by Nevil Shute
“What happened in the end?” asked the journalist.
“Oh, the Irish won. They got their independence. My Dad went home and took a farm near Newbury. He often used to talk about the war in Ireland.”
“Did he consider coming to Australia then?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mr. Mann stayed for half an hour, bade David good-bye, wished him luck and a good rain, and went back to the oil rig for the night. He left at dawn next day and breakfasted at Laragh Station with the Regans, or rather with Pat and Tom Regan and the Judge, for Mollie and her mother had their breakfast with the children in the kitchen. Light conversation was not normally a feature of the breakfast table at Laragh and Mr. Mann, who had been awake for two or three hours, found the atmosphere depressing. Thinking to raise interest and stimulate some small exchange of words, he said, “I looked in at Lucinda yesterday afternoon and had a chat with Mr. Cope. He was telling me about his father’s time in Ireland.”
Tom Regan spoke for the first time that morning. “And when would that one’s father have seen Ireland?”
“After the First War,” said Mr. Mann brightly. “He was in some sort of an armed police force, fighting the rebels.”
If his intention had been to raise interest he had certainly achieved it. There was a pregnant pause, and then Tom Regan asked, “And what rebels would they have been?”
Mr. Mann became aware suddenly that he might be skating on thin ice. “I suppose he meant the Irish when they were fighting for independence,” he said.
Pat Regan laid down his knife and fork. “Ye say that this was after the First War?”
“That’s right.”
“And that one’s father was in Ireland fighting for the English, the curse of Cromwell on them?”
“That’s right.”
Tom Regan asked, “Was it the murdering Black and Tans that that one fought in for the English?”
Mr. Mann wished very much that he had not raised this subject, but there was nothing to be done about it now. “That’s right,” he said. “Something to do with the Royal Irish Constabulary, I think. After that he took a farm in England.”
“In the Name of God!” said Pat Regan. “Do ye sit there to tell us that one’s Dad was raising up the hand of murder against poor boys fighting to drive out the English from their country, and they with nothing but a rifle or maybe a hand grenade itself to throw against machine guns in an armoured car?”
“He didn’t tell me what his father was doing in Ireland,” said the journalist uncomfortably. “I’ve probably got it all wrong.”
“But ye say that that one’s father was in Ireland in the Black and Tans?” demanded Tom Regan.
“I think that’s what he said. But it’s a long time ago, and he may have got it wrong himself.”
The Judge spoke for the first time. “It is a very long time ago,” he said. “There is a Statute of Limitations, gentlemen, a law which states that no legal action may be initiated after a lapse of seven years. I would add to that, perhaps, and say that nothing really matters after twenty years.” The quiet, even voice went on: “I have proved that from my own experience—nothing really matters after twenty years. And these events that you are speaking of were thirty years ago, or more.”
Pat and Tom Regan sat staring at the Judge. The thought passed suddenly across the mind of the journalist that this drunken and disgraced old reprobate was no negligible man. Pat Regan said, “There’s none the like of that one for black treachery, taking the hand of kindness, and the young girl off with him to the pictures in his jeep in the dark night, and he the son of a black-hearted Black and Tan.”
The Judge said evenly, “He is an honest and a clean lad, fit for any girl to go with. Would you like to be judged now, Mr. Regan, for things your father did in politics ten years before you were born?”
There was a long silence. Then Tom Regan got up from the table and walked out without a word. Pat Regan said heavily, “Sure, it will have me destroyed entirely,” and got up and went out after him.
Mr. Mann sat in silence with the Judge for a minute. Then he said, “I’m very sorry that I raised that subject, sir.”
“It will pass,” the Judge said. “They live much in the past, very much in the past. But they will grow accustomed to the new idea, and they are both good-hearted men. You have no occasion to distress yourself. It will all pass.”
Mr. Mann got into his Land Rover and went upon his way. It would have made a first-class feature article, but he rejected the idea.
At the end of February the oil men commenced to drill. No ceremony marked the start of the hole; as soon as their somewhat complicated equipment was installed, as they had installed it so often before, the big three-wheel drilling bit was attached to the drill collar and with no more ado the drill began to turn, the drilling mud to circulate, the spoil brought up from the hole to flow on to the screens, and Stanton Laird to inspect and examine all the particles that came up to the surface. They worked a daylight shift for the first week until the rig had settled down and all the bugs had been ironed out; then, warming to the work, they began to work the rig in shifts all through the day and night, sinking at the rate of about five feet an hour.
At the end of March, Stanton Laird got news from home which was a great blow to him. It was contained in a letter from his mother, and it read,
MY DEAR SON,
I’m afraid that what I have to tell you will be very bad news, because Chuck Sheraton was killed flying last week. Aimée came around last night and told us how it happened it has been a terrible shock to everyone in Hazel and I am sure it will be one to you because you were such great friends with Chuck but God knows best. He was stationed at a Base called Harrisburg in Texas instructing cadets in night flying training and I suppose it was test flying or something because he was flying with another instructor a man called Ed Sparkman at night and it must have been low test flying because they collided with a train. Aimée was all broken up of course she said it was a terrible accident because the wing hit the smokestack of the locomotive and the airplane rolled up in a ball and burned beside the track right by all the people in the coaches looking on. Dan and Aimée have gone down to Texas she never did like flying and I suppose this put her off so they went by the Limited and get in Thursday morning so that they’ll arrive too late for the interment but I’d say that’s a good thing it was such a terrible accident and they’ll be able to make arrangements for a beautiful monument Aimée said she thought white marble would be nice. They rang Ruthie and talked a while but they said she was all broken up of course everyone in Hazel is all broken up too and so terrible because he did so well in Korea and then to get killed just on a training flight you just can’t explain it. I think white marble would be elegant and Dan took his Kodak to take photographs of the monument and when they come back I will ask him for one to send to you.
It seems a dreadful thing that we shall never see Chuck again and I am so terribly sorry for poor Ruthie and all those little children I don’t know what they will do and nor does your father. Dr Atheling said some lovely words about poor Chuck in his address this morning I wish I could remember all he said something that he had died for the United States just as surely as if he had died in combat in Korea and that he was fighting the Reds just the same it was so lovely of him to say that and God only can decide who shall be taken and who left.
I am so sorry this news comes to you when you are so far away from us all. But now that you have decided to come home and help your father he is so busy and making all kinds of plans and the house is full of catalogs of dozers and graders and Euclids I wish I knew what they were all for that he hardly has time to look in on the Ford Theater and he missed I Love Lucy altogether last week. I am so very glad you have decided to come home, son, because it is at times like this that all Chuck’s friends should be in church together.
All our love, son, and come home soon,
MOTHER
When Stanton Laird g
ot this letter he read it through twice in the privacy of his cabin, and then went to the washbasin and wet his face-cloth and wiped his eyes, because it was time for him to go up to the laboratory hut beside the rig to inspect the samples brought up by the last shift. He did his routine tests with the fluoroscope, washed and scrutinised the samples from the screen, and wrote up the day book. Then he went out, and took his jeep, and drove up on to the limestone ridge two miles from the rig. Here he parked, and read his mother’s letter once again.
Chuck was dead. Never again would he sit with him in the Piggy-Wiggy café sucking a coke or licking an ice cream. Of all the men that he had met, in all his life, Chuck had understood him best; perhaps in turn he had understood Chuck best. The circumstances of his death were no mystery to Stanton Laird. Chuck had been killed in practising his own particular joke, probably initiating one of the other instructors into the jest; he had met his death with laughter in his heart and one landing light on. In all his grief Stanton felt instinctively that it was better so. Chuck would never have grown old graciously, and now he would remain for ever young.
There would be no more packhorse trips up into the Hazel mountains with Chuck, to look forward to. Never again would he see Chuck rise slowly to his feet behind a tree in the clear mountain air to shoot his arrow at a buck. Never again would he lie under the stars beside Chuck, recalling the blazing ardours of their first youth, the touch-last crash, and the disgrace that had brought them so close together, that had made them lifelong friends. He had never had so close a friend as Chuck. As he sat there, lonely in his jeep, looking out over the drab spinifex and the red earth beneath the bright Australian sun, he knew that he would never have so close a friend again.
He could not work that day. He felt a great need to get away out of the camp, to find somebody to talk to about Chuck, someone who would understand. There was only one person in the district who would be willing to listen to him in his trouble; perhaps if he went over to Laragh Station he could find an opportunity to talk to her alone.
He got into his jeep again and drove down to the camp. He picked up three copies of his own magazines from the recreation room to serve as an excuse for going over, said a word to Spencer Rasmussen, and drove out on the graded road that led to Mollie Regan.
As he drove up to the wool shed and the yards of Laragh he saw the men doing something with a mob of sheep held in the yards, and the huge, red-headed figure of Pat Regan with them. He hesitated, and decided that it would be discourteous to drive past to the grazier’s homestead, and so parked his jeep and walked across to where the grazier stood exhorting his two sons as they crutched and anointed the fly-struck sheep. The old red-headed man stood hatless in the blazing sun, his grey collarless flannel shirt open down his hairy chest, one hand tucked into the leather belt that held up his soiled trousers, the other gently stroking the kangaroo mouse on his shoulder with one finger.
The geologist said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Regan.”
“God save you,” said the other. “Have ye come to tell us that ye’ve found oil down in the deep earth?”
Stanton shook his head. “Not yet. I wouldn’t say we would before we get down to the second anhydrite. We’re bringing up shale right now.”
“How far down would the oil be, then?”
“If there’s any oil at all, I’d say it might be around seven thousand four hundred feet. I’d say we’d probably bring up some gas when we get that far down. Whether there’s oil there I just don’t know.”
“How deep would that be down, in miles?”
“About a mile and a half.”
“Well, isn’t that a great way to be sinking a bore down into the earth! It’s day and night you’re working, so herself was telling me.”
“It suits us better to keep going,” Stanton said. “It takes a long time to start up the plant and get the mud moving.” He paused. “They’re changing the drill head this afternoon,” he explained. “I brought some magazines over for Mrs. Regan and Mollie.”
“Ye’ll find them within.”
“You’ve still got the mouse, I see.”
“Aye.” The grazier put up his hand to the creature on his shoulder and rubbed its side gently with a gnarled forefinger; it leaned towards the rubbing with little chirrups of pleasure. “Wait now, while I show you.”
He left the yards and went into the shade of the wool shed, the geologist following him. The grazier lifted the mouse down from his shoulder and set it gently on the floor by the wool press, and retired a few yards over to the bins. There he squatted down upon one heel, ringer fashion, and called quietly, “Hop—Hop—Hop! Hop when I tell ye, ye little divil. Hop!”
The mouse paused for a moment and then hopped towards him in two-foot bounds, hopped on to his knee, his elbow, and up on to his shoulder. The red-headed old man took the tin box of matches from the pocket of his belt and opened it, and took out a screw of paper laid on top of the matches. From this screw he extracted a few morsels of rotten beetle and cheese which he proceeded to feed to the mouse on his shoulder, swearing at it gently as he fed it. “Take that, ye wicked little bastard …”
The American said, “You know somethin? If I’d read about that in a book or magazine I’d have said it wasn’t possible. I mean, to tame a critter like that.”
The grazier got to his feet. “Ye’ll not see the like of it, not if you searched the whole wide world,” he said with simple pride. “Not all the Cardinals in their red robes within the sacred city would show you the like of that, nor the Holy Father himself. She’s the kindest hopper in all West Australia, the kindest hopper this side of the black stump.”
Stanton walked back with the old man to the yards, got into his jeep and drove on to the homestead, leaving Pat Regan with his sheep and his half-caste sons. The Countess, shapeless and very black, was languidly sweeping out the dining-room; she poked the fly door open with the handle of her broom and looked out at him. “You want Missis or Missy?” she enquired. “I go tell ’um.”
It was the middle of the afternoon, and they might be taking a siesta on their beds in the heat of the day. “Don’t bother them,” he said. “I’ll just wait here. What time do they have tea?”
“Bye ’m bye,” she said.
“I’ll just sit right here till you bring tea.”
“No call Missy?”
“No. Leave her be.”
The Countess hesitated, perplexed at the strange ways of the white strangers, inhibited and repressed. “That her room,” she said helpfully, pointing to a french window opening on to the side verandah.
“Okay. I’ll just sit right here.”
The Countess withdrew doubtfully, not certain if she had made herself clear. Stanton sat down in a cane chair on the verandah and lit one of his very occasional cigarettes, an American cigarette made in New Jersey. Chuck was dead and he would never see him again now; in spite of what his mother had said in her letter he was glad that he was not in Hazel at this time. Here in the Lunatic life went on the quiet tenor of its way, a world that Chuck had never known, that had not known Chuck. It helped him with a sense of proportion. In Hazel grief would have been unrestrained, but here the world went on unknowing, a world where an unregenerate old man took simple pleasure in the taming of a mouse, a world where a black woman naïvely assumed that if a young man wanted to go into a young woman’s room he just went.
In a few minutes Mollie appeared in a clean print dress; she had been lying awake and had heard all that went on on the verandah, but the Countess was no novelty to her and she paid little heed to that part of the conversation. She said, “Why, Stan—it’s nice to see you. Come over for tea?”
“I guess so,” he said. “Didn’t have anything to do, because they’re changing the drill head. I brought some magazines.”
She took them from him gratefully. “Why—you’re smoking!”
“I do sometimes.”
“I’ve never seen you smoke before.”
“No—I don’t do i
t so often. I guess I’m kind of upset today.”
She glanced at him quickly. “Why—what’s the matter?”
“I got bad news from home,” he said. “Friend of mine called Chuck Sheraton. He got killed, flying.”
He looked up at her, and she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She said, “Oh Stan, I’m terribly sorry! That’s not the Chuck that you were telling me about, that you went shooting deer with, with bows and arrows?”
“That’s right,” he muttered. “It doesn’t seem any time ago, hardly.”
“How did it happen, Stan?” she asked gently. “Don’t talk about it if you’d rather not …”
“I guess it kinda helps to talk to some folks,” he muttered. “He got to beating up trains on one-track lines, ’n then last week he hit one.”
She wrinkled her brows. “Beating up trains?”
“Yeah. He was always thinking up some damfool joke.” A tear escaped and trickled down his cheek.
She did not understand at all what Chuck had done; she only understood that Stanton Laird was in deep distress. At any moment now the Countess might bring tea to the verandah, or her mother might appear; she wanted to spare Stan the embarrassment of meeting her mother till he had got himself under control. The long open shed that housed the trucks and jeeps, the Humber Super-Snipe that the hens laid their eggs in, and the workshop, was not far away; it was shaded and cool, and there they could talk undisturbed. She said, “Let’s go over to the garage, Stan.”
They walked together out into the blazing sun, and as they went he told her what had happened. In the cool shade of the shed he finished his account. “I guess he had it coming to him,” he told her. “It’s kind of hard to take, though, all the same.”
“You were very great friends?” she said.
He nodded. “Ever since we were in High School.” He hesitated. “We got in a kind of scrape together, like kids do,” he said. “After that we got to be real buddies. Went hunting or fishing or on ski trips together, and fixed things after we left school so’s we’d both be back in Hazel on vacation at the same time, if we could arrange it.” He hesitated again. “Chuck got married pretty young, but that didn’t seem to make any difference, as it sometimes does. You see, we’d all been in Hazel High together.”
