. In a minute they were under way again, the vessel tender with the weight of water on her sails, before the crash boat reached them. “Don’t you do that again,” she said severely. “This is my sun-bathing suit. It’s not meant for swimming in.”
“I don’t know how I came to do it,” he apologized. “We were doing all right up till then.”
They completed the course without further incident, finishing last but one. They sailed in to the beach, and Peter met them waist deep in the water. He caught the boat and turned her into the wind. “Have a good sail?” he asked. “I saw you bottle her.”
“It’s been a lovely sail,” the girl replied. “Dwight bottled her and then my bra came off, so one way and another we’ve had a thrilling time. Never a dull moment. She goes beautifully, Peter.”
They jumped over into the water and pulled the boat ashore, let down the sails, and put her on the trolley on the slipway to park her up on the beach. Then they bathed off the end of the jetty and sat smoking in the warm evening sun, sheltered from the offshore wind by the cliff behind them.
The American looked at the blue water, the red cliffs, the moored motorboats rocking on the water. “This is quite a place you’ve got here,” he said reflectively. “For its size it’s as nice a little club as any that I’ve seen.”
“They don’t take sailing too seriously,” Peter remarked. “That’s the secret.”
The girl said, “That’s the secret of everything. When do we start drinking again, Peter?”
“The crowd are coming in at about eight o’clock,” he told her. He turned to his guest. “We’ve got a few people coming in this evening,” he said. “I thought we’d go down and have dinner at the hotel first. Eases the strain on the domestic side.”
“Sure. That’ll be fine.”
The girl said, “You’re not taking Commander Towers to the Pier Hotel again?”
“That’s where we thought of going for dinner.”
She said darkly, “It seems to me to be very unwise.”
The American laughed. “You’re building up quite a reputation for me in these parts.”
“You’re doing that for yourself,” she retorted. “I’m doing all I can to whitewash you. I’m not going to say a word about you tearing off my bra.”
Dwight Towers glanced at her uncertainly, and then he laughed. He laughed as he had not laughed for a year, unrestrained by thoughts of what had gone before. “Okay,” he said at last. “We’ll keep that a secret, just between you and me.”
“It will be on my side,” she said primly. “You’ll probably be telling everyone about it later on this evening when you’re a bit full.”
Peter said, “Maybe we’d better think about changing. I told Mary we’d be back up at the house by six.”
They walked down the jetty towards the dressing rooms, changed, and rode back on their bicycles. At the house they found Mary on the lawn watering the garden. They discussed ways and means of getting down to the hotel, and decided to harness up the grey and take the buggy down. “We’d better do that for Commander Towers,” the girl said. “He’d never make it back up the hill after another session in the Pier Hotel.”
She went off with Peter to the paddock to catch the grey and harness her. As she slipped the bit between the teeth and pulled the ears through the bridle she said, “How am I doing, Peter?”
He grinned. “You’re doing all right. Never a dull moment.”
“Well, that’s what Mary said she wanted. He’s not burst into tears yet, anyway.”
“More likely to burst a blood vessel if you keep going on at him.”
“I don’t know that I’ll be able to. I’ve worked through most of my repertoire.” She laid the saddle over the mare’s back.
“You’ll get a bit more inspiration as the night goes on,” he remarked.
“Maybe.”
The night went on. They dined at the hotel and drove back up the hill more moderately than before, unharnessed the horse and put her in the paddock for the night, and were ready to meet the guests at eight o’clock. Four couples came to the modest little party; a young doctor and his wife, another naval officer, a cheerful young man described as a chook farmer whose way of life was a mystery to the American, and the young owner of a tiny engineering works. For three hours they danced and drank together, sedulously avoiding any serious topic of conversation. In the warm night the room grew hotter and hotter, coats and ties were jettisoned at an early stage, and the gramophone went on working through an enormous pile of records, half of which Peter had borrowed for the evening. In spite of the wide-open windows behind the fly wire, the room grew full of cigarette smoke. From time to time Peter would throw the contents of the ash trays into the wastepaper bin; from time to time Mary would collect the empty glasses, take them out to the kitchen to wash them, and bring them back again. Finally at about half-past eleven she brought in a tray of tea and buttered scones and cakes, the universal signal in Australia that the party was coming to an end. Presently the guests began to take their leave, wobbling away on their bicycles.
Moira and Dwight walked down the little drive to see the doctor and his wife safely off the premises. They turned back towards the house. “Nice party,” said the submarine commander. “Really nice people, all of them.”
It was cool and pleasant in the garden after the hot stuffiness of the house. The night was very still. Between the trees they could see the shore line of Port Phillip running up from Falmouth towards Nelson in the bright light of the stars. “It was awfully hot in there,” the girl remarked. “I’m going to stay out here a bit before going to bed, and cool off.”
“I’d better get you a wrap.”
“You’d better get me a drink, Dwight.”
“A soft one?” he suggested.
She shook her head. “About an inch and a half of brandy and a lot of ice, if there’s any left.”
He left her and went in to get her drink. When he came out again, a glass in each hand, he found her sitting on the edge of the verandah in the darkness. She took the glass from him with a word of thanks and he sat down beside her. After the noise and turmoil of the evening the peace of the garden in the night was a relief to him. “It certainly is nice to sit quiet for a little while,” he said.
“Till the mosquitoes start biting,” she said. A little warm breeze blew around them. “They may not, with this wind. I shouldn’t sleep now if I went to bed, full as I am. I’d just lie and toss about all night.”
“You were up late last night?” he asked.
&nbs
p; She nodded. “And the night before.”
“I’d say you might try going to bed early, once in a while.”
“What’s the use?” she demanded. “What’s the use of anything now?” He did not try to answer that, and presently she asked, “Why is Peter joining you in Scorpion, Dwight?”
“He’s our new liaison officer,” he told her.
“Did you have one before him?”
He shook his head. “We never had one before.”
“Why have they given you one now?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “Maybe we’ll be going for a cruise in Australian waters. I’ve had no orders, but that’s what people tell me. The captain seems to be about the last person they tell in this navy.”
“Where do they say you’re going to, Dwight?”
He hesitated for a moment. Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it. “People are saying we’re to make a little cruise up to Port Moresby,” he told her. “It may be just a rumour, but that’s all I know.”
“But Port Moresby’s out, isn’t it?”
“I believe it is. They haven’t had any radio from there for quite a while.”
“But you can’t go on shore there if it’s out, can you?”
“Somebody has to go and see, sometime,” he said. “We wouldn’t go outside the hull unless the radiation level’s near to normal. If it’s high I wouldn’t even surface. But someone has to go and see, sometime.” He paused and there was silence in the starlight, in the garden. “There’s a lot of places someone ought to go and see,” he said at last. “There’s radio transmission still coming through from someplace near Seattle. It doesn’t make any sense, just now and then a kind of jumble of dots and dashes. Sometimes a fortnight goes by, and then it comes again. It could be somebody’s alive up there, doesn’t know how to handle the set. There’s a lot of funny things up in the Northern Hemisphere that someone ought to go and see.”
