by Nevil Shute
She nodded. ‘I think it’s lovely. I don’t like things too bright.’ We went together into the shop and she set about buying it. It would need small alterations which could be done in the back room by the Japanese girls in a couple of hours, but first a fitting would be necessary. ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and get my cigars while you try it on. Then we’ll go and have lunch somewhere and you can pick it up.’
She smiled. ‘I’d like that. But I pay for my own lunch.’
‘Toss you for that one,’ I said, and went off for my White Owls. When I came back from the drug store she was waiting for me. ‘Where are we going to lunch?’ she asked.
‘The Edgewater’s as good as anywhere,’ I said. It was in our price bracket, too; we were well paid by any standard except that of the largest Waikiki hotels. We went to the terrace of the hotel overlooking the blue swimming pool, and had soft squashes full of fruit and ice before lunch. We had to fly that night, and in AusCan we don’t drink the day we fly.
As we sat there smoking she asked me, ‘How did you get on at Buxton?’
‘All right,’ I told her. ‘I think I shall go there.’
‘Will there be enough for you to do there, though?’
‘I think so,’ I said slowly. ‘I shan’t get fat on it, but there’ll be something to do every day even from the start. And these things snowball, you know. Once you start up in a place like that, business that you never thought of comes along.’
I started in to tell her all about it, and she listened attentively. ‘Anyway,’ she said once, ‘it’s not as if you had to work at all, is it? I mean, you’ll have your pension.’
I nodded. ‘I could get by on that. But I’ve got something saved up, of course. Enough for two or three small aircraft. Enough for a house too, I think. I don’t want anything big.’
‘What about furniture?’ she asked.
‘I’ll have to get that. But I shan’t need much.’
‘Who’s going to do for you? Cook your meals, and all that sort of thing?’
I laughed. ‘I haven’t got as far as that yet. I haven’t even made up my mind if I’m going there at all. I’m not afraid of that one, though. I’ve managed on my own before now, sometimes for months on end.’
She nodded. ‘You’ll have to have somebody. I should think you’d find somebody to come in daily.’
‘I should think so.’
We moved to a table on the dining portion of the terrace and ordered lunch. ‘When have you got to make your mind up about Buxton?’ she asked.
‘I told them I’d make up my mind about leasing the hangar by October,’ I said. ‘They’ve got to get the farmer out before I can go into it, and he’s got it on a monthly tenancy. And then there’s quite a bit of work to be done before I could put aeroplanes in it. The roof leaks pretty badly, but they’d do that for me. And then, I suppose I’d have to do something about a house. The hotel’s simply terrible.’
She laughed. ‘They usually are. When would you think of going there?’
‘I’ll be sixty in February,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got to be out of this by then.’
The waitress brought our lunch. When she had gone, the hostess remarked, ‘I suppose that means there’ll be a switch around of aircrew when you leave us.’
I hadn’t thought about it before, immersed in my own affairs. ‘I suppose there will,’ I said. ‘I know Pat Petersen would rather be upon the northern route.’
‘It’s his wife,’ she said. ‘She gets prickly heat.’
‘I know. When’s Mollie Hamilton getting married?’ She had got herself engaged on her last leave to a chap who worked for Mobilgas at Kingsford Smith.
‘They haven’t got a date. She’ll stay the year out.’
‘Wolfe’s got a girl in San Francisco,’ I remarked. ‘Looks like a General Post after Christmas.’
She nodded. ‘I don’t believe I’ll stay on when that happens.’
I glanced at her. ‘Getting tired of it?’
‘Not exactly,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It’s a lovely life in many ways. I’ll never be sorry to have seen all this, and worked for AusCan. But one sometimes feels it isn’t really important – not like nursing.’
‘Would you go back to the hospital?’
She nodded. ‘I think so. Either the Alexandra or some other hospital.’ There was a pause while we ate. ‘I think I’d like to try it in an orthopaedic hospital,’ she said. ‘Polio children.’
The blue, brilliant swimming pool lay before us, with the superbly healthy young Americans in and out of it in the bright sunshine. ‘Kind of an antidote to this,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Well – yes. I wouldn’t want this to be any other way. But after all, it’s work like that that makes this possible – getting crooked kids straight.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. I had never felt it personally, of course, because of the responsibilities. Every hour that I spent in the air was spent with the emergency routines upon the threshold of my consciousness. Every change in engine note was a minor shock that jerked me into maximum alertness to check with instruments and cathode ray plug indicator exactly what was happening. So many things can happen to a big four-engined aeroplane, most of which could end up fatally if I fell down upon the job, that I had never felt the need to shoulder any more responsibilities. With the hostesses who came to us from hospital work the case was very different. None of them stayed longer than a year or two; because they were hand-picked for their qualities of character the hospitals drew them back.
I glanced at her, smiling. ‘Marriage doesn’t come into your programme?’
She laughed. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘You don’t want to leave it too long,’ I remarked. ‘Everybody ought to be married.’
‘You’re a fine one to be talking like that,’ she retorted.
I glanced at her. ‘I was married once.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Nothing for you to be sorry about,’ I replied. ‘I was married in the First World War, very nearly forty years ago.’
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘She divorced me,’ I told her. ‘In Reno. She was an actress – Judy Lester. Ever hear of her?’
She shook her head.
‘Oh well, she was a bit before your time. But she was quite well known. I had rather a dud job in England after the war and she got a film contract in Hollywood. She divorced me from there.’
‘Why did she do that? Or is it a rude question?’
‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘She wanted to marry a band leader in Hollywood. She got it for desertion.’
She wrinkled her brows. ‘I don’t understand. Who deserted who?’
I smiled. ‘I deserted her, because I wouldn’t go to Hollywood.’
‘But could she get a divorce for that?’
‘She could then, in Nevada. I believe they’ve tightened things up a bit since those days.’
‘Did you have any children?’
I nodded. ‘There was a daughter, but I never had any thing to do with her. We never lived together after she was born. Her mother took her with her to America.’
‘You didn’t keep in touch?’
I shook my head. ‘I was a bit sore about the whole thing, and anyway I hadn’t any money to go to America. It was nearly twenty years before I got there, in the Second War, and then I didn’t feel like digging it all up again.’
She nodded, slowly. ‘The girl must have been grown-up.’
‘That’s right. It’s better to leave it be when it’s like that.’
It was many, many years since I had talked to anyone about my marriage. In fact, I can only remember telling two people about it in my life before this girl, Arthur Stuart and Brenda Marshall. Arthur was killed a year later in Ferry Command taking off a Liberator from Prestwick. He had been easy to talk to, so had Brenda Marshall, and now this girl was another. There are some people that you don’t mind telling about painfu
l things, but they don’t come very often.
That lunch set a pattern of many others. We fell into a habit of strolling out together on our morning in Honolulu after a late, lazy breakfast, to look at the yachts in the yacht harbour, or the sampan fishing boats, or the shops of down-town Honolulu or Waikiki. She had a friend who was at the Queen’s Hospital, an ex-hostess of Pan American, and we lunched there once, and once or twice we went together to a concert in the Civic Auditorium. Several times I got a drive-yourself car, and we explored the nearer parts of the main island, lunching at Fisherman’s Wharf, Hanauma, or Waimanalo. It became an established habit that we would do something together once a week upon our day in Honolulu, a habit that was only to be interrupted when one or other of us was on leave. At Nandi in Fiji it was different and we didn’t go about together; at the airport we seemed more or less on duty all the time; I was the captain and they treated me as one. But in Honolulu we could get lost in the crowd, away from our responsibilities.
I came to look forward to these weekly outings very much indeed; I think she did, too. I never made love to her; perhaps I was too old. Perhaps I told myself that, like the water polo, I just didn’t want to do it. Instead of that, a very close companionship grew up between us. I never told her anything about Brenda Marshall; that lay too deep to talk about, but within a couple of months she must have learned practically everything else about me; she was easy to talk to. In return, I learned a good deal about her. Her life had been a simple melody of Melbourne and her grandmother, a melody of school, of visits to the seaside at Portsea and Barwon Heads, of cheerful comradeship within the hospital, of the great adventure of her trip to England. She never told me anything about her love affairs, however; like me, she had her reticences.
Although we didn’t see much of each other at Nandi apart from the work and the tennis court, which after all was just another sort of work, she was never much out of my mind. As soon as we had landed and rested on the Friday morning, I usually found myself planning things that we could do together the following week in Honolulu. Very soon, of course, I got wise to myself. I was a silly old fool, for I was coming very close to falling in love with a girl less than half my age, at a time of life when I should certainly have known better. No future in that, I told myself. In all the years that had elapsed since Brenda Marshall nothing like this had happened in my life; that it was happening now was a sure sign of senile decay.
I tried to take a grip upon myself but it wasn’t very easy. One morning at Honolulu I told her at breakfast that I had to go down to the maintenance base at the airport, and I didn’t know how long I’d be; she’d better not wait in for me. She was surprised and obviously disappointed, which didn’t make it any easier, and I drove down to the base sick and angry with myself for hurting her. They were a bit surprised to see me at the base; I milled around there for an hour and asked a lot of damfool questions till I thought she would have gone out, and then went back to the hotel. I found her sitting disconsolately in the lounge reading a copy of Time, terribly pleased to see me, as I was to see her. I backslid then, of course. I had the car outside and we drove out to Kualoa on the east coast for lunch, and had a grand time together.
October came, and towards the end of the month I went on a week’s leave again. I went to Buxton and put up at the hotel. Nothing had changed since I was there before, either at the aerodrome or in my own affairs; my deadline for getting out of AusCan was now January the 31st. It was time that I made up my mind, with only three months left to go. I made it up. It was spring in northern Tasmania and the country was very lovely, fresh and cool and sunny after the hot humidity of Fiji, with wattles in bloom everywhere and everybody going trout fishing. I got myself one of the two solicitors in the town and the Shire Clerk got the other and we set them to draw up a lease of the hangar and the flying rights upon the aerodrome, the latter based upon a very small percentage of my turnover. When that was all in train, I set myself to organise a house.
There were houses on the other side of the town available, but I wanted one upon the road that led to the aerodrome. I bought the last lot of a row of building sites, the one nearest to the hangar, and started my negotiations with the local builder. I wanted to buy three aeroplanes, and tools, and spares, and a reasonable second-hand car; that meant that there wouldn’t be a great deal of money left for a house. It would have to be a fairly small house of nine or ten squares, but I didn’t want a big one anyway. He had a book of designs of small weatherboard houses, and we went into a huddle together over that. I picked a house that was within my price bracket, and started to consider it in detail.
It had a large lounge, a kitchen, and two bedrooms, one very small and the other not a great deal bigger. Without admitting to myself why I was making the alterations I decided on meals in the kitchen as a regular thing, cut the lounge down till it was quite a small room, and doubled the size of the main bedroom. That made a reasonable house for an elderly bachelor, I thought, and the builder agreed with me. A weatherboard house goes up very quickly, and he was confident that he could get it finished in the time. I had a small camera with me and took a photograph of the amended plan so that I could think it over back at Nandi, and fixed with him that I would come on leave again about the end of December, by which time the house would be nearing completion and we could settle details of the fixtures and the decoration. Then we got on to the money side, and he told me who to see about a loan at the State Savings Bank in Hobart. I got an estimate in writing from him and signed a contract in the solicitor’s office, and paid him five hundred pounds deposit. I signed the lease for the hangar and the aerodrome, and then my business in Buxton was over for the time being.
I had the afternoon to spare before the bus left for Hobart at four o’clock. I wandered round upon the aerodrome with my camera, snapping everything I could think of, the hangar, the site of my house, the view from where the house would be, the shopping street of the small town – everything. I knew that next week when I was in Honolulu I should want to tell Peggy Dawson all about it, and that she would want to know; the Indian photographer in Lautoka would get this film developed and printed for me before Tuesday so that I could take the photographs to Honolulu with me to show her. With the views that I had taken and with the photographed plan of the house she should be able to get a very good idea how I was going to live, I thought.
I got to Hobart at eleven o’clock that night after seven hours of sitting in various buses or waiting at bus stops, changing at Devonport and Launceston. I got into a hotel and went to the State Savings Bank next morning, and put in my application for a loan. Then I went round Hobart looking at furniture, new and second-hand, and getting estimates. The bedroom furniture bothered me a bit because I was a silly old fool and nothing could ever come of it, but there was no harm in looking and finding out what the stuff cost.
I flew to Melbourne on an afternoon plane and saw Arthur Schutt again that night, and told him that I’d write to him with definite orders about Christmas time. After I had done with him I took a tram out to South Yarra, and walked around in the warm night, trying to visualise what her life had been among these quiet streets and houses. I found the house in which she had her flat, her pied-à-terre, and stood in the lamplit road looking at it from the outside for ten minutes. I was a silly old fool, of course, but I asked my way to the Queen Alexandra Hospital and went and had a look at the outside of that, too.
Next morning I flew to Sydney on the eight o’clock service of Australian Continental Airways. When I was in my seat I saw a list of the aircrew posted on the door into the flight deck, and the captain was R. Clarke, Ronnie Clarke, that I had taught to fly at Leacaster so many years ago, in that wonderful year. I had been very happy then, and I was happy now, and here was Ronnie Clarke again. When we were airborne and the notice about seat belts had gone out and we were climbing upon course, I asked one of the hostesses to tell the captain that Johnnie Pascoe was on board and she went forward to the flight deck.
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She came back at once with an invitation to me to go up forward. Ronnie made his second pilot get out of his seat, and I settled down by my old pupil, and the hostess brought me a cup of coffee. I was glad to see Ronnie again. He had been a commercial pilot practically all the time since I taught him to fly, first with John Sword and then with British Airways. In the war he had been in the R.A.F. for a time, anyway, because I remember flying him home from Burma in 1944 or 45. He joined Australian Continental soon after the war; he was married with two children. It was some years since I had seen him to talk to, and I enjoyed it. Sitting there together at the controls of the Viscount we exchanged news as we slid along past Eildon and Canberra towards Kingsford Smith. He was well dug in with Continental now, unlikely to make any change. I told him about my coming retirement and about Buxton, and what I hoped to do there. ‘Like going back to Duffington again,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I replied shortly. I hoped it wasn’t going to be like going back to Duffington again.
We both had about three hours to kill at Sydney before he left to take the lunch-time flight back to Melbourne, before I got on to the AusCan flight to Nandi. He asked me to come up to the pilots’ room at Kingsford Smith and I said I would, and went back to my seat in the cabin as he started to lose height.
When we landed I went and made my number with AusCan on the overseas side, and then went back to have another chat with Ronnie Clarke. I always liked Ronnie, and now he was one of the oldest friends I had; moreover he lived in a Melbourne suburb and I could see him from time to time when I went over to the mainland from Buxton. I wondered, as I walked back to the domestic side, how much he ever knew about my love for Brenda Marshall. I had a vague idea that he probably knew quite a lot, because he was always at Duffington in those months and he went to the inquest with his father. Another thing was that in all the years that I had known him, off and on, he had never spoken of her.