by Nevil Shute
He began casting in a desultory way over the running water, but soon gave it up, and sat down on a stone and lit his pipe. Over his head the pigeons flapped and fluttered in and out of the trees, small clouds sailed slowly past on a blue sky, and once an early bee flew past his ear. Presently he got up and, smoking still, began to walk down the river, rod in hand. It was no good flogging the same place two days running, he thought.
He passed a couple of aircraftmen fishing where Gunnar had been on the previous day, and went on towards a pool at the next weir. Just above the pool he came on Sergeant Phillips sitting on a little stool, his float between the weed beds in mid-stream. The pilot paused beside him.
‘Done any good?’ he asked.
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Don’t seem to be nowt stirring. I reckon Gunnar must ha’ caught them all yesterday.’
‘How many did he get?’
‘Four.’
The pilot glanced back up the river. ‘I told Gunnar to see if he could borrow Sergeant Pilot Nutter’s little rifle, and we’d have a crack at those pigeons up by the mill.’
Aye, he was talking about that. He’s got the gun.’
‘We’ll have a crack at them one day.’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Make a change to get a pigeon for tea.’
Marshall left him, and went on to the weir. He cast for an hour above it and below but rose nothing; either there were no pike there or it was an off day when they would not feed. Presently he walked slowly back up-stream towards the mill, casting here and there as he went. At the mill he took down his rod, got on his bicycle, and rode back to the station.
He had packed up early with a vague hope that if he got back to the mess by half past four he might, quite accidentally, see Section Officer Robertson drinking a cup of tea. He did not find her there; either she was having tea in her office or else in her own quarters. He lingered for some little time until hope died; then he went up to his room to write his weekly letter to his mother.
He got out his pad, squared his shoulders at the deal table at the end of his bed, and began to write. He never knew what to say. His mother, he knew, lived each day in an agony of fear for him, a gnawing pain that she had suffered and concealed for nearly two years now. He could not write to her about the difficult raids, the ones that had not been so good, and he had long ago exhausted all that could be said about the uneventful ones. He wrote:
My darling mother,
We had a lovely flight the night before last, over to Turin and back. The moon got up as we were getting to the Alps and it was frightfully pretty with snow on the mountains and lakes and everything. They don’t have any black-out there and you could see the street lamps in the towns, and cars going along the road and everything. We went up to seventeen thousand and it was frightfully cold, but it was dry and there wasn’t any icing. I wore your leather waistcoat under everything else, and it was fine.
He paused, and then he wrote:
I’ve seen Switzerland three times now and I’d love to go there one day for a holiday, ski-ing and skating. I don’t think I want to go to Italy much.
He paused again; there really wasn’t much else to say about flying. He went on presently:
I caught a pike yesterday on one of the plugs, in the river here; eleven and a quarter pounds, it was awful fun. I brought it back and a lot of us had it for lunch today, stuffed.
Dare he say that Section Officer Robertson had liked it? Better not. He went on:
The biggest one caught for years was only fifteen pounds, so mine was a pretty good show. I got it on the new rod with the multiplying reel; it’s fine to use. A chap I met says he can show me a fox and a badger both in a quarter of an hour and we’re going out to try it tomorrow very early, about four. Next week I hope we shall be able to go pigeon-shooting.
He drifted into reverie. G.L. . . . Gertrude Lucy? He took up his fountain-pen again and wrote:
I like being on this station more and more; there are some awfully nice people here. Has Bill got his second pip yet? All my love to Daddy and to you, darling.
Peter.
It exactly filled the double-page, which was his statutory length. He read it through and put it in the envelope, and took it downstairs to the post.
He rang up Ellison and confirmed their meeting in the morning; then he retired into the ante-room with a can of beer. He was called to the telephone five minutes before dinner.
‘Marshall speaking,’ he said. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Sergeant Phillips here, sir. I don’t think that Section Officer can be the one you meant. What did you say her name was? The one that was the sister of the chap you knew?’
Damn it, what had he said? Cynthia? Sylvia? What on earth was it?
‘Sylvia,’ he said. ‘It was just a thought I had, that it might be the same. What’s this one called?’
‘You said the name was Sheila this morning, Cap. I suppose he had two sisters in the WAAFs. But it’s not the same family at all.’
Marshall said very slowly and emphatically: ‘What — is — this — one — called?’
‘Gervase, Cap. Uncommon sort of name.’ He spelled it out. ‘Gervase Laura. Did your friends live in Thirsk?’
Marshall said: ‘No, they lived near — er — Reading.’
‘Can’t be the same, Cap. This one comes from Thirsk in the North Riding.’
‘Oh well — thanks.’
‘Okay.’
Marshall put down the receiver, conscious that he had had his leg pulled by the sergeant. Still he had got the information that he wanted.
He went to bed early that night, having thoughtfully secured a packet of sandwiches from the kitchen. He ate these as he was dressing in the middle of the night. At ten minutes to four he was riding out of the station on his bicycle, yawning and rather cold, and wondering if it was really worth it.
He met Mr Ellison, a dim shadow with a bicycle, in Hartley market as they had arranged. ‘Couple of bloody fools, we are,’ said Mr Ellison. ‘This isn’t worth ten bob of anybody’s money. Let’s get going.’
‘How far?’
‘Seven or eight miles. Kingslake Woods, over by Chipping Hinton.’
They rode off down the main road leading north. The sky was practically clear; a half-moon was rising, making it light enough to see the detail of the countryside. They rode on steadily for nearly an hour, growing warm with the exertion. In the end Ellison slowed down.
‘Steady a moment,’ he said. ‘There’s a gate just here somewhere.’
They found the gate and left their bicycles inside it, and went on up a muddy track that wound slowly uphill through the woods. The leafless branches made a fine tracery over their heads, screening the white clouds drifting past the moon. There was little wind; the woods were very quiet. From time to time a rabbit shot away before them; once an owl swooped low over their heads with a great whirr of wings.
Ellison led on steadily for a quarter of an hour or more. Once Marshall asked: ‘How in hell do you know where to go?’
The motor salesman said: ‘I came here last month, that time when we were shooting foxes. Then old Jim Bullen brought me here again to see a badger, because I told him that I’d never seen one.’ He paused, and then he said: ‘They’re a bit scarce where I come from, around Great Portland Street.’
The pilot nodded. ‘There aren’t so many down in Holborn, where I used to work.’
In the end they paused on the edge of a clearing, full of dappled moonlit shadows. Ellison whispered. ‘This is the place — keep damn quiet now. If we have any luck we’ll see the badger here.’ He pointed across the clearing to a little earthy cliff. ‘There’s an earth there. . . . See? And there’s another one about a hundred yards along. . . . There.’
Marshall strained his eyes, but could see nothing but the dappled moonlight. The wind was blowing to them from the earth; it was as good a place to watch as any. ‘Take your word for it,’ he whispered. ‘How long shall we have to wait?’
Ellison said: ‘It must be close on six. We’ll give it an hour before we call it off.’
‘We’ll be bloody cold by then.’
They settled down upon a log to wait and watch, motionless. The silvery radiance that filled the clearing, ebbing and flowing with the passing clouds, was nothing novel to Marshall; he knew moonlight very well. For many hours he had sat patterned in black and white within the moonlit cockpit, uneasy and vigilant for night fighters; home to him was the appearance of a moonlit landfall seen through gaps of cloud, faint, silver, ethereal cliffs and fields. He had seen so much moon in the last fifteen months that he had absorbed a little of its serenity, perhaps. At the beginning of his career as a bombing pilot he had been confused and distressed and bewildered by the casualties, by the deaths of friends that he had known and played with in their leisure hours. The casualties had less effect upon him now; they were things that happened, that must be accepted as they came. One day he would probably go too; the thought did not distress him very much. Life in the RAF was real, and exciting, and great fun — better by far than the life he had known in his insurance office before the war. Everything had to end some time. It was undesirable to be killed, but it was also undesirable to go creeping back into the office when the war was over.
In the quiet glamour of the night his mind was full of Section Officer Robertson. Gervase, Gervase Laura Robertson. Thinking of her, he discovered his own mind. She was attractive, and neat, and pretty as a picture; she was a friendly girl and, he thought, rather an unhappy one. He wished very much that he knew what it was that worried her, whether it was some prune that she had left at her last station. He liked her very much indeed; he knew himself already to be half in love with her. Quite suddenly he realized that much of the fun of this attempt to see a badger and a fox within a quarter of an hour would be in telling her about it.
A stave out of the theme song of a picture came into his mind and set him smiling at his own foolishness —
Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair —
You certainly know the right things to wear . . .
He could not remember any more words, but the tune stayed with him, and Fred Astaire. For him the moonlit glade was filled with music as he sat there waiting for the badger. Gervase, he thought, was pretty enough in uniform, but in civilian clothes — say in a cotton summer frock — she must look wonderful.
Forty minutes passed, and his only knowledge of the drift of time lay in his chilling feet and legs. Then Ellison pressed him very gently on the arm, and pointed stealthily to the far hedge.
The pilot followed his direction. It was a true bill; some animal was there. It trotted along the hedge, seen dimly in the variable light; then it came out into the glade making towards the earth. It was greyish-black in colour with a long black-and-white face that it carried close down to the ground. It went purposefully and fairly fast, pausing for an instant now and then to snuffle at some delicacy of the woods, then going on.
Near the entrance to the earth it paused and froze, warned by some sixth sense. Ellison stood up, clumsy with the cold, making a slight noise of clothes and crushing leaves and twigs. ‘Badger,’ he said. ‘See it?’
There was a quick scramble on the far side of the glade, and it was gone. Marshall stood up stiffly. ‘I’ll give you that one,’ he agreed. ‘Damn good show.’ Then, remembering their bet, he peered down at his wristwatch in the dim white light. ‘Six twenty-three,’ he said. ‘Now — fox before six thirty-eight.’
Ellison said: ‘It don’t seem so long now as it did back in the pub.’ He turned, and led the way back down the track towards the road.
In a few minutes they branched off, and came to a piece of open pasture, rough and uncared for. There was a streak of grey light over towards the east, but it was still moonlight. Ellison paused. ‘Over in the corner there’s an earth,’ he whispered. ‘Old rabbit burrow.’
They waited for nearly half an hour, but nothing happened. By then the grey light was spreading over the whole sky; they gave it up, and started down the track towards their bicycles. ‘Bloody swindle,’ said the motor salesman. ‘I made sure that I’d be able to produce the fox.’
The pilot said: ‘Maybe you shot him the other day.’
‘That might be.’
And as he spoke, a big dog fox crossed the track a hundred yards ahead of them. In the half-light they saw it loping steadily away between the trees, red, furry, and with a bushy tail held level with the ground. Both said: ‘Fox!’ at the same moment, and stood watching it till it was out of sight.
‘Well, there you are,’ said Ellison. ‘Bit late, but what’s the odds?’
‘None of that,’ said the pilot. He looked at his watch; it was two minutes past seven. ‘You took thirty-nine minutes, not a quarter of an hour. Tell you what. Buy you a drink at the “Black Horse” tonight.’
‘Okay.’
They recovered their bicycles and rode back to Hartley with the light wind behind them in fifty minutes. Marshall left Ellison at the road junction and turned off for the camp, arriving back in the mess in comfortable time for breakfast. He was lighting his pipe and reading the comic strip in his paper when the Tannoy sounded metallically above his head. All ranks were to remain within the camp till further notice. All crews of serviceable aircraft were to muster at their machines at 10.00.
Marshall passed by Pat Johnson on his way up to his room. Mr Johnson said: ‘Did you go out this morning?’
Marshall nodded. ‘Saw the badger, and the fox, but not in a quarter of an hour.’
‘Was it cold?’
‘Awful.’
‘Must be crackers,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘As if we don’t get enough of running round in the dark.’
‘Where’s it to be? Have you heard?’
The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know and I can’t say that I care. It’ll look just the same as all the others when we get there, laddie.’
The morning passed in a routine of checking the aircraft, its engines, guns, instruments, and equipment. Then they got into it and took it off for a quarter of an hour’s final test. When they taxied back to their dispersal point the Bowser was waiting to tank up the Wellington and the armourers were waiting, sitting on their little train of bombs. Bombing up began as the tank lorry drew away. When they dispersed for lunch there was only the de-icing paste to be put on, and the perspex to be polished for the night.
Marshall went into the ante-room for his beer before lunch. The Adjutant came up to him sniffing pointedly and loudly. Marshall said: ‘Fox and badger, sir. Not a particle of Coty, more’s the pity.’
‘Did you see them?’
He had to tell the story of the night, much aware of Section Officer Robertson listening from across the room. He did not speak to her before lunch, but contrived to take his coffee from the urn immediately after her.
She said: ‘You saw them both, a badger and a fox?’
He nodded, smiling. ‘Not within the quarter of an hour. But we did see both — the badger first and then the fox.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Place called Kingslake Woods — somewhere near Chipping Hinton. I’d never been there before.’
The name meant nothing to her. ‘Was it very wild country — in the woods?’
‘Not specially. They were lovely woods.’
There was a short pause. Then she said: ‘You must be tired, aren’t you?’
He grinned. ‘Sleep a bit this afternoon.’
‘I shall, too,’ she said. ‘I’m on tonight.’
‘Are you?’ A thought came to him, sly and subtle and altogether bad. ‘Could you let me have the frequencies and DF stations? I like to get those in my mind before the briefing.’
She had been operational for too short a time to know the idiosyncrasies of all the pilots. She said: ‘Of course. If you’d like to walk over to the office I’ll give them to you now.’
They left the mess together and went over to Headquarters, to her lit
tle bare office with the ink-stained deal table, the two hard chairs, the bulldog clips and the buff papers. She read out to him the information that he wanted; he wrote it all down carefully in his notebook, asked a question or two, and slipped the book back in his pocket.
‘Thanks awfully,’ he said. He paused, and then said rather shyly: ‘It was lovely in the woods this morning. Perishing cold, but it was awful fun.’
She said: ‘It must have been. Did you have to wait very long?’
‘A fair time.’ He launched into a description of the expedition. For ten minutes they talked badger and fox. ‘Foxes often make their homes in old rabbit-burrows,’ she said presently. ‘I think most of them do that. But I don’t know about badgers. Did this one have an earth of his own?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marshall. ‘We didn’t go to it. We were chasing off after the fox, because of the time.’
The girl said: ‘I’ve never seen a badger, or even a badger’s earth.’
Elaborately casual, Marshall said: ‘I can show you this earth any time you like. Show you the badger, too, if you like to put your hand in and pull him out.’
They laughed together. ‘Would you like to do that one afternoon?’ he said. ‘You’ve got a bike, haven’t you?’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d love to see it,’ she said. ‘If I met you out there, would you show it me?’
His heart warmed to her for her discretion. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll take you about an hour to get there on your bike. What about half past three tomorrow afternoon?’
She was suddenly frightened at his confidence. Between then and half past three tomorrow afternoon there lay an operation, a thing of darkness and of terror, of bombs and fire and flares and flak and death. Beyond that, he was making an assignment to go walking in the woods with her.