by Nevil Shute
She could not argue it with him, nor would she have attempted to in that crowd. She said, “Will we be able to meet again before you go?”
“I’ll be busy in the daytime, most days,” he said. “We might take in a movie one evening, but we’d have to make it soon. We’ll be sailing as soon as the work gets completed, and it’s going well right now.”
They arranged to meet for dinner on the following Tuesday, and she waved good-bye to him and vanished in the crowd. There was nothing of urgency to take him back to the dockyard, and there was still an hour left before the shops shut. He went out into the streets again and walked along the pavements looking at the shopwindows. Presently he came to a sports store, hesitated for a moment, and went in.
In the fishing department he said to the assistant, “I want a spinning outfit, a rod and a reel and a nylon line.”
“Certainly, sir,” said the assistant. “For yourself?”
The American shook his head. “This is a present for a boy ten years old,” he said. “His first rod. I’d like something good quality, but pretty small and light. You got anything in Fiberglas?”
The assistant shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re right out of those at the moment.” He reached down a rod from the rack. “This is a very good little rod in steel.”
“How would that stand up in sea water, for rusting? He lives by the sea, and you know what kids are.”
“They stand up all right,” the assistant said. “We sell a lot of these for sea fishing.” He reached for reels while Dwight examined the rod and tested it in his hand. “We have these plastic reels for sea fishing, or I can give you a multiplying reel in stainless steel. They’re the better job, of course, but they come out a good deal more expensive.”
Dwight examined them. “I think I’ll take the multiplier.”
He chose the line, and the assistant wrapped the three articles together in a parcel. “Makes a nice present for a boy,” he observed.
“Sure,” said Dwight. “He’ll have a lot of fun with that.”
He paid and took the parcel, and went through into that portion of the store that sold children’s bicycles and scooters. He said to the girl, “Have you got a Pogo stick?”
“A Pogo stick? I don’t think so. I’ll ask the manager.”
The manager came to him. “I’m afraid we’re right out of Pogo sticks. There hasn’t been a great deal of demand for them recently, and we sold the last only a few days ago.”
“Will you be getting any more in?”
“I put through an order for a dozen. I don’t know when they’ll arrive. Things are getting just a bit disorganized, you know. It was for a present, I suppose?”
The commander nodded. “I wanted it for a little girl of six.”
“We have these scooters. They make a nice present for a little girl that age.”
He shook his head. “She’s got a scooter.”
“We have these children’s bicycles, too.”
Too bulky and too awkward, but he did not say so. “No, it’s a Pogo stick I really want. I think I’ll shop around, and maybe come back if I can’t get one.”
“You might try McEwen’s,” said the man helpfully. “They might have one left.”
He went out and tried McEwen’s, but they, too, were out of Pogo sticks. He tried another shop with similar results; Pogo sticks, it seemed, were off the market. The more frustration he encountered, the more it seemed to him that a Pogo stick was what he really wanted, and that nothing else would do. He wandered into Collins Street looking for another toy shop, but here he was out of the toy shop district and in a region of more expensive merchandise.
In the last of the shopping hour he paused before a jeweller’s window. It was a shop of good quality; he stood for a time looking in at the windows. Emeralds and diamonds would be best. Emeralds went magnificently with her dark hair.
He went into the shop. “I was thinking of a bracelet,” he said to the young man in the black morning coat. “Emeralds and diamonds, perhaps. Emeralds, anyway. The lady’s dark, and she likes to wear green. You got anything like that?”
The man went to the safe, and came back with three bracelets which he laid on a black velvet pad. “We have these, sir,” he said. “What sort of price had you in mind?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the commander. “I want a nice bracelet.”
The assistant picked one up. “We have this, which is forty guineas, or this one which is sixty-five guineas. They are very attractive, I think.”
“What’s that one, there?”
The man picked it up. “That is much more expensive, sir. It’s a very beautiful piece.” He examined the tiny tag. “That one is two hundred and twenty-five guineas.”
It glowed on the black velvet. Dwight picked it up and examined it. The man had spoken the truth when he had said it was a lovely piece. She had nothing like it in her jewel box. He knew that she would love it.
“Would that be English or Australian work?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “This came originally from Cartier’s, in Paris. It came to us from the estate of a lady in Toorak. It’s in quite new condition, as you see. Usually we find that the clasp needs attention, but this didn’t even need that. It is in quite perfect order.”
He could picture her delight in it. “I’ll take that,” he said. “I’ll have to pay you with a cheque. I’ll call in and pick it up tomorrow or the next day.”
He wrote the cheque and took his receipt. Turning away, he stopped, and turned back to the man. “One thing,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could buy a Pogo stick, a present for a little girl? Seems they’re kind of scarce around here just at present.”
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir,” said the man. “I think the only thing to do would be to try all the toy shops in turn.”
The shops were closing and there was no time that night to do any more. He took his parcel back with him to Williamstown, and when he reached the carrier he went down into the submarine and laid it along the back of his berth, where it was inconspicuous. Two days later, when he got his bracelet, he took that down into the submarine also and locked it away in the steel cupboard that housed the confidential books.
That day a Mrs. Hector Fraser took a broken silver cream jug to the jeweller’s to have the handle silver-soldered. Walking down the street that afternoon she encountered Moira Davidson, whom she had known from a child. She stopped and asked after her mother. Then she said, “My dear, you know Commander Towers, the American, don’t you?”
The girl said, “Yes. I know him quite well. He spent a week-end out with us the other day.”
“Do you think he’s crazy? Perhaps all Americans are crazy. I don’t know.”
The girl smiled. “No crazier than all the rest of us, these days. What’s he been up to?”
“He’s been trying to buy a Pogo stick in Simmonds’.”
Moira was suddenly alert. “A Pogo stick?”
“My dear, in Simmonds’ of all places. As if they’d sell Pogo sticks there! It seems he went in and bought the most beautiful bracelet and paid some fabulous price for it. That wouldn’t be for you by any chance?”
“I haven’t heard about it. It sounds very unlike him.”
“Ah well, you never know with these men. Perhaps he’ll spring it on you one day as a surprise.”
“But what about the Pogo stick?”
“Well, then when he’d bought the bracelet he asked Mr. Thompson, the fair-haired one, the nice young man — he asked him if he knew where he could buy a Pogo stick. He said he wanted it for a present for a little girl.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Miss Davidson asked quietly. “It would make a very good present for a little girl of the right age.”
“I suppose it would. But it seems such a funny thing for the captain of a submarine to want to buy. In Simmonds’ of all places.”
The girl said, “He’s probably courting a rich widow with a little girl. The bracele
t for the mother and the Pogo stick for the daughter. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Fraser, “only we all thought that he was courting you.”
“That’s just where you’ve been wrong,” the girl said equably. “It’s me that’s been courting him.” She turned away. “I must get along. It’s been so nice seeing you. I’ll tell Mummy.”
She walked on down the street, but the matter of the Pogo stick stayed in her mind. She went so far that afternoon as to inquire into the condition of the Pogo stick market, and found it to be depressed. If Dwight wanted a Pogo stick, he was evidently going to have some difficulty in getting one.
Everyone was going a bit mad these days, of course — Peter and Mary Holmes with their garden, her father with his farm programme, John Osborne with his racing motorcar, Sir Douglas Froude with the club port, and now Dwight Towers with his Pogo stick. Herself also, possibly, with Dwight Towers. All with an eccentricity that verged on madness, born of the times they lived in.
She wanted to help him, wanted to help him very much indeed, and yet she knew she must approach this very cautiously. When she got home that evening she went to the lumber room and pulled out her old Pogo stick and rubbed the dirt off it with a duster. The wooden handle might be sandpapered and revarnished by a skilled craftsman and possibly it might appear as new, though wet had made dark stains in the wood. Rust had eaten deeply into the metal parts, however, and at one point the metal step was rusted through. No amount of paint could ever make that part of it look new, and her own childhood was still close enough to raise in her distaste at the thought of a secondhand toy. That wasn’t the answer.
She met him on Tuesday evening for the movie, as they had arranged. Over dinner she asked him how the submarine was getting on. “Not too badly,” he told her. “They’re giving us a second electrolytic oxygen regeneration outfit to work in parallel with the one we’ve got. I’d say that work might be finished by tomorrow night, and then we’ll run a test on Thursday. We might get away from here by the end of the week.”
“Is that very important?”
He smiled. “We shall have to run submerged for quite a while. I wouldn’t like to run out of air, and have to surface in the radioactive area or suffocate.”
“Is this a sort of a spare set, then?”
He nodded. “We were lucky to get it. They had it over in the naval stores, in Fremantle.”
He was absent-minded that evening. He was pleasant and courteous to her, but she felt all the time that he was thinking of other things. She tried several times during dinner to secure his interest, but failed. It was the same in the movie theatre; he went through all the motions of enjoying it and giving her a good time, but there was no life in the performance. She told herself that she could hardly expect it to be otherwise, with a cruise like that ahead of him.
After the show they walked down the empty streets towards the station. As they neared it she stopped at the dark entrance to an arcade, where they could talk quietly. “Stop here a minute, Dwight,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”
“Sure,” he said kindly. “Go ahead.”
“You’re worried over something, aren’t you?”
“Not really. I’m afraid I’ve been bad company tonight.”
“Is it about the submarine?”
“Why no, honey. I told you, there’s nothing dangerous in that. It’s just another job.”
“It’s not about a Pogo stick, is it?”
He stared at her in amazement in the semidarkness. “Say, how did you get to hear about that?”
She laughed gently. “I have my spies. What did you get for Junior?”
“A fishing rod.” There was a pause, and then he said, “I suppose you think I’m nuts.”
She shook her head. “I don’t. Did you get a Pogo stick?”
“No. Seems like they’re completely out of stock.”
“I know.” They stood in silence for a moment. “I had a look at mine,” she said. “You can have that if it’s any good to you. But it’s awfully old, and the metal parts are rusted through. It works still, but I don’t think it could ever be made into a very nice present.”
He nodded. “I noticed that. I think we’ll have to let it go, honey. If I get time before we sail, I’ll come up here and shop around for something else.”
She said, “I’m quite sure it must be possible to get a Pogo stick. They must have been made somewhere here in Melbourne. In Australia, anyway. The trouble is to get one in the time.”
“Leave it,” he said. “It was just a crazy idea I had. It’s not important.”
“It is important,” she said. “It’s important to me.” She raised her head. “I can get one for you by the time you come back,” she said. “I’ll do that, even if I have to get it made. I know that isn’t quite what you want. But would that do?”
“That’s mighty kind of you,” he said huskily. “I could tell her you were bringing it along with you.”
“I could do that,” she said. “But anyway, I’ll have it with me when we meet again.”
“You might have to bring it a long way,” he said.
“Don’t worry, Dwight. I’ll have it with me when we meet.”
In the dark alcove he took her in his arms and kissed her. “That’s for the promise,” he said softly, “and for everything else. Sharon wouldn’t mind me doing this. It’s from us both.”
6
TWENTY-FIVE DAYS LATER, U.S.S. Scorpion was approaching the first objective of her cruise. It was ten days since she had submerged thirty degrees south of the equator. She had made her landfall at San Nicolas Island off Los Angeles and had given the city a wide berth, troubled about unknown minefields. She had set a course outside Santa Rosa and had closed the coast to the west of Santa Barbara; from there she had followed it northwards cruising at periscope depth about two miles offshore. She had ventured cautiously into Monterey Bay and had inspected the fishing port, seeing no sign of life on shore and learning very little. Radioactivity was uniformly high, so that they judged it prudent to keep the hull submerged.
They inspected San Francisco from five miles outside the Golden Gate. All they learned was that the bridge was down. The supporting tower at the south end seemed to have been overthrown. The houses visible from the sea around Golden Gate Park had suffered much from fire and blast; it did not look as if any of them were habitable. They saw no evidence of any human life, and the radiation level made it seem improbable that life could still exist in that vicinity.
They stayed there for some hours, taking photographs through the periscope and making such a survey as was possible. They went back southwards as far as Half Moon Bay and closed the coast to within half a mile, surfacing for a time and calling through the loud hailer. The houses here did not appear to be much damaged, but there was no sign of any life on shore. They stayed in the vicinity till dusk, and then set course towards the north, rounding Point Reyes and going on three or four miles offshore, following the coast.
Since crossing the equator it had been their habit to surface once in every watch to get the maximum antenna height, and to listen for the radio transmission from Seattle. They had heard it once, in latitude five north; it had gone on for about forty minutes, a random, meaningless transmission, and then had stopped. They had not heard it since. That night, somewhere off Fort Bragg, they surfaced in a stiff northwesterly wind and a rising sea, and directly they switched on the direction finder they heard it again. This time they were able to pinpoint it fairly accurately.
Dwight bent over the navigation table with Lieutenant Sunderstrom as he plotted the bearing. “Santa Maria,” he said. “Looks like you were right.”
They stood listening to the meaningless jumble coming out of the speaker. “It’s fortuitous,” the lieutenant said at last. “That’s not someone keying, even somebody that doesn’t know about radio. That’s something that’s just happening.”
“Sounds like it.” He stood listening. “Th
ere’s power there,” he said. “Where there’s power there’s people.”
“It’s not absolutely necessary,” the lieutenant said.
“Hydroelectric,” Dwight said. “I know it. But hell, those turbines won’t run two years without maintenance.”
“You wouldn’t think so. Some of them are mighty good machinery.”
Dwight grunted, and turned back to the charts. “I’ll aim to be off Cape Flattery at dawn. We’ll go on as we’re going now and get a fix around midday, and adjust speed then. If it looks all right from there, I’ll take her in, periscope depth, so we can blow tanks if we hit anything that shouldn’t be there. Maybe we’ll be able to go right up to Santa Maria. Maybe we won’t. You ready to go on shore if we do?”
“Sure,” said the lieutenant. “I’d kind of like to get out of the ship for a while.”
Dwight smiled. They had been submerged now for eleven days, and though health was still good they were all suffering from nervous tension. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” he said, “and hope we can make it.”
“You know something?” said the lieutenant. “If we can’t get through the strait, maybe I could make it overland.” He pulled out a chart. “If we got in to Grays Harbor I could get on shore at Hoquiam or Aberdeen. This road runs right through to Bremerton and Santa Maria.”
“It’s a hundred miles.”
“I could probably pick up a car, and gas.”
The captain shook his head. Two hundred miles in a light radiation suit, driving a hot car with hot gas over hot country was not practical. “You’ve only got a two hours’ air supply,” he said. “I know you could take extra cylinders. But it’s not practical. We’d lose you, one way or another. It’s not that important, anyway.”
They submerged again, and carried on upon the course. When they surfaced four hours later the transmission had stopped.
They carried on towards the north all the next day, most of the time at periscope depth. The morale of his crew was now becoming important to the captain. The close confinement was telling on them; no broadcast entertainment had been available for a long time, and the recordings they could play over the speakers had long grown stale. To stimulate their minds and give them something to talk about he gave free access to the periscope to anyone who cared to use it, though there was little to look at. This rocky and somewhat uninteresting coast was their home country and the sight of a café with a Buick parked outside it was enough to set them talking and revive starved minds.
