by Nevil Shute
Chagrined, and already ashamed, he released her. He said: “Say, I didn’t mean . . . Miss Grace, I guess I done wrong . . .” But she was gone, half running, sobbing with emotion and with fright. At the corner she ran full tilt into Sergeant Burton, of Montgomery in Alabama and of the US Military Police, who had heard her cry out and was coming to investigate.
He said: “Say, lady, what’s the matter?”
He was fat and forty and comfortable, and white. To her at that moment he was all security. She sobbed: “There was a nigger there. He caught me and started messing me about.”
Sergeant Burton said: “These goddam niggers,” and blew his whistle. He shot round the corner with surprising agility for so large a man, still whistling as he went; as Grace stood on the corner slowly composing herself two other military police shot past her, heading for the whistle. A jeep came screaming down the road in intermediate gear driven by a third, braked to a standstill with a screech of tyres by her, and two more tumbled out.
The girl was comforted by all this evidence of support, and yet at the same time she was distressed. She had started something, and she didn’t quite know what. Around the corner there were men shouting, and then one reappeared and whistled again. Men came pouring out of the White Hart; American soldiers, white and black, appeared from everywhere. Grace turned from them, still weeping a little, and walked quickly up the street towards her home. She could not bear to be questioned about what had happened.
Around the corner Dave Lesurier had to act quickly. He was bitterly disappointed at the blunder he had made; as he heard what Grace had said to the sergeant he realized that he was in a very serious position. He came, if not from the deep South, from the near South, and all his youth had been conditioned by tales he had heard of Negroes lynched and murdered horribly because the whites believed they had assaulted white women. Most of the tales that had conditioned him were quite untrue because such things grow in the telling, but Dave Lesurier could hardly be expected to know that. To him, at the moment, there was real danger that if the mob got him a bonfire would be made outside the White Hart and he would be burned on it alive. He must get to hell out of it.
He dived into the yard behind him, and flung himself over the wall into Mrs Higgins’s back garden, over the next wall into Polherring’s timber yard; from there he gained the back alley and looked cautiously around. There was clamour in the direction he had come from, but they did not seem to be following him; he heard continuous whistling, and the sound of jeeps. And then, to his dismay, he heard shouted orders sending all American troops back to their camps.
He knew that he must rejoin them immediately and go back with the crowd. He had not heard Grace tell his name; he did not know even if she knew it. If he could catch up with the crowd and mingle in with them he might escape; to stay in Trenarth and go back alone later meant instant detection. It never occurred to him for one moment to walk out, and give himself up, and tell the truth, that he had given the girl a kiss, so what? He had not hurt her, and he had not meant to hurt her, but it never crossed his mind that anybody would believe him if he said so. He must get to hell out of it.
He edged along the alley towards the end that led into Sheep Street; from there he could gain the High Street and mix in with the crowd. When he was still in the alley he heard voices of men in the street twenty yards ahead of him; he ducked back into the deep shadow of a wall as two corporals of the military police ran up, stopped, and peered down the alley towards him. He crouched deeper in the shadow.
One said: “Block this one — you stay right here, and block this one, and keep a look-out up ‘n down this street. I’m going on around the block. We got him somewhere in this block.”
“What’s he done, anyway?”
“Raped one of these darned English girls.”
“Gee. They’ve had it coming to them. Is he armed?”
“I guess not. Might be, though. If he don’t stop on a challenge, better let him have it.”
He ran on. Peering out of the deep shade, the Negro saw the policeman at the end of the alley pull out his service automatic and cock it to bring a cartridge to the breech; he moved close to the wall and stood there, vigilant, alert, the gun ready in his hand.
Very gently, inch by inch, Lesurier moved back along the alley, keeping flat against the wall in the darkness of the shadow, testing each step on the ground before he let his weight on that foot in case of noise, feeling ahead of him with outstretched fingertips. The moon was with him, its bright light dazzling the watching policeman twenty yards away. The Negro moved back undetected.
Presently he came to a gate leading through into a garden behind him. His fingers explored it and it opened; in quick silence he went through and out of sight of the watcher at the end of the alley. Now he could hurry. He sped over the walls back into the timber yard, one side of which adjoined the High Street. Creeping over the timber, he looked down into the street.
There were no soldiers to be seen, except the military police. Under the direction of Lieutenant Anderson they seemed to be searching houses round about the White Hart. There was a picket of two policemen fifty yards away down the street in the direction of Penzance, at the corner of Sheep Street; at the moment they were looking up that street, where something seemed to be going on.
Deserted in the street, not ten yards from where he lay on the stacked timber, there was a jeep. It stood pointing in the direction of Penzance.
Lesurier thought quickly, fighting down the panic that was overwhelming him. Although the troops were all out of the village, they could not yet have got back to the camp up at the airfield, over a mile away. If he could get the jeep out of the town there was still a chance that he could catch up with the crowd and pass in with them through the guard, unidentified. If he could drive out on the Penzance road there was a chance that he could work his way round through the lanes and reach the camp in time. There was the jeep, and only two policemen at the corner fifty yards away to pass.
He took a final glance around. Then he got down from the timber and strolled nonchalantly out into the street and got into the jeep. The noise of the starter made the two men turn towards him, but the light was bad and they could not distinguish the colour of the driver. Lesurier put the jeep in gear and accelerated towards them in a normal getaway, not too fast in order not to arouse suspicion.
He was only a few yards off when they saw that it was driven by a Negro, and challenged. He jammed his foot down hard in intermediate gear and drove straight at them. They leaped to one side as he roared past; then he was driving as he had never driven a jeep before, jinking and swerving all across the street. Behind him whistles shrilled and a shot rang out, missing him by twenty feet. Then he was out of Trenarth, roaring down the road towards Penzance, four miles away.
He did not know the roads. He was a bulldozer driver, and had never driven much about the countryside, though he could handle the jeep well enough. He had thought there would be a lane leading off towards the camp, and he drove on desperately looking for it. But there was no lane. He flung a glance behind him over his shoulder, and there were the headlights of cars, many cars, streaming down the road half a mile behind him. They were after him, and the hunt was up.
He knew now that when they overtook him they would shoot.
Stark panic seized him, born of the lynching stories told to him in his childhood in the South. He had done the unforgivable thing, and if the mob caught up with him they would tear him in pieces, burn him on a fire, torture him in vile ways. He put his foot hard down and dashed on through the quiet English moonlit scene in a frenzy of terror. The jeep he drove was in a poor condition; behind him the Command cars and the other jeeps were gaining on him; he had one hope now, to gain the shelter of the houses of Penzance and leave the jeep, and hide somewhere, anywhere. In his agony the thought of a well came to him; perhaps there would be a well somewhere, in some yard, that a man could get down into and hide, and let the hunt pass by. They would not thin
k of looking down a well.
He would have been safer in a British police station, but he could not be expected to know that.
He dashed into the streets of Penzance at fifty miles an hour, his speed conditioned only by the speed at which the jeep would take the bends without going over. As he drove, he swung his head desperately from side to side, seeking for refuge. He came out by the sea not far from the harbour, and that checked him. He braked heavily and swung the jeep round into a side alley, and stopped, and ran blindly up towards the shadows. A Command car drew up with a scream of tyres, and a shot rang out, and the bullet hit the wall beside him.
He leaped for a seven foot wall and caught it with his hands, and got one leg up on it, and miraculously he was over it and in a hen run on the other side. He blundered through the wire of that and into a vegetable garden, and over another wall into a churchyard. Behind him there were lights and the American voices of excited men.
He ran through the churchyard and stopped by a wall, peering out into the street. The military police were spreading round the block that he was in, as they had done before. He was caught; in a few minutes he would be in their hands.
In those last moments all trace of confidence in military justice left him. He was the elemental, fear-crazed Negro hunted by the whites, conditioned by centuries of discrimination. The whites were after him and murderous in their intention to avenge the insult to the colour of their skin; rather than fall into their hands it was preferable to fall into the hands of death.
There was an air-raid shelter built against the wall of the churchyard. Behind him the hunt was close; men were already in the far side of the churchyard at his heels. He went into the air-raid shelter and drew out his knife. It was a good knife and one that he was proud of, given to him by his father back in distant Nashville when he was on leave before proceeding overseas; he kept it as sharp as a razor.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, in the smelly darkness of the shelter, he drew it hard and unskilfully across his throat.
* * *
“That’s what happened,” said Mr Turner, in the quiet moonlight of the garden, four years later. “That’s how he come to be in hospital with me.”
His wife stirred in her chair; she was growing cold, but she was interested. “What happened to him?” she inquired.
“I dunno,” he said. “I dunno only what he told me, what I’ve told you now. He was for court martial when he got out, on a charge of attempted rape. That’s all I know.”
She said: “But what he done wasn’t rape at all, was it? I mean, you said he kissed her.”
“That’s what he told me,” said Mr Turner. “He said that’s all he did.”
“Well, they couldn’t charge him with attempting rape for that.”
“I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “Maybe they can in the American Army. I don’t know but what he told me may have been a pack of lies.”
“It must have been,” she said. “There must have been more to it than that.”
He was silent for a minute. “I dunno that there was,” he said at last. “I don’t think he was lying. He was pretty miserable, and I think what he said was true, far as he knew it. He knew he was for court martial, and he was kind of resigned to that.”
She said: “What was he miserable about, then? Just general disgrace?”
He said: “It was the girl. He’d gone and spoilt everything with his own foolishness, and made her complain against him, and he’d never see her again. He used to sit staring out of the window, hour after hour without saying anything — wishing he was back in Nashville, I suppose. One time I saw him crying — tears running all down his black face. It made me feel sort of funny to see that.”
He paused, and then he said: “I think he was in love with her. Really in love, I mean — just like he was a white lad.”
CHAPTER 4
MR TURNER WENT to the London office of his firm, Cereal Products Ltd., by Underground and bus next morning. Cereal Products Ltd., has a suite of offices high up in a building in Leadenhall Street. He got there about ten o’clock, and went in to see the managing director, Mr Parkinson. He told Mr Parkinson his position frankly, as one man to another.
“I don’t want any special favour, or anything o’ that,” he said. “But I want what’s my due, and it’s only right you should know what the doctor said, so you can make your own arrangements.”
Mr Parkinson told him what was his due. “On your salary scale, the firm give three months sick leave on full pay. Then if you are still unfit for work, another three months on half pay.”
“And after that the firm’s finished,” said Mr Turner. “Well, that’s fair enough. What about last year’s summer holiday? I didn’t get it then, because of that Argentine deal we did — Señor Truleja. Can I have that fortnight now?”
“I suppose so,” said the managing director. “Yes, I think we can do that.”
“Can I put this year’s fortnight to it, ‘n have a month?” said Mr Turner.
“Now?”
“Yes.” He paused, and then he said: “I got things to do.”
Mr Parkinson eyed him shrewdly. “Three months and three months and one month makes seven months,” he said. “The firm’s not going to see much more of you, is it?”
Mr Turner said: “It wouldn’t see much more of you, either, not if you was in my shoes.”
“No. All right, go on and take your month’s holiday, Turner. I’m very sorry to hear about all this.”
“Not half so sorry as I am,” said Mr Turner.
He went out, and turned into a Lyons teashop, and had a cup of coffee. He was feeling slack and unwell; the beer that he had drunk the night before, and the long sitting in the garden with his wife had done him no good. He sat there moody for a time, the great wound in his forehead pulsing intermittently. He smoked two cigarettes and then got up, paid his bill, and took a bus up to the Air Ministry in Kingsway.
“I got to try and trace an officer what served in the war,” he said to the messenger at the door.
He spent the next hour waiting in corridors and explaining his requirement to a number of uninterested people. They told him to go away and write a letter about it, but he would not do that. Finally he struck a junior clerk (female) who was much his type and very much in tune with the outrageous remarks that he saw fit to make to her, and who exerted herself to help him in his search.
She pulled a sheaf of cards from the immense card index. “Give over,” she commanded, “here, pay attention to this. There’s five Phillip Morgans here.” She sorted them. “He wouldn’t be the Group-Captain, would he? Nor this one that got killed in April 1942. What about this one — Squadron-Leader at HQ Bomber Command?”
“That’s not him, I shouldn’t think,” said Mr Turner. “You’re busting out of your jersey, Loveliness. Want about sixteen more stitches in the next one, round about.”
“If you go on like that I won’t help you any more,” she said. “Now what about this Flight-Lieutenant Morgan that got took prisoner by the Japs in July 1944? Released from Rangoon Jail in May 1945, and demobbed.”
“What was he doing before?”
She scrutinized the card. “Two tours in fighters, and then Transport Command.”
Mr Turner said: “That’s the boy. Got took prisoner by the Japs, did he? Well I never.”
She said: “That’s right. Last job was a Dakota squadron in South-East Asia Command. Supply drops, I suppose. Missing November 1944, reported prisoner in January 1945.”
“How can I get hold of him?”
“I dunno,” she said. “There’s next of kin here. That’s all the address I’ve got.” She scrutinized the card. “There’s two here, wife and mother.”
“That’s what’ll happen to you before you’re much older, Beautiful,” Mr Turner said. “Specially the last. Let’s have a look.”
He took down the addresses in his pocketbook, and left her, pleased and giggling. He lunched on a pint of beer and a snack at his favou
rite local off Shaftesbury Avenue, the Jolly Huntsman, and went to the address at Pont Street in the afternoon. He climbed the stairs to the tiny top floor flat; the door was opened to him by a pleasant plain woman.
He said: “Does Mrs Morgan live here still?” He explained. “I knew her husband in the war — I was trying to get in touch with him again.”
She wrinkled her brows. “There’s nobody of that name lives here now.”
He said: “Pity. This was some time ago, in 1943, of course. You don’t happen to have the address of the tenant before you, I suppose?”
She said: “We’ve been here for eighteen months. The tenant before us was a Mrs Bristow. Bobby Charmaine, the actress, you know — that was her stage name, but she was Mrs Bristow. She might know about the people who were here before her. It’s just a chance, you know.”
He said: “Do you know how I could get in touch with her?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “There was a divorce — she divorced Squadron-Leader Bristow, or he divorced her just after they left here. Perhaps some theatrical agent could tell you how to get in touch with Bobby Charmaine — she’s still on the stage. I saw that she had a small part in the Winter Gardens pantomime the Christmas before last, and my husband said he saw her in a touring company in Stockton-on-Tees last year. A theatrical agent might know.”
He left, and went down to the street again. He did not feel inclined to start a round of theatrical agents to get in touch with Bobby Charmaine in a second-rate touring company up at Wigan or West Hartlepool in order that he might ask her questions about her last husband but one or two. He took a bus to Kensington to see the mother.
She lived in Ladbroke Square. He found the house without difficulty, a tall old house in a terrace four storeys high, houses with basements and the stucco peeling off a little. Once it had been a smart residential neighbourhood; now it was a bit down at heels, still proud, but poor.