Nevil Shute - On The Beach

While he was standing there, helpless, the Gipsy-Lotus passed again.

He stood there in the steady rain for several seconds before it struck him that there had been no other cars between the two transits of the Gipsy-Lotus. When it did so, he made a dash for the Ferrari. If in fact there was only one car left in the race he still had a chance for the Grand Prix; if he could struggle round the track to the pits he might yet change the wheel and get the second place. He toured on slowly, wrestling with the steering, while the rain ran down his neck and the Gipsy-Lotus passed a third time. The tire burst at The Slide, where about six cars seemed to be tangled in a heap, and he went on on the rim, and reached the pits as the Lotus passed again.

The wheel change took his pit crew about thirty seconds, and a quick inspection showed little damage apart from panelling. He was off again several laps behind, and now one of the Bugattis detached itself from the chaos around The Slide and joined in. It was never a threat, however, and John Osborne toured around the course discreetly to win second place in the heat and a start in the Grand Prix. Of the eleven starters in the heat eight had failed to complete the course and three drivers had been killed.

He swung his Ferrari into the paddock and stopped the engine, while his pit crew and his friends crowded round to congratulate him. He hardly heard them; his fingers were trembling with shock and the release of strain. He had only one thought in his mind, to get the Ferrari back to Melbourne and take down the front end; all was not well with the steering though he had managed to complete the course. Something was strained or broken; she had pulled heavily towards the left in the concluding stages of the race.

Between the friends crowding round he saw the upturned box where Don Harrison had parked his Jaguar, the glasses, the two whisky bottles. "God," he said to no one in particular, "I’ll have that drink with Don now." He got out of the car and walked unsteadily to the box; one of the bottles was still nearly full. He poured a generous measure with a very little water, and then he saw Sam Bailey standing by the Gipsy-Lotus. He poured another drink and took it over to the winner, pushing through the crowd. "I’m having this on Don," he said. "You’d better have one, too."

The young man took it, nodded, and drank. "How did you come off?" he asked. "I saw you’d tangled."

"Got round for a wheel change," said the scientist thickly. "She’s steering like a drunken pig. Like a bloody Gipsy-Lotus."

"My car steers all right," the other said nonchalantly. "Trouble is, she won’t stay steered. You driving back to town?"

"If she’ll make it."

"I’d pinch Don’s transporter. He’s not going to need it." The scientist stared at him. "That’s an idea..." The dead driver had brought his Jaguar to the race on an old truck to avoid destroying tune by running on the road. The truck was standing not far from them in the paddock, unattended.

"I should nip in quick, before someone else gets it." John Osborne downed his whisky, shot back to his car, and galvanized his pit crew of enthusiasts with the new idea. Together they mustered willing hands to help and pushed the Ferrari up the steel ramps on to the tray body, lashing her down with ropes. Then he looked round uncertainly. A marshal passed and he stopped him. "Are there any of Don Harrison’s crew about?"

"I think they’re all over with the crash. I know his wife’s down there."

He had been minded to drive off in the transporter with the Ferrari because Don would never need it again, nor would his Jaguar. To leave his pit crew and his wife without transport back to town, however, was another thing.

He left the paddock and started to walk down the track towards the Haystack, with Eddie Brooks, one of his pit crew, beside him. He saw a little group standing by the wreckage of the cars in the rain, one of them a woman. He had intended to talk to Don’s pit crew, but when he saw the wife was dry-eyed he changed his mind, and went to speak to her.

"I was the driver of the Ferrari," he said. "I’m very sorry that this happened, Mrs. Harrison."

She inclined her head. "You come up and bumped into them right at the end," she said. "It wasn’t anything to do with you."

"I know. But I’m very sorry."

"Nothing for you to be sorry about," she said heavily.

"He got it the way he wanted it to be. None of this being sick and all the rest of it. Maybe if he hadn’t had that whisky... I dunno. He got it the way he wanted it to be. You one of his cobbers?"

"Not really. He offered me a drink before the race, but I didn’t take it. I’ve just had it now."

"You have? Well, good on you. That’s the way Don would have wanted it. Is there any left?"

He hesitated. "There was when I left the paddock. Sam Bailey had a go at it, and I did. Maybe the boys have finished up the bottles."

She looked up at him. "Say, what do you want? His car? They say it isn’t any good."

He glanced at the wrecked Jaguar. "I shouldn’t think it is. No, what I wanted to do was to put my car on his transporter and get it back to town. The steering’s had it, but I’ll get her right for the Grand Prix."

"You got a place, didn’t you? Well, it’s Don’s transporter but he’d rather have it work with cars that go than work with wrecks. All right, chum, you take it."

He was a little taken aback. "Where shall I return it to?"

"I won’t be using it. You take it."

He thought of offering money but rejected the idea; the time was past for that. "That’s very kind of you," he said. "It’s going to make a big difference to me, having the use of that transporter."

"Fine," she said. "You go right ahead and win that Grand Prix. Any parts you need from that—" She indicated the wrecked Jaguar—"you take them, too."

"How are you getting back to town?" he asked.

"Me? I’ll wait and go with Don in the ambulance. But they say there’s another load of hospital cases for each car to go first, so it’ll probably be around midnight before we get away."

There seemed to be nothing more that he could do for her. "Can I take some of the pit crew back?"

She nodded, and spoke to a fat, balding man of fifty. He detached two youngsters to go back with John. "Aifle here, he’ll stay with me and see this all squared up," she said dully. "You go right ahead, mister, and win that Grand Prix."

He went a little way aside and talked to Eddie Brooks, standing in the rain. "Tires are the same size as ours. Wheels are different, but if we took the hubs as well... That Maserati’s crashed up by The Slide. We might have a look at that one, too. I believe that’s got a lot of the same front-end parts as we have..."

They walked back to their newly acquired transporter and drove it back in the half light to Haystack Corner, and commenced the somewhat ghoulish task of stripping the dead bodies of the wrecked cars of anything that might be serviceable to the Ferrari. It was dark before they finished and they drove back to Melbourne in the rain.

In Mary Holmes’ garden the first narcissus bloomed on the first day of August, the day the radio announced, with studied objectivity, cases of radiation sickness in Adelaide and Sydney. The news did not trouble her particularly; all news was bad, like wage demands, strikes, or war, and the wise person paid no attention to it. What was important was that it was a bright, sunny day; her first narcissus were in bloom, and the daffodils behind them were already showing flower buds. "They’re going to be a picture," she said happily to Peter. "There are so many of them. Do you think some of the bulbs can have sent up two shoots?"

"I shouldn’t think so," he replied. "I don’t think they do that. They split in two and make another bulb or something."