On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

  The Admiral asked, “Where is Santa Maria Island?”

  “That one is just near Bremerton in Puget Sound, sir. There’s several others on the Coast. This one is the main Navy communications school for that area.”

  Commander Towers unrolled a chart, and pointed to the island with his finger. “Here it is, sir. It connects with the mainland by a bridge to this place Manchester right next to Clam Bay.”

  The Admiral asked, “What would be the range of the station on Santa Maria Island?”

  The Lieutenant said, “I wouldn’t know for certain, but I guess it’s global.”

  “Does it look like a global station? Very high aerials?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. The antennas there are quite a sight. I think it’s a part of the regular communication system covering the Pacific area, but I don’t know that for sure. I only attended the communications school.”

  “You never communicated with the station direct, from any ship that you were serving in?”

  “No, sir. We operated on a different set of frequencies.”

  They discussed the techniques of radio for a time. “If it turns out to be Santa Maria,” Dwight said at last, “I’d say we can investigate it without difficulty.” He glanced at the chart that he had studied before, to confirm his studies. “There’s forty feet of water right close up to it,” he said. “Maybe we could even lie alongside a wharf. In any case, we’ve got the rubber boat. If the radiation level is anywhere near reasonable we can put an officer on shore for a while, in the protective suit, of course.”

  The Lieutenant said, “I’d be glad to volunteer for that. I guess I know the way around that installation pretty well.”

  They left it so, and turned to a consideration of the Jorgensen effect, and the scientific observations that were needed to prove or to disprove it.

  Dwight met Moira Davidson for lunch after the conference. She had picked a small restaurant in the city for their meeting and he was there before her. She came to him bearing an attaché case.

  He greeted her and offered her a drink before lunch. She elected for a brandy and soda, and he ordered it. “Double?” he enquired, as the waiter stood by.

  “Single,” she said. He nodded to the waiter without comment. He glanced at the attaché case. “Been shopping?”

  “Shopping!” she said indignantly. “Me—full of virtue!”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “You’re going some place?”

  “No,” she said, enjoying his curiosity. “I’ll give you three guesses what’s in it.”

  “Brandy,” he suggested. “No. I carry that inside me.”

  He thought for a moment. “A carving knife. You’re going to cut one of those religious pictures out of the frame and take it away to hang in the bathroom.”

  “No. One more.”

  “Your knitting.”

  “I don’t knit. I don’t do anything restful. You ought to know that by now.”

  The drinks came. “Okay,” he said, “you win. What’s in it?”

  She lifted the lid of the case. It contained a reporter’s notebook, a pencil, and a manual of shorthand.

  He stared at these three items. “Say,” he exclaimed, “you aren’t studying that stuff?”

  “What’s wrong with that? You said I ought to, once.”

  He remembered vaguely what he had once said in an idle moment. “You taking a course, or something?”

  “Every morning,” she said. “I’ve got to be in Russell Street at half past nine. Half past nine—for me. I have to get up before seven!”

  He grinned. “Say, that’s bad. What are you doing it for?”

  “Something to do. I got fed up with harrowing the dung.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Three days. I’m getting awfully good at it. I can make a squiggle now with anyone.”

  “Do you know what it means when you’ve made it?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted. She took a drink of brandy. “That’s rather advanced work.”

  “Are you taking typing, too?”

  She nodded. “And book-keeping. All the lot.”

  He glanced at her in wonder. “You’ll be quite a secretary by the time you’re through.”

  “Next year,” she said. “I’ll be able to get a good job next year.”

  “Are many other people doing it?” he asked. “You go to a school, or something?”

  She nodded. “There are more there than I’d thought there’d be. I think it’s about half the usual number. There were hardly any pupils just after the war and they sacked most of the teachers. Now the numbers are going up and they’ve had to take them on again.”

  “More people are doing it now?”

  “Mostly teen-agers,” she told him. “I feel like a grandmother amongst them. I think their people got tired of having them at home and made them go to work.” She paused. “It’s the same at the University,” she said. “There are many more enrolments now than there were a few months ago.”

  “I’d never have thought it would work out that way,” he remarked.

  “It’s dull just living at home,” she said. “They meet all their friends at the Shop.”

  He offered her another drink but she refused it, and they went in to lunch. “Have you heard about John Osborne and his car?” she asked.

  He laughed. “I sure have. He showed it to me. I’d say he’s showing it to everybody that will come and look at it. It’s a mighty nice car.”

  “He’s absolutely mad,” she said. “He’ll kill himself on it.”

  He sipped his cold consommé. “So what? So long as he doesn’t kill himself before we start off on this cruise. He’s having lots of fun.”

  “When are you starting off on the cruise?” she asked.

  “I suppose we’ll be starting about a week from now.”

  “Is it going to be very dangerous?” she asked quietly.

  There was a momentary pause. “Why, no,” he said. “What made you think that?”

  “I spoke to Mary Holmes over the telephone yesterday. She seemed a bit worried over something Peter told her.”

  “About this cruise?”

  “Not directly,” she replied. “At least, I don’t think so. More like making his will, or something.”

  “That’s always a good thing to do,” he observed. “Everybody ought to make a will, every married man, that is.”

  The grilled steaks came. “Tell me, is it dangerous?” she asked again.

  He shook his head. “It’s quite a long cruise. We shall be away nearly two months, and nearly half of that submerged. But it’s not more dangerous than any other operation would be up in northern waters.” He paused. “It’s always tricky to go nosing round in waters where there may have been a nuclear explosion,” he said. “Especially submerged. You never really know what you may run in to. Big changes in the sea bed. You may tangle with a sunken ship you didn’t know was there. You’ve got to go in carefully and watch your step. But no, I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous.”

  “Come back safely, Dwight,” she said softly.

  He grinned. “Sure, we’ll come back safely. We’ve been ordered to. The Admiral wants his submarine back.”

  She sat back and laughed. “You’re impossible! As soon as I get sentimental you just—you just prick it like a toy balloon.”

  “I guess I’m not the sentimental type,” he said. “That’s what Sharon says.”

  “Does she?”

  “Sure. She gets quite cross with me.”

  “I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she observed. “I’m very sorry for her.”

  They finished lunch, left the restaurant, and walked to the National Gallery to see the current exhibition of religious pictures. They were all oil paintings, mostly in a modernistic style. They walked around the gallery set aside for the forty paintings in the exhibition, the girl interested, the naval officer frankly uncomprehending. Neither of them had much to say about the green Crucifixions or the pink N
ativities; the five or six paintings dealing with religious aspects of the war stirred them to controversy. They paused before the prizewinner, the sorrowing Christ on a background of the destruction of a great city. “I think that one’s got something,” she said. “For once I believe that I’d agree with the judges.”

  He said, “I hate it like hell.”

  “What don’t you like about it?”

  He stared at it. “Everything. To me it’s just phoney. No pilot in his senses would be flying as low as that with thermo-nuclear bombs going off all round. He’d get burned up.”

  She said, “It’s got good composition and good colouring.”

  “Oh, sure,” he replied. “But the subject’s phoney.”

  “In what way?”

  “If that’s meant to be the R.C.A. building, he’s put Brooklyn Bridge on the New Jersey side and the Empire State in the middle of Central Park.”

  She glanced at the catalogue. “It doesn’t say that it’s New York.”

  “Wherever it’s meant to be, it’s phoney,” he replied. “It couldn’t have looked like that.” He paused. “Too dramatic.” He turned away, and looked around him with distaste. “I don’t like any part of it,” he said.

  “Don’t you see anything of the religious angle here?” she asked. It was funny to her, because he went to church a lot and she had thought this exhibition would appeal to him.

  He took her arm. “I’m not a religious man,” he said. “That’s my fault, not the artists’. They see things differently than me.”

  They turned from the exhibition. “Are you interested in paintings?” she asked. “Or are they just a bore?”

  “They’re not a bore,” he said. “I like them when they’re full of colour and don’t try to teach you anything. There’s a painter called Renoir, isn’t there?”

  She nodded. “They’ve got some Renoirs here. Would you like to see them?”

  They went and found the French art, and he stood for some time before a painting of a river and a tree-shaded street beside it, with white houses and shops, very French and very colourful. “That’s the kind of picture I like,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of time for that.”

  They strolled around the galleries for a time, chatting and looking at the pictures. Then she had to go; her mother was unwell and she had promised to be home in time to get the tea. He took her to the station on the tram.

  In the rush of people at the entrance she turned to him. “Thanks for the lunch,” she said, “and for the afternoon. I hope the other pictures made up for the religious ones.”

  He laughed. “They certainly did. I’d like to go back there again and see more of them. But as for religion, that’s just not my line.”

  “You go to church regularly,” she said.

  “Oh well, that’s different,” he replied.

  She could not argue it with him, nor would she have attempted to in that crowd. She said, “Will we be able to meet again before you go?”

  “I’ll be busy in the daytime, most days,” he said. “We might take in a movie one evening, but we’d have to make it soon. We’ll be sailing as soon as the work gets completed, and it’s going well right now.”

  They arranged to meet for dinner on the following Tuesday, and she waved good-bye to him and vanished in the crowd. There was nothing of urgency to take him back to the dockyard, and there was still an hour left before the shops shut. He went out into the streets again and walked along the pavements looking at the shop windows. Presently he came to a sports store, hesitated for a moment, and went in.

  In the fishing department he said to the assistant, “I want a spinning outfit, a rod and a reel and a nylon line.”

  “Certainly, sir,” said the assistant. “For yourself?”

  The American shook his head. “This is a present for a boy ten years old,” he said. “His first rod. I’d like something good quality, but pretty small and light. You got anything in Fiberglas?”

  The assistant shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re right out of those at the moment.” He reached down a rod from the rack. “This is a very good little rod in steel.”

  “How would that stand up in sea water, for rusting? He lives by the sea, and you know what kids are.”

  “They stand up all right,” the assistant said. “We sell a lot of these for sea fishing.” He reached for reels while Dwight examined the rod and tested it in his hand. “We have these plastic reels for sea fishing, or I can give you a multiplying reel in stainless steel. They’re the better job, of course, but they come out a good deal more expensive.”

  Dwight examined them. “I think I’ll take the multiplyer.”

  He chose the line, and the assistant wrapped the three articles together in a parcel. “Makes a nice present for a boy,” he observed.

  “Sure,” said Dwight. “He’ll have a lot of fun with that.”

  He paid and took the parcel, and went through into that portion of the store that sold children’s bicycles and scooters. He said to the girl, “Have you got a Pogo stick?”

  “A Pogo stick? I don’t think so. I’ll ask the manager.”

  The manager came to him. “I’m afraid we’re right out of Pogo sticks. There hasn’t been a great deal of demand for them recently, and we sold the last only a few days ago.”

  “Will you be getting any more in?”

  “I put through an order for a dozen. I don’t know when they’ll arrive. Things are getting just a bit disorganised, you know. It was for a present, I suppose?”

  The Commander nodded. “I wanted it for a little girl of six.”

  “We have these scooters. They make a nice present for a little girl that age.”

  He shook his head. “She’s got a scooter.”

  “We have these children’s bicycles, too.”

  Too bulky and too awkward, but he did not say so. “No, it’s a Pogo stick I really want. I think I’ll shop around, and maybe come back if I can’t get one.”

  “You might try McPhails,” said the man helpfully. “They might have one left.”

  He went out and tried McPhails, but they, too, were out of Pogo sticks. He tried another shop with similar results;

  Pogo sticks, it seemed, were off the market. The more frustration he encountered the more it seemed to him that a Pogo stick was what he really wanted, and that nothing else would do. He wandered into Collins Street looking for another toy shop, but here he was out of the toy shop district and in a region of more expensive merchandise.

  In the last of the shopping hour he paused before a jeweller’s window. It was a shop of good quality; he stood for a time looking in at the windows. Emeralds and diamonds would be best. Emeralds went magnificently with her dark hair.

  He went into the shop. “I was thinking of a bracelet,” he said to the young man in the black morning coat. “Emeralds and diamonds, perhaps. Emeralds, anyway. The lady’s dark, and she likes to wear green. You got anything like that?”

  The man went to the safe, and came back with three bracelets which he laid on a black velvet pad. “We have these, sir,” he said. “What sort of price had you in mind?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said the Commander. “I want a nice bracelet.”

  The assistant picked one up. “We have this, which is forty guineas, or this one which is sixty-five guineas. They are very attractive, I think.”

  “What’s that one, there?”

  The man picked it up. “That is much more expensive, sir. It’s a very beautiful piece.” He examined the tiny tag. “That one is two hundred and twenty-five guineas.”

  It glowed on the black velvet. Dwight picked it up and examined it. The man had spoken the truth when he had said it was a lovely piece. She had nothing like it in her jewel box. He knew that she would love it.

  “Would that be English or Australian work?” he asked.

  The man shook his head. “This came originally from Cartier’s, in Paris. It came to us from the estate of a lady in Toorak. It’s in quite new conditi
on, as you see. Usually we find that the clasp needs attention, but this didn’t even need that. It is in quite perfect order.”

  He could picture her delight in it. “I’ll take that,” he said. “I’ll have to pay you with a cheque. I’ll call in and pick it up tomorrow or the next day.”

  He wrote the cheque and took his receipt. Turning away, he stopped, and turned back to the man. “One thing,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I could buy a Pogo stick, a present for a little girl. It Seems they’re kind of scarce around here just at present.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, sir,” said the man. “I think the only thing to do would be to try all the toy shops in turn.”

  The shops were closing and there was no time that night to do any more. He took his parcel back with him to Williamstown, and when he reached the carrier he went down into the submarine and laid it along the back of his berth, where it was inconspicuous. Two days later, when he got his bracelet, he took that down into the submarine also and locked it away in the steel cupboard that housed the confidential books.

  That day a Mrs. Hector Fraser took a broken silver cream jug to the jeweller’s to have the handle silver-soldered. Walking down the street that afternoon she encountered Moira Davidson, whom she had known from a child. She stopped and asked after her mother. Then she said, “My dear, you know Commander Towers, the American, don’t you?”

  The girl said, “Yes. I know him quite well. He spent a week-end out with us the other day.”

  “Do you think he’s crazy? Perhaps all Americans are crazy. I don’t know.”

  The girl smiled. “No crazier than all the rest of us, these days. What’s he been up to?”

  “He’s been trying to buy a Pogo stick in Simmonds’.”

  Moira was suddenly alert. “A Pogo stick?”

  “My dear, in Simmonds’ of all places. As if they’d sell Pogo sticks there! It seems he went in and bought the most beautiful bracelet and paid some fabulous price for it. That wouldn’t be for you by any chance?”

  “I haven’t heard about it. It sounds very unlike him.”