by Nevil Shute
‘Just once or twice, when I’ve been tired and had a bit to drink, I’ve thought that you were her,’ I said slowly. ‘You’re not very like her in the normal way. Not in appearance, I mean. But in character – I think you’re very like her.’ I glanced at her. ‘I think that’s been the trouble.’
‘I wouldn’t call it trouble,’ she said softly. She turned to me. ‘Did you know I looked like you?’
I laughed. ‘No, I didn’t. Do you?’
‘Mollie Hamilton says so. There’s been quite a bit of gossip since we started going about together in Honolulu.’
I stirred. ‘Better not let me hear them at it. It’s probably a good thing I’m retiring.’
‘They’ll all be very sorry to see you go,’ she said. ‘It’s been nice gossip.’
‘Make any trouble for you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. If they’ve been saying I’m your daughter, I’ve been proud of it.’
She turned to me. ‘I shouldn’t have let you go on and ask me to marry you,’ she said. ‘I should have turned it off, somehow. I could have done. I want you to forgive me for letting you go on.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said again.
‘It seemed so incredible,’ she said. ‘I knew by that time that there’d been no one in your life since my mother died. And I knew that there must be a good deal of my mother in me …’ She paused. ‘If you were falling in love with me, it could only be that you were falling in love again with what was in me of my mother. I couldn’t resist letting it happen, Johnnie. Because you see, it was the final, absolute proof that everything was quite all right when I was born – but for bad luck.’
‘Bad luck or bad management,’ I said slowly.
‘What do you mean by that?’
I sat silent for a time. ‘I’ve had a long time to think this over, and now I’m an old man,’ I said at last. ‘And what I think is this. When you get to wanting something that doesn’t belong to you so badly that you’ve just got to have it, and you take it – well, that’s stealing. You don’t let yourself get into that state of mind with other things – with money or motor cars or gold cigarette-cases. And you mustn’t do it with love. That’s stealing, just the same. But that’s what we didn’t understand.’ I paused. ‘I think your mother understood it a bit better than I did. We kidded ourselves that love was something different, because it says so on the pop tunes.’
She laughed. ‘If you hadn’t kidded yourselves, I shouldn’t be here.’
‘That’s true. Are you glad or sorry?’
‘Glad,’ she said. ‘Very, very glad.’
I got to my feet, stiff after sitting for so long. ‘Time we were going back,’ I said. ‘If we stay much longer I’ll have to write a confidential note about you to Mrs Deakin – staying out too late upon the beach with men.’
She stretched out her hand and I pulled her up beside me. We gathered our things up from the beach to take them to the car. ‘When you’re at Buxton and I’m back at the Alexandra again, we shan’t be very far away from each other,’ she said. ‘May I come over and see you when I get a holiday?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Come and start a bit of gossip for me there.’ We laughed together.
She turned to me. ‘I’ve been so happy tonight. Everything’s quite all right now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘Everything’s come good at last. It’s quite all right, now.’
We walked slowly from the moonlit coral beach into the deep shadows of the palm tree groves. Our feet made no sound on the ground; we were gliding along as if suspended in the air, floating along. Everything had come good at last, after so many years. I had reached the happy ending of the story, and I was quietly, serenely happy. In the soft, velvety darkness I lay utterly at peace for I had finished with all heartaches, with all pains and worries; nothing could touch me now. I had finished the book but I could take it up and read it over and over again, and I would do so, secure in the knowledge of the happiness in the last chapter. There would be no more misery ahead of me, for everything had come good. Everything was all right now.
There was light all around me, and she was by my side. She was dressed in a blue combination suit of smooth denim cloth over a heavy white polo-necked sweater, stifling in Fiji. I blinked my eyes and muttered, ‘You’ll be much too hot. Whatever are you wearing that for?’
She glanced at me curiously. ‘It’s five o’clock, sir. There’s a cup of tea here.’ I saw she had it in her hand, and she put it down upon the table by my side, beside the lamp that she had lit. She stood back from the bed, and she was in ski-ing clothes, with heavy ski-boots on her feet. ‘I can get you some breakfast while you’re getting up,’ she said. ‘Would you like bacon and eggs? It’s about all there seems to be.’
I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I had been dreaming. This was Johnnie Pascoe’s room and I was in his bed, in his pyjamas. I was Ronnie Clarke, and I had work to do for him. I rose upon one elbow. ‘What’s the weather like?’
She crossed to the window and pulled up the blind. It was quite dark outside. ‘The sky is clear,’ she said. ‘It’s all starry. The wind has dropped a lot.’
I was still happy, and this confirmed my happiness, for everything was going to be all right this time. ‘Has the doctor turned up yet?’
She shook her head. ‘He said he’d be here by ten to six. How did you sleep?’
‘Never better,’ I said. I was Ronnie Clarke, and she had made me a hot drink in the middle of the night. ‘That’s thanks to your Ovaltine.’
She smiled. ‘How many eggs? I’ll do them while you’re getting up.’
She was the nurse, and she had been a hostess with AusCan; I was awake now. ‘Not bacon and eggs,’ I said. ‘It’s too heavy so early in the morning.’ She nodded. ‘I’d like a couple of boiled eggs, lightly boiled, and some toast.’
‘I’ll have it ready in the kitchen by the time you’re dressed,’ she said, and went out of the room.
I got up in the chilly, spartan bedroom, so much larger than it need have been, and put on Johnnie Pascoe’s dressing gown, and thrust my feet into his slippers. I went to the window and looked out. The night was as she said. There was not a scrap of cloud in sight, and very little wind. In Tasmania they get no actuals from the southwest, and a high had come along that the Met had not been able to forecast. It might well last for a few hours, long enough for me to put the doctor and the nurse down at the Lewis River. Everything was coming good at last. Everything was going to be all right.
8
THE DOCTOR CAME while I was having breakfast with the nurse at the kitchen table. We heard his car outside, and I got up with my mouth full and went to let him in. He was in ski-ing clothes as he had been before. ‘The weather’s looking better, isn’t it?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘It’s going to be perishing cold for you without the cabin door,’ I said. ‘But if it’s like this when we get there I think we might be able to put down and land it properly.’
He smiled. ‘Is Sister Dawson up yet?’
‘She’s in the kitchen. She didn’t go to bed. She slept in the chair before the fire.’
‘She told me she was going to do that. It looked a great deal more comfortable than the bedroom.’
He came with me to the kitchen and had a cup of tea while I was finishing my breakfast. As I got up from the table we heard the engine of the Auster start up from the direction of the hangar; Billy Monkhouse was there and on the job, running her up for me. Everything was under control now and coming good. Everything was going to be all right this time.
We went the few hundred yards to the hangar in the doctor’s car. It was cold and frosty in the night with the extra bit of chill that always seems to come before the dawn. We parked the car and got out by the hangar, the nurse carrying a little bundle of clothes tied around with string. There was a Proctor in the hangar, dimly visible in the half-light. Outside, Billy Monkhouse was sitting in the Auster still running it up; four equal blue f
lames streamed from the exhausts beneath the engine cowling. The two boys were at the tailplane, their clothes blown and buffeted by the slipstream.
I led the doctor and the nurse round behind the hangar, a little out of the noise, so that we could talk. ‘Now look,’ I said. ‘This wind’s not very strong. If it’s like this when we get down to the Lewis River we may be in trouble again. It may be too strong for me to land upon that little strip cross-wind, and at the same time not quite strong enough for me to hold her stationary across it, like I did yesterday. In that case I’d be moving forward ten or fifteen miles an hour across the strip, and you’ll have to get out damn quick.’
The doctor nodded. ‘I understand that. But I could pretty well fall out, since there’s no door.’
‘That’s what I want you to do,’ I said. ‘I hope we shan’t have to perform like that. But if we should, I want you to fall flat on the ground, so that the tailplane will pass over you. I don’t want that to hit you, for my sake as well as yours.’
‘I understand,’ he said again. ‘I’ve got to go down flat upon the ground as soon as I’m out of the machine.’
‘That’s the shot. Think you can do it? I’m afraid it’s a bit acrobatic.’
‘I can do that all right,’ he said. ‘You think we may be going forward fifteen miles an hour?’
‘It could be twenty,’ I said. ‘I hope it won’t be so fast as that. It could be like getting off a tram going a good bat, and falling down.’
‘Fall limp, and try to guard one’s head,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Look, Captain Clarke, I’ll do my best with it. If I think there’s not a hope that I’d get up without broken bones, then I won’t do it. There’s no sense in loading up the woman with another patient.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I hope it won’t be like that. But if it is, I shan’t think any the worse of you if you don’t jump.’
I turned to the nurse. ‘Sister Dawson, I’ll have you in the back seat, and the doctor beside me. If he succeeds in making it, then we’ll go up again a few hundred feet, and you get out of the back seat and sit beside me, where he was sitting. Then we come in again when you’re quite ready. Before we take off, now, I want you to sit in that seat and just practise getting out.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like to do that.’
I thought for a moment. ‘If it looks too difficult, or if the doctor has a very rough landing, I won’t ask you to jump,’ I said. ‘We’ll try again later in the day, when there’s a bit more wind.’
She said, ‘If the doctor jumps, I jump.’
There was a sudden resemblance to Johnnie Pascoe in the set of her chin, the line of her jaw, the wrinkling of her eyes. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you the right moment when I’m going as slowly as I can, and then you decide for yourself, like the doctor.’
The roar of the engine slowed to a tick-over as I was speaking, and then stopped as the engineer switched off. ‘That’ll be best,’ she said. ‘I’d like to practise getting out a few times, before we start.’
We walked round the hangar to the machine. Billy Monkhouse was getting out of the cabin. ‘Morning,’ he said in the darkness. ‘She’s all ready for you.’
‘Flares?’ I asked.
‘I got them laid down on the aerodrome. They’re upwind from the thorn tree in the far hedge. I’ll nip out in the car and put a match to them when you’re ready.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks. How much petrol did you use for running up?’
‘Gallon. Maybe a gallon and a half.’
‘Get a can and top her up,’ I said.
He went off for a can, and I put the nurse in the back seat, and got into the left hand seat in front of her myself. I made her practise climbing over into the front seat, and then practise getting out of the machine. The doctor helped her. ‘Right foot out upon the step. Swing round. Hold the door frame – there, and the seat – there. Change feet. Now, left foot on the step, swing round, and face forward. That’s right. Now, jump out and let yourself fall limp on your right side. That’s fine.’
I watched this going on in deep concern. It looked horrible, but they knew what they were in for and they were both quite prepared to do it. The final decision lay with me, however; if it seemed to me too dangerous I could veto it by not going near the ground. Only if I put the aircraft on the little runway could they do this thing. Mine was the responsibility, and mine alone. The feeling was still strong in me, however, that everything was all right now. Everything was going to be all right this time.
The girl practised it half a dozen times, the doctor once or twice. The extra petrol was put in, and we were ready to start. It was still dark, but a paler tinge was showing in the black sky over to the east. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
They got into their seats, and I got into mine, shutting my door beside me. Billy Monkhouse swung the little propeller and the engine caught; I sat there studying the instruments in the dashboard lights while he drove out to light the flares. When the first flare flamed up I waved the chocks away and turned, and taxied out to the far hedge.
The wind was light now, no more than a gentle breeze. I took the full length of the aerodrome, for the little aeroplane was heavily loaded and it was pitch-dark beyond the line of the flares; I could not even see the hedge I had to take off over. I lined up beside the line of flares, checked everything once again, and satisfied myself that both my passengers were strapped in and comfortable. Then I opened up the throttle steadily, and we moved off.
I got the tail up as soon as I could and trimmed her so, and then I sat and let her fly herself off the ground. She took quite a long run but we came unstuck at the fourth flare and we were a few feet up at the fifth. The hedge flashed by twenty feet below. I trimmed her for seventy and got on course, for it was all clear ahead of us for fifteen miles or so, and presently I throttled back to cruising revs.
It was pretty dark still, for the moon had set, but as we gained altitude the grey light to the east increased and I could see the line of mountains stretching out ahead of me in a clear sky. I could go over everything this time, and there would be no creeping round the coast in the grey muck. The Gipsy engine only had to keep on turning and I had no fear of that, and we should be okay. Everything was going to be all right, this time.
I kept her on a steady climb up to about five thousand feet. It was terribly cold at that height without the door on the starboard side. It must have been way down below freezing, and the wind beat and whistled around us in the cabin. There was no icing on the aircraft for there were no clouds, but ice formed from my breath upon the muffler round my throat and on my eyebrows. I became seriously concerned about this jumping out of the machine if my passengers were frozen stiff with cold; as soon as possible I must get down to a lower altitude and give them a chance to thaw out before they had to do their stuff. Yet we must take the most direct course that we could, lest we should be in trouble over petrol again before getting back to Buxton.
I compromised, and deviated slightly to the west and began to let down before we got to Macquarie Harbour, scraping the bush-covered hills with only a hundred feet to spare. It was full daylight by the time we passed over the east end of the harbour and the mountains were high above us on our port hand; we were down to two thousand feet or so and it was getting warmer, though the sun was not yet up. I headed for the coast ahead of us, and presently I checked her at a thousand feet, and we went on like that.
Presently I saw the Lewis River and the house, and at the same moment the doctor pointed it out to me. We went on looking for some indication of the wind, and seeing none. There was heavy surf against the rocks upon the coast but I judged this to be more from a ground swell than from any wind. I saw no white horses on the sea out from the shore; if there was wind, as there must be, it was impossible to say from which direction it was coming.
When we were a mile from the house I saw the woman come out of the door and look towards us; she had heard our motor. She went back, and came out agai
n carrying a bundle that must be the windsock, and I was grateful for her intelligence. She hurried with it up the hill to that desperate little airstrip that looked more like a very short length of cart track than ever, and as I turned upon a circuit she was busy with it at the flagstaff. She hoisted it, and it hung limp and vertical along the spar. There was no wind at all.
I stared at it for half a minute, incredulous, watching for the gust to blow it out. No gust came; the sock hung motionless. I turned to my passengers, elated. ‘Money for jam,’ I said. ‘I’ll make one dummy run, and if it looks all right I’ll land upon the strip. Keep your belts done up.’
The sun was coming up over the mountains to the east as I turned on to final. There was no wind at all to hinder us in landing. The only problem now before me lay in coming in slow enough to put the wheels down within a few feet of the near end of that short strip, and so to stop her before running off the far end of it. But Austers had landed there before in good conditions like we had, and I was feeling fine. I had had a good sleep and I was right on the top line. Everything was going to be all right, this time.
I lined up on the strip to come in for my dummy run, throttled back a bit, and put my hand up to pull down half flap. I brought her in upon the throttle, watching it ahead of me. There was a little stunted tree with a bush beside it about seventy yards from the end of the strip; if I pulled down full flap there when I was about six feet up, ready to catch her with a burst of throttle, I should just about make it. I shot a quick glance at the flagstaff and the sock to make sure there was no sudden gust of wind.
There was something funny there. I took my attention from the runway and looked at the sock properly. It was hanging vertical, but it was only half way up the mast. Then the woman caught my attention. She was standing by the mast and waving both arms horizontally.
I turned back to my flying, and moved the throttle forward. We passed over the strip twenty feet up as I gently raised the flaps. I turned to the doctor by my side. ‘See that?’ I asked.