Landfall (12 page)

She said: “Jerry, what happened?”

He turned to her. “I sunk it with bombs,” he said. The strained, haggard look that had left him for a little while came back as he spoke. “I thought it was a German one. And later they found out it wasn’t. It was one of ours.”

“How awful! Didn’t it have any marks on it to tell the difference?”

He said: “I’m quite sure it hadn’t—I’m sure of that still. But I suppose it must have had. You see, they got clothes out of it.”

“Clothes, Jerry?”

“Yes, and a couple of packets of Players’.” And then,
in a flood, the story all came out. For the first time somebody heard the whole story, unrestrained and unedited in the pilot’s mind, told without fear or thought of consequences. The girl listened without interrupting very much, trying to understand the work he had to do. She was unused to mental concentration. Other people had always done her thinking for her. Here she felt instinctively, with all her being, was something she must try to understand if she was to help him, and she wanted most terribly to help him. She bent all her energies to the task of understanding.

Presently she said: “Where did it happen, Jerry? Was it by Departure Point?”

He stared at her. “No—it was much more towards the island. What made you think that?”

“There was some officers talking tonight. They thought it was there.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” He hesitated. “Did they know who sunk it?”

“They knew it was an aeroplane what did it. I don’t think anyone knew it was you.”

He said bitterly: “They’ll all know about it before very long.”

There was a silence.

She said timidly: “They couldn’t do anything to you for that, though, could they? I mean, it was an accident.”

He smiled a little. “I won’t be able to stay on here, after this. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to stay in the Air Force after the war’s over.”

“Oh …” She said: “Will they send you away?”

He nodded. “I got it in before they did. I asked to be transferred away from here to some other job.” He turned to her, miserable. “That’s why I wanted to see you tonight, Mona. I’m going away.”

She looked up at him, bitterly disappointed. “When are you going?”

“Very soon—as soon as the Court of Enquiry is over. It’ll close tomorrow. I expect I’ll be going the day after that.”

“Where to?”

“I’m going to the Bomber Command. Either to France or somewhere in the north of England.”

“You won’t be round Portsmouth any more?”

He shook his head. “Not for some time. It’s better to get away and make a new start somewhere else.”

She said: “I suppose it is.”

He turned to her. “It’s been fun going out together,” he said quietly, “and dancing. But for that I should be glad to get away.”

She said: “I’ve loved going out with you.” Tears welled into her eyes, but it would be absurd to cry.

He said awkwardly: “You know I told you I was making a galleon?”

She nodded.

“Would you like to have it?”

“I’d like it ever so, Jerry.”

Desperately he sheered away from sentiment. “I mean, it’s rather an awkward thing to take in the car because it’s so delicate, you see. And I thought you might like to have it.”

She said: “It’s terribly nice of you to think.”

He said: “I’ll bring it to your house tomorrow.”

She nodded. “I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon.”

For a time they sat disconsolate over the litter of their meal, not talking very much, depressed by rather mournful dance tunes from the radio-gramophone, all about thwarted love. Presently he paid the bill and took her home.

In the black street outside the furniture shop the car stopped for a few minutes; then she got out and went indoors, and went up quickly to her room. It was silly to be crying. He was a nice boy, terribly nice, but she
hadn’t known him long. Not nearly long enough to cry about him just because he was in trouble, and because he was going away.

Chambers drove back to the aerodrome, tired and resentful. He had passed the stage of being appalled at the loss of
Caranx
. He was still positive that the submarine carried no markings, but, marked or not, she had been out of position. In an impersonal way he was sorry for the people in her, but he was beginning to be sorrier for himself. He felt that he had not been careless, that he had done his job as well as anybody could. He felt that the Navy were making a scapegoat of him for their own ends. A great deal of criticism had been given to his own efficiency, but very little had been said of the undoubted fact that
Caranx
was in the wrong place.

He felt that he was being used unjustly as a pawn in a political intrigue, that he was being disgraced and made to change his squadron without proper cause. In normal times the change would not have worried him at all, but leaving Mona hurt most damnably. Desperately seeking to comfort himself, he reflected that in time he might feel that he was well out of it. She wasn’t his sort, really. He was getting dangerously fond of her. He felt at home with her: that he could talk to her freely and she would understand.

To hell with everything! If he had to go, let it be quick. If the Navy had to blacken his career, let them get it over and done with, and then let him get away.

He drove into the yard, parked the car, and walked in the glow of the rabbit lamp to the back door of the mess. Up in his room he turned on his wireless to America and got a peculiar religious service, in which the Glory of God and the merits of Bergson’s Baking Powder were given equal prominence. It brought him comfort by diverting his mind to a trail of wonder, and in time he slept.

Next day the Court of Enquiry sat in private, hearing no more witnesses. At the end of a couple of hours their findings were committed to typescript and sent by special messenger to the Admiralty, who in due course approved them. The findings were:

Captain Burnaby came out of the court-room and walked with Rutherford across the grassy quadrangle of the submarine depot to the commander’s office. Rutherford said heavily: “Well, that’s the end of that.” He must get those letters written now, and then it would be over.

Burnaby said: “There’s one more thing. The Admiral wants us to draft the terms of the announcement for the Press Department.”

The commander made a gesture of distaste. “All right, let’s get that over now.”

They went into his bare little office. He took a signal pad and a pencil from the desk. “How shall we put it?”

Captain Burnaby drew his brows together in a frown. “An accidental explosion, I should think.”

“I suppose that’s the thing to say.” The commander turned the pad over and wrote rapidly upon the back of it. “Something like this?”

Burnaby took the pad from him and read it over for himself. “That’ll do,” he said. “It’s true enough. The Press Department can re-word it if they don’t like that.”

He folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. Then he turned aside. “The thing to do now,” he said grimly, “is to make quite sure that this can never happen again.”

They discussed the methods of issuing time schedules for a few minutes. At the end, the captain said:

“What’s this?”

The object was a large glass jar with a ground glass stopper, of the sort that small confectioners use to keep sweets in. It stood upon the desk. It was half full of a mixture of fuel oil and water, with a few bits of cloth submerged and floating in the liquid.

Rutherford said: “You know we were talking about surface tension the other night?”

“I remember. Whether cloth would take up oil or water from a mixture. Is this an experiment?”

Rutherford took up the jar. “I thought it would be interesting to see.”

“Which do they take up?”

“Water.” The commander took off the stopper, put his hand in and pulled out a piece of cloth. He squeezed it, and a little stream of water ran out.

Captain Burnaby stared at it for a moment. Then he said: “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, sir. There are several points about this thing that I don’t understand.”

The captain turned away. “In any case, it’s all over now.”

The commander thought: all except those letters.

M
ARKET STANTON
is a village on the Yorkshire Wolds, ten miles from the North Sea. In 1934 the population was about four hundred people, and there was some talk of an aerodrome to be constructed on the undulating farm-land of the district. The population has increased of recent years, and now stands at about two thousand five hundred, mostly airmen.

It lies seven miles from Beverley, the nearest town of any consequence. Chambers got there in his little car in the fading light of a mid-winter afternoon and thought that he had never seen a place so desolate.

Caranx
to him now was only a dulled, shameful memory. His leave had extended over Christmas; he had been at his home in Clifton for over three weeks. It had not been a happy leave. He had not dared to tell his family about
Caranx
, and he had had to submit to a certain amount of mild hero-worship in consequence. His mother had been particularly trying. She had taken him shopping with her in the mornings, trailing along behind her, tall and blushing, in order that she might show him off to her friends.

She was very proud of him. “You remember Roderick?” she would say. “He goes out flying every day to protect the convoys, looking for submarines, you know.”

Usually the friend would say: “I hope he sinks them for us,” or words to that effect.

His mother would say triumphantly: “Of course he does. But, you know, they aren’t allowed to say. We can’t get a thing out of him.”

This usually got him an admiring look.

She arranged tea-parties for him, two hours of the
same purgatory. He was fond of his mother and bore with it stoically, but he wished she wouldn’t.

No, it had not been a happy leave. He had been restless and distracted over Mona. Their parting had been stilted and unsatisfactory. Immediately the Court of Enquiry had risen he had been seized with a blind urgency to get away, and there had been nothing to keep him. The Air Commodore had seen him for a quarter of an hour and had wished him luck.

“I’m not entirely in agreement with the findings of that Court,” he had said. “I shall forward a note of my own with the papers for attachment to your personal record.”

Chambers had said: “Thank you, sir.”

“The best thing you can do now is to get off at once and forget about it.”

He had anticipated that, and had made all his arrangements. He had driven down to Portsmouth with the galleon balanced on the seat beside him. In daylight the little furniture shop looked squalid and depressing; the snow was melting on the pavement under a steady, persistent rain. He rang the bell of the side door and her mother had answered it, an untidy, pleasant-looking woman in a dirty apron, bulging out of her clothes.

He had felt foolish, and had said: “I’m sorry—could I speak to Mona?”

In a quick, shrewd glance she had taken in the tall figure in the blue-grey coat, the fresh pink-and-white complexion, and she had approved. She had said: “Half a mo’, sir. I’ll just give her a call.”

The word “sir” had depressed him more than ever.

In a minute or two the girl had come to the door. He had said: “I’m going off this afternoon, Mona. I just brought you down the galleon.”

Desperately she had searched her mind for somewhere
where she could see him alone. But there was nowhere: her father was in the shop and her mother in the kitchen. There was no parlour to the house. She had said: “It’s ever so sweet of you to give it to me, Jerry.”

He had taken it from the car and put it into her arms: she cradled it like a baby. “I can’t ask you in,” she had said unhappily. “There’s nowhere to go.”

“I couldn’t stay. I’m just going off on leave.”

“Going home?”

“Yes. I live in Bristol, you know.”

“Will you be coming back here after that?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

There had been an awkward, unhappy pause. The rain dripped steadily upon the pavement at his feet.

He said: “If I get down to London any time, would you like to come up, and we’d do something together?”

She hesitated. The fare would mean that she would have to draw upon her tiny savings, but her mother might be able to help. She said: “I’d love to do that.”

He had smiled. “I’ll write to you and fix up something.”

So they had said good-bye, and he had driven off back to the aerodrome in the little sports car, to collect his bags and start for Bristol. Mona had taken the galleon up to her room and put it on the dressing-table, where it was in the way. Later in the day her mother, wistful for a daughter’s confidence, had said a little timidly: “I did think that officer looked ever such a nice boy, Mona.”

She had turned away. “I shan’t be seeing any more of him. He just came round to say good-bye. He’s going away.”

She had gone out to be alone, and had walked for two hours through the streets and down the rain-swept, deserted sea-front till the gathering darkness and the rain had driven her home, to change her shoes and stockings for her evening’s work in the snack-bar.

It had not been possible for Chambers to get to London before Christmas without worrying his mother, and his posting to Market Stanton came at a day’s notice.

He found Market Stanton cold comfort. The aerodrome was deep in snow and mud, alternately hard with frost and miserable with the thaw. The mess was a brick building reasonably warm and comfortable; the bedrooms were in wooden huts separated into cubicles of beaver-board, tiny and bleak and quite unheated. Chambers suffered it for a couple of nights, then motored seven miles into Beverley to buy a paraffin heating-stove and a can of oil. This warmed his cubicle sufficiently to enable him to unpack and erect his shortwave wireless set and re-establish radio communication with America. The occupation eased the lonely ache that he had suffered since he had left Emsworth. Presently, settling down, he wrote to London for the kit to make a model caravel.