by Nevil Shute
He bent to the fissure, sniffed it carefully, and tried to light it with a match, but it would not burn. He stood up thoughtfully, and looked around. It was within the cemetery area; the single strand of wire ran about two hundred yards to the north. There was nothing with which he could mark the place, and he had no instruments with him. He studied the fence line carefully, and walked towards it at right-angles, counting his paces; when he got there he tied his handkerchief in a firm knot on the wire. Then he made his way back to the jeep and drove on to his camp.
There was a strange jeep drawn up by the tents, and as he drove up he saw the bright colours of women’s print frocks. He realised that Mrs. Regan and Mollie had driven over to visit with them, and he quickened his pace. He drove in and got out of the jeep and went to meet them.
“I’m real sorry I wasn’t here when you came,” he said. “I picked this afternoon of all afternoons to go visiting at Lucinda.”
“Don’t fash yeself, Mr. Laird,” said Mrs. Regan. “The boys have been looking after us and giving us ice cream.”
“I invited them to stay for supper, Stan,” said Spencer. “The trouble is there’s only strawberry ice cream in the freezer, and you promised Miss Regan she’d have maple.”
Stanton was distressed. He turned to the girl. “I’m real sorry, Mollie,” he said. “We had maple quite a while, waiting for you to come, ’n then the boys got kind of tired of it, so we switched.”
“I got some maple in the freezer now, boss,” said Ted. “It’ll be hard in about an hour.”
The girl laughed. “It’s terrible nice of you to take so much trouble. I’ve had about half a pound of strawberry already. It’s awfully good ice cream.”
Relieved, Stanton turned to her mother. “Would you be able to stay ’n have supper with us, Mrs. Regan? The boys would like it if you could.”
“We’d be pleased to, Mr. Laird. It’s all cold at home, and the Countess can give that to the men. We’ll have to be back by eight o’clock, though, or they’ll be sending out a search party.”
Spencer Rasmussen glanced at his watch. “The six o’clock schedule will be on in half an hour,” he said. “We can speak to them on the natter session after that.” He meant, on the radio.
“Oh, that would do fine. I’d better speak myself if you can get them.”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Hank. He usually operated the set. “I’ll come ’n tell you when they’re on.”
Mollie turned to Stanton and said, “What did you think of Lucinda, Stan?”
“It’s kind of small,” he said. “I guess he’ll get it pretty nice, though, by the time he’s through. He’s certainly a worker.”
She nodded. “I know. It’s such an awful pity that he hasn’t got a better property to work on. There’s hardly any water there at all.”
Mrs. Regan had gone off with Ted to the cook tent, where he was showing her his stainless steel kerosene pressure cooking stove, his cadmium-coated aluminium freezer, and his water softener and cooler, with great pride. Stanton piloted Mollie to follow them, thinking that she would take an interest in these things, and this gave him an opportunity to say a few words aside to Spencer Rasmussen.
“You know what?” he enquired. “There’s a gas seepage, a little one, between here and the Bloody Gate, ’bout a quarter of a mile east, in the cemetery.”
“There is?”
“I’ll show you in the morning.”
“It wouldn’t be a decomposing body? Seems like that cemetery’s getting kind of crowded.”
“I don’t reckon that it’s that. I know gas when I smell it.”
He joined the ladies at the cook tent. They were amazed at the fine quality of the equipment with which Ted worked. “There isn’t a thing hardly that’s not stainless steel or aluminium,” Mrs. Regan said in wonder. “Even the table’s got a stainless steel top …” She stood looking around her. “It must all have cost a fortune. I’ve never seen so many stainless steel things in one place.”
The Americans were slightly embarrassed. “Don’t you have stainless steel things in your kitchens, Ma’am?”
“Oh yes, we do. But not so much as this, or such good quality.” She picked up a stainless saucepan. “It’s got a ground bottom and all, but it’s so light.”
Stanton asked Ted, “What do we get for supper tonight?”
“Fried chicken, sausages, and hot cakes, boss. I got some biscuits in the oven. Fruit salad ’n ice cream. Coffee.”
“I guess that ’ll do.” He turned to Mollie, smiling. “Sounds like a real American meal,” he said. “I hope you’ll be able to eat it.”
“It sounds delicious.”
He took them round the camp, into his own sleeping tent first. Again they were naïvely astonished at the comforts with which the Americans had equipped their camp, which seemed so natural to them. The pressure water system in the showers conserving water by the use of fine, high-power jets intrigued them. “It’s better than we’ve got at Laragh,” Mrs. Regan said. “I never saw a camp fitted up like this before.”
“Maybe it’s the sort of work we do,” said Stanton a little apologetically. “We use some mighty delicate instruments, and they need mighty delicate maintenance. I guess you’ve got to live a bit differently if you’re going to do fine work in camp.”
He took them to the observation truck and showed them the galvanometers, the gravimeters, and the magnetometers. For a time he tried to explain to them how these things worked and what they were each for, but he soon gave that up. The scientific principles were outside their experience; to them it was as if he had been speaking in a foreign language when he spoke of matters that were his normal life and work. He had experienced this before in his own family; his mother had never been able to grasp exactly what he did or how he did it. He was content to leave it so, only demonstrating to them the complexity of the instruments to make his point about the camp.
“It’s just like the insides of a clock, only much more delicate,” Mollie said. “If that goes wrong, have you got to put it right?”
“Either that, or send eleven hundred miles to Perth for another one.” He shut the case of the gravimeter carefully and put it back into its dustproof box. “You want to be clean and cool and in good shape before you start ’n pull that down,” he said. “I guess that has a bearing on the camp equipment that we take along.”
She nodded. “I see what you mean.”
He took her to the office tent, where his drawing board was set up, and a table that supported the black cases of the radio transreceiver. Hank was there, tuned in and waiting; a low chatter of medical consultation came from the loudspeaker. He disregarded that, and showed them the plan upon his drawing board, the sections of the strata so far as he had been able to deduce them at that stage. The drawing meant little to them, but the air photographs meant more, and now he was able to explain to them upon the photographs a little of what happened underground.
Ten minutes later, Hank said, “Natter session coming on now, Stan. I told them a while back we wanted Laragh.”
“Okay. Let us know when you’ve got them.”
He took his guests through into the mess tent next door, a marquee with a long table down the middle, a couple of deck chairs, and a side table with a litter of magazines on it. Presently Hank shouted that Laragh was on the air. Stanton took Mrs. Regan back to the set, leaving Mollie in the mess tent, thinking that the older woman might need help in operating a radio telephone. He need not have worried; the set was as normal to Mrs. Regan as her kitchen stove. She spoke for a few minutes to the Judge, telling him where they were and giving him instructions about supper to retail to the Countess. Then they went back to the marquee.
They found Mollie engrossed in the advertisement pages of the Saturday Evening Post. She looked up as they came in, but did not put the magazine down. “You do have lovely things in America,” she said. “Tell me, are these pictures real?”
“Real?”
“Do you
really have cars like that?” She pointed to the long, flowing lines of a big convertible in a glamorous setting.
He studied the picture. “I guess so,” he said after a minute.
“Don’t you know?”
“It was just trying to remember,” he said. “I’d say that’s about right. Sometimes an artist might exaggerate, make it look longer than it really is. No, I’d say that’s about right for an Olds.”
She studied the picture for a moment or so longer, and then leafed the pages through slowly, looking at the television sets, the electric toasters, the electric blankets, the brightly coloured bedspreads. The advertisements, designed to catch the attention of a population accustomed to discount their advertising, were positively dazzling to her. She put the Post down reluctantly, afraid that she was being rude to her host. “You do have the most lovely magazines,” she said.
He was a little surprised at the note of yearning in her voice, because these articles were normal to him; he liked the Post for the articles and stories, but he paid little attention to the advertisements. “Would you like to borrow some of them?” he asked.
She withdrew a little. “Oh no. You’ve got nothing else to read.”
“I think the boys have read most of these,” he said. “There’s a fresh batch comes in each week with the mail.” He wanted her to have them very much, and her sincerity in not wanting to deprive them of their reading pleased him. They were obliged to the Laragh people for doing their washing; if now they could give pleasure to this girl it would be something in return. The Post was his own property, but there were many others on the table. He called through to the office tent, “Hey, Hank? You finished with the September Cosmopolitan, if I lend it to Mollie?”
“Sure,” said Hank. He appeared in the mess tent. “Look, she can take these others, too.”
She could not avoid their generosity, nor did she really want to; there was little to read at Laragh but the books she bought herself or borrowed from David Cope. The Americans made up a bundle of about a dozen magazines for her and put them in the Laragh jeep, and her thanks were more evident in her gleaming eyes, her raised colour, and her slight excitement than in her words. Stanton, pleased himself at her pleasure, became aware that he was talking to a very lovely girl, a lovelier girl than he had seen in Hazel during his vacation.
Supper in the mess tent with the Americans was a new experience for Mollie, as it was for her mother. The Americans, however, were more accustomed to the change in manners than the Australians. “I guess we don’t eat the way you do,” said Stanton to the girl, laughing. “See, this is what you do with it. You lift it up, so, ’n put some butter in, ’n then the maple syrup, ’n then a bit of fried chicken, ’n a bit of bacon, ’n a hot biscuit and jam on the side. Then you just eat with a fork.”
She laughed with him. “Mayn’t I use my knife, Stan?”
“I guess you can,” he said generously. “Back home you wouldn’t use it the way people do here.”
“I’ll try and do it your way.”
“That’s a girl,” said Spencer Rasmussen. “Make believe you’re eating with Chinese and using chopsticks.”
“It’s not like that a bit,” she said. “I think it’s rather a nice way of eating. But we don’t eat sweet things with meat so much as this.”
“We eat more sweet things than you do, I’d say,” said Stanton. “That might have something to do with the climate back home. We don’t hardly ever get it hot like this, but it gets mighty cold in the winter in some parts of the States.”
“Is it very cold where you live?” she asked.
“Most winters we’d have a foot of snow for around three months,” he said. “A bad winter, or in a blizzard, it might be two feet.”
“Is that fun, or is it horrid?” she enquired. “I’ve never seen snow.”
“I’d say that probably depends on how old you are,” he said. “If you’re at High School or home from college on vacation, ’n go ski-ing or on sleigh rides, then it’s fun. I always liked the winter when I lived at home. I guess you’d get to look at it differently as you got older.”
In the hot outback, in a tent pitched on the red earth, it all seemed very distant, very beautiful, and as refreshing as the Americans’ ice cream. “You really do use sleighs to go about in, in the snow?” she asked. “With horses, with bells on the harness?”
“Only on the farms,” he said. “The main highways, they get the snow ploughed, ’n you change to your snow tyres for winter. But in the country districts they use sleighs still. Not much, but enough to find one for a ski-ing party when you want it.”
After supper the Regans started off for home, Mollie driving the jeep. It was a fine night with a rising moon, and the track, though faint, was clearly visible in the silvery light. Mrs. Regan and Mollie protested that they were perfectly capable of driving back to Laragh by themselves, as indeed they were, but the Americans would not hear of it. To them the wide expanse of the station properties was still menacing and journeys in them were expeditions to be undertaken with some thought and some provision for disaster. It was unthinkable to them that two women should be allowed to venture out at night to drive home fifteen miles without an escort, and they were unyielding on the point. Accordingly Spencer and Stanton got into their jeep to follow the ladies. They drove behind them till the shearers’ camp of Laragh came in sight; then they pulled up alongside, waved and shouted good-night, and wheeled around to drive back to their camp on the oil site.
Mollie Regan went to bed with an armful of American magazines and with a lot to think about. A whole new world was opening before her. She had never in her life been outside West Australia, had never been further from her station home than Perth. Throughout her education at the convent school and at the University of West Australia she had been brought up to believe that England was the seat of all learning, all wisdom, and all culture in the world. Everything stemming from her own country was immature and puerile compared with that which stemmed from England. As regards America, her opinion was formed entirely on the movies and the movie magazines. For fifteen years, the majority of her short life, the dollar exchange shortage had prevented any Australian from visiting the United States unless on dollar-earning business. In consequence Mollie Regan had never spoken to anybody in her life who had visited America. The picture of America that had been placed before her was that of a country uninterested in simple pleasures and devoid of simple virtues, brash, over-luxurious, dissolute, ignorant, uncultured, and hagridden by gangsters.
She had accepted this picture of American life without question; now she was having to revise it. She had found these Americans, mostly men in their late twenties or early thirties, to be simple and unaffected people. Half of them did not drink at all, all were generous to a degree that she had seldom met before, and it had not escaped her wondering notice that the only book in Stanton Laird’s tent had been a Bible. She did not understand their work, but it was quite clear that they were highly educated people and very competent in the outback, strange though it was to them. Her mother had offered to do their washing and they came in with that every other day, and to collect their mail; apart from that they had not asked for anything, and needed no help at all from Laragh Station. Their equipment was superb, but she could not hold that against them; if they were clever enough to invent a shower that ran for three minutes on a gallon of water they were not to be despised for the achievement. Physically they were very like the people that she was accustomed to see on the movies, and they had the same sort of names, but in behaviour they seemed totally different, and a great deal nicer. Especially their leader, Stanton Laird.
David Cope, coming to Laragh to meet Spinifex Joe next mail day, found the verandah table littered with American magazines, and Mollie deeply engrossed in them. “The things they have!” she said. “Look, there’s a toaster that makes the toast pop up and turns itself off when it’s done! Isn’t that a good idea?”
“You can get those in Perth
,” he said.
“Not like that—where they pop up and turn themselves off.”
“Yes, you can.” He named the make. “I’m not sure that they’re not made in Australia.”
He convinced her in the end about the toaster. She said, “Well, look at these sheets. They’re made with a sort of pocket that the mattress tucks into.”
He grinned. “You can get those, too,” he said.
“Oh, David, you can’t! I know you can’t.”
“You can.” He told her the name of the shop.
“Well, anyway, you can’t get a car like that in Perth.”
He laughed. “I don’t suppose you can in America, either. I should say the artist’s had a go at it.”
“He hasn’t,” she informed him. “I asked Stan, and he said an Oldsmobile really was just like that.”
He had to accept defeat about the car. He picked up one of the magazines and leafed it through, a little enviously. “I believe we’ve got most of these things,” he said. “Not the big cars or the television, of course, but most of the rest. But they do advertise them well, don’t they?”
She was unconvinced. “I don’t believe you can get half these things here in Australia,” she said. “I think they’re beaut.”
Presently the mail was sorted, and it was time for him to get back to Lucinda. “What about the movies?” he enquired. “Mannahill on Saturday?”
“Some of the Americans are going,” she said. “They’re coming here at about four o’clock to pick us up. I don’t know who’ll be going over from here. I told Stan to come through with his party and have a cup of tea, and we’d go on after that. You’d better join up with us here, David, and we’ll all go on together.”
He hesitated for a moment. “All right.”
Back at the oil site the Americans were now paying a great deal of attention to the land around the gas seepage in the cemetery. They spent some days examining the surface outcrops and correlating them, so far as they were able, with the more detailed knowledge they had gained of the sub-surface structure round their camp, three miles to the north. It was evident to them that the strata underneath the cemetery ran up in a gentle fold to the north end, but they had no means on the surface of estimating the extent of this fold, or the amount of gas or oil that might be trapped in it. In the circumstances there was only one logical course for them to pursue.