Shute, Nevil (12 page)

Joan touched him on the arm. ‘Let’s get along,’ she said. ‘You can come back and look at this afterwards.’

Corbett nodded and moved the car back into the traffic stream. He drove round the aerodrome and down the hill through the village to the water’s edge, parking the car above high-water mark. The tide was nearly full.

He got out of the car and looked about. ‘I’ll go and see if I can find a dinghy,’ he said. ‘If not, I’ll have to get our own out of the yard.’

Joan nodded. ‘I’ll stay here and give Baby her bottle.’

‘All right.’

Phyllis said: ‘May I go with Daddy?’

John said: ‘May I go with Daddy, Mummy?’

Corbett said: ‘You can come, Phyllis. You’d better stay with Mummy, John. You can come when you’re a big man.’

‘May I take Teddy with me, Daddy?’ asked Phyllis.

‘Yes, you can bring Teddy.’

John said: ‘May I give Baby her bottle?’

Corbett left Joan to deal with that, and taking his daughter by the hand, went off to the yard.

He found a good deal of activity. Practically all the boats laid up in the yard seemed to be being lived in; evidently the owners of boats had come to the conclusion that their boats were safer residences than their houses in the towns. There was much coming and going by well-dressed, well-educated people in the yard. But there were no dinghies to spare. After a good deal of delay Corbett located his at the back of a far shed; he got a young man in a pullover and plus-fours to help him get it down to the water.

‘Lammermoor’s the name,’ said the young man. ‘My dad, he’s the Lammermoor of Pearson and Lammermoor, in Commercial Road, Portsmouth. Drapery, toys, and all sorts. Maybe you know it?’

Corbett nodded. ‘I’ve passed it. How are things in Portsmouth?’

‘It’s been terrible. They say that London’s had it bad, and Bristol, but they couldn’t possibly have had it worse than we did. Bombs every night, hours on end.’ The young man’s lips twitched like a rabbit. ‘Dad, he stayed on to see the business right, and he made me bring Mummer and Sissie and Ted here. We’ve got a motor-cruiser just up there, the Happy Days. Come up and have a cup o’ tea if you have a minute.’

Phyllis, clutching her teddy-bear, stared at him wide-eyed. Corbett excused himself, took the dinghy, and rowed round to the hard where Joan was waiting in the car.

She got out and came to meet him, the baby in her arms. ‘You’d better put me on board with the children first,’ she said. ‘We’ll take this basket and the paraffin, and then I can get the children something to eat. Is there any water on board, do you think?’

He nodded. ‘About half a tank. But it’s been there since last summer.’

She forced a laugh. ‘I’ll have to boil that before we give it to the children.’

He smiled. ‘You’d better boil it before you give it to me -let alone the children. But don’t waste any of it, not until I can find out how water is round here.’

He helped Joan and the two children into the dinghy and pushed off. The mud berth where his vessel lay was half a mile down river. He rowed down to her and drew the dinghy up by her counter, and held the boat while Joan got on board with the baby; then he passed the other children up to her. She unlocked the cabin hatch and went below. Corbett rowed back upstream to his car.

He made the seven cans of petrol the foundation of his next load; he was sensitive about them and glad to get them on board out of sight. Two more trips emptied the car; after the last load he climbed on board himself and surveyed the mass of gear accumulated in the cockpit. ‘Better get some of this stuff stowed away,’ he said to Joan.

She looked up at him appealingly from the cabin, feeding the children with milk and bread and jam, tired and hot. The baby was yelling furiously on the bare foundation of a settee bunk.

‘Get the mattresses next, if you can,’ she said. ‘Then we can get the children into bed and turn around a bit ourselves.’

He nodded, glancing at the sky. It was not going to rain; there was no harm in leaving the stuff out on deck. He rowed back up the river to the hard, went to the store, and carried down the mattresses one by one to the dinghy.

He took them back to the yacht, passed them below to Joan, and helped her to lay them down. He was tired then; while she began putting the children to bed in their novel surroundings he sat down on the heap of dunnage in the cockpit and lit a cigarette. But she would not let him finish it.

‘There’s very little water in the tank,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t like to go on shore and get some more?’

‘I’d hate it,’ he said. He got up wearily, fetched the canvas water-bag from the sail-locker, and, in the falling dusk, rowed to the hard again. He landed, pulled the dinghy up a little, and walked with his water-bag towards the houses. Suddenly he brightened. It was after six o’clock, and the pubs were open. Light streamed from the-wide-open door of the ‘Hamble Arms’; he heard a buzz of conversation and the clinking of tankards. He made his way into the saloon bar. The room was thronged with people from the yachts, all listening to the news broadcast from a wireless set. He stood for a time quietly in a corner and listened with them; in a quarter of an hour he learned a great deal about the progress of the war. Queerly enough, it did not seem to touch him personally; it was as if he had been reading of the war in Spain. It was a restricted and a censored broadcast. A few sporadic air-raids on a few towns in the country were admitted, but no details were given and the topic was passed over quickly. A full account was given of the raids carried out by our own Air Force ‘as measures of reprisal’. There was no mention of any action by the Army or the Navy, though the broadcast ended with a stirring call to enlistment in all services.

The news ended, the set was switched off to conserve the batteries, and a subdued hum of conversation broke out in the crowded room. The reception of the news was mixed. There was little enthusiasm, no keen discussion of the war. Most of the men in the saloon seemed to be of military age, some of them with their wives, many of them evidently in good circumstances. To Corbett, there seemed to be an atmosphere of uncertainty, of bewilderment, among them. They were all men of the officer type, who might have been expected to be serving in a war that was now nearly a week old. It appeared to Corbett that they were all in the same boat as he was himself. They were delaying and procrastinating, waiting to see their families established in safety before they went to serve. And each of them, secretly and individually, was unhappy and ashamed of the line that he was taking.

They did not stay and gossip much. The news broadcast ended, they finished their drinks and went quietly back on to their boats.

Corbett ordered a pint of ale. The barman recognised him and wished him good evening. ‘Come down to stay on your yacht, Mr. Corbett?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Mrs. Corbett with you?’

He nodded. ‘She’s on board with the children.’

The barman nodded. ‘Most people seem to have come to their boats,’ he said. ‘Boats, cottages, or tents. Cold comfort in a tent this weather, if you ask me. But there’s a regular camp by the old reservoir. People living in their cars, and all sorts.’ He laughed shortly.

Corbett said: ‘I want some water. Can I fill a water-bag?’

‘Surely, Mr. Corbett. You know where the tap is-out in the yard. It’s running all right now.’

Corbett looked up, startled. ‘Have you had a water shortage here?’

The man nodded carelessly. ‘Thursday, it was off. Or was it Wednesday? One or other of them. After one of them raids you had in Southampton. One of the mains was bust, but they seem to have got it mended now.’

‘Do you get your water from Southampton, then?’

‘Oh, aye. All our water comes from Southampton, saving one or two of the cottages that have wells. That’s why the people went up to the old reservoir to camp, because the water was off. Still, can’t say I’d like to drink that water from the reservoir myself, nor out of them old wells either. Rather drink beer.’ He laughed comfortably.

‘Have a pint with me.’

‘Thank you, sir. I don’t mind if I do.’

A man standing near the bar and listening to the conversation, said: ‘Most country districts get their water from the towns, these days.’ He paused. ‘When they’re near enough, I mean to say.’

‘I suppose they do,’ said Corbett.

He stood thoughtfully for a few minutes, drinking his beer. Presently he said to the barman: ‘I shall want some milk in the morning. Where had I better go for that?’

The other man laughed. The barman said: ‘I really couldn’t tell you, Mr. Corbett. Everybody’s after milk.’

‘You won’t get any milk in Hamble,’ said the other man. ‘Better stick to beer.’

‘I can’t give the baby beer. Isn’t there any milk at all?’ The barman shook his head. ‘There was a cart come in the day before yesterday. Regular scramble for it, there was. I don’t know where you’d go for milk, Mr. Corbett -really and truly I don’t. You might try one of the farms on the Warsash side, over Titchfield way.’

The other nodded. ‘That’s your best chance to get milk, if you’ve got young children. It’s no good going to the farms between here and Southampton. There’s a milk queue half a mile long at each of them.’

Corbett finished his beer, stood up, and stretched. His fatigue had left him. ‘I’ll get the water, anyway,’ he said, ‘while the going’s good.’

He went out into the yard, filled his water-bag, and carried it with difficulty and with many pauses down to the dinghy. The tide had fallen quickly while he had been on shore. He dragged the boat down till she floated and rowed back to his yacht. The dinghy grounded on the mud fifty yards from the vessel.

Joan was sitting in the hatchway, smoking a cigarette and watching him. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I’m stuck. What do we do now?’

‘Get out and walk,’ she said. ‘I can’t. I’d go in up to the waist.’ ‘Well, you’ll just have to sit there, then. Why did you stay so long on shore?’

‘I was drinking in the pub.’

‘Pig,’ she said, without animosity. ‘Did you get any water?’

‘I got that. What about the children?’

‘They’re in bed and asleep. You’d better go back on shore and get yourself something to eat there.’

‘Are you all right? If you chuck me my gum-boots I’ll have a crack at getting on board.’

‘I couldn’t chuck them that far.’ She blew a long cloud of smoke. ‘Don’t worry-there’s nothing for you to do here. I’ll make myself some cocoa and go to bed. You go on shore, and come back when the tide comes in. When will that be?’

He thought for a minute. ‘I should be able to get on board about eleven.’

She nodded. ‘I shall be asleep. Don’t make a row when you come back.’

He pushed the dinghy off the mud and rowed towards the hard. On the way she hailed him.

‘Oh, Peter. Get some more cigarettes, if you can!’

He went back to the inn and had a cold meal in the snack bar. There was evidently a food scarcity, but he got a small plate of cold beef and some bread and cheese after a time. There were several others in the snack bar, like him, dining on shore. There was no conversation; everybody seemed to be uneasy and depressed. As he finished his meal it began to rain.

He paid his bill and went to the door of the inn. The night was wet and windy, but the rain was light. As he stood there looking out, an aeroplane roared over in the pitch darkness, then another, and a third. The barman, collecting dirty glasses in the saloon, came to the door and stood beside him, looking up into the dark night.

‘Going off again,’ he said. ‘They get the hell of a time, them chaps.’

‘Are they from the aerodrome here?’ asked Corbett.

The man nodded. ‘Every night they goes up, just the same, wet or fine. Mostly wet. And they don’t do no bloody good, either.’

‘They don’t seem to be able to get at the bombers.’

The man shook his head. ‘You should hear them talk… . Proper fed up with themselves, they are.’

‘Do they get any accidents?’

‘Plenty, nights like this. There was one fine, starry night-Wednesday, was it? They didn’t have none at all that night. But wet, dark nights like this, in them fast single-seaters-they goes piling ‘em up right and left. ‘Tisn’t reasonable to expect otherwise.’

‘When do they come back to land?’

‘They’ll be at it all night, in shifts, like. Up and down, all night long. You want to go up there and see. It’s quite a sight.’

He went back to the bar. Overhead the aircraft roared up into the darkness at half-minute intervals, interminably. Corbett stood for a time in the doorway finishing his cigarette, then buttoned his coat round him and walked up towards the aerodrome.

The entrances were unguarded. He had no difficulty in walking up between the buildings to the edge of the flying field. The place was thronged with men, lorries, and cars, moving and crowding in an orderly, disciplined confusion, each intent on his own job. The lights shone shimmering on wet raincoats and on dripping lorry tarpaulins; beneath each tail-board the exhaust roared out in a great cloud of steam in the wet night. Corbett made his way forward to the edge of the tarmac, hear the control, and stood for a time in a sheltering doorway to see what was happening.

The flare-path was laid out into the wind. Five open buckets filled with blazing rags and paraffin stretched in a line down the grass, with one placed transversely at the windward end. The machines, greenish-black in the yellow, flaring light, were taxiing one by one to the far end for the take-off, as each was ready a light flashed at the control. The pilot opened his throttle with a high-pitched scream from the engine, supercharger, and propeller, accelerated down the line of flames, slowly at first and then more quickly, rolled into the air, retracted his undercarriage at once, and vanished into the dark rainy night, over the trees. Then the next was ready.

A squadron of eleven machines went off as Corbett watched; there was a pause after that. It seemed that no more was to happen for a little time. The crowd of officers round the control thinned out; one or two of them walked away past Corbett.

He saw a well-known face half-buried in a turned up raincoat collar, beneath a forage cap. He swung round and called impulsively after the retreating figure: ‘Collins!’