by Nevil Shute
“His wife’s alive, of course?”
He nodded. “She was with him down at this place Harrisburg.”
“Any children?”
“Yeah. He had four children.”
“Oh, Stan, how terrible! Will she get a pension?”
“I guess so,” he said. “I wouldn’t know exactly, but I’d say that she’d class as the widow of a veteran, same as if he’d been killed on combat service in Korea. He was only a lieutenant, so it wouldn’t be so much. Her Dad runs the lumber yard back in Hazel. I guess Ruthie ’n the kids ’ll be kind of hard up.”
She let him talk on, and he talked on for a quarter of an hour, gradually calming down, gradually building up a picture in her mind of the small town he loved so well. In the end he said, “I guess I’ll have to write to his mother, and maybe to Ruthie too. Apart from that, I dunno that there’s much that anyone can do.”
“There’s nothing more you can do,” she assured him. “It’s the sort of thing that happens, and one’s just got to make the best of it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just got to take it.” He glanced down at her. “It’s been mighty nice of you to let me talk like this. It kind of helps.”
“I know it does,” she said. “You’ve got to talk to someone.” She had noticed that tea was on the verandah and that her mother was there with the children. The American had regained control of himself now. “Let’s go over and have a cup of tea.”
“Just one thing.” He took her hand and drew her to him, and kissed her on the cheek. He smiled at her. “That’s for letting me talk.”
She withdrew, flushing a little. “That’s very sweet of you, Stan. But I didn’t want payment just for letting you talk to me.”
“I guess not,” he said. “But I kind of wanted to pay.”
They walked together in the hot sun across the sunbaked earth to the verandah of the homestead. “Stan’s got an afternoon off because they’re changing the drill or something,” the girl said to her mother. “I’ve been showing him the welder.” Later that evening she told her mother about Chuck Sheraton, and of Stanton Laird’s distress.
“Aye,” said the Scotswoman, “always up and down. Highly emotional, as they’d say. They’d all be the better for more self-control.”
“It must have been a frightful shock, Ma,” the girl protested. “I think he’s got plenty of self-control.”
“They wouldn’t have thought that in Edinburgh, when I was a child.”
“His great grandfather was a Scot. He’s a Presbyterian.”
Her mother looked up in surprise. “Do ye tell me that! Is that where the name Laird comes from?”
“That’s right, Ma. They emigrated from Scotland to the States sometime about a hundred years ago.”
“And the laddie’s a member of the kirk?”
“That’s right. All his family are Presbyterians.”
Her mother sat in silence, digesting this information. “Ah, weel,” she said at last in the intonation of her childhood, half forgotten now, “maybe there’s more to him than I was thinking.” She had never complained about the turn of fate that had made Roman Catholics of all her children, and it was many years since she had been inside a church of any sort herself. A fellow Presbyterian could still evoke her sympathies, however, even though he were American and only a very distant Scot.
Stanton Laird drove home that evening rested by his conversation with the girl, very much more at ease. The letters he would have to write tomorrow to Chuck’s mother and Chuck’s wife were no longer the ordeal they had seemed before; his talk to Mollie had given him back his sense of proportion and he now felt that he could write those letters without tears. He was immensely grateful to the girl, he hardly knew for what unless it was for her kindness in letting him talk. She was pretty, and young, and very, very kind.
He was tired when he got back to the camp. He did not want to meet his colleagues, and he was not hungry; he cut out supper altogether and went to his cabin. He had a cabin to himself, a privilege reserved for senior officials which he shared with Spencer Rasmussen. He was tired now, and sleepy; his distress assuaged, he knew that he would be able to sleep. Chuck was dead and he would never quite be forgotten, but now everything had come into proportion and Stanton Laird could sleep.
He dropped off his few clothes, lay down on the bed and pulled the sheet over him, and reached for his Bible. It was his habit in times of stress to lie and leaf this through before sleep came, seeking for a message, discarding the many irrelevancies till he found a verse comforting in his mood. Tonight he lay for a quarter of an hour till a familiar passage met his eyes:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He did not fully understand the reference to angels but he knew that that was due to his own insufficiency. The passage seemed to fit Chuck’s death, he did not quite know why, but it comforted him, and he laid the Bible down and turned the light out. There was always a message in the Book if you looked long enough; it had never failed him. Chuck was dead beside the railroad track, but God was still looking after him.
How kind that girl had been, letting him talk about Chuck. How sweet she had been when he kissed her. The kindest girl that he had ever met. The kindest … where had he heard that? the kindest … Practically asleep, he smiled. The kindest hopper this side of the black stump. That was it.
The kindest hopper this side of the black stump.
He slept.
All through April the drill bored deeper, making good about a hundred feet a day on the average. The cores and the spoil brought up were more or less as Stanton Laird had forecast from his geological survey; he did not expect anything sensational before the end of May, when they should have reached the second layer of anhydrite and the domed anticline below. Early in the month they struck the first layer of anhydrite, a belt of hard-cap rock about fifteen feet thick. This took them several days to drill through; beneath it there was limestone heavily charged with water. This was in accordance with the geologist’s prediction and they were prepared for it, but it slowed down their progress because now all casings had to be sealed with liquid cement pumped down between the outside of the steel tubes and the virgin earth to keep the water out, and this necessitated many pauses to let the cement set.
At the oil rig the labour was about seventy per cent Australian, working under the expert directions of the Americans. By paying a wage unprecedented in Australia the Americans had induced Australians to work as enthusiastically as the Americans, and had persuaded them to work through all the many Australian public holidays. Labour Day and Australia Day had been worked normally at the oil rig, but Anzac Day was approaching, and Topex had been briefed by the Bureau of Mineral Resources that Anzac Day, the anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915, was in the nature of a Holy Day and there might be real trouble reverberating through the whole of Australia unless work stopped for Anzac Day.
“I guess this Anzac Day must be kind of like the Fourth of July, only a durn sight more so,” said Spencer Rasmussen. “We never stop the drill for Independence Day.”
“I’d say it’s more like Easter Sunday,” said Stanton. “Sort of a religious day. Clem Rogerson from Mannahill, he’s going down to Perth for it, taking all his family. Does that each year, so he was telling me.”
“He does?”
“Uh-huh. He was in the combat group that landed on the beaches at Gallipoli, way back in the First War. Seems like on Anzac Day they get up and parade in the middle of the night, ’n stand to arms at dawn, just like they did then before the assault. It’s just the same as a religious ceremony, kind of a Midnight Mass.”
“Well,” said Mr. Rasmussen in wonder, “what do you know!”
He was willi
ng to co-operate, however. He made arrangements to stop drilling and close down all work at midnight, with the reservation that he himself and one or two of the leading American hands would use the idle time to conduct a stocktaking and an inspection of the plant for latent defects. He made arrangements with the Australian foreman to paint a scaffold pole white and to set it up as a flagstaff on a piece of level ground for the Australians to parade to before dawn, only to find that his Australian labour needed a good deal of persuading to get up at five in the morning on a holiday. However, the Americans were so sincere in their endeavours to do the right thing that the parade took place at dawn and was reasonably well attended, with a fair sprinkling of Americans standing in the ranks and making the best they could of the unfamiliar words of command. A ball game followed in the morning, a cricket match in the afternoon, and a good deal of beer in the evening. Next morning at eight o’clock the drill began to turn again.
The stocktaking and inspection had revealed a number of items to be required from Perth, which should be sent up on the next truck. It had not proved economic to arrange an air service to the oil rig, so that the only mail communication that the Americans had with their head office was by way of the weekly mail truck driven by Spinifex Joe. Most of their communications therefore went by telegram via the Flying Doctor radio service; after the medical calls upon the morning schedule the oil men, in turn with the station owners in the district, would dictate telegrams to the radio operator in Hastings, who would pass them to the post office, who would forward them normally over the land lines.
That morning Mr. Rasmussen sat waiting patiently with a three-hundred-word telegram in his hand, while the radio operator at Hastings, a Mr. Jerry Lee, took down a number of telegrams from various stations, picked at random out of the ether. He sat in the office where the set was now installed, with Stanton Laird nearby standing at his drawing board and poring over the most recent core analyses, correcting the depths marked in neat pencil on his geological surveys. They listened idly while one station sent a telegram reserving two seats on the airline down to Perth, another sent one ordering a water pump assembly for a Chev truck, and a third sent twenty pounds to a daughter stranded without money in Hobart. A fourth, to a stock transport company, was being dictated by a station four hundred miles to the north of them, when a voice broke in, and said,
“I tell you, ’e’s cut his bloody throat.”
Mr. Rasmussen blinked, looked up at Mr. Laird, and said, “What in hell was that?” He saw that the geologist was looking at the set, and that he had heard the words. He reached out, and turned the volume higher.
In Hastings, three hundred miles to the west, Mr. Jerry Lee was alerted, and began transmitting. “All stations off the air, please. Some station seems to be passing a medical message. Will that station please come in again and give station identification. Everybody silent, please.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackling of static in a dozen receivers that happened to be listening in, in a dozen stations spread throughout the breadth of northern West Australia. Presently the voice said again,
“’Ullo. ’Ullo.” And then, sotto voce, evidently to someone standing by the set, “The bloody thing ain’t working.” Another voice said, equally indistinct, “Give it them again, Bert.” And the first voice said, “’Ullo. I tell you, we got a bloke here cut his bloody throat. ’E’s bleeding something ’orrible, ’n now Jim Copeland’s muggered off into the bush.”
In distant Hastings Jerry Lee could hear the carrier wave still going on. He tried his own transmission set, but it raised a heterodyne squeal at once; he switched it off again. Throughout the country the listeners sat tense and alert. One, who recognised the name Jim Copeland, began transmitting, but the words were indistinguishable among the squeals, and presently he stopped.
The sotto voce voice said, “You got to turn that one to hear. Rec means Receive.” The carrier wave stopped.
Mr. Lee came on the air at once. “This is Six Easy Dog, Hastings Flying Doctor Service. We have received your message about somebody who cut his throat and somebody who went off into the bush. Now I want you to tell us the name of your station and some more about what happened. When you want to speak, turn the little switch low down on the left hand side to Trans, and directly you’ve done speaking turn the same switch to Rec. Don’t touch anything else on the set—it’s going fine. Now, turn your switch to Trans and tell us what happened. Over.”
The voice said, “’Ullo. This is Bert Hancock, at Mannahill. We got a bloke here cut his throat. He’s bleeding pretty bad. ’Ullo. Did you get that?” The carrier stopped.
Jerry Lee came in at once. “Flying Doctor here. I got your message. I’m going to switch you through to the doctor in the hospital in a minute, but first of all, you said somebody had gone off into the bush. What was that? Turn your switch to Trans now. Over.”
The voice said, “Jim Copeland, that was. Went off in the middle of the night sometime. Left a note on the cookhouse table, said he was going back to London. Cookie found it ’bout an hour ago. I’ll turn the knob now.”
“Flying Doctor here. Was this man Copeland walking or riding?”
“Walking, I’d say. The trucks are all here. ’E’s just a youngster, a Pommie out from home, jackerooing. ’E got a bit full last night. We all got a bit full.”
Mr. Lee, sitting in the radio house by the hospital in the little coastal town, thought quickly. He knew the Rogersons were all away from the station for he had passed the telegram booking their airline seats to Perth. In their absence, it was probable that the station hands had got at the grog, and had gone on a terrific bender all through Anzac Day. One was bleeding to death and he must hurry; there was no time to bother over the Pommie youngster who had walked out into the bush. He lifted his post office telephone, got Dr. Gordon in the hospital, and switched the reception on his radio through to the doctor, monitoring the conversation from his set.
By their receivers a dozen listeners sat, separated in some instances by hundreds of miles, waiting and alert to help if it were possible. The oil rig was one of the closest to Mannahill; they had no means of telling if the Regans at Laragh were listening or not.
The doctor said, “You say this man cut his throat with a razor?”
Bert Hancock said, “That’s right, Doc.”
“Where is he now? Over.”
“Out on the verandah, Doc. We got him sitting up, but it didn’t seem right to move him.”
“Tell me how long the cut is. Is it still bleeding?”
“I’d say it’s about four inches, Doc. It’s bleeding pretty fast still. Real nasty.”
Three hundred miles from the patient, the doctor mustered all his energies to help. He said, “Now look, Mr. Hancock. I’ll come out as soon as I can get the aeroplane, but first of all you’ve got to get that bleeding stopped. Have you got any sutures? Over.”
The other said doubtfully, “I don’t know what they’d be, Doc.”
“Well, have you got a needle and cotton?”
“I got a housewife, Doc.”
“That’s fine. Now what you’ve got to do is this. Take your needle and thread it double, and tie the ends of the cotton together. Then you’ve got to sew up that wound in his throat just as if you were sewing up a tear in your trousers. You’ve got to pull the edges close together, and then make the cotton fast. Then you must get a pad of linen to bind over it. You’d better tear up a clean sheet. Make a pad that will fit close down on the wound, and then tear bandages from the sheet and wrap them round his throat to keep the pad in place. You’d better keep him sitting up, and keep him warm. Don’t give him anything—no alcohol. I’ll be out this afternoon in the aeroplane, as soon as I can get to you. Now, can you do that? Over.”
There was a long silence. Then the voice said, “I dunno, Doc. I can’t stand blood. Makes me sick at the stomach. Always did, ever since I was a youngster. Gives me a real bad turn.”
In the office at the oi
l rig the Americans sat listening. Stanton said quietly, “Maybe some of us should go over, with the first-aid kit.”
Spencer Rasmussen said, “Take quite a while. The airplane with the doctor would make it ’most as soon. Hold it a few minutes.”
Over the air the doctor said, “You’ve got to do that, Mr. Hancock. If you don’t the man will die. I’ll be out with you in about three hours’ time. I can’t get to you sooner. If you don’t attend to him, he’ll bleed to death. Now, do as I tell you. Go and get your needle and cotton, sew up that wound, put the pad on, and come back and tell me when you’ve done it. Go and do that now. Over.”
The voice said reluctantly, “I’ll try it, if you say. But I gets sick at the stomach. I chundered once today already.”
The carrier wave stopped, and there was silence but for the crackling of the static. Then another voice broke in and it was the courtly, refined tones of the Judge.
“This is Laragh Station, 6 CO. We have heard the whole of that. Mr. Pat Regan and Miss Regan are leaving at once for Mannahill with medical supplies. They think that the journey will take them about an hour and a half in the jeep. I am afraid those poor boys must have been terribly intoxicated. Over.”
Three hundred miles away Jerry Lee said, “Thank you, 6 CO. I will tell Mannahill when they come on again. Listening out.”
At the oil rig Stanton said, “I guess I’ll go over, take Tex with me. We’re not so far away, ’n it might look bad if we didn’t show up to help.”
Mr. Rasmussen nodded, turned his switch, and said, “This is 6 QT, Topeka Exploration. We heard all of that. Mr. Laird and one other are leaving for Mannahill right now. I guess they’ll be there in about two hours. Over.”
Jerry Lee said. “Thank you, Topex. I’ll tell Mannahill. Listening out.”