On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

  They did so, and picked a little twelve-inch mower. Peter looked at the price tag, picked up the mower, and went to find the assistant. “I’ll take this one,” he said.

  “Okay,” said the man. “Good little mower, that.” He grinned sardonically. “Last you a lifetime.”

  “Forty-seven pounds ten,” said Peter. “Can I pay by cheque?”

  “Pay by orange peel for all I care,” the man said. “We’re closing down tonight.”

  The naval officer went over to a table and wrote his cheque; Mary was left talking to the salesman. “Why are you closing down?” she asked. “Aren’t people buying things?”

  He laughed shortly. “Oh—they come in and they buy. Not much to sell them now. But I’m not going on right up till the end, same with all the staff. We had a meeting yesterday, and then we told the management. After all, there’s only about a fortnight left to go. They’re closing down tonight.”

  Peter came back and handed his cheque to the salesman. “Okey-doke,” the man said. “I don’t know if they’ll ever pay it in without a staff up in the office. Maybe I’d better give you a receipt in case they get on to your tail next year …” He scribbled a receipt and turned to another customer.

  Mary shivered. “Peter, let’s get out of this and go home. It’s horrid here, and everything smells.”

  “Don’t you want to stay up here for lunch?” He had thought she would enjoy the little outing.

  She shook her head. “I’d rather go home now, and have lunch there.”

  They drove in silence out of the city and down to the bright little seaside town that was their home. Back in their apartment on the hill she regained a little of her poise; here were the familiar things she was accustomed to, the cleanness that was her pride, the carefully tended little garden, the clean wide view out over the bay. Here was security.

  After lunch, smoking before they did the washing up, she said, “I don’t think I want to go to Melbourne again, Peter.”

  He smiled. “Getting a bit piggy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s horrible,” she said vehemently. “Everything shut up, and dirty, and stinking. It’s as if the end of the world had come already.”

  “It’s pretty close, you know,” he said.

  She was silent for a moment. “I know; that’s what you’ve been telling me all along.” She raised her eyes to his. “How far off is it, Peter?”

  “About a fortnight,” he said. “It doesn’t happen with a click, you know. People start getting ill, but not all on the same day. Some people are more resistant than others.”

  “But everybody gets it, don’t they?” she asked in a low tone. “I mean, in the end.”

  He nodded. “Everybody gets it, in the end.”

  “How much difference is there in people? I mean, when they get it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t really know. I think everybody would have got it in three weeks.”

  “Three weeks from now, or three weeks after the first case r”

  “Three weeks after the first case, I mean,” he said. “But I don’t really know.” He paused. “It’s possible to get it slightly and get over it,” he said. “But then you get it again ten days or a fortnight later.”

  She said, “There’s no guarantee, then, that you and I would get it at the same time? Or Jennifer? We might any of us get it, any time?”

  He nodded. “That’s the way it is. We’ve just got to take it as it comes. After all, it’s what we’ve always had to face, only we’ve never faced it, because we’re young. Jennifer might always have died first, of the three of us, or I might have died before you. There’s nothing much that’s new about it.”

  “I suppose not,” she said. “I did hope it all might happen on one day.”

  He took her hand. “It may quite well do so,” he said. “But—we’d be lucky.” He kissed her. “Let’s do the washing up.” His eye fell on the lawn mower. “We can mow the lawn this afternoon.”

  “The grass is all wet,” she said sadly. “It’ll make it rusty.”

  “Then we’ll dry it in front of the fire in the lounge,” he promised her. “I won’t let it get rusty.”

  Dwight Towers spent the week-end with the Davidsons at Harkaway, working from dawn till dusk each day on the construction of the fences. The hard physical work was a relief from all his tensions, but he found his host to be a worried man. Someone had told him about the resistance of the rabbit to radioactive infection. The rabbit did not worry him a great deal, for Harkaway had always been remarkably free from rabbits, but the relative immunity of the furred animals raised questions in regard to his beef cattle, and to these he had found no answer.

  He unburdened himself one evening to the American. “I never thought of it,” he said. “I mean, I assumed the Aberdeen Angus, they’d die at the same time as us. But now it looks as though they’ll last a good while longer. How much longer they’ll last—that I can’t find out. Apparently there’s been no research done on it. But as it is, of course, I’m feeding out both hay and silage, and up here we go on feeding out until the end of September in an average year—about half a bale of hay a beast each day. I find you have to do that if you’re going to keep them prime. Well, I can’t see how to do it if there’s going to be no one here. It really is a problem.”

  “What would happen if you opened the haybarn to them, and let them take it as they want it?”

  “I thought of that, but they’d never get the bales undone. If they did, they’d trample most of it underfoot and spoil it.” He paused. “I’ve been puzzling to think out if there isn’t some way we could do it with a time clock and an electric fence … But any way you look at it, it means putting out a month’s supply of hay into the open paddock, in the rain. I don’t know what to do …”

  He got up. “Let me get you a whisky.”

  “Thank you—a small one.” The American reverted to the problem of the hay. “It certainly is difficult. You can’t even write to the papers and find out what anybody else is doing.”

  He stayed with the Davidsons until the Tuesday morning, and then went back to Williamstown. At the dockyard his command was beginning to disintegrate, in spite of everything that the executive and the Chief of the Boat had been able to do. Two men had not returned from leave and one was reported to have been killed in a street brawl at Geelong, but there was no confirmation. There were eleven cases of men drunk on return from leave waiting for his jurisdiction and he found these very difficult to deal with. Restriction of leave when there was no work to do aboard and only about a fortnight left to go did not seem to be the answer. He left the culprits confined in the brig of the aircraft carrier while they sobered up and while he thought about it; then he had them lined up before him on the quarterdeck.

  “You men can’t have it both ways,” he told them.

  “We’ve none of us got long to go now, you or me. As of today, you’re members of the ship’s company of U.S.S. Scorpion, and that’s the last ship of the U.S. Navy in commission. You can stay as part of the ship’s company, or you can get a dishonorable discharge.”

  He paused. “Any man coming aboard drunk or late from leave, from this time on, will get discharged next day. And when I say discharged, I mean dishonorable discharge, and I mean it quick. I’ll strip the uniform off you right there and then and put you outside the dockyard gates as a civilian in your shorts, and you can freeze and rot in Williamstown for all the U.S. Navy cares. Hear that, and think it over. Dismissed.”

  He got one case next day, and turned the man outside the dockyard gates in shirt and underpants to fend for himself. He had no more trouble of that sort.

  He left the dockyard early on the Friday morning in the Chevrolet driven by his Leading Seaman, and went to the garage in the mews off Elizabeth Street in the city. He found John Osborne working on the Ferrari, as he had expected; the car stood roadworthy and gleaming, to all appearances ready to race there and then. Dwight said, “Say, I just called in as I was passing by to sa
y I’m sorry that I won’t be there to see you win tomorrow. I’ve got another date up in the mountains, going fishing.”

  The scientist nodded. “Moira told me. Catch a lot of fish. I don’t think there’ll be many people there this time except competitors and doctors.”

  “I’d have thought there would be, for the Grand Prix.”

  “It may be the last week-end in full health for a lot of people. They’ve got other things they want to do.”

  “Peter Holmes—he’ll be there?”

  John Osborne shook his head. “He’s going to spend it gardening.” He hesitated. “I oughtn’t to be going really.”

  “You don’t have a garden.”

  The scientist smiled wryly. “No, but I’ve got an old mother, and she’s got a Pekinese. She’s just woken up to the fact that little Ming’s going to outlive her by several months, and now she’s worried stiff what’s going to happen to him …” He paused. “It’s the hell of a time, this. I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”

  “End of the month, still?”

  “Sooner than that for most of us.” He said something in a low tone, and added, “Keep that under your hat. It’s going to be tomorrow afternoon for me.”

  “I hope that’s not true,” said the American. “I kind of want to see you get that cup.”

  The scientist glanced lovingly at the car. “She’s fast enough,” he said. “She’d win it if she had a decent driver. But it’s me that’s the weak link.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

  “Okay. Bring me back a fish.”

  The American left the mews and went back to his car, wondering if he would see the scientist again. He said to his Leading Seaman, “Now drive out to Mr. Davidson’s farm at Harkaway, near Berwick. Where you’ve taken me once before.”

  He sat in the back seat of the car fingering the little rod as they drove out into the suburbs, looking at the streets and houses that they passed in the grey light of the winter day. Very soon, perhaps in a month’s time, there would be no one here, no living creatures but the cats and dogs that had been granted a short reprieve. Soon they too would be gone; summers and winters would pass by and these houses and these streets would know them. Presently, as time passed, the radioactivity would pass also; with a cobalt half-life of about five years these streets and houses would be habitable again in twenty years at the latest, and probably much sooner than that. The human race was to be wiped out and the world made clean again for wiser occupants without undue delay. Well, probably that made sense.

  He got to Harkaway in the middle of the morning; the Ford was in the yard, the boot full of petrol cans. Moira was ready for him, a little suitcase stowed on the back seat with a good deal of fishing gear. “I thought we’d get away before lunch and have sandwiches on the road,” she said. “The days are pretty short.”

  “Suits me,” he said. “You got sandwiches?”

  She nodded. “And beer.”

  “Say, you think of everything.” He turned to the grazier. “I feel kind of mean taking your car like this,” he said. “I could take the Chev, if you’d rather.”

  Mr. Davidson shook his head. “We went into Melbourne yesterday. I don’t think we’ll be going again. It’s too depressing.”

  The American nodded. “Getting kind of dirty.”

  “Yes. No, you take the Ford. There’s a lot of petrol might as well be used up, and I don’t suppose that I’ll be needing it again. There’s too much to do here.”

  Dwight transferred his gear into the Ford and sent his Leading Seaman back to the dockyard with the Chev. “I don’t suppose he’ll go there,” he said reflectively as the car moved off. “Still, we go through the motions.”

  They got into the Ford. Moira said, “You drive.”

  “No,” he replied. “You’d better drive. I don’t know the way, and maybe I’d go hitting something on the wrong side of the road.”

  “It’s two years since I drove,” she said. “But it’s your neck.” They got in and she found first gear after a little exploration, and they moved off down the drive.

  It pleased her to be driving again, pleased her very much indeed. The acceleration of the car gave her a sense of freedom, of escape from the restraints of her daily life. They went by side roads through the Dandenong mountains spattered with guest houses and residences, and stopped for lunch not far from Lilydale beside a rippling stream. The day had cleared up and it was now sunny, with white clouds against a bright blue sky.

  They eyed the stream professionally as they ate their sandwiches. “It’s muddy kind of water,” said Dwight. “I suppose that’s because it’s early in the year.”

  “I think so,” the girl said. “Daddy said it would be too muddy for fly fishing. He said you might do all right with a spinner, but he advised me to kick about upon the bank until I found a worm and dab about with that.”

  The American laughed. “I’d say there’s some sense in that, if the aim is to catch fish. I’ll stick to spinner for a time, at any rate, because I want to see that this rod handles right.”

  “I’d like to catch one fish,” the girl said a little wistfully. “Even if it’s such a dud one that we put it back. I think I’ll try with worm unless the water’s a lot clearer up at Jamieson.”

  “It might be clearer high up in the mountains, with the melting snow.”

  She turned to him. “Do fish live longer than we’re going to? Like dogs?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know, honey.”

  They drove on to Warburton and took the long, winding road up through the forests to the heights. They emerged a couple of hours later on the high ground at Matlock; here there was snow upon the road and on the wooded mountains all around; the world looked cold and bleak.

  They dropped down into a valley to the little town of Woods Point and then up over another watershed. From there a twenty mile run through the undulating, pleasant valley of the Goulburn brought them to the Jamieson hotel just before dusk.

  The American found the hotel to be a straggling collection of somewhat tumbledown single-storey wooden buildings, some of which dated from the earliest settlement of the State. It was well that they had booked rooms, for the place was crowded with fishermen. More cars were parked outside it than ever in the palmiest days of peace time; inside, the bar was doing a roaring trade. They found the landlady with some difficulty, her face aglow with excitement. As she showed them their rooms, small and inconvenient and badly furnished, she said, “Isn’t this lovely, having all you fishermen here again? You can’t think what it’s been like the last two years, with practically no one coming here except on pack horse trips. But this is just like old times. Have you got a towel of your own? Oh well, I’ll see if I can find one for you. But we’re so full” She dashed off in a flurry of pleasure.

  The American looked after her. “Well,” he said, “she’s having a good time, anyway. Come on, honey, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  They went to the crowded bar-room, with a boarded, sagging ceiling, a huge fire of logs in the grate, a number of chromium-plated chairs and tables, and a seething mass of people.

  “What’ll I get you, honey?”

  “Brandy,” she shouted above the din. “There’s only one thing to do here tonight, Dwight.”

  He grinned, and forced his way through the crowd towards the bar. He came back in a few minutes, struggling, with a brandy and a whisky. They looked around for chairs, and found two at a table where two earnest men in shirt sleeves were sorting tackle. They looked up and nodded as Dwight and Moira joined them. “Fish for breakfast,” said one.

  “Getting up early?” asked Dwight.

  The other glanced at him. “Going to bed late. The season opens at midnight.”

  He was interested. “You’re going out then?”

  “If it’s not actually snowing. Best time to fish.” He held up a huge white fly tied on a small hook. “That’s what I use. That’s what gets them. Put a shot or two on it,
and sink it down, and then cast well across. Never fails.”

  “It does with me,” his companion said. “I like a little frog. You get alongside a pool you know about two in the morning with a little frog, and put the hook just through the skin on his back and cast him across and let him swim about … That’s what I do. You going out tonight?”

  Dwight glanced at the girl, and smiled. “I guess not,” he said. “We just fish around in daylight—we’re not in your class. We don’t catch much.”

  The other nodded. “I used to be like that. Look at the birds and the river and the sun upon the ripples, and not care much what you caught. I do that sometimes. But then I got to this night fishing, and that’s really something.” He glanced at the American. “There’s a ruddy great monster of a fish in a pool down just below the bend that I’ve been trying to get for the last two years. I had him on a frog the year before last, and he took out most of my line and then broke me. And then I had him on again last year, on a sort of doodlebug in the late evening, and he broke me again—brand new, o.x. nylon. He’s twelve pounds if he’s an ounce. I’m going to get him this time if I’ve got to stay up all of every night until the end.”

  The American leaned back to talk to Moira. “You want to go out at two in the morning?”

  She laughed. “I’ll want to go to bed. You go if you’d like to.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not that kind of fisherman.”

  “Just the drinking kind,” she said. “I’ll toss you who goes and battles for the next drink.”

  “I’ll get you another,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Just stay where you are and learn something about fishing. I’ll get you one.”

  She struggled through the crowd to the bar carrying the glasses, and came back presently to the table by the fireside. Dwight got up to meet her, and as he did so his sports jacket fell open. She handed him the glass and said accusingly, “You’ve got a button off your pullover!”

  He glanced down. “I know. It came off on the way up here.”

  “Have you got the button?” He nodded. “I found it on the floor of the car.”