by Nevil Shute
“I don’t think so,” I said.
CHAPTER VIII
THAT evening we went up to Thompson’s field and sat and waited for the aeroplane. Mollie had gone up to her room directly after lunch, and had come down in half an hour to find me working in the model room. She had changed into a jumper and an old brown skirt, and she had come to ask me if she would do. “I haven’t put hardly any powder on, or anything,” she informed me. “Do you think I’ll be all right like this for Lady Stenning?”
Her mind was still running on Joan. I laid my set-square down and grinned at her. “You’re quite all right,” I replied. “Looking very nice. You don’t want a lot of powder and stuff in those sort of clothes. It doesn’t go, does it?”
She smiled, and looked up at me. “You don’t like a lot of that, do you?” she inquired. “It’s funny how people are about that. Lots of the gentlemen just don’t care about taking you out unless you’ve got a lot on.”
She glanced down at her shoes; they were black, high-heeled, and ornamental. “I didn’t bring my other pair of walking shoes down with me,” she said ruefully. “I thought they’d be too old for me to bring here. Does it matter?”
I laughed. “Not a hoot. But would you like to get a pair of country shoes? We’ll slip down in the car, if you like.”
She said: “I’d love it, ever so. But not now—when you’ve finished working.” And she indicated the drawing-board.
“Playing,” I said, “up here. I do my work down at the office.”
“What is it?” she inquired.
I moved aside the T-square for her to examine the drawing. “It’s a ship,” I said. “The hull lay-out of a little yacht I want to build.”
She stared at it, uncomprehending. “You do love ships,” she said at last. “I wish I knew about them more.”
And so we left the house and went down to the town at gossip time, and drew the Bentley up before the local shoe emporium to provide fresh matter for discussion at the local tea-tables. I knew all that before we went, of course, but Mollie came back in new brown brogues with tasselled laces and was happy for the afternoon.
They say that a man has licence to take off whatever clothes he puts on to a girl. I thought that I might take that risk, with shoes.
We sat on the gate to Thompson’s field for half an hour and waited for the aeroplane. We heard it first, and then we saw it in the sky, a speck above Kingswear. We watched it closer till the engine was shut off above the harbour, and the Moth came in on a wide gliding turn, side-slipped down across the hedge, and ran gently to rest in the middle of the field. Stenning swung her round and taxied in towards us; Mollie turned to me: “Wasn’t it pretty the way it did that?”
“He’s not got much to learn about an aeroplane,” I said.
Joan waved a hand from the front cockpit as they drew abreast of us; I got on to the wing tip and guided the machine towards the barn. Stenning taxied up to it and throttled back; then he reached out and switched off the engine. The propeller kicked and came to rest, and the silence of the evening closed on us again.
Stenning heaved himself up out of the rear cockpit and jumped down; he was in plus fours and a flying-helmet. Joan came climbing down the plane from the front seat.
“Had a good trip?” I asked.
“Thick as far as Salisbury,” said Stenning. He pulled his helmet off and smoothed his hair. “You’ve got it nice down here.”
Joan dropped down on to the ground. She had taken off her helmet, and she shook her shingled hair into some sort of order. “Cheer-oh, Malcolm,” she remarked. “You’re looking very fit.”
“So I am,” I said. “A bat or two still flying round the belfry, perhaps, but nothing to make a song about.” I turned to Sixpence: “Joan, I want you to meet Miss Gordon. She’s staying here with me for a few days.”
Lady Stenning stopped scratching her hair and composed her features into a smile. “Afternoon,” she said. “I hope he’s been remembering his duties as a host. He doesn’t often, I may say.”
Sixpence smiled diffidently, and said: “Good-afternoon.”
I turned to Stenning. He was staring at Mollie in perplexity, slowly passing one hand over his disordered hair. “But we’ve met before,” he said. “Of course we have.” He looked inquiringly at her. “Now where the devil was that?”
I asked in some surprise: “Do you two know each other, then?”
“I’m damn sure we do,” said Sir Philip. “We’ve met some place or other.” He smiled at her. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t just pin it down.”
I glanced at Mollie. She caught my eye despairingly, sending an appeal for help. Something was evidently wrong; I didn’t know what, but I did all I could to help her out. “Perhaps you met him at some party,” I remarked. “I’ve often met people like that, and couldn’t think of where we’d met before.”
She forced a smile. “We did meet once before. But I didn’t know you were Sir Philip Stenning, then.”
“Don’t suppose I was,” said Stenning equably. “But where was it that we met?”
There was nothing for it, then. “In the Salford Road Palais de Danse,” said Mollie bravely. “In Manchester—about two years ago. You came in one night with a party, rather late, and booked me for the evening.”
There was a momentary silence after that—the very slightest pause. I moved to her and slipped my arm through hers. “Miss Gordon teaches dancing in the North,” I said easily. “She’s spending her summer holiday down here with me.”
Stenning had recovered by that time. “By God, yes,” he replied. “I remember now. I was with Dick Annesley and Holt. I say, it’s splendid meeting you again down here.”
And Joan said practically: “Now’s the time to get my quickstep right. Philip’s always going on at me because I can’t do enough tricks.” She turned to Mollie: “I’d love it if you’d show me, some time.”
I sent a little message of my thanks to Joan. “Of course, I’d love to, Lady Stenning,” Mollie said. “I know some lovely new ones that Pagani did last season, ever so pretty.”
“That’s a bet,” said Joan. We turned to pushing the machine towards the barn. Before the opening Stenning folded back the wings; we pushed the Moth in under cover and collected their belongings from the locker. Then we made off towards the house, the girls walking ahead of Stenning and myself.
We went inside and Mollie went upstairs with Joan; Stenning and I turned into the library for a drink. He raised it with a meaning twinkle in his eye. “Luck!” he said. “Boys will be boys.”
I met his glance. “I brought her down from Leeds three days ago,” I said simply. “She’s in this business that you want to know about. Norman had a good go at her yesterday, but he didn’t get much out of her.”
He raised his eyebrows, swallowed down his drink, and set the glass down on the table by his side. “You’ve got to keeping some damn funny company, these days,” he said. “Not but what the girl’s all right. Nice, quiet little bit—or was when I met her. But I’d never have thought to find you with the C.I.D.”
I nodded. “You’re right there. I’ve had my fill of your friend Norman in the last two days.”
I told him that we’d have a talk about it after dinner, and took him up and showed him to his room. Mollie was in her room with Joan; I heard them talking as we passed the door. It seemed that they were getting on all right; I might have known I could rely on Joan. I passed along and saw that Stenning had everything he wanted in his place; then I went to my own room to wash.
I forget what we talked about that night at dinner, but it went all right. The party had settled down, and Mollie was no longer shy of Joan. I sat on with Stenning after dinner in the dining-room, after the ladies had gone through into the south room, and over the port I told him everything I knew about the business.
He was intensely interested. He told me that Norman had been on to him in London to find out what he had heard in Rotterdam; he had had some dealings with Norman previo
usly in his chequered career, and knew Sir David Carter. I found that he had told Norman a great deal more about the episode in Rotterdam than he had mentioned on the yacht. It seemed to hinge about a conversation in a café on the quays, and it went somehow like this:
Stenning had gone to this café for a drink. He was with another man, some engineer or pilot from the aerodrome, and they sat down in the sunshine at a table on the pavement outside. The window of the place was open above their heads and the door was open at their side; in this position they could not be seen from inside the café premises.
They sat there for the most part in silence, not having much to say to each other, sipping their drinks and looking out over the harbour. Inside the room some conversation was in progress about a shipping contract, the majority of which they overheard through door and window. Stenning sat there on the pavement in the sun, listening idly, not taking very much in. In fact, he never really thought of it again until he spoke of carpet-sweepers to me that evening on the yacht.
The conversation was in English. One of the talkers was apparently the captain of a vessel, a young man by the voice, educated, and English. The other one was probably a Dutchman or a German, speaking English with a strong accent. Stenning never saw either of the speakers.
The contract was for shipping carpet-sweepers and relays—electrical relays, perhaps, but Stenning did not know. Fifteen sweepers and thirty-eight relays were involved; the smallness of these quantities mildly attracted his attention. Delivery was to be made to Berth No. 16A; an advice note had been sent to the Professor. Stenning heard nothing to explain who the Professor was.
That was all he could remember of the conversation, which indeed had hardly attracted his attention at the time. Later on the same afternoon, however, he had occasion to go down to the docks to see to the unloading of an engine in connection with his work. Walking along the quays he recollected berth No. 16A, and had the curiosity to look and see what sort of vessel was involved. He found a small, single-masted sailing vessel of some forty or fifty tons, a sloop or bawley—he would not be certain which. She was an English rig. He only gave her a casual glance, for he was in a hurry. His impression was of a vessel that was little more than a smack; he retained the memory, however, of a cargo hatch. A crabber, or some vessel of that sort.
That was the sum of Stenning’s evidence. It had not provided Norman with a lot to go upon, because Stenning had seen neither of the talkers and was by no means sure that he would be able to identify the boat again. He had only looked down on her, quite casually, from the top of the quay.
Norman had made a search through the police archives at the Yard for the Professor, and had found at least fifteen. He said that every gang in his experience possessed some member, generally of a higher standard of intelligence than the others, who was described like that.
I sat on for some time in the dining-room discussing it with Stenning, but we didn’t get much forrader. Finally the clock struck ten, and roused me to the time. It was over an hour since the ladies had gone out and left us talking with the port. I got a little worried then that Sixpence might have fallen down and hurt herself with Joan, and so I rose, and we went through to the south room.
As it turned out, I need not have been alarmed. We found them playing the gramophone and talking about knitted cross-stitch jumpers, or something of that sort, and eating a box of chocolates that Joan must have brought down with her. I could see that they were getting on all right, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I had had visions of finding them silent in opposite corners of the room; one never knows with girls. Or I don’t, anyway.
It was a warm, still, summer night. We walked out on to the terrace in the dusk and stood there looking out over the Range, talking idly about the chance of the weather and the sea in the next few days. Stenning was going west next day in the Irene; I had other plans, myself, and thought of taking Sixpence east.
In the dim light she came to me, and said: “Please, Commander Stevenson, I think I’m going up to bed, if you don’t mind. I do feel ever so sleepy.”
“Right-o,” I said; “I’m going soon myself.” I paused. “I thought if it’s a fine day to-morrow we’d have an early breakfast and take Runagate.”
She looked up at me, puzzled. “Please—I didn’t understand.”
I smiled. “It’s the name of my yacht,” I said. “Runagate. I thought we might go sailing all day if it’s fine. Would you like that?”
She beamed at me. “It would be ever so lovely to do that. I’ve only been in a sailing boat once, and it was quite rough, and ever such fun.” She paused reminiscently. “The gentleman that took me, he was sick.”
Stenning laughed. “Red hot!” he said.
She laughed with him. “He was cross—what with being with me, and the others laughing at him.…” Her voice drifted away to silence in the dusk; a veil dropped upon the story of that pleasure party. “Good-night,” she said, and moved quietly away into the house.
I turned to Stenning and Joan. “We’d better get off early,” I said, thinking of the tides. “Breakfast at eight—not later, or we’ll find ourselves sweating out over the flood.”
“I thought of that,” said Stenning. “We’ll sail together.” I took a turn or two with them upon the terrace before going up. At the corner of the house, in Mollie’s room, I saw the light come on and shine out in the night. I saw her shadow move and pass upon the curtains of the room. I knew that Joan was watching, too; I stirred and glanced at her, and our eyes met.
“Malcolm,” said Joan, “who is she?” Her curiosity, I suppose, was irresistible. “I mean,” she said, “it’s so unlike you to have anyone.”
I eyed her grimly. I knew I had to face this questioning, this prying into my affairs. “She’s just a girl that I picked up in Leeds and brought down here,” I said defensively. “I gave her ten pounds to come.”
Joan laughed softly. “You are a funny old stick,” she said, quite quietly. “You needn’t think you’re going to kid me she’s that sort of girl, or you’re that sort of man.” She paused. “As a matter of fact, she told me all about her work, and how you came to meet. But then there was a lot more that I didn’t quite get the hang of; I don’t know that she really understood it all herself. All about her brother, and a fire in a motor-lorry, and the police, and staying on to have a holiday with you.”
She stopped, and there was a little silence on the terrace; Stenning had walked a little way away. “Well,” I said, “she seems to have told you all there is to tell. I haven’t anything to add to it.”
She stood and eyed me for a moment. And then, quite unexpectedly, she said: “I think you must have been rather a dear.”
I stood by the parapet looking out over the harbour mouth; the moon was coming up in a calm night, and there were wreaths of fog or mist down by the sea. “Stenning will tell you all I know,” I said at last. “I got involved in this when I was drunk, and played a dirty trick on her. And then I didn’t like it when I’d done it. That was all.”
I didn’t feel inclined to tell her any more, and she didn’t worry me to do so. So we took a turn or two upon the terrace, till Stenning said: “I vote we go to bed.”
“We’d better have a whisky first,” I said. Joan said good-night to us, and moved towards the house. I went with her to the window; on the threshold of the room she turned to me, and said:
“You’re very lucky, Malcolm. I think she’s simply sweet.” Then she was gone before I could reply, before I could ask her to explain herself.
I went with Stenning to the model room, and we had our whisky there. He wanted the Irene got up on the slip as soon as he came back; he said she wanted caulking at the stern-post. She didn’t, as it happened; what she wanted was new stuffing at the stern tube gland. I fixed up this with him, and then we too went up to bed.
I was up early the next day, but Sixpence was before us. I heard her go downstairs as I was shaving, and saw her in the garden with the Rogers’ dog. It was a misty so
rt of morning with blue sky above; not a breath of wind. I knew what that would mean for the day’s sailing—getting up sails that flapped about and didn’t draw, and trundling along under power most of the day. Still, it should be calm enough, and it seemed to me that there might be a little wind from the east to bring us home in the late afternoon.
I found her in the garden when I got down, and walked with her for a little time among the rose-beds on the dewy paving. Then we went back into the house; Stenning was there in sea clothes, dirty flannel trousers and a fisherman’s jersey. Then Joan came down in much the same sort of getup. I saw Sixpence looking at them furtively, and smiled. “You’re not dirty enough for this game,” I said.
“I didn’t know,” she murmured. “I thought you always did yachting in white clothes.”
“Not this sort,” said Stenning. “That’s only when you don’t know how to sail a boat and have to have a crew.” I think that was unjust, but Stenning hates a crew. So do I for that matter; paid hands are nothing but a nuisance on a boat.
She said again: “I didn’t know. I thought yachts always had a crew, like on the pictures.”
Joan laughed, and helped herself to sausages. “They don’t do any washing-up upon the pictures,” she observed. “Or perhaps that’s what the crew’s for. My experience is that a woman’s place upon a yacht is at the tub.”
We finished breakfast and collected all their gear together with a hamper of our own containing lunch, packed everything into the Bentley, and set off for the yard. Down by the harbour everything was wreathed in mist, thin, with a visibility of half a mile or so. I knew that this would clear off as the day went on; we often have it that way in the summer-time.
At the yard we separated. Joan and Stenning started to unload their stuff into their dinghy, and I went into my office for a few minutes to go through the post. There wasn’t very much to do; I came out presently and saw them pulling out to the Irene. My pram was at the steps; I took Sixpence down and put her in the stern-sheets with the hamper, took the sculls, and set out towards Runagate in the next berth.