Nevil Shute - On The Beach

"I suppose you’re the sort of person who works very hard, all the time, whether you’ve got to or not."

He laughed. "I suppose I must be." He glanced at her. "Do you do any work?"

"Of course. I’m a very busy woman." "What do you work at?"

She lifted her glass. "This. What I’ve been doing ever since I met you yesterday."

He grinned. "You find that the routine gets tedious, sometimes?"

"Life gets tedious," she quoted. "Not sometimes. All the time."

He nodded. "I’m lucky, having plenty to do." She glanced at him. "Can I come and see your submarine next week?"

He laughed, thinking of the mass of work there was to do on board. "No, you can’t. We go to sea next week." And then, because that seemed ungracious, he said, "You interested in submarines?"

"Not really," she said a little listlessly. "I kind of thought I’d like to see it, but not if it’s a bother."

"I’d be glad to show it to you," he told her. "But not next week. I’d like it if you’d come down and have lunch with me one day when things are quiet and we’re not dashing around like scalded cats. A quiet day, when I could show you everything. And then maybe we could go up to the city and have dinner someplace."

"That sounds good," she said. "When will that be, so that I can look forward to it?"

He thought for a moment. "I couldn’t say right now. I’ll be reporting a state of operational readiness around the end of this coming week, and I’d think they’d send us off on the first cruise within a day or so. After that we ought to have a spell in the dockyard before going off again."

"This first cruise—that’s the one up to Port Moresby?"

"That’s right. I’ll try to fit it in before we go away on that, but I couldn’t guarantee it. If you’ll give me your telephone I’ll call you around Friday and let you know."

"Berwick 8641," she said. He wrote it down. "Before ten o’clock is the best time to ring. I’m almost always out in the evening."

He nodded. "That’ll be fine. It’s possible we’ll still be at sea on Friday. It might be Saturday before I call. But I will call, Miss Davidson."

She smiled. "Moira’s the name, Dwight." He laughed. "Okay."

She drove him to the station in the buggy after lunch, being herself on her way home to Berwick. As he got down in the station yard she said, "Good-bye, Dwight. Don’t work too hard." And then she said, "Sorry I made such a fool of myself last night."

He grinned. "Mixing drinks, that’s what does it. Let that be a lesson to you."

She laughed harshly. "Nothing’s a lesson to me, ever. I’ll probably do that again tomorrow night, and the night after."

"It’s your body," he said equably.

"That’s the trouble," she replied. "Mine, and nobody anybody else’s. If anybody became involved it might be difficult, but there’s no time for that. Too bad."

He nodded. "I’ll be seeing you."

"You really will?"

"Why, sure," he said. "I’ll call you like I said."

He travelled back to Williamstown in the electric train, while she drove twenty miles to her country home. She got there at about six o’clock, unharnessed the mare and put her in the stable. Her father came to help her, and together they pushed the buggy into the garage shed beside the unused Customline, gave the mare a bucket of water and a feed of oats, and went into the house. Her mother was sitting in the screened verandah, sewing.

"Hullo, dear," she said. "Did you have a nice time?"

"All right," the girl replied. "Peter and Mary threw a party last night. Quite good fun. Knocked me back a bit, though."

Her mother sighed a little, but she had learned that it was no use to protest. "You must go to bed early tonight," she said. "You’ve had so many late nights recently."

"I think I will."

"What was the American like?"

"He’s nice. Very quiet and navy."

"Was he married?"

"I didn’t ask him. I should think he must have been."

"What did you do?"

The girl repressed her irritation at the catechism; Ma was like that, and there was now too little time to spend it in quarrelling. "We went sailing in the afternoon." She settled down to tell her mother most of what had happened during the week-end, repressing the bit about her bra and much of what had happened at the party.

At Williamstown Commander Towers walked into the dockyard and made his way to Sydney. He occupied two adjoining cabins with a communicating door in the bulkhead, one of which was used for office purposes. He sent a messenger for the officer of the deck in Scorpion and Lieutenant Hirsch appeared with a sheaf of signals in his hand. He took these from the young man and read them through. Mostly they dealt with routine matters of the fuelling and victualling, but one from the Third Naval Member’s office was unexpected. It told him that a civilian scientific officer of the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation had been ordered to report in Scorpion for scientific duties. This officer would be under the command of the Australian liaison officer in Scorpion. His name was Mr. J. S. Osborne.

Commander Towers held this signal in his hand, and glanced at the lieutenant. "Say, do you know anything about this guy?"

"He’s here right now, sir. He arrived this morning. I put him in the wardroom and got the duty officer to allocate a cabin for him for tonight."

The captain raised his eyebrows. "Well, what do you know? What does he look like?"

"Very tall and thin. Mousey sort of hair. Wears spectacles."

"How old?"

"A little older than me, I’d say. Under thirty, though."

The captain thought for a minute. "Going to make things kind of crowded in the wardroom. I think we’ll berth him with Commander Holmes. You got three men aboard?"

"That’s right. Isaacs, Holman, and de Vries. Chief of the Boat Mortimer is on board, too."

"Tell the chief I want another cot rigged on the forward side of Bulkhead F, transverse to the ship, head to starboard. He can take one out of the forward torpedo flat."

"Okay, sir."

Commander Towers ran through the routine matters in the other signals with his officer, and then sent the lieutenant to ask Mr. Osborne to come to the office. When the civilian appeared he motioned him to a chair, gave him a cigarette, and dismissed his officer. "Well, Mr. Osborne," he said, "this is quite a surprise. I just read the order posting you to join us. I’m glad to know you."

"I’m afraid it was rather a quick decision," the scientist said. "I only heard about it the day before yesterday."

"That’s very often the way it is in service matters," said the captain. "Well, first things first. What’s your full name?"

"John Seymour Osborne."

"Married?"

"No."

"Okay. Aboard Scorpion, or aboard any naval vessel, address me as Captain Towers, and every now and then you call me ‘sir.’ On shore, off duty, my name is Dwight to you—not to the junior officers."

The scientist smiled. "Very good, sir."

"Ever been to sea in a submarine before?"

"No."

"You’ll find things just a little cramped till you get used to it. I’m fixing you a berth in Officer’s Country, and you’ll mess with the officers in the wardroom." He glanced at the neat grey suit upon the scientist. "You’ll probably need clothing. See Lieutenant Commander Holmes about that when he comes aboard tomorrow morning, and get him to draw clothing for you from the store. You’ll get that suit messed up if you go down in Scorpion in that."

"Thank you, sir."

The captain leaned back in his chair and glanced at the scientist, noting the lean, intelligent face, the loose, ungainly figure. "Tell me, what are you supposed to be doing in this outfit?"