Shute, Nevil (16 page)

‘Go now, before it gets too late.’

He rose and helped her clear away the tea-things, ‘Is there nothing I can do for you?’ he asked. ‘You know how much I want to help.’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll go on working. That’s all I need.’ She stared around the littered room, the window gaping open to the wind. ‘I don’t know what to do with this house and everything. What have you done with yours?’

‘Shut it up and left it. You’ll have to do the same. Just lock the door. It will be quite all right.’

She laughed, a little bitterly. ‘What’s the good of locking the door, with all the windows in this state?’

She did not need him; there was nothing he could do for her. He left her there, dry eyed, gathering up a few clothes before she went back to her work, and walked back to his car.

He drove back to Hamble in the middle of the afternoon, parked the car, and hailed Joan on the yacht. She came off in the dinghy to fetch him with his purchases. The first thing she asked was:

‘Did you find my powder-compact, Peter?’

He gave it to her, with the lipstick; she took them gratefully. He smiled. ‘Go on-laugh,’ she said. ‘But it does help to know you’re looking decent.’ She opened the compact and peered at the little mirror.

The next thing she asked about was the milk. He told her he had only got a pint.

‘But, Peter,’ she said, ‘that’s only two feeds! What are we going to do?’

There was an urgency about her manner that was new to him. He said: ‘Can she go on soup for a bit?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve been trying that, and it’s awful. I gave her some of the tinned soup this morning. She was sick at once. Then I opened a tin of milk and gave her that, and she had that up, too. The little brat’s been crying steadily since ten o’clock.’ He noticed that Joan was looking tired and worn.

He took her arm, resolving not to tell her about Gordon for the time. ‘Never mind,’ he said gently. ‘We’ll give her this lot when we get on board. And then you come on shore and take the car, and see if you can get any at a farm.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll do that. It’ll be a relief to get away from the baby for a bit.’

They went on board. In the steady roar that came from the baby he helped her to prepare a bottle of the fresh milk, watched her offer it. The noise stopped, and the silence could be felt. Phyllis looked up from playing with the little musical truck upon the cabin floor, and said:

‘I’ve got a piece of soap, Daddy.’

He expressed interest and went and fetched the kaleidoscope. ‘I got this for you from home,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d like to have it.’

She took it without much enthusiasm. ‘You didn’t bring my dolls’ house, did you, Daddy?’

‘No. Big girls don’t take dolls’ houses on boats with them. Only little girls do that.’

She was satisfied. John said: ‘Did you bring anything for me, Daddy?’

He gave him the little truck that he had brought, and set him playing with it on the cabin floor. Then he turned to Joan. She motioned him to be quiet.

‘She’s taken nearly the whole of this,’ she said very softly. ‘She must have been terribly hungry. Look, she’s practically asleep.’

He smiled. ‘Don’t shake her, or she’ll have it all up again.’

He watched his wife as she laid the baby gently in the cot, sound asleep. Then she came through into the saloon. ‘I’ll get on shore now,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the children with me.’

‘Aren’t you fed up with them?’

She smiled. ‘I’ll take them. They aren’t any bother, and they ought to have a run on shore.’

He helped her with the dinghy. ‘Where would you go for milk?’ she asked.

He rubbed his chin. ‘I should try Swanwick, or go on towards Wickham. Don’t go by Botley - there’s sickness there. I’ll tell you all about it when you come back. And I say, go easy with the petrol. Get some more if you can find any.’

He watched her row on shore, then went below. He looked to see that the baby was sleeping quietly, and then put on the meat to boil. Then he turned to the consideration of his yacht.

He had, not talked to Joan about it, but the idea of leaving Hamble was in his mind. Everything seemed to point that way, now. But if he were to do that, he would have to finish fitting out the boat. Most of the spars and sails and gear were stored on shore; he went aft to the sail-locker and dragged out various coils of rope, with their blocks and sheaves, looked them over dubiously, and put them back again. Then he sat down on a settee with an old envelope and made a list of what would have to be done before the vessel would be fit to go to sea. Presently he relaxed, lay back in meditation-on the couch, and slept.

He was still sleeping when the dinghy bumped against the side and woke him up. He went on deck, helped the children on board, and took the milk from Joan. They made the painter fast.

‘I only got a quart,’ she said. ‘I had to go nearly to Wickham to get that. Swanwick was hopeless. It’s chock full of people camping out upon the green, and in the fields, and everywhere. And not a drop of milk in the place. I tried three farms after that, and then at the fourth they were actually milking in the cow-shed. So they couldn’t say they hadn’t got any. But I had to pay half a crown for that quart.’

‘How long will that keep us going for?’

‘About a day.’

‘Did you get any petrol?’

‘There wasn’t a drop to be had, anywhere.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘You must have used about a gallon. A gallon of petrol for a quart of milk. We can’t go on for long like that.’

‘I know. But what are we going to do?’

He shook his head.

She took the children down below and gave them for their supper a plate of soup and a little loaf of bread that she had made in the Primus oven. John said:

‘Can I have some milk, Mummy?’

‘You don’t want milk,’ said Corbett, a little hurriedly. ‘Only babies have milk. When you’re big enough to go on a boat you eat soup and bread and jam, like real sailors. Makes the hair grow on your chest.’

‘Will it make hair grow on my chest, Daddy?’ asked Phyllis.

‘Girls are different. It’ll make hair grow all over you, till you’re like a little dog.’

They thought this was a great joke, and forgot about the milk.

He helped Joan to put them to bed. When that was done they went up together into the cockpit; it was windy and fresh up there; they sat for a little looking out over the river. Joan said: ‘You haven’t told me about Southampton yet. What did you do?’

He was silent. She looked at him curiously. ‘What did you do?’ she asked again.

‘I heard about Gordon,’ he said unevenly. ‘Joan, he-he’s dead.’ ‘Oh, Peter

He told her of his visit to the hospital, of his talk with Margaret. She heard him to the end. Then she asked him for a cigarette; he lit it for her.

She blew a long cloud of smoke. ‘She was quite right, Peter,’ she said at last. ‘We shan’t be able to stay here much longer. I thought we’d be all right here, but after seeing Swanwick-well, I’m not so sure. It was awful. Cars just parked about, higgledy-piggledy, everywhere. And people sort of living in them like gipsies, only not so well able to do it. Cooking on frying-pans in the rain over a methylated spirit stove like you use for curling-irons- that sort of thing. And no proper lavatories, of course. Pits dug about here and there-not nearly big enough. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there were epidemics. It looked sort of-squalid.’

He nodded. ‘Well, that’s what she said. They’ve got both cholera and typhoid at Botley now.’

They sat in silence for a time, watching the grey clouds rolling past.

‘Where could we go to, Peter?’

‘Bellinger’s taken his family to Ireland.’ He told her of the note that he had found in his office.

‘That’s an awfully long way away,’ she said. ‘I think that’s overdoing it a bit.’

He said: ‘I should have thought Scotland would be all right.’

‘We’ ought to know where it’s all right and where it’s not. But I haven’t heard any news for days.’

‘Nor have I. I’ve been too busy to bother much about it.’

‘You might have got a paper in Southampton.’

‘I don’t think there were any. I didn’t see any about.’

They came back to the matter in hand.

‘I should think it would be all right in the Isle of Wight,’ he said. ‘We might try Wootton Creek.’ He paused. ‘But if we’re going to do that, I’d better get the sails and boom on board and fit her out properly.’

‘How long would that take us to do?’

‘A couple of days, perhaps.’

They went below and cooked their supper. They ate it and washed up; it was then about nine o’clock. Across the black water the light streamed from the windows of the inn, invitingly.

Peter turned to Joan. ‘Go on shore and see if you can pick up any news.’

She smiled. ‘You go. I’d just as soon go to bed. Besides, you’ll pick up more than I should.’

He took the dinghy and rowed off to the hard. The inn was full of men, but they were sitting dour and glum; there was little talk. Corbett made his way up to the bar and ordered a pint.

He asked the barman if he had a paper. The man produced one that was two days old, a single printed sheet. Corbett retired with it to a corner of the room. In a quarter of an hour he came to the conclusion that in the game of bombing cities we were more or less holding our own. Our raids, however, were referred to as reprisals, which seemed to put them on a higher plane. There was very little other news, but there were columns of enlisting propaganda. He sheered hastily from that, with averted eyes.

He rose, and gave the paper back to the barman. ‘There’s not much in that,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘Difficult to know what really is going on, these days.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Not that we want to hear any more bad news than what we’ve got round about here. Still, it would be nice, to hear something good for a change.’

There was a short pause.

Corbett asked: ‘What do you mean by that? Is anything wrong-specially, I mean?’

The man dropped his voice. ‘You know up by the old reservoir, where all them campers are? Up past the aerodrome, Netley way. There was a woman took sick up there, Sunday night-and there’s several more of them sick now, so they say.’

There was a momentary silence.

‘I don’t like it,’ said the man in a low tone. ‘Straight, I don’t. If it gets any worse, I’m hopping it. I don’t want any of that cholera.’

Corbett asked, equally furtively: ‘Where would you go?’

‘Gawd knows. That’s the only reason I haven’t gone.’

He turned away to serve a customer.

Corbett left the inn and went back on board his yacht. As he was tying up the dinghy Joan put her head out of the hatch and asked if he had any news. He told her shortly what he had seen in the paper. And then, a little diffidently, he repeated to her what the barman had said. She listened to the end.

‘I don’t much like the sound of that, Peter,’ she said at last. ‘Getting a bit near home, isn’t it?’

He sighed. ‘There’s nothing to be done about it. But I do think this-we’ll start to fit out properly in the morning. Then if we don’t like the look of things we can slip across to the Isle of Wight.’

‘Do you think we’d be able to get any milk over there?’

‘I don’t know, I should think we ought to be able to.’

That night there was another raid. Corbett was awake and reading in his bunk, waiting for it; he knew from experience by now the sort of night that brought a raid, and the time when it might be expected to begin. Presently it came; he lay quietly in his bunk listening to the distant concussions and the gunfire. In the end Joan woke up.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They’re at it again. I don’t think there’s any point in getting up.’

They lay and listened for an hour or more, reading a little, talking now and again. Then that happened which brought them leaping from their bunks up to the cabin hatch, in time to see the last spurts of flame from a salvo that fell in a field half a mile away upon the Warsash side.

They stared at each other speechless, in consternation. ‘Peter,’ said Joan at last in a very small voice, ‘that was the wrong side of the river. Right away from Southampton. Do you think they’re bombing us?’

He dropped an arm around her shoulders. ‘I don’t think so. It’s a very bad shot. It’s what Collins said-our fighters are up there, harrying them. They’re getting very wild.’

She shivered. ‘It was awfully close.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘This puts the lid on it. We’ll get away from here now, soon as we can.’

Neither of them felt inclined to go back to bed again while the danger lasted. They put on coats and huddled up together in the hatchway, listening to the fatting of the bombs. None fell again so close, but they heard bursts in the direction of Bursledon and a series of deep, watery explosions near the junction of the Hamble River with Southampton Water. Presently there came the long lull that they knew must be the end; they went back to their beds.

The morning came up sunny and bright. In spite of the disturbed night they were up at dawn; there was a great deal to be done if they were going to leave next day. They got the children up and cooked the breakfast; as they were washing up Joan sounded the water-tank.

‘We’ll want some more to-day,’ she said. ‘Could you get that when you go on shore?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll take the water-bag with me.’

He went off shortly afterwards, pulled the dinghy up upon the hard, and walked into the inn. The barman was there, polishing the glasses. ‘I want a bag of water,’ Corbett said. ‘Can I go through and get it?’

‘Tap ain’t running.’

Corbett stood and stared at him. ‘There isn’t any at all?’

The other shook his head. ‘Go and try if you like. It wasn’t on five minutes ago.’

‘Has it been like that for long?’

The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right last night, it was. Then this morning there wasn’t none of them running. It’s the same all through the village.’

‘Do you think the mains are bust?’

‘Aye, that’ll be it. They was all around last night, between here and Southampton, dropping their bombs. Did you hear them?’

‘Did I not!’ He paused. ‘There was one lot over at Warsash.’