Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “Now mind what I say, Mollie,” she said to her daughter. “Ye’re not to go marrying in America without ye let us know in good time to come over for the wedding. I’m thinking that the Laird family are decent, upright people who would think ill of us, and of you, if no member of the bride’s family were there to see her wed. I’m minded to come myself, for all that it’s a long, weary way. I doubt we’d get your father to come, and maybe it’s a better thing he shouldn’t. But you mind what I say. If ye get wed, ye get wed in a decent fashion with your mother in the church, for all you’ve been brought up on Laragh Station.”

  She left next morning. Stanton Laird came to fetch her in the oil rig jeep which he had spent half a day in washing and trying to make a little presentable for the occasion, for a jeep was now the only vehicle that could be depended on to negotiate the morass of the roads down to the coast. He had arranged to leave the jeep at Onslow to be picked up by another member of the Topex staff, coming to the oil rig as his replacement in the final stages of dismantling. She went dressed for the road in khaki shirt, slacks, and gum boots, with her clean new luggage wrapped around in tarpaulins to keep it from the mud. “One thing, honey,” said Stanton as they piled these bundles into the back of the jeep. “You’ll never have to travel this way again, back in the States.”

  “I suppose not, Stan,” she said. “It’s going to be marvellous.”

  Her leave-taking was a short affair, for they had a hundred and fifty miles to go to the station where they had arranged to stay the night, and to travel that distance over the flooded roads would be all that they could manage in daylight. She kissed everybody all around including the Countess, got into the jeep, and sat in a depressed silence as Stanton drove her from her home. He realized her mood, and did not bother her with talk. Within a quarter of an hour, however, she was jerked roughly from her depression, for a watery slough a quarter of a mile long stretched ahead of them on what was called a road, and Stanton judged it better to go bush and drive across country with the jeep in four-wheel drive, rocking and swaying over the clumps of spinifex and coming back to the road half a mile ahead. From that time onwards she had plenty to do and no time for regrets.

  They flew down together from Onslow to Perth two days later. The accommodation in the Onslow hotel had left a good deal to be desired, and she elected to travel in the Dakota still in her shirt and slacks, with the worst of the mud brushed off, rather than risk her fine new clothes. On that outback air service this attire was normal and aroused no comment, but at Guildford airport she felt shabby and out of place. From the airline office in the town they took a taxi to Mike’s house, and here Stanton left her while he went to his hotel.

  When he came to her again that evening she had had a bath and washed her hair and done her face, and had put on one of her new costumes in his honour. In turn, Stanton appeared in a clean new two-piece suit of a distinctively American cut with very square shoulders.

  He stood back and looked at her, amazed. “Gee, honey,” he said. “You look like a million dollars!”

  She stood back and looked at him, equally amazed. “Stan darling!” she exclaimed. “Honestly, I’d never have recognized you. It’s the clothes, I suppose.”

  He laughed. “I guess this is the first time you’ve seen me in a suit.”

  “It is,” she said. “You’ve always been in that battledress thing before.”

  He smiled. “I’d say we’ve still got quite a bit to learn about each other, hon.”

  He took her to the theatre that evening to see Ralph Richardson appearing in the flesh in Separate Tables. At the interval Stanton said, “I guess there’s something about a play the movies haven’t got. I kind of wish we had some more of them at home.”

  “Don’t you have a live theatre in Hazel?” she asked.

  “Oh — no, honey. Hazel’s quite a small town, you know. Matter of fact, it’s got to be a pretty big city in the States to have a play on all the time. There’s lots of theatres in New York, of course, and two in San Francisco. I wouldn’t think you’d ever find a regular theatre in a city the size of this, though. They haven’t got one in Portland, and I don’t think in Seattle, either.”

  On the next day, which was Sunday, Mollie went early to Mass, a thing she hadn’t done for lack of opportunity for quite a time. Later, she drove out with Stan to visit her old school and to take her sister Jean out to tea at the Regans’. They returned her at about six o’clock and went on to a farewell party given for Stanton by the officials of the Topex organization in Perth. Most of the Americans and Australians drank Scotch, Stanton and one or two other Americans drank Coca-Cola, and Mollie elected for beer. She said to him, “Will I have to stop drinking beer in Hazel, Stan?”

  He hesitated for a minute. “Women don’t drink it the way they do here,” he said. “But shucks — anyone can drink beer back home. There’s scads of people do.”

  They left for Sydney on Monday evening, after a day of last minute shopping and rearranging of baggage. Sylvia and Mike drove them to the Guildford airport to see them off on the night flight across Australia in the Viscount. It was the first long flight that Mollie had ever made and she was thrilled by the experience, and deeply impressed by the comfort of the airplane. Already the Lunatic seemed far behind her, and America very close at hand. She turned to Stanton at her side as the engine note reduced after the take-off.

  “We’re really off, now, Stan,” she said.

  “That’s right,” he replied. “We’re on our way. Happy about it, hon?”

  She nodded emphatically. “It’s going to be wonderful,” she said. She looked around her. “It’s so comfortable.” She fingered the ash tray at her side, the airline folders on her lap.

  He smiled. “Think you’ll be able to sleep later on?”

  “I should think so.” She put the reclining seat back experimentally. “I should think I’d sleep like a top. But it’s too exciting to sleep.”

  He smiled again. “I don’t sleep so well in an airplane, myself,” he said. “But this is a pretty quiet plane, I’d say. Quieter than most.”

  She nodded. “It’s much quieter than the ones that go up to Onslow.”

  The hostess came with a light meal on plastic trays for Mollie to marvel at and to eat every scrap of, and then she came with rugs and pillows and advice. Mollie kissed Stanton good night, and composed herself for sleep, but it was some time before sleep came. She lay in comfort watching the slow march of the stars above the firm line of the wing, completely happy. Life with Stanton Laird in America was going to be wonderful.

  Before leaving Laragh she had had a letter from Stanton’s mother welcoming her for the visit, a pleasant, cordial letter that had told her little, partly because Mrs. Laird had been uncertain how far they were committed since they were not engaged, and partly because she wasn’t a very fluent writer at the best of times. She had written in a similar strain to Mrs. Regan and Mollie knew that her mother had replied to it; everything was secure and happy and arranged for her new life. She lay there looking at the blue immensity beyond the window, wondering if the stars would be the same in Oregon. Presently she slept, and did not wake until the hostess roused her to do up her safety belt before the plane touched down to refuel at Adelaide.

  It was still dark when they got out to stretch their legs and drink a cup of coffee in the lounge. She had slept better than Stanton, who looked tired as he fetched her coffee and biscuits, a fact which did not escape her notice. She fussed about him a little, and when he confessed to a headache she made him take a Veganin from a tube she carried in her bag. Then they were summoned to the airplane, and they were on their way again.

  She did not sleep again, but sat and watched the dawn creep up ahead of them as they flew on to Sydney. The hostess brought them breakfast for her to marvel at again, and after that there was hardly time for a cigarette before they were down to circuit height on the outskirts of Sydney and coming in to land at Kingsford Smith.

  It was th
e middle of the morning before they found themselves in adjacent rooms in their hotel. Both felt a little washed out after the night flight. They strolled out for half an hour before lunch, but the streets looked very much the same as the streets of any other city. They lunched back at the hotel, and in the afternoon they took Mike Regan’s advice and went on the ferry from Circular Quay to Manley, a journey down the harbour that took the best part of an hour and showed them a good deal of the waterfront. They found Manley to be a prosperous seaside resort with a magnificent bathing beach; they walked about it for a little, had tea in a café, and took the ferry back again, glad to sit and to enjoy the genial winter sunshine and the moving panorama of the harbour.

  They dined in the hotel before going early to bed, for another twenty hours of flying lay before them. Over dinner Mollie turned to Stanton, and said, “Tell me something, Stan. Are you sorry to be giving up the oil business?”

  He hesitated, and replied, “I guess the answer to that one would be both yes and no, honey. The oil business is a fine thing to be in and mighty big; it makes you feel you really are somebody. But it sure means you have to spend your life in rugged places. Hazel’s a small town and folks who move around might say the job’s not so important as the one I’m quitting. But it’s a happy little town to live in, full of nice people, and a go-ahead place, too. I guess we’re going to make out better home in Oregon than if I went on in the oil business, and always going off for years to Arabia or Patagonia or some other goddam place.”

  She laughed, and touched his hand. “Or to the Lunatic. I’m glad you came there, anyway.”

  He pressed her hand upon the table. “I couldn’t agree more, honey.”

  They started after breakfast on the tedious formalities that must precede an international flight. Finally they got into the Pan-American Stratocruiser at about midday and took off on the long flight to Fiji. A subtle change in the voices of the hostesses and in the food upon the trays told them that they were travelling in a little part of the United States.

  “She said, ‘Are you-all comfortable?’ ” Mollie remarked. “I haven’t heard that before.”

  “We don’t say that in Oregon so much,” he told her. “I’d say she’s from Kentucky or some place in the deep South.”

  They flew on for eight hours, seemingly motionless above a sea seen intermittently through layers of cloud far below. They read a little, talked a little, dozed a little, and ate a little, suspended in the tubular room in space. Night came as they nosed downwards to the clouds; they broke through at about three thousand feet to see a rocky coast in the moonlight, and then they swept in low over the sea and touched down on the airstrip of Nandi, the airport of Fiji.

  As they went down the steps out of the airplane the heat hit them like a blow, a warm wind scented with salt and with the smell of tropical flowers. They walked across the road and through the garden of the airport hotel for dinner, a hotel with bamboo decoration in the lounge, with straw hula skirts and brassières for sale in one corner among the picture postcards, the Siamese silverware, and the souvenirs of Fiji. They dined in the draught of many fans, served by native boys with the great shock of upstanding hair that she had seen in travel books, and then sat over their coffee in the lounge. It was totally different to anything that Mollie had ever seen before.

  Stanton said, “We got another ten or eleven hours to go this time before Honolulu. What say I get you a little drink of something, honey? Make you sleep better?”

  She turned to him, smiling. “I will if you will, Stan.”

  “I guess I’d just as soon stay on coke, or somethin’. But you have it, hon.”

  She said, “I won’t unless you do, Stan — on principle. When we get to Hazel I’m going to be as dry as a bone until I see what other people do. But I do think it might be a good thing now. If I have one will you have just a little tiddly bit, in your coke?”

  He laughed. “Okay.” And then he asked, a little helplessly, “What’ll I get? Some wine?”

  The barmaid’s daughter said, “When we were very tired sometimes, Ma used to give us ginger ale and brandy. That’s the only drink I know anything about, except the rum the men drink. I only tried that once, and it made me sick. Get a coke and a ginger ale, Stan, and a little brandy in another glass.”

  When he came back from the bar she poured about a quarter of the brandy into his glass, and the rest into her own. Sipping his coke and feeling a bit of a devil, Stanton said, “I tell you what, honey. I think it makes a better drink this way.”

  “It does when you’re tired, anyway,” she said. “And we’re both a bit tired now.”

  “Only one more hop to Honolulu,” he said. “You’ll be able to rest there a while, and freshen up.”

  Presently they got back into the airplane and sat perspiring freely in the confined heat of the cabin till they were off the ground and climbing up to cruising height. Gradually they grew more comfortable and, as they grew more comfortable, more drowsy. Presently the hostess came with rugs and pillows, and they lay back and slept.

  Dawn came, and breakfast as they hung poised in space, more reading, and a very early lunch. Then, as they lost height towards the sea, land appeared on the port side and they regained the sense of speed; they slipped along the coast and Stanton pointed out Pearl Harbor to her. Then they were down upon the runway, and taxiing into the airport of Honolulu.

  It was by far the busiest airport that the girl had ever seen. Great silver aircraft stood around or taxied about; between the tarmac and the sea a wide car park housed all the motorcars she had seen in the magazines, and over all there was an indefinable sense of being in another country. On every side she heard the accent that she was familiar with as Stanton’s; here he was at home, and she was a stranger and a little ill at ease. This feeling was accentuated by the immigration formalities, for as a U. S. citizen he was called for first and passed through quickly and ahead of her, while she had to wait in line and answer a good many questions before she could go through to join him. When finally she did so she was hot and sticky with worry and with the humid heat, and very glad indeed to be with him again. With him she could relax and look around to savour her first sight of America, the country where the cars were bigger, the people busier, the sea more sparkling and the sun brighter than any place that she had ever seen before.

  Presently the formalities were over, and they got into the airport limousine, an outsized vehicle that looked like a car but seated about ten people, and were driven through the town to the hotel near the beach at Waikiki. As they went, Stanton said, “Well, this is it, honey. Is it like you thought it would be?”

  “It’s just exactly like the pictures,” she said, eyes gleaming. “Stan, look at that pineapple up there on stilts! Whatever is it?”

  He laughed. “That’s a water tank, belongs to that factory.”

  “Why is it like a pineapple?”

  “They fix it up that way for advertising,” he said. “I guess they make canned pineapple, or somethin’.”

  She stared at it in wonder. “It’s awfully good.” And then she said, “Everything’s so different here.”

  The foyer of the hotel was small for the amount of traffic in it, very modern and well decorated. She was glad to stand back against the wall while Stan stood in line to claim their rooms, watching the Japanese and Filipino boys handling the luggage, a little dazed by the many American voices. Then they were going up in the elevator to the quiet of the upper floors. They had two rooms on opposite sides of a corridor; when the boy was gone they went into each other’s room to inspect, and then parted to change and take a shower and relax.

  Her two days in Honolulu were a delight to Mollie. The humid heat was relieved by a perpetual trade wind, and her room was designed to take full advantage of it, with louvred windows and a louvred door, permitting the cool, scented wind to blow through by day and night, ruffling her hair gently as she slept. To her amazement and delight the room was furnished with a little refrig
erator, very small and white and cold, for the provision of ice and cold water, and for the storage of fruit. Her room looked out over the sea and over the hotel swimming pool, set in a shaded garden with many deck chairs and tables, the water very blue in the bright sunlight. They bought nylon Hawaiian shirts and straw sandals to be in the fashion, and bathed in the pool, and sat around with cokes in bathing costumes in the warm sun and wind. Stanton hired a car for the two days, a very easy thing to do in Honolulu, and they drove to the yacht harbour and to Coral Gardens; they dined at The Reef and after dinner walked and kissed in the moonlight upon Waikiki Beach with a hundred other couples doing the same thing.

  Everything was new to her, and yet she knew it all beforehand. When they went to buy a pack of cigarettes she spurned the hotel shop and walked out to a real drugstore, the first that she had entered, and had a milk shake in it with Stan to mark the event. She wondered at the many Japanese shops, so well patronized, so soon after the war; nothing in Australia had prepared her for such fraternization. The affluence and the slow, restful tempo of the place were a delight to her, tired as she was after their long flights. The great, brightly coloured motorcars parked thick beside the sidewalks on every block amazed her with their size and pleased her eye, and she discovered very soon that these were Stan’s weakness, too. “Whatever folks can say against the United States,” he observed once, “and maybe they can say plenty — we certainly do know how to build automobiles.”

  Briefed by her mother back in the distant Lunatic, she insisted upon paying all her own expenses, even down to splitting the bill at The Reef and the hire of the Hertz car, much to Stanton’s distress. She discovered on their last evening that she had spent nearly a hundred dollars in the two days, and her enjoyment of Honolulu was tempered a little by the reflection that twenty pounds a day was quite a lot of money, though to be sure she had a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of straw sandals to show for it. As she drifted into sleep that night the Scot in her began to assert itself; lovely as Honolulu was, and it was certainly by far the loveliest place that she had seen, it was in no sense a permanency. It was a place to come to and enjoy and go away from; a place as different to real life as a theatre set. America, she felt, in some way would be different to this.