Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “It’ll be down next year,” Jack Dorman said. “Not real low, but down to something reasonable, I’d say. It can blow a blizzard after that, for all I care.”

  They got out of the car and went with her to the wide veranda, and sat down in deck-chairs. “That’s what George thinks, too. I’d be quite glad if it went down a bit. It doesn’t seem right, somehow. It’s not good for the children, either, to see money come so easy.”

  She told them that they were sailing for England in April on the P. and O. Strathmore; the children were going to stay with their grandmother at Nagambie. “George booked the cabin six months ago,” she said, “but I never really thought it’ld come off. Still, now we’re going, definitely. His dad and mum, they’re still alive at this place Shepton Mallet where he was brought up. I never thought I’d meet them, but now it looks as if I shall.”

  She turned to Jane with a question that had been worrying her a good deal. “When you go on those P. and O. boats travelling first-class,” she said, “what do you wear at night? Is it a low evening dress every night, or is that just for dances?”

  George Pearson came back presently with six hungry children, and they all sat down to tea at the long table in the kitchen, eleven of them, counting the hired man, a Pole from Slonim, who spoke little English. They ate the best part of two joints of cold roast mutton with a great dish of potatoes and thought nothing of it, topping up with bread and jam and two plum cakes, and many cups of tea. Then the men went out into the yard and put the three visiting children on their ponies and saw them off so that they would be home by nightfall, which comes early in Australia.

  The two graziers talked quietly for a time on the veranda while their wives washed up indoors. “Going home in April, so Ann told us,” Dorman said.

  “Aye.” George smoked for a few minutes in silence. “See the old folks once more, anyway. I don’t know what it’s going to be like there, now.”

  “I asked Jane if she’d like to go back home, but she didn’t want to. She said it’ld all be different.”

  “Aye. I want to see my brother, see if he won’t come out. There’s still land going if you look around a bit.”

  “Ninety pounds an acre.” They both smiled. “Forty-five or fifty, if you look around,” said George. “He’d get that for the land he’s got at home.”

  “All right while the wool keeps up.”

  “I want to see what things are like at home,” George Pearson said. “They may not be so bad as what you read.”

  “They don’t have to be,” said Dorman. “I see where it says in the paper that you can’t have a new car if you’ve had one since the war, and now they’re selling squirrels in the butchers’ shops. What’s a squirrel like to look at? Is it like a possum?”

  “Smaller than that,” said George. “More the size of a rat. It’s a clean feeder, though; I suppose you could eat squirrel. Gypsies used to eat them, where I come from.”

  There was a slow, bewildered silence. “I’d not know what the world was coming to, if I’d to eat a thing like that....”

  Everything foreign in the newspapers was puzzling to them, these days. The murders and the pictures of the bathing girls were solid, homely matters that they could understand, but the implacable hostility of the Russians was an enigma. Fortunately they were seven or eight thousand miles away, and so it didn’t matter very much. Korea and the Chinese provided another puzzle; Australian boys were fighting there for no very clear reason except that a meeting of the United Nations nine thousand miles from Buttercup had said they should. Mr. Menzies made a speech sometimes and told them that all this was terribly important to Australians, and failed to convince them. The only thing from all these distant places that really touched the graziers was the food shortage in England; they did not understand why that should be, but they sent food parcels copiously to their relations at home, and puzzled over their predicament. They could not understand why English people would not come to this good country that had treated them so well.

  The two wives came out and joined their men on the veranda. Jane said, “Ann’s been telling me about Peter Loring falling off his horse, Jack. Did you hear about that?”

  Her husband shook his head. “That one of the Loring boys, from Balaclava?”

  She nodded. “The little one — eleven or twelve years old. You tell him, Ann.”

  Ann Pearson said, “It was a funny thing, Jack. I had to go into town early on Friday, about nine o’clock. Well, I got just up to the main road — I was all alone in the utility, and there was a pony, with a saddle on and bridle, grazing by the side of the road, and there was Peter Loring with blood all over him from scratches, sitting on the grass. So of course I stopped and got out and asked him what was the matter, and he said he fell off the pony; he was on his way to school. So I asked him if he was hurt, and he said it hurt him to talk and he felt funny.” She paused. “Well, there I was, all alone, and I didn’t know what to do, whether to take him home or what. And just then a truck came by, with a couple of those chaps from the lumber camp in it.”

  Jack Dorman said, “The camp up at Lamirra?”

  “That’s right. Well, this truck stopped and the men got down, and one of them came and asked what was the matter. New Australian he was, German or something — he spoke very foreign. So I told him and he began feeling the boy all over, and then the other man told me he was a doctor in his own country, but not here in Australia. He was a tall, thin fellow, with rather a dark skin, and black hair. So I asked him, ‘Is it concussion, Doctor?’ I said. Because, I was going to say we’d bring him back here, because this was closer.”

  She paused. “Well, he didn’t answer at once. He seemed a bit puzzled for the moment, and then he made little Peter open his mouth and took a look down his throat, and then he found some stuff coming out of his ear. And then he said, ‘It is not concussion, and the bleeding, that is nothing.’ He said, ‘He has ear disease, and he has a temperature. He should go at once to hospital in Banbury.’ My dear, of all the things to have, and that man finding it out so quick! Well, I felt his forehead myself, and it was awful hot, and so I asked the truck driver to go on to Balaclava and tell his mother, and I drove this doctor and Peter into town to the hospital. And Dr. Jennings was there, and he said it was a sort of mastoid — otitis something, he said.”

  “Pretty good, that,” said Jack Dorman.

  George Pearson said, “Dr. Jennings knew all about this chap. He’s a Czech, not a German. He works up at the camp there, doing his two years.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He did tell me, but I forgot. One of these foreign names, it was — Cylinder, or something. Not that, but something like it. Ann drove him back to Lamirra.”

  His wife said, “He was quite a quiet, well-behaved one for a New Australian. I do think it was quick of him to find out what was wrong.”

  “Lucky he came along just then,” said Jack.

  “My word,” said Ann with feeling. “If he hadn’t come I think I’d probably have put Peter into the utility and brought him straight back here, because it’s so much closer here than Balaclava. I wouldn’t have known what to do with mastoid.”

  The Dormans left soon after that, and drove back to Leonora. Life went on as usual on the station, and on Saturday evening Tim Archer drove into Banbury with Mario Ritti for the Red Cross dance. He hit it off all right with Mario in spite of their very different backgrounds, but there was always a little difficulty with Mario at a dance. There was a barrier of language and experience between the Italian and the local Australian girls; he was inclined to be too bold with them, and they would not willingly have been seen with him except at a dance, where social barriers were somewhat broken down. There had been an Italian girl at one of the hotels till recently, and Mario had done most of his dancing with her, but now she had left to go to Melbourne to earn eight pounds a week in a café, and Tim was a little anxious about Mario in consequence.

  There were about eighty thousand p
ounds’ worth of new motor-cars parked outside the Shire Hall that night, for wool had been good for a couple of years. They parked the old Chevrolet and went into the hall, neat in their blue suits, with oiled hair carefully brushed. For a time they stood with a little crowd of young men round the door while the girls sat on chairs in long lines on each side of the floor waiting to be asked to dance; only two or three couples were yet dancing, and the place was still stone cold. Tim studied the girls; Elsie Peters was there talking to Joan McFarlane. If he had been alone he would have gone and asked one or other of them to dance, but that meant leaving Mario high and dry. He felt an obligation to the Italian to get him started with at least one partner before going off to his own friends, and he did not think that either Elsie or Joan would appreciate it if he landed her with an Eyetie who spoke poor English and was full of rather obvious sex appeal.

  He glanced down the row of girls beside the floor, and saw two black-haired girls sitting together. They were both rather broad in the face, and both wore woollen dresses of a sombre hue and rather an unfashionable cut. They were obviously a pair and strangers to Banbury; Tim had never seen them before. They were clearly New Australians.

  He nudged Mario. “What about that couple over there?” he asked. “They’d be Italian, wouldn’t they?”

  “I do not think,” said Mario. “I think Austrian perhaps, or Polish. I have not seen these girls before.”

  “Nor have I. Let’s go and ask them.” Once Mario was launched with these two, he would be able to go off and dance with his own sort.

  They crossed the floor to the girls, and Tim, taking the nearest one, said, “May I have this dance? My name’s Tim Archer.” Mario bowed from the waist before the other, looking as if he was going to kiss her hand at any moment, and said, “Mario Ritti.”

  Both girls smiled and got to their feet. Tim’s girl was about twenty-five years old and pleasant-looking in a broad way; in later life she would certainly be stout. She danced a quickstep reasonably well, and as they moved off she said with a strange accent, “Teem Archer?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Tim.”

  She tried again. “Tim?”

  “That’s right,” he said again. “Short for Timothy.”

  “Ah — I understand. Timothy.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She smiled. “I am Tamara Perediak.”

  “How much?”

  “Tamara Perediak.”

  “Tamara? I never heard that name before.”

  “It is a name of my country,” she said. “Where I was born, many girls are called Tamara.”

  “Are you Polish?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I was born in the Ukraine.” He did not know where that was, but didn’t like to say so. “Now I am come from Mulheim, in the American zone, to Australia.” She called it Owstrahlia. “I am to work here at the hospital.”

  “Have you just arrived?” he asked.

  “In the camp I have been three weeks, but here only three days.”

  “Three days? Then you’re brand-new!” They laughed together. “How do you like Australia?”

  “I like it very much, what I have seen.”

  “Are you a nurse?”

  She shook her head. “I think you call it ward-maid. I am to do scrubbing and the carrying trays, and the washing dishes, and the washing clothes.”

  “Do you know anybody in Australia?”

  She said, “I have good friends that I met on the ship, but they have gone to Mildura. But I have here Natasha who came with me, who is dancing with your friend. She comes also from the Ukraine and we were together at Mulheim, working at the same canteen.”

  “Natasha?”

  She laughed. “That is another name of the Ukraine. Natasha Byelev. Are our names very difficult?”

  “My word!”

  “Tell me,” she said presently, “your friend, is he Australian also?”

  “No,” he replied. “He’s Italian. His name’s Mario Ritti.”

  “Ah — an Italian. I did not think he was Australian.”

  “That’s right,” Tim said. “He works at Leonora, where I work. He’s on top of the world tonight, because he’s got a girl in Italy and the boss is going to pay her passage out here so that Mario can get married.”

  He had to repeat parts of that once or twice before its full import sunk in. “He will pay for her to come from Italy to Australia?” she said in wonder. “He must be a very rich man.”

  “He’s doing all right with the wool,” Tim said. “He’s not a rich man, really.”

  “Your friend is very lucky to work for such a man. Is his loved one to come soon?”

  “Soon as the boss can get her on a ship. He’s scared that Mario will leave when his two years are up. He wants to get him settled on the station in a house of his own, with a wife and family.”

  She stared at him. “He is to make him a house also?”

  “That’s right. Just a shack, you know.”

  She thought about this for a minute as they danced. “I also must work for two years,” she said. “I am to work here in the hospital, with Natasha.”

  “Do you like it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I have been working so since five years, in the works canteen at Mulheim. Once I was to be schoolteacher, but with the war that was not possible.”

  “Where were you in the war?” he asked.

  “In Dresden,” she said. “When I was little girl my father and my mother left Odessa because they were not members of the Party and the life there was not good, and so they went to live in Dresden. There my father was schoolteacher, to teach the boys Russian. All before the war, and in the war, we lived in Dresden. Then the English bombed Dresden and my father and my mother were killed, both together. Our house was all destroyed. I was not there, because I worked that night in the factory outside the city and that was not bombed. But I went to go home in the morning, our house and the whole street was all destroyed, and my mother and my father were dead, both of them. So then the war came to Dresden very soon after, and I went first to Leipzig and then to Kassel because the Russians were coming, and there I met Natasha and we went to Mulheim in the end to work in the canteen.”

  Tim Archer said, “You’ve seen a mighty lot of foreign places. I should think you’d find it a bit slow in Banbury.”

  “I think it will be better to be in a slow place and live slowly for a time,” Tamara said. “So much has happened since I was a little girl.”

  Presently the dance ended and he took her back to her seat. Mario immediately asked her to dance again, and Tim escaped, and went to dance with Joan McFarlane.

  At the same time, at Leonora, Jane sat with Jack before the kitchen stove in wooden arm-chairs with cushions; they generally sat there in the evening rather than in the parlour, a prim, formal room where nothing was to hand. Jack Dorman was reading the Leader, a weekly farming paper which was about all he ever read. Jane sat with the open letter from Aunt Ethel in her hand, worrying about it.

  “I wrote to Myers with a cheque,” she said. “They sent a statement for the parcels, seven pounds eighteen and six. I told them to keep sending them, one every month....”

  He grunted without looking up. “What are you sending now?”

  “I told them to keep sending the dried fruits,” she said. “It’s what she seems to like.” She turned the letter over in her hand. “It’s so difficult, because she never asks for anything, or says what she wants. She does seem to like the dried fruit, though.”

  “I’d have thought that a meat parcel might be better,” he said. “They haven’t got much meat, from all I hear.”

  “An old lady like her doesn’t eat a lot of meat,” she replied. “She can make cakes with the dried fruit for when she has people in to tea.”

  She turned the letter over, reading it again for the tenth time. “I can’t make out about this vest,” she said, troubled. “It almost reads as if she’s short of money, doesn’t it
?”

  “Could be,” he observed. He laid the Leader down, and glanced across at his wife. He could still see in her the girl he had brought out from England, stubborn in her love for him to the point of quarrelling with her parents, supported only by this aunt to whom they now sent parcels.

  “Like to send her some?” he asked.

  She looked up quickly, and met his eyes. “Send her money? She might take it as an insult.”

  “She might buy herself a vest,” he said.

  She sat in silence for a time. “We couldn’t send her just a little money, Jack,” she said at last. “It would have to be nothing or else quite a lot, as if it was a sort of legacy. Enough to be sure that she wouldn’t take it badly. Enough to keep her for a couple of years if she’s in real trouble.”

  “Well, we’ve got a lot,” he said. “We’ll do whatever you think right.”

  There was a pause. “I feel we kind of owe it to her,” he said presently. “To see her right if she’s in any trouble. We haven’t done so bad together, you and I. It might never have come to anything if she hadn’t backed us up.”

  “I know. That’s what I feel.” She stared down at the letter in her hands. “I’m not a bit happy about this, Jack,” she said at last. “I don’t like the sound of it at all. If we’ve got the money, I’d like to send her five hundred pounds.”

  Two

  JENNIFER MORTON WENT home for the following week-end. She was the daughter of a doctor in Leicester, his only child now, for her two brothers had been killed in the war, one in the North Atlantic and one over Hamburg. She was twenty-four years old and she had worked away from home for some years; she had a clerical job with the Ministry of Pensions at their office at Blackheath, a suburb of London. Most of her life was spent in Blackheath, where she had a bed-sitting-room in a boarding-house, but once a month she went home to Leicester to see her parents, travelling up from London early on the Saturday morning, and returning late on Sunday night.

  These were duty visits; she was fond enough of her father and her mother, but she had now no interests and few acquaintances in her own home town. The war and marriage had scattered her school friends. She had no particular fondness for the Ministry of Pensions or for her job in Blackheath; she would have stayed at home and worked in Leicester if there had been any useful purpose to be served by doing so. In fact, her mother and her father were remarkably self-sufficient; her mother never wanted to do anything else but to stay at home and run the house and cook her father’s dinner. Her father, an overworked general practitioner, never wanted to go out at night unless, in the winter, to a meeting of the British Medical Association or, in the summer, to a meeting of the Bowls Club. This was a good thing, for the night air made her mother cough, and she seldom went out of the house after midday in the winter. As the years went on, her father and her mother settled firmly into a routine of life moulded by overwork and by poor health, a groove that left little room for the wider interests of a daughter.