Authors: Nevil Shute
“I’ve got the whole stock of maps here in Tare,” he said. “I brought everything we’ve got for the whole world—maps, radio, and radar. How had we better split it?”
The Group Captain turned to the Canadian. “How are you fixed for going home?”
“I’ve got everything I want between Vancouver and White Waltham,” the Canadian said. “I’ve got nothing else.”
Frank Cox thought for a moment. “Leave the lot in Tare,” he said at last. He turned to the Canadian. “If you get another job away from Canada you’ll have to raise maps from the R.A.F. in London.”
“Okay, sir,” said Dewar. “You’re not coming back with us?”
“No. I shall be staying here, or going on with Tare.”
Dewar went off to his machine, and David said, “Any gen about our movements yet, sir?”
“Not yet,” said the Group Captain. “They’re still talking out at Gatineau. They’ll probably decide something tonight.”
The Australian said, “I’ll stay here till Dewar gets away. After that, is it still all right for me to keep my dinner date at the Chateau Laurier? I’ll be on call there.”
“That’s all right,” the other said. “I may be in there later on myself, with Macmahon.”
In the dusk Sugar was drawn with a tractor to the departure tarmac and the officers stood in a small group waiting for the passengers. At half past six exactly the Prince came with his valet; they saluted and he said a word to them, and got into the aircraft, followed by Dewar. The door closed and the engines started up and the machine moved off towards the runway; Cox and David watched the take off and watched the machine circle and head off towards the east.
At five minutes to eight David drove up to the hotel. He dismissed the taxi and went into the enquiry desk and asked for Miss Long. The clerk said, “She said, to go up to Suite 23—second floor.” He went up in the elevator and found the door. Rosemary opened it to him, and he went into the sitting room with her. There was a faint colour in her cheeks, and though she was evidently tired he thought her prettier than ever.
“My word,” he said, “they do you proud.
I
don’t get a suite.”
She laughed. “This isn’t mine,” she said. “It’s Major Macmahon’s, but he’s dining at Gatineau with the Queen tonight.” She hesitated. “There are so many reporters here,” she said. “We’d probably have trouble with them if we dined down in the public rooms, so I asked him if we could have dinner up here. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” he replied. He took his coat off. “I shan’t stay very long,” he said. “I know you’re tired.”
She smiled. “I’m all right,” she said a little wearily. “It’s just being cooped up in the office gets you down a bit. I tried to go out for half an hour’s walk yesterday afternoon, but there was a woman reporter just walked with me all the way.
The Daily Sun
, I think. I had to give up and
come back. They know there’s something in the wind, but they don’t know what it is.”
“You’ve not been out at all today?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t try it.”
“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s order a drink and talk about boats.”
She smiled at him and pressed the bell, and presently the sherry and tomato cocktails came, and then the dinner. They tried to keep the conversation upon boats, but the pressure of great events was against them. Once she said, “Did you hear anything about this row in England, David?”
He smiled at her. “Nothing but what’s in the newspapers,” he said. “We don’t gossip in this servants’ hall.”
She laughed. “Oh, you pig. To throw that up at me!”
“Why not?” he laughed with her. “I had a very good teacher.” He paused. “I haven’t seen the newspapers here,” he said. “Can you tell me anything about what’s happened at this end, without gossiping too much?”
“I typed a communiqué this afternoon—three drafts and then the final,” she said. “It’s being issued to the Press by now. I can tell you what’s in that.”
“What?”
She said, “Her Majesty has taken the opportunity afforded by her residence in Canada to hold conversations upon Commonwealth affairs with the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and with various elder statesmen of the Federal and the Provincial Governments. These conversations will be continued as opportunity presents itself in the other countries of the Commonwealth.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Nigger,” she replied. “I only wish I did.”
“I can tell you, or make a pretty good guess.”
“What’s your guess?”
“They’ve been debating what the hell they’re going to do about England.”
She sat in silence for a minute, staring at the table cloth. Then she raised her head, and said, “You’re probably right, Nigger. But I’m an Englishwoman, and so is the Queen. I don’t like hearing that sort of thing put into words. I don’t suppose that she does, either.”
“I’m sorry, Rosemary,” he said. “I’m just a bloody Colonial, I suppose. Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it,” she said unhappily. “I can’t forget it, because I know it’s probably true. It’s just that I don’t care to hear it said.”
They finished dinner and got up from the table; she rang the bell and the French Canadian waiter came to clear the table. When he had gone, he said, “I’m going to beat it pretty soon, Rosemary. If I go now, will you go to bed?”
She said, “Stay till ten o’clock, David. I shouldn’t go to bed before Major Macmahon comes back, because I said I’d be here to mind the telephone. He said that he’d be back here about ten.”
They sat down in armchairs before the radiants of the electric stove in the ornamental fireplace. “Let’s play a game of some sort, Nigger,” she said wistfully. “Let’s try and stop thinking about this wretched thing. Do you know any games?”
“You’ve not got any cards? Or chess? Or draughts?” She shook her head. He grinned and thought for a minute. “I tell you what,” he said. “Suppose you got a little illness—not too bad, but just enough to make you lose your job in the Palace. And suppose you couldn’t take another real job because of your bad health. And suppose then, somebody left you five thousand a year. What would you do with yourself? You tell me first, and then I’ll tell you what I’d do.”
She laughed. “You mean, I’d be well enough to do whatever I wanted to, but too ill to do any work?”
“That’s right.”
“What lovely illnesses you do think of!”
“Too right,” he said. “What would you do?”
She thought for a minute. “I believe I’d have a boat like yours,” she said. “A five tonner, just big enough for one to live in comfortably, or two at a pinch. I’d have a cottage with just a couple of bedrooms and a sitting room and kitchen, looking out over the sea. Somewhere near Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight, I think.”
“And just live there, and sail your boat?”
“I think so.”
“Wouldn’t you get bored with doing nothing but that?”
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t I be able to do any work at all?”
“Of course not. You’re very ill, you know.”
She smiled. “I think one would get bored if there was no work at all. I think I’d like to do a half time job of some sort, even if it killed me.”
“Very unwise,” he said. “As your medical adviser I can’t recommend it.”
“Good thing you’re not my medical adviser,” she replied. “Now you tell me what you’d do. Mind—no flying. You’re too ill to work.”
“I think I’d get a shark boat and fit it up as a yacht,” he said.
“What’s a shark boat like?” she asked.
“It’s a big boat, sixty or seventy feet long,” he said. “It’s generally got one big diesel in it—I’d like to have two smaller ones. It’s got a high bow and a low stern, with a steep sheer, rather like some of your English fishing boats, with a little wheelhouse at the stern. They’re splendid sea-boats; you could go round the world in a shark boat.”
She laughed. “Do you want to go round the world, David? You must have been round it about twenty times already.”
He laughed with her. “Ah, but that’s flying. You never see anything when you’re flying.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t know that I want to go round the world in my shark boat,” he said. “I’d like to cruise in it about Australia. Tasmania’s full of lovely creeks and harbours. And then up north, it would be tremendous fun to cruise about the Celebes, and the Sunda Islands, and the Moluccas, all the way to Borneo. That’s a huge cruising ground that no one ever visits.” He paused. “Years ago,” he said, “during the war, I was flying a new Hatfield up to Luzon in the Philippines. I put down at Darwin for fuel, and after that we’d got enough fuel to fly low, so I went at about a thousand feet all the way, just for fun. I’ve never seen anything so lovely. After Timor it was just hundreds and hundreds of islands, the Celebes and the Moluccas and the Philippines, all coral islands, so it seemed, and nobody much living on them. I always promised myself that one day I’d go there in a boat.”
“I’m not sure that you aren’t cheating,” she said. “There’s not much difference between going in a boat and going in an aeroplane. If you’re too ill to fly, are you well enough to go in a shark boat?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s only work that makes me go all queer.”
“You wouldn’t have a place on shore at all?”
“I don’t think so. You could live on a shark boat.”
“And you wouldn’t want to do any work?”
He grinned. “Getting a small yacht from A to B through a lot of uncharted coral reefs is work enough for me.”
“I wouldn’t be happy without some kind of a job to do,”
she said thoughtfully. “However interesting the rest of it might be.”
He glanced at her. “You’d better come and cook for me on the shark boat.”
“You wouldn’t want an invalid cook, liable to die on you at any moment,” she laughed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’d be a couple of old crocks together, with ten thousand a year.”
“You might have a lot of fun on ten thousand a year,” she said reflectively.
“We could have a lot of fun together on a darn sight less than that,” he replied.
She coloured a little, and said nothing. She sat staring at the elements of the fire, and he sat silent, noticing the curl of her hair behind her ear, the soft lines of her neck, wondering if he had said too much. She stirred at last, and looked at her wrist watch. “Quarter past ten,” she said prosaically. “I’m going to have a cup of tea before going to bed. Will you have one, David?”
He got to his feet. “Don’t you think I’d better go home?” he said. “You ought to get to bed, and so ought I. I may have to work tomorrow, and you certainly will.”
The door of the sitting room opened, and they turned towards it. Macmahon walked in with the Group Captain.
Frank Cox turned to the pilot. “The Queen’s changed her plans,” he said. “She wants to go from here to Canberra, in Tare.”
T
HE pilot stood in thought for a moment by the fireplace. Then he said, “Which way round?”
“You know the form better than I do, Nigger,” the Group Captain said. “Which way would you rather?”
Macmahon asked, “What’s the point at issue?”
David turned to him. “I should think it’s practically the same distance going east or west from here to Canberra. No—wait a minute—seventy-five west and a hundred and fifty-two east——” he stood for a moment in thought. “No, it’s much shorter across the Pacific. It just depends if there’s enough fuel held on Christmas Island.”
He glanced at the Group Captain. “You don’t want to land outside the Commonwealth? There’s fuel for us at Honolulu.”
“Christmas Island would be better. Can you make Christmas from here in one hop?”
“I’m not sure,” said the pilot. “I’ll have to get down to it on the maps. If we can’t we could refuel at Vancouver. We can do Christmas to Canberra all right, provided that they’ve got the fuel there.”
“Four thousand gallons, and a hundred and fifty gallons of oil?” The pilot nodded. “I’ll get a signal off at once.”
“If there’s no fuel there,” the pilot said, “we’d better go the other way about. In that case, we’d better go back
to White Waltham, and then on with one stop at Colombo.”
“Not England,” said Macmahon.
David looked up quickly. “Oh. Well, Malta. There’s all the fuel that we’d need at Malta.”
The Secretary said, “I think the Pacific route would be the better. Is there an alternative if there should be no fuel at Christmas Island?”
The pilot bit his lip. “Fiji, from Vancouver,” he said. “That’s the only one that keeps inside the Commonwealth. I’m not sure if that’s too far for us or not. You’ll have to let me go and work it out.” He turned to the Group Captain. “What time does she want to start?”
“As soon as possible, I think.”
“West about,” said David. “If it’s Christmas, I think we’ll try and get there in daylight. Take off about nine-thirty, after breakfast?”
“I think that would be all right. Have you been to Christmas?”
David nodded. “I’ve been there three times. It’s just a staging post, you know, on an island that’s a coconut plantation. I don’t know that it’s been used much since the war. The R.A.A.F. still have a detachment there.” He paused for a moment in thought. “Food,” he said. “We’d better stock up here for the whole trip to Canberra. We shan’t get much at Christmas, and we’ll only be there to refuel for an hour. How many people will be coming?”
“The whole party,” said Macmahon. “Eight passengers and the Group Captain.”
From the background Rosemary said quietly, “Am I going, Major?”
“Of course. Couldn’t do without you.”
The pilot said, “I’d better go and do my sums.” He turned to Cox. “Would you ring Ryder for me, sir, and tell him that I’m on my way out? Then if you could check up on
the fuel held at Christmas, I can ring you about midnight and we’ll make the definite decisions. Will you be here?”
“Yes, I’ll be here.”
David turned to Rosemary. “Thanks for the dinner, Miss Long. See you in the morning.” He put his coat on, and went out.
A reporter intercepted him while he was waiting for a taxi, and got a rude rebuff. He drove out to the aerodrome and worked for half an hour with Ryder at the navigator’s table in the Ceres, for the maps had been left in the aircraft. They walked back to the mess across the frosty tarmac under a bright moon, and talked again by telephone to Frank Cox in the hotel suite. Christmas Island, it appeared, had fuel; they confirmed the take off time as nine thirty and rang off, Cox to ring the Consort at Gatineau and David to start negotiations with Area Control for clearance to fly over the United States. Their course crossed the Pacific Coast in the vicinity of Los Angeles.