Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

‘Sorry to say he got murdered,’ the landlord told me. ‘Chap jumped out at him as he was going home from the hospital after midnight, beat him to death with a bit of iron bar.’

  ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Friday night,’ he said. That was the night that we had spent at Coudray. They all stood looking at me with sympathy, and I wondered how much they knew.

  They told me all about it. It seemed that he lived in a suburban house two streets from The Haven. Normally he would have occupied the Medical Superintendent’s house inside the grounds, but he had three young children and disliked the thought of bringing them up in the surroundings of a mental home. He put his deputy, Dr Somers, into the Superintendent’s house and lived outside himself, but near at hand. Because he was not on the spot he was meticulous in turning out at night to visit any patient who required attention, though a less conscientious man would have left the night work to his deputy. He was walking home through the deserted streets soon after midnight when an ex-patient, recently released from the mental hospital at Coatley, sprang out on him and beat him to death. They had got the man without much difficulty.

  ‘He’ll be for Broadmoor,’ the police sergeant said. ‘Should have been there years ago.’

  Little more was said about the doctor, and presently I went and had my supper, wrote a letter or two in the commercial room, and went to bed. I knew that Brenda would have heard the news from her mother. It was difficult for me to telephone to her from the Seven Swans or from the office in the hangar on the aerodrome, because both telephones were public and conversations were liable to be overheard. I had a sense of impending disaster all that night, but there was nothing I could do about it. She came to the aerodrome next day, and we walked together on the grass up the boundary hedge towards the north-east windsock. ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, and all the brightness of the last few months seemed to have gone out of her. ‘Poor Dr Baddeley …’

  Presently I asked her, ‘Do you think it will make any difference to us?’

  She asked in turn, ‘Have you met Dr Somers?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I only met Baddeley once.’

  ‘He’s so terribly righteous,’ she muttered. ‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t approve of this divorce.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something Dr Baddeley said once, I think. He’s a very different sort of man.’

  ‘In what way, Brenda?’

  ‘More up to date. More modern. More – rigid, sticking by the rules.’ She turned to me. ‘Like a young schoolmistress in a very modern school, who’s learned it all up out of a book.’ She paused, and then she said, ‘Dr Baddeley was so kind. That’s what made him so good.’

  I asked, ‘Do you think this chap Somers will get the job? Or will they put in somebody over his head?’

  She said, ‘He’s got an awful lot of letters after his name. He’s studied in Austria and in America.’

  We were a long way from the hangar now. I stopped and took her hand. ‘There’s nothing to worry over,’ I said. ‘It’s all in train now. We’re just waiting our turn for the case to come up in court.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But when I went there to see Derek this morning, it was – difficult.’

  ‘With Dr Somers?’

  ‘No – Derek. Sort of bad-tempered.’ She paused. ‘He’d taken everything so well before we went away.’

  There was nothing I could do to make things easier for her, except to give her the assurance of my love. And presently we walked back to the hangar and got out her aeroplane, Morgan le Fay, and started it up, and she took off and went up to the sunlit cumulus above the aerodrome, and I saw her playing in and out of the clouds for nearly an hour, never out of my sight for more than a few minutes at a time. When she landed and taxied in, her eye was bright and there was colour in her cheeks. ‘It was simply glorious up there,’ she said. ‘Like something out of this world.’

  ‘Not worried any more?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Not worried any more.’

  In the next few weeks her visits to The Haven were never easy for her. She told me very little about Derek, and I did not press her, but I gathered that he had turned sullen and uncommunicative with her, and she had difficulty in keeping up a conversation with him for the forty minutes that was the duration of her usual visit. ‘I’m sure it will be easier when this divorce goes through,’ she told me once. ‘I’m sure that he’ll be happier when that’s over.’ Whenever it was fine after her visit to The Haven, and it was fine most of that summer, she used to come out to the aerodrome and fly her aeroplane, always among the clouds if there were any there. It seemed to ease her mind, and drive away the tensions and anxieties of the morning.

  There came a morning in late July when she rang me at the aerodrome. She said, ‘Johnnie, I want to meet you for a talk. Not here. Could we go somewhere this afternoon?’

  I thought quickly. ‘I’ve got a lesson at three and another one at four. I could meet you anywhere after that.’

  She said, ‘Could we meet at Huddlestone, like we did before?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I could be there by half past five. Is it anything serious?’

  ‘A bit,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you when we meet.’

  When I drove into the village street at twenty past five she was already there and waiting for me, rather pale and quiet. I apologised for being late, and she said, ‘I was early. Let’s go into the woods.’ So we left the cars parked and walked down the lane together and into the woods, fragrant and cool and silent. When we were out of sight of the last house, I took her hand, and said, ‘What’s the trouble, Brenda?’

  She turned to face me. ‘Three troubles,’ she said. ‘The first is, Derek’s withdrawn his petition for a divorce.’

  ‘That’s a bad one,’ I said quietly. She had had a letter from her solicitor, who wrote with evident sympathy, but quite definitely. She showed it to me, and I read it carefully. There could be no ambiguity.

  ‘What’s behind this?’ I asked.

  ‘Dr Somers,’ she said.

  ‘Dr Somers?’

  She nodded. ‘I went to see him this morning. That’s the second trouble. I asked him if he knew anything about this change of Derek’s mind, and he said that he thought a doctor shouldn’t try to influence his patient’s mind in matrimonial affairs one way or the other. He said that perhaps he took a different view from his predecessor – he meant Dr Baddeley. He said he thought that Derek was quite well enough to make his own mind up on matters of that sort without any assistance. And then he went on to talk about Derek. He said that in the nine months that he had had him under observation he had not, himself, detected any symptoms that he would describe in court as mental illness. He said that there had been fits of bad temper, sometimes associated with violence. He said that these could occur with any strong-willed person kept under indefinite restraint.’

  I stared at her. ‘Does he mean to say there’s nothing wrong with him?’

  ‘That’s more or less what he said.’

  ‘But what about the case – the case he was in court for?’

  She nodded. ‘I know. I asked him about that. What he said was that there were two sorts of people who would do a thing like that, criminals and criminal lunatics. He said that nothing that he had observed confirmed the supposition that Derek was a criminal lunatic. He said that he intended to keep him under observation for a further period, but that he was beginning to feel that the certification was due for a review.’

  I pressed her hand. ‘Does this mean that he’s going to let him out?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what he was hinting at. I think he’s been putting the same idea into Derek’s head, and that’s why he isn’t going on with the divorce.’

  I thought quickly. It was bad, very bad, whichever way you looked at it. The worst of it was, I could see it from Dr Somers’ point of view, because since I had known Brenda I had kept my ears o
pen for gossip about Derek. I knew the efforts that his family had made to keep him out of prison; I even knew the amount of the fee marked on the brief of the eminent King’s Counsel who defended him. If Dr Somers now said that he wasn’t going to have his mental home cluttered up with ordinary criminals who ought to be in prison just because they had the money for a first-class defence, one couldn’t help feeling a little sympathy for him in his attitude.

  I asked her, ‘What’s the third trouble?’ I knew the answer to that one, of course.

  She faced me. ‘I’m in the family way.’

  I grinned at her. ‘That’s not a trouble,’ I said. ‘That’s a damn good thing. I was hoping for that.’

  She stared at me, bewildered, and then she smiled, and then she burst into tears. I had never seen her in tears before; I took her in my arms and let her cry. And when her sobs had eased, I said, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have done it, but I’m glad we did. We’ve wanted to have a family, and now we’re going to have one. It’s going to make things just a little bit more complicated at the start, but we’ll get over that.’ I wiped her eyes with my handkerchief.

  ‘Just a little bit more complicated,’ she sobbed. ‘That’s an understatement.’

  ‘There’s two of us now to work things out together,’ I said. ‘Two of us, because I’m in this now up to the neck. I can take some of the dirty work off you now, because I’ve got a legal standing in this thing.’ I paused for a moment in thought. ‘First of all, I think I ought to go and have a talk with your mother.’

  She dabbed with my handkerchief. ‘She doesn’t know anything about this yet.’

  ‘Does she know what Dr Somers says about Derek?’

  She nodded. ‘She knows about that, and about the divorce.’

  ‘Will you let me tell her about us, and about the baby?’

  She stared at me. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘I’ll be scared stiff,’ I admitted. ‘But I think I ought to. After all, I’m responsible.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that. It was more my fault than yours.’

  ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault,’ I said. ‘It was a damn good thing. But I think your mother might think better of me if I told her about it.’

  Presently we went back to our cars and drove home independently.

  When I got back to Duffington I went to the aerodrome. The secretary and ground engineers had gone home so the telephone was private; I let myself into the deserted office and rang up Mrs Duclos at the Manor. She said that Brenda wasn’t home yet, and that I knew, because we had arranged it so. I told her that I wanted to have a private talk with her about the divorce, and she told me to come along at half past eight that evening.

  When I went to the Manor I was shown into the drawing room. Mrs Duclos was there alone; she got up to meet me. ‘Brenda came in, but she went to bed,’ she remarked. ‘Said she was tired.’

  I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I arranged that with her.’ She drew herself up a little. ‘I wanted to have a talk with you privately about this divorce.’

  She said a little testily, ‘Well, I can’t do anything about that.’

  I nodded. ‘I know.’ And then I said, ‘There’s something new now, that you’ll have to know about. Brenda’s in the family way, and I’m responsible.’

  She stared at me, erect, angry, and formidable. ‘You’ve got a nerve, young man, to come and tell me that!’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be telling you if I hadn’t,’ I remarked.

  We stood staring at each other for a moment. ‘When did this happen?’ she asked.

  ‘When we flew to France. She saw Dr Haughton today.’

  ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said wearily. ‘But I’m not. We both wanted this to happen some time, but it’s a pity it had to be so soon.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  We sat before the fire in silence for a time. When she spoke again she sounded much older. ‘I won’t pretend to you that this is a surprise,’ she said. ‘I may have hoped you’d have more sense, but I don’t know that I really thought you would. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Do you think Derek would go on with the divorce, in view of this?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Not unless he sees some advantage to himself.’

  ‘It’s like that, is it?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘He wouldn’t give any consideration to Brenda’s position?’

  ‘He might, but I don’t think he would. If Dr Baddeley had been alive, he might have talked him round.’

  There was a short pause. ‘Brenda tells me that Dr Somers is talking of letting him out.’

  ‘So she told me.’

  ‘We’ll have to try and get Derek to go on with the divorce,’ I said. We talked about it for a few minutes. ‘Which of the three of us would be the best person to go and see him? I’m quite ready to.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not you. I’ll go and see him myself.’

  ‘Would you do that? I’d be quite ready to go, but I don’t think it ought to be Brenda.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not Brenda. I’ll go and see him. Perhaps I’ll have a talk with his eldest brother George first, up in Halifax. He’s got a very good head on his shoulders. He might help.’

  Presently I said, ‘Suppose that doesn’t come off. Suppose he won’t have a divorce. Suppose Dr Somers lets him out. We’ve got to think of what would happen then.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said drily. ‘We may as well start thinking about that.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. There’s only one thing we could do, that would solve everything. I’d have to get a job abroad, and Brenda would have to come with me as my wife.’ She made a gesture of dissent, but I went on, ‘We could do that. Imperial Airways want pilots for their Far Eastern service. It means living in New Delhi, or Rangoon, or Singapore. But I could get a job with them, I think.’ I paused. ‘I don’t suppose they’d want to see our marriage lines. I don’t suppose they’d be interested.’

  She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Brenda wouldn’t go,’ she replied. ‘She’s Derek’s wife.’ I was silent.

  ‘You don’t know her very well,’ she said. ‘A divorce when a continuation of her marriage was hopeless – yes. She accepted that. I think she would go on with the divorce now, for the sake of her child, and for you, even if Derek were to get out of The Haven.’ She stared into the fire, at the sparks that we call ‘gypsies’ wandering in the soot at the back of the grate. ‘But to leave her husband and go away with you, unmarried – Brenda would never do that.’

  That one had never entered my head.

  ‘I think I shall go up to Halifax tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and have a talk with George. He might be able to talk Derek round.’

  There was really nothing more to discuss, but I stayed ten minutes longer before getting up to take my leave. As I said good-bye to her, I said, ‘I’m very sorry about all this.’

  ‘No good being sorry now,’ she observed, a little curtly. And then she said, ‘Do you read poetry?’

  I was startled at the change of subject. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Arthur Hugh Clough,’ she said. ‘I used to read a lot of poetry when I was a girl, and it keeps coming back. He wrote a poem about the Ten Commandments.’ And then she said,

  ‘Do not adultery commit,

  Advantage rarely comes of it.’

  ‘He was dead right,’ I remarked, and went back to the Seven Swans.

  I had a long talk with Brenda next day, out at the aerodrome. She had heard from her mother that she was going up to see George in Halifax – in fact, Mrs Duclos had already gone. Her mother had told her that she wasn’t to tell Derek anything about the baby; she or George would tell him when the time came. She had agreed, but she didn’t like it. ‘I’ve never deceived him before,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t like doing it now.’
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br />   There was so little I could do to help.

  George Marshall came down next week-end. It was the Bank Holiday week-end, and every machine we had was flying about eight hours a day. I had ten or twelve lessons every day, and six hours of instruction day after day makes quite a strain. He went to The Haven on the Saturday morning, and on the Saturday afternoon Brenda brought him out to the aerodrome.

  He was a big, heavy man about fifty years old, considerably older than Derek. He was very Yorkshire, with an air of solid, burly prosperity about him. I only had time for a few words with him of no importance before I had to go up with a pupil again. Brenda wanted to take him up in her Moth so I told the ground engineer to get it out and run it up for her, and then I had to go off to give my lesson.

  She flew him round for half an hour or so, I think, and then they sat in deck chairs on the lawn of the clubhouse. I went and had a word with them once between lessons, but they were quite prepared to wait until the rush was over. I landed for the last time at about six o’clock, jotted a few times down upon a pad upon my desk in the hangar office, and then walked over to them at the clubhouse. The crowd was thinning now, and the cars were beginning to roll away. We walked a little way up the aerodrome hedge in the evening light.

  ‘Ye’ve got a champion little club, Mr Pascoe,’ he remarked. ‘D’ye get many accidents with all this flying that goes on?’

  ‘We haven’t had one since I’ve been here,’ I replied. ‘I don’t believe in them.’

  ‘It’s an active little business,’ he said. ‘Do ye make it pay?’

  ‘It makes a profit every year,’ I told him. ‘Not a very large one, because we keep the cost of flying as low as we can for the members. When we look like making money, the Committee drops the rates.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s one way of doing it.’ And then he said, ‘Ye’ll be wondering how I got on this morning. Well, I’ve no good news for you. Derek will have nowt to do with any divorce.’

  I glanced at him. ‘You told him about Brenda?’

  ‘Aye, I told him about that. Couple of scallywags, the pair of you, that’s what I say. Still, what’s done can’t be undone, and the only thing is, make the best of it. That’s what I told Derek this morning. But he’d have nowt to do with it.’