by Nevil Shute
“Peter!” cried Joan. “What’s that?”
They watched it, tense and motionless. It grew to a great ruddy blaze in a few seconds, with showers of red sparks whirling up above the trees. Then it began to die away as quickly as it had appeared; within a very short time it was black night again.
They relaxed. “It was a fire of some sort,” Corbett said. He hesitated.
“Peter. Do you think it was an airplane?”
“It looked very like it.” He passed his arm around her shoulders. “Come back to bed. We can’t do anything to help.”
Her lips were trembling. “This beastly war ...”
He helped her back to bed and tucked her up. They lay awake for a long time, listening to the bursting of the bombs in the dark night. Presently the raid came to an end, and they slept.
Next morning it was raining heavily. Corbett had breakfast; then Joan rowed him on shore to the car to go into Southampton.
He had left the car parked in the open. Trying to start it, he discovered that the tank was empty; the drain plug and the washer were placed neatly on the running board. Gas in Hamble was at a premium. He replaced the drain plug angrily and went back on board to fetch a can out of his store, returned to the car, filled it into his tank, and got going on the road to Southampton.
The road past the airport was choked with Air Force lorries and tank waggons. The continual forced stops in the traffic gave him a measure of time to look about him; the whole countryside seemed to be littered with people camping out. Wherever a hedge corner made a shelter from the wind among the fields, a car had been parked as the basis of a settlement; in some instances a tent had been put up as well. Most of these temporary camps were littered and amateurish, with a touch of squalor. The people looked pinched and unhealthy in the streaming rain. Over the fields towards the disused reservoir the cars were thick; there seemed to be a great number of people camping out among the trees around the water.
He drove on into the town. At Northam bridge, before entering the city proper, there was a barricade guarded by police. He was stopped and asked where he was going to.
He told the constable his house and his office. “You’ll have to go round by the other bridge, sir,” said the man. “You know it, of course?”
Corbett nodded. “Why is that?”
The man hesitated. “It’s Mr. Corbett, isn’t it? The solicitor?”
“That’s right.”
The constable said, “We’ve got our orders not to allow any traffic in the Northam district. On account of the sickness, and that.”
“Is it the cholera?”
The man hesitated for a little. “Well — we’ve got orders not to talk about it, sir. Spreading alarm, if you take my meaning.”
“I understand. It’s pretty bad, is it?”
“I did hear it was better this morning, getting under control, like. It’s the typhoid now that they’re more upset about.”
Corbett nodded. “That’s bad.”
“It is, sir. Seems to me there’s not much to choose between them. Round by the Cobden bridge, if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t loiter in the city, sir, if I was you.”
Corbett swung his car round, and drove on. As he went he noticed that the streets were smelling very bad; stagnant water stood about in pools, spotted with rain drops, in the road and gutters. In one place he had to make a detour through side streets to avoid the debris that had been a house, now hurled into the road; in many places he had to edge his way around great cavities, roughly filled in or laid across with boards. There were no cars running. In places the overhead wires were down, roughly tied back to keep the roadway clear.
He reached his house with difficulty. It was untouched, as were the houses on each side of it. The house beyond Littlejohn’s, however, had suffered a direct hit; it stood a ruined, roofless shell. The explosion had brought down a small part of the side wall of Littlejohn’s house, but had not seriously damaged it.
There was a notice stuck on Littlejohn’s front door. He went to read it. It said:
GONE AWAY
Address, care of Southern Counties Bank,
Southampton.
E. D. Littlejohn
The notice, and the desolate, neglected appearance of the house, wrung his heart. It seemed to point an ending to the happiness that had existed in that house, a quiet, humdrum, and plebeian happiness that had better have been allowed to fade into oblivion, that did not require to have been underlined. At the same time, the notice seemed to him to be a sensible and practical idea; he would put one like it on his own front door. But where should he give as his new address? Where should he say that he had gone to?
Better to give his Bank address, as Littlejohn had done.
He turned away, and went to his own house. The windows and the back door had been carefully boarded up; Littlejohn must have done that for them before he had gone away. He unlocked the front door and went in. Inside, the house smelt stale and damp. Wet drove in at the board cracks over the windows, but little light or air came in; the house was cavernous and depressing. Materially, everything was quite all right; there had been no burglary nor, so far as he could see, had anybody been into the house.
He went upstairs. Joan’s powder compact was still lying on the dressing table, and her lipstick; he picked them up and dropped them in his pocket. The room was full of her things, redolent of her personality. He knew that if she had been with him she would have wanted other things; he was at a loss what to take with him. Finally he took her bedroom slippers and a little bottle of scent, and went about his business.
For some time he went from room to room, a pencilled list in hand, collecting the various articles and clothing which they had decided he should bring away. He took them all out to the car. Finally he went into the house again, and up to the nursery. He selected a few more books for the children, Little Black Sambo, the Story of a Fierce, Bad Rabbit, and one or two others, and he took a battered kaleidoscope for Phyllis, and a little truck for John, and a much-sucked woolly animal for the baby. Then he was ready to go.
He went gladly. It did not seem as if it was his own home at all, that house. It was strange and rather unpleasant, a desolate shell where people once had lived a quiet, peaceful life, and had been happy. His home, his real home, was on his battered, leaky little yacht.
“Home’s where your people are,” he muttered to himself. “That’s about it.”
He wrote out a notice similar to Littlejohn’s, found a packet of drawing pins, and pinned it securely to the front door. It would not last for long in that wet weather; perhaps when he came again he could do something more permanent for both houses.
In the road outside he paused and looked about him. Only about one house in three was still inhabited; the rest were empty, damaged and deserted. There was no drainage for the surface water in the road; it stood about in pools at the lower levels. One or two houses in the road had basements; it seemed to Corbett that they must be flooded.
He turned back to his car and drove away. As he drove through the shopping district towards his office he noticed that the smaller shops were shut up, practically without exception. The larger shops were open in a desultory sort of way; all windows had been smashed and boarded up, and there seemed to be very little business being done. He drove on to his office, parked the car outside it, and let himself in with his key.
There was nobody there. Someone had been there since his last visit; the windows were blocked with shelves roughly nailed across, taken from cupboards and presses whose contents had been neatly laid out on the floor of the various rooms. On his desk Corbett found a note addressed to himself, and dated two days earlier.
It was from his partner. It told him briefly that Bellinger was taking his family to stay with his sister in Ireland. He was motoring them up to Holyhead; he hoped to be back in Southampton in about a week.
“Ireland,” Corbett muttered to himself. “That should be safe enough. There’s nothing there to bomb.”
>
He pottered round in the office for a little while. There was a full bottle of milk by Miss Mortimer’s desk; he picked it up gladly, but it was a week old and very sour. He wrote a note and left it on Bellinger’s desk, telling him that he was living on his yacht. Then he left the office, shutting the front door carefully behind him, and went out into the town.
He was unable to get any milk at all. At one or two shops he was told that they might have some in the morning, but they did not seem sure about it. He visited an empty and deserted dairy. Nor was he any more successful with tinned milk. Finally he was advised to go to the hospital.
“There’s ever so much milk at the hospital,” the girl said. “They’re selling it up there, I heard. You see, they got their own supply, or something.”
He managed to buy a good quantity of provisions, sufficient to last them for a fortnight or so. Fresh meat was scarce, owing to the breakdown of refrigeration caused by the failure of the electric current. Rather unwisely he bought a large lump of dubious beef, about ten pounds in weight, which the butcher assured him would be quite all right if it were cooked that day, and he had the foresight to get a pan big enough to cook it in. That would make soup for the children, anyway. Fresh vegetables were scarce, but he was able to get some more potatoes and a good supply of tins.
There seemed to be no gasolene in the town at all.
He drove up to the hospital to try for milk. The short approach was thronged with ambulances evacuating the cases to some unknown destination, the entrance thronged with people. The building itself was damaged at one side. Baulks of timber had been placed to shore up a doubtful wall, and there were tarpaulins stretched across one portion of the roof.
He made some inquiries, and was directed to a basement room entered from the back of the building. A ward maid here sold him a pint of milk.
“Matron says we haven’t got to let nobody have more than a pint, and then only for a baby,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He watched her while she poured it into his jug. “You’re having a bad time here, I’m afraid,” he said.
“They’re getting all the patients that can be moved away today,” she said dully. “After last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been out in the country. They didn’t hit the hospital, did they?”
She nodded dumbly. “It’s the second time.”
“I’m terribly sorry. Was it bad?”
She nodded again, without saying anything.
“Any of the staff hurt?”
She nodded for a third time. “It was right on the theatre. Sister Morgan and Sister Burke — they were killed.” Her lips trembled. “And Nurse Harrison — she died this morning. And Mr. Endersleigh, and Mr. Gordon, and Dr. Sitwell, they were killed. It’s been a terrible blow to the hospital, really and truly.”
There was a momentary pause. Corbett rallied himself. “You say that Mr. Gordon was killed?”
She nodded. “Did you know him?”
“Yes,” said Corbett. “I knew him very well.”
There was a pause.
“Do you know how it happened?” he asked. “Did he — was he killed at once?”
“I think he was. He and Mr. Endersleigh were operating at the time. They had two tables going, each of them. And they say the bomb fell right into the theatre. Nurse Harrison, she was in the next room....”
There was no more to be said. Mechanically Corbett picked up his jug and moved away.
“That’ll be fourpence for the milk,” the ward maid said.
He turned back and paid her, and went on out to his car. He got into the car and sat motionless at the wheel for a long time, lost in thought. Gordon was dead. He sat there while the traffic to the hospital passed beside him, trying to realize it, to accept it as a new fact of his life. Gordon was dead. There would be no more Sunday trips in summer to Seaview to bathe with Gordon; there would be no repetition of the Whitsun holiday with Gordon to St. Malo. Gordon was dead.
He wondered what would happen now to Margaret. Gordon had told him she was nursing cholera. He could at least go to the house, to see if she was there, to see if he could help at all.
He drove towards the surgeon’s house. As he got near the road was blocked with unrepaired bomb holes. Rather than waste time in searching for a way round to the other end, he left the car and walked down to the house on foot. The front door stood open. He went up diffidently, and rang the bell. There was no sound; he remembered the electrical supply and tapped with the knocker.
In the hall a door opened. Margaret was there, bareheaded, in a stained nurse’s uniform. She said very quietly, “Peter. Come in. Come in and have a cup of tea.”
He said a little awkwardly, “I’ve just been to the hospital, Margaret. They told me what had happened there. I came to see if there was anything that I could do to help.”
She shook her head. “Come in and have a cup of tea,” she repeated. “I was just making one for myself.”
He said, “We were great friends, you know. I want to do anything I can.”
“It’s good of you, Peter,” she said quietly, “but there’s nothing you can do.”
He followed her into a littered, windy drawing room. Nothing had been done about the windows; the glass lay shattered on the carpet in the wet patches. In the grate a Primus was roaring under a tin kettle. “It won’t be long,” she said. “What have you done with Joan?”
He told her how they were living, as she prepared the teapot. As he spoke he studied her furtively. She was dry-eyed and very calm; he was a little afraid of her, and did not dare to offer any further sympathy.
She poured a little hot water into the teapot and set it down to warm. “You did right to go away,” she said evenly. “Everybody ought to get out of this town. It’s got a curse on it.” She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “It makes it terribly difficult when they won’t go.”
He recognized in that the detached attitude of a nurse; in one way he was glad of it. “I know you’ve got your work to do,” he said gently. “But you must need a rest. Would you come back with me to Hamble for a night or two?”
She raised her head, and smiled faintly. “You haven’t got room in your little boat. I don’t know how you’ve all got into it as it is.”
“We could manage somehow. We’d like to have you, and you’d help Joan a lot.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got my work to do here. It’s sweet of you to offer, Mr. Corbett. But the best thing I can do is to go straight on working. I don’t want to stop and think about things — yet.”
He nodded. “I’ll be coming in again in a few days. Perhaps you might like to come then.”
She shook her head. “There’s too much for me to do here.”
“Is it the cholera?”
She nodded. “Now that we’ve got the serum, that’s not quite so bad. Typhoid is worse. And this difficulty now is that it’s got out into the country. People evacuating, you know — and you can’t stop them, well or ill. We’ve got cases of both cholera and typhoid at Botley, and round about there. And every day we hear of new ones that we can’t isolate, or even treat....”
She turned to him. “And it’s so difficult to make a hospital. Even the barns and cowsheds are crammed full of people camping out. We’re getting near the stage when we may have to bring the patients back into the city for sheer lack of room, and chance the bombing.”
She laid her hand upon his arm. “Get away from it, Mr. Corbett,” she said earnestly. “You’ve got a boat. Take Joan and the children over to the Isle of Wight, or somewhere. This bit of Hampshire’s got a curse on it. Allan ...” Her voice faded, and she stopped. Then she spoke again. “He was John’s godfather, and I know he’d have said the same. Get them away to the Isle of Wight, or further still.”
He eyed her for a moment. “You think it’s going to be really bad?”
She nodded. “I know
it is. While this bombing keeps on every night — we’re not even holding our own. Disease is bound to spread, and it is spreading. We’re getting used to it a bit now, and we can see what we’re up against. But things will be much worse before they’re better.”
He said, “Thanks for telling me, Margaret. It’s decent of you. We could go over to the Isle of Wight at any time.”
“Go now, before it gets too late.”
He rose, and helped her clear away the tea things. “Is there nothing I can do for you?” he asked. “You know how much I want to help.”
She shook her head. “I’ll go on working. That’s all I need.” She stared around the littered room, the window gaping open to the wind. “I don’t know what to do with this house and everything. What have you done with yours?”
“Shut it up and left it. You’ll have to do the same. Just lock the door. It will be quite all right.”
She laughed, a little bitterly. “What’s the good of locking the door, with all the windows in this state?”
She did not need him; there was nothing he could do for her. He left her there, dry-eyed, gathering up a few clothes before she went back to her work, and walked back to his car.
He drove back to Hamble in the middle of the afternoon, parked the car, and hailed Joan on the yacht. She came off in the dinghy to fetch him with his purchases. The first thing she asked was, “Did you find my powder compact, Peter?”
He gave it to her, with the lipstick; she took them gratefully. He smiled. “Go on — laugh,” she said. “But it does help to know you’re looking decent.” She opened the compact and peered at the little mirror.
The next thing she asked about was the milk. He told her he had only got a pint.
“But, Peter,” she said, “that’s only two feeds! What are we going to do?”
There was an urgency about her manner that was new to him. He said, “Can she go on soup for a bit?”
She shook her head, “I’ve been trying that, and it’s awful. I gave her some of the tinned soup this morning. She was sick at once. Then I opened a tin of milk and gave her that, and she had that up, too. The little brat’s been crying steadily since ten o’clock.” He noticed that Joan was looking tired and worn.