by Nevil Shute
The diary remains blank after that for several days, and then comes a long entry describing her visit to the Royal Bath Hotel at Bournemouth where her father was in training for the Seaborne Royal Observer Corps. I have used that information earlier in this account, and only the last sentence or two need be quoted here:
… I meant to tell Daddy about the Junkers but I didn’t. He was so full of fun, and having such a glorious time.
There was another gap of several days, and then came an entry about Bill.
May 7th. I got a letter from Bert Finch this morning. Bill is dead. He went off with Bert on some job over to the other side, and didn’t come back. Bert’s not allowed to say what happened, and I don’t specially want to know.
I can’t seem to realise that it’s happened. I thought people went all soppy and cried, but I don’t seem to feel like that. I’ve been going on with the work all day because there’s such a lot to do and no time to sit and think. It’s almost as if it had happened to somebody else.
I’m glad I never told Mummy or Daddy about Bill. I couldn’t stand anybody being sympathetic. What happened between Bill and me was just ours and nobody else’s, and if it’s over now it’s still ours and nobody else’s just the same. I couldn’t bear to have anybody else knowing about us.
Bill never told any of his people at home about us, only brother Alan of course. I know he didn’t because we decided that we wouldn’t tell anybody till we were quite sure ourselves, till after the balloon had gone up and we’d been away together and really got to know each other, out of uniform. I wrote and told Bert Finch that Bill’s people in Australia didn’t know about us, and asked him to look through Bill’s gear and send me back any letters he found, and the photograph we had taken together. Ben’s a good sort, and I think Bill would have wanted it like that. When a thing’s done, it’s done. I couldn’t bear to have strangers butting in and being sympathetic from the other side of the world, even Bill’s people.
The only complication now is Dev. Bert said he was told to shoot him if I couldn’t have him, but I couldn’t bear that. I went and told Third Officer Collins about it and asked if I could have him here, and she said I couldn’t. But then half an hour later Lieut. Parkes came to the Wrennery and said he’d fixed it for me, and he was to be McAlister’s dog. I cried for about ten minutes, in the heads, when I got back into the Wrennery. It’s awful when people are so kind as that, but I suppose it does one good to let go. I felt better afterwards and went down river with some Bofors ammunition for the L.C.G.s. I’m so frightfully tired.
There are no more entries in the diary after that until the middle of June. Only a very few weeks remained before the invasion, and in those weeks she was working at high pressure. She had the dog to look after, too, and Viola told me that she spent every minute of her spare time with Bill’s dog. Probably in those weeks there was no need for the emotional outlet of a diary, for the dog Dev provided that. Perhaps it is significant that the next diary entry was written on the evening of the day that Dev was killed.
Tuesday June 11th. Dev is dead, and I made a fool of myself and broke down on the hard, in front of everyone. He got under a Sherman because I wasn’t looking after him properly. He was in such pain and it wasn’t possible to do anything for him, so I got an Army officer to shoot him. Then everyone was sympathetic and that put the lid on it, and when I started crying I couldn’t stop.
Viola was a brick; she came back with the cutter as soon as she could and got me out of it and back to the Wrennery, and Collins came over and told me to go and see the surgeon and report sick. All the R.N.V.R. surgeons have gone off on “Overlord” and there was an American Army doctor there, a Captain Ruttenberg, quite a young fair haired man. I was so glad it was a stranger because there wasn’t anything the matter with me but I couldn’t get a grip of myself, and I was so ashamed.
I think he was frightfully good as a doctor or psychologist or something because he didn’t do anything at all. He made me sit down in a chair and got a couple of cups of tea from the wardroom and gave me a cigarette and started talking about himself. He said it was his first visit to Europe and he’s only been here for about three weeks; his name is Lewis and he’s got a wife called Mary and a little boy of three called Junior and a baby called Susie and they live in a place called Tacoma. He says he runs a 1938 Ford sedan, I think that’s a saloon, and they all go camping in the mountains in it with a tent in the summer because he likes trout fishing and his wife likes riding a horse. I dried up after a bit and presently he got me talking about myself and I told him about Bill and the Junkers, and Daddy, and Dev. I must have been in with him for an hour and a half before he got busy with his stethoscope and blood pressure and all the rest of it, and started making notes about my length of service and all that. And then he said that there was nothing wrong with me except I was tired out so he was sending me on a month’s leave. He took two solid hours to get around to that. Lewis C. Ruttenberg. He must be very clever because he didn’t seem specially concerned about me, but after a bit I just wanted to tell him all about it and I think it did me good to spill it. He says I’ve got to have ten hours’ sleep each night for the next three nights, and he’s given me three little yellow capsules to take when I go to bed, one each night. I’ve never had anything like that before. I hope they don’t make you dream like I’ve been dreaming lately; I couldn’t stand ten hours of that.
Oh Bill, I’m sorry about Dev. Do please forgive me. It was all my fault.
There was a long gap then of about six months, and the next entry is headed December 16th 1944:
The last of those foul children went away today, thank God. I told the billeting officer a month ago when I came back from Henley that my mother couldn’t cope with them any longer but he didn’t do anything and they just stayed on. I went and saw him on Thursday and told him that I’d murder one of them unless he took them away, and I think he saw I meant it, and I did. So they all went away today and the house is our own for a bit, and we’ve got a nice black mark against us at the Town Hall. Unpatriotic. We’ll have to have somebody with three spare rooms, and I said adults—no children and no babies. My God, I’ll be glad when I can get back into the Wrens.
The first thing is to keep out of the hands of the bloody doctors, of course. I’m never going to see a doctor again in all my life, and I’m not going to any more homes. I’m not a looney and I never was. They don’t understand that some people do things that they’ve got to be punished for. God looks after that, and it’s fair enough, because if you kill seven people wantonly just to show how good you are with an Oerlikon you’ve got to be made to suffer for it. The trouble is that all the proper doctors are in the services and the ones left aren’t any good. If you try to explain about punishment they think you’re crackers and send you to a looney-bin like Henley.
Mother not at all good. She gets tired so quickly and she doesn’t seem to be interested in anything. I took her to the pictures yesterday because she liked going with Daddy before the war, but she didn’t seem able to follow the plot, and a bit bored with it all. I wish we hadn’t sold the car now, because she never gets out at all and if I could take her out into the country now and then I think she’d like it. One couldn’t go far on the basic ration, but it would be something. But God knows we needed the money. If I don’t get back into the Wrens soon I’ll have to take a job because there’s not much left of the car money and our capital won’t last so long if we go selling out to live on it. P.G.s would help, of course, but not those ghastly children.
The war looks like going on for a long time now, at least another year. They’re bound to call me up again before long. May Spikins has been drafted to Brindisi; they’re starting up an ordnance depot there. With all these ordnance Wrens going out to the Med. they must be getting very short of them at home.
There were several entries in a similar tone in the early months of 1945, showing a great sense of frustration, of being out of active service in the war and frett
ing over it. Then came the armistice.
May 9th. The war in Europe seems to be over, though the war against Japan is still going on. Fighting has stopped in Europe, Hitler is supposed to be dead, and everyone is starting to talk about getting demobilised.
I can’t believe it’s true. The war against Japan will go on for years, and it must be a naval war. They must need ordnance Wrens all the more out in the east. Now that the fighting has stopped an awful lot of girls will be getting married and leaving the service, and I don’t suppose they’ll be training any more. I believe if I wrote in now they might take me back.
I don’t know what to do about Mother. She doesn’t seem to pick up a bit, and I don’t know that she could manage by herself now if I went back to the Wrens. I suppose we’ll have to go on as we are for a bit till things get easier, unless they write and call me up again, when of course I’d have to go. They might do that, because I’ve had a long spell at home, nearly a year, and I’m perfectly fit now.
I went and saw the Bank Manager and told him to sell out enough of the Associated Cement to give us £200 in the bank. At the rate we’re going the capital won’t last more than five years, though it would be better if I got a whole time job instead of this half time one. The trouble is with Mother in bed so much that isn’t going to be very easy. I’ve got a feeling sometimes that if the money lasts five years it may be long enough. Poor old Ma.
She never got back into the Wrens, of course. She was writing fairly regularly in the diary again, with an entry every three or four days, but there was nothing particularly notable about the entries in the fifteen months that were to elapse before her mother’s death. They were a record of small, daily frustrations and austerities, and of her rebellion against the circumstances of her life. The coming of peace meant no joy or release to her; it meant rather a continuation of a prison sentence. Freedom to her meant life in the Navy in time of war.
Her mother died in August 1946 and I pass those entries over, and I turn on to one of more significance.
September 7th. Viola Dawson turned up this morning in her little car. It was lovely seeing her again, but I hardly recognised her in civvies. It’s funny how different people look. We went and had lunch at the Cadena and talked till about three in the afternoon.
She’s got a job with a film company, not acting, but doing something with scripts and sets; she’s making eight hundred a year. Of course, she can draw awfully well, and that helps in the set design. She’s such a splendid person, I do hope she marries someone who’s really up to her. I did enjoy seeing her again.
I told her about Mother and selling the house, and about my letter to the Admiralty. It’s five days since I posted it so I ought to be getting an answer any day now. She was a bit discouraging about getting back because she says they’re cutting the navy down so much, but Wrens get paid less than ratings so it’s obviously economical to use Wrens on ordnance duties when they can. If I can’t get back I suppose I’ll have to take a job in a shop or something. I don’t believe I’d ever be able to do shorthand well enough to make a living as a secretary.
Viola asked if I ever had another dog, and when I said no, she said I ought to have one, and that it wasn’t my fault that Dev got killed. I told her I still pray for Dev every night, because I think dogs need our prayers more than people. We know that God looks after people when they die and that Daddy and Mummy and Bill are all right, but we don’t know that about dogs. Unless somebody keeps on praying to God about dogs when they die they may get forgotten and just fade out or something. Someday Bill and I will get together again but it wouldn’t be complete unless Dev was there too. I let Bill down so terribly by not looking after Dev, but if I keep praying for him it will all come right.
May Spikins is married to her boy, the one who was a P.O. in Tormentor, and they live in Harlow. It was nice seeing Viola again.
The next entry reads,
September 16th 1946. So that’s over, and they don’t want me back in the Wrens. The only person who wants me is Aunt Ellen in Seattle. I can’t remember her at all, although she says she met me on their trip to England in 1932. I’ve a vague recollection of an American woman coming to see Daddy and Mummy once when I was at school. Perhaps that was her.
I think I’ll go and stay with her for a bit anyway. It’s an awfully long way and a very expensive journey; it’s rather sweet of her to offer to send money for the fare but I’ve got enough for that. I don’t suppose I’ll like America but it’s time I got out of my groove here, I suppose, and I don’t have to stay there longer than a month or two.
One can go all the way to Seattle by sea, through the Panama Canal. Cook’s are finding out about passages for me, in case I should decide to go when the house has been sold. They seemed to think a Dutch ship would be best, as there’s a regular line of cargo ships that carry a few passengers from Rotterdam to San Francisco and Seattle, and it’s cheaper to go that way than by Cunard to New York and then across America by train. I’d like it much better, too, going by sea all the way.
I pass over a few entries, mainly concerned with the sale of the house in Oxford and the furniture. The diary at this point becomes filled with rather muddled notes about her finances; she was not very good at accountancy, but when everything was realised she seems to have possessed about seventeen hundred pounds, of which she was spending about a hundred and twenty on her passage to Seattle.
November 15th. Rotterdam. In a ship again, and it’s simply grand. The Winterswijk only carries ten passengers, and I’ve got a lovely single cabin right under the bridge, beautifully furnished. We’re still in dock, but there’s the same old smell of salt water and oil and cabbage cooking, and the moon on the water, all ripply. I brought my duffle coat and my Wren bell-bottoms, and I’ve been leaning on the rail looking at it all and taking it all in, hour after hour. We sail about two in the morning, so I shan’t get much sleep tonight. I don’t quite see how they’re going to get her out of this dock even with a tug, because I’m sure there’s not room to swing her. I believe they’ll have to take her out backwards.
I’m sorry to have left England, and yet in a way I’m glad. It will be good to get away and have a change from Oxford. There’s been so much unhappiness. I’ll come back in a year or so because I don’t think I’d want to live anywhere else, but it’s a good thing to snap out of it and see new places for a time.
They’ve started up a donkey engine on the forecastle, heaving in on something. I must go and see.
November 18th. We’re out of the Channel now and heading out into the Atlantic, rather rough. I felt a bit funny at first and didn’t want breakfast, dinner or tea, and spent most of the first day lying on my bunk reading a grand book by Hammond Innes. I’m fine now and spend most of the day on deck. When Captain Blok saw my duffle coat he asked me where I got it and when I told him I was in the Wrens he invited me to go up on the bridge any time I liked. So I spend most of each day up there now, keeping as much out of the way as I can in case they find it a nuisance having me up there and stop it. We go north of the Azores and we shan’t see anything at all till we pass Puerto Rico in about nine days time, and after that Panama. If only there was a gun to be looked after it would be as good as being back in the Wrens.
I pass over several more entries in the diary that describe her voyage. It was obviously very good for her; the entries are balanced and cheerful. She was keenly interested in everything that related to the management of the ship, and at one point she listed the names and addresses of all the officers and stewards, and many of the men. She was less impressed by the Panama Canal than one would have expected; to her it was mere inland steaming, rather hot and humid and less interesting than being at sea. She went on shore at Colon and at Panama, where they refuelled, but didn’t like it much and was glad to get back on board. The last shipboard entry in her diary reads:
December 12th. We dock tomorrow at Seattle, and it’s cold and misty. It was clear this morning and we were quite close in to th
e coast and could see snow covered mountains a good long way inland. Of course, it’s winter now and we are pretty far north, almost as far north as England in latitude. The Captain says it doesn’t get very cold in Seattle in the winter because of the sea, not like the inland cities of America, but they get a lot of fog and mist.
It’s been a lovely month, and I’m sorry to be leaving the ship. They make four trips a year between Seattle and Rotterdam and I shall try to go back in her, probably in three months’ time. They’re such a good crowd to be with.
I wonder what Aunt Ellen will be like.
She got on well with Aunt Ellen but found her rather a sick woman with mysterious internal pains. In fact, she was dying though she took five years to do it and at the time that Janet went to Seattle they neither of them thought that there was very much wrong. Her aunt-by-marriage proved to be about sixty-five years old, in fairly easy circumstances. There was a seven year old Pontiac car that had done little mileage which Aunt Ellen no longer cared to drive herself, and a Boxer dog, and a cat.
Janet Prentice lived with her aunt in Seattle till she died, in May 1952. It was the logical thing for her to do, of course, and she seems to have been fairly contented with a very quiet life in that suburban district. I think the dog and the cat provided her with the emotional outlet that she needed, for there are many references to them in the early pages of the diary. Later on, the diary entries become infrequent, as had happened once before when she had Bill’s dog to look after.
Rather curiously, I found no mention in the diaries that she had ever made contact with fishermen or yachtsmen in Seattle, or had been to sea in a boat in all the five years that she lived there. From my mother’s account of her life at Coombargana she seems to have developed into a very reserved girl, and there is little in the diaries to indicate that she made any friends of her own at all while she was in Seattle. She seems to have been content to go on quietly in the daily round of housekeeping for her aunt. If she couldn’t get back into the Navy she had no particular ambition for another form of active life. When friendships had been forced on her in the close quarters of the Service she enjoyed them and treasured them, but she was too reserved to make friends on her own.