Nevil Shute Norway - Pastoral

Ellison said: ‘It don’t seem so long now as it did back in the pub.’ He turned, and led the way back down the track towards the road.

In a few minutes they branched off, and came to a piece of open pasture, rough and uncared for. There was a streak of grey light over towards the east, but it was still moonlight. Ellison paused. ‘Over in the corner there’s an earth,’ he whispered. ‘Old rabbit burrow.’

They waited for nearly half an hour, but nothing happened. By then the grey light was spreading over the whole sky; they gave it up, and started down the track towards their bicycles. ‘Bloody swindle,’ said the motor salesman. ‘I made sure that I’d be able to produce the fox.’

The pilot said: ‘Maybe you shot him the other day.’

‘That might be.’

And as he spoke, a big dog fox crossed the track a hundred yards ahead of them. In the half-light they saw it loping steadily away between the trees, red, furry, and with a bushy tail held level with the ground. Both said: ‘Fox!’ at the same moment, and stood watching it till it was out of sight.

‘Well, there you are,’ said Ellison. ‘Bit late, but what’s the odds?’

‘None of that,’ said the pilot. He looked at his watch; it was two minutes past seven. ‘You took thirty-nine minutes, not a quarter of an hour. Tell you what. Buy you a drink at the “Black Horse” tonight.’

‘Okay.’

They recovered their bicycles and rode back to Hartley with the light wind behind them in fifty minutes. Marshall left Ellison at the road junction and turned off for the camp, arriving back in the mess in comfortable time for breakfast. He was lighting his pipe and reading the comic strip in his paper when the Tannoy sounded metallically above his head. All ranks were to remain within the camp till further notice. All crews of serviceable aircraft were to muster at their machines at 10.00.

Marshall passed by Pat Johnson on his way up to his room. Mr Johnson said: ‘Did you go out this morning?’

Marshall nodded. ‘Saw the badger, and the fox, but not in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Was it cold?’

‘Awful.’

‘Must be crackers,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘As if we don’t get enough of running round in the dark.’

‘Where’s it to be? Have you heard?’

The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know and I can’t say that I care. It’ll look just the same as all the others when we get there, laddie.’

The morning passed in a routine of checking the aircraft, its engines, guns, instruments, and equipment. Then they got into it and took it off for a quarter of an hour’s final test. When they taxied back to their dispersal point the Bowser was waiting to tank up the Wellington and the armourers were waiting, sitting on their little train of bombs. Bombing up began as the tank lorry drew away. When they dispersed for lunch there was only the de-icing paste to be put on, and the perspex to be polished for the night.

Marshall went into the ante-room for his beer before lunch. The Adjutant came up to him sniffing pointedly and loudly. Marshall said: ‘Fox and badger, sir. Not a particle of Coty, more’s the pity.’

‘Did you see them?’

He had to tell the story of the night, much aware of Section Officer Robertson listening from across the room. He did not speak to her before lunch, but contrived to take his coffee from the urn immediately after her.

She said: ‘You saw them both, a badger and a fox?’

He nodded, smiling. ‘Not within the quarter of an hour. But we did see both—the badger first and then the fox.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Place called Kingslake Woods—somewhere near Chipping Hinton. I’d never been there before.’

The name meant nothing to her. ‘Was it very wild country—in the woods?’

‘Not specially. They were lovely woods.’

There was a short pause. Then she said: ‘You must be tired, aren’t you?’

He grinned. ‘Sleep a bit this afternoon.’

‘I shall, too,’ she said. ‘I’m on tonight.’

‘Are you?’ A thought came to him, sly and subtle and altogether bad. ‘Could you let me have the frequencies and DF stations? I like to get those in my mind before the briefing.’

She had been operational for too short a time to know the idiosyncrasies of all the pilots. She said: ‘Of course. If you’d like to walk over to the office I’ll give them to you now.’

They left the mess together and went over to Headquarters, to her little bare office with the ink-stained deal table, the two hard chairs, the bulldog clips and the buff papers. She read out to him the information that he wanted; he wrote it all down carefully in his notebook, asked a question or two, and slipped the book back in his pocket.

‘Thanks awfully,’ he said. He paused, and then said rather shyly: ‘It was lovely in the woods this morning. Perishing cold, but it was awful fun.’

She said: ‘It must have been. Did you have to wait very long?’

‘A fair time.’ He launched into a description of the expedition. For ten minutes they talked badger and fox. ‘Foxes often make their homes in old rabbit-burrows,’ she said presently. ‘I think most of them do that. But I don’t know about badgers. Did this one have an earth of his own?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Marshall. ‘We didn’t go to it. We were chasing off after the fox, because of the time.’

The girl said: ‘I’ve never seen a badger, or even a badger’s earth.’

Elaborately casual, Marshall said: ‘I can show you this earth any time you like. Show you the badger, too, if you like to put your hand in and pull him out.’

They laughed together. ‘Would you like to do that one afternoon?’ he said. ‘You’ve got a bike, haven’t you?’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d love to see it,’ she said. ‘If I met you out there, would you show it me?’

His heart warmed to her for her discretion. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll take you about an hour to get there on your bike. What about half past three tomorrow afternoon?’

She was suddenly frightened at his confidence. Between then and half past three tomorrow afternoon there lay an operation, a thing of darkness and of terror, of bombs and fire and flares and flak and death. Beyond that, he was making an assignment to go walking in the woods with her.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Half past three tomorrow.’ That wouldn’t bring bad luck, would it?

He said: ‘That’s a date. Have you got a map?’

She had a map, a map on which in lonely absorption she had traced in red the solitary cycle rides that she had made around Hartley Magna. He studied it for a minute or two and then drew a little pencil circle at an intersection of two lanes. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Half past three tomorrow.’

She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll be there.’

He went back to the mess and she went over to her quarters and up to her room. She undressed partially and lay down on her bed, pulling a blanket over her. Life for her had suddenly become very full of incident. First there was the operation immediately ahead. She took her work very seriously. She had been bored with the work of training at her last station; she had wanted to be more closely in contact with the war. Now that she was at an operational station the war terrified her. From time to time when the machines were coming back from the target she had to bear quite heavy responsibilities in the fleeting moment. There had been a terrible occasion ten days previously when a crippled aircraft running short of petrol over the North Sea had appealed for a W/T fix, and when she gave it had complained, in a thin whisper of Morse, that their transmission had been weak and undecipherable. For a desperate half-hour she had laboured with a flight sergeant and two wireless mechanics to check the station transmission and to get in touch again with C for Charlie, while a stream of signals from the other aircraft were passing in and out. There had been nothing wrong with the transmission. The fault must have been some damage to the receiving set in the aircraft, but they were never to know that. That last whisper of Morse haunted her, making her more vigilant and serious about her work than ever.