by Nevil Shute
“Did she get back into the Wrens?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They wouldn’t have her.”
“Why not? She must have had a very good war record.”
“I know.” There was a pause, and then she said, “They’re very, very careful who they take in. Even in peacetime there are many more girls trying to get in to the Wrens than they want. They can afford to be choosy.”
“I see,” I said.
“I know a girl who stayed on in the Wrens,” she told me. “She’s a Second Officer, in the Admiralty. She tells me that they won’t have anyone back, however good, if there’s the slightest hint of any nervous trouble on the record. She says they get a lot of cases like that, and they turn them all down, just on principle. They want girls with untroubled minds, who sleep soundly at night.”
We sat in silence for a minute. “When you saw her in 1946,” I asked presently, “was she really bad? I mean, I’d like to know.”
“She wasn’t raving, if that’s what you mean,” Viola said, a little sharply.
“I want to try and understand,” I told her.
“I know,” she replied, more gently. “She was very lonely for one thing, I think. She was missing her mother, of course, and she didn’t seem to have any relations left in England to speak of. She didn’t seem to have made many friends, either.”
“She didn’t make friends easily?”
Viola shook her head. “She did in the Service, but that’s different. When you’re sleeping thirty in a hut you just can’t help making friends. But in civil life, living at home and looking after her mother — I don’t think she would have done. She was rather shy, you know.”
“I’d never have thought that of her,” I remarked.
“You only saw her in the navy,” Viola said. “It’s so totally different, living with men and working alongside them. You can’t do a good job in the navy and be shy. But it can come back afterwards.”
“Was she still nervous?”
She shook her head. “Not in the way she was when I saw her before, the time I saw her just after the invasions. She’d got herself under control. I don’t think anything was very real to her that had happened since she left the Wrens, though.”
“Was she still worrying about the Junkers?”
Viola nodded. “It was still very much upon her mind — that, and your brother’s death. But what really did worry me was the way she talked about the dog.”
“What dog was that?” I asked.
“Your brother’s dog,” she said. “He had a dog that he called Dev. I thought you’d have known.”
“I know he had a dog,” I said. “A sort of Irish terrier. They had him with them in the boat that day. What about him?”
“Bert Finch brought him over to her after your brother’s death,” she said. I sat in silence while she told me about Dev.
Ten minutes later I said, “It was that that really finished her? When the dog got killed?”
She nodded. “You see, it wasn’t just a dog that she’d got fond of. It was your brother’s dog. She told me in the Wrennery that evening that she’d let your brother down by not taking more care of his dog. Of course, I didn’t pay much attention to that at the time, because she was in a sort of a breakdown and going off on leave next day. But after her mother’s death, more than two years later, she told me the same thing. I tried to tell her it was my fault as much as hers, that I shouldn’t have let him out of the boat on to the hard. But it didn’t register with her. She seemed to have got a sort of horror and disgust with herself that she hadn’t looked after Bill’s dog better.”
“She never had another dog, after the war?”
Viola shook her head. “Oh no — I shouldn’t think so.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Something broke in her when that dog got killed that took a lot of breaking, and would have taken a lot of building up. And it never got built up . . .”
She looked at her watch presently, and it was half past ten. “I must go,” she said. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
I paid the bill and we left the restaurant. We walked slowly together the short distance to her flat, and paused for a minute on the pavement outside before I left her. “There are one or two other people who might possibly know where she is,” she said. “There’s a girl called May Spikins, the other O.A. Wren who worked with her. I think I might be able to get you her address. You ought to see Bert Finch, too.”
“I’ve been in touch with him,” I said. “He’s in China, or on his way home now. I’ll be seeing him before Christmas — about Bill.”
She nodded. “Of course. I think you might find he knows something about Janet Prentice. Anyway, I’ll find out about May Spikins for you.”
I saw a good deal of Viola Dawson after that. She rang me up a few days later to give me information about May Spikins, who was May Cunningham by that time, and when I suggested that we might have lunch together she seemed pleased. She was almost as anxious as I was to find Janet Prentice, for having been close friends in the war Viola was genuinely worried to find that they had drifted so far apart that she had lost all touch with her. On my part, I soon found that Viola knew a great deal about Janet Prentice that had not come out at our first meeting — not important things for she had told me all of those, but little touches, little incidents that happened in their Service life together that helped me to build up a picture of the Leading Wren that Bill had loved.
I went to see May Spikins in her new house in the new town at Harlow, and she put me on to Petty Officer Waters in his tobacconist’s shop in the Fratton Road at Portsmouth. Then, about Christmas time, Warrant Officer Finch came home and I went down in January after he came back from leave and saw him in his mess in Eastney Barracks. From him I got the account of Bill’s death, and in the Long Vacation of 1951 I went to France and spent some time endeavouring to find out where Bill had been buried. As I have said, I failed, but it wasn’t very important to know that in any case.
At each step in this matter Viola and I used to meet to talk things over, often at a restaurant in Jermyn Street. Presently she began coming with me to motor race meetings, and twice I visited her film studio and spent an afternoon upon the set with her, and had lunch with her in the commissary. She was a very easy person for a man like me to go about with, for we had the Service background as a link. I found presently that I was telling her about my life in the RAF, almost unconsciously, a thing that I had never been able to talk about to anybody, and I woke up one day to realize uneasily that we were getting very close, that she knew more about me, probably, than anybody else in the world. It was a year after we had met for the first time that I woke up to that, and the realization troubled me. I liked Viola, and I didn’t want to hurt her.
It all came to a head next winter, either just before or just after Christmas. She had been to Switzerland skiing for a fortnight and had come back with a lot of action photographs, and from these she had been working up a painting of a chap on a snow slope doing a fast turn. It was part of her artistic development that she was getting away from naval subjects now; at the long last, perhaps, the preoccupation with her Service life was beginning to fade. She had asked me to come round to her flat to have a look at this picture, and I went with slight reluctance. At some stage I would have to hurt her, and I didn’t want to do it.
I went one afternoon at a week-end, intending to take her out to a movie and dinner. The painting she was working on was a good, vigorous action picture; if anything, I think she was a better draughtsman than painter and her action drawings were unusually good for a woman. We talked about the picture for a few minutes, and then she went through to her kitchenette to make tea, and I dropped down upon the sofa.
She had been rummaging in the cupboard where she kept her old sketchbooks, and the big, floppy things were all out upon the floor. I turned them over till I found the one that I thought contained the sketch of Janet Prentice firing the Oerlikon, and turned the pages. It was full of penci
l sketches of naval craft and naval scenes, with a number of rough portrait sketches, a sort of commonplace book that she had kept with her throughout her service in the Wrens. Presently, turning the pages, I came upon a pencil sketch of Janet Prentice.
It was a head and shoulders portrait, exactly as I had seen her in the boat at Lymington, as I remembered her. She wore a round Wren cap and a duffle coat, the hood thrown back upon her shoulders. I sat there looking at the square, homely face that I remembered so very well, thinking of that day. Viola came in as I sat motionless with the book upon my knee. She asked, “What have you got there?” and looked over my shoulder.
“Portrait of Janet Prentice,” I said. “Can I have it?”
“What do you want it for?” she asked. There was a sharpness in her tone, so that I knew there was trouble coming. It had to come some time, of course.
“It’s very like her,” I said quietly. I wanted a picture of her very badly. “I’d like to have it, if you can spare it.”
She did not answer that at once. She crossed to the table and put down the teapot and the plate of cakes that she was carrying, and stood silent for a minute, looking into the far corner of the room. Then she said, “You think you’re in love with her, don’t you?”
“I don’t think anything of the sort,” I replied. “She was Bill’s girl. If he’d come through she’d have been my sister-in-law. We ought to have a picture of her.”
“It’s absolutely crazy,” she said dully. “You only met her once for a few hours nearly eight years ago.”
“It would be absolutely crazy if I was,” I retorted. “You’re imagining things.” I paused, and then I added weakly, “I’m just trying to find her.”
She turned to me, suddenly furious. “And when you’ve found her, what then? Do you think she’ll still be the same person as she was eight years ago? Are you the same person as you were in 1944? For God’s sake be your age, Alan, and stop behaving like a teen-ager.”
She was quite right, of course, but I wasn’t going to stay and have her talk to me like that. I got to my feet. “About time I beat it, after that,” I said. I put on my raincoat and picked up my sticks. “I’m sorry, Viola, if I’ve done anything to hurt you. I didn’t mean to.” And I made for the door.
She stood watching me go, and I half expected the embarrassment that she would call me back and ask me to stay, and so prolong the inevitable. But she didn’t do it, and I closed the door behind me and made my way slowly down her stairs for the last time. It’s no good looking backwards; one has to go on. It’s no good trying to be happy with the second best. She had said that I was absolutely crazy, but I had known that myself for some considerable time.
Two days after that I got a note from Viola; it enclosed the little pencil sketch of Janet Prentice, cut from her sketch book. It said simply,
My dear Alan,
Here’s your sketch, as a peace offering. I’ve fixed it, but you’d better frame it under glass.
I think you’re mad as a March hare, and I don’t want to see you any more, so please don’t ring up or write and thank for this.
Good luck.
Viola.
London wasn’t much fun after that. I had grown to depend on Viola more than I quite realized for company, and when it all came to an end I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had my work in Chambers, of course, and I had the club and motor racing still, but as 1952 progressed I began to take less interest in these things, and to feel that a time was approaching when I should have had England. Reports from home weren’t too good, either; both my father and my mother were beginning to fail in health and to find the work of the station a burden, and a wistfulness was starting to creep into their letters when they mentioned my plans. I saw Helen from time to time and she was obviously fixed in London with her Laurence, and I began to feel that I should be at home. My search for Janet Prentice seemed to have petered out, and it was only a chance now if I ever heard of her again. In the uncertain climate of the English spring and summer I began to think with longing of the warm settled weather of the Western District in summer, and the drenching sunshine of our property at Tennant Creek.
I had another year of keeping terms and eating dinners to do before I could be called to the Bar, and there was no urgency for me to go home till that had been achieved, but I began to make my plans to go home in the autumn of 1953. I didn’t really want to stay in England for another year, and it may well have been the really big mistake of my life that I did so. But having set myself to one of the learned professions it seemed silly to abandon it when it lay within my grasp, and though I was growing tired of London there was nothing imperative to take me home. I went to Spain for a month in the summer and to Greece, Rhodes, and Cyprus for a couple of months in the winter, garnering all the experience that an Australian likes to take back with him to the Antipodes when he knows it may be many years before he comes to Europe again, if ever.
I achieved my ambition and was called formally to the Bar in September 1953. I had booked a passage home by sea to leave England at the beginning of October, and in the last month I was winding up my affairs in England and saying good-bye to all my friends. I was troubled about Viola Dawson, the best friend I had made in London, and uncertain if I ought to see her to say good-bye to her or whether that would only upset her and so be an unkindness. But she solved the matter, because ten days before I sailed she wrote to me. She said,
Dear Alan,
I hear I’ve got to congratulate you on being called. I’m so glad. And Cynthia tells me that you’re sailing on the 5th. I want to see you before you go, and it’s about Janet Prentice so you’ll probably come.
I shall be dining at Bruno’s, the little restaurant I took you to the first night we met, next Thursday at eight. Will you come and dine with me there? Don’t come to the flat.
Yours,
Viola.
I was waiting for her in the little restaurant when she came, at a table by the wall. She was paler than usual, I thought, not looking very well. She seemed pleased to see me, and I ordered sherry while we discussed what we would eat. I asked her what she had been doing, and she said, working.
“No holiday?” I asked, for it was autumn and the weather was still warm.
She shook her head. “There seems to have been such a lot to do.”
The waiter took our order and went away, and then she turned to me. “I’ve got news for you,” she said. “Janet Prentice.”
“What about her?” I asked.
“She’s living in Seattle, or she was about a year ago.”
“Seattle — in America?”
She nodded. “On the west coast somewhere, isn’t it?” She smiled faintly. “It was Seattle she was going to, when she left Oxford, not Settle. The charwoman got it wrong.”
“What on earth’s she doing there?”
“Didn’t you say that she was going to live with an aunt in Settle?”
“That’s what the charwoman said.”
“She had an uncle who was on the faculty of Stanford University in the United States,” she reminded me. “Is that in Seattle?”
“I think it’s on the west coast somewhere,” I said slowly. “I always thought it was near San Francisco.”
“Anyway, she’s living in Seattle now,” said Viola. “I’ve got her address for you.” She picked up her bag and opened it, and took out a folded slip of paper, and passed it to me across the table. “That’s what you’ve been looking for,” she said quietly.
I opened it, and it read: Miss J. E. Prentice, 8312 37th Ave., N.W., Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. I stared at it for a minute, and then asked, “How did you get hold of this, Viola?”
“Dorothy Fisher got it for me,” she said a little wearily. “The girl I told you about, who stayed on in the Wrens. Second Officer, in the Admiralty. Janet’s been writing in every few months, ever since the Korean war started.”
“Trying to get back into the Wrens?”
She nodded. “She wrote
in when the Korean war broke out and there was nothing doing, and she wrote in again about six months later. Then about eighteen months ago she put in an application to rejoin the Wrens through the Naval Attaché in Washington, and that went to the Admiralty, of course. They were getting a bit fed up with her by that time, so they wrote her rather a sharp letter, saying that her application was on the file and would be considered if and when the expansion of the Service justified the re-engagement of ex-naval ratings in her category. They haven’t heard from her again.”
“That was eighteen months ago?” I asked.
“About that. I think their letter to her was dated some time in April.”
The waiter came with soup, and I sat silent, thinking rapidly. I could scrap the passage I had booked by sea back to Australia and fly home through the States, but I should have to wangle a few dollars. A little thing like that wasn’t going to stop me. Buy a set of diamond cuff links and sell them in the States, perhaps . . .
The waiter went away, and Viola said, “I suppose you’ll write to her.”
“I’ll do that,” I said slowly, “but there won’t be time to get an answer before I go. I’m booked to leave in a few days. I think I’ll cancel the sea passage and go back through the States. I’ll be in Seattle in a few days’ time, pretty well as soon as my letter.”
“I thought you’d probably do that,” she said. “Mad as a March hare.”
I didn’t know what I could say to that without hurting her more, and so we sat in silence for a time. The waiter came with the next course and woke me up from the consideration of the detail of my change in plans, of airline bookings, visas, vaccination certificates, travellers’ cheques, and all the other impedimenta to air travel. I became aware that I owed Viola a lot. It must have cost her a great deal to give me what she had.
“I’m very grateful to you for all this, Viola,” I said clumsily. “I don’t think I’d ever have got in touch with her without your help.”