Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  Her friend said generously, “Well, you might get in that. You make up ever so pretty, really you do.”

  Mona shot a brilliant smile at her. “You do talk soft.”

  A very shy young pilot in the Fleet Air Arm saw it, and his heart turned over. But his grill was ready, and in any case he would have been far too shy to go and talk to the barmaid. Romance was stillborn.

  The evening wore on, not very busily. In the intervals of serving, Mona’s thoughts drifted more and more from beer; in the bitter aroma of the bar she savoured all the perfumes of Arabia. There were ever so many different sorts of colours of lipstick and of powder; she did not know them all, but she could learn. It would be lovely to get a job and go round all the big shops demonstrating facial make-up, helping people to look nice. A job in the perfumery would be the start, if she could land one. She wondered what was the best way to set about it.

  The bar closed at ten. At about quarter to ten she saw a tall young Air Force officer come in through the swing doors, dressed in a long grey-blue overcoat and forage cap, with black hair and pink cheeks glowing with the sudden warmth of the room. She stared amazed. Jerry was up in Yorkshire, or so she had thought. He couldn’t be back here again, but there he was.

  “Are you just back on a holiday?”

  He grinned at her across the room; she put a hand up to shoulder height and waved at him. Then he hung up his coat and came to her through the naval officers.

  “Jerry!” she cried. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  Behind her, Miriam watched entranced.

  He said, “I came for half a can.”

  “But what are you doing down here?”

  He looked into her eyes, laughing. “Buying half a can.”

  “Oh, you and your half can!” She served it to him.

  He raised it to her. “All the best.” He set it down again. “How’ve you been?”

  “I’m fine. How are you, Jerry?”

  He said, “I got rid of my ringworm, but my cancer’s troubling me a good deal. I don’t think I’ve got very long to live.”

  She said, “You look like it. Tell me, are you back at Emsworth?”

  “I’m at Titchfield now.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Three and a half hours. Nearly three and three quarters, now.”

  She said happily, “And you come right along . . .”

  He nodded. “That’s right. I couldn’t miss my beer.”

  There was an interruption, and she left him to serve three double whiskies and a crème de menthe for the lady. When she came back to him, he said, “Doing anything afterwards?”

  She smiled. “Nothing special.”

  He set down his can. “I don’t want to go dancing at the Pavilion,” he said quietly. “Not just yet. And it’s too late for a flick. Would you like to go and eat something at the Cosy Cot?”

  “I’d like that ever so.”

  “Five past ten, round by the back door?”

  “That’s right.”

  He grinned at her. “I’ll be there.”

  He moved away, beer mug in hand; Mona went on with her work, humming a little song about rolling down the cotton on the levee down South, which she did not fully understand but which seemed to express what she was feeling. Miriam came up and smiled at her.

  “Got the boy-friend back again,” she said. “You might have told me.”

  Mona said, “I didn’t know he was coming. He went away to Yorkshire.”

  “You don’t say. I thought he just went off, like.”

  Mona shook her head. “He got shifted away.”

  “What’s he doing here now?”

  “He got shifted back again.”

  “My! Going out with him?”

  The girl nodded.

  Miriam sighed a little. Some girls got all the luck. She herself had been sedulously to the Pavilion, year after year, but she had never got off with an officer like that. All she got were awkward sailors who danced badly, smelt of beer, and never even made a dubious proposal such as she had read of in books. Some girls had all the luck.

  She said, “You be careful. He’s got a naughty look about him.”

  Mona laughed. “You’re telling me!”

  The other sighed. “I’d leave home for him, any day,” she said.

  Chambers stood in the darkness of the alley, waiting. It was a fine bright moonlit night, frosty and with a keen wind. In the shadows of the alley the darkness was intense. He held the rabbit lamp in his hand. When he heard Mona at the gate that led into the yard of the hotel, he flashed the rabbit at her, and said, “Boo!”

  She jumped back with a little squeal. He caught her in his arms, and kissed her in the darkness of the alley.

  She said breathlessly, “You and your rabbit! I didn’t know what it was.”

  He held her to him, and said, “Me.”

  “I know that.” She wriggled in his arms. “Give over now. You’ll get me all mussed up.”

  “That’s the object of the exercise. Are you glad to see me?”

  She stopped wriggling, and said quietly, “Ever so glad, Jerry.”

  He released her. “Let’s go and get something to eat.”

  They walked across to the little car parked by the roadside. “You’ve got the same car still,” she said.

  “That’s right. Look out how you sit down. The bottom’s coming out of that seat.”

  They drove out to the Cosy Cot, sitting more closely together even than was warranted by the cramped nature of the car. The roadhouse was only moderately full; they got a table in a corner and ordered ham and eggs and beer.

  She said, “How long will you be here, Jerry?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t really know. Some time, I should think.”

  “Is it flying out over the sea, like you did at Emsworth?”

  He hesitated. “It’s not much like that. It’s a sort of an experimental job.”

  “One of them you’re not supposed to talk about?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I see.” There was nothing new to her in that. When her father had been working in the Dockyard towards the end of his career in the Navy, there had been a period of four whole years when they had not known what work he did when he went off each day. Those four years in his life were still a sealed book to his wife and family.

  He said, “Been dancing much?”

  She smiled at him impishly. “Went to the Pavilion two or three times, but I never got another officer.”

  “One’s enough.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Once bit, twice shy.” They both laughed. “No, I’ve not been there much.”

  “Still liking it in the bar?”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right, but I’d like to have a change. With the summer, and the long evenings, and all.”

  He nodded. “What would you want to do?”

  “I thought it might be nicer in a shop.” She looked at him doubtfully, wondering how he would react to that; he might regard it as a step down in the social scale.

  “What sort of shop?”

  She said, “I’d like to sell perfume, ever so.”

  He nodded. “Not bacon or split peas?”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t mean a shop like that.”

  He said, “I was joking — sorry — tell me, why perfumes?”

  “I don’t know, Jerry. Only, that’s what I’d like to do.” He nodded with understanding. She leaned forward to him. “Things like silks, and evening gowns, and perfumes, and face powder. It’d be lovely to be handling them sort of things all day.” She considered for a moment. “Of course, it’s all right in the bar.”

  He smiled. “But you’re getting restless.”

  “That’s right.”

  He said, “It’s the war. Nobody really settles down to any job.”

  Behind them the radio-gramophone was playing dance tunes, softly and continuously.

  She said quietly, “War
is a fine time for men. I mean, all them chaps that get called up. They get fun, and games, and work outside in the sun instead of working a machine all day in the factory.” She looked up into his face. “I walked along the front today, and there was dozens of them in the Fort, sitting about and smoking in a patch of sun, out of the wind. They seemed so happy. I was ever so glad for them.”

  He smiled at her. “It may be a fine time for men, but it’s a rotten time for women.”

  She shook herself. “We’re getting mouldy, Jerry. We’ll be weeping salt tears next.”

  “I know. It’s all this beer we’re drinking does it. We’d have been merry as a grig if we’d been drinking gin.”

  She laughed. “Says you.”

  “We’ll go and dance, next time.”

  She eyed him for a minute. “You wouldn’t want to go to the Pavilion yet, would you?”

  “I don’t know that I mind much, now.” He stared across the room, absent-minded for a minute. His new job with the Marine Experimental Unit rather altered his diffidence about the Pavilion. The work, so far as he had been able to assimilate it in an hour’s discussion, was definitely dangerous and of the highest value to the progress of the war. One pilot, who was married and whose wife was having her first baby, had asked if he might be excused from it. That was why a pilot had been sent from Market Stanton. Chambers was pleased and proud to have the chance of doing it; only a strong sense of discretion had prevented him from pouring his news out to Mona. With this job he had walked straight into the status of a test pilot, and a pretty responsible one at that. It made a difference to dancing at the Pavilion, in his view. It gave him back self-confidence. To hell with what the Navy chose to think of him. He was one of the test pilots from the Marine Experimental Unit.

  Mona said gently, “Did you hear any more of that submarine thing, Jerry?”

  He shook his head. Behind them the radio-gramophone was churning out its grievances.

  Tonight, I mustn’t think of him —

  Music, maestro, please —

  Tonight, tonight I must forget

  Those happy hours, but no hearts or flowers —

  Play that lilting melody

  Ragtime, Jazztime, Swing —

  Any old thing

  To help to ease the pain

  That solitude must bring. . . .

  He said, “It’s all over now, and best forgotten. I suppose I sunk it. I must have done it. But it was an accident, and it really wasn’t my fault. The thing was ten miles out of its position.” He stared at her. “I shall be sorry about it all my life,” he said quietly. “But one must go on. There’s still work to be done.”

  He used to like waltzing —

  So please, don’t play a waltz —

  He danced divinely

  And I loved him so

  But there I go . . .

  They sat together, without talking much. Mona did not pursue the subject of the submarine; she listened absently while he told her of the flight that he had made across Germany. There was something in her mind that puzzled her; she could not exactly place it. Seeing Jerry and talking to him in the Cosy Cot had brought back to her mind the details of the time before when she had sat with him, listening to the same tunes on the same radiogram. That was the time when he had told her about Caranx, when she had sat straining to assimilate the story in order that she could help him in his trouble. She sat there listening to him as he talked, and the conviction grew in her that there was something inconsistent, something wrong. She had heard of Caranx again that evening, and it was different. Caranx was sunk by a number of bombs, some large, some small; Jerry had told her all about it, and she had strained to memorize the details. But the cutting in the newspaper had said there was one big explosion. And what was that about the bow and stern coming up in two separate parts? That wasn’t what Jerry had told her.

  She would not worry him by raking it all up again. He had said that it was best forgotten, and it was. American newspapers were bound to be all wrong about the war; she had seen half a dozen movies of American newspaper offices in which the heroine solved the mystery and married the District Attorney. They had left her pleasantly thrilled, but with a poor opinion of the American Press.

  Jerry was right. Caranx had been an accident that was best forgotten.

  What the adjutant said really doesn’t matter a great deal. So far as I know Chambers never spoke of it to any one, even to Mona. It was very technical, difficult to understand, though interesting in its way. It was purely by chance that I came to hear what he’d been doing. I found it in a file at the Air Ministry when I was looking for something else, and my tea got cold while I went chasing up that side alley. But the file was marked SECRET and I had to sign for it, and so I think we’ll let it rest. It had nothing to do with Caranx, anyway. — N. S.

  6

  CAPTAIN BURNABY SAT in conference in his office in the Dockyard. He sat at the head of the long green table, his massive, iron-grey eyebrows knitted in a frown as he battled stubbornly with unfamiliar problems. A stern pride had made him master every technicality that had come to him in a long career. It was bad luck that electronic theory should have crossed his path so late in life.

  He turned to the civilian on his right. “If you can calibrate the circuit in the trial runs, that’s good enough,” he said. “I don’t see where the difficulty arises.”

  The professor cleared his throat. He was a grey-haired, serious man of fifty, dressed in a dark grey suit. He was not yet at home in the naval atmosphere to which his work had led him. He did not understand their processes of thought, and he was ill at ease.

  “We can calibrate for any given frequency,” he said. “The difficulty lies in assessing the conditions as the aircraft nears the ship.”

  “But as I understand it, every ship has its own frequency.”

  “Yes — every ship of the same class has similar characteristics.”

  “And the frequency is always the same, from month to month and year to year.”

  “That is so. But of course, it will be modulated by the direction of the ship relative to the meridian.”

  “Oh . . .” The captain stared at the blotting pad before him in a giant effort of concentration. It was impossible for him to admit that once again he was out of his depth. The wing commander on his left came to his aid.

  “The course corrector deals with that, sir. The pilot sets the course of the target ship upon the dial, you remember.”

  “Yes — yes,” said Burnaby. “I see that.” Now that his memory was refreshed, he could recall that point.

  The professor said, “But that’s a relative correction, not an absolute one. It has no bearing on our difficulty.”

  There was a short silence.

  Burnaby turned to the civilian. “You say it’s going to take three months to do these calculations.”

  “At least that, I’m afraid. It means we’ve got to plot the influence round several known ships, in three dimensions. From that we can construct the diagrams for any other ship.”

  The naval officer cut through the difficulty with a swift question.

  “Suppose we haven’t got the time for that,” he said. “Suppose I tell you that this thing has got to be in service in three months from now? I understand there’s no production difficulty.”

  The wing commander nodded. “It could be used in three months’ time,” he said. “Deliveries will be starting in a week or two.”

  The professor of physics looked helplessly from one to the other. “We must find out the conditions before we can make it work at all,” he said.

  The captain looked at him. “Can’t we fly it over a known ship and poop it off?” he said. “Poop off half a dozen of them, each with a different setting?”

  The wing commander said, “Surely we can bracket it like that?”

  The civilian said slowly, “I don’t think you can go at it in that way. You see, you have to have a bursting charge to free the satellites. You can’t d
o it with a dummy.”

  Burnaby said, “I’m afraid I don’t quite get that point.”

  “Well, if in fact the frequency is lower than the setting, it probably won’t work at all. If the frequency is high, then there’s a danger that the bomb will go off in the aeroplane. We can’t take out the bursting charge, you see.”

  The naval officer said slowly, “I see that.”

  There was a short silence. Burnaby sat marshalling his rather scanty knowledge of the subject that they were discussing. Not for the first time, he cursed these newfangled weapons. Things had been easier in the last war. You got a bomb and stuck a simple fuse in the end of it. If you hit it with a hammer, it went off. It was as simple as that. But things were very different now.

  He said, “I suppose if the bomb exploded in the aeroplane we’d lose both the machine and the pilot.”

  The wing commander nodded. “We mustn’t let that happen.” He paused and then he said, “But I don’t think it need. We can go at this from the low-frequency end, and work up gently. It should be all right that way so long as we don’t make any mistakes.”

  Burnaby said, “That seems all right, so long as we go carefully.”

  The civilian listened uneasily. For fifteen years he had worked in the seclusion of a Cambridge laboratory upon the research that war had switched to a new weapon. He was a practical man, and fully understood the urgency with which the Navy drove on the development. But with that understanding he had other understandings of his own. He knew that they knew so little of the influences round a ship. Such things had never been plotted or explored. He had made estimates, and if his estimates were right the weapon would work. If not, either it wouldn’t work at all, or else it would be set off prematurely in the aeroplane.

  He said, “I don’t think we could possibly do that.”

  Burnaby stared at him. “Why not?”

  “Well, think of the risk.”

  The wing commander said, “If we get it wrong, of course, we lose the aeroplane. But I don’t see any reason why we should go wrong.”

  The civilian said stubbornly, “It seems to me that we’ll be taking very great risks if we go at it that way.”