Shute, Nevil (3 page)

‘You can’t go down without having a shave,’ said Joan. ‘Make yourself tidy, dear. This water will be hot in a minute.

He stared at her in wonder. ‘I must be off my head,’ he said at last. ‘Fancy thinking of going down to work without having shaved… .’ He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin.

She pressed his arm. ‘Don’t worry. I expect everything will be all right down there.’

Twenty minutes later, spruce and neat in his business suit, bowler hat, and dark overcoat, and carrying a neatly furled umbrella on his arm, he came to her again.

‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘I can’t ring you up because the phone’s put of order-I’ll try and get that put right. I’ll be back to Lunch if I possibly can, but don’t worry if I’m not.’

She stood for a moment in thought. ‘Candles,’ she said at last. ‘We’ll have to have some candles if the electricity isn’t going to be on tonight. The milk hasn’t come yet, either. We take three and a half pints. If it doesn’t come. I’ll have to go and get it, but I don’t want to leave the house.’

He nodded. ‘Candles and milk.’

She turned to him.’ I tell you what would be a godsend, if you could get it. A Primus stove-like we have on the boat. And a kettle to go on it-and paraffin and meths, of course.’

‘I’ll do what I can. I’d better take the car.’

She reached up and kissed him. ‘There’s sure to be an awful lot of other things,’ she said. ‘Come back for lunch, if you can.’

‘All right. Turn on the wireless and see if you can get any news out of it while I’m away.’

She frowned. ‘I’ll try, but is it any good? I thought that worked off the mains?’

He had forgotten that.

He went down the garden to the garage, got the car, appalled at what he saw.

In Westwood Road he passed a house that had suffered a direct hit; above the first floor there was very little left of it. He went on, sober and a little sick, and stopped once more to inspect a crater in the road where there had been a motor-car. After that he did not stop again.

He had to make two detours to avoid roads that were blocked with bomb-holes.

The streets were full of people. Most of them seemed to be looking around, viewing the damage before they went on to their work. There was a sort of stunned bewilderment apparent in the crowd, and mingled with it the exhilaration of the novelty, a certain thrill and pleasure in the break of the routine. There was excitement, interest, in the streets. People were standing at street-corners chatting eagerly to strangers; at other points there seemed to be the apathy of tragedy. Corbett wanted to buy a paper but could see no posters; the newsagents’ shops that he passed were closed. A great many shop windows were smashed; in one or two places gangs of men were working nailing boards across.

He reached his office about ten o’clock, and parked outside it. Duncan, the managing clerk, slid from his desk as Corbett came in.

‘Morning, Duncan. Mr. Bellinger in yet?’

‘Not yet, Mr. Corbett.’ The old man hesitated. ‘Wasn’t it a terrible night, sir?’

Corbett nodded. ‘Pretty bad. Everything all right at home, I hope?’

‘Yes, sir. We were spared.’

‘Spared? So was I. We’ve got that to be thankful for.’

‘Oh, yes, sir. We have indeed.’

‘Has The Times come?’

‘No, sir. None of the papers have come this morning. Nor the post either.’

‘Have we had any windows bust here?’

‘No. sir. Everything seems to be quite all right. I think we’ve been very fortunate.’

‘I should say we have.’

He moved over to the telephone switchboard and tried the various lines; it was all dead. He went through in to his office.

With no post, no paper, and no telephone, there was only routine work to do; he could not settle down to that. He idled for 10 minutes at his desk, waiting for something to happen. Then he noticed Andrews car parked outside his office next door. Andrews was a chartered accountant, and a member of the same club.

He went out, and into the next office. Andrews, lean and saturnine, was idling as he had been.

‘Morning,’ said Corbett. ‘Have a good night?’

‘Not so bad,’ said Mr. Andrews. ‘Bit of coal in the bed, but nothing to signify.’

‘Do you know if we’re at war?’

Mr. Andrews said: ‘We are now.’

‘Who are we fighting?’

Mr. Andrews told him in a few short sentences.

‘How did you get to know all this?’ asked Corbett.

‘It’s on the wireless. They’re broadcasting news almost continuously.’

‘My set’s passed out. It’s on the mains.’

‘So is mine. But I’ve got a set in the car, and that’s functioning all right. The King’s broadcasting at three o’clock, and the Prime Minister at two-thirty.’

‘If we get any current I must listen in to that.’

‘If we had some ham,’ said Mr. Andrews, ‘we could have some ham and eggs if we had some eggs.’

‘Do you know, has any other town been bombed?’

The accountant leaned forward. ‘Has any town not been bombed! They’ve all had it, from what I can make out-just like us. Portsmouth, Brighton, Bristol, Guildford, Bournemouth, Oxford, Birmingham, Coventry, Plymouth-oh, and a lot more. Practically every town in the Midlands and the south of England.’

‘My God!’ said Corbett.

Mr. Andrews leaned back in his chair. ‘The real cream of the joke,’ he said, ‘the part that’ll tickle you to death, is that there’s no news that any of the bombers were shot down, or interfered with in any way.’

‘That’s a bad one.’

‘Of course,’ Corbett continued, ‘I suppose it came as a complete surprise.’

‘Evidently.’

There was a little silence. Corbett frowned. ‘I don’t understand how it was done. I didn’t see any aeroplanes, or hear any engines. Did you?’

‘No, I can’t say I did. I saw a few searchlights, but they didn’t seem to be much good. The clouds were too low.’

The solicitor got up restlessly and walked over to the window. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘we’re in a bloody mess.’

He stood staring out of the window over the little park on the other side of the road. There were craters in it like great excavations. Through the trees he could see the buildings of the Civic Centre; part of it seemed to have come down.

Without turning from the window he said: ‘Did you count the bombs?’

Andrews shook his head. ‘I had other things to think about, old boy.’

‘I wonder how many there were? There’s been a frightful lot of damage done.’

The accountant picked up a pencil and held it poised above his blotting-pad. ‘On the average,’ he said, ‘how many explosions did you hear a minute?’

‘Lord knows. Sometimes they came quick, and then there’d be a bit of a gap. I heard about fifteen come down one minute.’

‘But on the average?’

Corbett thought carefully. ‘More than four. Perhaps five or six. But you really can’t say.’

The accountant flung his pencil down unused. ‘There are a hundred and eighty minutes in three hours. That means the best part of a thousand bombs.’

Corbett nodded. ‘I dare say there were that number. But what sort of a force of bombers would that mean?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Corbett turned back into the room. ‘There must have been a lot of people killed,’ he said heavily. ‘Have you heard anything about the casualties yet?’

Mr. Andrews shook his head. ‘They didn’t say anything about that side of it upon the -wireless. There were three people killed in Wilton Road, nearby me. Family called Winchell. Do you know them?’

Corbett shook his head.

‘Father, mother, and one child,’ said Mr. Andrews succinctly. ‘The other kid got off scot-free.’

There was a little silence.

‘I can’t stay here,’ said Corbett restlessly. ‘I’m going out. I’ve got to buy a Primus stove.’

He went out into the streets. In the half-hour since he had come into the centre of the town there had been a marked change for the better. The idle, gossiping crowds had vanished from the corners, and now the streets were full of busy, energetic people going about their business. The craters in the streets where bombs had fallen were full of men working upon the various mains and conduits, shattered and uncovered by the explosion. In half a dozen places the overhead wires of the trams were down and trailing in the road: he saw several repair gangs working upon those. A great many of the windows of the larger shops were shattered irretrievably; in most of them the assistants were engaged in putting up some sort of barrier or protection to the shop-front. There was a tendency to chalk up such notices as BUSINESS AS USUAL.

Southampton was itself again, busy and enterprising.

He went into an ironmonger’s where he was known, to buy a Primus stove. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett,’ said the man, but I’m right out. Haven’t got a Primus in the place. Regular run on Primuses there’s been this morning, what with the gas being off and all. I’m sorry.’

‘Do you know where I could get one?’

The man suggested one or two other places. ‘Would you like me to save you a gallon of paraffin, Mr. Corbett?’

‘Is that short?’

‘There’s been a great run on it this morning. We shall be out very soon.’

He bought a can, had it filled with paraffin, and took it with him to the office. Then he went out again.

He got a Primus stove with difficulty at a ship chandler’s down by the docks. After trying half a dozen stores, he got some very large candles irreverently at an ecclesiastical suppliers. Fresh milk was unobtainable; it seemed that very little milk had come into Southampton that morning. He got a few tins of condensed milk at a grocer’s shop.

Towards noon he was in the High Street, walking back towards his office. Quite suddenly beneath his feet he felt a subterranean rumble, and a hundred yards away a manhole cover shot up into the air from the middle of the road, followed by a vivid sheet of yellow flame. The heavy cover fell with a resounding clang upon the road, doing no damage. There was a sudden rush of people from me street; one or two women screamed.

There was an expectant pause.

Nothing more happened, and presently the people ventured out into the street again. A little crowd had collected. A harassed looking policeman with a grey drawn face and dirty streaks around his eyes appeared from somewhere and stood by the open manhole.

‘Move along there,’ he said mechanically. ‘Don’t get crowding round-there’s nothing to see. Keep moving on. Come on, there-keep moving. Bit of gas in the sewer. Nothing to worry about now. Move along, please.’

Corbett went over to the hole; the man recognised him as a police court acquaintance, and saluted. ‘Not so good, this,’ said Corbett.

‘I didn’t see it happen, sir,’ said the constable. ‘I was around the corner, in Fishbourne Street. But there have been one or two of these this morning.’

‘Did you say it was gas in the sewer?’

‘Town gas from the mains, they say, sir.’ He said wearily: ‘It’ll take a while to get things properly fixed up, after a night like what we’ve had.’

Near the Civic Centre Corbett bought a newspaper still wet from the press, and read about the war.

The war news was quite short, and made up from the news broadcasts suitably filled out by the local editor. There was an account of similar raids which had taken place in other towns, which did not interest him very much. It left him cold to hear in messages sent out from London that London had been more heavily bombed than any other town. On another page there were full details of the emergency programme of broadcasting, of academic interest only in a town where the electric mains were dead. He reflected for a minute. There was a battery set in his old yacht at Hamble, if he could get to that. But probably the batteries would be run down. He had not used it since the previous summer.

The back page of the paper was given over to a stirring patriotic appeal. It seemed that there were a number of ways in which he could enlist to serve his country. All of them involved leaving Joan and his three children to get along as best they could. His brows wrinkled in a frown; he wanted to think over that. It wasn’t a thing to be rushed into. If there was going to be another air-raid, somebody would have to be at hand to help Joan with the children. Especially if this talk of gas meant anything….

Back at the office his secretary, Miss Mortimer, was waiting for him with her hat and coat on. She got up as he came in.

‘Please, Mr. Corbett,’ she said. ‘Could I have the day off?’

He nodded. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘We shan’t be doing any work to-day. I’m going home myself.’

She sighed with relief. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Corbett. It’s my daddy and mummy, you see. They live all alone, and they’re so old now. I can’t get to know what’s happened to them, or if they want any help, unless I go there myself. I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said again. ‘Where do they live?’

‘Just outside Poole, Mr. Corbett, between Poole and Bournemouth. I’m not sure how the trains are going, but if it comes to the worst, I could get over on my bicycle. It’s only about thirty miles.’

She paused. ‘Of course, I went through the Air Raid Precautions course, and I’m supposed to be working at a First Aid post. But I can’t think of anything else but how Daddy and Mummy are getting on. I do think the old people ought to come first, don’t you, Mr. Corbett?’

‘That’s your own problem,’ he said. ‘I can’t help you there.’

She considered for a minute. ‘I might be able to get somebody to take my place before I go.’

She left him, and he turned to the old clerk. ‘We’ll pack up for the day, he said. ‘Lock up the office, and get along home and look after your family.’

‘Thank you, sir. But there’s only my wife and myself. The children are all out in the world.’

Corbett nodded. ‘So much the better for you.’

‘I’m sure, sir.’ The old man hesitated. ‘Did you hear where we could get our gasmasks, sir, by any chance?’ The solicitor shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard a word about that yet.’

He went out to the car, laden with his purchases. The rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted a little; over his head a couple of aeroplanes made reassuring noises, crossing, turning, and recrossing the city. He watched them for a minute.