by Nevil Shute
There was a long silence. In the end she broke it. ‘When you said you wanted us to take a chance together,’ she said, ‘did you mean you wanted us to be engaged, or something?’
He thought for a minute. ‘If you like. What I really meant was that we should say, “To hell with the station.” That we should meet as often as we like, and when we like. In the middle of the parade ground, if we like.’
‘We wouldn’t go on like that for very long,’ she said practically. ‘One or other of us would get shifted. It would probably be me.’
He said: ‘I’m sorry, Gervase. I didn’t think of that.’
There was a pause, and then he said: ‘I don’t think I object so much to dodging behind hedges to kid the people on the station, so long as it’s all right between ourselves. But I’m not going to kid you any more, Gervase. I think you’re a lovely girl, and I think when we know each other a bit better we’ll want to get married.’ He glanced at her. ‘I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about that.’
She said: ‘There couldn’t be now, Peter. You’ve said it about six different ways already.’
He blew a cloud of smoke. ‘I’m pretty eloquent when I get going,’ he said. There was a pause, and then he added: ‘Mind if I ask a question?’
She shook her head, wondering what was coming now.
‘You haven’t got a boy friend tucked away anywhere, have you?’ he asked. ‘Somebody you knew at your last station?’
She thought rapidly of simulating an impassioned separation, and abandoned the idea as too difficult to improvise. ‘There’s nobody like that,’ she said.
Marshall said: ‘I didn’t think there was. And I might have known I’d get a straight answer.’ He glanced at her and met her eyes, smiling. ‘You really are a wizard girl,’ he said. ‘I’m doing this all wrong. I ought to be holding you clutched to my manly bosom, whispering hot words of love into your shell-like ear.’
She said nervously: ‘You promised to cut out the rough stuff if I stayed.’
He glanced at her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently. ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’
The sun shone down upon them sitting one at each end of the stile, and a little fresh wind of March blew across the plough behind them, fresh and stimulating. Gervase sat mustering her thoughts, trying to think of ways to say the things she had to say without hurting him too much.
‘You’re not wanted,’ she said quietly. ‘Not in the way you mean.’ She glanced at him, sitting staring at the dead leaves on the ground before him, smoking quietly. ‘I don’t want to be beastly to you, saying that. You’ve been very nice to me, Peter. You’ve done me a great honour, saying you wanted to marry me. But I couldn’t marry you just because of that.’
He said: ‘I wouldn’t want you to. But there’s more to it than that. I think you like me a bit, too.’
‘I do like you,’ she said. ‘I like coming out with you. But I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anybody, not for six or seven years.’
‘Why not?’ he asked.
She said desperately: ‘That’s not what we’re here for. When I joined the WAAFs I didn’t do it to get married. When I was trained in Signals, it was because they expected me to do some work in the RAF. It was a sort of bargain, and I do the best I can. It’s not such important work as yours, but it’s the best I can do. I couldn’t give it up as soon as I’d started, just for a personal reason. I’d feel awfully mean if I did that.’
There was a pause. Marshall said nothing, because he could not think of anything to say except that he loved her, and that seemed hardly relevant to what she said about her work. And presently Gervase went on:
‘I don’t think I’m a bit in love with you, Peter.’ She glanced at him, and glanced down again, troubled, and she said: ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to pretend. I like you awfully, and we do get on together, but that’s different to being in love.’
‘Quite sure?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I think I can tell you. People who fall in love and want to get married always think that matters more than anything else — they all do. And I suppose it does, if you’re in love. I don’t feel in the least like that. I think my job here matters more than getting married, or not getting married.’
‘I see,’ he said quietly.
She knew that she had hurt him, and the knowledge hurt her in turn. ‘We’ve both got jobs to do,’ she said. ‘We’re on an operational station, Peter, after all. And there hasn’t been much wrong with the R/T, or the W/T either, has there?’
He shook his head.
She said: ‘That matters frightfully to me. Much more than anything personal.’
Marshall said slowly: ‘Suppose that when we knew each other better we did decide we wanted to get married. You might still go on in the WAAFs while the war is on.’
She shook her head. ‘If ever I did want to marry, I’d want to do it properly, not half and half. We wouldn’t be able to be on the same station, probably. I don’t think there’d be much point in getting married if we couldn’t be together.’ She paused, and added cautiously: ‘Even if we wanted to.’
There was a long silence between them. Presently she said: ‘Look at it the other way round — suppose it was you instead of me. Suppose you went to Wing Commander Dobbie and said you were going to stop flying and leave the RAF because you were in love.’
He glanced up at her, grinning. ‘That’s all different.’
‘It’s not different at all,’ she retorted. ‘The only difference is that you can’t do it and I can, if I care to go the whole hog. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve both got jobs to do.’
‘That’s how you feel about it — honestly, Gervase?’
She met his eyes. ‘Honestly, Peter — that’s how I feel. That’s why I know I’m not in love with you.’
He said heavily: ‘Well, that just about puts the lid on it.’
She looked despairingly out over the glade. There was a chaffinch on a bush not far from them; she would have liked to have pointed it out to him and shared it with him, but it didn’t seem to be quite the right time for that. With a sad heart she got down from the stile; it was time, she felt, to wind this up.
‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps we’d better not come out again together, for a bit.’
He cocked an eye at her. ‘Just what do you mean by “for a bit”?’ he asked.
She searched her mind for words to express what she did mean. ‘I mean, until you can forget about what you’ve just told me,’ she said at last.
He stared at her. ‘Are you trying to say that you’d like to be a sister to me?’ he enquired. ‘Because that’s crackers.’ He hesitated, and then said more gently: ‘I think that’d be like trying to put back the clock.’
‘If you feel like that about it,’ she said, ‘then we’d better not meet at all.’
He nodded. ‘That’s how I do feel about it,’ he said. ‘I shan’t change my mind. If we can’t meet on the basis that I — I’m in love with you, then I think we’d better not meet at all.’
She turned to him. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said. ‘Frightfully sorry. I have enjoyed going out with you.’ And then, feeling that the courtesies were complete, she turned away awkwardly, saying: ‘I really must go now.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Find your way back all right?’
She said: ‘Oh yes — thanks.’ He watched her to the turning of the path, till she disappeared from view.
For half an hour he sat there mooning, staring at the black, sinister pool, trying to recover his nerve before going back to the station. Presently he lit a cigarette with fingers that shook a little and began to take down the little rod that he had been so proud of; there was no joy in it now. After a time he followed down the path to where his bicycle was lying in the bushes, and rode slowly back towards the station.
Gervase rode back ahead of him, her mind a blank. She felt tired and exhausted, as she felt when s
he stayed up all night upon an operation. She could not summon up the energy to think of what had happened; she only wanted to get home to her quarters, and rest.
She felt better when she was sitting in a chair before the fire in the WAAF officers’ sitting-room, sipping a cup of tea. She smoked a cigarette, sitting very quiet and recovering from the strain; she was rather moved and rather sorry for herself, but confident that she had done the right thing. Presently she stirred and stubbed out her cigarette, and reached out for her novel, and began to read.
It was all about Love; she had thought it good when she had been reading it in bed the previous night, but now it seemed to her to be a rotten book. She put it away with distaste, and got up and went over to the bookcase for another. She ran her eye over the titles. Most of them seemed to be about Love in one form or another; the rest were detective stories and books about Hitler. She picked an intricate and badly-written story about Scotland Yard, lost the thread of the tale in the first three pages, and spent a dull and restless evening over it, smoking a great number of cigarettes. She went to bed with a dry mouth and a worried mind, and slept accordingly.
Marshall spent a troubled evening in the mess and went to bed early, to lie awake most of the night. It seemed to him that he had been a most almighty fool to raise the point of marriage with Gervase so soon, however certain he might be in his own mind; a quarter of an hour later he was thinking that he had done right to tell her plainly what he thought, that it was better to end it quick and face the pain, if they had no future together. Again, he was chivalrously and desperately sorry that he had caused her trouble and worry; in turn he was incredulous that there should be no future for them when they got on so well together.
He fell asleep at about three in the morning, and woke, heavy and dull, at seven. The short sleep had rested his mind; he now felt that it was better for them to be quite apart. It seemed to him that the right line was to see nothing of her for the next six months; if then they met again she would know, at any rate, that there was something solid that she could depend upon in his regard.
In this decision he was probably correct; the difficulty was that it was quite impracticable. He met her immediately after breakfast as she went from her quarters to the signals office, as he went to the Link trainer hut; it was genuinely fortuitous, and it was impossible to pass her without smiling and saying ‘Good morning’. He went on troubled and depressed, and put up an unusually poor performance on the Link trainer. He met her again at lunch and sat opposite her, talking absently to Lines, watching her eat roast beef and cabbage and plum tart. He saw her again in the ante-room taking coffee, and again at tea time, reading the Illustrated London News. In the circumstances of their life upon the station it was inevitable that they should meet the whole day through; it was not at their option never to meet again.
In the next thirteen days he met her sixty-one times. He counted them.
In that thirteen days they did no operation. They did several long training flights at night and spent a large proportion of each day upon their various trainers and firing teachers. The machines were overhauled, a few engines were changed, and some of the crews were re-formed. Flight Lieutenant Johnson got rid of Pilot Officer Drummond, who was given a new Wellington, C for Charlie, and a new crew of his own.
‘He’s all right, sir,’ Johnson told the Wing Commander. ‘A bit too conscientious, if you know what I mean. But he’ll be all right.’
Dobbie visualized the keen eagerness of the young man. ‘I’ll give him Sergeant Entwhistle as navigator,’ he said. ‘He’s very steady. And Murdoch as rear-gunner.’
Johnson said: ‘I don’t know Murdoch.’
‘Chap with a face like a burglar — came in with the last lot from the Pool. A regular Commando type. He ought to be good.’
Johnson went away and found Drummond sitting in his bedroom, graph paper and pencil before him, working at a book of Weems’ upon condensed celestial navigation. He told him about his crew. ‘You erks get all the lucky breaks,’ he said. ‘Entwhistle’s done about twenty raids; he knows the routine backwards. And Winco’s picked the toughest rear-gunner on the station for you. God, I wish I’d had a crowd like that for my first crew. We none of us knew arse from elbow when they pushed me off. Talk about going to sea in a sieve!’
He went off and played a round of very bad golf, confident that his apprentice was well launched upon his independence.
In R for Robert things were not so satisfactory. Corporal Leech, the wireless operator, had been taken roach-fishing by Gunnar Franck and Phillips, and to their delight had proved himself an apt pupil, keen and interested, and naturally skilful. On his first day he had caught a roach with Sergeant Phillips’ rod, and on the next day he had caught another with Gunnar Franck’s. He had then gone off to Oxford and bought himself a new roach-pole, and reel, and line, and floats, and tackle for the three remaining days of the coarse-fishing season.
The period after March 15th was irritating and troublesome for them. Fishing gear was taken down and packed away for three months, and they had nothing much to do with their spare time, which was considerable. Leech was a footballer, and that season was also at an end; he hung about the canteen bored and idle, and finally commenced a slap-and-tickle intrigue with one of the station cooks. Sergeant Phillips took to lying on his bed for most of his leisure time and reading thrillers; the balance he devoted to L.A.W. Elsie Smeed. There was little to do, in fact, at Hartley at that time of year except to play cards and make love. Gunnar Franck did neither, but took to going for long walks through the country lanes, browned off and thinking of Denmark and his lost life as a medical student.
Gervase met him one evening, travelling back from Oxford in the bus. The bus was nearly full; in the half-light she saw a seat by him and sat down in it. She liked Gunnar Franck; she liked him because he had lent her his rifle to shoot a pigeon with, and because he was a Dane and had given up his life’s career to escape to all the hazards of the RAF, and because by doing so he had become a lonely man. She smiled at him and said: ‘Good evening. Have you been to the pictures?’
He said: ‘I have been to the Regal, to see the movie with Bette Davis. Always I like a Bette Davis picture. To me a Bette Davis is good, overordentligt.’
Gervase said: ‘I like her, too.’ They talked of films and film actresses while the bus got under way and rumbled out into the darkness of the country roads, dim-lit and crowded with RAF and American soldiers. Presently she said: ‘Do you still go fishing?’
He shook his head. ‘It is now the season when they breed the little fish. It is not allowed to fish now, till the middle of June.’
She said: That must be rather a blow — you’re all fishermen in Robert, aren’t you? What do you do instead?’
He was silent for a minute, long enough for her to look at him curiously. Then he said: ‘It is ver’ dull. I think I would like to go away now, to another station.’
She exclaimed: ‘But I thought you were so happy here!’
He said bitterly: ‘I think now perhaps it is time I have a change.’
‘But why, Gunnar? Has anything happened?’
She was an officer and he was a sergeant, but she was a girl, and friendly, and very young. It was nearly dark in the bus. He said: ‘The Captain, he has been difficult to please. It must be ver’ difficult for an Englishman to have in the crew a foreigner. I think perhaps it is better that I ask if I may go to another station.’
She said: ‘But, Gunnar, Flight Lieutenant Marshall thinks the world of you. I know he does. You mustn’t think of anything like that. What’s the trouble?’
There was a pause, and then he said in a low tone so that she had to bend her head to catch his words: ‘He say I cross my sevens so he cannot read the numbers that I write, and I must write in English if I want to stay with him.’
She said: ‘Cross your sevens?’
‘Ja. Always in Denmark when we write the number seven we make a line across the tail, but in En
gland you do not do that. And now he says that I must write in English.’
She said: ‘But that’s silly. It doesn’t matter a bit, does it, if you write a seven like that?’
‘Nine months we have been together,’ said the big young man a little sadly, ‘and over forty ops. And now he is angry because I write my sevens as we do at home.’
A lump of apprehension rose in the girl’s throat, and she said: ‘I thought you all got on so well together. Is this something new?’
Gunnar said: ‘It is the last week only. Always before he has been sympathetic; we were all very happy together. Now for a week everything has been wrong, and he finds fault with all that we do, and it is trouble all the time. It is not only me; it is Sergeant Phillips and Corporal Leech. They are quite fed-up with him.’
The girl said: ‘I am sorry.’ She relapsed into silence, worried over what she had unearthed. This was another side of Marshall that she had not seen before, this apparently unreasonable irritation with his crew. From what she had heard she felt that he had been unfair to them; certainly Gunnar Franck considered that he had been hardly used. She felt that Flight Lieutenant Marshall deserved a reprimand and she felt that she would have liked to give it to him herself, and that she could do so in a way that would improve matters. She felt, sincerely, that it was a very great pity that they were not upon speaking terms; she would have liked to tell Peter Marshall just where he got off.
It was perfectly true that Marshall was bad-tempered. He was sleeping very badly; that is to say, no more than six hours in each night, which seemed to him to be fantastically little. Most of the rest of the time that he spent in bed he spent in self-depreciation, thinking what an almighty fool he had made of himself with Gervase. He felt that he made himself ridiculous; each time they met he felt that she must be smiling inwardly at the memory of their last meeting in the wood, and he didn’t blame her. This happened to him three or four times every day. The recurring humiliation mingled strangely with his admiration, which was quite unchanged. He still noted every movement that she made, each characteristic gesture, each light in her hair.