by Nevil Shute
There were a couple of Fascists beside the body; they said something to me, but I shook my head. He must have been killed instantly. I wondered if in Italy that would be a manslaughter against Stenning. [A]
[A] In the end nothing was done about it at all, and they let him go back to England with me two days later.
When I got back to the little glade the dressing was done. Stenning was on his feet again, his bare hairy arms smeared with blood which he was trying absently to remove with a pad of grass. I walked a little way aside with him. “We’d better get a stretcher of some sort,” I said. “He’s all right to move?”
He stopped wiping his arms for a moment, and looked me in the eyes. “I wouldn’t try it.”
There was no wind that morning. On the hill-side it was very still; I could hear the two Italians talking down by Manek, fifty yards away. I can remember standing there and noticing a great scent of rosemary and pines in the warm summer of that day.
“He’s dying?”
Stenning didn’t answer for a minute, but stood there wiping his arm mechanically, studying the spots of blood upon his skin.
“Yes,” he said heavily at last, “he’s dying. I don’t think he’s got a hope in hell unless it’s to keep still. And he knows it himself.”
And then he told me what was wrong, and what he had done about it. And I agreed with him, and we went back together to the dying man in the glade. Sheila was leaning over and speaking to him, and she motioned me to him as we approached.
He was very much weaker then. I stooped down beside him so that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice.
“I’m damn sorry to have let you in on this, Moran,” he said: “you shouldn’t have come out.” And then he said: “You ought to have put me down at the station that night, like I asked you.”
“Couldn’t do that, old boy,” I said quietly. “Not on a night like that.”
He shifted a little on his back, and in an instant Stenning was stooping anxiously to help him move. “It’s been a rum show,” he muttered when he was comfortable. “You’ve got crashed, and I’ve got shot up. And nothing gained. The whole thing a ruddy failure.” . . . There was a catch of disappointment in his voice. He was getting very weak.
I glanced anxiously at Sheila. Behind the range of his vision she shook her head.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “We’ve got the plates you took of Portsmouth, you know. We took ’em off Manek.”
For one moment, I thought he was going to sit up. “You say you’ve got the plates?”
“You lie still,” I said, and reached out for that black case. One of the Italians handed it to me. “They’re here, quite all right. The case hasn’t been opened.”
I put it into his hand so that he could feel it. He lay there fingering it for a moment, and then he handed it back to me.
“Open it up,” he said.
I could not have met Sheila’s eyes at that moment. I had all that I could do to keep a steady face myself. “D’you want me to expose these chaps?” I asked.
He inclined his head painfully. “There’s a little spring catch . . . on the end,” he said. “A little button.”
“I’ve got it now,” I said, and lifted off the cover plate.
He was insistent. “Get the plates out, and give them to me one by one,” he said.
There was a slide there held by a sort of locking-pin, and underneath the slide there was a thin metal plate covered in black velvet. That pulled out in the same way as the slide, and under it I saw the greenish yellow of the first plate.
I lifted it out of the case and put it in his hand. He laid it on his chest in the bright morning sunlight and played with it for a little, holding it up and turning it about. And presently he laid it down.
“Now the next,” he said.
There were twelve plates in that box, each separated from the others by a velvet shield. I gave them to him one by one. He held each one for half a minute or so, turning them all ways to the light and never speaking at all, until we got to the tenth. And then:
“God damn it,” he said. “The sun’s going in.”
The brilliant sunlight of that Italian morning beat down upon us in the glade, drenching the country with its golden glow and drawing the scent out of the rosemary on which he lay. “It’s only a little cloud, old boy,” I said. “There’s lashings of light left to cook these plates.”
“That’s right,” he said faintly. “It was an awfully quick film they used. We had a lot of trouble developing the practice ones.”
I handed him the twelfth and last. “That’s the lot,” I said. “You’ve got them all there now. The box is empty.”
He fingered the last plate for a little, and laid it with the others. “That’s a bloody good job done,” he sighed.
He was silent for a minute or so. I thought it was the end, but he roused himself again. “You’re sure they’re cooked all right?” he inquired. “It’s getting so dark.”
“They’re done all right, old boy,” I said. “You’ve made a proper job of it.”
He sighed again. “Well, bust them up,” he said.
So I laid them together on the grass beside him and cracked them into very small pieces with the handle of my automatic. And the sound of the tinkling glass reassured him a bit, I think, because:
“Miss Darle,” he whispered. “I want to speak to Miss Darle.”
Sheila bent over him. “I’m here, Captain Lenden,” she replied, and wiped his face very gently with the water.
“That’s nice,” he said, and then he began to speak to her about his wife. And what he said was no concern of ours, nor has it any place in this account. It didn’t take very long, and at the end of it he said:
“You’ll tell her that?”
Very gently Sheila brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Why, yes, I’ll tell her that. But there isn’t any need, you know. She knows it all already.”
He sighed. “I know she does. But I want you to tell her again. Just that it’s all — all right.”
He closed his eyes as if for sleep, but presently he opened them again and said “Moran”. And I bent towards him.
“How did you come to crash my kite?”
“Doing a slow turn when I was coming in to land, old boy,” I said. “Something went wrong with it, and we spun into the deck from about three hundred.”
His voice had grown very faint. “You want to watch those slow turns on the Breguet,” he said. I had to put my ear practically to his lips to catch the words.
There was silence, and then he said: “You don’t want to use the rudder at all . . . hardly. Just the bank. And keep her nose stuffed down a bit and she’ll go round . . . nicely.”
About five minutes after that he died.
APPENDIX
SO TO THE end. I have little more to add to this account, except two letters, which I think can hardly be omitted.
Six weeks after my return from Italy a raid was carried out upon Soviet House. A great mass of correspondence was examined and a selection of this material, dealing with matters of general interest, was made available to the public in a White Paper. Of the remainder, two letters were found to bear directly on the death of Maurice Lenden, and were brought to the notice of Lord Arner in connection with my own Statement. It is to be regretted that it has not proved possible to publish these interesting documents in their entirety.
The first letter is dated April 20th, 1927, and is signed, Ast. Strokoff. It is addressed from 132, Twenty-Seventh Avenue, New York, and a portion of it reads:
. . . In regard to the letters mentioned in your cable as being of especial importance, I have good reason to believe that everything was destroyed by Comrades Soller and Manek. I left the house and crossed the frontier with the others earlier in the night, so that I can say nothing definite about this. I shall be sending with Comrade Ogden a sworn statement upon the death of Manek, and I suggest that you should prepare a campaign of questions about this in the Engli
sh Parliament as soon as he arrives. Comrade Jack Atterley, M.P. would be a good man to take this up, and you should write an article about it for the Worker. The facts are that Comrade Manek was foully murdered in cold blood by the man Stenning, who shot him repeatedly through the body while he was held prisoner by the Fascisti. I am urging Comrade Ventoli to press this matter in Italy, but it is necessary to work more carefully in that country than in England, owing to the injustice of their despotic government. . . .
The extract from the second letter is quite short. It is dated from Moscow, April 22nd, 1927, and is signed by Sanarowa, Minister of Internal Preparation. As a memorial, I think it may not be altogether unworthy of the man:
. . . As for the airman, Maurice Lenden, this man proved difficult and uncertain in temper from the first, and by no means devoted to the Soviet doctrine. In the end he proved weak and treacherous beyond all belief, and has been the occasion of a considerable set-back to our activities in Europe. It is recommended that no further confidence be placed in renegades of this description. . . .
Lonely Road (1932)
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Shute as a young man
Author’s Note
THIS WAS THE third of my books to be published, in 1932, when I was thirty-three years old. It took me about a year to write it, in the evenings after a day spent on other work, and it was written twice through from start to finish. I was evidently still obsessed with police action as a source of drama, but with the growth of experience in writing, the character studies and the love story appear to have smothered the plot a bit, and these aspects of the book now seem to me to be the best.
The first chapter was quite frankly an experiment, and one which pleases me still. It was a dangerous experiment, however, for a young writer to make in the first pages of a book, for it defeated a good many readers who might have enjoyed the story if they had been able to read on. In spite of this the book did moderately well in this country and in America. In 1936 a film was made from it at the Ealing Studios, starring Clive Brook and Victoria Hopper.
Nevil Shute
When thy story long time hence shall be perused,
Let the blemish of thy rule be thus excused —
None ever lived more just, none more abused.
THOMAS CAMPION
Preface
THE WRITER OF this book, Malcolm Logan Stevenson, was born in the year 1891. On the death of his father, in 1895, the boy came under the care of his uncle, Sir Lionel Cope, the greater part of his boyhood being spent at Courton Hall in West Sussex. He was educated at Winchester and New College. Throughout his life his financial position was such as to cause him no anxiety; he was, in fact, a man of very considerable estate.
As a young man he displayed little enthusiasm for any form of regular occupation, in marked distinction to his later life. His interests at that time were essentially in things adventurous rather than academic. From Oxford he joined the ill-fated Catter-Delina expedition to the Amazon, leaving this country for Para in the autumn of 1911. He returned to England with the survivors of that party in the spring of 1913 and devoted himself with some energy to the sport of yacht cruising, an exercise to which he was much attached. In the winter of 1913 he commenced a desultory study of the economic factors affecting commercial ships and shipping, spending some months upon the Clyde. Previous to the war, however, he made no venture in this business.
In September, 1914, he was granted a commission as Sub-Lieutenant in the RNVR, and served upon minesweepers until the summer of 1917, principally in the Channel and the Irish Sea. During this period his vessel was twice mined; in the second of these explosions he lost the third and fourth fingers of his left hand.
In September, 1917, he was promoted to Lieutenant and was posted to a so-called mystery ship, the Jane Ellen, of Bideford, under Commander D. A. Faulkner, RN. This vessel was a coastal schooner of some one hundred and fifty tons, normally trading in china clay and coal between the southern ports of Cornwall and the north-east coast. Under Commander Faulkner she was employed as a submarine decoy.
The action of the Jane Ellen (HMS Q 83) will be found described in a supplement to the London Gazette published shortly after the Armistice, together with the list of awards. Sir Arthur Mortimer, in the second volume of his ‘Naval History of the Great War’, gives a reliable account of the engagement, which he refers to as ‘one of the bloodiest naval actions ever fought’. Briefly, the Jane Ellen engaged the U187 at dawn, on April 18th, 1918, at a point some forty miles west of the Scillies. Casualties on the British vessel were extremely heavy and included the Commander, the ship’s company of forty-seven being reduced eventually to three in number. Finally the U187 was sunk by gunfire at about noon, the gun being manned by Lieutenant Stevenson and a midshipman. No survivors were rescued from the German vessel.
As a result of this action Stevenson was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander; he was then about twenty-seven years of age. Injuries to his lungs, aggravated by exposure, necessitated a prolonged period in hospital subsequent to the action. It would not be beyond the truth to say that these injuries were ultimately responsible for his early death.
In the spring of 1919 Commander Stevenson commenced to build up a fleet of schooners and small ketches which had carried the bulk of the coastwise traffic of this country before the war. At that time these vessels had disappeared almost entirely from British waters. A certain number of them were sold abroad during the war; the remainder were sunk as they carried on their business.
In the years following the war Commander Stevenson repurchased a number of these vessels from their Scandinavian owners and, establishing himself in a shipyard on the River Dart, commenced to operate them in their ancient trade. At the time of his death he was the owner of no less than seventeen of these ships. At the outset this speculation involved him in a financial loss which was severe even for a man of his resources; in later years the losses decreased, and at the time of his death the business was in a fair way to show a profit.
In the settlement of his estate the fleet was broken up, the majority of the vessels being sold abroad again. It is doubtful whether this form of coastwise trading can be regarded as an economic business in these days. It is at least doubtful whether Commander Stevenson cared if it were so or not.
From the year 1919 until his death, ten years later, he lived in the Port House above Dartmouth Harbour, alone but for a housekeeper and a few servants. As the business of his fleet became stereotyped, demanding less of his attention, he showed some inclination to develop his shipyard as a building centre for yachts and small sailing craft of various kinds.
In the winter of last year he died, after a comparatively short illness, at the early age of thirty-nine.
In person, Malcolm Stevenson was a man of medium height; his hair, from the war onwards, was almost completely grey. He walked with a slight limp; he was sensitive to the injury to his left hand, for which reason he usually wore a glove. In temperament he was very taciturn, perhaps bitter. He was popular with his acquaintances but admitted few to friendship; with women he was diffident and shy. He had few interests beyond the sea. For recreation he was accustomed to cruise single-handed, or with at most one friend, in his tenton cutter Runagate; he was a regular competitor in the Ocean Race. He was a member of the Squadron. He held both Master’s and Extra Master’s certificates, and on occasions when he was short of a skipper would sometimes act as Master in one of his own little ships upon a coastal cruise.
He had few relatives, and those few he neglected. His closest
tie was with his cousin, Lady Stenning. In the later years of his life he seldom left Dartmouth except to stay at her house in Golders Green, and he became on terms of considerable friendship, if not intimacy, with her husband, Sir Philip Stenning. To Sir Philip he left a very considerable legacy; for the remainder, his testament was eccentric and beyond the scope of this preface.
The book which is now published was written by Commander Stevenson shortly before the illness which terminated in his death. The MS is written in pencil in a foolscap ledger freely interspersed with memoranda of a personal nature; it would seem from internal evidence that the compilation of this book was a relaxation for his leisure hours over a period of about two months.
In the settlement of his estate the MS was read first by the writer of this preface, and later by Sir Philip and Lady Stenning, who confirmed the truth of the account. It seemed desirable, and even necessary, that the facts contained therein should be made public at an early date, for which reason it was first proposed that a condensed and impersonal edition of the narrative should be prepared. Upon a closer investigation, however, it became evident that the task of expurgation would prove to be a most formidable one, and that a great mass of extraneous matter would require to be inserted in explanation of motives which were wholly personal and therefore to be omitted from the book. In these circumstances it has seemed better to publish the MS substantially in the form in which it was discovered, only modifying those names and places which bear too close a relation to the world as it is lived in today.
With this course the relatives of Commander Stevenson are in agreement. I am indebted to Sir Lionel Cope for advice upon matters pertaining to the family, and to Lady Stenning for much assistance in the preparation of the narrative. If the effect of publication in this form should be to indicate a quality of greatness in a man of singular reserve, then the intrusion into his privacy may not be quite unjustified.