by Nevil Shute
I told him what had happened. ‘I hadn’t an earthly,’ I said. ‘The clouds were right down on to the hills—I was only a hundred feet up when the engine conked. I told you it was running rough. What? Oh yes, the machine’s a write-off—absolutely, I’m afraid. What’s that? Well, I can’t say that it worries me much—only too glad to be well out of it. I don’t give a damn about the machine. Yes, I dare say you do, but that’s your worry. Oh, nothing to write home about, thanks. I got shaken up a bit and cut my eyebrow—nothing serious. I’m sorry it’s happened, but I’m not taking any responsibility for it at all. I told you I wasn’t fit to go. As a matter of fact, fit or not, it wouldn’t have made any difference to what happened.’ Which was a lie.
Rather to my surprise he said he was sending down the breakdown gang at once, and told me to fix up a meal for them. I rang off, and immediately found myself the sensation of the evening. I should think half the village crowded into the passages of the pub, all eager to see me and condole before I had my face washed. I managed to get away from the crowd, and the landlord’s wife took me upstairs and bathed my eyebrow for me; I would have preferred the barmaid, but didn’t like to say so. It was a clean cut and she made quite a good job of it for me, fixing it up with a bit of lint and sticking-plaster. Then I went down and saw the landlord and arranged about a meal for the mechanics over a stiff whisky.
Presently I began to throw out feelers about the Stevensons, and the house called Six Firs.
I said that I thought I knew some people called Stevenson who lived near Stokenchurch; at least, I knew of them but had never met them. He said that they would be the people at Six Firs. I was told that the house was about a mile from the village; with a little encouragement he told me the whole family history—so far as there was anything to tell. Arthur Stevenson, Esq., C.B., was a man of about seventy, several years retired from the Treasury. His wife was only a little younger, and both were passionately fond of gardening. They always took first prize for sweet-peas at the local flower show. Before moving to Stokenchurch on their retirement they had lived for thirty years in Earl’s Court. Their pew in church was close under the pulpit because the old lady was getting very deaf. There was a son in India, a major in the Indian Army. There was a daughter about twenty-five years old who lived at home and painted pictures—water-colours, I gathered—which had been exhibited at High Wycombe. They had a Morris Cowley which the daughter drove. The barmaid had a cousin who was their cook. That was all.
I said that my father had been at school with old Mr. Stevenson, and I thought that I would walk up and call on them. He offered to send a boy with me to show me the house, but I got out of that and got directions instead. I borrowed one of his hats, and set off up the street.
As I went I realised the utter futility of the whole thing. It was impossible that such a household should shelter an escaped convict. It struck me at once that it wasn’t fair on the old people; at all costs they must be kept out of it. It was evident that if there was any help at all coming from that house it must come from the girl; I can’t say that I was too sanguine about her. From the landlord’s description she sounded a blue-stocking of the most virulent description; it seemed to me that water-colours and escaped convicts were unlikely to go well together. Evidently I must try the house, but I thought it was more probable that Compton would have to stay in the woods for a day or two till I could get some clothes for him and smuggle him away.
As I drew nearer to the house I began to wonder how I should get hold of the girl without her parents. A succession of ideas passed through my head and were rejected one by one. I might say that I was soliciting custom for a projected milk round—but that wouldn’t work in the country. Nor would the gas-meter do, where there was probably no gas. Finally, I fixed on the car as being the one thing in the house that would be solely the domain of the daughter, and decided to make that my line of attack.
The house was a pleasant-looking place on the wooded side of a hill, standing well back from the road in three or four acres of land. It was not a large house, but it was beautifully cared for; the gardens were small, but very neat. There was a large paddock with a decrepit-looking pony in it. It was about seven o’clock when I got there; the rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing off before the sunset. The garden smelt wonderful after the rain.
I rang the bell and a maid came to the door. ‘Can I see Miss Stevenson?’ I said. ‘It’s about the car—I’m from the garage.’
The maid went in and a girl came to the door. She must have been in the hall.
‘It’s about the car?’ she said. ‘You’ve come from Weller’s?’
That was the first time I met Joan Stevenson. I wish I could recall that first interview a little more clearly. She was a tall slim girl with grey eyes, by her complexion a country girl, rather plain and—which seemed strange to me—without a trace of powder or make-up. She had very soft brown hair, bobbed; she was wearing a brown jumper, a skirt that looked like corduroy, and brown brogues. She looked me straight in the eyes when she spoke, which worried me and made me nervous.
I produced a jet from my waistcoat pocket. ‘It’s about the carburettor on your car, Miss,’ I said. ‘The makers sent a letter round to us agents to say as some cars was issued from the factory wiv jets as gives trouble in the morning, starting from cold, like. They was to be replaced without charge. So as I was passing along this evening the manager told me to look in.’
‘It’s very good of him,’ said the girl, ‘but she’s always been very easy to start. Beautiful.’ I could see that she was puzzled.
‘Could I just ’ave a look at her,’ I said, ‘if it won’t be inconveniencing? ’Course, if she’s going all right, I says leave well alone. There’s a sight more damage done messing them about than what there is leaving them alone. But if I might look to see what number jet she has got in, an’ then I can tell the boss.’
She took me round to the back of the house, and there was the car standing in the coach-house with the doors open. We went into the coach-house, but I didn’t open the bonnet of the car. Instead, I straightened myself up.
‘Miss Stevenson,’ I said, ‘I haven’t come about the car. I’ve come about your cousin, Compton—I don’t know his other name. He sent me here to see you. He wants help.’
She looked at me incredulously. ‘He sent you here?’ she repeated.
‘I saw him this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid he’s in trouble. He broke prison apparently—he’s been in prison, hasn’t he? He’s in the woods close here, and he wants help to get a change of clothes and get away.’
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
I could see that this interview wasn’t going at all well. I didn’t see what else I could do but to plough ahead and tell her exactly what had happened; if then she chose to disbelieve it I should have done my best. ‘My name is Stenning,’ I said, ‘Philip Stenning.’ I set out to tell her all that had happened to me that afternoon. When I got to the bit about Compton coming out of the wood and pulling me out of the machine she stopped me.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Stenning,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe a word of all this. It’s quite true that my cousin is in prison, but I don’t believe a word of the rest of it. You shouldn’t have brought in the aeroplane, you know; it’s laying it on a bit too thick. As a matter of curiosity, what were you going to ask me to do?’
I laughed; it was the only thing to do. ‘For one thing,’ I said, ‘I was going to ask you to believe me. I was going to ask you to put out food and clothes for your cousin in the morning-room at about eleven o’clock to-night after your people have gone to bed, and to leave the morning-room window open and to switch on the light in your bedroom when the coast was clear. But I’m afraid you’ll find that as melodramatic as the aeroplane.’
She smiled gravely. ‘I’m afraid I do, Mr. Stenning. Much too sensational. Now I’m going to go down to the police station to-morrow morning and tell them all about you, so you’d better run away
back to London to-night. It’s an ingenious tale and for the moment you very nearly took me in, but you spoilt it by bringing in the aeroplane. You wouldn’t have got very much out of this house, though. There’s only the silver forks and things and I don’t think they’re worth very much. We shall have to put them in the dog-kennel or somewhere to-night, shan’t we? Now you’d better go.’
‘Right you are,’ I said. ‘You can go to the police station, and they’ll probably tell you who I am. But, for God’s sake don’t tell them anything about your cousin being out in the woods, because he’ll have to stay there for to-morrow till I can get him some clothes. So if you go telling the police where he is there’ll be hell to pay.’
She wrinkled her forehead in perplexity, but before she could speak I stopped her.
‘Look here, Miss Stevenson,’ I said, ‘I know you don’t believe me. But walk down to the village after dinner and collect the local gossip. I promise you that you’ll find that an aeroplane crashed this afternoon, and that I’m the pilot. If you find that’s true you can take a chance on the rest of the yarn. If you leave the morning-room window open and hide behind the curtains with the morning-room poker you can hit him on the head as he comes in and examine him at your leisure. I promise you you’ll find he’s your cousin.’
She looked at me seriously. ‘If I find that’s true,’ she said, ‘we may owe you a great deal, Mr. Stenning. But my cousin has only six months of his sentence left to run.’
‘Then he must have a pretty good reason for wanting to be out,’ I said. ‘Well, we’ll leave it at that, Miss Stevenson.’
I walked back through the lanes to the village. It was a wonderfully quiet evening; the clouds and the storm were rolling away towards the east and the sunset was clear. The birds had come out again, and I remember there was a thrush calling somewhere in the trees. It was a long time since I had been in the country. It was time I took a holiday. I thought of the aerodrome and the machines and Manchester and my flat in Maida Vale, and the more I thought of them the more I hated them. I thought what a fool I was to live that sort of life. I didn’t want to go back.
When I got back to the pub I found the local constable waiting for me to give an account of myself; he seemed a little hurt that I had not come to do so of my own accord. I was a bit short with him till I remembered that this case was probably the most important that he had had to deal with for six months; then I loosened up and stood him a drink. By the time that had gone down the lorry had arrived with the breakdown gang.
I went out and had a chat with the foreman of the men; he clucked his tongue when he heard what had happened, and opined that I was lucky to have come off so lightly with nobody there to help me out of the machine. I passed that off without a blush and hoped that his practised eye would not betray me when we came to the wreck, and then, though it was after eight o’clock, we went off in the lorry to get the machine. We found her as I had left her, lying on her back by the wood surrounded by a crowd of yokels. The ground was hard, being summer, so that we could get the lorry right up to her; the foreman clucked his tongue some more and set the men to work. An aeroplane comes to pieces very easily. In twenty minutes the wings and the tail were off and we were loading the fuselage on to the lorry; in an hour and a half we were back in Stokenchurch just as it was getting dark.
We passed Joan Stevenson in the village street. I stopped the lorry, jumped down clumsily in my heavy coat, and went to speak to her. I pointed to the wreckage.
‘There it is,’ I laughed. ‘I was just bringing it along to show you.’
In the dusk I could see that her face was very white. I sent the lorry on, and it rumbled away into the distance with the mechanics all telling each other that the captain was a quick worker.
‘It’s terrible,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you when you told me this afternoon, Mr. Stenning. What are we to do? Where is he now?’
‘He’s in the woods,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know what we can do. He’ll know what he wants to do, though.’
She nodded. ‘He’ll want clothes, won’t he? I found some old clothes of father’s that he’ll never miss. They’ll be a terrible fit. Father’s so much fatter.’
‘We must get him something that looks as if it belongs to him,’ I muttered, ‘or he’ll be caught at once. He’d better have this suit of mine till we can fit him out properly. We’re very much the same build.’
She looked me up and down. ‘You’re much broader across the shoulders than he is,’ she said, ‘but the height is about right. But what’s it all for? Where’s he going to go?’
‘God knows.’ I muttered.
‘How do you think he got here from Dartmoor?’
I started. ‘He was in Dartmoor? He must have had luck to get all this distance.’ And then I remembered that I had seen a headline in the morning paper over my breakfast at Manchester—a meagre and a sour breakfast it had been that morning—that a prisoner had escaped and was still at large. I remembered that I had commented on it to the photographer, and had wished him luck. I almost wished now that I hadn’t.
‘I saw it in the paper this morning,’ I said. ‘We shall have to be careful.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the window open to-night as soon as it’s safe. Mr. Stenning—will you come too? I don’t know anything about these things. Would it be frightfully inconvenient for you?’
I laughed. ‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘I should have been a stiff little corpse by now but for him—and nobody any the wiser.’
‘It’s awfully good of you,’ she said. ‘He’ll have to get out of the country, won’t he?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He said he only wanted to be free for ten days. But I’ll come up this evening and we can have a talk with him and find out what it is that he wants us to do. I’ll be skulking round outside till I see him get in at the window, and then I’ll come along. That way, you’ll know I’m not playing any funny business on you. Right you are, Miss Stevenson—at about eleven o’clock.’
‘It’s awfully good of you,’ she repeated mechanically. She hesitated for a moment. ‘I don’t want to tell my father or mother if we can help it,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t bring them into this unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
I went back to the pub. The men were in the commercial room, busy over the meal that I had ordered for them. They didn’t wait long; they were anxious to get back with the machine to the aerodrome, and so to bed. They grumbled a good deal over the journey, but it appeared that Morris was eager to get the machine back into the works and start on the repair. I wished him joy of it.
I started with them on the lorry. The landlord showed some concern at my departure; I think he was counting on me to stay the night and fight my battles over again in the bar. However, we all crowded on to the lorry in the darkness and pushed off, not without a little song and dance from the men.
Half a mile from the village I stopped the lorry and got down, and the lorry drove on towards London without me. I never heard what the men thought about it, but I doubt if this proceeding did my reputation any harm. That was hardly possible.
It was then about half-past ten, and quite dark. I fetched a compass round the outskirts of the village through the fields, and presently found myself on the road for Six Firs.
I was beginning to feel most frightfully rocky. During the early part of the evening I had been almost myself; I think the whisky I was drinking then had something to do with it. Now the cut in my forehead had stiffened up and was aching and throbbing till I could hardly bear it; it was the only thing that prevented me from sitting down under a hedge and going to sleep. I was most fearfully done. I walked up to the house and got there at about ten minutes to eleven; a hundred yards up the lane from the gate I found a gap in the hedge. I got through this into the field and, skirting along the hedge, reached a position where I could command a view of the whole front of the house.
I sat down on a hummock in the darkness and b
egan drowsily to consider what would be the best thing to be done for Compton. All the little noises of a country night in June conspired to take my mind from the problem and to increase my drowsiness. Somewhere there was an owl hooting irregularly; the air was full of little rustlings and squeaks. I sat there till my head dropped forward and I awoke with a start; then I got up and began to walk up and down the field. The lights were still on in the house. Then as I looked again one of the lights in the downstairs rooms went out, and then all the others. A light appeared in an upstairs room; I interpreted that to mean that the old couple were going to bed.
I began to wonder what I should do if I were in Compton’s place and had to cut the country without undue ostentation. I knew the answer to that at once. I would do it on a small yacht. For many years it has been my hobby to knock about the Channel whenever I had the chance; I owned a six-tonner of my own one season in partnership with another man, but for the most part my experience has been gained on charters.
I knew the Channel pretty well. I was convinced that one could slip quietly in and out of England in that way without anybody being any the wiser. Now that the coastguard has been practically abolished there is very little restraint or comment on the movements of small yachts. One goes over to France and cruises the French coast for a time; on one’s return to England one may invite the local Customs officer on board by flying an ensign at the truck. Or one may simply join the throng of yachts cruising up and down the coast; it is nobody’s business to discover in what country the anchor last bit the mud.
Yes, I decided, that is what I would do. It would need a little organisation; one would have to have a suitable boat ready and, if possible, get someone to provision her. Then it struck me that there is little advantage to be gained in these days by escaping from one country to another unless it be to one where there is no extradition. Still, it would be a step in the right direction to get as far as France. And rather than begin on a ten-year sentence I would push off for South America in a decent ten-tonner, though I won’t pretend that my seamanship is in the same street as that of Captain Joshua Slocum.