by Nevil Shute
“D’you hear anything more about Russia in Town?” he inquired.
I shook my head. “Not a word. I left soon after lunch. But I saw your pal Robertson this morning.”
He took the cigarette from his lips and stared at me. “Sam Robertson? Where did you see him?”
“In Knightsbridge,” I replied. “At his club.”
“What d’you go there for?”
I crossed the room, switched on the reading-lamp, and sat down on the music-stool before the piano. “Bit of officiousness, I suppose,” I said quietly. “Can’t think of any other reason.”
He didn’t speak.
“You may as well know what I think about this thing,” I said. “For myself, I don’t care a damn what you do. It doesn’t affect me. You can walk out of this place when you like — to-night or next month — and I don’t suppose we’ll meet again for some time. I’ll get rid of that aeroplane for you. But when you do go, I honestly think you’ll be a ruddy fool if you go back to Russia. There’s going to be bad trouble there, and there’ll be hell to pay if you’re caught out there then. You can see that for yourself.”
He brushed that aside. “I know all that. But what did you want to go and see Robertson for? Was it about me?”
“I went to Robertson because I knew damn well you wouldn’t go yourself,” I said. “Not my business, I know. But that’s what I did.”
He thought about it for a minute. “What happened?” he inquired.
I filled a pipe, and lit it before replying. “He ended by offering you a job on his survey,” I said at length, and glanced towards him through the smoke. “At four hundred and fifty — to start with. Plus a share of the profits.”
He stared at me incredulously. “Did he offer that — on his own?”
“He did.”
“Without wanting any capital put into the business?”
“Not a bean.”
He laughed. “He must have changed his mind since last I saw him, then.”
“You’ve got to remember that his business has expanded since you saw him last,” I said.
It upset the whole apple-cart of his decisions once again. He didn’t say very much, but he sat there conning it over for a long time.
“I’d like to go with Sam again,” he said at last, a little uncertainly. “It was good of you to go and look him up for me. I wouldn’t have thought of it, myself. It’s a better show than going back to Russia. But I don’t know that I can cut off and leave the job like this. . . .”
I might have told him there and then that his plates were spoilt, I suppose. But I didn’t.
“And then there’s Keumer and his wife,” he said. “I couldn’t go shooting off to the Argentine without getting that squared up somehow.” He turned to me. “D’you know, I thought of something to-day. Keumer’s got an uncle who keeps a retail grocery shop in Mannheim, in a pretty big way of business. I believe we might be able to trace his wife that way.” As a matter of fact, it was through that uncle that I found her in the end. But that was much later.
He sat there dithering over his decisions. I saw then very clearly that there was only person in the world who could resolve his mind for him. I suppose I had known it all along, in a way.
“There was one other thing happened up in Town,” I said nervously, and went fishing in the breast pocket of my coat.
“What’s that?”
I passed his wife’s letter to Robertson over to him to read. “Robertson gave me this after we’d done talking business,” I remarked. “You’ve turned up at last, you see.”
I didn’t watch him while he read that letter, but swung round on the music-stool and began polishing the white keys and the dark rosewood of the piano with my handkerchief. That piano stands beside me as I write, and presently, when I am tired of recalling those bad times, I shall get up and I shall play a little to Sheila before going up to bed. With my three stiff fingers my playing will never be a patch on what it was in the days of which I am writing — and that, I think, is the least price that I have had to pay for interference.
“I’ve read that letter,” I remarked, without looking at Lenden. “Robertson showed it to me.”
He didn’t make any comment.
“And then,” I said, “I went on down there this afternoon, and had tea.”
He stared at me darkly. “Oh. You went to Winchester?”
I nodded.
He was about to say something, but stopped. “Did you see Mollie?” he inquired.
“She gave me tea. And then I said I’d seen Robertson, and she gave me a note for you.”
He blinked at me. “She all right?”
I got up from the piano. “She looked pretty fit,” I said casually. “She was very anxious to see you before you go back,” and I dropped her letter on the table by his side. “I’ve got to go down to Under this evening for a bit. There’s her note.”
He took it in his hands and sat there fingering it, and looking up at me. “How long’ll you be?” he inquired.
“About an hour or so, I suppose,” I said, and left him to it.
I walked down to Under. I had to go down there some time, and this was as good a time as any, because I knew that I should catch the crowd I wanted all together. There was an amateur dramatic show brewing, Gilbert and Sullivan, and because it was for charity they wanted the use of the hall without paying any rent.
I found them hard at it in the hall itself, rehearsing and quarrelling, and having a fine time generally. I might have seen eye to eye with them in the matter of the rent if they’d been red-hot in the cause of charity. But their chief trouble lay in the allocation of their mythical profits between the costumier and the charity; if they were to run to wigs by Parkinson, would there be anything left for Barnardo? I didn’t see why Parkinson should pouch the lot, and so I told their secretary that they could hold their show in the street for all I cared, but if they had the hall they’d pay for it.
Having made myself quite clear on that point, I stayed on for a bit and watched the progress of their rehearsal. They were doing Patience, and young Saven, whose father kept the Red Bear in the market, was playing some small part in the thing. I liked young Saven. He had recently come out of the Air Force; I think he had been one of the first batch of peace-trained recruits. He had attained the dignity of two stripes before he came out, and now he was opening a little garage at the back of his father’s inn.
We sat there smoking and gossiping for a bit. Then Nitter, the hairdresser, joined us, and with him came his brother.
Now, I’ve mentioned Nitter before — John Nitter, that is, who keeps the hairdressing establishment in the Leventer Road, and talks Communism in the market on Saturdays. He’s a nice little man, and when he isn’t talking Communism he’s breeding Irish terriers, or children. There’s no harm in John Nitter, and for a long time I was puzzled to see where he got his Communist ideas from. And then one day I met his brother, and I knew.
They came from Bradford originally, I think. John was older than Stephen, and left Bradford some years before the war with a lung that required the comparative warmth of the south. In that way the hairdresser’s shop came into being. Stephen, on the other hand, was clever, and won scholarships. Eventually he passed on to Oxford and, as befitted the son of a fitter in those less tolerant days, he went to Ruskin.
I don’t know what happened to him in the war. He never got into the Army — I know that much. And he never married. He was industrial to the backbone; a little short tubby man in a bowler hat and a shiny black suit. He had very light blue eyes, and he wore his hair rather longer than one would have expected. I saw him on a platform once. It was in Hyde Park and he spoke without a hat, and his hair fell down over his eyes and he kept shaking it back as he put the whole impact of his nature into his tirade. And when I heard him then, I forgot that he was a tubby little man.
There was the inspiration that brought John Nitter to the market every Saturday afternoon. But I can vouch for this, that John
wasn’t in the same street with Stephen, whatever he might have been ten years before. Living in the south had done it, I suppose. That, and the Lotus.
Stephen used to come down to Under about once in six months to stay with John — partly for a holiday and partly, I think, to ginger up his brother. I expect John needed a bit of gingering up from time to time. The Revolution wasn’t getting on very fast in our part of Sussex.
“Evening, Nitter,” I said to John. “You acting in this thing?”
He shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, and got a scowl from Stephen for his deference. “Ah could have had a part in t’ chorus, if Ah’d a mind. But it’s a game for t’youngsters.” He sucked his pipe. “D’you know my brother Stephen, Mr. Moran?”
I shook hands. “We’ve met before,” I said. “You down here for a holiday, Mr. Nitter?”
He stared at me uneasily. He was shy and difficult to get on with, was Stephen — all edges and rough corners. “Ay,” he said morosely. “For a holiday. Just the three days, and I’m for the north again. I wouldn’t stay longer than that.”
I took him up. “Why not?”
The south, he said, was a playground. I must condense his ideas into a practicable space, for they dragged out in little short, dark sentences, interminably. The south was where rich men came to live, capitalists who had made their money by the sweat of the workers in the north. A capitalist only needed to work in the north for ten or fifteen years and then, having made a fortune from the labour of the workers, he came down into the south to get away from the reminder of his own misdoings, and to spend his money.
I’m no good at arguing with those chaps. I couldn’t refute this slander, because, in cold hard fact, a certain amount of it was true. A lot of industrialists retire to the south when they’ve finished their life’s work in the north, because it’s the best part of England to retire to.
“It’s like a garden, this place,” he said sullenly. “It all runs that smooth and soft and rich. An’ up there, where Ah come from, there’s the workers sweating in the factories. In the half-dark and the rain, and never to see the sun clear, for the sky’s that mucky.” He eyed me dourly. “Conditions what you’ve never dreamed of. You come up north, and Ah’ll show you something.”
I grinned at him. “You’d better go to Russia if you want to see what sweating is,” I said. I suppose he had stung me up a bit, or I wouldn’t have said that to provoke him. “You’ve never seen anything in the north to touch what you get out there. You don’t want a revolution to put that right.”
I had annoyed him very much. I knew that it was his dearest ambition to visit Russia; to be able to say that he had been there would give him a cachet in the counsels of his union, and raise him from the ruck.
“That’s not true,” he said hotly. “You don’t know nothing about it — you, living soft and easy as you do. Ah’m for Russia in two or three days from now, and Ah’ll find a better and a more hopeful world for the worker in that country. A better and more hopeful world.” He repeated the words as if they were a quotation. “And the time will come — the time will come when we’ll see that better time in England. And Ah pray to God that Ah’ll be spared to see it.”
I eyed him for a minute. “You won’t expect me to agree with you about that,” I said. “But apart from politics, this is a damn bad time to go to Russia, you know. There may quite well be a break. You want to be careful what you’re letting yourself in for.” I had a vague recollection of having said that before, quite recently.
“Ye’re wrong!” he cried passionately. “Ye’re all wrong. This is the time when every thinking man among us ought to go to Russia. Your Capitalist Government — they’re slighting and insulting Russia every way they know. And for why? Because Russia sticks up for the worker. That’s what it is. Well, the workers must unite. It’s us that counts. We’ve got no quarrel with the Russians; they stuck to us like brothers in the strike. Like brothers. This is the time when every worker in England and in Scotland and in Wales has got to stick to Russia — and Ah’m away to tell them so.”
I nodded slowly. I had no arguments to meet this chap’s sincerity.
“You want to be careful you don’t get caught out there if there is a break,” was all I said. “Get clear in time.”
“Ah,” he said rudely, “ye’re talking nonsense, and ye know it. But it’s always the same with you rich folk.” He paused. “Ye won’t see what’s going on under yer own eyes.”
With that he turned on his heel and walked off. John gave me an anxious, uncomfortable look; I grinned back at him, and he hurried off after his brother. I fancy Stephen was a bit of a trial to John at times. Especially in the Red Bear.
I left soon after that, and walked back to my house. Lenden was still sitting there in that chair before the fire, but the fire was practically out and the room was filled with the smoke from his cigarettes. I stirred him up about the fire with a few winged words, and he got down on his knees to make it up, a little apologetically. He said that he had forgotten all about it.
I threw off my overcoat and went and sat down at the piano. “What’ll we have?” I inquired. “Spot o’ sugar?” He stared at me uncomprehendingly. “No,” I said absently. “All right. Spot o’ Chopin, then.”
And I played him a couple of mazurkas. And when I had come to an end of that I glanced at him, and he was sitting there exactly as he had been when I first came in, and I thought he was asleep. And I swung round on the stool, and I said:
“You can have the Morris if you want her to-morrow. I shan’t be using her myself.”
He stirred in his chair. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “I was going by train. I’ve been looking up the trains in your time-table, but it means going by Portsmouth and Southampton to get there. You’re quite sure you won’t be using the car?”
I shook my head. “I’m going to London again. I’ve got some insurance business to get through up there, but I got side-tracked on to this thing of yours this afternoon.”
“Sorry.”
He hesitated. “I was going to pinch the car as a matter of fact, and run over there this evening,” he said. “And then — I thought it’d be better not to go over there so late . . . and it’d be nicer if I went over there after breakfast.”
He paused, and then he said: “What’s the shop like? She was always wanting to have a shop like that.”
“It’s not a bad place,” I said. “There’s two of them there, that I saw. She’s got a red-haired young woman in to help her run it.” And then I started in and told him everything that I had done or said, so far as I could recall. He heard me to the end in silence and then, with only the briefest excuse, he got up to go to bed. He made some remark to the effect that he was tired, I remember, and I remember that he paused in the doorway for a moment.
“This puts all the Russian business in the cart again,” he muttered. “I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen about that.”
Then he was gone. I played a bit of my own stuff, sat there idly for a quarter of an hour, kicked the fire to the back of the grate, and followed him to bed.
An early breakfast suited us both next morning; I was aiming to catch the 8.32 myself. Before I left I went out with Lenden to the stable to make sure he’d got the hang of the Morris; he started her up and got in.
He was wearing my ulster and my driving gloves. He nodded to me from the car. “See you this evening, then,” he said, and with that he swung her round and out of the yard gate on to the western road to Petersfield, and he put his gloved hand up in salutation as the car shot up the road. And so he drove away out of my life and on to meet his wife and all the promise that she held for him. I only saw him once after that.
I had meant to go to Town. But as I turned back from the stable to my house, they came to fetch me to the telephone in the mansion. A cowhouse in one of our farms out by Leventer was blazing merrily, and it was up to me to go and see that they did something about it.
It was the usual sort
of thing. A chimney in the farm-house first; they hadn’t worried about it — in fact, they were rather pleased than otherwise when it happened. It saves sweeping the chimney if you have a little fire in it to burn away the soot. That went on while they were having breakfast and thinking no evil, till a lump of red-hot soot fell on a little stack of straw, and then half the outbuildings went up. We got it in hand by eleven o’clock, and then I went on with the farmer into Pithurst to see the insurance agent about the claim. By the time I got back to Under it was three o’clock.
I might very well have given up the idea of going to Town that day. But when I got back to the office my clerk showed me a telephone message from Lenden that had arrived about an hour before. He wasn’t coming back that night unless I wanted the car, in which case I was to ring up a number in Winchester. Otherwise he’d be over first thing in the morning.
I told the clerk to ring up and tell him he could have the car for as long as he wanted it. He could have had a second honeymoon in it for all I cared. There was the little Talbot belonging to the mansion which nobody ever used except myself when the Morris was in dock. And, apart from that, there was the Siddeley.
There didn’t seem to be much point in stopping in Under, and so I went up to London that afternoon, and put up at my club. That gave me the whole of the next morning clear for my business, and I reckoned to catch an afternoon train down again. If I didn’t get away from Under while I had a chance, I thought, there’d be another fire, or a cat’d kitten, or something, and I’d have to stop and see to that.
I had a certain amount of luck next morning, and went on to Curzon Street for lunch to report progress to Arner. He told me that things in connection with Russia were still very bad. He didn’t think that the evidence in the machine that had been shot down had been worth very much. There was little direct evidence to connect it with the Soviet. He was of the opinion that the break would not come at once, but on the next opportunity. Things were getting very difficult, especially in regard to Arcos, where all sorts of fishy work was going on. He thought that Arcos would be able to provide all the material that was necessary to make a breach with Russia, if that were considered necessary.