Shute, Nevil (28 page)

Presently they went on board for tea. They had a fine tea, as if it was a birthday, with strange French jam and bread in long sticks only half an inch wide, and little cakes, and pain d’epices. It was great fun. After tea Corbett read to them, while Joan washed them and put them to bed. He read for nearly an hour, right through Nicodemus, and When Jesus was a Little Boy, and Ameliaranne, and the Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit. It took an hour because they had to stop at each picture while both children had a look at it, pored over it, and had it explained to them.

By seven o’clock they were asleep in their berths, tired out and happy. Joan finished off the baby and came up into the cockpit; Peter lit her cigarette. ‘It’s a pity we can’t go on shore,’ he said. It was impossible to leave the children alone on board. ‘We should have gone somewhere, this last night.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t feel much like it. I’d rather stay here.’

He nodded without speaking. Presently he said: ‘It won’t be for long. The war can’t go on for long at this pace.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s what one tries to think,’ she said quietly, ‘but it’s not true. Wars seem to go on for ever nowadays. All these new things-tanks and gas and aeroplanes-don’t seem to shorten wars a bit. They seem to make them longer.’

He shook her hand. ‘It won’t be so long.’

She said: ‘It may be for years, Peter.’

‘We mustn’t let it be.’

They sat in silence for a time, smoking in the darkness. Over the water the shore lights made dappled tracks, shattered by passing boats, rejoining as the water stilled. A gentle little breeze blew from the west. She said: ‘I knew that this would be the worst of all. So long as we could stick together everything was fairly all right. Even the bombs and cholera weren’t so bad. This separating is the worst we’ve had to face.’

‘I know.’

‘We’ll go back to Southampton when the war’s over, won’t we, Peter?’

‘You want to go back there?’

She nodded. ‘It’s our own place. We’ll be able to, won’t we?’

‘I’ll try and make it so. I’ll have to arrange with Bellinger to be on leave while the war lasts. I think he can carry on alone, for a time at any rate.’

She said: ‘I want to go back just like we were before.’

He hesitated. ‘We may not be able to do that. The house may be too bad.’

‘Then I’d like to have another house in the same part. Do you think we’d have to have new furniture?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It depends what happens to the house. We might have to have a whole new outfit.’

‘I believe that would be fun. The settee was awful, and the chairs weren’t up to much. We’d have had to get some new furniture soon, anyway. And Peter, I do want a decent radiogram. The children are getting old enough to listen to good music now-just a little bit, now and again. I’d like to have a piano.’

‘We might have to wait a bit for that.’

‘We could have the radiogram, couldn’t we? Even if we had to get it on the Never-Never.’

He pressed her hand. ‘We’ll have that,’ he said, a little huskily.

‘That’ll be something to look forward to.’

They went below, and began to pack her luggage and the children’s things. There was not very much; a suitcase and a kitbag held all that they had to take. When they had done all that was possible before morning they got themselves a meal; he had a bottle of Nuits St. Georges on board, and they drank that. Then for a long time they sat facing each other across the little table, littered with their plates and dishes. They sat smoking and drinking coffee, talking in little disconnected sentences.

‘We’re still young,’ he said presently. ‘We may lose a year together now-we may lose more. But we’ve got the rest of our lives before us.’

She nodded. ‘But that will be different. You’ll be a different man when you’ve been through this war, and I’ll be different, too. We shan’t be able to take up just where we left off. We’ll have to start off new.’ He smiled. ‘We shan’t find that so difficult.’ ‘I don’t think so. But this is the end of our young married life, Peter. We’ll be middle-aged when we meet again.’ He was silent.

She said: ‘I don’t know if in passing through the world you leave a mark behind you. A sort of impression. I ‘d like to think so, because I think we must have left a good one. We’re not famous people and we’ve not done much. Nobody knows anything about us. But we’ve been so happy. We’ve lived quietly and decently and done our job. We’ve had kids, too-and they’re good ones. But I wish we could have had another boy.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Too bad we didn’t get time to have Little Egbert.’

She roused herself. ‘Let’s do the washing-up.’ They washed up and sat for a little in the cockpit, well wrapped up against the cold night air. And presently they went to bed. They did not sleep well; each in the night awoke from time to time and heard the other turning on the opposite settee.

In the morning all was bustle and confusion. They did the last of their packing, breakfasted, and washed up. Then they left the luggage ready in the saloon and went on shore in the dinghy with the children, carrying the baby. They went to the Port Doctor’s office and got clearance; then they took a taxi to the British Consulate and got their passports. They turned back towards the Port du Commerce in the taxi; presently they came to a place where they had a wide view over the Rade.

Joan plucked suddenly at his arm. ‘Tell him to stop, Peter-quick!’

He leaned forward and spoke to the driver, who pulled up. ‘What is it?’ he asked her.

She pointed to the mass of shipping in the Rade. ‘Look, Peter-the aircraft-carrier! I’m sure it’s the Victorious.’

He stared out over the sea, to where the white ensign blew lazily about the stern. ‘It’s one or other of them,’ he said at last. ‘It might be the Courageous.’

‘Ask the driver if the Victorious is here,’ she said. He’ll probably know.’

With some difficulty Corbett did so.

‘Oui, M’sieur,’ said the man at last. ‘Le bateau anglais la-bas? On a dit le nom Victorious.’

Joan said: ‘Peter, we must hurry. She may be going off at any time-they never stay long. Get us on board the Lachine, quick, and then you go and see the admiral.’

They went down to the quay. He left Joan and the children there while he went off to get the luggage from the yacht. Then, carrying the suitcase and the kitbag, they set off down the crowded quays and wharves for the Lachine. They found her without difficulty, her loading practically complete.

He took Joan and the family on board, found the cabin that he had engaged for them, and settled them in. She turned to him.

‘We’ll be all right now, Peter,’ she said. ‘You must go off, and get on board the Victorious before she sails.’ He said: ‘There’s no great hurry. You’ll be going in an hour and a half.’

She shook her head. ‘Please, Peter, go now. We’re perfectly all right, and it’s a chance you mustn’t miss.’ She hesitated, and then said: ‘ I want to think of you, being in the Navy.’

‘I’d rather wait and see you off.’ ‘No, Peter. Please go now.’

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She said very quietly: ‘I’ve been wonderfully happy all these years, Peter. As happy as a girl could be.’

He patted her on the shoulder, but said nothing. He kissed each of the children, tickled the baby’s cheek. Then he was gone. Standing by the open port she watched him through a mist of tears, walking down the gangway and along the quay, out of her life.

He walked up through the town. In the British Consulate he made enquiries and was directed to the Naval Staff Office; he went there and got a signal sent to the Victorious without great difficulty. He waited half an hour in a bare waiting-room.

‘The admiral sends his compliments, sir. Will you go aboard. The boat leaves the pontoon beneath the bridge in half an hour, at thirteen hundred.’

He walked down to the boat, and was carried to the aircraft-carrier in a sad dream. He went on board and went straight to the fore cabin, where he had to wait for a considerable time.

He stood beside an open port, watching the traffic of the Rade. He saw the Lachine move from the quayside in the Port du Commerce, watched her as she swung towards the passage through the breakwater, as she came out into the Rade. He watched her as she passed along the shore, as she grew smaller in the distance, heading through the Goulet towards Canada. The flag-lieutenant said: ‘Mr. Corbett!’ He went through the steel door into the inner cabin. The admiral, seated writing at his desk, did not look up. He said:

‘Well, young man, what can I do for you?’

Corbett said: ‘I’ve got rid of my wife and family. I came to see if I could still have that commission, sir.’

To the people of Southampton.

This book is a work of fiction. None of the characters have any existence except in my imagination, barring one, and he is not in your part of the book.

I think you will ask, with some reason, why I have to write about your city. Why, if I can write about imaginary people, can I not write about an imaginary city-or at any rate, about a seaport city in the south of England called Northendton, in the county of Rampshire. My answer to this is, firstly, that I don’t think much of the Northendton convention, however good the precedents for it may be. And secondly, although I have written fiction, I have written what to me are very real forecasts of what may be coming to us. I wanted to make them real to you, and so I have laid them in real places.

I have never lived in your city. As a boy I had great kindness from one of you; since then I have visited your city from time to time, poked about in it, and I have admired its virility. But I do not know it as you do, and so it may be that in writing about it I have made mistakes.

Very likely by the time you read these words I shall be in trouble with your chief officials. Your Mayor and your Town Clerk will be grieved with me, your Chief Constable will be indignant, your Medical Officer of Health will be a very angry man, and your engineers of Electricity, Gas, Sewage, Telephone, and Water-especially Water-will be considering what action they had better take.

But I don’t care. If I have held your attention for an evening, if I have given to the least of your officials one new idea to ponder and digest, then I shall feel that this book will have played a part in preparing us for the terrible things that you, and I, and all the citizens of all the cities in this country, may one day have to face together.

NEVIL SHUTE.