Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “Don’t you ever want to get married? I mean, even if we are all dying next September.”

  The girl stared into the fire. “I wanted to get married,” she said quietly. “I wanted to have everything you’ve got. But I shan’t have it now.”

  “Couldn’t you marry Dwight?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sure he likes you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He likes me all right.”

  “Has he ever kissed you?”

  “Yes,” she said again. “He kissed me once.”

  “I’m sure he’d marry you.”

  The girl shook her head again. “He wouldn’t ever do that. You see, he’s married already. He’s got a wife and two children in America.”

  Mary stared at her. “Darling, he can’t have. They must be dead.”

  “He doesn’t think so,” she said wearily. “He thinks he’s going home to meet them, next September. In his own home town, at Mystic.” She paused. “We’re all going a bit mad in our own way,” she said. “That’s his way.”

  “You mean, he really thinks his wife is still alive?”

  “I don’t know if he thinks that or not. No, I don’t think he does. He thinks he’s going to be dead next September, but he thinks he’s going home to them, to Sharon and Dwight Junior and Helen. He’s been buying presents for them.”

  Mary sat trying to understand. “But if he thinks like that, why did he kiss you?”

  “Because I said I’d help him with the presents.”

  Mary got to her feet. “I’m going to have a drink,” she said firmly. “I think you’d better have one, too.” And when that was adjusted and they were sitting with glasses in their hands, she asked curiously, “It must be funny, being jealous of someone that’s dead?”

  The girl took a drink from her glass and sat staring at the fire. “I’m not jealous of her,” she said at last. “I don’t think so. Her name is Sharon, like in the Bible. I want to meet her. She must be a very wonderful person, I think. You see, he’s such a practical man.”

  “Don’t you want to marry him?”

  The girl sat for a long time in silence. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t know if I do or not. If it wasn’t for all this . . . I’d play every dirty trick in the book to get him away from her. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with anyone else. But then, there’s not much time left now to be happy with anyone.”

  “There’s three or four months, anyway,” said Mary. “I saw a motto once, one of those things you hang on the wall to inspire you. It said, ‘Don’t worry — it may never happen.’”

  “I think this is going to happen all right,” Moira remarked. She picked up the poker and began playing with it. “If it was for a lifetime it’d be different,” she said. “It’d be worth doing her dirt if it meant having Dwight for good, and children, and a home, and a full life. I’d go through anything if I could see a chance of that. But to do her dirt just for three months’ pleasure and nothing at the end of it — well, that’s another thing. I may be a loose woman, but I don’t know that I’m all that loose.” She looked up, smiling. “Anyway, I don’t believe that I could do it in the time. I think he’d take a lot of prising away from her.”

  “Oh dear,” said Mary. “Things are difficult, aren’t they?”

  “Couldn’t be worse,” Moira agreed. “I think I’ll probably die an old maid.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. But nothing does seem to make sense, these days. Peter . . .” She stopped.

  “What about Peter?” the girl asked curiously.

  “I don’t know. It was just horrible, and crazy.” She shifted restlessly.

  “What was? Tell me.”

  “Did you ever murder anybody?”

  “Me? Not yet. I’ve often wanted to. Country telephone girls, mostly.”

  “This was serious. It’s a frightful sin to murder anybody, isn’t it? I mean, you’d go to Hell.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose you would. Who do you want to murder?”

  The mother said dully, “Peter told me I might have to murder Jennifer.” A tear formed and trickled down her cheek.

  The girl leaned forward impulsively and touched her hand. “Darling, that can’t be right! You must have got it wrong.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not wrong,” she sobbed. “It’s right enough. He told me I might have to do it, and he showed me how.” She burst into a torrent of tears.

  Moira took her in her arms and soothed her, and gradually the story came out. At first the girl could not believe the words she heard, but later she was not so sure. Finally they went together to the bathroom and looked at the red boxes in the cabinet. “I’ve heard something about all this,” she said seriously. “I never knew that it had got so far. . . .” One craziness was piled on to another.

  “I couldn’t do it alone,” the mother whispered. “However bad she was, I couldn’t do it. If Peter isn’t here . . . if anything happens to Scorpion . . . will you come and help me, Moira? Please?”

  “Of course I will,” the girl said gently. “Of course I’ll come and help. But Peter will be here. They’re coming back all right. Dwight’s that kind of a man.” She produced a little screwed up ball of handkerchief, and gave it to Mary. “Dry up, and let’s make a cup of tea. I’ll go and put the kettle on.”

  They had a cup of tea before the dying fire.

  Eighteen days later U.S.S. Scorpion surfaced in clean air in latitude thirty-one degrees south, near Norfolk Island. At the entrance to the Tasman Sea in winter the weather was bleak and the sea rough, the low deck swept by every wave. It was only possible to allow the crew up to the bridge deck eight at a time; they crept up, white faced and trembling, to huddle in oilskins in the driving rain and spray. Dwight kept the submarine hove-to head into the wind for most of the day till everyone had had his allotted half-hour in the fresh air, but few of the men stayed on the bridge so long.

  Their resistance to the cold and wet conditions on the bridge was low, but at least he had brought them all back alive, with the exception of Yeoman Swain. All were white faced and anaemic after thirty-one days’ confinement within the hull, and he had three cases of intense depression rendering those men unreliable for duty. He had had one bad fright when Lieutenant Brody had developed all the symptoms of acute appendicitis; with John Osborne helping him he had read up all the procedure for the operation and prepared to do it on the wardroom table. However the symptoms had subsided and the patient was now resting comfortably in his berth; Peter Holmes had taken over all his duties and the captain now hoped that he might last out until they docked at Williamstown in five days’ time. Peter Holmes was as normal as anyone on board. John Osborne was nervous and irritable though still efficient; he talked incessantly of his Ferrari.

  They had disproved the Jorgensen effect. They had ventured slowly into the Gulf of Alaska using their underwater mine detector as a defence against floating icebergs till they had reached latitude fifty-eight north in the vicinity of Kodiak. The ice was thicker near the land and they had not approached it; up there the radiation level was still lethal and little different to that they had experienced in the Seattle district. There seemed to be no point in risking the vessel in those waters any longer than was necessary; they took their readings and set course a little to the east of south till they found warmer water and less chance of ice, and then southwest towards Hawaii and Pearl Harbor.

  At Pearl Harbor they had learned practically nothing. They had cruised right into the harbour and up to the dock that they had sailed from before the outbreak of the war. Psychologically this was relatively easy for them, because Dwight had ascertained before the cruise commenced that none of the ship’s company had had their homes in Honolulu or had any close ties with the Islands. He could have put an officer on shore in a radiation suit as he had done at Santa Maria and he debated for some days with Peter Holmes before he reached the Islands whether he should do so, but they
could think of nothing to be gained by such an expedition. When Lieutenant Sunderstrom had had time on his hands at Santa Maria all that he had found to do had been to read The Saturday Evening Post, and they could think of little more useful that an officer on shore could do at Pearl Harbor. The radiation level was much as it had been at Seattle; they noted and listed the many ships in the harbour, the considerable destruction on the shore, and left.

  That day, hove-to at the entrance to the Tasman Sea, they were within easy radio communication with Australia. They raised the radio mast and made a signal reporting their position and their estimated time of arrival back at Williamstown. They got a signal in reply asking for their state of health, and Dwight answered in a fairly lengthy message that he worded with some difficulty in regard to Yeoman Swain. A few routine messages came through then dealing with weather forecasts, fueling requirements, and engineering work required when they docked, and in the middle of the morning came a more important one.

  It bore a dateline three days previous. It read,

  From: Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Forces, Brisbane.

  To: Commander Dwight L. Towers, U.S.S. Scorpion.

  Subject: Assumption of additional duties.

  1. On the retirement of the present Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Forces, at this date you will immediately and henceforth assume the duty of Commanding Officer, U.S. Naval Forces, in all areas. You will use your discretion as to the disposition of these forces, and you will terminate or continue their employment under Australian command as you think fit.

  2. Guess this makes you an admiral if you want to be one. Good-bye and good luck. Jerry Shaw.

  3. Copy to First Naval Member, Royal Australian Navy.

  Dwight read this in his cabin with an expressionless face. Then, since a copy had already gone to the Australians, he sent for his liaison officer. When Peter came he handed him the signal without a word.

  The lieutenant commander read it. “Congratulations, sir,” he said quietly.

  “I suppose so . . .” said the captain. And then he said, “I suppose this means that Brisbane’s out now.”

  Brisbane was two hundred and fifty miles in latitude to the north of their position then. Peter nodded, his mind on the radiation figures. “It was pretty bad still yesterday afternoon.”

  “I thought he might have left his ship and come down south,” the captain said.

  “They couldn’t move at all?”

  “No fuel oil,” Dwight said. “They had to stop all services in the ships. The tanks were bone dry.”

  “I should have thought that he’d have come to Melbourne. After all, the Supreme Commander of the U. S. Navy. . . .”

  Dwight smiled, a little wryly. “That’s doesn’t mean a thing, not now. No, the real point is that he was captain of his ship and the ship couldn’t move. He wouldn’t want to run out on his ship’s company.”

  There was no more to be said, and he dismissed his liaison officer. He drafted a short signal in acknowledgment and gave it to the signals officer for transmission via Melbourne, with a copy for the First Naval Member. Presently the yeoman came to him and laid a signal on his desk.

  Your 12/05663.

  Regret no communications are now possible with Brisbane.

  The captain nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Let it go.”

  7

  PETER HOLMES REPORTED to the Second Naval Member the day after they returned to Williamstown. The admiral motioned to him to sit down. “I met Commander Towers for a few minutes last night, Lieutenant Commander,” he said. “You seem to have got on well with him.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, sir.”

  “Yes. Now I suppose you want to know about a continuation of your appointment.”

  Peter said diffidently, “In a way. I take it that the general situation is the same? I mean, there’s only two or three months left to go?”

  The admiral nodded. “That seems to be correct. You told me when I saw you last that you would prefer to be on shore in these last months.”

  “I should.” He hesitated. “I’ve got to think a bit about my wife.”

  “Of course.” He offered the young man a cigarette, and lit one himself. “Scorpion is going into dry dock for hull reconditioning,” he said. “I suppose you know that.”

  “Yes sir. The captain was anxious to have that done. I saw the Third Naval Member’s office about it this morning.”

  “Normally that might take about three weeks. It may take longer under present conditions. Would you like to stay on with her as liaison officer while that work is going on?” He paused. “Commander Towers has asked for you to continue in the appointment for the time being.”

  “Could I live at home, down at Falmouth? It takes me about an hour and three quarters to get to the dockyard.”

  “You’d better take that up with Commander Towers. I don’t suppose you’ll find that he has any objection. It’s not as if the ship was in commission. I understand he’s giving leave to most of the ship’s company. I don’t suppose your duties would be very arduous, but you would be a help to him in dealing with the dockyard.”

  “I’d like to carry on with him, sir, subject to living at home. But if the ship is programmed for another cruise, I’d like you to replace me. I don’t think I could undertake another seagoing appointment.” He hesitated. “I don’t like saying that.”

  The admiral smiled. “That’s all right, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll keep that in mind. Come back and see me if you want to be relieved.” He rose to his feet, terminating the interview. “Everything all right at home?”

  “Quite all right. Housekeeping seems to be more difficult than when I went away, and it’s all becoming a bit of a battle for my wife, with the baby to look after.”

  “I know it is. And I’m afraid it’s not going to get any easier.”

  That morning Moira Davidson rang up Dwight Towers in the aircraft carrier at lunchtime. “Morning, Dwight,” she said. “They tell me that I’ve got to congratulate you.”

  “Who told you that?” he asked.

  “Mary Holmes.”

  “You can congratulate me if you like,” he said a little heavily. “But I’d just as soon you didn’t.”

  “All right,” she said, “I won’t. Dwight, how are you? Yourself?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Got a bit of a letdown today, but I’m okay.” In fact, everything that he had done since they had come back to the aircraft carrier had been an effort; he had slept badly and was infinitely tired.

  “Are you very busy?”

  “I should be,” he said. “But I don’t know — nothing seems to get done and the more nothing gets done the more there is to do.”

  This was a different Dwight to the one that she had grown accustomed to. “You sound as if you’re getting ill,” she said severely.

  “I’m not getting ill, honey,” he said a little irritably. “It’s just that there’s some things to do and everybody off on leave. We’ve been away so long at sea we’ve just forgotten what work is.”

  “I think you ought to take some leave yourself,” she said. “Could you come out to Harkaway for a bit?”

  He thought for a moment. “That’s mighty nice of you. I couldn’t do that for a while. We’re putting Scorpion into dry dock tomorrow.”

  “Let Peter Holmes do that for you.”

  “I couldn’t do that, honey. Uncle Sam wouldn’t like it.”

  She forebore to say that Uncle Sam would never know. “After you’ve done that, the ship’ll be in dockyard hands, won’t she?”

  “Say, you know a lot about the navy.”

  “I know I do. I’m a beautiful spy, Mata Hari, femme fatale, worming secrets out of innocent naval officers over a double brandy. She will be in dockyard hands, won’t she?”

  “You’re very right.”

  “Well then, you can chuck everything else on Peter Holmes and get away on leave. What time are you putting her in dock?”

  “Ten o’clock tomorr
ow morning. We’ll probably be through by midday.”

  “Come out and spend a little time at Harkaway with us, tomorrow afternoon. It’s perishing cold up there. The wind just whistles round the house. It rains most of the time, and you can’t go out without gumboots. Walking beside the bullock and the pasture harrows is the coldest job known to man — to woman, anyway. Come out and try it. After a few days with us you’ll be just longing to get back and fug it in your submarine.”

  He laughed. “Say, you’re making it sound really attractive.”

  “I know I am. Will you come out tomorrow afternoon?”

  It would be a relief to relax, to forget his burdens for a day or two. “I think I could,” he said. “I’ll have to shuffle things around a little, but I think I could.”

  She arranged to meet him the next afternoon at four o’clock in the Australia Hotel. When she did so she was concerned at his appearance; he greeted her cheerfully and seemed glad to see her, but he had gone a yellowish colour beneath his tan, and in unguarded moments he was depressed. She frowned at the sight of him. “You’re looking like something that the cat brought in and didn’t want,” she told him. “Are you all right?” She took his hand and felt it. “You’re hot. You’ve got a temperature!”

  He withdrew his hand. “I’m okay,” he said. “What’ll you have to drink?”

  “You’ll have a double whisky and about twenty grains of quinine,” she said. “A double whisky, anyway. I’ll see about the quinine when we get home. You ought to be in bed!”

  It was pleasant to be fussed over, and relax. “Double brandy for you?” he asked.

  “Small one for me, double for you,” she said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, going about like this. You’re probably spreading germs all over the place. Have you seen a doctor?”

  He ordered the drinks. “There’s no doctor in the dockyard now. Scorpion is the only ship that’s operational, and she’s in dockyard hands. They took the last naval surgeon away while we were on the cruise.”

  “You have got a temperature, haven’t you?”

  “I might have just a little one,” he said. “Perhaps I might have a cold coming on.”