by Nevil Shute
“I don’t know if it’s right or wrong,” I said. “I only know it’s liable to make a packet of trouble, any time.”
We were just at her house, and there wasn’t time to tell her any more, and I didn’t want to anyway. It would have been useless to try and make her understand all that was going on out in Bahrein and further east. I turned to her. “I’ve enjoyed this evening,” I said. “Like to do it again one day?”
She smiled. “Of course I would. I’m free most evenings, Tom. Tuesdays I bring home the essays to correct, but most of the rest are free.”
“I’m expecting to have to go to London,” I remarked. “There may be a letter tomorrow. I’ll probably be there for a night or two. I’ll drop around one evening when I get back.”
She nodded. “Fine. I may be round with your mother. I have enjoyed this, Tom. It was nice of you to ask me.”
I turned away. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll do it again.”
As I had thought, there was a letter from Mr. Norman Evans next morning. He said that he had heard a lot about my success out in the Persian Gulf, and he wanted to congratulate me. He went on to say that as they were operating both in Egypt and in India we ought to get together, as we’d have a lot in common to talk over. Would I like to lunch with him at the Royal Aero Club one day? He was free any day that week. Perhaps I would give him a ring and suggest a day.
I rang him from the call box at the end of our street, and went up to London a couple of days later with my bag packed for a night or two. I went to the same economical hotel in Bloomsbury, and left my bag, and took a brief-case with a few papers in it, and went out to lunch with my old boss.
He was very glad to see me. I’d never been inside a London club before, and it was all new to me. We had a drink in the bar, and I was really glad to be back with him again. One gets kind of attached to people that you work for, sometimes, and I had always hit it off with Mr. Evans.
He asked how many aircraft I’d got operating, and I didn’t mind a bit telling him that. I’d fixed in my own mind the day before the things I wasn’t going to talk about — contract prices, and things of that sort — but except for one or two essential bits of business like that I saw no point in hiding anything up. We had a drink or two and then we had lunch. I asked him question for question, and he told me all about his staff and aircraft out in Egypt and in India, most of which I knew already, and I told him about mine.
Over the coffee he said, “What we’ve none of us been able to understand, here at home, is how you managed to work up such a fleet of aircraft on no capital at all, Cutter. I couldn’t have done that. It looks like black magic to us. I hear you’ve placed an order for a Plymouth Tramp.”
“You keep your ear pretty close to the ground,” I said.
“Well, of course. I wish I knew what you use for money.”
I smiled; there were some things I didn’t mean to tell him. But I could tell him most of it. “For one thing, I’ve been very lucky,” I replied. “For another, I probably work at a much bigger margin of profit than you do. I don’t employ any Europeans at all. Not one. None of my aircraft carry upholstery or sound-proofing. If anybody wants a seat he pays extra for the weight of it, at standard freight rates. Little things like that.”
“Third class travel for everybody,” he said thoughtfully.
“That’s right.”
“I’ve been wanting to ask you about staff,” he said. “I knew, of course, that you use only Asiatic pilots and ground engineers. Are you satisfied with that?”
“Perfectly. We’ve had no accidents yet, and the maintenance is good. You can ask the A.R.B.”
“It’s very, very interesting. How much do you pay a pilot — say for one of your Airtrucks?”
I grinned. “I’m not telling you.”
He laughed. “All right. There’s quite a number of people wanting to know that.”
“They may find out if they black their faces and come to Bahrein for a job,” I said. “They’ll have their work cut out to find out any other way.”
We sat for some time upstairs with the coffee. “I still don’t understand where you have found the capital,” he said. “It’s very wonderful, the amount that you’ve been able to do. You aren’t a company even, are you?”
“I’m just trading as Tom Cutter. It seems to work all right.” I did not want to keep anything from him that I could reasonably divulge. “I’ll be quite frank with you, Mr. Evans. Up till now I’ve been very lucky with getting easy hire-purchase terms, for the Airtrucks and the Carrier, so that I could meet the instalments out of profits. For this new Tramp, I’ve got in some new money, as a personal loan. Local money.”
He stared at me. “Local money — in Bahrein?”
“That’s right.”
“And as a personal loan?”
I nodded. “It’s a personal business. The aircraft are all my property — so far as they’re paid up.”
“I see. You must be getting to be worth quite a bit, if it’s all personal.”
“On paper,” I said, laughing. “You wouldn’t believe the struggle that it’s been to pay the wages and the petrol bill sometimes.”
“I would,” he said. “I’ve had some.”
Presently he said, “Look, Tom, this is just an idea that’s been passing through my mind in the last month or two. I’m putting it to you without prejudice and with my fingers crossed and all that.” I nodded. “You know what we do. We operate charter aircraft based here, and in Egypt, and in Delhi. We’ve been a bit slow over setting up an organisation in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, for a variety of reasons. Well, now in a way you’ve stolen a march on us and you’ve done what we should have done ourselves, and good luck to you. As things are, no competition has developed between us, and I hope it never will. I always think of you as one of us. But, geographically, we operate each side of you. If we try to join up Delhi with Egypt we shall come into competition with you. If you try to get out and extend your operations either way, you’ll come into competition with us. I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t get together in some way.”
“That’s very interesting, Mr. Evans,” I said cautiously. “I think I’m all right as I am, but there’s no harm in talking it over.”
That began it, and for the next week I was up in London almost all the time. I edited an edition of my balance sheet for them and gave them that to chew over, and in return I asked for theirs. Mine was a darn sight better than theirs was, although my total business was much smaller. I met Evans again at Morden with an accountant, and then I met him again in London with his chairman, Sir Roger Sale. I told them early on that after running my own show I wasn’t going to work for anyone, but that if they cared to make an offer to buy my business as a going concern I’d be interested to hear it. I told them straight that if I went on in aviation I was going on as boss of my own show, but I’d consider a proposal whereby they’d pay me hard cash for the business, and I’d get out.
I was thinking of the garage, and of Dad and Mum at home, not getting any younger.
They took a few days to think it over, and I went home. I was troubled about the whole thing, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. In three years I’d got further ahead in my own business than I had any right to expect; I couldn’t suppose that I’d go on getting bigger and bigger at that rate for ever. There was nothing behind me in the way of finance; if the aeroplanes stopped operating for a month I’d be bust. I lived from hand to mouth all the time in that business; there was no cash in it. But it was my own show and I’d made it a success, and out there people depended on my efforts.
Back at home, Dad and Mum were beginning to depend on me, too, as they got older. It looked as if Airservice Ltd. would make an offer, and I had a pretty good idea of what it would be. A garage in a country town was well within my reach, with a quiet, pleasant life in the south of England, close to all the places and the people that I knew. I could get married again with more chance of a success this time, and raise a f
lock of kids. And I knew somebody who’d marry me if I put it to her right, too.
I went around, on the morning I got back, to the garage out at Bitterne on the Portsmouth road that I had worked in as a boy, and that I had got the sack from when Cobham’s circus came, seventeen years before. Mr. Collier still ran it, greyer and older than when I had worked for him; he remembered me, and he had heard I was in aviation in the Persian Gulf. I asked him how one would set about buying a garage business if one wanted to, and he produced some copies of a privately issued paper called the Garage and Motor Agent, with a lot of businesses for sale in it. He lent me half a dozen copies and I fixed up with him to hire a little ten-year-old Ford to run around in while I was at home.
I went off in this car next day alone, and drove around, thinking. There was a business at Petersfield for sale, and another one at Arundel, and one at Fordingbridge, and one at Lymington in the New Forest, on the Solent. And there was a good big one in Bournemouth.
I got back home on the first evening and parked the car on a bombed site near our house. Doris Waters was in having tea with Mother. It was a Friday and there was no school next morning. I said to her, “Like to come for a joy-ride in my Rolls tomorrow?”
She smiled. “I’d love to do that. Where are you going to?”
“Fordingbridge, Lymington, and Bournemouth,” I said.
“Oh, lovely, Tom. Shall I make us up some sandwiches?”
“Not a bad idea,” I said. “Make us independent.”
Ma asked me, “See anything you fancied today?”
“I saw two,” I said. “Trouble is, I don’t know if I want a business or not. Or even if I can pay for it, if I did want it. I’m just looking.”
Ma said, “Well, Doris can help you look. Four eyes are better than two.”
I ought to have slept well that night, but I didn’t. I lay awake hour after hour in the little back bedroom we had all slept in as boys together, listening to all the church clocks in Southampton as they struck the hours, the noise of shunting engines and the clang of trucks from the goods yard, and the occasional siren from a steamer in the fairway. I couldn’t sleep at all.
A man has a right to get married and have children, and I’d earned the right to have a wife, both in work and money. A man’s got a right to live in his own place. A man has a right to make his life where he can look after his dad and mum a bit when they get old. I owed nothing to the East. If this deal went through I could pay back the sixty thousand that I’d borrowed from Sheikh Abd el Kadir for the Tramp. Everyone working for me at Bahrein would go on working for Airservice Ltd., just as they had for me, except that they might get a bit more money; Airservice Ltd. paid higher wages than I did. I could get clean out, injuring nobody, putting nobody out of a job, and I could come back to my own place with capital to buy a garage with, and settle down.
It was reasonable, and straight, and the obvious thing to do. And I didn’t want to do it.
I lay in bed tossing and turning, trying to reason out why I was such a bloody fool. It was the glamour of the East, of course. The colour, and the easy life, and the quick money. These things had got hold of me, intoxicated me, so that I couldn’t break away and come back to a harder, saner, more humdrum life in England. That was the trouble with me, I told myself. Now that I’d realised it everything would be all right, and I could sleep.
That’s what I told myself, but it wasn’t all right at all. It was no good kidding myself like that. There wasn’t any colour in Bahrein. There was an awful lot of grey dust, but no pretty girls. There wasn’t an easy life out there, or if there was I hadn’t had it. What I had had was hard work and bad food, prickly heat and sores that wouldn’t heal because of the sweat, and nobody to talk to. If I had made money it had not been easy money, and it had done me no good whatsoever; in terms of fun or goods or holidays I’d have been better off working in England on the bench in some factory at six quid a week. It wasn’t true when I tried to tell myself that the glamour of the East had got hold of me. There isn’t any glamour, or if there is, it hadn’t come my way.
I lay sleepless, hour after hour. Somewhere, sometime, I had read a story about a Spitfire pilot going into a dog-fight with his squadron. It was near the end of his tour of ops, and he couldn’t take it any longer. The story told how he fiddled with his safety harness as they dived towards the Jerries, making sure that everything was ready for him to get out quick, and slid his cockpit cover back a fraction just to make sure it was free. He knew just what he’d do. He’d carry straight on in his dive and not attempt to get a Jerry, but just go right through them. Then, while everybody else was engaged, with no eyes for anything but the Jerry in his sights or the Jerry on his tail, he’d turn his Spitfire over and bale out, and nobody would ever know he hadn’t been unlucky. He did that, and got down all right, and the French Resistance boys got hold of him and hid him, and made a fuss of him as a great hero. Two days later he shot himself.
I lay awake till dawn with that damn story running through my mind. Then I slept an hour or so, and then it was time to get up and take Doris for her day in the country.
She turned up about half-past nine, as pretty as a picture in a white summer frock with a little fine red and green pattern on it. She had colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She was carrying a basket full of lunch, with a white napkin tucked around the top of it. “Oh Tom, isn’t it a heavenly day?” she said when she saw me. “I’ve been up since six.”
I grinned; her mood was infectious, and all my gloom was rolling away at the sight of her. “What got you up so early?”
“I’ve been making your lunch. Tom, you can eat sardines, can’t you?”
“I can eat anything,” I said. “What have you got?”
“Sardine sandwiches, and brawn sandwiches, and cheese and biscuits and some little cakes I made last night. I’ve not got anything to drink except a thermos of coffee. Are you going to bring some beer?”
“Might as well,” I said. “Shall I get some for you?”
“I don’t drink it,” she said. “I’ll have cider.”
I went out and down to the “Lion” and in at the back door, and they let me have the bottles in a bag, because it was out of hours. It was bright and sunny and fresh out in the street. I went and fetched the old Ford from the bombed site and drove it up to the door of our house, and got all the stuff and put it in the back seat. Doris came out and got into the seat beside me, and Ma stood at the door waving us good-bye, and two or three of the neighbours were peeking at us round the corner of the curtain. I let the clutch in and we moved off with a haze of blue, scorched oil rising up around us in the shabby little saloon.
Doris turned to me, “Oh Tom, this is fun!”
It certainly was a lovely summer morning when we got out on to the road. We went by Cadnam and over the open heaths of the New Forest, and we didn’t go very fast because the car wouldn’t go very fast; it had been nobody’s darling for so many years that about twenty-five was its safe cruising speed. We couldn’t talk much, either, because it kicked up a pretty fair racket. We just sat and enjoyed the colours of the country and the warm, tolerant sunshine alternating with cool shade, and we were happy.
I stopped outside Fordingbridge and showed Doris the advertisement of the garage in the paper I had with me, and then we drove in to have a look at it. It was advertised as having a two-bedroomed house, and they wanted seven thousand for it. When we got to it we found it mostly built of tin and rather dirty, and the house was nothing much. I went in and spent about half an hour with the chap looking after it; the owner had just died and previous to that he had let it run down badly. I didn’t think a lot of it, but it was cheap and in a good position. We got into the car again, and went on to see the one at Bournemouth.
We stopped for lunch on the way, by a wide river, heavily preserved, full of enormous trout. There was a waterfall there, a little sort of weir; we carried our lunch along the river bank to the tumbling water, and sat down and h
ad it there. As Doris was spreading out the white napkin for a tablecloth, we saw a kingfisher.
Doris was very positive about the garage that we’d seen at Fordingbridge. “It’s all right,” she said, “but it wouldn’t do for you. There’s not enough scope there for a man like you, Tom. It’s — it’s all too small.”
“I’d have a bit of capital left over for building it up,” I said. “It’s a possibility, anyway.”
She shook her head. “All right for some people, but not for a man like you.”
I grinned. “Fat lot you know about me.”
“I can’t see you fitting in at Fordingbridge,” she said obstinately. “Not after all that you’ve been doing. You’d be bored to tears at the end of a year.”
“Give me another of those rock cakes,” I said. “They’re good.” I knew she had made them herself. She passed them to me, smiling, and I took one and bit into it. “About Fordingbridge,” I said. “You may be right, but I’m not sure you are. You think I couldn’t stick it in a small town. But I’ve been living in one for three years.”
She stared at me. “Where?”
“Bahrein,” I said.
“But that’s different, Tom. That’s in the East.”
“A small town’s a small town, wherever it is,” I said. “I’ve got no feeling against small town life. I rather like it.”
She switched the subject. “It’s a rotten little house, anyway,” she said. “I’d hate to live in it.”
I grinned at her. “I haven’t asked you to.”
She flushed a little, and I was sorry I’d done that. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s a rotten little house, and you can’t make it any better. You’d have to find another house, and that would take you away from the business.”
“I know what you mean,” I said gently. “You’re right, too. In a place like that I think you ought to live on top of the job.”
“It’s a small-scale business,” she said, “and it always will be. But you’re not a small-scale person, Tom.”
We sat and smoked a cigarette after lunch, watching the tumbling water and the birds, and presently we packed up and walked back to the car and got on the road for Bournemouth.