On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

“I take it that you aren’t enamoured of the navy,” he observed.

  “Well, are you having fun?”

  He considered the matter. “Yes, I think I am. It’s going to be rather interesting.”

  “Looking at dead people through a periscope. I can think of funnier sorts of fun.”

  They walked a step or two in silence. “It’s all knowledge,” he said at last. “One has to try and find out what has happened. It could be that it’s all quite different from what we think. The radioactive elements may be getting absorbed by something. Something may have happened to the half-life that we don’t know about. Even if we don’t discover anything that’s good, it’s still discovering things. I don’t think we shall discover anything that’s good, or very hopeful. But even so, it’s fun just finding out.”

  “You call finding out the bad things fun?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you’re going to lose before you start. It’s fun just playing them.”

  “You’ve got a pretty queer idea of fun and games.”

  “Your trouble is you won’t face up to things,” he told her. “All this has happened, and is happening, but you won’t accept it. You’ve got to face the facts of life some day.”

  “All right,” she said angrily, “I’ve got to face them. Next September, if what all you people say is right. That’s time enough for me.”

  “Have it your own way.” He glanced at her, grinning. “I wouldn’t bank too much upon September,” he remarked. “It’s September plus or minus about three months. We may be going to cop it in June, for all that anybody knows. Or, then again, I might be buying you a Christmas present.”

  She said furiously, “Don’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t,” he replied. “Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world before.” He paused, and then he added whimsically, “If it had, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

  “If you say one word more I’m going to push you over the edge of that deck.”

  Commander Towers came out of the island and walked across to them, neat in a double-breasted blue suit. “I wondered where you’d got to,” he remarked.

  The girl said, “Sorry, Dwight. We should have left a message. I wanted some fresh air.”

  John Osborne said, “You’d better watch out, sir. She’s in a pretty bad temper. I’d stand away from her head, if I were you, in case she bites.”

  “He’s been teasing me,” she said. “Like Albert and the lion. Let’s go, Dwight.”

  “See you tomorrow, sir,” the scientist said. “I’ll be staying on board over the week-end.”

  The captain turned away with the girl, and they went down the stairs within the island. As they passed down the steel corridor towards the gangway he asked her, “What was he teasing you about, honey?”

  “Everything,” she said vaguely. “Took his stick and poked it in my ear. Let’s have a drink before we start looking for a train, Dwight. I’ll feel better then.”

  He took her to the same hotel in the main street. Over the drinks he asked her, “How long have we got, this evening?”

  “The last train leaves Flinders Street at eleven-fifteen. I’d better get on that, Dwight. Mummy would never forgive me if I spent the night with you.”

  “I’ll say she wouldn’t. What happens when you get to Berwick? Is anybody meeting you?”

  She shook her head. “We left a bicycle at the station this morning. If you do the right thing by me I won’t be able to ride it, but it’s there, anyway.” She finished her first double brandy. “Buy me another, Dwight.”

  “I’ll buy you one more,” he said. “After that we’re getting on the train. You promised me that we’d be going dancing.”

  “So we are,” she said. “I booked a table at Mario’s. But I shuffle beautifully when I’m tight.”

  “I don’t want to shuffle,” he said. “I want to dance.”

  She took the drink he handed her. “You’re very exacting,” she said. “Don’t go poking any more sticks in my ear—I just can’t bear it. Most men don’t know how to dance, anyway.”

  “You’ll find me one of them,” he said. “We used to dance a lot back in the States. But I’ve not danced since the war began.”

  She said, “I think you live a very restricted life.”

  He managed to detach her from the hotel after her second drink, and they walked to the station in the evening light. They arrived at the city half an hour later, and walked out into the street. “It’s a bit early,” she said. “Let’s walk.”

  He took her arm to guide her through the Saturday evening crowds. Most of the shops had plenty of good stock still in the windows but few were open. The restaurants and cafés were all full, doing a roaring trade; the bars were shut, but the streets were full of drunks. The general effect was one of boisterous and uninhibited lightheartedness, more in the style of 1890 than of 1963. There was no traffic in the wide streets but for the trams, and people swarmed all over the road. At the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets an Italian was playing a very large and garish accordion, and playing it very well indeed. Around him, people were dancing to it. As they passed the Regal Cinema a man, staggering along in front of them, fell down, paused for a moment upon hands and knees, and rolled dead drunk into the gutter. Nobody paid much attention to him. A policeman, strolling down the pavement, turned him over, examined him casually, and strolled on.

  “They have quite a time here in the evenings,” Dwight remarked.

  “It’s nothing like so bad as it used to be,” the girl replied. “It was much worse than this just after the war.”

  “I know it. I’d say they’re getting tired of it.” He paused, and then he said, “Like I did.”

  She nodded. “This is Saturday, of course. It’s very quiet here on an ordinary night. Almost like it was before the war.”

  They walked on to the restaurant. The proprietor welcomed them because he knew her well; she was in his establishment at least once a week and frequently more often. Dwight Towers had been there half a dozen times, perhaps, preferring his club, but he was known to the head waiter as the captain of the American submarine. They were well received and given a good table in a corner away from the band; they ordered drinks and dinner.

  “They’re pretty nice people here,” Dwight said appreciatively. “I don’t come in so often, and I don’t spend much when I do come.”

  “I come here pretty frequently,” the girl said. She sat in reflection for a moment. “You know, you’re a very lucky man.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve got a full time job to do.”

  It had not occurred to him before that he was fortunate. “That’s so,” he said slowly. “I certainly don’t seem to get a lot of time to go kicking around on the loose.”

  “I do,” she said. “It’s all I’ve got to do.”

  “Don’t you work at anything? No job at all?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said. “Sometimes I drive a bullock round the farm at home, harrowing the muck. That’s all I ever do.”

  “I’d have thought you’d have been working in the city some place,” he remarked.

  “So would I,” she said a little cynically. “But it’s not so easy as that. I took honours in history up at the Shop, just before the war.”

  “The Shop?”

  “The University. I was going to do a course of shorthand and typing. But what’s the sense in working for a year at that? I wouldn’t have time to finish it. And if I did, there aren’t any jobs.”

  “You mean, business is slowing down?”

  She nodded. “Lots of my friends are out of a job now. People aren’t working like they used to, and they don’t want secretaries. Half of Daddy’s friends—people who used to go to the office—they just don’t go now. They live at home, as if they were retired. An awful lot of offices have closed, you know.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,�
� he remarked. “A man has a right to do the things he wants to do in the last months, if he can get by with the money.”

  “A girl has a right to, too,” she said. “Even if the things she wants to do are something different to driving a bullock round the farm to spread the dung.”

  “There’s just no work at all?” he asked.

  “Nothing that I could find,” she said. “And I’ve tried hard enough. You see, I can’t even type.”

  “You could learn,” he said. “You could go and take that course that you were going to take.”

  “What’s the sense of that, if there’s no time to finish it, or use it afterwards?”

  “Something to work at,” he remarked. “Just as an alternative to all the double brandies.”

  “Work just for the sake of working?” she enquired. “It sounds simply foul.” Her fingers drummed restlessly upon the table.

  “Better than drinking just for the sake of drinking,” he observed. “Doesn’t give you a hangover.”

  She said irritably, “Order me a double brandy, Dwight, and then let’s see if you can dance.”

  He took her out upon the dance floor, feeling vaguely sorry for her. She was in a prickly kind of mood. Immersed in his own troubles and occupations, it had never occurred to him that young, unmarried people had their own frustrations in these times. He set himself to make the evening pleasant for her, talking about the films and musicals they both had seen, the mutual friends they had. “Peter and Mary Holmes are funny,” she told him once. “She’s absolutely nuts on gardening. They’ve got that flat upon a three years’ lease. She’s planning to plant things this autumn that’ll come up next year.”

  He smiled. “I’d say she’s got the right idea. You never know.” He steered the conversation back to safer subjects. “Did you see the Danny Kaye movie at the Plaza?”

  Yachting and sailing were safe topics, and they talked around those for some time. The floor show came on as they finished dinner, and amused them for a while, and then they danced again. Finally the girl said, “Cinderella. I’ll have to start and think about that train, Dwight.”

  He paid the bill while she was in the cloakroom, and met her by the door. In the streets of the city it was quiet now; the music was stilled, the restaurants and cafés were now closed. Only the drunks remained, reeling down the pavements aimlessly or lying down to sleep. The girl wrinkled her nose. “They ought to do something about all this,” she said. “It never was like this before the war.”

  “It’s quite a problem,” he said thoughtfully. “It comes up all the time in the ship. I reckon a man has a right to do the things he wants to when he goes ashore, so long as he doesn’t go bothering other people. Some folks just have to have the liquor, times like these.” He eyed a policeman on the corner. “That’s what the cops here seem to think, in this city, at any rate. I’ve never seen a drunk arrested yet, not just for being drunk.”

  At the station she paused to thank him and to wish him good night. “It’s been a beaut evening,” she said. “The day, too. Thanks for everything, Dwight.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it, Moira,” he said. “It’s years since I danced.”

  “You’re not too bad,” she told him. And then she asked, “Do you know when you go off up north?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. A message came in just before we left, telling me to report Monday morning in the First Naval Member’s offices, with Lieutenant-Commander Holmes. I imagine we’ll get our final briefing then, and maybe get away on Monday afternoon.”

  She said, “Good luck. Will you give me a ring when you come back to Williamstown?”

  “Why, sure,” he said. “I’d like to do that. Maybe we could go sailing again some place, or else do this again.”

  She said, “That’ld be fun. I’ll have to go now, or I’ll miss this train. Good night again, and thanks for everything.”

  “It’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “Good night.” He stood and watched her go till she was lost in the crowd. From the back view, in that light summer dress, she was not unlike Sharon—or could it be that he was forgetting, muddling them up? No, she really was a bit like Sharon in the way she walked. Not in any other way. Perhaps that was why he liked her, that she was just a little like his wife.

  He turned away, and went to catch his train to Williamstown.

  He went to church next morning in Williamstown, as was his habit on a Sunday when circumstances made it possible. At ten o’clock on Monday morning he was with Peter Holmes in the Navy Department, waiting in the outer office to see the First Naval Member, Sir David Hartman. The secretary said, “He won’t be a minute, sir. I understand he’s taking you both over to the Commonwealth Government Offices.”

  “He is?”

  The Lieutenant nodded. “He ordered a car.” A buzzer sounded and the young man went into the inner office. He reappeared in a moment. “Will you both go in now.”

  They went into the inner office. The Vice-Admiral got up to meet them. “Morning, Commander Towers. Morning, Holmes. The Prime Minister wants to have a word with you before you go, so we’ll go over to his office in a minute. Before we do that, I want to give you this.” He turned, and lifted a fairly bulky typescript from his desk. “This is the report of the commanding officer of U.S.S. Swordfish on his cruise from Rio de Janeiro up into the North Atlantic.” He handed it to Dwight. “I’m sorry that it’s been so long in coming, but the pressure on the radio to South America is very great, and there’s a good deal of it. You can take it with you and look it over at your leisure.”

  The American took it, and turned it over with interest. “It’s going to be very valuable to us, sir. Is there anything in it to affect this operation?”

  “I don’t think there is. He found a high level of radioactivity—atmospheric radioactivity—over the whole area, greater in the north than in the south, as you’d expect. He submerged—let’s see” he took the typescript back and turned the pages quickly “—he submerged in Latitude Two South, off Parnaiba, and stayed submerged for the whole cruise, surfacing again in Latitude Five South off Cape Sao Roque.”

  “How long was he submerged, sir?”

  “Thirty-two days.”

  “That might be a record.”

  The Admiral nodded. “I think it is. I think he says so, somewhere.” He handed back the typescript. “Well, take it with you and study it. It gives an indication of conditions in the north. By the way, if you should want to get in touch with him, he’s moved his ship down into Uruguay. He’s at Montevideo now.”

  Peter asked, “Are things getting hot in Rio, sir?”

  “It’s getting a bit close.”

  They left the office in the Navy Department, went down into the yard, and got into an electric truck. It took them silently through the empty streets of the city, up tree-lined Collins Street to the Commonwealth Offices. In a few minutes they found themselves seated with Mr. Donald Ritchie, the Prime Minister, around a table.

  He said, “I wanted to see you before you sailed, Captain, to tell you a little bit about the purpose of this cruise, and to wish you luck. I’ve read your operation order, and I have very little to add to that. You are to proceed to Cairns, to Port Moresby, and to Darwin for the purpose of reporting on conditions in those places. Any signs of life would be particularly interesting, of course, whether human or animal. Vegetation, too. And seabirds, if you can gather any information about those.”

  “I think that’s going to be difficult, sir,” Dwight said. “Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, I understand you’re taking a member of the C.S.I.R.O. with you.”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Osborne.”

  The Prime Minister passed his hand across his face, a habitual gesture. “Well. I don’t expect you to take risks. In fact, I forbid it. We want you back here with your ship intact and your crew in good health. You will use your own discretion whether you expose yourself on deck, whether you expose your ship upon the surface, guided by your scientific officer. Within the limits of that i
nstruction, we want all the information we can get. If the radiation level makes it possible, you should land and inspect the towns. But I don’t think it will.”

  The First Naval Member shook his head. “I very much doubt it. I think you may find it necessary to submerge by the time you get to Twenty-two South.”

  The American thought rapidly. “That’s south of Townsville.”

  The Prime Minister said heavily, “Yes. There are still people alive in Townsville. You are expressly forbidden to go there, unless your operation order should be modified by a signal from the Navy Department.” He raised his head, and looked at the American. “That may seem hard to you, Commander. But you can’t help them, and it’s better not to raise false hopes by showing them your ship. And after all, we know what the conditions are in Townsville. We still have telegraphic contact with them there.”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “That leads me to the last point that I have to make,” the Prime Minister said. “You are expressly forbidden to take anybody on board your ship during this cruise, except with the prior permission of the Navy Department obtained by radio. I know that you will understand the obvious necessity that neither you or any member of your crew should be exposed to contact with a radioactive person. Is that quite clear?”

  “Quite clear, sir.”

  The Prime Minister rose to his feet. “Well, good luck to all of you. I shall look forward to talking to you again, Commander Towers, in a fortnight’s time.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nine days later U.S.S. Scorpion surfaced at dawn. In the grey light, as the stars faded, the periscopes emerged from a calm sea off Sandy Cape near Bundaberg in Queensland, in Latitude Twenty-four degrees South. She stayed below the surface for a quarter of an hour while the captain checked his position by the lighthouse on the distant shore and by echo soundings, and while John Osborne checked the atmospheric and sea radiation levels, with fingers fumbling irritably upon his instruments. Then she slid up out of the depths, a long grey hull, low in the water, heading south at twenty knots. On the bridge deck a hatch clanged open and the officer of the deck emerged, followed by the captain and by many others. In the calm weather the forward and aft torpedo hatches were opened and clean air began to circulate throughout the boat. A life line was rigged from the bow to the bridge structure and another to the stern, and all the men off duty clambered up on deck into the fresh morning air, white faced, rejoicing to be out of it, to see the rising sun. They had been submerged for over a week.