by Nevil Shute
“Fine — I’ll be there.”
There was a little pause.
“You’ve got another stripe,” she said. “That makes you a full lieutenant.”
He smiled self-consciously. “I get a bit more money now.”
“Did you get it because of this show?” She inclined her head towards the vessel at the quay.
“I was about due for it anyway,” he said. He hesitated, and then said: “Are you going to be attached to us now? I mean, we’re going to have a truck with a Wren driver.”
“I think I am. It was to be the new truck with the Wren who drove it down from London — Miss Roberts, I think she’s called. But they seem to have switched things round.”
He said a little shyly: “It’ll be fun if they keep it like that.” And then he said quickly: “I mean, it’ll be interesting for you, seeing the whole thing right through from the start.”
She said: “I’d like to see it all, I mean, having seen it at the very beginning.” She coloured slightly. “I must go now, or I’ll be late.”
He stood back from the van. “If you’re not doing anything, I’ll be down there about seven.”
He was there before her, standing over the rabbit as it hopped about the little yard of the net defence store, eating the dandelions. She found him there cleaning out the hutch.
“Good evening,” she said. “I see you’re busy.”
He straightened up, pan and brush in hand. “I do this in the evenings,” he said, “because then the ratings aren’t about.”
She said: “Is this the hay you give him?”
“That’s right,” he said. “That goes in his sleeping quarters.”
“I’ll do that,” she said.
They worked together for ten minutes, making a boudoir for the rabbit between the Oropesa floats and the depth charges. He showed her the plank that he had set up across the ends of the depth charges to prevent the rabbit getting in between them and eluding capture.
She said, half laughing: “You aren’t afraid that any of these will go off?”
“They’re not fused,” he said. “We couldn’t keep them stacked like this if they had pistols in.”
“Does that mean that they’re quite safe?”
“I think so,” he replied. “Just how safe they are, I’m not quite sure.”
They stooped down together to the rabbit, and began feeding it young carrots. Geoffrey nibbled them seriously right to their fingers; he was very tame. “He is fun,” said the girl. “Have you ever kept rabbits before?”
Rhodes said: “No, I’ve never had a rabbit.” And then he said: “I had a dog once, but he died...”
She said: “You seem to know all about rabbits.”
“Well, they’re decent little beasts,” he said. “I mean, it’s something ordinary to have, to look after. He isn’t really mine, of course,” he said. “He belongs to Mrs. Harding.”
“But you look after him, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,!” he said. “She hardly ever sees him.”
The girl turned to him. “I do think you’re funny,” she said.
He was immediately on the defensive, and a little hurt. “Because I like rabbits?” he said. “‘Pansy’ is the word you want.”
She said quickly: “Not like that. But things like flame-throwers — and rabbits — they don’t seem to go together.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t help that. If that’s the way you are you can’t help it.”
“No,” she said, “I suppose that’s so.”
They fed Geoffrey the remainder of the carrots. “Was that the flame-thrower that they were putting in this afternoon?” she asked. “All those tanks and things?”
He nodded. “We’re going to move up to Dittisham the day after to-morrow, to finish off the job up there.”
“Is that because it’s more secret up there?”
“That’s right,” he said. “We don’t want this equipment in the shipyard for too long.”
She indicated the rabbit. “Will you be able to come down here and look after him from there?”
He said: “I’ve been thinking about that. I can get the trot boat down each evening, or else come in with you in the van.”
She said: “You don’t need to worry about him. I shall be living in the Wrennery and coming out to Dittisham every day, so I can always do him if you can’t.”
He said warmly: “I say, that’s awfully nice of you.”
They moved up to Dittisham one Thursday, and went on a mooring two or three hundred yards above the landing. The four officers moved into one of the houses requisitioned for them, the other being held in reserve for the crew. Simon spent most of his time away in London at Free French Headquarters during these days, interviewing and picking his crew. The bulk of the work of getting the ship fit for sea fell inevitably upon Colvin and Boden, and they worked solidly from dawn to dusk each day.
Colvin found Boden to be unlike any R.N.V.R. officer that he had met in this war or the last. Most of these amateur seamen had definite shore interests, seldom shared by the R.N.R. Boden, it seemed, had no such interests. He never seemed to want to go on shore; he had no correspondence to speak of. He never seemed to want any relaxation; he seldom read a paper or a magazine. Colvin himself was no great reader, but he liked the Daily Mirror and he liked looking over the pages of Picture Post in the evening. The other officers very soon discovered that what this handsome, grey-haired merchant seaman really liked was pictures of bathing girls. Sometimes he would find one in a periodical and hold it up for their inspection. “Say...” he would breathe, “just get a load of this! Ain’t she a dandy?”
“I knew a girl one time that used to sit for them pictures,” he said once. “Miss Oregon, she was. Her real name was Susie Collins.”
Rhodes said curiously: “How did you get to know her?”
“I was one of the judges,” Colvin said simply. “A guy what knows his way around can always get to be one of the judges in a beauty contest. Ankle competitions, too.”
Simon laughed. “And then you can take your pick!”
Colvin was a little offended. “You don’t want to talk that way,” he said. “This was all regular. I used to go visiting with her folks.”
They tried to get more detail out of him, but he was put off by their ribaldry, and would tell them nothing more.
The man who got to know him best was Boden. Boden had very few interests outside the ship, and in the ship his duty lay continually with Colvin. He grew to admire the middle-aged merchant officer immensely; he was the first really competent and efficient commanding officer that Boden had served under. He learned continuously from Colvin. If they had had much paper work on board the defects of the older officer would have become apparent, but their constitution was such that there was practically no paper work of any sort to do. What little there was in the way of requisitions and indents, Colvin was content to leave in Boden’s hands.
On his side, Colvin had never had a junior officer so hard-working as Boden, or one with so few shore interests. After a week or so it seemed to him that there was something almost queer about the lad. Rhodes he could understand: Rhodes was running after the Wren in the truck, a reasonable occupation for any young chap in Colvin’s opinion. Boden, it seemed, had no such inclinations.
Ten days after they began it was a Saturday. Three or four Breton lads had joined them under the command of a petty officer called André, who spoke a little English; Colvin arranged that they should knock off work at five and that André should take these lads on shore. Rhodes, they knew, would be in Dartmouth; Simon was in London.
Colvin turned to Boden. “Let’s you and I go into Torquay an’ see what’s to be found,” he said.
“I don’t know about me,” said Boden. “Think I’ll stay on board.”
The older man looked at him, puzzled. “Say,” he said. “You’ll get enough of sticking around here before we’re through. Come on into Torquay, an’ make a break. I don’t
want to go alone.”
The last remark bore weight with Boden. “If you like,” he said.
He would genuinely rather have stayed on board. Six little long green boxes had arrived on board that day, containing six Thompson guns; other crates and boxes had arrived with them full of drums and ammunition. Boden had never handled any weapon of that sort; to prepare for it he had bought a book about the Thompson gun. He would rather have sat all evening in the cuddy with his book and with the gun and with a handful of clean rag, learning, assimilating. Still, Colvin wanted to go to Torquay, and didn’t want to go alone. In his loneliness he was becoming fond of Colvin.
They got to Torquay at about six o’clock. Boden had no particular wish to go anywhere or do anything; he was content to let Colvin take the lead. He suspected that Colvin was on the look-out for a bathing beauty, for Miss Torquay. If he achieved his end, thought Boden, he would make off and leave him to it; he could get back to the ship and have an hour with the sub-machine-gun before bed.
They strolled from the station down the front towards the town. There were young women by the score there, sunning themselves; most of them turned and glanced at the two naval officers. The white-faced, red-haired young R.N.V.R. was commonplace, but they looked very long at the tall bronzed officer beside him, with the ribbons on his shoulder and the iron-grey hair.
“Get anything you want to here,” said Boden presently.
The other gave a little snort. “I don’t go in for them kind,” he said. “All giggles an’ silliness, and in the end you get what you don’t want, as like as not.”
Boden was surprised. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said. He had never picked a girl up on the beach and didn’t want to start; it warmed him to find that Colvin held the same views.
The R.N.R. officer said presently: “What say, we find the best hotel and have a drink or two, an’ then a durned good dinner — oysters and that?”
“Suits me,” said Boden. “What about the Metropole?”
“Is that where you get the best food?”
“The food’s supposed to be better at the Royal Bristol, and that’s got a garden. But it’s full of old ladies.”
“They won’t hurt us any.”
They found their way to the Royal Bristol Hotel, and had a couple of pink gins on the terrace overlooking the garden and the sea. It was a quiet, pleasant place. The service was unobtrusive and efficient; the sun was warm, the garden bright with flowers. As Boden had foretold, it was full of well-to-do elderly people.
“I call this a dandy place,” said Colvin. “It must cost a raft of money to live here, like all these old Buddies do.”
Boden knew something about that. “I had an aunt who came here once. They took eight guineas a week off her.”
“Sure. Was that with a bathroom and a sitting-room, and that?”
“Not on your life. She had just a bedroom.”
“Nice business, if you can get it.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two. Then Boden said: “Have you ever fired one of those Thompson guns?”
“Not against anyone. I fired them once or twice at barrels and that.”
“What’s the muzzle velocity?”
“Oh, shucks, I dunno. Fifty to a hundred yards, that’s all you want to use them at. It’s only a little bullet, like an automatic has.”
His mind was evidently not on the subject. Presently he indicated a couple of chairs in the lounge over to their right. “I bet that Jane don’t see much life,” he said.
Boden glanced over and took in the scene. A very old lady dressed in black was sitting primly in a chair, knitting. A girl, or woman, perhaps thirty years of age was sitting by her reading the evening paper aloud in a low tone. She wore no rings. She had a blonde, fair head and a resigned, bored expression. Once she must have been a beautiful girl; now she was growing old before her time.
Boden shrugged his shoulders. “She looks after Mother,” he diagnosed. “Somebody’s got to look after Mother.”
“Sure,” said Colvin. “And when Mother dies the girl gets all the berries.”
“Probably.”
The gong for dinner rang, and the old lady and her daughter went in almost immediately. Colvin and Boden followed them ten minutes later. At the entrance to the dining-room the older man paused, reading a notice. “Got a dance on here to-night,” he said thoughtfully. “Fancy that!”
They did not get oysters with their dinner, but they dined quite well. They talked very little, both occupied with their own thoughts. Boden was still preoccupied with the sub-machine-gun; if the shells were really automatic pistol ammunition, then the muzzle velocity was probably quite low, which agreed with the short range that Colvin had in mind. That, probably, was what made the gun handy to fire; there would not be very much recoil.
Colvin was also absent-minded. Half-way through dinner he said to the waitress: “That old lady dining over there. What’s her name?”
“That’s Mrs. Fortescue, sir.”
“She live here?”
“She’s been here since March.”
“That her daughter sitting with her?”
“Yes, sir. That is Miss Fortescue.”
“Okay.”
The waitress moved away; Boden awoke from his ballistic reverie and cocked an eye at his companion. “What’s all this about?”
Colvin smiled. “I was just thinking,” he said, “that it was quite a while since I went dancing.”
Boden shook his head. “You’ll get us both thrown out if you try that.”
But he had underrated Colvin. They finished their dinner and went through into the lounge for coffee. The old lady and her daughter were sitting a little way away from them; presently the old lady wanted something from her room. The girl went to fetch it. Colvin, who had been watching, immediately got up and crossed over to Mrs. Fortescue. Boden sat still, appalled.
He had great charm of manner, an air of distinction. He bent slightly towards Mrs. Fortescue and said: “You must forgive me, ma’am. Would you consider it all out of order if I asked your daughter for a dance to-night?” He smiled charmingly. “I’ve been out of England a good many years, and I’ve rather forgotten the way things go back home here, socially. I didn’t want to do what folks might think was rude — but I don’t know anybody here...”
The old lady looked at him and took him all in, the firm, handsome features, the grey eyes, the iron-grey hair. He looked like an ambassador in naval uniform. “I am sure my daughter would be delighted to have a dance,” she said. “Sit down and talk to me.”
He sat down readily, retrieving her spectacle-case from the floor as he did so. “That’s very, very kind of you,” he said. “My name is Colvin. One gets kind of lonesome when you don’t know anybody in a place.”
“I am sure you do,” she said. “Have you been here long?”
“Only a week or two,” he said. “Before that I was in the North Atlantic on patrol since war began, with convoys and that. And before that again I had a job in San Francisco for a raft of years. It’s fifteen — seventeen years since I last lived in England.”
She dropped her knitting to her lap. “And did you come home all the way from San Francisco to fight in this war?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He had a good story to tell without departing from the truth, and he told it with modesty and humour. Half-way through the girl returned carrying a shawl; she approached them with surprise and interest giving new life to her face. Colvin got up as she approached.
Mrs. Fortescue said: “Elaine, my dear, this is Mr. Colvin.’ He has been telling me such a marvellous story of his journey home from San Francisco. Quite thrilling!”
The girl smiled at him and they all sat down together. Boden watched from his seat a few yards away; it had been a smooth, competent piece of work which increased his respect still more for his commanding officer. He did not want to join them. If he left in half an hour he could get back on board Geneviève by half-past nine, with an ho
ur’s daylight still to go in which he could become acquainted with the gun. In the meantime, he would sit and smoke.
Presently there was the sound of a dance band from the dining-room and Colvin took Miss Fortescue through to dance; a faint flush of colour in her cheeks made her attractive. The colour had deepened when Boden passed them in the corridor on his way to the cloakroom for his cap and gloves. He overheard her say:
“You mustn’t call me Wonderful, Mr. Colvin. My name is Elaine.”
He said pleasantly: “Oh, shucks, that’s my American tongue running away with me. You don’t want to worry about that.”
Boden treasured up that one to tell Rhodes.
I went down to Dittisham for the gun trials a few days after that. The installation of the flame-thrower was complete and the full crew of ten Free Frenchmen and two Danes were on board. One of these Danes spoke English and was an engineer in civil life; Rhodes took him as his second-in-command upon the flame-gun, and trained him in the rather complicated mechanism. I got to Dartmouth early in the forenoon, having spent the previous day at Teignmouth on another job. Simon met me at the station with a little shabby truck, driven by a Wren. He wore the uniform of a captain in the Sappers, battle-dress; he saluted me very smartly.
I paused before I got into the truck. “Is this the lorry I sent down?” I asked. It seemed so old.
Simon laughed. “It is not the same,” he said. He told me the circumstances as we started off. “He is very pleased with us because we got him a new truck,” he said. “We can get anything we want now — ropes, paint, anything.”
I grunted; there was nothing much to say, and Simon went on to detail to me all that still had to be done before the ship was fit to sail on operations. We got to Dittisham in about ten minutes, and drew up outside the officers’ villa.
I got out. Simon said:
“I am going to change my clothes before we go to sea.” He paused, and looked me up and down, hesitant. “We do not call attention to ourselves, or to the ship,” he said. “We usually go out in rough clothes, as fishermen. I could lend you an old pair of trousers and a jersey...” And then he added: “But you can wear your uniform if you like, sir. It does not really matter.”