No Highway (27 page)

To distract his mind she said, “Look, there’s the lake. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

It lay blue and shimmering before them under the summer sky, fringed with tall fir trees, its shores broken up into little rocky bays. Waterfowl were dotted about upon its surface; three or four deer, grazing on a rocky sward beside the water half a mile away, looked up as they stopped and vanished into the woods. “There are all sorts of wild things here,” she said. “There’s a stream running out at the far end where there were beavers last year. And there are bears here, too.”

He stared at her. “Are they dangerous?”

She laughed. “The only time I saw one he ran like a rabbit. They say they’re all right unless you feed them; then they come after more and you get clawed. But if you let them alone they’re quite harmless.”

The path ran alongside the lake, made by the fishermen from the airfield; they passed a couple of rough dorys moored to the bank. They went on and came to the place where the deer had been and studied their tracks, and on until they came to the beaver stream. But the beavers were gone and only fragments of their dam remained.

They laid out their lunch by the stream, on a bare rock. “It’s so quiet here,” she said. “You might be a thousand miles from anywhere.”

“Apart from the airport,” Mr. Honey said, “we probably are.”

She nodded. “It’s a mistake to leave the path, they say,” she remarked. “You can quite easily get lost in these woods, and that’s not so funny. All this country looks the same.”

“Do people ever get lost?” he asked in wonder.

“Oh yes. Two of the boys from the airport got lost last year. One of them died; it was eight days before they were found.”

He thought this over for a minute. “You have a very adventurous life,” he said at last. “What will you do? Can you go on as a stewardess indefinitely?”

She smiled. “I suppose you could if you wanted to,” she said. “I don’t know that I should want to, though.”

“Don’t you like it?”

She picked up a twig of fir, and absently scratched a little furrow in the earth. “It’s been quite fun,” she said. “It’s been fun meeting people and going to new places. I went into it after the war when I was restless, with Donald being killed, and everything. But now—well, I don’t know. I sometimes feel I’d like to give it up.”

“You’d find it rather difficult to settle down,” he said. “After this.”

She said, “When you’ve seen all the new places you’ve got no more new places to see. And anyway, one new place is just like another new place.… I used to like meeting new people every trip—and I still do. But those things, meeting new people, seeing new places, they aren’t everything. And while you go on in that sort of life you can’t have any real friends or any real home. Because you’re never there …”

“You don’t get worried about the risks?” he asked.

She shook her head. “There’s so little danger in flying now. I know Jean and Betty bought it in the first Reindeer, but that sort of thing happens so seldom.” She flashed a smile at him. “Thanks to people like you.” He was confused, and she went on, “No—it’s fun living this sort of life, but there’s nothing
permanent
about it, if you understand. Sometime I’d like to be a bit more permanent.…”

“You’ll be looking for another job?” he asked.

“I suppose so.”

He said, “So shall I.”

She glanced at him. “Are you going to leave Farnborough?”

He nodded. “I’ve decided to resign.”

“Oh …” There was a pause, and then she said “Do you think that’s necessary? Surely they’ll understand?”

He shook his head. “They’ve got nothing tangible on this fatigue at all—just my own hypotheses, which nobody really believes in but myself. And there’s certain to be a row about this Reindeer, because I’m a Government servant and so the Government will have to pay for its repair. And that means the Treasury and—oh, all sorts of things. I thought it all out last night. I want to write a letter to Dr. Scott putting in my resignation, and get it to him as soon as I can.”

She was convinced in her own mind that he was doing the wrong thing, but she knew too little of the problems that confronted him to argue. She said, “But what will you do? What sort of a job would you look for, Mr. Honey?”

He said, “I think they might take me on at the National Physical Laboratory—I know a lot of people there. And the work might be quite similar.… I should try that first of all. Or else I might try teaching.”

She was distressed for him. With her wider knowledge of the world she knew one thing very certainly; that Mr. Honey would not be much good at keeping order in a class of boys. He would be ragged unmercifully, grow bitter and morose. She said, “I should think the other one would be better.”

“I think it might be more interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s such a lot of new stuff coming up about the earth’s magnetic field and its relation to cosmography. It’s all getting rather exciting.”

“I’m sure it must be,” she said. “Look, try one of these chicken ones—they’re rather nice.”

He brought his mind back to the matter in hand. “They’re very nice,” he said. “Things you make yourself always taste better than what you get in a canteen, don’t they?”

She said, “You take a lot of your meals in the canteen, do you?”

He said, “Well, yes, we do. We get our own breakfast, but then I always have lunch at the factory, and Elspeth has her’s at school. There’s a very good British Restaurant in Farnham and we go there sometimes in the evening, but it shuts at six and that sometimes isn’t very convenient. It’s such a lot of work getting meals at home, you know, when you’re both working all day.”

She nodded slowly. “It isn’t very good, having so many meals out, is it?”

He said, “It makes it rather expensive. I think you’re
right in a way—I get a lot of indigestion that I didn’t seem to get before. But one can always take magnesia for that.”

She laughed. “That’s expensive, too.”

They sat by the lake for a couple of hours, talking, finding out about each other. In the middle of the afternoon they recalled the cables and the signals that might be waiting for them in the airport office from the outside world, and got up reluctantly and walked slowly back up the path.

At the edge of the airport clearances they stopped for a moment. “It was terribly kind of you to suggest coming out like this,” Mr. Honey said. “I haven’t had a day like this for years.”

“Nor I,” she said. “I’m getting rather tired of aeroplanes, I think, and racketing around the world. A quiet day like this is rather a relief.”

Mr. Honey hesitated, uncertain how to put in words what he wanted very badly to say. “Do you think we might do it again some time in England,” he asked timidly, “one Sunday? There are some lovely walks along the Hog’s Back …”

She smiled down at him, “I’d love to do that, Mr. Honey,” she said. “I’ll give you my address.”

They went back together to the airport, rather quiet. In the C.A.T.O. office there was a signal ordering her to take passage on the night aircraft for London; there was a cable for Honey telling him to stay at Gander till an R.A.F. aircraft arrived later in the week to bring him back to England.

He wrote a short letter to me giving in his resignation, and gave it to Marjorie Corder to deliver; at dusk he walked with her to the plane.

“It’s been terribly kind of you to do all that you have for me,” he said. And then he added wistfully, “We’ll meet again in England, won’t we?”

For some odd reason, tears welled up behind her eyes. “Of course, Mr. Honey,” she said quietly. “Of course we will.”

I SAT FINGERING
Mr. Honey’s letter of resignation while Miss Corder was telling me what had been going on at Gander; I was only listening to her with half my mind. With the other half I was wondering if I dared put his letter in the wastepaper basket and tell him not to be a bloody fool when I saw him, or whether I ought to show it to the Director. I sat fingering it uncertainly as she talked.

I looked down at it when she had finished, and read it through again. “I see,” I said thoughtfully. And then I said, “I wish he hadn’t written this.”

She said, “He was so positive that you would all be very angry with him.”

“So we are,” I said. I raised my eyes and grinned at her. “He’s been a silly fool. There
must
have been other ways of stopping that thing flying on without wrecking it. But if that was the best way he could manage, then he did quite right to wreck it. I should never have forgiven him if he’d let it fly on.”

She stared at me, puzzled, trying to absorb that one. “I don’t think he’s quite the person to deal with things of that sort,” she said.

I nodded. “You’re quite right. He’s an inside man. The fault was mine for ever sending him.” I waggled the letter in my fingers. “But that doesn’t help me in deciding what to do about this.”

She was silent.

I glanced at her. “Did he write this reluctantly, because he thought it was the thing to do in the circumstances? Or does he really want to leave and get another job?”

“He doesn’t want to leave,” she said. “He thought that things would be so unpleasant for him if he came back here—well, he’d rather go somewhere else. He talked of going to some place called the National Physical Laboratory to try and get a job on cosmic radiations or something.”

I nodded; it was a likely story. He was quite capable of taking cosmic radiations in his stride. “Things won’t be unpleasant for him here,” I said. “That Reindeer had to
be stopped flying, and he stopped it.” I fingered the letter in my hand. “I should be very sorry to lose him,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a feeling that he’s working on the right lines in this matter of fatigue, and that we’ll find in a few months’ time that his estimates are very near the truth.” I raised my head and looked at her, thinking of what I should have to say at our formal conference next day. “He’s a valuable man in this department. I don’t want to take this letter seriously. I think it would be a loss to the Establishment, and even to the country, if he left his work upon fatigue just at this stage.”

She said, “If he’s as important as all that, I can’t understand why you don’t look after him a bit better.”

I stared at her. “How do you mean?”

She said firmly, “He gets a terrible lot of indigestion and he’s always taking pills for it. He’ll be getting a duodenal ulcer if you don’t look out, and then he won’t be able to work for you at all.”

The indigestion was news to me, and there didn’t seem to be much that I could do about that, but it fitted in with his complexion, and one bit more was added to the picture of him in my mind. “I can’t help that,” I said. “I wish his home life was a little easier for him, but that’s just one of those things.”

She got up to go. “I know, sir,” she said. “It was stupid of me to say that. I know you can’t help him in that way.” She hesitated. “I told him that I’d go and see his daughter, Elspeth, while I was down here,” she said. “There’s only a charwoman looking after her. He lives in Copse Road, Farnham. What’s the best way for me to get there, sir? Is there a bus?”

I blinked; another lovely woman to see Elspeth Honey. “She’s not there now,” I said. “As a matter of fact, you’ll find her in my flat. She had a bit of an accident.” And I told her shortly what had happened.

Miss Corder was upset. “The poor kid!” she said. “I
am
glad Mr. Honey doesn’t know about this—he’d be terribly worried. I mean, on top of all the other trouble.” She asked a few more questions, and then said,

“It’s awfully kind of Mrs. Scott to have done so much, sir. I was wondering if I could help at all? I went into the office at the airport this morning, and they’ve given me a few days’ leave. I’m a nurse, you know. I trained at the London Hospital.” She paused. “If I can help, I really
would like to. Mr. Honey was so kind to me, and I’m quite free.”

I thought quickly. There was some substance in this offer; Miss Teasdale, charming and good-hearted as she was, was not a trained nurse. But here was a trained nurse who felt herself to be under some obligation to Honey, and who was free for some days and anxious to assist. In fairness to Shirley I could not pass this over.

“It’s very nice of you to say that,” I replied. “As a matter of fact, Miss Monica Teasdale came down and helped a bit yesterday, and I think she’s coming again today. But she’s just an amateur; I know my wife would be awfully glad of your help.”

I told her how to get to my flat and that I would ring up Shirley; then I showed her out, because I had a lot to do that day. At the door she turned to me.

“You won’t let him resign, will you, Dr. Scott?” She looked up at me appealingly; she was a very lovely girl. “He’s not the sort for changes and adventures. He’d be much happier going on quietly here.”

I nodded. “I don’t want to lose him,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”

She went, and I read Honey’s letter of resignation again. Then I asked Miss Learoyd to find out if the Director was free; he was, and I went down to see him, forgetting all about my call to Shirley.

I said, “Good morning, sir. I’ve got a letter from Mr. Honey here, resigning his position with us. With your permission I’m going to tear it up and forget I ever had it.”

He smiled, and stretched out his hand. “Let me see.”

He read it carefully, and then said, “Why, particularly, do you want to destroy it?”

“We’ve got this conference tomorrow, sir,” I said. “I still think he’s probably right about this Reindeer tail, and as a member of my staff I’m going to back him up. But if we accept this letter, then he’s not a member of my staff any longer, and I don’t know where we are. We’ll all look pretty good fools and the right decisions probably won’t be made.”

He said thoughtfully, “You are quite sure about him still?”

I was silent for a moment, thinking. “I don’t want to be stupid about this,” I said at last. “I don’t want to back him automatically, just because he
is
a member of my staff. I’ve got a strong feeling that he’s probably right about the Reindeer tail, but that’s not evidence. I’m basing my opinions
more on the quality of his other work, the stuff I found in his private files. He’s a fine mathematician, he’s very well informed on physical chemistry, and he’s got a very clear analytical mind. Apart altogether from the Reindeer tail, I think it would be a great loss if he left us, sir.”