by Nevil Shute
An entry in her diary about six weeks after she reached Seattle is of interest.
January 29th 1947. Tacoma is only thirty miles from here and of course that’s where Dr. Ruttenberg lives. I looked him up in the telephone book and he’s there all right, Lewis C. Ruttenberg. He’s got an office in the city and a residence at Fircrest. I would like to see him again because he was so awfully nice at Mastodon, but I couldn’t bother him unless I was ill. Today a friend of Aunt Ellen’s came for lunch, a Mrs. Hobson who lives in Tacoma, and I asked her if she knew Dr. Ruttenberg. She didn’t know him herself but she had heard about him; she says he’s got a very good reputation as one of the up and coming young doctors, and that he takes a tremendous amount of trouble over his patients. It is nice to know he’s here within reach. Almost like having a bit of Mastodon here in Seattle.
Apart from that, I do not think that there is anything worth quoting from the diaries till the Korean war broke out, more than three years later.
June 29th 1950. There’s a full scale war on in Korea now, and the Americans are being forced back southwards. Everything is just tearing into action here—troops embarking for the east, tanks and guns on the quays, destroyers in Lake Union. Everybody says that it’s the beginning of the third world war.
I wish I was in England now. They’re bound to want a lot of Ordnance Wrens back into the navy, because they’re calling up reserves. I’ve been an awful fool, because the Admiralty don’t know where I am; they probably still think I’m at Crick Road. I wrote airmail at once, of course, and posted it yesterday, saying that I could pay my own passage home if they wanted me, or else join up in Canada, at Esquimault or somewhere. It will be about a fortnight before I hear, even if they reply airmail. I should think they’d probably cable, though.
I think Aunt Ellen would be all right. She’s got her family in Denver; one of them would have to come over and look after her, Janice or Frances. It’s not like it was when Mummy was alive. If they want me in the Wrens I’ll have to go.
Six weeks later she got a letter from the Admiralty, delivered by sea mail, saying that there was no requirement at the moment for ex-naval personnel in her category and that she would be notified in due course if vacancies for re-engagement should arise. It was a disappointment to her, though I think she must have been getting used to disappointments by that time. She put in another application to the Admiralty in December 1950 when the Chinese Communists had intervened in Korea and were driving the United Nations forces southwards, and the third World War seemed really to have begun. Again she got the same type of reply.
She would have found it difficult to leave her aunt by that time if the Wrens had wanted her, however, for Aunt Ellen was a very sick woman.
February 17th. Aunt Ellen had the operation this morning, and it all went off quite well. I saw her for a few minutes in the hospital this afternoon and she seemed quite cheerful, but still very dopey. I took some chrysanthemums but the sister wouldn’t let her have them in the room today, but I saw some lovely carnations in a flower store and I’ll take her some of those tomorrow. I saw Dr. Hunsaker for a minute or two in his office at the hospital and he says she stood the operation very well and thought she’d be home in about a fortnight, but when I asked him if it was malignant he sort of dodged the question and said that at this stage it was difficult to make an accurate prognosis. Doesn’t look too good. Billy isn’t at all well; he wouldn’t eat anything yesterday or today. It’s rather lonely in the house without Aunt Ellen. I went out to the movies last night, but it was a stinker.
Billy was the Boxer dog, now getting very old.
The operation did little to relieve Aunt Ellen of her complaint, and throughout the year 1951 her infirmity increased. Again trouble and overwork were massing up on Janet Prentice, for by the end of the year her aunt’s spells of pain were practically continuous and were only kept in check by drugs and analgesics. The dog Billy was dying, too, and in September he had to be put away, and from that point onwards a note of tired despair begins to creep into the diary.
November 13th. I persuaded Aunt Ellen to stay in bed again today; it’s two days since she ate anything solid. Dr. Hunsaker came this morning and he’s going to see if he can get a nurse to come in every day for a couple of hours. I asked him what was coming to us and he couldn’t hold out much hope, but said she might go on for a long time. In the end she’ll have to go into the hospital.
I suppose this is what happens at the end of life and it’s normal and nothing to do with the Junkers. But this is the fourth, or if you count the dogs, and I think you ought to, it’s the sixth. There were seven people in the Junkers, so there’s only one more due. I suppose that will be me.
I think she misses Billy a great deal, and I do too.
The nurse was living permanently in the house by January, and by the beginning of March Aunt Ellen was removed to the County Hospital, where Janet used to go and see her every day.
April 7th. It’s very lonely in the house now. I’ve been starting to pack things up a bit, because I don’t think there’s a chance now that Aunt Ellen will ever come back. Janice is coming from Denver to stay for a few days; Aunt Ellen was always very fond of her. I’ll talk it over with her and decide what’s to be done with all the things.
When it’s all over I’m going to make a real effort to get back into the Wrens. I think I’ll write to the naval attaché in Washington. I believe that’s the right thing to do for a British subject living in the United States. I simply don’t know what I’d do if they won’t have me back. But the war in Korea is so serious now I think they’re bound to want more Ordnance Wrens.
May 2nd. Aunt Ellen died today at about five in the morning. Janice saw her yesterday but she was so much doped she didn’t really know anything. Poor old dear. They rang up from the hospital to tell us, but we’d been expecting it of course.
Well, that’s over. The house is to be sold and all the clothes and stuff. Janice is staying here for another week to help me sort it all out. There’s a tremendous lot of stuff that we shall have to give away or pass on to the garbage man including all the drugs and medicines except the ones I’ve pinched. Janice says that she made a new will about two years ago and that the house has been left to me, but I wouldn’t go on living here. I shall post my letter to the naval attaché tomorrow.
May 11th. Janice left today; she’s been away from the family too long as it is. She asked me to go and stay with them in Denver when everything has been cleaned up here, but I left that open. I told her that I felt rather bad about the will, getting the house, because I’m not really a relation at all, but she said they were all agreed about it at the time the will was made and they were grateful to me for doing what I had in the last five years. So that’s that. I put the house in the hands of the agent yesterday and some people called Pasmanik came and looked over it today; I think it should sell fairly easily. The furniture goes to the sale room on Wednesday of next week and I’ve booked a room at the Golden Guest House from Monday. I do hope I hear soon if they want me in the Wrens. I don’t know what to do if they don’t.
May 28th. I got a letter from the Admiralty today, and they still don’t want me. Not a very nice letter. I suppose that’s the end of it and in a way I’m glad. It’s been so miserable sitting here and doing nothing, just watching for each post. I’m glad in a way it’s over and I know something definite.
I suppose I’ll have to go back to England now, but I don’t know what I’d do. I’m beginning to think the best thing now might be to finish it all here or somewhere in America, where nobody really knows me and there won’t be any scandal or any trouble for anyone. Most women have something to hang on to that makes going on worth while—children, or a husband, or relations, but I’ve got nothing like that. If I go on I’ll have to start from now and build up a new life, almost like being born again, and I don’t think I want to. I feel too tired to face up to that. It’s not worth while.
It would be terribly easy to
do, because I’ve got enough of Aunt Ellen’s stuff to kill a horse. You’d just go to sleep and never wake up. It would make the seventh, and that must finish it. All the people that I’ve loved, Bill most of all, and then Daddy, and Dev, and Mummy, and Billy, and Aunt Ellen. I’d make the seventh, and all the people in the Junkers would be paid for then.
The only thing is that it seems so cowardly, as if you can’t face up to things because you haven’t got the guts.
Perhaps the drugs that had been provided for Aunt Ellen were not wholly menacing to her, because the next entry reads, two days later:
May 30th. I couldn’t sleep again last night, just miserably tired and depressed, and about midnight I got up and took one of Aunt Ellen’s things as an experiment, with a glass of water. It was a knock-out drop all right because I didn’t wake up till half-past nine—clean out, like a log. I got up feeling fine and it was a glorious morning, sunny and bright and fishing boats on the blue sea in Shilshole Bay. I was too late for breakfast here so walked up to the drug store on West 85th and had a cup of coffee. I’d been so miserable the night before and I was feeling so good that I thought perhaps all I needed was a tonic. And then, rather on the spur of the moment, I rang Dr. Ruttenberg’s office in Tacoma from the drug store and told his nurse he’d treated me before in England during the war, and asked for an appointment to see him. She said to come along at two-thirty, so I drove over in the Pontiac and had lunch in Tacoma and saw him in the afternoon.
He didn’t seem to have changed much in eight years, hair a bit thinner, but he looked as young as ever. He remembered me, and he really did because when we got talking he mentioned Bill and Daddy, and he even remembered Dev’s name—pretty good to remember the name of a dog all these years when he’d only seen me once. I asked how he did it and he said that he’d been very much interested in the case because it was the first he’d come in contact with, where a woman had been exhausted and worn out in service life, and he’d always been sorry that he hadn’t been able to follow the case up. It was just like it was before at Mastodon and I told him everything, about Mummy and Billy and Aunt Ellen and how miserably ill I’d been feeling and that I wanted a tonic. He started asking me things then, about love affairs of which there aren’t any, probably that’s bad, and I was getting too tired to keep up a front any longer and told him about the Junkers and the expiation that had to be made, and there’d been six already and the last one would be me. I said I didn’t know when that would happen, but if I didn’t get a hefty tonic it would happen pretty soon.
He said of course that there was no future in that and that all that was wrong with me was that I’d been spending myself and got myself worn out again, like I had in Mastodon. He said the expiation angle was baloney, that I seemed to have the instincts of a nurse in doing things for people, but a nurse didn’t talk about expiation and go all suicidal after a hard case when her patient died. He said he wanted to see me again and made an appointment for next Tuesday at the same time, and gave me a prescription to get made up at the pharmacy. I did like seeing him again; he gives one such confidence. I was with him for about an hour.
Before her next appointment the doctor wrote her a letter which influenced her a great deal. I found the letter itself among her correspondence, and it reads:
1206, S. 11th St.
Tacoma.
June 1st 1952.
Dear Miss Prentice,
I have been giving your case a great deal of consideration in the last two days and would suggest a line that you may care to consider and talk over at our next appointment.
Medically your case is not a complicated one, and as you are aware your trouble is more of a psychological nature. As such it may be somewhat beyond my province, but as a friend can I suggest that you might think over the following.
I do not think that you have taken sufficiently into account the family of the young man Bill Duncan whom you would have married. If he had lived you would have become a part of that family, and you would have owed duties to your new relations by marriage. I can readily understand that in the circumstances of 1944 you did not wish your love affair to become known to strangers, but the circumstances of 1952 are very different.
As I understand the matter your recent bereavement has given you a small independence so that you are under no immediate necessity to look for paid work. In these circumstances I would say you might seek out the Duncan family and satisfy yourself that they are well and are in no need of help from you, even if this should mean a journey to Australia. From what you have told me both now and in the year 1944 these people are farmers. If with increasing age the father or the mother of your friend Bill should be in any distress it may be that you could assist them, and in doing so achieve a purpose and new interest in your life.
If this suggestion should entail a sea voyage of several weeks from this country to Australia I presume that this would be an interest and an enjoyment to you. From the medical point of view I could advise nothing better for you in your present circumstances.
I look forward to seeing you again on Tuesday next.
Sincerely,
Lewis C. Ruttenberg.
The next entry in her diary reads:
June 2nd. I got a letter from Dr. Ruttenberg this morning. It’s given me an awful lot to think about. When Bill got killed it was the end of everything for me. I never thought about it being the end of everything for other people, for his mother, for one. What Dr. Ruttenberg says is absolutely right, of course. If it had happened six months later, after Bill and I were married, say if he’d been killed at Arnhem or something like that, then I’d have been one of his family. My name would have been Mrs. Duncan. I couldn’t have slid off then and kissed my hand to them and never seen them again. Bill wouldn’t have thought a lot of me if I’d behaved like that, and I don’t suppose I’d have wanted to anyway. But that’s about what I did. We’d have got married if he’d lived a few months longer, after the balloon went up. And now I don’t know anything about his father and mother, and I haven’t cared. I’ve been wrapped up in my own affairs and my own grievances, very selfish. I’m so sorry, Bill.
It’s going to be a bit difficult finding out. They may be fit as fleas and perfectly all right; after all I suppose they’ve got brother Alan to look after them and the sister, Helen. I can’t just write and say, well, here I am. You’ve never heard of me, but how are you getting on? I think the doctor’s right, as usual; I’ll have to go to Australia and snoop around, and come away if everything’s all right. Perhaps if I went there I might find brother Alan and have a talk with him. I think he’d understand.
I’ve been wondering what sort of place a sheep farm in Australia can be. I suppose it’s very hot and people riding round the desert in big hats on horses, and boomerangs, and black people. And billabongs whatever they may be, like in the song. I don’t think I’d be much good in a place like that, but I’d feel now that I was letting Bill down if I didn’t go and see if I was needed there at all.
Anyway, it ’ld mean another month on a ship. I’ve been down to the library looking at an atlas. Honolulu, Fiji, New Zealand, Sydney, I should think. It would be a marvellous trip, anyway.
On the next page of the diary she had totted up her financial situation to the best of her ability. Her aunt’s house had sold to the Pasmaniks for eighteen thousand dollars. Unravelling her somewhat tangled accountancy and putting together the money from the sale of the house and her English capital, she seems to have possessed a total of about eight thousand pounds in English money, a sum which she considered as indecent riches.
She saw Dr. Ruttenberg again, but there is only a short mention of that meeting in the diary.
June 4th. I saw Dr. Ruttenberg again today. He gave me a medical check-up, stethoscope and blood pressure and all the rest of it and we had a talk about things. I told him I was going to take his advice and take a sea trip to Australia and perhaps meet brother Alan and find out how Bill’s parents were, but I wasn’t going to
barge in if everything was quite all right as it probably will be. In that case I should come back to Seattle because I’ll have to come back here, because it will take the lawyers about six months to settle up Aunt Ellen’s estate and they can be doing that while I’m away. He asked me to come and see him when I got back. And then he said that in his experience a woman without family duties was generally an unhappy woman until she got adjusted to what was an unnatural condition, and that was really all that was the matter with me. I suppose he’s right. He generally is.
I went to the shipping office this morning. There’s a ship called Pacific Victor loading bulldozers and earth moving machinery for Sydney which is due to sail in about ten days’ time. She has accommodation for four or five passengers, and they don’t think she’s full up but they’re not sure. They’ve given me a letter of introduction to the captain. She’s in a dock on the East Side somewhere by Lander St. I couldn’t go today because of seeing Dr. Ruttenberg, but I shall go and find her tomorrow and see if she’s got a berth.
June 17th. We sailed from the East Waterway this morning. This isn’t half such a nice ship as the Winterswijk was, much older and dirtier and slower, not so well kept. However, I’ve got a two berth cabin to myself and it’s lovely being at sea again. It’s two thousand four hundred sea miles to Honolulu and we do about ten knots, so it will take about ten days.