by Nevil Shute
“That’s it,” I said. “The shops are all along by the harbour.”
She sighed. “I’d love to get into a Palais there. It must be lovely to live in a place like that. But they don’t get many vacancies in those places. The girls down there, they know when they’re well off.”
We danced again, and came back to the table.
“Been to many shows?” she asked.
I tried to remember when I had last been at the theatre. “Not many lately,” I replied. “I expect you go to lots. Or can’t you get away from here?”
She blew a long cloud of smoke. “It’s not very easy. You see, if you get a boy that wants to take you out he has to book you out for the session, and that costs twenty-five bob on top on what he spends outside. It’s only the old ones that can do that, and I don’t like going out with them. They get so silly. But I do love a show, better than anything. I expect you don’t care for them much?”
I had had a long drive that day, and a good dinner. I was leaving Leeds on the next day, and it was unlikely that I should ever see this girl again. Sometimes it’s a luxury to speak the truth. “I like a theatre,” I said. “I like to go and have a really good dinner somewhere, and go on to a theatre, and then go and dance for an hour or so before bed. But you want to have somebody to go with; it’s not much fun doing that alone.”
She nodded. “Haven’t you got any girl friends to go with?”
I knocked the ash off my cigarette. “No,” I said. “They don’t seem to come my way much.” I looked at her and grinned. “That’s why I have to come and pay sixpence.”
She nodded, without laughing. “You’re too particular,” she said shrewdly. “There’s ever so many like you come and dance with us — you’d be surprised. There’s some that just don’t want to do anything but sit and talk for a bit. It’s like as if they don’t seem able to fancy the girl friends they can get, and can’t get the ones they fancy, and so they come here. It’s funny, isn’t it? My brother now, he’s just the same as you.”
I was watching an unpleasant youth dancing with an anæmic girl, an extraordinarily graceful pair. “What does he do?” I asked absently.
Evidently she was very proud of him. “He’s in the motor transport business. He’s got a lorry of his own. I hadn’t seen him for over three years, and I didn’t know where he was or anything, but he turned up here on Friday last week, and booked me out all Saturday, and we had a lovely time. They told him at home that I was here. He’s doing awfully well, down somewhere in the south. He takes carpet sweepers and things that come from abroad from the boats and drives them to the factory, or something. It’s all-night work.”
She paused. “He’s just the same as you — never seems to fancy the sort of girl that he can pick up.” She bent a hostile eye upon the single ladies sitting at their tables all alone. “And there’s some that don’t take much picking up, either.” She paused. “We always used to do things together when he was home, and it was lovely seeing him again.”
The evening was drawing to a close. I was tired and ready for my bed and I had the suspicion of a headache which I wasn’t anxious to provoke. “I’m going home in a little while,” I said. “Would you like something from the soda fountain before I go? An ice, or anything?”
The hard, painted harridan of our first meeting had merged imperceptibly into the girl friend that she had spoken of. “That ‘ld be lovely,” she said. “What can I have?”
“Anything you like,” I said, a little surprised. “What do you want?”
She hesitated. “Some of the things are rather expensive, you know.”
I had never had that said to me by any girl before. I smiled at her. “It’s nearly the end of my holiday,” I said quietly. “I’ve got a lot of money to blue before I go back home.” And she laughed, and said: “If that’s the way of it, I’ll have a banana split.”
So I ordered two of these things, and when the bill came it was half-a-crown. “I told you they were terribly expensive,” she said, a little ruefully. We finished them and went and danced again, and after that I sent her to find out my reckoning for me.
She came back. “It’s twenty-five dances. That’ll be twelve and six, won’t it?” So I gave her twenty-five shillings, feeling that it was miserably inadequate for the evening that she’d given me, and she said: “Oh, that’s an awful lot. You are kind!”
We shook hands. “I’ve enjoyed this frightfully,” I said. “It’s been the nicest evening that I’ve had for years.”
“It has been nice,” she said simply. “I’ve loved it. You’ll come back when you’re in Leeds again, won’t you?”
And so my hostess said goodnight to me, and I went back to my hotel alone. Next morning I set out for home.
Chapter 3
STENNING HAS KEPT a little black cutter, Irene, with me for the last three years. She is about seven tons yacht measurement; she is about thirty years old, I think, but the hull is still quite sound. She is planked with Baltic redwood upon oak frames; the only vessel I have ever seen like that. I don’t know why redwood isn’t used more; it’s cheap enough. They use it on the east coast a bit, and that’s rather interesting, because this boat was built at Yarmouth.
He makes her earn her keep by chartering her out among his friends; when she is not away she lies moored up Bowers Creek just across the water from my yard, with Runagate. He uses her for his holidays and long weekends. About a fortnight after I came back from Scotland he came down with Joan to cruise in her for a couple of days; they arrived by road one afternoon, and went on board to get squared up for an early start next morning. I put off to them after I had finished at the office, and stayed and had a meal with them on board.
It was the first time I had seen Stenning since his return from the flight which made his name, and he was rather interesting about it. His technicalities were beyond me, but he had lived on shellfish for a week when he got lost on some rotten little atoll near Hawaii, and he had dined with Royalty. By his own account his journey had been uneventful and the flight from the Bermudas to the Azores — two thousand miles of open sea — had bored him stiff, but he had very nearly died of eating onions in the tropics and that gave him a great fright. He didn’t like Australia, and his nearest approach to a flying crash came when he was coming in over Lambeth Bridge and nearly got bumped down on to it.
Joan produced a sort of Irish stew for supper and we sat for a long time over it and after it, smoking and talking in a desultory manner. Stenning is a fine practical seaman of the rough-and-ready type. It’s in the blood, of course. His father was a commander, RN, and his grandfather; it’s a pretty good old naval family. His mother was a Portsmouth chorus girl. That marriage came to an end, and Stenning’s father died, and Stenning went with his mother to the north to live with her new husband, who kept a chain of drapers’ shops in places like Ilkley and Skipton. He got away from it when he was fifteen years old and went as odd boy in a garage; then for some years before the war he was a chauffeur. That went on till the war, when he enlisted and was commissioned into the Flying Corps in 1916. He became a Captain, Acting Major, and collected decorations. In 1918 he was sent home as an instructor, and for him that was the end of the war.
He became a civilian pilot after the war and got to be pretty well known in golf and rugger circles; he had plenty of spare time and a natural aptitude for games. He lived a bachelor life and he lived it hot and strong, culminating in a month for being drunk in charge of a motor car. His life at that time was full of episodes, some creditable and more discreditable, till in the middle of one of these he met Joan and married her out of hand, to the disgust and indignation of my family. But Joan knew what she’d got hold of when she picked on Stenning; I don’t think she has regretted it. She is now Lady Stenning, which may make up a bit for the things my family said to her when first she got engaged.
Stenning had been abroad since he came back, to Greece and then to Rotterdam — a series of business trips mainly in connection wi
th the marketing and foreign manufacture of the little Dabchick flying boat. By virtue of his job Stenning moves about a good bit, and he spent a long time this evening developing to me his views upon the flow of trade in the world. He has a very clear head and exceptional opportunities for observation; if he had capital — which he hasn’t — this combination would make him a wealthy man. I remember that he talked this evening for a long time about the rise of Spanish South America, and what he said was sound and made me think about my stocks.
The evening drew on; in the hatchway the sky turned slowly to deep blue and on to black, and we sat smoking there in the saloon. Presently we stirred and went up through the hatch into the little cockpit; it was ten o’clock and time that I was getting home. In the bright light of the saloon behind us Joan began to tidy up the mess that we had made, and then I saw her pulling down the bunks.
My dinghy was lying out astern, her painter stretched, and sheering gently in the running tide. Down the river the white lights of the town made dappled streaks upon the water; it was very calm. “Time I got along,” I said. “That’s a rotten reefing gear you’ve got. Remind me about it next year when you’re fitting out. I’ll put a crane up at the hounds and fit you Jersey pattern.”
He stared up at the one-pole mast and the pencilled tracery of ropes in the dim light of the riding-lamp. “There’s room for a crane,” he said reflectively. “I suppose the spar would stand it.” He had only half his mind on the reefing gear; we were both of us still thinking of the flow of trade, and of the coming general election.
“The safeguarding will go,” I said.
Sir Philip Stenning spat into the sea. “I’m not a bloody soothsayer. I can only tell you what I’ve seen happening today. I can’t say what’s going to happen if the safeguarding comes off. But I tell you this, that there’s a darn sight more light manufactured stuff comes into this country than goes out of it. You see it at every dock, safeguarding or no. Motors, electrical household gadgets, carpet sweepers — all sorts of stuff. Seems as if every country in the world can produce cheaper than we can.”
I had been considering his reefing gear, straining my eyes into the darkness at the hounds and not paying much attention to what he said. “Damn it,” I said absently, “everybody’s talking about carpet sweepers these days.”
He took me up. “Well, that’s a case of the production on the Continent that I was talking about. You’d think that the only country that could produce against the duties would be America. Well, it’s not, and it’s time we realised it. The carpet sweepers I’m thinking of are shipped in Rotterdam, and shipped in funny little tubs not much bigger than this. They’ll be Jerry stuff. I tell you, the sooner we re-cast our ideas of import and export trade in manufactured goods, the happier we shall be.”
I nodded absently. “Maybe.” I stood for a moment looking out over the water, then I threw away my cigarette and bent down at the hatchway. “I’m going ashore now,” I said to Joan. “Hope it’s a decent trip. Did you see the potatoes?”
She came and stuck her head and shoulders up on deck. “Two stone, are they? Tell Adams I’ll pay him for them when we come back. We’ll be back on Thursday evening, I expect. It’s lovely to have seen you.” And so I pulled up my dinghy and uncast the painter, and pushed off and left them there together, Sir Philip and Lady Stenning. And as I pulled away they waved at me together across the dappled, inky water, he standing with one arm around her shoulders, till the darkness dropped a curtain round them and I was alone again, and pulling for the slip.
They sailed away next day, and I went on in Dartmouth. After my holiday I had slipped back very readily into my old life, drinking a little more than before my crash, perhaps, and working a little harder. I have my set routine now, after ten years, that fits me like a glove. I get to the office at about ten, leave it at half past twelve for lunch, and leave it again at seven for my dinner. Sometimes in the afternoon I work on Runagate or one of the others; I put in most afternoons in the yard. On Tuesdays and Fridays I go up to the RNC for bridge after dinner, and very occasionally I dine there. On Saturdays I go to Plymouth to the club.
I don’t entertain much at the Port House because there’s not much to do there after dinner, and I can’t take any pleasure in being host to more than one or two people at a time. One wants a wife to help one out with that sort of thing. But now and again I get a man in to dinner who doesn’t mind just sitting in the library afterwards with a cigar, when I can play him a record of Mozart on the gramophone and talk about my ships. Colonel Fedden comes in for an evening of that sort sometimes, and I remember that he came about a week after Stenning went away.
Fedden is Chief Constable in my part of the world; a quiet, youngish man of fifty, who cruises in a little yawl Seamew, ex-Happy Day. He was just back from the Bay, or at any rate the Isles de Glenan, and I wanted to hear how he’d got on down there. We sat down to dinner at about eight and talked ships, and rose at about half-past nine, and no sooner had we got settled in the library with the cigars and brandy than the telephone bell rang for him.
I listened while he spoke. They were ringing from the police station at Newton Abbot, and they wanted him to go over there at once; so much I gathered from the one-sided conversation. There was a little backchat then, that I didn’t understand; in a few minutes he hung up the receiver and came over to me by the fire. He had to go.
I glanced out of the window. It was a fine, blue evening with the remains of a red sunset lingering in the sky. “I’ll run you over in the Bentley,” I remarked. “Then we’ll come back here for a whisky before bed. You won’t be long?”
He hesitated. “I don’t quite understand what it is that they’ve got over there,” he said. “Something about a burnt-out motor lorry. In any case, I don’t see that we can do much tonight. No, I probably shan’t be very long. But I don’t want to drag you out.”
“I’d like the run,” I said. So we went out to the stables and got the Bentley, and drove out on to the cool, brilliant roads with our cigars.
At Newton Abbot I waited in a lobby for the greater part of half an hour. Through a glass partition I could see Fedden in the next room, in business with a superintendent and a sergeant. A constable gave me an evening paper and I sat there reading it, and studying the printed and photographed descriptions of various miscreants on the wall, till at last the door opened behind me, and there was Fedden.
“Sorry to have kept you so long,” he said. He did not stir from the door. “I won’t be a moment now. But in the meantime, I should be glad if you would come in here for a minute, if you don’t mind. For your advice.”
I followed him into the room. There was a table, and on the floor behind the table there was a large deal packing case, about the dimensions of a coffin, but not so long. The lid of this packing case was standing up against the table, and looking down into the box I saw the blued glint of steel.
“This must be confidential, Stevenson,” said Fedden. “But I want you to have a look at that, and tell me if you’ve ever seen one like it before.”
I laid my gloves down on the table and stooped over the case. The gun lay neatly on chocks on the bottom of the case, surrounded by its accessories in little racks upon the sides. I stood erect again. “I’ve seen something very similar,” I said; “but they never came my way much. May I lift it out?”
He nodded, and I stooped down and lifted the gun from its case. It was a sort of light machine gun designed to be fired from the shoulder. It was heavy; not quite so heavy as the infantry-type Lewis, perhaps, but still much heavier than the service rifle. It was served by a long clip of cartridges which fed in underneath the lock, rather in the manner of an automatic pistol. I examined it pretty thoroughly, but I found no indication of the maker’s name, nor any mark or numeral of any sort.
I looked up at Fedden. “Is this a Thompson gun?”
He shook his head. “I know the Thompson. We took a lot of them in Ireland.”
I laid it down carefu
lly on its chocks within the case, and stood erect again. “I saw something very like it in Zeebrugge,” I said, “just after the Armistice. It was a German gun; a major in the Inniskillings had it as a souvenir. It wasn’t quite like this. It had a different lock, and it hadn’t all that cooling stuff. I think it was lighter. He said it was an aeroplane Parabellum gun. That’s the nearest thing to it I’ve ever seen.”
I stood and eyed it for a moment. “I should say it came from Germany,” I said. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you about it. I’m sorry.”
I glanced at the case for any further information, and then at the lid. There was a label pasted on the lid, a large white one, coloured with a crude illustration in red depicting a vacuum cleaner of the Hoover type sweeping a white swathe upon a spotted carpet. Below the picture there was a legend in large block lettering: THE PANPHAGON SWEEPER. That was all.
“No,” said Fedden. “It occurred to me that there was just the chance that you might know about these things. Now, if you don’t mind . . However. . just for a few minutes?”
I went out into the lobby and sat down again with the paper; in the office that I had left I heard his voice upon the telephone. After a quarter of an hour or so he came out into the lobby with the superintendent, and this time he was ready to go home.
We slid out of the town upon the Dartmouth road. “You’re coming back to my place for a drink?” I said.
He was hesitant “I really don’t know that I ought. I’ve got to go to London over this damn business first thing tomorrow morning, and I ought to see my wife.”
“Time for a quick one,” I said. “You’ve got to come back with me, anyway, to get your car.” And so we went back into the library and took off our coats, and while I was fiddling with the siphon and the glasses he sat down in one of the chairs before the fire, and he was unusually quiet.