Nevil Shute - On The Beach

"Can’t you stay over till tomorrow morning?"

He shook his head, knowing her concern about the measles. "I’ll have to get back tonight."

He went out into the garden directly the meal was over to smoke a cigarette, thinking to ease Mary’s mind. Moira found him there when she came out from helping with the dishes, sitting in a deck chair looking out over the bay. She sat down beside him. "Are you really going to church?" she asked.

"That’s right," he said.

"Can I come too?"

He turned his head, and looked at her in surprise. "Why, certainly. Do you go regularly?"

She smiled. "Not once in a blue moon," she admitted. "It might be better if I did. Maybe I wouldn’t drink so much."

He pondered that one for a moment. "Could be," he said uncertainly. "I don’t know that that’s got a lot to do with it."

"You’re sure you wouldn’t rather go alone?"

"Why, no," he said. "I’d like your company."

As they left to walk down to the church Peter Holmes was getting out the garden hose to do some watering before the sun grew hot. His wife came out of the house presently. "Where’s Moira?" she asked.

"Gone to church with the captain."

"Moira? Gone to church?"

He grinned. "Believe it or not, that’s where she’s gone." She stood in silence for a minute. "I hope it’s going to be all right," she said at last.

"Why shouldn’t it?" he asked. "He’s dinkum, and she’s not a bad sort when you get to know her. They might even get married."

She shook her head. "There’s something funny about it. I hope it’s going to be all right," she repeated.

"It’s no concern of ours, anyway," he said. "Lots of things are going a bit weird these days."

She nodded, and started pottering about the garden while he watered. Presently she said, "I’ve been thinking, Peter. Could we take out those two trees, do you think?"

He came and looked at them with her. "I’d have to ask the landlord," he said. "What do you want to take them out for?"

"We’ve got so little space for growing vegetables," she said. "They are so expensive in the shops. If we could take those trees out and cut back the wattle, we could make a kitchen garden here, from here to here. " She indicated with her hands. "I’m sure we could save nearly a pound a week by growing our own stuff. And it’d be fun, too."

He went to survey the trees. "I could get them down all right," he said, "and there’s a nice bit of firewood in them. It’d be green, of course, too green to burn this winter. We’d have to stack it for a year. The only thing is, getting out the stumps. It’s quite a big job, that."

"There are only two of them," she said. "I could help—keep on nibbling at them while you’re away. If we could get them out this winter and dig the ground over, I could plant it in the spring and we’d have vegetables all next summer." She paused. "Peas and beans," she said. "And a vegetable marrow. I’d make marrow jam."

"Good idea," he said. He looked the trees up and down. "They’re not very big," he said. "It’d be better for the pine if they came out."

"Another thing I want to do," she said, "is to put in a flowering gum tree, here. I think that’d look lovely in the summer."

"Takes about five years to come into bloom," he said.

"Never mind. A gum tree there would be just lovely, up against the blue of the sea. We could see it from our bedroom window."

He paused, considering the brilliance of the scarlet flowers all over the big tree against the deep blue sea, in the brilliant sunlight. "It’d certainly be quite a sensation when it was in bloom," he said. "Where would you put it? Here?"

"A bit more over this way, here," she said. "When it got big we could take down this holly thing and have a seat in the shade, here." She paused. "I went to Wilson’s nurseries while you were away," she said. "He’s got some lovely little flowering gum trees there, only ten and six-pence each. Do you think we could put in one of those this autumn?"

"They’re a bit delicate," he said. "I think the thing to do would be to put in two fairly close to each other, so that you’d have one if the other died. Then take out one of them in a couple of years’ time."

"The trouble is, one never does it," she observed.

They went on happily planning their garden for the next ten years, and the morning passed very quickly. When Moira and Dwight came back from church they were still at it. They were called into consultation on the layout of the kitchen garden. Presently Peter and Mary went into the house, the former to get drinks and the latter to get the lunch.

The girl glanced at the American. "Someone’s crazy," she said quietly. "Is it me or them?"

"Why do you say that?"

"They won’t be here in six months’ time. I won’t be here. You won’t be here. They won’t want any vegetables next year."

Dwight stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the blue sea, the long curve of the shore. "So what?" he said at last. "Maybe they don’t believe it. Maybe they think that they can take it all with them and have it where they’re going to, someplace. I wouldn’t know." He paused. "The thing is, they just kind of like to plan a garden. Don’t you go and spoil it for them, telling them they’re crazy."

"I wouldn’t do that." She stood in silence for a minute. "None of us really believe it’s ever going to happen—not to us," she said at last. "Everybody’s crazy on that point, one way or another."

"You’re very right," he said emphatically.

Drinks came, and put a closure on the conversation, and then lunch. After lunch Mary turned the men out into the garden, thinking them to be infectious, while she washed the dishes with Moira. Seated in deck chairs with a cup of coffee, Peter asked his captain, "Have you heard anything about our next job, sir?"

The American cocked his eye at him. "Not a thing. Have you?"

"Not really. Something was said at that conference with P.S.O. that made me wonder if anything was in the wind."

"What was it that was said?"

"Something about fitting us with new directional wireless of some kind. Have you heard anything?"

Dwight shook his head. "We’ve got plenty of radio."

"This is for taking a bearing—accurately. Perhaps when we’re submerged to periscope depth. We can’t do that, can we?"

"Not with our existing equipment. What do they want us to do that for?"

"I don’t know. It wasn’t on the agenda. It was just one of the back-room boys speaking out of turn."

"They want us to track down radio signals?"

"Honestly, I don’t know, sir. How it came up was that they asked if the radiation detector could be moved to the forward periscope so that this thing could be put on the aft periscope. John Osborne said he was pretty sure it could, but he’d take it up with you."

"That’s right. It can go on the forward periscope. I thought they wanted to fit two."

"I don’t think so, sir. I think they want to fit this other gadget in its place on the aft one."

The American stared at the smoke rising from his cigarette. Then he said, "Seattle."

"What’s that, sir?"

"Seattle. There were radio signals coming from someplace near Seattle. Do you know if they’re still coming through?"

Peter shook his head, amazed. "I didn’t know anything about that. Do you mean that somebody’s still operating a transmitter?"

The captain shrugged his shoulders. "Could be. If so, it’s somebody that doesn’t know how to send. Sometimes they make a group, sometimes a word in clear. Most times it’s just a jumble, like a child might make, playing at radio stations."

"Does this go on all the time?"

Dwight shook his head. "I don’t think so. It comes on the air irregularly, now and then. I know they’re monitoring that frequency most of the time. At least, they were till Christmas. I haven’t heard since."