Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  The old man took it, and put it to his mouth; he inhaled deeply, held it for a few moments, and exhaled it from his nose; the smoke was acrid and unpleasant. He did this four or five times, and it appeared to give him almost instantaneous relief, because within a minute or two he was lying more relaxed, and the strained lines of pain were smoothing on his face. The pipe was apparently finished with those few inhalations, because he handed it back to Liang.

  “Another?” asked the Chinaman.

  The old man nodded, and Liang set about preparing another pipe. I moved forward and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Stevie,” I said. “I’m Roger Hargreaves. You know me; I’m the parson from Landsborough. Remember?”

  “Too right,” he said weakly. “You got on Black Joke.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You and I are cobbers. You’re a sick man now, Stevie. You’ll go off to sleep after you’ve had these pipes, and while you’re asleep we’re going to take you into hospital for an operation. I think it’s going to be successful, and you’ll be strong and well again, but there’s a risk in every operation. I’ve got to die some time, and so has Liang here, and Sister Finlay; we’ve all got to face it when the time comes. You’ve got to face it too, Stevie. You may die tonight. Would you like me to say a prayer or two before you go to sleep?”

  “Harps and angel’s wings,” he muttered. “I don’t hold with that.”

  “I know you don’t,” I said. “What creed were you baptized into, Stevie? What church did you go to when you were a boy?”

  “I never went to no church,” he said. “I was raised out on the station.”

  “When you were in the army, what did you have on your identity disc?” I asked him. “C. of E., or R.C., or what?”

  “Church of England,” he said sleepily. “That’s what they said I was.”

  “Then you’re one of my parishioners,” I said. “Look, Stevie, I’m going to say two little prayers, and then I want you to answer one or two questions. They’re very simple. Now listen carefully.”

  So I did what I had to do, and he was quite good about it, and I gave him the Absolution. Then Liang was ready with the second pipe, and he took that and smoked it, and now he was much easier, and apparently in little pain.

  He handed the pipe back to Liang.

  “Another?” asked the Chinaman, and Stevie nodded. I glanced at Sister Finlay; she shrugged her shoulders slightly, and then nodded.

  Stevie said, “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

  “I hope not,” I replied. “If you are, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I’m crook all right,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t let me have three pipes, ‘less I was bloody crook. I ain’t afraid of dying. I’ll go carrying the Queen.”

  The hallucinations were returning; no doubt that was the opium. Perhaps the fading mind was poisoned through and through with that outlandish drug. “You’ll be all right,” I said quietly. “God is very merciful, and he won’t judge you too hard.”

  “You don’t know nothing,” the old man muttered weakly. “I could tell you things. Old Liang here, he’s got the rights of it. I ain’t done so good. I know it. I’ll start lower down next time. But I’ll be right. Everyone gets another shot, however low you go, and I’ll be right.”

  He seemed to be convinced about reincarnation in some form, and he was too weak for me to argue with him. I was weak myself; the hot fit had come on me again, and I was restless and sweating.

  “You’ll be right,” I said. “God will look after you.”

  There was a long, long pause while Liang fiddled about preparing the next pipe. “I ain’t afraid of dying,” Stevie muttered at last. “That’s nothing. Old Liang here, he knows a thing or two. It’s just going off to sleep and sliding off into the next time, into the dream. I reckon that I’d rather be there than here.”

  I was too hot and fuddled with my fever to say anything to that. Liang lit the pellet in the bowl of the third pipe and gave it to Stevie; the old man inhaled deeply four or five times, and gave it back to Liang.

  “Another?”

  Stevie gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and relaxed on to the pillow. Liang gathered up the spirit lamp and the pipe and the saucer of opium, and padded off with them to the next room. I moved and sat down on the chair beside the bed. Sister Finlay bent over and held the old man’s pulse for a minute, and then stood up again.

  “Going off now,” she said in a whisper.

  I nodded. “I’ll sit with him for a bit.” I glanced at the candle; it was burning very low. “You can put that candle out and save it, sister, if you like. We may need it later on. I’ve got the torch here.”

  She moved to the table and blew out the candle; I switched the torch on for a moment. Stevie’s hand was lying on the sheet. I took it and held it in my own; it was rather cold. I was concerned at that, and then I thought that part of the effect, at least, lay in my own high temperature. I switched the torch off, and sat holding him by the hand. A little light filtered into the room from outside in the glade, but it was waning, and as I sat there a few raindrops fell on the iron roof again, and steadied to an even drumming.

  I knew that there was something that I had intended to ask Stevie, and that I had forgotten. I sat there in the darkness holding his cold hand, fuddled and incompetent in my fever, trying to remember what it was that I had forgotten to do. The drumming of the rain upon the roof perplexed me, making it difficult to think clearly; I felt myself falling into a coma, and I had to jerk myself awake. What was it that I had to ask?

  And then it came to me — it was about relatives. I had forgotten to ask if there was a wife anywhere, or any children — any relatives who should be told if the old man should die. It was quite doubtful if anyone in Landsborough knew much about him, because they were all so very much younger. Even Liang probably knew little about his relations. As for myself, I did not even know his name.

  I pressed his cold hand, doubtful if I had not left it too late. “Stevie, can you understand me? This is Roger here — the parson. Tell me, before you go to sleep — what’s your other name, your surname? What’s your full name?”

  I felt the hand that I was holding stir a little in my own, and I forced my fuddled mind to concentrate upon what he was saying.

  “Anderson,” he muttered, “David Anderson. Me cobbers call me Nigger.”

  3

  IT WAS NO novelty to me to come upon a man known by two names, and I can remember a feeling of relief that he was still able to talk, because it was important to find out about any dependents. The country districts of Queensland are full of men like Stevie; I know several sailors who have jumped their ships and have worked for years upon the cattle stations under false names, and one or two husbands who have escaped from intolerable marriages in some city. The police know all about these men in most cases and turn a blind eye, because white labour on the cattle stations is getting scarcer every year. Like Liang with his lettuces and poppies, they see no point in persecuting a man doing a good job unless there is some compelling reason forcing them to do so.

  “David Anderson,” I said hazily. “Are you married, David?”

  “Too right,” he muttered.

  “Any children?”

  “Two.”

  In my heat and my fatigue I was immensely relieved that I had time to get this matter straightened out. “I’ll write a letter to your wife when you’re in hospital, and tell her how you’re going on,” I said. “Where does she live?”

  “Letchworth,” he muttered.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Outside Canberra.”

  “What’s the name of the house, or the road?”

  “Three Ways, in the Yarrow Road.”

  I was so ill and feverish that there seemed to be nothing incongruous in that to me. “I’ll write to her as soon as we get you into hospital.”

  “Pommie bastard,” he mumbled, or it might have been parson. And then he said, “S
he come from England, too.”

  “She’s English, is she? What part of England does she come from?”

  “Oxford,” he told me. “Her Dad and Mum, they live at Oxford, at a place called Boars Hill. But we met at Buck House.”

  Even in my fatigue, I knew that this was nonsense. There was nothing serious in this that the old man was telling me; he was not married, least of all to an English wife from Oxford, and he had no home in Canberra. These were hallucinations, fantasies from the dream world that he slid into when opium or drink had gripped him. In the disappointment of this discovery I had to force myself to concentrate again upon the problem I was trying to solve. “Try and tell me what’s real,” I said wearily.

  He did not answer that, but his hand stirred in mine, and he said, “Where am I, cobber?”

  “You’re in Liang Shih’s house on Dorset Downs,” I told him. “We’ve got to keep you here tonight, but we’ll get you into hospital tomorrow. There’s too much water on the track to move you tonight.”

  “The Butterfly Spirit,” he muttered inconsequently, “what goes out of you, flipping about all sorts of places while you sleep. Liang tol’ me. This ain’t real.”

  It was no good; he was too far gone in drugs and in disease. One cannot argue with hallucinations, or make sense of them. I said, “Don’t worry about it now.”

  There was a silence. I glanced around me as I sat by the bed. My eyes had become accustomed to the faint light now, and I looked to see what Sister Finlay was doing. She was sitting by the table, one arm resting on it; her head had fallen forward on this arm, and she seemed to be asleep. I was glad of that, because she had had a very tiring day, and there was no sense in both of us staying awake at the same time. Better to let her rest, and save her energies till they were needed.

  Liang was nowhere to be seen; probably he was in the next room. A faint odour of burning incense drifted round me as I sat there in the darkness, and I thought that he had probably lit another of his joss sticks before the Buddha. The rain still drummed upon the roof, but the clouds cannot have been very thick because to my night-accustomed eyes it was light enough to see a little way across the open clearing, looking through the open door from where I sat. The animals were still there; they had come closer, and I could see them sitting or standing on the edge of visibility. Perhaps they had come closer in the darkness so that they could still watch the house, though now the lights had been extinguished.

  From the bed Stevie spoke suddenly. He said, “This place on Dorset Downs?”

  “That’s right,” I told him. “We’re near the Dorset River, about fifteen miles from the homestead. Where you live with Liang Shih.”

  He muttered inconsequently, “I was born near here. My Dad was a drover.”

  It was queer how fact and hallucination were mixed up in his mind. It was entirely credible that his father had been a stockman or a drover, as it was quite incredible that he had married a girl from Oxford. I would remember the address that he had given me at Canberra, but it was most unlikely that he had a wife and family living there. And then I thought, it really didn’t matter. I could find out about him from the Post Office, because he drew a pension once a month. Some Government office would have most of the particulars of his life; indeed, Sergeant Donovan probably knew a good deal about him. I should only have to ask the sergeant.

  “I’m sick, aren’t I?” he asked. “On Dorset Downs, up in the Gulf Country?”

  “That’s right,” I repeated. “We’ll get you into hospital tomorrow.”

  “There’s one thing you can do, cobber,” he muttered. I bent to catch his words. He said, “Send a telegram to Rosemary at Letchworth. Air Vice Marshal Watkins. Got that, cobber? Air Vice Marshal Watkins. Say to see Air Vice Marshal Watkins, ‘n the R.A.A.F.’ll fly her up to Group at Invergarry, ‘n she can come on in one of them helicopters.”

  It was all delusions, of course, a hotchpotch of war memories. Invergarry was real enough. It was a bomber station in the second war, from which the Liberators had flown against the Japanese in Timor and New Guinea. I knew it as two vast bitumen runways in the bush, that would endure for ever. No aeroplane had landed there since 1946, except perhaps the ambulance to take away some injured stockman. There were no buildings there, no installations, and no people; nothing but wild pigs and wallabies.

  “I’ll see to that in the morning,” I said quietly. “Now try and get some sleep.”

  It seemed to me that he stirred restlessly in the darkness. “I got to get in touch with Rosemary,” he muttered, and it seemed to me that he was sobbing. “I got to get to her. This ain’t real. She’ll get me out o’ this . . .”

  There was nothing I could do for him. I sat holding his hand, and listening to him sobbing in the darkness. Death sometimes comes in very distressing forms. After a time I asked him, “If you can’t sleep, shall I ask Liang Shih to make you another pipe?” I knew that Sister Finlay would allow it, if it would give him rest.

  “I don’t smoke a pipe,” he muttered. “Never did. I got to get to Rosemary.”

  He lay twisting and turning on the bed in his delirium, so far as the paralysis would allow. I had a raging thirst: half in a dream I got up and went to the table — I think — and took a long drink of the muddy water. As I moved across the room I seemed to be gliding in mid-air; I could not feel my feet upon the ground or hear my movements, and when I picked up the glass I could not feel it in my hands. I was intolerably hot and my body was streaming sweat; my clothes were drenched, and sticking to me with each movement, and I could not think very clearly. After I had had the drink I went fumbling around to try and find my torch, because I wanted to switch it on, to look at Stevie lying on the bed. In my feverish state I had a strange thought that it wasn’t Stevie who was talking, and though with my intellect I knew this to be nonsense I wanted to switch on the torch and look at the old man. But I couldn’t find the torch, and then it didn’t seem to be important any longer, and I went back to the chair and sat down again, holding his limp hand.

  He was still restless, muttering something incoherent. I bent to hear what he was saying but I could make no sense of it, though I heard the name Rosemary again. I straightened up wearily and sat there in a daze. His insistence on the name worried me. It was just possible that some part of all this rigmarole was true, and that he really had a wife called Rosemary who had been born in England. My lips were thick and dry again in spite of the drink that I had taken, too parched to speak, but I managed to ask him somehow, “How did you come to meet Rosemary?”

  The drumming of the rain upon the tin roof was insistent, too loud for me to hear his weak voice, but he answered, “I got sent to Boscombe Down after the war. And then I got sent to White Waltham. I met her at the Palace.”

  In my fever I asked him, “What Palace?”

  “Buckingham Palace,” he said. “Where the Queen lives, cobber.”

  I knew with my intellect, of course, that this was nonsense. He was delirious, and I was not much better. I knew it was all rubbish, but I was too dazed and fuddled to be able to think clearly why it should be so. I sat there holding his hand, thinking that presently Sister Finlay would wake up and hear what I could not, that he was talking, and she would do something to relieve me. In the meantime, I could sink into the daze, and we could go on talking without speaking; it was easier that way.

  “Where’s Boscombe Down?” I asked.

  “In England,” he said. “West ‘o London.” He said that it was where new aeroplanes for the R.A.F. were tested in flight. In a dazed stupor I remembered that this man had been a pilot in France in the first war, so it was possible that he had been to such a place. He said it was a very big place on an aerodrome, staffed by many engineers and scientists, all testing these aeroplanes. The pilots were a mixture of every nationality in the British Commonwealth because each country used to send its best pilots to Boscombe Down, so that there were British and Canadian and Australian and Rhodesian and Indian pilots, and many o
thers, all working together test flying these aeroplanes and living in the same mess.

  I sat there, feverish and confused, listening to his fantasy while the rain drummed down upon the roof, drowning all sound. He said that he had been there for about six weeks, flying on some experimental test flight every day, when he first met Group Captain Cox. He had done a job early in the morning which had involved a climb to eighty thousand feet in an experimental fighter followed by a long dive down to a lower altitude, but the refrigeration had been unsatisfactory and he had had to pull out and reduce speed at forty thousand feet as the temperature in the cockpit became unbearable. He went up and tried it again, and managed to hold the dive down to thirty-two thousand feet; he landed after an hour and ten minutes in the air, very exhausted. He wrote some notes for his report while the details were still fresh in his mind, and went back to his quarters for a shower and a change. Then he went over to the mess for lunch.

  There were three Australian pilots on the course at that time, one from the Navy and one other with himself from the Air Force. In the anteroom he saw the other two standing with the C.O. and this strange Group Captain. The C.O. called him over, and introduced him to Cox. “This is Squadron Leader Anderson.”

  The Group Captain was evidently English, and an officer of the old type, lean and soliderly and handsome, with perfect manners. “Morning,” he said. “I’m in the book. What are you drinking?”

  He said, “Tomato juice, sir.”

  “Flying this afternoon?”

  He shook his head. “I grounded my thing for a refrigeration check. It’s got to go into the hot hangar; it won’t be ready till tomorrow.”

  “Have a sherry, then.”

  “No, thanks. I never do.”