Nevil Shute - On The Beach

"I wouldn’t know," said the commander. "I want a nice bracelet."

The assistant picked one up. "We have this, which is forty guineas or this one which is sixty-five guineas. They are very attractive, I think."

"What’s that one, there?"

The man picked it up. "That is much more expensive, sir. It’s a very beautiful piece." He examined the tiny tag.

"That one is two hundred and twenty-five guineas."

It glowed on the black velvet. Dwight picked it up and examined it. The man had spoken the truth when he had said it was a lovely piece. She had nothing like it in her jewel box. He knew that she would love it.

"Would that be English or Australian work?" he asked. The man shook his head. "This came originally from Cartier’s, in Paris. It came to us from the estate of a lady in Toorak. It’s in quite new condition, as you see. Usually we find that the clasp needs attention, but this didn’t even need that. It is in quite perfect order."

He could picture her delight in it. "I’ll take that," he said. "I’ll have to pay you with a cheque. I’ll call in and pick it up tomorrow or the next day."

He wrote the cheque and took his receipt. Turning away, he stopped, and turned back to the man. "One thing," he said. "You wouldn’t happen to know where I could buy a Pogo stick, a present for a little girl? Seems they’re kind of scarce around here just at present."

"I’m afraid I can’t, sir," said the man. "I think the only thing to do would be to try all the toy shops in turn."

The shops were closing and there was no time that night to do any more. He took his parcel back with him to Williamstown, and when he reached the carrier he went down into the submarine and laid it along the back of his berth, where it was inconspicuous. Two days later, when he got his bracelet, he took that down into the submarine also and locked it away in the steel cupboard that housed the confidential books.

That day a Mrs. Hector Fraser took a broken silver cream jug to the jeweller’s to have the handle silver-soldered. Walking down the street that afternoon she encountered Moira Davidson, whom she had known from a child. She stopped and asked after her mother. Then she said, "My dear, you know Commander Towers, the American, don’t you?"

The girl said, "Yes. I know him quite well. He spent a week-end out with us the other day."

"Do you think he’s crazy? Perhaps all Americans are crazy. I don’t know."

The girl smiled. "No crazier than all the rest of us, these days. What’s he been up to?"

"He’s been trying to buy a Pogo stick in Simmonds’."

Moira was suddenly alert. "A Pogo stick?"

"My dear, in Simmonds’ of all places. As if they’d sell Pogo sticks there! It seems he went in and bought the most beautiful bracelet and paid some fabulous price for it. That wouldn’t be for you by any chance?"

"I haven’t heard about it. It sounds very unlike him."

"Au well, you never know with these men. Perhaps he’ll spring it on you one day as a surprise."

"But what about the Pogo stick?"

"Well, then when he’d bought the bracelet he asked Mr. Thompson, the fair-haired one, the nice young man—he asked him if he knew where he could buy a Pogo stick. He said he wanted it for a present for a little girl."

"What’s wrong with that?" Miss Davidson asked quietly. "It would make a very good present for a little girl of the right age."

"I suppose it would. But it seems such a funny thing for the captain of a submarine to want to buy. In Simmonds’ of all places."

The girl said, "He’s probably courting a rich widow with a little girl. The bracelet for the mother and the Pogo stick for the daughter. What’s wrong with that?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Fraser, "only we all thought that he was courting you."

"That’s just where you’ve been wrong," the girl said equably. "It’s me that’s been courting him." She turned away. "I must get along. It’s been so nice seeing you. I’ll tell Mummy."

She walked on down the street, but the matter of the Pogo stick stayed in her mind. She went so far that afternoon as to inquire into the condition of the Pogo stick market, and found it to be depressed. If Dwight wanted a Pogo stick, he was evidently going to have some difficulty in getting one.

Everyone was going a bit mad these days, of course—Peter and Mary Holmes with their garden, her father with his farm programme, John Osborne with his racing motorcar, Sir Douglas Froude with the club port, and now Dwight Towers with his Pogo stick. Herself also, possibly, with Dwight Towers. All with an eccentricity that verged on madness, born of the times they lived in.

She wanted to help him, wanted to help him very much indeed, and yet she knew she must approach this very cautiously. When she got home that evening she went to the lumber room and pulled out her old Pogo stick and rubbed the dirt off it with a duster. The wooden handle might be sandpapered and revarnished by a skilled craftsman and possibly it might appear as new, though wet had made dark stains in the wood. Rust had eaten deeply into the metal parts, however, and at one point the metal step was rusted through. No amount of paint could ever make that part of it look new, and her own childhood was still close enough to raise in her distaste at the thought of a secondhand toy. That wasn’t the answer.

She met him on Tuesday evening for the movie, as they had arranged. Over dinner she asked him how the submarine was getting on. "Not too badly," he told her. "They’re giving us a second electrolytic oxygen regeneration outfit to work in parallel with the one we’ve got. I’d say that work might be finished by tomorrow night, and then we’ll run a test on Thursday. We might get away from here by the end of the week."

"Is that very important?"

He smiled. "We shall have to run submerged for quite a while. I wouldn’t like to run out of air, and have to surface in the radioactive area or suffocate."

"Is this a sort of spare set, then?"

He nodded. "We were lucky to get it. They had it over in the naval stores, in Fremantle."

He was absent-minded that evening. He was pleasant and courteous to her, but she felt all the time that he was thinking of other things. She tried several times during dinner to secure his interest, but failed. It was the same in the movie theatre; he went through all the motions of enjoying it and giving her a good time, but there was no life in the performance. She told herself that she could hardly expect it to be otherwise, with a cruise like that ahead of him.

After the show they walked down the empty streets towards the station. As they neared it she stopped at the dark entrance to an arcade, where they could talk quietly. "Stop here a minute, Dwight," she said. "I want to ask you something."

"Sure," he said kindly. "Go ahead."

"You’re worried over something, aren’t you?"

"Not really. I’m afraid I’ve been bad company tonight."

"Is it about the submarine?"

"Why no, honey. I told you, there’s nothing dangerous in that. It’s just another job."

"It’s not about a Pogo stick, is it?"

He stared at her in amazement in the semidarkness. "Say, how did you get to hear about that?"

She laughed gently. "I have my spies. What did you get for Junior?"

"A fishing rod." There was a pause, and then he said, "I suppose you think I’m nuts."

She shook her head. "I don’t. Did you get a Pogo stick?"

"No. Seems like they’re completely out of stock."

"I know." They stood in silence for a moment. "I had a look at mine," she said. "You can have that if it’s any good to you. But it’s awfully old, and the metal parts are rusted through. It works still, but I don’t think it could ever be made into a very nice present."