by Nevil Shute
“1944 and 1945,” she said. She took a drink of tea to wash the sausage down. “I was demobbed from H.M.S. Hornet.”
I lit a cigarette, for I had finished eating and it was warm and pleasant sitting on the grass in the sun, listening to the engines revving up. “Did you ever meet a Leading Wren Prentice?” I enquired. “Janet Prentice. She was an ordnance artificer, I think, at H.M.S. Mastodon in the Beaulieu River.”
She checked with her cup poised in midair. “You mean, the one who shot down the German aeroplane?”
I stared at her. “I never heard that.”
“There was a Leading Wren Prentice who shot down a German bomber with an Oerlikon,” she said. “At Beaulieu, just before the invasion.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “I never heard that about her, but it could be. She was engaged to my brother, but he was killed about that time. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her, but she seems to have disappeared.”
“It must be the same,” she said. “There couldn’t have been two Leading Wrens called Prentice at Beaulieu, at that time.”
“Did you know her?” I enquired.
She shook her head. “I never met her. There was a lot of chat about it in the Service — naturally. It never got into the newspapers, of course. Security.”
I nodded. “I wish to God I could find somebody that knew her and kept in touch with her,” I said. “I believe she’s out of England, but she must have some friends here. I’ve been trying for two years to find out where she is.”
She chewed thoughtfully for a minute. “She was engaged to your brother?”
“That’s right. I met her once, at Lymington, early in 1944, just before Bill got killed.” I paused, and then I said, “She was a fine girl.”
“Viola Dawson would be the best person,” she said thoughtfully. “Viola must have known her.”
“Who’s Viola Dawson?”
“She was another Leading Wren,” she said. “She was in boats with me at Brightlingsea, and then she went to Beaulieu. Viola must have known this Prentice girl.”
“Can I get in touch with Viola Dawson?”
“I know Viola,” she said. “She’s got a flat in Earl’s Court Square. She’s in the telephone book. If you like, I’ll give her a ring tonight and tell her about you, and say you’ll be calling her.”
“I wish you would,” I said. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to find anybody who might know something about Janet Prentice.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I’ll tell her who you are.”
“What would be a good time to ring her?” I enquired. “Does she work?”
“She works in a film studio,” she said. “At Pinewood or some place like that. She does continuity, whatever that may mean. I should think you’d get her any evening at about seven o’clock — unless she’s out, of course.”
I thanked her, and at seven o’clock next evening I rang up Viola Dawson. “Miss Dawson,” I said. “You won’t know me — my name’s Alan Duncan. I met a girl—”
“I know,” she broke in. “Cynthia rang me. I’ve been expecting to hear from you, Mr. Duncan.”
“Good,” I said. “What I really wanted to find out from you is if you know anything about Janet Prentice.”
“I knew her quite well in the war,” she said.
“You haven’t seen her recently?”
“I haven’t,” she replied. “I’m not sure even where she’s living now.”
“I don’t think she’s in England,” I said. “I’ve been trying to find someone who could put me in touch with her.” I paused, and then I said, “She was engaged to my brother, before he got killed.”
“I know,” she said. “I remember that happening.”
“You do?”
“Oh yes. Janet and I were together at Beaulieu. We were great friends in those days, but I’m afraid I’ve lost touch with her now.”
“Look, Miss Dawson,” I said, “there’s a lot I’d like to ask you about Janet. I never knew much about her, and I’m very anxious to get in to touch with her if I can. Could we have a meal together, do you think?”
“I’d like to,” she said.
“What about tonight? Have you eaten yet?”
She seemed to hesitate. “No — not yet. Yes, I could come tonight, a bit later on.”
“Suppose I call for you in about half an hour?”
“Give me a little longer — I’ve got some work I want to finish. Come about eight o’clock and we’ll go out somewhere. Somewhere simple; I shan’t have time to change.”
“All right. I’ll be with you about eight o’clock.”
“Top flat,” she said. “Right up at the very top, in the attic.”
I went round in a taxi an hour later, and climbed the stairs of the old four-storey terraced house converted into little flats, up to the very top. It was such a place as any working girl in a good job might live in, decent but not affluent. I rang the bell, and she opened the door to me.
If her face hadn’t been quite so lean, her jaw quite so definite, she would have been a very beautiful woman. She had very fair hair and a beautiful complexion, slightly tanned or sunburned. That she had been a boat’s crew Wren was in the part; I realized directly I saw her, with the knowledge of her Service that I had, that she would look exactly right at the wheel of a motorboat. Perhaps her dress may have put that into my mind, for she wasn’t ready for me yet. She was wearing a dark blue linen overall coat, and she had an artist’s brush in her hand.
“Come in, Mr. Duncan,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to sit down and wait a few minutes while I finish off, before the light goes.”
The door opened directly into her sitting room, which was half studio; apparently her interests were artistic. Various canvases were propped up on chairs or book cases or stacked against the wall, and sketches and sketch books littered her table. She was working at an oil painting upon an easel, and she went back to this without more ado, picked up her palette, and began work again. “Find somewhere to sit down for just a minute,” she said. “That’s sherry in the bottle on the tray — help yourself. I ought to have got this place all tiddley before you arrived, but it’s such a pity to waste the light.”
“Don’t bother about me,” I said. “I’ll sit and watch. Cynthia didn’t tell me that you were an artist. She said something about working in the movies.”
“That’s what I do,” she said. “Continuity and set design. I do this as a sparetime job, for fun. Give yourself a glass of sherry and give me one. I won’t be very long.”
I did as she told me, and took her glass to her before the easel, and saw the picture she was painting for the first time. The easel stood beneath a skylight in the roof which gave it a north light, probably why she lived in that flat. The canvas was a fairly large one, perhaps twenty-four by twenty. It showed a brightly camouflaged motor torpedo boat ploughing through a rough sea at reduced speed, under a lowering sky with a break at the horizon giving a gleaming, horizontal light. The curved bow of the vessel was lifted dripping from the water in a trough showing a fair length of her keel; there was vigour in the painting and life in the pitch and heel of the boat, and in the gleaming, silvery light.
I gave her her sherry and stood back behind her, looking at the picture. “That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, that’s what it must look like.”
“I hope so,” she said equably. She stood back for a moment, then bent forward and added a deft, sweeping stroke to one of the grey-green waves of the foreground, giving it form and texture. “You don’t know much about painting, do you?”
“Not a thing,” I said.
“Then there’s a pair of us,” she remarked. “I’ve never had a lesson and I’ll never be any good, but I like doing it.”
I stared at the painting. “Never had a lesson?”
“Not in painting,” she said. There was a pause while she changed brushes, dabbed on the palette, and added a stroke or two. “At school, of course — drawing. And then n
ight classes after the war to learn to do a monochrome wash drawing, for the sets, you know, for the stage carpenters to work to. I’m not sure that lessons in colour would be much good, anyway.”
“I like that,” I said. “I like it very much.”
There was another pause while she worked. “Journeyman stuff,” she said at last. “I’ll hang it on the wall and look at it till I’ve outgrown it. Then I’ll sell it, and some stockbroker who was RNVR in the war’ll give me twenty quid for it and love it for the rest of his life.”
I glanced around the room, taking in the other pictures. Most of them seemed to have to do with naval matters, studies of ships and landing craft, and one or two portraits of naval officers. One recent painting showed white painted yachts moored in a harbour; this was principally a study of water reflections.
“Are most of your things naval?” I asked.
“Most of them,” she said. “I’m beginning to get it out of my system now.” She worked on in silence for a time, and then she said, “It seemed so much the normal way of life after the war that one didn’t do anything about it. And then one day I woke up — we all woke up — and had to realize that it had all been quite unusual; it would never come again. Not for us, not in our lifetime. We should be too old, or married — out of it. And then I felt I had to work and work and put it all down on canvas, everything I’d seen, before I forgot what it was like.” She worked on in silence, and then she said, “It’s very hard to realize that it will never come again. To realize we’ve had it.”
“I know,” I said. “I think we all feel that.”
She laid the palette down and wiped the brush upon a bit of newspaper. “You were in the RAF, Cynthia said.”
“That’s right,” I replied.
“I remember Janet telling me about you,” she said. “Didn’t she pinch one of the boats and take you out in it, one Sunday?”
“That’s right,” I said again. “I went out with her and Bill, to a place called Keyhaven.”
She scraped the palette with a palette knife and wiped it with a cloth. “She said you were the hell of a chap,” Viola remarked. “Fighter Command, three rings, and a chest full of ribbons.”
“That was then,” I said quietly. “Now I’m a fat cripple walking with two sticks, living on wool and only interested in Law.”
She went on tidying up her things, for the light was failing and her work was over for the evening. “It comes to all of us,” she said. “You think a thing’s going on forever when you’re young, and then you wake up and you find it doesn’t, and you’ve got to find something fresh to do. New interests.”
She finished putting her things away, gave me another sherry, stood for a minute looking at her painting, and then went through to another room to wash and get ready to come out to supper. I sat down off my feet and rested, pleasantly lulled by her sherry, studying her pictures. She had made a better job of adapting herself to Peace than I had.
She came out presently, pulling on a raincoat over her blouse and skirt. “There’s a little restaurant just round the corner that I go to,” she said. “In the Earl’s Court Road. Will that be all right for you?”
“Anywhere you say,” I replied.
She turned to a cupboard, opened it, and stooped down on the floor rummaging among the contents. “There’s something here I’d like to show you,” she said. She pulled out a big, floppy sketch book, discarded it upon the floor beside her, pulled out another and another, and finally stood with one in her hand. “I think it’s in here.”
She flipped the pages through and turned the book back, and laid it on the table before me. It was a vigorous drawing of a Wren firing an Oerlikon at an aeroplane flying very low towards her. The drawing was in sepia crayon. The Wren was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired girl, hatless, leaning back upon the strap that held her in the shoulder rings, tense, unsmiling, intent upon the sights. I had only met her once six years before but she was unmistakable to me.
“Janet Prentice,” I said.
She nodded. “I did that the same evening, in the Wrennery. I was in the boat alongside when the thing came over.” She paused. “I think that’s pretty well what it looked like.”
“Cynthia told me she had shot a Junkers down,” I said. “I never heard the details. I think that must have been after I met her.”
“Probably it was,” she said. “I think it was after your brother got killed — no — I’m not sure about that. I can tell you what happened, though.” She paused, and then closed the book. “Let’s go out now and have supper.”
She took me to her restaurant and I ordered dinner. They had no very good wine because it was a cheap little place, but they produced a bottle of claret, very ordinaire and probably Algerian, the sort of wine we would pay seven and six a gallon for at home. The wine helped, no doubt, and I found Viola Dawson easy to talk to, so that when we were sitting smoking with a cup of coffee I had no difficulty in speaking to her frankly about Janet Prentice.
“I want you to understand where I stand in this matter,” I told her. “I only met her once, that day when she took Bill and me to Keyhaven in the boat. I don’t think they were engaged, but they were pretty near it.”
She nodded. “They were never engaged,” she said. “She wanted to be. They were waiting until after the balloon went up.”
“I know,” I said. “Bill told me that. He was my only brother, you know. We were very close.”
“He thought a lot of you,” she said. “Janet was afraid of meeting you that day because Bill had told her about you. Three rings, DFC and bar, Fighter Command and all the rest of it. She wasn’t a bit happy when she went off with the boat that morning. She was afraid she wouldn’t make the grade with you.”
I stared at her. “I’d never have thought that . . .” I paused, and then I said, “She made the grade all right. I told Bill afterwards. You see, my father and mother came in to it. They’d have wanted to know about her if Bill had got married in England. I thought she was a fine girl, and she’d have made Bill a good wife. I told him that I’d write and tell them so at home.”
“She was quite happy when she came back to the Wrennery that night,” Viola said. “She wasn’t worried after that. The only thing is, I think she was a bit puzzled.”
“What about?”
She smiled. “About what she was marrying in to, if she married Bill. She thought he was a sheep farmer’s son. She’d got herself accustomed to the idea that she might be marrying — well, a little bit beneath the way she’d been brought up. She didn’t worry about that because she was in love with your brother, but she knew she’d have to make adjustments, that she might find her new relations a bit raw.” She paused. “Your brother was a sergeant, of course. Then you came along and it turned out you were a Rhodes scholar, which rocked her a bit, and then it seems you told her that both you and Bill had been at some school in Australia — I forget the name. She found out afterwards that it was a sort of Eton in Australia, and rather expensive. Then she didn’t know what to think.”
“Bill was telling her the truth,” I said. “We are sheep farmers. But there are little ones and big ones in Australia.”
“You’re one of the big ones?”
“Yes.” I paused for a minute to collect my thoughts. “She was very good for Bill,” I said. “I thought that day that he was feeling the strain a bit — the work he had to do.” She nodded. “She was just the right person for him, as I saw it. I was grateful to her then,” I said. “I’m grateful to her now.”
“They should have given him a rest,” she remarked. “The trouble was, of course, there were so few of them that had the skill to do the job, and so much to be done before Overlord.”
“I know,” I said. “They were expendable. The thing that matters now is this. She made Bill very happy in his last weeks. I should have kept in touch with her, and I didn’t. She should have been a friend of the family for the remainder of her life, but it’s not worked out that way. I tried to get in touc
h with her three years ago and I’ve been trying ever since. All I’ve succeeded in discovering has been bad news. Things haven’t been too good for her. That’s what’s worrying me now.”
I went on to tell her why I hadn’t kept in touch with Janet Prentice, about the show at Evère aerodrome, about my time in hospital, about my self-centred preoccupation with my own affairs before I went back to Australia. “Not so good,” I said quietly at the end. “But that’s what happened.”
“I lost touch with her, too,” said Viola. “I’m just as bad, I suppose, because she needed her friends after the war. But — one can’t keep up with everyone.” She glanced at me. “You know that she was trying to get back into the Wrens?”
“No,” I said. “I never heard that about her.”
She thought for a minute. “I went and saw her just after the invasion, at Oxford,” she said. “I was on leave. She wasn’t up to much then — sort of weepy and very, very nervous. It was just before she got her discharge from the Wrens and she knew that it was coming. She took it as if it was a sort of disgrace, I think. The Junkers she’d shot down was worrying her, too.”
“I don’t know anything about that Junkers,” I said. “What was it that she did?”
She told me as much as she knew. I called the waiter and ordered a fresh pot of coffee, and lit another cigarette for her. At last I was learning something real about Janet Prentice.
“It was all a bit depressing,” Viola said at last. “She’d been such a fine person a few months before, and now she was all to pieces.”
I said nothing.
“I saw her again in the summer or autumn of 1946,” Viola said. “I can’t remember what month. I saw her mother’s death in the Telegraph, and I was driving to Wales or somewhere so I wrote to her and fixed up to have lunch with her in Oxford on my way through.” She paused. “It was just after the funeral and she was packing up the house and selling everything. Her one idea was to get back into the Wrens.”
“Why was she so keen on that?” I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Why do any of us look back on our war service with such pleasure, in spite of everything?” she demanded. “Answer me that. You’d be glad to be back in the RAF in another war, and you know it. If it happened again, I’d be back in the Wrens like a shot.”