by Nevil Shute
They spent a few days planning with their maps while Mr Turner recuperated, and started off for Taunton on a Monday. They stayed the night there, after a long drive in the little car, and went on to Minehead next day, and after that across Exmoor to South Molton, where Mr Turner found an old friend in the saloon bar travelling in ladies underwear, and a had a glorious time with him, and learned two new stories, and got a rayon slip for Mollie very cheap. From there they went to Dartmoor and spent a couple of nights at Two Bridges, stared at the prison, and then went on through Launceston across Bodmin Moor to Bodmin.
In the hotel that night, over dinner, Mr Turner said casually, “I see we’re only about forty miles from Penzance, here.”
His wife said quietly, “Like to go there, Jackie?” She had seen the point of his manoeuvres westwards for some days.
“Well, I dunno,” he said. “It might be nice to go on to the very end, now we’ve come so far. I never seen Lands End yet.”
They decided that it would be nice to go on and see Lands End, and came to Penzance the next day in time for lunch. They took a room and went out after lunch in the small car and drove out to Lands End, and stood on the cliff looking out towards America. The sea looked very cold and grey and unfriendly, and they were glad to get back to Penzance for tea in the hotel.
Over tea Mr Turner said casually, “We’re only four miles from that place Trenarth where all that happened about Dave Lesurier, the Negro I was telling you about. Like to take a run out and see what the beer’s like at the pub?”
This was his holiday, and probably his last. She knew that he had been distressed that he had only located one of his companions in the ward so far, that the quest still lay very near the surface of his mind. She was not in the least deceived by his dissimulation; he wanted to go there, she knew, in the faint hope that he might glean something from the landlord of the pub. She said quietly, “It’ll probably have changed hands by this time, Jackie.” She did not want to see him suddenly disappointed. “There’ll be another landlord after all these years.”
He said, “Well, I dunno; it’s not so long as that. Anyway, I’d kind of like to go and see the place.”
She got up. “I’ll just run up and put my things on.”
They drove out to the little town Trenarth and parked the car in the small square outside the White Hart Hotel. Mr Turner stood for a few minutes looking round, while Mollie waited for him. This was the place that he had heard so much about in hospital in 1943 from the young Negro, and in Burma recently, eight thousand miles away, from the young man who had married a brown girl. Nay Htohn in Mandinaung had known about this place, though she would never see it. Negroes in Memphis and New Orleans, in Nashville and St Louis, remembered this small town with pleasure. This unconsidered place, these slate-roofed, unimposing houses, and these unassuming people had formed themselves into a little thread in the weave of friendship and of knowledge that holds countries together. Mr Turner felt that Trenarth had done something for the world; it was impossible to feel otherwise when he had heard so much about it in Burma.
It seemed incredible, looking at this quiet little place, that it had once been full of Negroes from America. It seemed incredible that the landlord of this shabby little pub had once sat down in his shirt sleeves to write a letter to General Eisenhower, and had got a hearing.
It seemed incredible that all that could have happened here.
He went into the bar with Mollie. There was a stout man of about sixty behind the bar, in shirt sleeves; a common man, but a man of authority and poise. At the first glance Mr Turner knew that the White Hart had not changed hands; he glanced at Mollie and she glanced at him in the same knowledge. Mr Turner ordered a pint of bitter for himself and a gin and French for Mollie.
The landlord served them across the bar. They stood at the bar for a moment; Mr Turner gave his wife a cigarette, and offered one to the landlord, who accepted it. “Just passing through?” he asked.
Mr Turner blew a cloud of smoke. “Staying in Penzance the night,” he said. “Matter of fact, I been down here before. Not in this place. I was in hospital in Penzance for a time, back in 1943.”
“Aye?” said Mr Frobisher.
“Bit different now,” said Mr Turner.
“Aye,” said Mr Frobisher. “1943—that’s when we had all them Americans in camp here, turning the place upside down.”
“That’s right,” said Mr Turner. “I was in the ward with one of them, got into trouble here. A young Negro soldier he was, Dave Lesurier.”
“Aye?” said Mr Frobisher with interest. “You was in hospital with Dave Lesurier?”
“That’s right,” said Mr Turner. “We used to play draughts together. Checkers, he called it.”
“He calls it checkers still,” said Mr Frobisher. “He comes in here now and again; Saturday nights, mostly.”
There was a momentary pause.
“Is he about here, then?” asked Mr Turner. “I reckoned he’d have gone back to America.”
“He did,” said Mr Frobisher. “And he come back again. He lives just up the road. Works over at Camborne as a draughtsman—goes there every day. It’s only two stations up the line.”
“Well, I’m damned,” said Mr Turner. “You say he’s living here now? I’d like to see him again.”
“Aye,” said Mr Frobisher, “you’ll find him up the road. House called Sunnyvale, four doors up past Woodward’s store, just past the church. You can’t miss it. On the same side as Robertson’s.”
Mr Turner thought for a minute. “Does he live alone?” he asked. “In digs, like?”
“No, he’s married,” said the landlord. “Married a Trenarth girl last year—Grace Trefusis that was.”
From Penzance Hospital, in 1943, Dave Lesurier had been sent to Northern Ireland, where he had joined a draft for Iceland; in Iceland he had driven a truck till V-E day, when he had been sent back to the United States and demobilised. He had got back to Nashville in the late summer of that year, a free man, to find that the Filtair Corporation was laying off hands strenuously and that his old job in the garage was a thing of the past.
He did not regret it. It had been a dead-end job at best, one which would never lead him further than the maintenance of trucks. He did not know what he wanted to do, except that he wanted more than that; as a first step he wanted to design things, to make drawings, on a drawing board, of engineering parts, and watch them come to life on the fitter’s bench. And he wanted to meet Grace Trefusis again, to say that he was sorry.
If there had been work for him in Nashville of a sort that he could settle down to, both these vague ambitions might have faded. In the turmoil of reconversion there was nothing for him at the time that he got home but those jobs which are traditional for the Negro—domestic or hotel service, work on a farm or on the roads, or in a shoeshine parlor. His travels had made Dave Lesurier despise these things. He was resentful of the land of opportunity that gave so small an opportunity to him. While he was living on his Army money in those first few weeks at home, his mind turned back to England. Compared with the glittering, streamlined prizes of a white man’s career in his own country, the rewards that England had to offer seemed drab enough and poor, but they were more accessible to him.
He talked the whole matter out with his father, who had been laid off due to reductions in the draughting staff at Filtair consequent on reconversion, and was doing casual tracing for a local architect, for irregular payments at the wage rate of a girl. Money was tight in the Lesurier household, but his father advised him objectively.
“If you reckon you can make a living better over in Europe, son,” he said, “you go ahead and don’t you worry about your Ma and me. We’ll get by all right. There’ll be plenty trouble in this country before colored folks get equal opportunities with whites, at any rate down South. If they ever do, you can come right back home and slip into a good job. But in the meantime, if you got a hunch you can do better over there—well, son, you go ahead
and try it while you’ve got some money left.”
Dave Lesurier did try it. He hitchhiked to Charleston and went to the United States Shipping Board with his Army discharge papers, and after three days got a job as a mess boy in a freighter bound for Durban with machinery. He washed dishes from Charleston to Durban, from Durban to Sydney, from Sydney to Calcutta, and from Calcutta to New York. He landed back in the United States after seven months without having made much progress towards England, but with a little money saved. He shipped again then in another freighter from New York to Buenos Aires. From Buenos Aires his ship sailed for Avonmouth, with a cargo of hides.
He drew his pay and left the ship at Avonmouth, only a hundred and fifty miles from Trenarth, eleven-and-a-half months after setting out from Nashville. He was twenty-five years old then, more fully developed and self-confident than he had been when he was last in England, still anxious to become a draughtsman, still anxious to see Grace Trefusis once again, if only to say that he was sorry for his lapse three years before. A long scar, somewhat blacker than his chocolate-coloured skin, reminded him of it each time he looked in a mirror.
He travelled down to Penzance by train, staring out the window at the little fertile fields, immersed in memories of his previous journeys in troop trains about this country. At Penzance he parked the suitcase which held all his property in the station cloak room, and went and asked a policeman where he could spend the night; he spent it in a common lodging house.
In the morning he walked out to Trenarth. It was September, and the weather was fine and warm. He had a good suit in his bag, but he wore his seaman’s clothes-blue linen slacks, a khaki shirt, and a windcheater. On his head he wore an old soft hat. He turned up in the bar of the White Hart at opening time, and the first person he saw was Bessie Frobisher, behind the bar.
She greeted him warmly. “We’ve wondered ever so many times if any of you boys would come back here and see us,” she said. “We hear of some of them. Sam Lorimer, he wrote at Christmas; ever so nice it was to hear from him. He’s married now and living at a place called Detroit, where they make motor cars or something.” She smiled at him. “You married yet?”
He shook his head, “No ma’am!”
She laughed. “Won’t nobody have you?”
She asked him what he had been doing, and heard all about his wandering. “Fancy!” she said. Then she went to the parlour door and called her father. “Dad, here’s Dave Lesurier come back!” And he had to tell his story all over again. And then Mr Penlee, the farmer, came in, and he had to tell it a third time.
Mr Frobisher took him into the back parlour and gave him dinner, while Bessie served the bar; she had had her meal before opening time. After the pudding, Dave gave his host a cigarette, and said:
“It’s been mighty nice of you to give me dinner, Mr Frobisher.” He hesitated. “If I wanted to stop over for the night, would you have a bed? I’ve got money to pay for it.”
“Aye,” said the landlord, “I can fix you up somehow. You staying for a few days?”
“I dunno, Mr Frobisher.” The Negro hesitated. “There was quite a mite of trouble last time I was here,” he said at last. “Would folks remember that around these parts?”
“Aye,” said Mr Frobisher, “they remember it all right. Proper rumpus that set up, that did.”
“If that’s the way it is,” said Lesurier, “maybe I better move along.”
“Not unless you want to,” said the landlord. “The feeling here was you’d been treated pretty bad.”
“There wouldn’t be no more trouble if folks saw me here, on account of what I did?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said the landlord slowly. “Not unless Grace Trefusis or her mother cut up nasty, and I don’t see why they should.”
Lesurier asked, “Is Miss Grace still here?”
“Aye,” said the landlord. “She works up at Robertson’s just the same. Been there all the time.”
There was a long, slow pause.
“Well, thanks a lot,” the Negro said at last. “I’ll be back around five or six tonight, Mr Frobisher, ’n let you know if I’ll be wanting to stay.”
“Aye,” said the landlord, “please yourself. The bed’s there if you want it.”
Dave Lesurier went out and stood on the street corner, smoking, till the church clock struck two. Then he turned, and walked slowly up the road to Robertson’s grocery shop, and went in, and walked straight up to Grace Trefusis behind the counter, and said quietly, “Ten Players, please, ma’am.”
She looked up quickly, and met his eyes. Between them, for an instant, the world stood still. She was three years older now, nearly twenty. Her figure had filled out, making her more mature and prettier than the frightened adolescent he had known before. She was more knowledgeable about men, too; she had been to the pictures many times and with a number of young men, and had been kissed by several in a dark corner since the Negro had initiated her into that deplorable pastime. She met his eyes, and the old fear flickered in her own for an instant, but then she smiled.
“Oh …” she said, “it’s you!”
In that instant all his old shyness swept back over him. He coloured hotly, and wished desperately for eloquence, that he might make some flip and smart rejoinder, but no inspiration came. Instead, there was an awkward pause, and all he could find to say to her at last was to repeat, “Ten Players, please, ma’am.”
The last trace of fear of him left her forever. In her more adult experience she knew that she would never be in any danger from this shy young man, coloured though he might be. The words of an American officer came to her mind, secretly treasured and remembered for three years—“If he kind of admired you, Miss Trefusis, well, there’s nothing wrong with that.” That admiration had brought nothing to him but attempted suicide, hospital, and disgrace; and now, after three years, he had come back for more. She reached mechanically to the shelf for a packet of cigarettes, and said gently, “Are you out of the Army, now?”
He swallowed, and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
She had the packet in her hand, but she did not give it to him. “What are you doing then?” she enquired.
He raised his head, and looked at her, and she was smiling at him in the way that she always had smiled at him when she gave him cigarettes, but she was prettier than he had ever remembered her. Courage came back to him, and he said, “I got a job on a freighter, with the steward, and we docked in at Avonmouth. I thought as it was pretty close, I’d kind of come along down here.” He met her eyes again. “I thought I’d kind of like to see if you was anywhere around here still, and tell you I’ve been mighty sorry about that time.”
She coloured and laughed awkwardly. “Oh, that’s all right.” And then she asked curiously, “Did you come all the way from Avonmouth just to say that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said simply.
She had once been as far as Exeter, nearly a hundred miles away, but Avonmouth, she knew, was much farther than that, and it seemed a very long way to her. She said weakly, “Fancy …” And then she said, “You didn’t have to come all that way, just to say that.” She did not know that he had come from the United States to say it, in eleven months. “There was an officer here once, about that time,” she said. “He said you didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“That’s right,” he said. He looked at her, and she was smiling, and a slow smile spread across his own face. “I reckon it just kind of happened.”
“Well,” she said, “you just look out it doesn’t happen again.” But she was still smiling as she said it, and he took more courage from her smile.
“I was wondering—” he said, and stopped. “I got a lot I’d like to tell you about that time—” he said, and stopped again. And then he managed to get it out, after three years. “If I stopped over for the night,” he said, “I was wondering if you’d care to take a little walk with me this evening.”
She said gently, “That’s what you wanted to ask me before, wasn’
t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Just for an hour?”
He nodded.
She smiled at him. “I don’t mind if I do. Six o’clock, by the gate into the churchyard?”
“I’ll be waiting for you, Miss Grace.”
She laughed. “None of your tricks, now.”
He said in horror, “No ma’am!”
“All right,” she said. “See you then.” And as he turned to go, “You’re forgetting your cigarettes!”
Dave Lesurier did not go down the street turning cartwheels, but he felt like it. He went and waited for the bus, went into Penzance and got his bag, and took it back to the White Hart Hotel, and spent the rest of the afternoon dressing for the party. When he walked out of the White Hart that evening for his date he wore a blue suit that was a little too blue, with a very marked waist, and pointed light-brown shoes rather too tight for his feet, and a bright yellow tie with spots on it, and a green silk shirt and collar, and a magenta handkerchief. Grace Trefusis, when she saw him coming, thought he looked ever so smart, and wished she’d put on her best frock instead of the one she’d been wearing for three days.
He had bought a large bunch of violets for her in Penzance, and he gave her these when he met her by the churchyard gate. “They looked so pretty, right there in the shop,” he said diffidently, “I thought maybe you’d like them.”
She buried her face in the little blossoms. “Oh, they’re ever so nice. Just take a smell!” He sniffed them, laughing, and they turned and walked past the churchyard wall together, out towards the hill, and old Mrs Polread, the sexton’s wife, who had seen the whole thing from her cottage window, had a fine tale to tell Mrs Penlee when they met an hour later.
“That black boy that assaulted Grace Trefusis when the Americans were here, you know, the one that there was all that trouble over? Believe it or not, he’s back here, and she’s walking out with him this very minute! And he give her a bunch of violets, too, big as a plate!”