by Nevil Shute
“All right if you haven’t got to scrub them yourself,” the stewardess said. “But the metal ones are so much easier.”
Miss Teasdale glanced at her. “Kind of interested in housework, aren’t you?”
Unaccountably, beside this sophisticated woman Marjorie Corder felt like a child. “Everybody’s interested in that,” she said defensively. “Besides, I was a nurse once, before I went to the Air Transport Organisation. I know a lot about scrubbing.”
“Going to stay with the airline? Or leave and marry the boy friend?” She glanced at the stewardess’s hand. “Or isn’t there a boy friend?”
The girl shook her head. “Not now.”
“No? I’d have thought there’d have been plenty.”
“I got inoculated,” Marjorie said. “There was one once, but he was killed. He was a bomber pilot.”
“In the war?”
She nodded.
“That was quite a while ago,” the actress said. And then she said, “I see.”
Miss Corder flushed, in spite of herself. “I don’t know what it is you see,” she said. “I’ve got this other floor to do.” And she went back to the sitting-room, and went down on her knees beside the pail.
“Okay,” the older woman said. “You don’t have to get worked up about it. Guess I’ll go along now and get Mrs. Scott to telephone the office for my car.”
Marjorie raised her head. “All right,” she said. “Tell her I’ll be round in about half an hour for my coat.”
Miss Teasdale walked back slowly to our little flat, deep in thought; it did not now seem very important to her whether she was recognised or not. One or two women and three men, glanced at her curiously in the street, but no one spoke. She reached the garden gate just as I drove up from the factory; I had left early that night, resolved to get in a couple of hours more upon my lecture that evening, somehow and in some place. I had to give it the following night; indeed, the next day, with our full-dress meeting upon Reindeer fatigue in the morning and my lecture in the evening and flying to Montreal that night, was likely to be quite a heavy one.
I took her into the flat and telephoned for her car; it would take an hour or so to come from London. I poured her out a glass of sherry.
“Tired?” I said. She looked rather limp.
“Just a bit.” She roused herself. “I walked around to see where Mr. Honey lives. Miss Corder, she’s still there scrubbing the floor. Says she’ll be another half an hour. She’s got energy, that kid has.”
“Well,” I said, “She’s young.” I could have bitten my tongue out an instant later for having said that.
The actress nodded briefly. Presently she said, “Say, Dr. Scott—this research on airplanes you and Mr. Honey do. Can that be done any place? I mean, suppose a man had money, enough money to set up a swell laboratory, say, at some place like Palm Beach, and maybe another one in Vermont for the summer months. Could the work be done that way?”
“Research on aeroplanes?” I asked. “You mean, the sort of things that we do here in Farnborough?”
“That’s right. Fatigue, is that it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think you could do any effective work upon fatigue effects in airframes in a private laboratory,” I said. “You’d have no access to the secret information, for one thing, so you’d never be up to date. But apart from that, the expense would be prohibitive to any private individual.”
“What’s that about secret information?”
“All the work done on military aeroplanes is secret,” I said. “If the wings start coming off our latest bomber in a dive, we don’t tell the world about it. Not until we get it put right, anyway. But at Farnborough, all that experience is at our disposal when we’re dealing with the Reindeer tail—in fact, we should ourselves be working on the secret troubles of the bomber at the same time. A private research worker would always be behind, for that reason alone.”
“He wouldn’t cut any ice, working that way?”
“I don’t see how he could. Research on aeroplanes is a big business, too. I don’t know what this fatigue story on the Reindeer is going to cost before we’re through with it. Apart altogether from the repair of the one at Gander, what’s going on at Farnborough may cost thirty thousand pounds before we’re through with the first stage of it.”
She opened her eyes. “A hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That’s quite a lot of money. How long would that be spread over?”
“About a year,” I said. “But I don’t think it could be done at all upon a private basis. There’s the buildings and the plant to be considered too, you see.”
She nodded. “Like the stages.”
I did not understand her. “No, I mean the actual buildings to house the experimental work.”
“That’s right. Like the stages that we put up the sets in, ready to start shooting the scene.”
I thought of the great barnlike buildings I had read about, “Yes—just like that,” I said. “You’d need something just about as big as that, and a corresponding staff.”
She turned the conversation and asked me about my lecture that I was to give upon the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft flying at High Mach Numbers.” Elspeth had told her about it, it seemed, and had confused Miss Teasdale with her erudition. The child, it seemed, knew quite a lot about high Mach numbers and the difficulties that aeroplanes get into in those regions. The actress had no idea what a Mach number was, high or low, and was hazy about the meaning of the word analysis. But she was a very beautiful and charming woman; I did not find the explanations tedious.
Shirley came in while that was going on, and almost immediately Miss Corder followed her. I poured them both out a glass of sherry, Monica Teasdale said, “Dr. Scott’s been telling me about his lecture tomorrow night, Mrs. Scott. Elspeth told me first. She said it was a great distinction for a young man like Dr. Scott to be asked to read a paper to the Royal Aeronautical Society.” She glanced at me mischievously. “I’m just repeating what she said.”
“I can quite believe it,” I replied. “That child’s got the mind of a woman of forty.”
Shirley said artlessly, “I do wish I could come up and hear it.”
I stared at her; it had never entered my head that she would not be coming to London. “Aren’t you coming?” I suppose there was disappointment in my voice, because we had worked at it a good deal together. And then, it struck me that she was talking with a purpose.
“I can’t, Dennis,” she said. “There’s Elspeth.”
Miss Teasdale sat motionless, staring at the sherry in her glass. The faint lines upon her face seemed suddenly deeper.
Marjorie Corder burst out, “But Mrs. Scott, of course you must go! I’ve got a few days’ leave. I’d love to come down again tomorrow and sit with her, or stay the night if you like. She’ll be perfectly all right with me. If anything should happen, I am a nurse, you know.”
The actress sat silent, motionless.
Shirley said, “Would you—really?”
“Of course, Mrs. Scott. I’d love to do that.” The girl was bright-eyed and eager.
Shirley said, “It really is most awfully kind of you—I do want to go, terribly.” And then we all said what a good idea it was and Shirley said, “And after the lecture we can go on and have dinner somewhere, and then I’ll come to the Airways place at Victoria and see you off.”
I grinned. “Fine,” I said. “But you’ll miss the last train home.”
“Then I’ll stay in Town, and make a night of it,” she said. She turned to Marjorie Corder. “Did you really mean that you’d spend the night here with Elspeth? It means sleeping on the sofa, I’m afraid.”
“Of course, Mrs. Scott. I’d love to do that.”
Presently I suggested that we’d better go and tell Elspeth about it, and we all walked down to see her in the bedroom. “Guess what’s going to happen tomorrow,” I said.
The child’s face lit up. “Am I going back to our house?”
Marjorie sat down on the bed and took her hand. “Not quite that,” she said gently. “But Mrs. Scott wants to go to London to hear Dr. Scott give his lecture, so I said I’d come and spend the night here and look after you. Would you like that?”
The stewardess, as I have mentioned before, was a very charming young woman. She made a sweet picture, sitting talking to the sallow little girl. Elspeth said, rather shyly, “Yes.” And then she said, “Will Dr. Scott be coming back after the lecture?”
“No,” said Marjorie. “He’s got to fly to Montreal and he’s leaving that night from London, and Mrs. Scott’s going to see him off and stay the night in Town. So there’ll be just you and me alone down here tomorrow night.”
Elspeth said in distress, “But that means there’ll be nobody at all in our house, and there’ll be a burglar.”
We stared at each other in consternation. We had all heard about this burglar in the last few days, sufficiently to realise that it was the sort of phobia that a child has to be led out of, that it may not be very good to repress. In Elspeth’s case she certainly would not sleep while that house remained empty, and she was a mild concussion case.
Shirley said, “Oh dear. I never thought of that.”
There was a momentary silence.
Marjorie Corder said slowly, “Mrs. Scott, would you think this very awful? I don’t believe Mr. Honey would mind me sleeping in his house, in the circumstances. They won’t want me at Air Transport before the week-end, and Mr. Honey will probably be back himself by then. What I was thinking was, we might move Elspeth back into her own house and her own bed tomorrow morning. I’d be very glad to sleep there tomorrow night and look after her there, and the next night, too, if that would help. I’m sure Mr. Honey will be back in a day or two.”
I said, “It’ll only be a couple of days at the most. There’s a Lincoln from the Navigation School picking him up this week.”
Shirley said slowly, “I don’t think it would matter a bit. After all, he did ask you to come and see if Elspeth was getting on all right. I don’t think he could possibly mind if you moved in for a night or two to look after her, as things are. But surely, it’s a great tie for you?”
The girl said, “I’d like to do that, honestly.”
I said that I thought it would be a darned good idea. Shirley had had quite enough of sleeping on the sofa, I thought, and if I was to go away to Labrador upon this trip, I did not want to leave her with a sick child on her hands. If this Miss Corder who was a trained nurse wanted to take over and move Elspeth back into her own place and look after her there, I was all for it, and the sooner the better.
Everyone was very pleased about the decision we had taken, except possibly Miss Teasdale, who said very little. We made all the arrangements; Marjorie was to come down first thing in the morning, Shirley was to drive me to the station in the car and then bring back the car and transfer Elspeth back into her own house.
Soon after that, the stewardess went off to catch the bus to the station for the train that was to take her up to London. As soon as she was gone, Miss Teasdale said, “I guess I’ll have to say good-bye, now, to you folks. I don’t see any reason to come down again tomorrow.” She was brightly cheerful.
Shirley said in disappointment, “Oh, can’t you stay and see Mr. Honey when he gets back? You’ve done such a lot for him.”
She smiled. “It’s you folks have done everything—all I did was read a while with Elspeth. I certainly did enjoy doing that. But now she’s going to be all fixed up, and as for me, I’ve no right to be over on this side at all. I’m due back on the Coast in five days’ time.”
She was emphatic that she had to go, and she went through into the bedroom again to say good-bye to Elspeth. “One day,” she said, “when you’re a little older, I want you to come over to the States and spend a holiday with me. We’ll go on a ranch up in the mountains, riding and swimming all day. In the spring, when all the flowers are out. Would you like that?”
The child nodded. “Mm.”
“Okay, honey,” said the actress brightly. “We’ll look forward to it.” She paused, and then she said, “If I write you sometimes, would you like to write me back and say what you’ve been doing?”
Elspeth nodded again. “I’ll write four pages,” she said.
“Okay, honey,” said Miss Teasdale again, “that’s a deal. I must go now.” She stooped and kissed the little sallow face. “Tell your daddy I’m sorry that I couldn’t wait to see him. Tell him I’ll look forward to seeing you both again next time I’m over on this side.”
“How long will that be?” the child asked.
“A couple of years, maybe. But we’ll write in the meantime, won’t we?”
Elspeth nodded vigorously.
Miss Teasdale turned to the door, and waved her hand brightly. “Good-by-ee,” she said, with rising American inflection.
As we walked down the passage there was a ring at the door, and it was the chauffeur. We went into the sitting-room, where she gathered up her things. And then she said, “It’s been swell knowing you folks. Going around the way I do, one never gets to know the real English people, the way you live and work. But this two days has been just like it used to be at home, as if you were all Hoosiers. It certainly has been grand knowing you.”
I forget what we said in reply; it doesn’t matter. We walked down with her to her car, and this time there was a little crowd of ten or fifteen people on the pavement, for the news had leaked. Two little girls with autograph albums stopped her as she crossed the pavement and said, “Miss Teasdale, would you sign my book?” She smiled brilliantly, professionally, at them, scrawled her name, and got into the car; we stood and watched it as it slid away, conscious of the eyes of the small crowd now focussed upon us, friends of the great.
Shirley asked, “Dennis, what’s a Hoosier?”
“Blowed if I know,” I said.
We went in and had supper, and gave Elspeth hers, and made her bed for her, and put her down to sleep. Then we washed up the supper things, and then I had to pack a suitcase with everything that I would need for a fortnight or three weeks in Ottawa and Labrador. By half-past nine I was finished, and could take my overnight bag and the printed script of my paper and go round to Honey’s house to do a final trial reading of the thing, and finally, to sleep.
Shirley came with me to the gate of the front garden of our little block of flats. “Good night, Dennis,” she said softly. “Don’t stay up later than midnight, will you?”
It was reasonable that I should get a good night’s sleep. “All right,” I said.
She stood for a moment, looking down the road in the dusk, in the direction that Miss Teasdale’s car had gone. “That poor woman,” she said thoughtfully.
I asked her, “Why do you say that?”
She kicked absently at a tuft of grass. “I don’t know. I think she’s having rather a rough time.” She turned back to the house. “Mind now, don’t stay up too late.”
I went off down the road, and the “Performance Analysis of Aircraft Flying at High Mach Numbers” put the matter from my mind.
9
I TRAVELLED UP to London next morning with the Director for our meeting at the Ministry of Supply. It took place in one of those long, bleak: conference rooms you sometimes find in economical Government offices, furnished only with a long table and about twenty hard seats. It was a very hot day, with the sun streaming in across the table. Our Chairman was Stanley Morgan, the Director of Research and Development. Ferguson was seated by his side, and on his other hand was a chap from the Secretariat that I did not know, and next to him there was a lean, cadaverous beggar from the Treasury whose name I never learned. Then there was Carter from the Ministry of Civil Aviation with some stooge or other. Next was Sir David Moon, the Chairman of C.A.T.O., with Carnegie beside him, and next to them and in their party was a little sandy-haired man, rather stout, who turned out to be Samuelson, the Captain of the Reindeer that Honey had had his fun with. Th
ere were two chaps from the Air Registration Board, and Group-Captain Fisher of the Accidents Branch, with somebody to help him. Next came E. P. Prendergast, the designer of the Reindeer, looking like thunder, and with him was a chap in a black jacket who turned out to be the legal adviser to the Company. Finally, there was the Director and myself. I don’t know what he felt like. I know I felt like a bag fox about to be let loose in front of a pack of hounds.
The Chairman opened the meeting by saying that as there was no formal agenda he would lay down terms of reference right away. The meeting had been called to discuss the airworthiness of the Reindeer aircraft with particular reference to tailplane failure by fatigue. He hoped that as a result of our discussions we would reach agreement upon whether any steps were necessary to restrict the operation of the aircraft, either now or in the future. He wished to emphasise that any decisions taken must be taken upon sound technical grounds alone. At the same time, he said, the matter was of grave political importance. The Reindeer aircraft was now maintaining more than half of the British Transatlantic passenger service, and by the end of the year would be doing the lot. If those aircraft had to be taken out of service the consequences would be very serious indeed. He was sure that the technicians present, of whom he was one, appreciated these hard facts. With that, he would ask the Director of the R.A.E. to give a short account of the investigations which had been proceeding on the Reindeer tail.
The Director said that the matter arose from certain basic researches into the question of fatigue, for which the second Reindeer tailplane submitted for structural tests, and unbroken in those tests, was used. This choice had been entirely fortuitous; the tailplane happened to be there, and so we used it. The research was directly in the hands of Mr. Honey, working under Dr. Scott; it was unfortunate, he said dryly, that circumstances prevented Mr. Honey from being present at that meeting. Sir David Moon tightened his lips and looked annoyed, but said nothing.