Landfall (18 page)

“If they’re friends of yours they’d say anything. But, really and truly, I’ve enjoyed this ever so. I’d like to come again, next week or any time.”

He was silent for a minute. “I don’t know about next week,” he said. “I shall be working pretty steadily from Tuesday onwards. When we start, we shan’t knock off for the week-end.”

She said: “You and your work! I believe you just play about, out at that aerodrome.”

He grinned and said: “Have another doughnut.”

She shook her head. “I’ve finished.”

He took one himself. “Honestly,” she said, “what do you do all day?”

He eyed her for a moment. “I can tell you one thing that I did last week.”

“What’s that?”

He said: “Made my will.”

This was quite true. He had been to Smith’s, the booksellers, and had bought a will form in an envelope for sixpence. He had read the instructions carefully, as carefully as if they had been for the circuit of his wireless set or for the rigging of his caravel. Then he had sat down and had written what he wanted to say upon the ruled lines of the form, without erasures or alterations. He had folded it over and got a couple of the batmen to witness his signature. Then he had sealed it in an envelope and put it at the back of the drawer in which he kept his collars.

Mona stared at him, uncertain whether to believe him. “No kidding?”

He munched the doughnut. “Not a bit. Show it you if you like.”

She was puzzled, uncertain of his mood. “I don’t believe you made a will at all.” People didn’t make wills till they were old, about to die.

He took a drink of tea. “Well, I did. I can’t show it to you now, because I haven’t got it with me. But I’ll tell you what’s in it.”

She was silent. There was something that she didn’t understand.

His eyes smiled at her. He said: “Like me to tell you?”

She said quietly: “If you want to, Jerry.”

He said: “I left everything to you.”

In the short evening of the winter day it was already dusk. In the long room it was getting dark: the flickering firelight was already brighter than the windows. Outside the trees massed blackly against the deep blue sky, which seemed to pale towards the whale-back of the downs. It was quiet outside in the village street. Quiet and cold.

Mona said softly: “What did you do that for?”

He grinned at her, a little embarrassed. “It’s not enough to bother about,” he said. “There’s a couple of hundred pounds in War Loan that Aunt Mollie left me. That’s all there is, really, except things like my wireless set—and the car, of course. That’s worth about thirty quid.”

There was a silence. She leaned towards him, puzzled and distressed. “But, Jerry, I don’t want your money. Honest, I don’t.”

“I hope you’re not going to get it. I shall be very much upset if you do.”

She stared at him. “But what did you want to make a will for, anyway?”

He leaned back in his chair. “Well, somebody’s got to have what I’ve got. In case I should get killed or anything.”

“So you thought you’d leave it all to me….”

He nodded.

She got up from the table and came round to his chair. She stood by him, looking down at him as he leaned back, balancing on the back legs of the chair with one leg crooked beneath the table.

“Why me?” she said gently.

He began fingering the bottom edge of her jumper, and he was silent for a moment. Then he looked up at her. “Because we’ve had a fine time,” he said, “ever since we met. Because you were so frightfully nice to me after I sank
Caranx
. You know, you did a lot for me then. I wanted to do something, if I could, to pay back what I owe you. Even if I was to do myself a bit of no good.”

Her eyes moistened. “You don’t want to talk like that, Jerry.”

He grinned. “All right—let’s drop it. Let’s talk about something else.”

Her mother had quite rightly said that Mona was quick. “That’s right,” she said. “Let’s talk about what happens if you live to be ninety.” She laughed down at him tremulously. “You’re trying to make out you owe me something. If you die, I get two hundred quid and your car.”

He was uncertain what was coming. “And my wireless set,” he said. “You mustn’t forget that. I got Chungking the other night.”

“But that’s all if you’re dead. What do I get if you live to be ninety?”

With the hand that had been fingering her jumper he smacked her seat. “A bloody good spanking. You can have the first instalment of it now, if you like.”

She looked down at him. “What do I get?” she repeated.

“If I told you, you’d slap my face and start out to walk home.”

“It’s twenty miles. I couldn’t walk that far.”

“You’d have to take a bus.”

“There aren’t any buses.” There was a short pause, and then she said: “You’d better tell me, Jerry.”

He jerked forward in his chair and got up. He took her hands in his and stood there looking down on her, blushing pink. Her eyes were hardly higher than the stained and drooping wings upon his chest. “All right,” he said, “I’ll tell you. If this was peace-time and things were ordinary, I should want you to marry me, Mona. But I don’t want that.”

She said in a small voice: “What do you want then, Jerry?”

He laughed. “Your mind runs in a groove,” he said. “I don’t want that one, either. I want to go on as we are.” She was silent.

He said: “I’ve not got a lot of use for people who think they’re going to get bumped off next week, and so they take a running jump into a honeymoon. If I got married I should want to have a kid or two and see them growing up. And if I couldn’t see beyond the middle of next week, I’d just as soon lay off it altogether.”

“I feel that way, too. It wouldn’t be like being married if you didn’t have kids.”

He grinned. “They’ll want people like us when this war’s over.”

She looked up into his face. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “All this you say about you’re going to be killed. What’s it all about?”

“Indigestion, I should think. I’ve been missing my Eno’s.”

“Talk sensible for once, Jerry.”

“It does happen from time to time, even in the best-conducted wars.”

“Is this what you do at Titchfield very dangerous?”

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew
her to him. He wanted to make her understand, to see the matter in its true proportions.

“Look,” he said. “There’s a little bit of risk in every sort of flying in war-time, just as there is for ships at sea. When I was at Emsworth three chaps from my squadron fell into the drink. A month ago I was over Germany, down as far as Leipzig. This new job isn’t any more dangerous than any of the other things. But in a war, in any sort of job, things do sometimes happen. That’s why I made that will.”

“I see.”

There was a long pause. Presently she said: “I dunno if it’s going to be so easy for us to keep on the way we are now, Jerry.”

He was silent. The feel of her shoulder warm beneath his hand had put the same idea into his head.

She turned in his arms and looked over to the window. “If we found we couldn’t, I don’t want to jump into a honeymoon the way you said. It wouldn’t do. I’d rather that it was the other way.”

Gently he turned her back to him. “Is this what they call an improper proposal in the Sunday papers?”

She giggled. “I suppose it must be.”

“You mean, you’d rather that we went away together somewhere for the week-end or something?”

“That’s right.”

“I wouldn’t know how to set about it.”

“Nor would I. But we could learn.”

They looked at each other and laughed.

Chambers said: “I’d have to get a book about it and read it up. I suppose I’d have to get a wedding-ring for you, and then we’d go to a hotel and register as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

“We’d want to have an engagement ring as well. It’ld look awfully fishy if I went with just a wedding-ring.”

“A very new one, too.”

“That’s right. Wouldn’t it be awful if we got found out?”

He said: “They can’t do anything to you for that, The police, I mean.”

“Not even if you register with a false name? In wartime?”

“I’m not so sure about that one. They might not like that very much.”

“They could be terribly nasty, anyway.”

He laughed down at her. “I don’t think very much of your idea,” he said. “It’s too risky and too complicated. It’ld be a damn sight simpler to be old-fashioned and get married, and have done with it.”

She said: “I don’t want to do that.”

He asked gently: “Why not?”

“I dunno, Jerry….” There was a pause, and then she said: “It wouldn’t do. I’d like to go on like we are. But if we found we couldn’t, then I’d rather we was Mr. and Mrs. Smith for a bit.”

He said very quietly: “Every word you utter goes like an arrow to my heart. A barbed arrow, I should say. You know, you’re the Bad Girl of the Family. The Scarlet Woman.”

She smiled a little. “You do say awful things.”

“Added to which,” he said gently, “my pride’s cut to the quick. Here I am, Lord Jerry of Chambers’ Hall, Chambers, Chambershire, and you spurn my suit.”

She did not laugh. “That’s it,” she said softly.

He stared at her. “I believe you’ve got this wrong,” he said. “Are you thinking of our families?”

She said honestly: “That’s right. We aren’t really the same sort, Jerry, and being married is for ever. We’d want to be terribly careful, or we’d be unhappy all our lives. Both of us.”

“I am being careful. I haven’t been so careful since I first went solo.”

“Talk serious. I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

“Well then …”

She turned in his arms and faced him. “Look, Jerry,” she said, “let’s talk sensible. You know how I feel about you. You can have anything you want from me—honest, you can. And there’s never been anyone before, either.”

“I know that,” he said.

“But I don’t want to marry you—not for a long time, anyway.” She looked down. “It wouldn’t do.”

“Why not?”

She said: “I wouldn’t marry you unless I could talk like the other officers’ wives, and dress like them, and play tennis, and that and—and sort of
think
like them. I can’t do any of them things. If we got married now we’d be happy for a month, and then we’d be unhappy ever after. That’s not good enough.”

He was silent for a minute. Then he said: “You’re wrong. You won’t be an officer’s wife, not when the war’s over. I shan’t be able to stay on in the Air Force—not with the
Caranx
business on the record. And in the war, it doesn’t matter a hoot.”

She looked up into his face. “You’ll stay in the Air Force,” she said, “and you’ll go right up to the top. You’ll be an Air Vice-Marshal before you leave, or something of that. You will, Jerry—I know.”

He grinned at her, but there was moisture in his eyes. “Fat lot you know about it,” he said. “Look, Mona. I want you to marry me, at once.”

“I dare say you do,” she said. “But I’m not going to.”

They argued for a quarter of an hour and got no further. Presently she said: “It’s getting very dark, Jerry. If we’re going to get on the road before the blackout, we’ll have to go.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Next week,” he said, “I’ve got to do a little work. I’ll have to get to
bed early each night; I can’t be late. I’ll make a date to come and take you dancing on Monday of next week for certain. If we get a day of bad weather I’ll come in during the day, but don’t count on that. Don’t be worried if I don’t turn up till Monday week.”

She said: “That’s a long time to wait, Mr. Smith.”

“Lord Jerry of Chambers’ Hall to you. I’ll have no
lesé-majesté.”

She laughed up at him. “Mr. Smith to me.”

“I
DON’T
see what he’s getting so worked up about,” the pilot said. “He’s only got to watch. God help him if he ever got into a real jam.”

The wing-commander turned and glanced with the pilot at the civilian pacing nervously up and down in front of the aeroplane. “He feels responsible for this. He took it very badly when the Navy cut the time short. Since then he’s been working long hours on his distribution curves.”

The pilot said: “He looks as if he’ll have a litter of them any minute.”

Professor Legge had a headache. He walked up and down before the aeroplane, anxious and fretting. From time to time he went round to the tail and got into the cabin, inspecting the last adjustments that the electricians were making to the apparatus, bothering them with his evident anxiety.

He had worked hard for the last week, too hard for his health. Unaided, he had covered in a week the research which he had estimated would take six weeks. He had covered about half the ground that would have been necessary to ensure safety for the enterprise. Now the trials were upon him, and he could do no more.

In the mental fatigue and strain from which he suffered he had lost a great deal of his sense of proportion. He had slept, in the last week, for a total of about thirty hours. He had been compelled to go to Cambridge to collect certain data, and he had visited the aerodrome three or four times. For the whole of the rest of the week he had sat in the sitting-room of his Southsea flat plodding through endless computations
with slide rule, graphs, and the little black comptometer. His wife had helped him very much. She had brought him tea and biscuits at intervals of two hours all through the night, had given him aspirins to help him sleep, had slept little more than he had in the week. This she had done without any understanding of the work, because for reasons of secrecy he had told her nothing. All he had said was that he was terribly afraid that they might have an accident, Because the Navy were in such a hurry. For Mrs. Legge that had been sufficient.

Now on the morning of the trial, fretting and apprehensive as he waited for the adjustments to be finished, he blamed himself most bitterly that he had not worked harder, had not got through more in the time. Passing through London on his return from Cambridge he had slept a night at his club. He had got to London no later than half-past eight at night, having travelled and worked since dawn. There had been a train down to Portsmouth at nine-forty-seven, which would have got him to his flat in Southsea before midnight.