Shute, Nevil (26 page)

‘Going fine.’ He stooped to look at the log. ‘Three and a half miles from the Bill.’

She looked around. ‘Is that the Bill back there?’ She pointed at the land, seen dimly behind them in the dusk.

‘That’s it.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Take a good look at it,’ he said gently. ‘You may not see England again for some time.’

‘Oh, Peter …’ She was startled and appalled. While they were on the yacht the thought of leaving England had not been real to her; the yacht was a part of England, part of Hamble, part of their life together. Now, that dim wedge-shaped bit of land was England, perhaps the last of England that she would see for years. Gone was the pleasant, semi-detached house that she had married into, had her children in. Gone was their well-loved, battered Austin car. Gone were the happy summer week-ends, bathing at Seaview or Newtown. Gone was the cinema, two streets away from them, where they knew the manager and the cashier by their names. Gone were the occasional, economical trips to London. Gone were their friends, the Gordons and the Hutchinsons and the Littlejohns-all gone. Gone were the shops she loved, the one that had the puppies in the window, the one that sold the radiograms that they could not afford, the piano that they would have had when they were very rich. All these were gone. That rocky point with the white lighthouse, unlit and hardly visible behind them in the mist, was the last of all these things. When that went, England would be gone.

He took her hand. ‘Never mind,’ he said quietly. She said: ‘I hadn’t realised what we were doing. We’ll come back again, Peter, won’t we? We shan’t have to live in Canada for ever?’

He drew her down beside him in the cockpit, and put his arm around her. ‘Of course not. We’ll be back in Southampton as soon as ever the war’s over. But Canada’s a great country, I believe. People like living there.’

She nodded. ‘I don’t want to be silly about it. I believe it’s going to be all right. But-it’s not like England, Peter. England’s our own place.’

He said: ‘I know. I promise you that we’ll come back again.’

They sailed on for a long time in silence after that, his arm around her shoulders. Presently she took the helm, and he went down below to get supper.

The motion of the boat was easy; they were able to have a good meal of cold beef, potatoes, tinned fruit, and coffee. After that Joan went down below and gave a bottle to the baby, came on deck again, and took the helm. It was about half-past eight, and a fine, starry night.

She said: ‘Go down and get some sleep, Peter. I’ll he all right.’

He looked around. The breeze was moderate from the southeast; in the cabin the glass was steady. The vessel was running easily; the sailing lights shone forward into the darkness, red and green. The little lamp in the binnacle was glowing steadily. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You take her till midnight, and give me a call then. Give me a shout if the wind freshens, or if you can’t hold the course.’

She said: ‘I’ll be all right.’ He fetched her up a coat and a blanket to wrap her, saw her settled comfortably at the helm, and went below to sleep.

She sat there in the darkness steering through the night. England was lost behind her, strange unknown things lay ahead. In the darkness and the waste of sea she seemed to be in limbo, forgotten in the wilderness. She was filled with a great regret for the lost past. She felt that on passing Portland Bill a part of her life, the first part, possibly the best part, had been closed. That part contained her childhood, her days at her boarding-school, her short time as a secretary, her marriage to Peter, their happiness together, their children. The history of that part was written now, the last sentence was complete, the book was closed, the covers latched together. It was final-nothing could be added to that history, or taken away. Before her lay a new period of her life, divorced entirely from the other. She felt that the new period could not be happier. It might be much less happy; it could never be the same.

The vessel sailed on through the night under the brilliant stars; she was the only one awake. It was not necessary for her to watch the binnacle intently; Peter had trimmed the sails for her and the ship was light to steer, holding her course very nearly by herself. She thought again of the life that she had left behind. She had no great regrets for lost opportunities, for mistakes. The best that one could do was to live happily and cheerfully, help Peter all she could, and bring children into the world. She had done her best in all of that; she had no regrets. She felt a deep sadness that that happy time was over. There should have been more of it.

She sat there steering all night long, immersed in her thoughts.

Peter woke suddenly in the grey light of dawn. He rolled over on his settee and looked at his watch; it was half-past five. He got quickly to his feet and went to the hatch; in the cockpit Joan was sitting at the helm wrapped in a blanket, her face white and drawn.

‘You are a mutt,’ he said kindly. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

She said: ‘She was so light to steer, I thought I’d let you sleep. We’ll have another night out, won’t we?’

He slipped on a coat and took the helm from her. ‘I suppose so. How has she been getting on?’

She got up and stretched stiffly. ‘She’s been going just the same all night.’

He looked at the log; it showed forty-six miles. ‘About four knots,’ he said. ‘That’s all right if we can keep it up.’ He lashed the helm and made the vessel sail herself; then he took Joan below and put on a Primus stove.

Half an hour later she was asleep on the settee, a hot meal of baked beans and bread and cheese and cocoa inside her, a hot-water bottle at her feet. He covered her with a blanket and removed a smouldering cigarette from her unconscious fingers; then he made breakfast for himself and for the children. He kept the children in their bunks; the baby was asleep, and he left well alone. After an hour he was able to go on deck, light a pipe, and settle at the helm, getting the little ship upon her course again.

They sailed on all day uneventfully. The wind blew in to the north and grew colder, but it did not strengthen. In the middle of the morning a flotilla of destroyers passed near them at high speed taking no notice of them; all through the day there were aeroplanes in sight, patrolling the mouth of the Channel. One came down low to have a look at them, apart from that they were ignored. They saw two steamers on their way up Channel from the direction of Ushant; neither passed very close to them.

Joan came on deck at about ten o’clock, had a look round, and went below to give a bottle to the baby. They had a meal then with the children and let them up into the cockpit for an hour, while Corbett pumped the vessel out and filled the lamps again. Then he went down to sleep for a time and came back on deck again in the late afternoon. The log read ninety-seven miles.

At eight o’clock he gave the helm again to Joan, with definite orders that he was to be called at midnight. ‘We shall be getting on towards the coast of France by then,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to bump on anything I’d like to do it myself.’ He went below and slept; at midnight she called him and he came up and relieved her. The vessel was still running in a northerly wind.

Joan woke at six o’clock. She came on deck in the grey light and looked around. She saw a rocky coast four or five miles away on the port bow, and nearer at hand a lighthouse standing on an isolated rock.

Peter said: ‘That’s Le Four.’

The dawn came up grey and squally; the wind had backed in to the north-west, and was a good deal stronger. Corbett said: ‘We’ve had the best of the weather. Still, we’ve had great luck in carrying it so far.’

It took them all that day to sail the last twenty-five miles in to Brest. The tide was foul against them in the Chenal du Four until the middle of the morning and they made no progress; then they began to move southwards in a fresh wind and an uneasy sea. Slowly the intricate pattern of towers and buoys unrolled before them, but it was not till early afternoon that they rounded Pointe St. Mathieu and bore up for Brest, twelve miles farther on.

Till then they had seen very few ships. In the Chenal du Four and off Conquet they had met fishing smacks and small boats hauling lobster pots; now as they approached the Goulet they came in to a considerable mass of traffic. Three French destroyers first came out of Brest, followed by a British light cruiser. An oil tanker and a big tramp steamer passed them going in, and a small liner came out. As they neared the Goulet a smart white steam yacht flying the white ensign and manned by naval personnel came past within a hundred yards of them; they rolled for a few minutes in her wash.

In the Goulet itself, the narrow entrance to the wide natural, harbour, they came upon intensive submarine precautions. Half of the entrance was shut off with nets; a launch ranged up to them, asked a few questions in mixed French and English, and directed them between two buoys. They passed through the barrier, past half a dozen motor-boats attending to the nets, and so came to the shelter of the Rade.

The Rade de Brest is a wide inland sea, approximately five miles square. That day, it was a mass of anchored ships. Near to the town there were British and French warships lying at anchor; farther away there were liners, transports, hospital ships, oil tankers, and tramp steamers of every shape and size. Corbett was amazed; he had never seen such a collection of ships assembled together.

‘Peter,’ said Joan. ‘What are we going to do now?’

He had the chart with him in the cockpit. ‘We want to get inside the breakwater’ - he pointed to the chart- ‘this thing they call the Rade-Abri, and drop our anchor. That is, if they don’t stop us first. I ‘m not quite sure what you do then. I believe the thing to do is to hang up an ensign and a yellow flag.’

‘Have you got a yellow flag, Peter?’

He stared at her blankly. ‘No, I’ve not. You’ve not got anything yellow?’

She shook her head. ‘You know I don’t wear yellow.’

‘We’ll just have to hang up an ensign at the masthead, then.’ He thought about it for a minute. ‘As a matter of fact, that may be better. They may not want to put us into quarantine if we don’t ram it down their throats.’

He went below and started up the engine. It was about five o’clock when they passed through the harbour entrance into the Port du Commerce and dropped anchor near some other yachts beside the breakwater. Corbett went below, found a red ensign, and hoisted it to the masthead in place of the burgee.

He came aft to the cockpit. ‘We might as well let the children up on deck,’ he said wearily.

He dropped down on to one of the seats and lit a cigarette. Around them swarmed the traffic of the harbour; the water was alive with boats and pinnaces of every sort going back and forwards to the ships in the Rade. The children climbed on deck and stared around them.

‘Phyllis asked: ‘Daddy, will you buy me a green hair-ribbon when we go on shore?’

He said: ‘If Mummy says you can have it.’ ‘Oh yes, because you see she was going to get it for me at home, ever such a long time ago, before the bangs. Cecily’s got a green hair-ribbon, Daddy.’

‘Has she?’

John asked: ‘Are we going home now, Daddy?’ His sister rebuked him. ‘You are a silly, John. We’re ever such a long way from home. This is Portland.’

Corbett said: ‘No, it’s not. It’s a place called Brest, in France. Where they talk French.’

‘Like Mademoiselle?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What do they do that for, Daddy?’ Joan came on deck with the baby in her arms; she was looking very tired. ‘She slept almost the whole way,’ she said. ‘We’ve really had a wonderful passage, Peter.’

He nodded. ‘Not so bad. It’s been much easier than I thought it would be.’

‘We’ve had great luck with the weather. I think we’ve got a lot to be thankful for.’

‘I think we have.’

A little motor-boat came across the harbour towards them; on its bow it bore the legend, service du port. It ran round under their stern and read the name; then it drew up alongside. Two men in shabby uniform stepped on board. The senior of them was a man of about fifty, black-haired, stout, and badly shaved.

‘La Douane,’ he said impassively. He produced a black notebook. ‘You are English-yes?’

Corbett nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘Bien. Where have you now come from?’

‘From Portland.’

The stout man glanced at him keenly, from little beady eyes. ‘Portland-c’est un port militaire-only the Royal Navy. You ‘ave come from Portland?’

‘I put in there for a night on the way. That was my last port.’

‘Bien compris. Before Portland, where have you then come from?’

‘From Hamble, near Southampton.’

‘Ah, Southampton.’ The man looked at him woodenly. ‘La petente de sante, if you please-the Bill of ‘ealth.’

Corbett shook his head. ‘I haven’t got one.’

‘Non? On ne peut pas passer la Manche sans une patente de sante.’

‘I’ve done it,’ said Corbett wearily. ‘Je l’ai fait. And I’m not going back for you or anybody else.’

‘C’est bien serieux, M’sieur.’

Corbett pulled himself together. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Je prie votre pardon, M’sieur. Nous sommes echappes des choses terribles en Angleterre, et je suis tres fatigue.’

‘Ne derangez-vous pas, M’sieur. You must not go on the shore. Tomorrow I will bring to you the Doctor of the Port. Tonight you rest here, but not to go on shore. And not to allow the visitors to land on your boat, here. You understand?’

Corbett nodded. ‘Perfectly.’

‘Bien. Now, M’sieur, the certificate of registry of the ship.’

Corbett shook his head. ‘I haven’t got it with me.’

‘No?’ The stout man raised his eyebrows. ‘Alors, your passport.’

Again Corbett shook his head. ‘M’sieur, je suis desole. Je n’ai pas des papiers-rien de tout.’

‘No papers-nothing at all?’ The stout man clicked his tongue. ‘That is ver’ bad, M’sieur. Where is the crew?’

Corbett stared at him. ‘I haven’t got a crew.’ The stout man stared back. ‘Vous avez traverse la Manche tout seul?’

‘Mais non. Madame et les enfants etaient avec moi.’ The stare broadened to a smile. ‘Et aussi le bebe?’