by Nevil Shute
“Is it?” she asked. “Is it like this in the States?”
“It certainly is,” he said. “You’ve got all the trees here from the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of Australia I’ve seen up till now, they’ve only had gum trees and wattles.”
“They don’t make you feel bad?” she asked.
“Why, no. I just love to see these northern trees again.”
“There are plenty of them round the farm,” she said. They drove through the village, across the deserted bitumen road, and out upon the road to Harkaway. Presently the road trended uphill; the horse slowed to a walk and began to slog against the collar. The girl said, “This is where we get out and walk.”
He got down with her from the buggy, and they walked together up the hill, leading the horse. After the stuffiness of the dockyard and the heat of the steel ships, the woodland air seemed fresh and cool to him. He took off his jacket and laid it in the buggy, and loosened the collar of his shirt. They walked on up the hill, and now a panorama started to unfold behind them, a wide view over the flat plain to the sea at Port Phillip Bay ten miles away. They went on, riding on the flats and walking on the steeper parts, for half an hour. Gradually they entered a country of gracious farms on undulating hilly slopes, a place where well-kept paddocks were interspersed with coppices and many trees. He said, “You’re mighty lucky to have a home in country like this.”
She glanced at him. “We like it all right. Of course, it’s frightfully dull living out here.”
He stopped, and stood in the road, looking around him at the smiling countryside, the wide, unfettered views. “I don’t know that I ever saw a place that was more beautiful,” he said.
“It is beautiful?” she asked. “I mean, is it as beautiful as places in America or England?”
“Why, sure,” he said. “I don’t know England so well. I’m told that parts of that are just a fairyland. There’s plenty of lovely scenery in the United States, but I don’t know of any place that’s just like this. No, this is beautiful all right, by any standard in the world.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” she replied. “I mean, I like it here, but then I’ve never seen anything else. One sort of thinks that everything in England or America must be much better. That this is all right for Australia, but that’s not saying much.”
He shook his head. “It’s not like that at all, honey. This is good by any standard that you’d like to name.”
They came to a flat and, driving in the buggy, the girl turned into an entrance gate. A short drive led between an avenue of pine trees to a single-storey wooden house, a fairly large house painted white that merged with farm buildings towards the back. A wide verandah ran along the front and down one side, partially glazed in. The girl drove past the house and into the farmyard. “Sorry about taking you in by the back door,” she said. “But the mare won’t stand, not when she’s so near the stable.”
A farm hand called Lou, the only employee on the place, came to help her with the horse, and her father came out to meet them. She introduced Dwight all round, and they left the horse and buggy to Lou and went into the house to meet her mother. Later they gathered on the verandah to sit in the warm evening sun over short drinks before the evening meal. From the verandah there was a pastoral view over undulating pastures and coppices, with a distant view of the plain down below the trees. Again Dwight commented upon the beauty of the countryside.
“Yes, it’s nice up here,” said Mrs. Davidson. “But it can’t compare with England. England’s beautiful.”
The American asked, “Were you born in England?”
“Me? No. I was born Australian. My grandfather came out to Sydney in the very early days, but he wasn’t a convict. Then he took up land in the Riverina. Some of the family are there still.” She paused. “I’ve only been home once,” she said. “We made a trip to England and the Continent in 1948, after the Second War. We thought England was quite beautiful. But I suppose it’s changed a lot now.”
She left the verandah presently with Moira to see about the tea, and Dwight was left on the verandah with her father. He said, “Let me give you another whisky.”
“Why, thanks. I’d like one.”
They sat in warm comfort in the mellow evening sun over their drinks. After a time the grazier said, “Moira was telling us about the cruise that you just made up to the north.”
The captain nodded. “We didn’t find out much.”
“So she said.”
“There’s not much that you can see, from the water’s edge and through the periscope,” he told his host. “It’s not as if there was any bomb damage, or anything like that. It all looks just the same as it always did. It’s just that people don’t live there any more.”
“It was very radioactive, was it?”
Dwight nodded. “It gets worse the further north you go, of course. At Cairns, when we were there, a person might have lived for a few days. At Port Darwin nobody could live so long as that.”
“When were you at Cairns?”
“About a fortnight ago.”
“I suppose the intensity at Cairns would be worse by now.”
“Probably so. I’d say it gets worse steadily as time goes on. Finally, of course, it’ll get to the same level all around the world.”
“They’re still saying that it’s going to get here in September.”
“I would say that’s right. It’s coming very evenly, all around the world. All places in the same latitude seem to be getting it just about the same time.”
“They were saying on the wireless they’ve got it in Rockhampton.”
The captain nodded. “I heard that, too. And at Alice Springs. It’s coming very evenly along the latitudes.”
His host smiled, a little grimly. “No good agonizing about it. Have another whisky.”
“I don’t believe I will, not now. Thank you.”
Mr. Davidson poured himself another small one. “Anyway,” he said, “it comes to us last of all.”
“That seems to be so,” said Dwight. “If it goes on the way it’s going now, Cape Town will go out a little before Sydney, about the same time as Montevideo. There’ll be nothing left then in Africa and South America. Melbourne is the most southerly major city in the world, so we’ll be near to the last.” He paused for a moment in thought. “New Zealand, most of it, may last a little longer, and, of course, Tasmania. A fortnight or three weeks, perhaps. I don’t know if there’s anybody in Antarctica. If so, they might go on for quite a while.”
“But Melbourne is the last big city?”
“That’s what it looks like, at the moment.”
They sat in silence for a little while. “What will you do?” the grazier asked at last. “Will you move your ship?”
“I haven’t decided that,” the captain said slowly. “Maybe I won’t have to decide it. I’ve got a senior officer, Captain Shaw, in Brisbane. I don’t suppose he’ll move because his ship can’t move. Maybe he’ll send me orders. I don’t know.”
“Would you move, if it was at your own discretion?”
“I haven’t decided that,” the captain said again. “I can’t see that there’s a great deal to be gained. Nearly forty per cent of my ship’s company have got themselves tied up with girls in Melbourne — married, some of them. Say I was to move to Hobart. I can’t take them along, and they can’t get there any other way, and if they could there’s nowhere there for them to live. It seems kind of rough on the men to separate them from their women in the last few days, unless there was some compelling reason in the interest of the naval service.” He glanced up, grinning. “Anyway, I don’t suppose they’d come. Most of them would probably jump ship.”
“I suppose they would. I think they’d probably decide to put the women first.”
The American nodded. “It’s reasonable. And there’s no sense in giving orders that you know won’t be obeyed.”
“Could you take your ship to sea without them?”
“Why,
yes — just for a short run. Hobart would be a short trip, six or seven hours. We could take her there with just a dozen men, or even less. We wouldn’t submerge if we were as short-handed as that, and we couldn’t cruise for any length of time. But if we got her there, or even to New Zealand — say to Christchurch — without a full crew we could never be effective, operationally.” He paused. “We’d be just refugees.”
They sat in silence for a time. “One of the things that’s been surprising me,” the grazier said, “is that there have been so few refugees. So few people coming down from the north. From Cairns and Townsville, and from places like that.”
“Is that so?” the captain asked. “It’s just about impossible to get a bed in Melbourne — anywhere.”
“I know there have been some. But not the numbers that I should have expected.”
“That’s the radio, I suppose,” Dwight said. “These talks that the Prime Minister’s been giving have been kind of steadying. The A.B.C.’s been doing a good job in telling people just the way things are. After all, there’s not much comfort in leaving home and coming down here to live in a tent or in a car, and have the same thing happen to you a month or two later.”
“Maybe,” the grazier said. “I’ve heard of people going back to Queensland after a few weeks of that. But I’m not sure that that’s the whole story. I believe it is that nobody really thinks it’s going to happen, not to them, until they start to feel ill. And by that time, well, it’s less effort to stay at home and take it. You don’t recover from this once it starts, do you?”
“I don’t think that’s true. I think you can recover, if you get out of the radioactive area into a hospital where you get proper treatment. They’ve got a lot of cases from the north in the Melbourne hospitals right now.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No. They don’t say anything about that over the radio. After all, what’s the use? They’re only going to get it over again next September.”
“Nice outlook,” said the grazier. “Will you have another whisky now?”
“Thank you, I believe I will.” He stood up and poured himself a drink. “You know,” he said, “now that I’ve got used to the idea, I think I’d rather have it this way. We’ve all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you’re never ready, because you don’t know when it’s coming. Well, now we do know, and there’s nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I kind of like the thought that I’ll be fit and well up till the end of August and then — home. I’d rather have it that way than go on as a sick man from when I’m seventy to when I’m ninety.”
“You’re a regular naval officer,” the grazier said. “You’re probably more accustomed to this sort of thing than I would be.”
“Will you evacuate?” the captain asked. “Go someplace else when it gets near? Tasmania?”
“Me? Leave this place?” the grazier said. “No, I shan’t go. When it comes, I’ll have it here, on this verandah, in this chair, with a drink in my hand. Or else in my own bed. I wouldn’t leave this place.”
“I’d say that’s the way most folks think about it, now that they’ve got used to the idea.”
They sat on the verandah in the setting sun till Moira came to tell them that tea was ready. “Drink up,” she said, “and come in for the blotting paper, if you can still walk.”
Her father said, “That’s not the way to talk to our guest.”
“You don’t know our guest as well as I do, Daddy. I tell you, you just can’t get him past a pub. Any pub.”
“More likely he can’t get you past one.” They went into the house.
There followed a very restful two days for Dwight Towers. He handed over a great bundle of mending to the two women, who took it away from him, sorted it, and busied themselves over it. In the hours of daylight he was occupied with Mr. Davidson upon the farm from dawn till dusk. He was initiated into the arts of crutching sheep and of shovelling silage up into a cart and distributing it in the paddocks; he spent long hours walking by the bullock on the sunlit pastures. The change did him good after his confined life in the submarine and in the mother ship; each night he went to bed early and slept heavily, and awoke refreshed for the next day.
On the last morning of his stay, after breakfast, Moira found him standing at the door of a small outside room beside the laundry, now used as a repository for luggage, ironing boards, gum boots, and junk of every description. He was standing at the open door smoking a cigarette, looking at the assortment of articles inside. She said, “That’s where we put things when we tidy up the house and say we’ll send it to the jumble sale. Then we never do.”
He smiled. “We’ve got one of those, only it’s not so full as this. Maybe that’s because we haven’t lived there so long.” He stood looking in upon the mass with interest. “Say, whose tricycle was that?”
“Mine,” she said.
“You must have been quite small when you rode around on that.”
She glanced at it. “It does look small now, doesn’t it? I should think I was four or five years old.”
“There’s a Pogo stick!” He reached in and pulled it out; it squeaked rustily. “It’s years and years since I saw a Pogo stick. There was quite a craze for them at one time, back home.”
“They went out for a time, and then they came back into fashion,” she said. “Quite a lot of kids about here have Pogo sticks now.”
“How old would you have been when you had that?”
She thought for a moment. “It came after the tricycle, after the scooter, and before the bicycle. I should think I was about seven.”
He held it in his hands thoughtfully. “I’d say that’s about the right age for a Pogo stick. You can buy them in the shops here, now?”
“I should think so. The kids use them.”
He laid it down. “It’s years since I saw one of those in the United States. They go in fashions, as you say.” He glanced around. “Who owned the stilts?”
“My brother had them first, and then I had them. I broke that one.”
“He was older than you, wasn’t he?”
She nodded. “Two years older — two and a half.”
“Is he in Australia now?”
“No. He’s in England.”
He nodded; there was nothing useful to be said about that.
“Those stilts are quite high off the ground,” he remarked. “I’d say you were older then.”
She nodded. “I must have been ten or eleven.”
“Skis.” He measured the length of them with his eye. “You must have been older still.”
“I didn’t go skiing till I was about sixteen. But I used those up till just before the war. They were getting a bit small for me by then, though. That other pair were Donald’s.”
He ran his eye around the jumbled contents of the little room.
“Say,” he said, “there’s a pair of water-skis!”
She nodded. “We still use those — or we did up till the war.” She paused. “We used to go for summer holidays at Barwon Heads. Mummy used to rent the same house every year. . . .” She stood in silence for a moment, thinking of the sunny little house by the golf links, the warm sands, the cool air rushing past as she flew behind the motorboat in a flurry of warm spray. “There’s the wooden spade I used to build sand castles with when I was very little. . . .”
He smiled at her. “It’s kind of fun, looking at other people’s toys and trying to think what they must have looked like at that age. I can just imagine you at seven, jumping around on that Pogo stick.”
“And flying into a temper every other minute,” she said. She stood for a moment looking in at the door thoughtfully. “I never would let Mummy give any of my toys away,” she said quietly. “I said that I was going to keep them for my children to play with. Now there aren’t going to be any.”
“Too bad,” he said. “Still that’s the way it is.” He pulled the door to and closed it on so many sen
timental hopes. “I think I’ll have to get back to the ship this afternoon and see if she’s sunk at her moorings. Do you know what time there’d be a train?”
“I don’t, but we can ring the station and find out. You don’t think you could stay another day?”
“I’d like to, honey, but I don’t think I’d better. There’ll be a pile of paper on my desk that needs attention.”
“I’ll find out about the train. What are you going to do this morning?”
“I told your father that I’d finish harrowing the hill paddock.”
“I’ve got an hour or so to do around the house. I’ll probably come out and walk around with you after that.”
“I’d like that. Your bullock’s a good worker, but he doesn’t make a lot of conversation.”
They gave him his newly mended clothes after lunch. He expressed his thanks for all that they had done for him, packed his bag, and Moira drove him down to the station. There was an exhibition of Australian religious paintings at the National Gallery; they arranged to go and see that together before it came off; he would give her a ring. Then he was in the train for Melbourne, on his way back to his work.
He got back to the aircraft carrier at about six o’clock. As he had supposed, there was a pile of paper on his desk, including a sealed envelope with a security label gummed on the outside. He slit it open and found that it contained a draft operation order, with a personal note attached to it from the First Naval Member asking him to ring up for an appointment and come and see him about it.
He glanced the order through. It was very much as he had thought that it would be. It was within the capacity of his ship to execute, assuming that there were no mines at all laid on the west coast of the United States, which seemed to him to be a bold assumption.
He rang up Peter Holmes that evening at his home near Falmouth. “Say,” he said, “I’ve got a draft operation order lying on my desk. There’s a covering letter from the First Naval Member, wants me to go and see him. I’d like it if you could come on board tomorrow and look it over. Then I’d say you’d better come along when I go to see the admiral.”