Nevil Shute - On The Beach

"He never caught a sea gull," he said. "I guess that’s all I’ve got against him. I never logged him for it."

"Did you expect him to catch sea gulls?"

"Sure. I rated him chief sea gull catcher, but he fell down on the job. The Prime Minister, your Mr. Ritchie, he’ll be mighty sore with me about no sea gull. A ship’s captain, though, he’s just so good as his officers and no better."

She asked, "Have you been drinking, Dwight?"

"I’ll say I have. Coca-Cola."

"Ah, that’s what’s wrong. You need a double brandy—no, whisky. Can I speak to Peter Holmes?"

"Not here, you can’t. He’s lunching with John Osborne someplace, I believe. Could be the Pastoral Club."

"Worse and worse," she said. "If he happens to ask you down, will you come? I’d like to see if you can sail that dinghy any better this time. I’ve got a padlock for my bra."

He laughed. "I’ll be glad to come. Even on those terms."

"He may not ask you," she pointed out. "I don’t like the sound of this sea gull business at all. It seems to me that there’s bad trouble in your ship."

"Let’s talk it over."

"Certainly," she replied. "I’ll hear what you’ve got to say."

She rang off, and succeeded in catching Peter on the telephone as he was about to leave the club. She came directly to the point. "Peter, will you ask Dwight Towers down to your place for the weekend? I’ll ask myself."

He temporized. "I’ll get hell from Mary if he gives Jennifer measles."

"I’ll tell her she caught it from you. Will you ask him?"

"If you like. I don’t suppose he’ll come."

"He will."

She met him at Falmouth station in her buggy, as she had before. As he passed through the ticket barrier he greeted her with, "Say, what happened to the red outfit?"

She was dressed in khaki, khaki slacks and khaki shirt, practical and workmanlike. "I wasn’t sure about wearing it, meeting you," she said. "I didn’t want to get it all messed up.

He laughed. "You’ve got quite an opinion of me!"

"A girl can’t be too careful," she said primly. "Not with all this hay about."

They walked down to where her horse and buggy stood tied to the rail. "I suppose we’d better settle up this sea gull business before meeting Mary," she said. "I mean, it’s not a thing one wants to talk about in mixed company. What about the Pier Hotel?"

"Okay with me," he said. They got up into the jinker and drove through the empty streets to the hotel. She tied the reins to the same bumper of the same car, and they went into the Ladies’ Lounge.

He bought her a double brandy, and bought a single whisky for himself. "Now, what’s all this about the sea gull?" she demanded. "You’d better come clean, Dwight, however discreditable it is."

"I saw the Prime Minister before we went off on this cruise," he told her. "The First Naval Member, he took me over. He told us this and that, and among other things he wanted us to find out all we could about the bird life in the radioactive area."

"All right. Well, did you find out anything for him?"

"Nothing at all," he replied comfortably. "Nothing about the birds, nothing about the fish, and not much about anything else."

"Didn’t you catch any fish?"

He grinned at her. "If anyone can tell me how to catch a fish out of a submarine that’s submerged, or a sea gull when nobody can go on deck, I’d like to know. It could probably be done with specially designed equipment. Everything’s possible. But this was at the final briefing, hail an hour before we sailed."

"So you didn’t bring back a sea gull?"

"Was the Prime Minister very much annoyed?"

"I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t dare go see him."

"I’m not surprised." She paused and took a drink from her glass, and then more seriously she said, "Tell me. There’s nobody alive up there, is there?"

He shook his head. "I don’t think so. It’s difficult to say for certain unless one was prepared to put a man on shore, in a protective suit. Looking back, I think that’s what we should have done in some of those places. But we weren’t briefed for that this time, and no equipment on board. The decontamination is a problem, when he comes back in the ship."

"‘This time,’" she quoted. "Are you going again?"

He nodded. "I think so. We’ve had no orders, but I’ve got a hunch they’ll send us over to the States."

She opened her eyes. "Can you go there?"

He nodded. "It’s quite a way, and it’d be a very long time underwater. Pretty hard on the crew. But yet—it could be done. Swordfish took a cruise like that, and so could we."

He told her about Swordfish and her cruise around the North Atlantic. "The trouble is, you see so very little through the periscope. We’ve got the captain’s report on the Swordfish cruise, and, when you sum it all up, they really learned very little. Not much more than you’d know if you sat down to think it out. You can only see the waterfront, and that from a height of about twenty feet. You can see if there’s been bomb damage in a city or a port, but that’s about all you can see. It was the same with us. We found out very little on this cruise. Just stayed there calling on the loud hailer for a while, and when nobody came down to look at us or answer, we assumed they were all dead." He paused. "It’s all you can assume."

She nodded. "Somebody was saying that they’ve got it in Mackay. Do you think that’s true?"

"I think it is true," he said. "It’s coming south very steadily, just like the scientists said it would."

"If it goes on at this rate, how long will it be before it gets here?"

"I’d say around September. Could be a bit before."

She got restlessly to her feet. "Get me another drink, Dwight." And when he brought it she said, "I want to go somewhere—do something—dance!"

"Anything you say, honey."

"We can’t just sit here mooning and moaning about what’s coming to us!"

"You’re right," he said. "But what do you want to do, more ‘n you’re doing now?"

"Don’t be sensible," she said fretfully. "I just can’t bear it."

"Okay," he said equably. "Drink up and let’s go up and meet the Holmes, and then go sail that boat."

They found at the flat that Peter and Mary Holmes had arranged a beach picnic supper for the evening’s entertainment. Not only was it cheaper than a party and more pleasant in the heat of summer, but in Mary’s somewhat muddled view the more the men were kept out of the house the less likely they were to give the baby measles. That afternoon Moira and Dwight went down to the sailing club after a quick lunch to rig the boat and sail her in the race, while Peter and Mary followed with the baby in the bicycle trailer in the middle of the afternoon.

The race went reasonably well that time. They bumped the buoy at the start, and engaged in a lulling match on the second round which ended in a minor collision because neither party knew the rules, but in that club such incidents were not infrequent, and protests very few. They finished the race in sixth place, an improvement on the time before, and in much better order. They sailed in to the beach at the conclusion of the race, parked the vessel on a convenient sandbank, and waded on shore to drink a cup of tea and eat small cakes with Peter and Mary.

They bathed in leisurely fashion in the evening sun; in bathing costumes they unrigged the boat, put away the sails, and got her up to her resting place upon the dry sand of the beach. The sun dropped down to the horizon and they changed into their clothes, took drinks from the hamper, and walked out to the jetty’s end to see the sunset while Peter and Mary got busy with the supper.

Sitting with him perched upon a rail, watching the rosy lights reflected in the calm sea, savouring the benison of the warm evening and the comfort of her drink, she asked him, "Dwight, tell me about the cruise that Swordfish made. Did you say she went to the United States?"