by Nevil Shute
His wife said: “I expect he’s all right, too.”
“Maybe,” said Mr Turner thoughtfully. “But I’d like to know.”
In the distance they heard the church clock strike six. Mollie asked what he wanted to do that evening, and Mr Turner said at once that perhaps it would be nice to take a run out to the Barley Mow. She vetoed that, upon the score that he was tired after his journey, and won her case. Instead they talked about his journey and about her refresher course in shorthand typing, and presently they moved indoors as it grew cool and put the wireless on, and listened to Itma with Tommy Handley, and Lady Sonly, and Inspector Ankles, and the Colonel, and Naïve, and Mr Turner who had missed this programme very much while he had been in Burma laughed until the tears came to his eyes, while fifteen million other people in the British Islands did the same.
He went down to the office next day, only a day or two adrift upon his holiday time, and found a little work to do, and told the managing director about Mr S. O. Chang in far Rangoon. Secretly they were all rather shocked to see the change in him; if Mr Parkinson had wanted any confirmation of the sentence of death passed on Turner, he found it in the change in his appearance.
He went back to the office after lunch for a short time, and then went out and took a bus to Notting Hill Gate. He walked slowly through the streets to Ladbroke Square, and walked up the steps, and knocked on the door. Again, it was opened to him by Morgan’s sister, as it had been only about five weeks before.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
The girl said: “Oh — it’s you.”
“Aye,” he said, “it’s me all right. I’ve been staying with your brother, out in Mandinaung, Miss Morgan. I told him that I’d come and see you when I got back home. I got some things to tell his mother.”
She stared at him. “You say you’ve been staying with my brother, out in Burma?”
“That’s right.”
She did not move from the door, or ask him in. “You can’t have been,” she said suspiciously. “You were only here the other day.”
He said: “I flew out, and flew back again; I was in Burma just on a fortnight. I was staying with your brother Thursday of last week.”
“But that’s fantastic . . .” She moved aside, still only half convinced that this was not some imposition. “Come in, Mr Turner.”
She took him up to the first floor drawing-room. The mother was not there, and one of the long windows was open, letting in fresh air and sunlight to the room. “Yes,” he said, “I made a very quick trip, but I got time to spend a few days with your brother, up at Mandinaung.”
“At Mandinaung? You went and saw him there?”
“That’s right. He gave me a fine time.”
She stared at him. “But could he . . . where did you stay?”
Mr Turner said: “I don’t know as you’ve got the right idea of how he lives, Miss Morgan. He’s got a great big house, ‘n servants, ‘n a good job, too. It’s true enough he lived in a palm hut for a while after the war, same as any young couple might live in a prefab when they start off first. But now he’s built himself a great big house outside the town. Real lovely that house is,” he said, a little wistfully. “He’s living better than what I do, or what you do here.”
The girl said: “He did mention something about a new house, once . . . .” She glanced at Mr Turner. “I’m afraid we don’t know as much about my brother as we ought to,” she said. “There was — well, something of a breach when he married that native woman. We don’t hear from him very often.” She paused, and then said: “Did you see her?”
“Aye,” said Mr Turner, “I saw quite a lot of her. As nice a girl as any that you’d find, in this country or any other.”
She stared at him, incredulous, and then asked, as Mollie had: “Can she speak any English?”
He felt at a loss, not knowing where to begin. “She speaks better’n what I do, by a long chalk,” he said. “She’s a very well educated girl, Miss Morgan, and come of a good family too. I think your brother done all right for himself, marrying her, if you ask me.”
She said: “But they lived in a palm hut in the jungle!”
The wheel had gone the full circle, and Mr Turner started again, patiently. He talked for half an hour, telling her about the house, the meals, the furniture, the children, the servants; he told her everything that he could think of about life in Mandinaung. As he talked, there came into his mind the figure of Nay Htohn, wistful. “That is the trouble with the English,” she had said. “They so seldom go out, to see for themselves.” He talked to Morgan’s sister with the figure of the Burman girl before his eyes, and he talked for nearly half an hour, and he was very tired by the time he had done.
A uniformed nurse came into the room, hesitated at the door on seeing Turner, and went out again. The girl said: “My mother is ill, Mr Turner, or I should have liked her to see you, and to hear all this. But I’m afraid she is too ill to see you now.”
“That don’t matter,” he said, “I’ll look in some other time, when she’s up and about again.”
The girl hesitated. “That’s very kind of you,” she said at last. “My mother had a stroke, soon after you were here before. She’s very ill. If she recovers sufficiently, I will let you know. But she’s made no progress in the last three weeks and the doctor tells me I must be prepared for anything.”
“Dying, eh?” said Mr Turner.
She nodded, and her eyes were very full.
“Well, there’s a pair of us,” he said cheerfully. “I’m dying, too.” The girl stared at him indignantly. “It’s a fact,” he said. “This wound in my old napper’s going wrong on me.” She glanced involuntarily at the great wound on his forehead, red and angry. “I got till next April, not longer, and I don’t reckon that I’ll be in circulation after Christmas. I’ve had it, Miss Morgan. But what the hell? All be the same in a hundred years, that’s what I say.”
She said, rather at a loss: “I am so sorry.”
“So am I,” said Mr Turner. “I’d like to have gone on a bit longer, but that’s the way it is.” He thought for a minute. “I think you should go out and stay with your brother,” he said at last. “After your mother’s gone, that is. I think you ought to go and see with your own eyes how different it all is to what you think. It don’t cost much to go, considering what you’d get out of it.”
She said seriously: “I’ll think that over, Mr Turner. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
He said: “You won’t be seeing me again, Miss Morgan, I don’t suppose, because of what I told you.” He got to his feet to go. “So just remember this. When your Ma dies, you write out to your brother, ‘n go out and spend a few months with him, ‘n get to know your sister-in-law. You girls are of an age and educated much the same; you’ll hit it off with her all right if you can just forget what folks have told you about colour and judge for yourself from what you see with your own eyes. I don’t ask more than that. Just make up your own mind from what you see with your own eyes.” He picked up his hat. “Well, I must be getting along.”
He left the house, and travelled back to Watford on the Underground, and arrived home in time for tea. Mollie was expecting him and had a kipper for him and a great slab of cherry cake and strawberry jam, all the delicacies that Mr Turner liked the most. And relaxing in a deckchair after this repast, and looking at the roses, and smoking his pipe, Mr Turner felt that there was a great deal to be said for Watford whatever the charms of Burma. And presently, when Mollie came from washing up the tea, he said:
“Like to take a run out to the Barley Mow this evening?”
She smiled tolerantly. “If you like.”
So presently they got out the little seven-year-old Ford and started down the arterial road in the cool evening. They got to the Barley Mow at about a quarter to nine and parked the car with all the others, and went into the saloon bar. It was full of light and smoke and good company; all his old familiar cronies were there, George Harris,
and Gillie Simmonds with a new girl friend on the stage, and fat old Dickie Watson the bookie. In that atmosphere Mr Turner drank his beer and came out like the flower.
He told them the story of the temperance lecture and the glass of whisky and the worm, and he told them the one about the lecture upon psychic research and the goat. He was a very good raconteur and told a dubious story well; standing in the middle of the crowd by the bar, flushed with beer and with the great wound in his forehead red and pulsing, he was in his element. He never thought to tell them he had been in Burma but he told them about the schoolmistress and the little girl who lisped, and about the man who climbed up on the wall of the lunatic asylum and found out all about Hipposexology. He had an inexhaustible supply of these stories, all somewhat juvenile, all certain of a laugh when told as Jackie Turner told them. The men enjoyed his company tremendously; the women stood by faintly bored and brightly cheerful, with one eye covertly upon the clock.
He tired presently, more quickly than he used to, and stood listening to other people’s anecdotes and stories with a mug of beer clasped in his hand. A broad shouldered young man dressed in a black coat and dark grey striped trousers told a very legal story about a man who had half his house requisitioned as a Wrennery and went on living in the other half, which was a Roman bastion and so an Ancient Monument, and immune, and what came of it all. Mr Turner found himself beside this young man presently, and said:
“You in the law business?”
The other nodded. “I’m a junior clerk in Sir Almroth Hopkinson’s chambers, in the Temple.”
Mr Turner took a sup of beer, and thought for a moment. “Suppose one wanted to find out what happened in a trial back in 1943,” he said. “How would one set about it?”
“Get somebody to look it up in the register.”
“Can anyone do that?”
The young man shook his head. “You’d have to do it through a solicitor.” He glanced at Mr Turner. “What sort of case was it?”
“A murder.”
“Murder? Do you remember the name of the prisoner?”
“Brent. Douglas Theodore Brent. A corporal he was, in the Parachute Regiment.”
“Rex v. Brent . . .” The young man stared at him absently. “Wait now, Rex v. Brent . . . He got off didn’t he? Manslaughter, was it?”
“I dunno,” said Mr Turner. “That’s what I want to find out.”
“Rex v. Brent,” the young man said again. “I’ve heard about that case. I know. Stanier, Marcus Stanier. That’s right. He was defended by a chap called Carter in Sir Phillip Bell’s chambers. A man called Marcus Stanier is a clerk there now. It was he who told me about it. That’s right. I could find out about it, if you like.”
“I’ll be real glad if you would,” said Mr Turner. “I was in hospital with him just before. I’ve always thought I’d like to know.”
They exchanged names and telephone numbers; Mr Turner learned that the young man was Mr Viner. He rang up Mr Viner the next afternoon from the office.
Viner said: “Oh yes. I’ve got a copy of the transcript of the shorthand note of the trial here, Mr Turner, taken for the Judge-Advocate-General. And I’ve got counsel’s notes for his speech. Marcus Stanier brought them over this morning; I said I’d let him have them back tomorrow. Matter of fact I’ve been reading it myself — it’s quite an interesting case. He got six months for manslaughter.”
“That all?” said Mr Turner in surprise. “It don’t sound much. He reckoned he was charged with murder.”
“That’s right,” said Mr Viner. “But he had a very good counsel, a very unusual counsel, I may say. Would you like to see the papers?”
“I would,” said Mr Turner. “If I slip over now, could I have a read at them?”
He went out and took a bus down to the Temple, and found the chambers with some difficulty. Mr Viner sat him down in a little badly lit outer office full of books and packets of old briefs and coats and hats, and gave him a dusty carbon copy of the shorthand transcript, Rex v. Douglas Theodore Brent. With it there was a dog-eared, marble paper covered book of pencilled manuscript, now smudged and faded, labelled P. C. CARTER.
* * *
The Judge was Mr Justice Lambourn, the prosecuting counsel Mr Constantine Paget, KC, with Mr Peter Melrose for his junior, and the defending counsel Mr P. C. Carter. In the opening formalities the Judge had asked: “And for the defence?”
Major Carter stood up in the front bench. He did not wear wig and gown. He wore a uniform practically identical with that of the prisoner, with the emblem of the Parachute Regiment upon the shoulder of his rough serge battledress; the crown upon his epaulette was the only distinction between them. “May it please your Lordship,” he said, “I appear for the prisoner.”
The Judge glanced slowly from the counsel to the prisoner, and back to the counsel. A thin, wintry smile appeared upon his lips. He bowed slightly. “Very well, Mr Carter. You are for the defence.” He leaned back in his seat. “Proceed.”
Mr Constantine Paget stood up, a sheaf of papers in his hand, and opened the case for the Crown. The case concerned, he said, a Mr Michael Seddon, a boilermaker by trade, who met his death in the Miller Hospital at Greenwich as a result of injuries sustained outside a public house known as the Goat and Compasses in Albion Street, New Cross, upon the night of March 22nd, 1943. He would call evidence to prove a quarrel between the deceased man and the defendant in the public house, and to prove that this quarrel continued in the street after closing time, which was ten-thirty. He would call medical evidence relating to the injuries that the deceased sustained. He would call evidence to show the court that the defendant was a man of violent passions, and he would bring to the court the only witness of the struggle which resulted in the fatal injuries to the deceased, the young lady friend of the defendant. With this evidence he would show the court that here was a case of wilful murder, and he would ask the jury for a conviction in those terms.
He then proceeded to call the barman who gave evidence of the quarrel, and the landlord’s daughter who gave evidence about the telephone call received ten minutes after closing time from an unknown caller. He called the house surgeon of the Miller Hospital for evidence of the cause of death. For the violent passions, he called a Mr Isidore Levy, a commission agent of Southampton, who deputed that in 1942 the defendant and another man had come in and wrecked his office and injured him so severely that he had to spend a week in bed, following an argument about paying out after a dog race. In cross-examination by Mr Carter, this witness admitted that he had not brought the matter to the notice of the police, for business reasons. Finally Mr Constantine Paget produced a most reluctant Phyllis Styles of the ATS and put her in the box, and examined her on her sworn deposition in the police court, proving what had taken place outside the pub.
Major Carter rose to cross-examine her; she knew he was a friend of Duggie’s and greeted him with a bright smile. “Miss Styles,” he said, “what was the original cause of this quarrel in the public house? What happened first of all?”
“He started saying ever such rude things to Duggie,” she said at once. “He’d had a bit too much.”
The counsel said: “Well, let’s leave that for the moment. Will you tell us, what exactly did he say?”
Patiently he extracted from her, for the benefit of the jury, all that Mr Seddon had thought fit to say about the paratrooper’s fancy hat. “This hat that caused so much trouble,” he inquired. “What sort of hat was it?”
She said: “His beret. You know, what they all wear now.”
Major Carter reached down to the seat beside him and picked up his own magenta beret, and held it up. “To make the matter quite clear, Miss Styles, was it a hat like that?”
She said: “That’s right, sir, just like yours. The Parachute beret.”
The counsel glanced towards the jury, and dropped his beret back on to the seat beside him; a faint smile crossed the features of the Judge. Major Carter went on and took her through t
he entire quarrel; the court heard all Mr Seddon’s opinions of the work done by the Army and his views upon the Second Front. And after ten minutes of all this, he said:
“And now, Miss Styles, I want you to tell the court exactly what the deceased man last said before he was attacked by Corporal Brent.” He turned to the Judge. “May it please your Lordship, it may well be that the court would wish that the witness should write down the answer to this question, rather than give a verbal answer.”
The Judge looked at the girl, slim and erect in her ATS uniform. “Would you rather write down the words that the deceased man used?” he said.
But Private Phyllis Styles had seen two years of service in an AA battery, and had few inhibitions. “I don’t mind saying it if you don’t mind hearing it,” she replied. “He said I was a mucking Army tart, wearing a fancy tart’s hat.” She put her hand up to the gay forage cap tucked under the epaulette of her tunic, and glanced at the jury, as Major Carter had before. “This one, he meant. Then he give Duggie a terrible kick up his behind and Duggie went for him.”
Mr Constantine Paget leaned back in his seat, stifling a smile. He was going down on this case, he could see, all on account of these blessed hats; he did not greatly care. He doubted if the jury would give murder after what the girl had said. He did not really want them to. His duty was to present the case for the Crown, but not to strive for victory at the expense of what was right. He rose slowly to his feet for re-examination of the witness, and said:
“Now, Miss Styles, what happened after the deceased man used the words that you have told us, and before he kicked Corporal Brent? The corporal said something, didn’t he?”
The girl said reluctantly: “Well, yes, he said he was the scum of bloody Dublin and one or two things like that.”
“Thank you, Miss Styles. And then what happened, after that?”
“Well, he kicked Duggie, like I said.”
“Thank you.” He turned to the Judge. “My Lord, I have no further evidence to offer.”