by Nevil Shute
“All right,” said Mona with determination. “I’ll go and try.”
The white-coated waiter came with a tray for three glasses of light sherry for the Wrens. Mona said, “Look, Jimmie, I’ll take that along.”
Miriam said, “Here, what about the bar?”
“Give a hand in the bar, Jimmie. I won’t be a minute.” She took the tray and carried it over to the three Wren officers in the corner. She put the glasses down carefully on the table before them, wiping the foot of each with Jimmie’s napkin, and waited while one of them fumbled in a purse with finger and thumb.
She took the money, and said, “Please, is one of you ladies Miss Hancock?”
The middle girl looked up. “I am Miss Hancock,” she said. She spoke with a public-school voice, clearly and very definitely. Mona was a little damped.
She said diffidently, “Do you think I might speak to you alone, please?”
The Wren stared at her with amused astonishment. “Of course you can,” she said at last. She got up from her chair, saying to the others, “Look after my drink.” She turned to Mona. “Where shall we go?”
There was nowhere they could go privately, except the ladies’ room, and that was probably full. Mona said weakly, “Just anywhere, I suppose.” They moved a little way aside from the other two watching Second Officer Hancock with curiosity.
The two girls faced each other. “What is it?” asked the officer.
Mona said, “It’s just something I overheard, Miss Hancock. You know, we hear a lot of talk in the bar here of an evening — this and that, you know. Sometimes you just don’t know what to do for the best, whether to tell any one or let it go. Or who you ought to tell.”
“What did you hear?”
“It was about a submarine called Caranx.”
The Wren frowned. Caranx was a sore subject at Admiralty House, the source of a great deal of bitterness. “What about Caranx?” she asked sharply.
Mona said, “They all said that she’d been sunk by one of our own aeroplanes. But I don’t think that’s right, honest I don’t.”
“There was a Court of Enquiry that went into the whole thing very carefully.”
Mona tossed her head. “Precious fine Court of Enquiry, if you ask me. They never heard what Porky Thomas had to say, nor Mouldy James, neither.”
Miss Hancock was startled and impressed. “Who are they — Porky Thomas and Mouldy James?”
“They’re naval officers what come here of an evening, and talk free when they’ve had a beer or two. Off the minesweepers, I think they are — both of ’em.”
“Do they know something about Caranx?”
Mona hesitated. “All they know is what they saw,” she said at last. “There was another submarine sunk that same afternoon, besides Caranx.”
The Wren officer fixed her with a cool, level stare. “You’re not making all this up?”
“Honest, I’m not. Porky Thomas saw the oil coming up from the bottom the next morning, and Mouldy James had a cutting from an American paper describing how the second one was sunk, and it was that same day. And then there was the clothes, too.”
“What about the clothes?”
“There was a salvage officer here only last night, saying about the Germans carrying our sailors’ clothes in their torpedo tubes, to shoot out if they was depth-charged. I don’t know his name, but he was off one of the salvage ships.”
“I see.”
Miss Hancock was silent for a minute. Around them the crowd moved and chattered, with all the clamour of a bar at nine o’clock at night. She was impressed; the girl seemed to know something. Certainly she knew a great deal more than it was right for any civilian to know in wartime. It would probably turn out that it was all imagination; on the other hand it was just possible that there was something in it. Miss Hancock had seen and filed the minutes of the Court of Enquiry; she could remember nothing about any other submarine, or about clothes being carried in torpedo tubes, for that matter. She knew very well the bitter feelings that had been raised by the affair of Caranx between men overstrained by war. If it were possible to show, even by inference, that Caranx might not have been sunk by our own action, the gain in unity would be enormous.
“What’s your name?” she said at last.
“Mona Stevens.”
“Look,” said the Wren officer, “we can’t talk about this here. When can you come to Admiralty House tomorrow?”
Mona said, “I’m on duty here from twelve till two, and then again from six till ten, Miss Hancock. I could come any time between.”
The other said incisively, “I come off watch at six bells. Could you come and see me then, at the side entrance to Admiralty House? The signalman will show you the office.”
The barmaid looked at her helplessly. “Please — what time did you say?”
“Three o’clock in the afternoon. Come in at the main gate of the Dockyard; I’ll tell them to expect you. You’ll have to sign the book.”
“All right, Miss Hancock. I’ll be there.”
“I wouldn’t talk about this too much.”
“I won’t do that.”
Mona picked up her tray, and went to the bar. The Wren officer rejoined her friends. One of them said, “You had a nice little heart-to-heart. What was it all about?”
Miss Hancock was silent for a minute. Then she said, “She’s got an idea into her head which might be important. You know, there’s no proper organization for civilians who get to know things. They never know who to see about it.”
“What are you doing?”
“I told her to come to Admiralty House tomorrow afternoon.”
Two miles away, in Haslar Hospital, Sister Loring was going on duty. She was the night sister in Block B, Floor 2; each night at nine o’clock she came to take over from Sister MacKenzie, the day sister. Sister Loring went straight to the floor office and took off her cloak, hanging it on a peg. There was a trolley there, loaded with the grim appliances for a transfusion. She gave it a cursory glance, patted her hair before the mirror and adjusted her cap, and crossed to the desk. The record sheet was there, made out in MacKenzie’s angular, crabbed handwriting. There was no sign of MacKenzie.
The night sister glanced at the sheet. Everything seemed much as she had left it before except for one new case, multiple injuries and burns. That would be the transfusion, no doubt. The record showed an injection of strychnine, one sixteenth of a grain, at eight-forty — twenty minutes previously.
There was a quick short step outside. Sister MacKenzie came into the office, and a glance told the night sister that she was in a blazing temper. Her mouth was set into a thin, hard line of disapproval; her high, angular cheekbones glowed pink.
“Evening, sister,” said Loring. “Got a new accident case, I see.”
“We have that,” said the Scotswoman dourly.
The other glanced at her curiously. “Who is he?”
“A young air pilot. Been up to some daft fool trick, nae doubt.”
“Bad?”
“Ay, he’s bad all right. And if you ask me, Dr. Foster’s oot to make him worse. I doot he’ll die before the morn.”
The night sister nodded slowly. Such things were not a novelty to her. More interesting was the rancour of the day sister against Surgeon Commander Foster.
“Fractures, I suppose?”
“Ay — twa ribs and the right thigh. Maybe the pelvis, but it’s early yet to say. Burns on both hands and arms. Shock, of course.”
The night sister glanced at the trolley. “When’s the transfusion?”
“I dinna ken — you’d better ask that Commander Foster. I’ll tell you when it should have been, and that’s two hours ago. Maybe the doctor will let him have it in another two hours, if he’s with us still.”
“I see he’s had strychnine.”
“Ay, and a heavy dose. Did ever you hear the like! The laddie comes in here conscious and all excited, and they give him strychnine!”
The night sis
ter nodded; it did seem to be a very odd treatment for shock. She would have said morphia, to put him to sleep, to rest while the shock spent its force. She wrinkled her brows. Strychnine, surely, would make him still more conscious. It sounded absolutely crazy.
“What on earth are they playing at?” she said.
The day sister shrugged her shoulders in eloquent, silent disapproval. “There’s another thing,” she said with evident restraint. “A thing ye’d never guess, if ye was to guess from now till New Year’s Day.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s got a visitor.”
“A visitor!”
“Ay — a business visitor. And there the laddie is, at this very minute, talking nineteen to the dozen about engineering and the Lord knows what!”
Sister Loring stared at her. “But what on earth possessed them to let a case like that have a visitor?”
“Ye may well ask that. I’m coming to think this place is turned into a madhouse. There have been Navy officers and Air Force officers and all sorts here this evening, talking with the doctor. Such craziness I never met, in twenty years of service.”
A gleam of light came to Sister Loring. “Is this visitor an officer?”
“Not a bit of it. There might be reason in it if he was. It’s just a civilian of some kind.”
“How long has he been with the patient?”
Sister MacKenzie glanced at the watch upon her wrist. “Eight and a half minutes. Commander Foster said ten minutes was the time he was to have, but I’ll no let him stay that long. It’s time he was off oot of it.”
She left the office, and marched a little way along the corridor to a single room. Loring followed her; they entered with quiet precision learned from the long years in the wards.
The Scotswoman said, “Your time is up now. Will you please go away.”
In the bed the patient turned his head with difficulty. “I want a minute or two longer, Nurse.”
“And ye’re not going to have it.” She turned to the civilian. “I have asked you to go away,” she said with icy dignity. “Will ye please go at once.”
Professor Legge got to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said to the still figure in the bed. “I’ve got it all now.”
There was no answer from the bed. Legge turned away; the sister marched to the door and held it open for him. He went out; in the passage he turned back to her. “What are his chances?” he asked softly.
She was still very angry. “One half of what they were before your visit,” she said. “And that’s the truth I’m telling you.”
She turned back into the room, and shut the door in his face. Professor Legge went heavily towards the entrance. There was no ending to the pain and anxiety of this work.
Half an hour later Surgeon Commander Foster straightened up above the bed and removed his gloves; a nurse wheeled away the trolley, and Sister Loring finished the bandaging. The surgeon said in a low tone, “Now the morphia injection, sister. Half a grain.”
“Yes, doctor.”
Presently the surgeon went away. The sister stayed for a while with the nurse, tidying the room and making all ready for the night. Once as she bent over him to adjust the bedclothes the patient said, “I want Mona to have my rabbit.”
She smiled at him. “You go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll see that Mona gets your rabbit. But you’re not to talk any more.”
There were few other patients in the ward, and she was with him most of the night.
Next day, at three o’clock, Mona was at the Dockyard gate. The policeman greeted her affably, and made her sign the visitors’ book. He compared the name written in the book with a pencilled list.
“That’s right,” he said. “Admiralty House. You know where that is, do you?”
“Turn to the right, don’t I?”
“That’s it, miss. Big house on the right hand side, with pillars in front, just before you come to the arch. You can’t mistake it.”
She walked on and came to Admiralty House, standing in the middle of the Dockyard with a mown sweep of grass in front of it. One or two old cannon graced the entrance, with one or two symmetrical piles of cannon balls; the brass was very brightly polished, and the long flight of steps that led up to the main door were very white. The perfection with which the big old house was maintained externally gave it a queerly masculine effect; it exuded discipline. Mona was slightly intimidated.
She saw a side door, and went in. A naval signalman came forward. “I want to see Miss Hancock,” she said.
He took her to a very small office on an upper floor; the Wren officer got up to meet her from a desk littered with a typewriter and many files and dockets of papers. “Afternoon,” she said. “You got here all right?” She cleared a bundle of papers from the only other chair, and offered it to Mona.
The girl sat down upon the edge of it, a little nervously. “Yes, thank you,” she said.
There was an awkward pause.
Miss Hancock leaned back in her chair. “Well, what is it?” she said at last. “You told me that you thought another submarine had been sunk on the same afternoon as Caranx.”
“That’s right.”
“But how did you come to know that Caranx had been sunk at all?” Miss Hancock had thought of that one in her bath that morning.
Mona had anticipated it. “They was talking about it in the bar, the night it happened,” she said. That was true enough, although she hadn’t heard what they said.
“Who was talking about it?”
“All the naval officers, I think. They all seemed to know.”
Miss Hancock was silent. It was extraordinary how these things got around. People talked too much.
She said, “Tell me again what Porky Thomas saw. What’s his real name, by the way — and his rank?”
Twenty minutes later she tapped at the next door but three along the corridor, and then went in. Commander Sutton looked up from his desk, red-faced, red-haired, and jovially plump. “Ha,” he said, “what are you doing here? I thought it was your watch below.”
Second Officer Hancock was patient with him. The reference to her watch below was part of a longstanding ridicule, aimed at the naval talk affected by the W.R.N.S. It had reached its culmination the week before, rather offensively in her opinion, when he had found her making tea. “Tea!” he had roared for all the corridor to hear. “Sailors don’t drink tea! You want a tot of rum! That’s the stuff to put hair on your chest!” Since then there had been a coolness in the office.
She said, “There’s a girl in my room that I’d like you to see, Commander.”
He said, “Is she pretty?”
She raised her head a little higher. “I don’t know if you’d think so. But she’s got a story that I think you ought to hear.”
He stared at her, slightly more serious. “Who is she, anyway?”
“She is the barmaid at the Royal Clarence, in the snack bar.”
He burst into a guffaw of laughter. “Of course I’ll see her. Any time — anywhere. Lead me to her.” He sobered himself and then said, “Where is she now?”
“She’s in my office.”
“Go and get her. I say, do you know that one— ‘My Lord, there is a maid without’?”
Miss Hancock said frigidly, “I know that one, Commander. I’ll go and get her.”
She went back to her own office. “I want you to come and see Commander Sutton,” she said. “He’s just along the corridor.” She hesitated and then said, “You mustn’t mind his way. He thinks he’s funny.”
She need not have worried. Commander Sutton reserved his pleasantries for young women who considered themselves his superior in the social scale; with his inferiors he was both courteous and polite. He got up from his desk as Mona came into the room. “My name is Sutton,” he said. “How do you do, Miss Stevens.” He indicated a chair. “Would you sit down?”
He offered her a cigarette, which she refused. “Well now,” he said jovially, “what’s this all about?�
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Miss Hancock said, “It’s about the Caranx accident, Commander. Miss Stevens thinks another submarine was sunk on that same afternoon, off Departure Point, and that that one was really Caranx.”
“Oh . . .” The plump officer lit his cigarette with care, and laid the match down carefully in the tray. Then he stared across the desk at the barmaid, and all joviality was gone. “What makes you think that, Miss Stevens?”
Mona said in a small voice. “It’s like this. I work in the Royal Clarence, in the snack bar.”
“I know you do,” he said gravely. “You’ve served me there.”
She smiled weakly. “Yes, sir. And you know how people get to talking of an evening, when they meet old friends. Not but what they’re very careful, but they forget about the girl behind the bar.” She looked up at him. “We get to hear ever such a lot of things — you wouldn’t think.”
He nodded without speaking.
“Well, the day after Caranx was sunk all the naval officers, the young ones I mean, they seemed to know all about it. And they was arguing where it happened. And somebody said that somebody called Rugson had told him that it was off Departure Point, in Area SL, I think it was.”
The naval officer absently wrote “Rugson” on his blotting pad. “Departure Point is in Area SL,” he observed.
“That’s what they said. And they said that an officer called Porky Thomas had sailed through a lot of oil coming up from the bottom, just off Departure Point, and that he told Rugson.”
“This was the same day?”
“No, sir. That was the next morning, after Caranx had been sunk.”
“I see. It’s all a bit second-hand, isn’t it?”
Mona said, “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, somebody told somebody something, and he told somebody else, who told somebody else over a drink. It’s not very good evidence, is it?”
Mona looked him in the eyes. “I didn’t think nothing of it till I saw a newspaper that an officer called Mouldy James had.” She smiled. “I’m terribly sorry I don’t know their proper names, Porky Thomas and Mouldy James. I only know what people call them.”