by Nevil Shute
We met one or two of the Dutch officials of the administration during the afternoon, serious, competent people whose one concern was for the welfare of the people of the island. They went into our proposals with some care but they raised no obstacles. I think they welcomed the idea of an Australian aeroplane coming to the island now and then, because at that time consumer goods were very short in Indonesia, and small things such as thermos-flasks and electric torches which mean so much in the East were almost unobtainable. We were taken to call upon the Governor that evening and received his approval of the proposals; next morning we had a detailed talk with a Dutchman called Bergen who seemed to be the second in command, and fixed with him the rentals for the hangar and the landing fees.
I should have liked to stay in Bali and rest there for a time, but the demurrage on a Tramp is a heavy charge, and I had to go on. I told Bergen that I would come out with the first series flight and stay ten days and go back on the next machine, in order to see the engineers settled in and the show running smoothly. We went down to the aerodrome about midday and had a last look round the hangar. Then we took off again and flew through to Batavia, and spent the night there, and flew on next morning to Diento to pick up a small return load for Bahrein.
We got back to Bahrein three days later, and I went into a huddle with Gujar Singh and Connie that evening. “They just won’t have us in Australia,” I told Connie. “Too bad, but that’s the way it is.” And then I told him about Bali and about Maclean Airways.
“Who do you think of sending out there?” he asked presently.
“What about Chai Tai Foong?” I asked. He was the Chinese ground engineer who had been with Connie and Dwight Schafter at Damrey Phong; he had been with us for two years or more, and he had come on a lot. I always reckoned him in my own mind as second in command upon the ground staff.
He nodded. “He’d be all right. He’s got an Arab wife here; I don’t know about that.”
It was a point that I had missed when talking to the Dutch administrators at Bali, whether foreign Asiatic women would be acceptable. “I shouldn’t think there’d be much difficulty,” I said slowly. “I’ll write and ask if there’d be any objection. Find out first, though, if he’ll go and if he wants to take her.”
I suggested that we should send a young Egyptian called Abdul with Chai Tai Foong, but Connie said they would quarrel; he preferred a Siamese that we had with us, whose name was Phinit. That was a better choice as it turned out; the Siamese are a gentle and artistic people and Phinit was mentally much closer to the Balinese than Abdul would have been. He was unmarried, so that complication didn’t arise. I left it to Connie to put the matter to these two and then to bring them in to see me in the office.
It was dark by the time all that was finished, and I couldn’t get hold of Mr. Johnson at the Arabia-Sumatran office. I had to see him soon to find out how he reacted to the whole idea of transfer to an Australian machine at Bali; it might well be that he would wash out the whole thing and give the contract to a British company with a white staff; the cost did not mean a great deal to them. I worried over this a lot that night.
As luck would have it, a cable came in that night from Maclean in Alice Springs. I was in bed in the radio operators’ chummery where I still had my room; the operator on duty saw it was important and sent it over to me by a boy. In it Maclean gave me his quotation for the return trip of a Dakota once a fortnight between Bali and East Alligator River. It was exactly what I wanted; I got up and went over to the office on the aerodrome, and stayed there for two hours revising my quotations to the Arabia-Sumatran, cutting everything as close down as I dared. When I’d finished I still had a figure that was about fifteen per cent lower than anything my white competitors were likely to quote for the whole journey from Bahrein to the East Alligator, and I went to bed moderately happy about the job.
I was over at the office bright and early next morning, and when Nadezna came in I had the new quotation ready for her to type out. She ran through it in half an hour and I rang up Mr. Johnson, and by nine o’clock I was in his office showing him the new figures and telling him all about it. He had already had a cable from Fletcher at East Alligator River telling him about the difficulties, and he wasn’t at all happy about changing airlines at Bali; he was afraid, quite reasonably, that one or other of the aircraft wouldn’t be there on time and so his men and loads would get hung up at Bali.
“There’s worse places to be stranded at than Bali,” I remarked.
He glanced at me. “I’ve never been there. I’ve heard that it’s a very lovely island.”
“It is,” I said. “It breaks my heart to think you won’t see much of it — not travelling this way.” I turned more serious. “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “There is a danger of a hold-up there. What I propose doing, if you go on with this, is to go to Australia and either form a new white company to do this last leg, or take a financial interest in Maclean’s show — if I can. I’ll have to get control of that last leg.”
He grunted. “It’s just possible that we might operate it ourselves from the East Alligator River ...”
He wouldn’t say yes or no to the new scheme at that meeting; he said that he wanted to talk it over with his colleagues and he’d telephone me later in the day. I went back to the aerodrome worried and anxious, wondering if my £120,000 contract had gone down the drain. I roamed about restless and irritable in and out of the office and the hangar, unable to settle to anything or attend to anything. I had a miserable day. So did everybody else in the party.
At about four o’clock in the afternoon Johnson came on the phone. He said they had decided to try the service in the way that I suggested, in co-operation with Maclean Airways. He said that I must have escape clauses to the contract enabling us to get rid of Maclean if he was late at Bali, and he wanted to see me about that. He wanted to talk to me again about the possibility that they should operate a Dakota themselves for the last “white” leg of the journey. He suggested I should come and see them next morning, and he said they wanted to start the service on a six months basis with a flight leaving upon Thursday week, in nine days’ time.
I put down the telephone, and I was so relieved I could have wept. It was all right, after all.
Nadezna had been standing by my desk. She had come in while I was talking, and was waiting to say something to me.
“Major Hereward is here, waiting to see you,” she said. “Shall I bring him in?”
Even the Liaison Officer couldn’t worry me at the moment. “Show him in,” I said. “Look — slip over to the hangar then and find your brother and Gujar. Tell them it’s all okay — Johnson has accepted the Bali scheme and Maclean Airways. I’ll be over there as soon as I’ve found out what this chap wants.”
She smiled at me, radiant; perhaps it was my own relief that made her look like that. “I’m just terribly glad it’s all come out all right,” she said.
“My God,” I remarked with feeling. “So am I.”
She brought in Major Hereward, and I got up to greet him. “Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I had someone on the phone.” I offered him a cigarette, but he refused it.
“I’m afraid that what I’ve come to tell you may be rather unwelcome, Mr. Cutter,” he said. “It’s about your man, Shak Lin. We feel up at the Residency that the influence that he is building up here is quite undesirable, and could even be dangerous.”
“I see,” I said. The sun seemed suddenly to have gone in.
“It’s very unwise to play about with religious matters in this country,” he said seriously. “I’ve been here twenty-five years, and I know. A new sect makes a schism, and in this country schisms may break out into an open riot, any time. I’m afraid we cannot tolerate a British subject who gains influence in this country by starting a new sect.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much harm in it,” I said dully.
“Well, that’s for us to judge, Mr. Cutter.
Shak Lin is a British subject, and you’re a British subject, and in this I’m afraid you’ll have to do what we decide.”
I was silent.
“You’ll have to get rid of him, Cutter,” he said, not unkindly. “I’m very sorry about it, and so is the Resident. But Shak Lin’s got to go.”
7
GOD BE THY guide from camp to camp; God be thy shade from well to well; God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet’s camel bell.
James Elroy Flecker
Major Hereward was adamant that Connie had to leave the Persian Gulf. He said that I could see the Resident if I liked, but it was obvious that they had made their minds up. He made it pretty clear, too, that if they had any trouble with me they’d kick me out too. They didn’t seem to have a lot of use for any of us, and yet, I think we’d done a useful job while we were there. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d gone into the officers’ mess, as I could have done long before. I should have got invited to the Residency parties then, and got alongside them more. Perhaps I had stuck too closely to the job.
Using his own words, I told him that what he proposed raised rather large issues. “Maybe I shall wind the business up,” I said. “The chief engineer is a key man in a thing like this. In any case, I’m not going to decide anything tonight. I may go to London and talk it over with your people there. Mr. Shaklin has done nothing but talk a very harmless and sincere form of religion.”
“Not Christian,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “Not Christian. Does that make a difference?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t enter into that. Where British subjects are concerned, one expects Christianity. However, Mr. Cutter, there it is. I don’t want to upset your business unduly, but I want Shak Lin out of this district within a fortnight. We can’t have him here any longer than that.” He got up to go. I got up with him. “I understand what you want. I’ll think it over, and let you know what I’m going to do.”
He went out and got into his car and drove away. I went back to my chair and flopped down into it, tired and depressed. Nadezna came back from the hangar presently, and found me sitting so, staring idly at the pad in front of me, wondering with a dulled brain what I was going to do. She said, “They’re all very pleased. Gujar was asking if you’re going on the next Bali trip yourself, or if you want Arjan Singh to go with him, or what.”
I could not take in what she was saying. “What’s that?” I asked.
She looked at me curiously, and repeated the question. “Arjan — no — I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“Is anything the matter?” she asked.
I shook my head; I wanted time to think about things before spilling them to anyone. “I’ll be going off in a minute. If you’ve got the letters I’ll sign them now.”
I think it was on that day that my business stopped being fun. Up till then, it had been a game to me. I had made money out of it, it is true, but this had been a paper profit that I had seen nothing of. I was still the same Tom Cutter living with the radio operators as I had been when first I came to Bahrein in the Fox-Moth. I had no more goods, no better clothes or food than in those days. Figures on white typescript sheets might say that I was worth thirty thousand pounds or so, and it was just like any other fiction to me, as unreal as a page in a novel. No Rolls-Royce had yet come my way; I drove a 1940 Dodge station wagon that I had bought in the first year. The only difference in my life was that I had more work even than in those early days, and larger aeroplanes to play with.
And it had been play. It was a game to all of us in those first years, a game that we all played together as a team. We had all been of the same mind, I think; the fun that we had had in working the thing up together had been the real essence of it. Now, it seemed, the team was to be broken up, and we should go on one man short. Fun is a delicate flower that doesn’t stand up very well to changes of that sort. You can’t play about with fun. You can kill fun very easily, as easily as you can kill a wife.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Towards morning I gave up the idea of going to London to argue with the Foreign Office. They would only take the advice of their officials on the spot; I had no prestige, no influence or reputation that would weigh against the vagaries of these foolish people. I was just Tom Cutter, ex-ground engineer, who made too much money to please civil servants. If I had been Sir Thomas Cutter, Bart., deep in debt and divorced three times, I might have commanded some attention in official circles, but as just plain Tom Cutter I hadn’t got a hope.
Connie would have to go to Bali and set up the party there, and Chai Tai Foong must take command of the ground staff at Bahrein in his place. Connie and Phinit to Bali. I reached that conclusion towards dawn and dozed a little then, thinking unhappily of what I had to say to Connie, and how Gujar Singh would react, and all the rest of the party.
I don’t like stalling when there’s anything unpleasant to be done. I walked over to the hangar soon after the men came in at half-past seven, and called Connie out on to the tarmac. “Look, old boy,” I said as soon as I got him out of earshot of the others. “We’re in for trouble, I’m afraid.”
He faced me, smiling gently. He had a wonderful smile that sort of comforted you. His sister had it a bit, too. “I know,” he said. “They want to get rid of me. That’s it, I suppose?”
“You’ve heard about it, then?”
He nodded. “The Imam came and told me a couple of days ago. That’s what Major Hereward came up about last night?”
“How did the Imam get to know about it?”
He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling. “The bush telegraph works very well, here in Bahrein. Far better than the Residency know.”
“Those bloody fools,” I said bitterly. “I’ve been trying to think of some way out of this. And I can’t think of one.”
“Don’t let it trouble you,” he said. “I know it’s going to be a set-back to the business, but it’s no injury to me. It’s time that I went on, in any case. I’ve been here long enough.”
“It’s good of you to take it that way,” I said. “I don’t believe you, but it’s nice of you to say it. I don’t believe you meant to make a change.”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have left you, just as you wouldn’t leave us. But I’ve done all I can in this place, and I should go on.”
We strolled into the shade of the hangar, for the sun was getting hot already. “I’ve been wondering if you’d care to start up Bali for me,” I said. “Let Chai Tai Foong go on here in your place, and you go down to Bali with Phinit. There’s not a lot of work there, I’m afraid, but it’s all I’ve got to offer.”
He smiled again, that wonderful, comforting smile. “I’ll go there,” he said. “I’d like to go somewhere for a bit now where there’s time to think things out. Bali is what I should have asked for, if you had suggested any change before this happened. It’s no injury to me to go there.” He paused, and then he said, “There’s only one person damaged by this nonsense.”
I glanced at him. “Who’s that?”
“You.”
“I’m not damaged,” I said. “Nothing’s happened to me.”
“Nothing that you can’t ride over,” he said, “because you were born a valiant and courageous man, and you can take hard blows. But you were going to sell this business, weren’t you?”
“I did think of it,” I said. “I gave up the idea.”
He nodded. “And with it you gave up England, and wealth, and an easy life in a beautiful place, and love, and the children that you long for. You gave up all these things, and came back to the Persian Gulf. Why did you do that?”
I stared at him. “How did you know all this?”
He smiled gently. “You’re thinking I’ve got second sight,” he said. “I haven’t. Your mother told Gujar Singh about these things, and he told me.”
I stared out along the tarmac of the runway, already shimmering in oily waves of he
at. “It didn’t seem to be a very good idea to sell the business, after all,” I said. “One does what one thinks is for the best.”
“You thought it for the best to give up all the delights of the world, and come back to this hot, barren place of difficulties and insults,” he observed. “Why did you do that, you hard-headed man? Did you do it for a penance?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “If I did, I’ve got plenty to do penance for.”
“So have all men,” he replied. “But all men don’t do it.”
“I don’t know that I’m doing it either,” I said. “As regards selling the business, I very nearly did sell it. I only rejected the idea on final inspection.”
“Half a thou too small,” he said. “The difference between Right and Wrong. Half a thou bigger, and it ‘ld be Right. As it is, it’s Wrong, and you can’t cheat about it.” He smiled again. “Too bad when God gives you the mind of an Inspector, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “You’d better get into the hangar if you’re going to talk that sort of stuff.”
He smiled. “I shan’t talk my beliefs here very much longer. When do you want me to go?”
“I’m laying on the first flight down to Bali on Thursday week, provided Maclean Airways can play at such short notice,” I told him. “Will you and Phinit come with me on that? I shall take Arjan as pilot so that he can learn the route.”
He nodded. “I’ll tell Phinit.”
I stood staring out across the wide expanses of the airfield to the sea, revolving all the problems in my mind. “There’s your sister,” I said. “I suppose she’ll go with you.”