by Nevil Shute
“Or-right.”
“Did you ask him about the stewed fruit?”
“He ain’t got none.” The diver made a gesture of annoyance.
The second anchor broke surface; Lieutenant Mitcheson rang for half speed ahead, and the trawler began to move. She turned in a wide circle. Commander Rutherford went forward to the well deck and stood by the bulwarks facing to the buoy. Then, in a level voice, he began to read from Mitcheson’s prayer book.
The men stood round him with bared heads, awkward and a little embarrassed. Rutherford read on steadily, conscientiously, and rather badly. He knew that he was bad at reading aloud. His friends had known that, too; he thought they wouldn’t mind.
“I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me,
Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which
die in the Lord: even so saith the spirit; for they rest
from their labours.”
The trawler turned from the buoy, and set a course for home.
In the study in Admiralty House, Commander Rutherford made his report to the Admiral. Captain Burnaby was there, and Commander Foster, jovial and red-faced.
Rutherford said, “I think there is no doubt that the one off Departure Point is Caranx, sir. The long handle was part of the ballast controls, and the handwheel was the field control to one of the motors. We identified that definitely.”
Admiral Blackett said, “Was the other submarine really sunk? It’s been established that she didn’t get away?”
“We had a sweep made yesterday,” said Captain Burnaby. “Commander Rutherford suggested that. There’s definitely a ship there on the bottom, but it’s too deep to get a diver down to her, except under very good conditions.” He paused. “I think there can be very little doubt that she is the submarine that Flying Officer Chambers sunk.”
“I see.”
The Admiral sat back in his chair. “As you would reconstruct the matter, then,” he said, “Caranx was proceeding towards Portsmouth at two-fifteen in the afternoon, in a squall of rain. Probably she was running on the surface.”
Rutherford said, “Certainly on the surface, I should say. She sent a wireless signal at 14.03.”
“Yes — on the surface. As the squall passed she was sighted by a German, which unfortunately was in a position to torpedo her, and did so.”
The officers nodded their agreement.
The Admiral thought for a minute. “The supposition is, that after that, the German took up the course that Caranx had been steering on, for Portsmouth. And that he ran upon the surface as Caranx had been doing.” He paused. “Why did he do that?”
Commander Foster beamed, leaned forward, and said keenly, “He was a clever chap. He would have seen from her course that Caranx was making for the Gate, and he would have realized that aircraft and trawlers would have been warned not to attack her. He may have hoped to get right up into Spithead.”
“So he proceeded on the surface, just as Caranx had been doing. He took a very bold course if he did that.”
Commander Foster said, “I think he was probably a very bold man, sir.”
Burnaby said, “That sounds like the truth of it, to me. He was doing his best to behave exactly as Caranx would have done, in an attempt to get right close in to the Gate.”
Commander Rutherford made a grimace. “He might have done a lot of damage if he’d pulled it off.”
The Commander-in-Chief nodded. “Yes, he might have done a lot of damage. Unfortunately for him, he took too long to make up his mind. He was late on his schedule.”
Foster said, “It’s a bit of luck that Air Force pilot got him.” He smiled broadly.
Admiral Blackett leaned forward to the table. “Well, gentlemen, that seems to be the truth of it. I’m glad we’ve been able to clear it up; it’s always very unsatisfactory when things are left unexplained. Now, is there any further business — any other points that anybody has to raise?”
Captain Burnaby raised his head. “As a matter of fact, sir, the Court of Enquiry ought to be recalled to reconsider its findings. That’s a small matter; I should think they’d run through it in half an hour. But I think it ought to be done.”
The Commander-in-Chief said, “I shouldn’t waste much effort over that. It affects nothing now.”
Burnaby persisted. “They censured the pilot in their findings, sir. I think that should be rectified with as little delay as possible.”
The Admiral said, “I had forgotten that. All right, see my secretary and get them recalled. You’d better get that done at once; we owe a lot to that young man.”
Commander Foster laughed out genially. “First of all he gets a strip torn off for sinking Caranx, when what he really did was to save our bacon for us. Then we go and blow him up in Burnaby’s experiments.”
Burnaby said, “That’s another matter altogether. We might consider that as well, sir, if you care to.”
Admiral Blackett said, “Just as you like. He seems to have deserved well of us on two counts.”
Rutherford said, “How’s he getting on, by the way?”
“Quite well,” said Burnaby. “He’ll be flying again in six months.”
The Admiral leaned back in his chair. “For the submarine, he deserves a mention in despatches. That’s clearly in our sphere. Is every one agreed on that?”
They nodded their agreement.
“For the experimental work, I take it that we owe him a good deal. That is so, isn’t it?”
Burnaby said, “That is correct, sir. The R.Q. apparatus will be ready for service in a month from now. That’s very largely the result of the risks he took. I think he should get something for that, too.”
The Admiral said, “Haven’t the Air Force got a special decoration for that sort of thing? It stays in my mind that they’ve got something of the sort.”
There was a doubtful silence. Foster said, “Is that the Air Force Cross?”
The Commander-in-Chief said, “I believe you’re right. Pass me that Whitaker’s Almanack from the desk.”
He turned the pages. “That’s the one,” he said at last. “ ’For acts of courage or devotion to duty when flying, although not in active operations against the enemy.’ ” He paused. “That seems to cover it.”
Commander Foster said, “Well, that’s a matter for the Air Force, isn’t it? It’s their decoration.”
Captain Burnaby raised his head and stared at him arrogantly, the grim, iron-grey brows knitted together in a frown, the jaw firmly set.
“I don’t agree with you at all,” he said. “This was a naval trial. The Air Force supplied the pilot and the aeroplane, but apart from that they had nothing whatever to do with it. The matter of a decoration is entirely in our hands. It would be most improper for the Air Ministry to put him forward for anything except upon our recommendation.”
He turned to the Admiral. “I quite agree that he should have the Air Force Cross,” he said. “I suggest we make a recommendation in those terms to the Air Ministry.”
L’ENVOI
DUSK FELL UPON the convoy making westward from the land. There were nine ships in all, guarded by destroyers ahead and astern. They steamed in long zigzags at about fifteen knots, heading out into the Atlantic.
Flight Lieutenant Chambers, A.F.C., stood by the rail with his wife. He leaned upon his stick, because he could not walk without it yet. It would be some months before he would be fit to fly again; in the meantime he had been posted to Trenton, Ontario, as a ground instructor.
In the six months since he had sunk his submarine he had changed a good deal. He was thinner and he had lost a good deal of his fresh complexion, replaced by a brown tan gained from lying out in his long chair at the convalescent home. He bore himself with greater confidence.
Mona, too, was changed. In her, the alteration was less physical than verbal. When it had become inevitable that she must marry Jerry she had left the snack bar and had entered on a concentrated course of study. Her general education di
d not worry her; her native wit told her that she would get by as an officer’s wife if she took pains with her appearance and her speech. It was the latter that she had concentrated on.
Madame Tremayne had been her standby, Professor of Elocution, Public Speaking, and Deportment. Madame Tremayne, whose real name was Susan Bigsworth, lived in undistinguished style in Fratton and charged two shillings for each individual lesson. Her chief clients were young women who aspired to be mannequins; Mona had known about her for some time. She taught Mona a correct form of English that would have given her away more surely than her mother tongue. From her Mona learned to abandon the phrase, “You didn’t ought to do that” and to say carefully, “You should not do that.” It was some time before she acquired familiarity with “You oughtn’t to do that.”
They had been married for a week. In the swift movement of the war so much had happened in that week that their marriage had not occupied their thoughts a very great deal. They had anticipated a long period of sick leave which they had planned to spend in Cornwall on their honeymoon; instead of that they had received upon their wedding day a posting to Canada. After the first shock they had welcomed it. When all their life demanded readjustment a further change meant little to them. They had their clothes and a few suit-cases; they had no other ties to bind them to one place. They sold the little roadster with regret for fifteen pounds, parked the wireless set and the half-built caravel with Jerry’s mother, packed the rabbit lamp among Mona’s stockings, and sailed. They were inured to change. Buckwheat cakes and maple syrup for breakfast on the liner were just another thing.
Mona said, “Can you see the land still, Jerry? I can’t, now.”
“I think we’ve seen the last of it,” he said.
She drew a little closer to him. “How long shall we be away in Canada, do you think?”
In the uncertainty of war he could not answer that. “For all I know, we may stay there forever.” He smiled down at her. “Would you mind a lot if it turned out like that?”
She looked up at him. “I don’t mind,” she said. “When you start fresh, like getting married, I don’t know that it makes a lot of difference if you change your place as well.”
He nodded. It was nearly dark astern; there would be no more to be seen. In many ways he felt the transition more than she did. To her the move to a less formal country was in itself desirable; there would be less tendency to criticize her when she slipped in the word “like” unwarily, or referred to “something of that.” Chambers had deeper roots in England than she had.
“We shan’t see any more now,” he said quietly. They turned and went below.
So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war. Wars come, and all the world is shattered by their blast. But through it all young people meet and marry; life goes on, though temples rock and the tall buildings start and crumble in the dust of their destruction.
Pied Piper (1942)
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
The first edition’
1
HIS NAME IS John Sidney Howard, and he is a member of my club in London. I came in for dinner that night at about eight o’clock, tired after a long day of conferences about my aspect of the war. He was just entering the club ahead of me, a tall and rather emaciated man of about seventy, a little unsteady on his feet. He tripped over the doormat as he went in and stumbled forward; the hall porter jumped out and caught him by the elbow.
He peered down at the mat and poked it with his umbrella. “Damned thing caught my toe,” he said. “Thank you, Peters. Getting old, I suppose.”
The man smiled. “Several of the gentlemen have caught their foot there recently, sir,” he said. “I was speaking to the steward about it only the other day.”
The old man said, “Well, speak to him again and go on speaking till he has it put right. One of these days you’ll have me falling dead at your feet. You wouldn’t like that to happen — eh?” He smiled quizzically.
The porter said, “No, sir. We shouldn’t like that to happen.”
“I should think not. Not the sort of thing one wants to see happen in a club. I don’t want to die on a doormat. And I don’t want to die in a lavatory, either. Remember the time that Colonel Macpherson died in the lavatory, Peters?”
“I do, sir. That was very distressing.”
“Yes.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Well, I don’t want to die that way either. See he gets that mat put right. Tell him I said so.”
“Very good, sir.”
The old man moved away. I had been waiting behind him while all this was going on because the porter had my letters. He gave them to me at the wicket, and I looked them through. “Who was that?” I asked idly.
He said, “That was Mr. Howard, sir.”
“He seemed to be very much concerned about his latter end.”
The porter did not smile. “Yes, sir. Many of the gentlemen talk in that way as they get on. Mr. Howard has been a member here for a great many years.”
I said more courteously, “Has he? I don’t remember seeing him about.”
The man said, “He has been abroad for the last few months, I think, sir. But he seems to have aged a great deal since he came back. Getting rather frail now, I’m afraid.”
I turned away. “This bloody war is hard on men of his age,” I said.
“Yes, sir. That’s very true.”
I went in to the club, slung my gasmask on to a peg, unbuckled my revolver belt and hung it up, and crowned the lot with my cap. I strolled over to the tape and studied the latest news. It was neither good nor bad. Our Air Force was still knocking hell out of the Ruhr; Rumania was still desperately bickering with her neighbours. The news was as it had been for three months, since France was overrun.
I went and had my dinner. Howard was already in the dining room; apart from us the room was very nearly empty. He had a waiter serving him who was very nearly as old as he was himself, and as he ate his dinner the waiter stood beside his table and chatted to him. I could hardly help overhearing the subject of their conversation. They were talking about cricket, re-living the Test Matches of 1925.
Because I was eating alone I finished before Howard, and went up to pay my bill at the desk. I said to the cashier, “That waiter over there — what’s his name?”
“Jackson, sir?”
“That’s right. How long has he been here?”
“Oh, he’s been here a long time. All his life, you might say. Eighteen ninety-five or ninety-six he come here, I believe.”
“That’s a very long time.”
The man smiled as he gave me my change. “It is, sir. But Porson — he’s been here longer than that.”
I went upstairs to the smoking room and stopped before a table littered with periodicals. With idle interest I turned over a printed list of members. Howard, I saw, had joined the club in 1896. Master and man, then, had been rubbing shoulders all their lives.
I took a couple of illustrated weeklies, and ordered coffee. Then I crossed the room to where the two most comfortable chairs in my club stand side by side, and prepared to spend an hour of idleness before returning to my flat. In a few minutes there was a step beside me and Howard lowered his long body in to the other chair. A boy, unasked, brought him coffee and brandy.
Presently he spoke. He said quietly, “It really is a most extraordinary thing that you can’t get a decent cup of coffee in this country. Even in a club like this they can’t make coffee.”
I laid down my paper. If the old man wanted to talk to me, I had no great objection. All day I had been working with my eyes in my old-fashioned office, reading reports and writing dockets. It would be good to take off my spectacles for a little t
ime and un-focus my eyes. I was very tired.
I felt in my pocket for my spectacle case. I said, “A chap who deals in coffee once told me that ground coffee won’t keep in our climate. It’s the humidity, or something.”
“Ground coffee goes off in any climate,” he said dogmatically. “You never get a proper cup of coffee if you buy it like that. You have to buy the beans and grind it just before you make it. But that’s what they won’t do.”
We went on talking about coffee and chickory and things like that for a time. Then by a natural association we talked about the brandy. He approved of the club brandy. “I used to have an interest in a wine business,” he said. “A great many years ago, in Exeter. But I disposed of it soon after the last war.”
I gathered that he was a member of the Wine Committee of the club. I said, “It must be rather interesting to run a business like that.”
“Oh, certainly,” he said with relish. “Good wine is a most interesting study — most interesting, I can assure you.”
We were practically the only people in the long, tall room. We spoke quietly as we lay relaxed beside each other in our chairs, with long pauses between sentences. When you are tired there is pleasure in a conversation taken in sips, like old brandy.
I said, “I used to go to Exeter a good deal when I was a boy.”
The old man said, “I know Exeter very well indeed. I lived there for forty years.”
“My uncle had a house at Starcross.” And I told him the name.
He smiled. “I used to act for him. We were great friends. But that’s a long time ago now.”
“Act for him?”
“My firm used to act for him. I was a partner in a firm of solicitors, Fulljames and Howard.” And then, reminiscent, he told me a good deal about my uncle and about the family, about his horses and about his tenants. The talk became more and more a monologue; a word or two from me slipped in now and then kept him going. In his quiet voice he built up for me a picture of the days that now are gone forever, the days that I remember as a boy.