Nevil Shute Norway - Pastoral

‘I looked.’ Above their heads, in a bare elm tree, there was a sudden flap and clatter, and a pigeon flew off. They raised their heads to watch it. ‘I looked, but there was nothing. Only the bomb doors and the belly and the fabric underneath the tail. It is no damage, really.’

Marshall said: ‘It was just as you said “Bombs away.” Just after that, wasn’t it? We were running up too long.’

‘One minute only. Sixty-five seconds. I had the stop-watch running,’ said Gunnar.

‘We’ll have to get it shorter. I’d hate to get shot up by the Eyeties. I should die of shame.’

‘Of shame?’ The Dane wrinkled his forehead; there were still points of English manners that eluded him.

The pilot said: ‘Did you see that pigeon? This place is stiff with them. You haven’t got a gun?’

Gunnar shook his head. ‘Sergeant Pilot Nutter, he has a rifle. A little gun, his own. Two-two.’

‘Bring it out with you next time you come and let’s see if we can’t get one or two. They’re bloody good eating, pigeons.’

‘Oh—oh, yes. Pigeons is ver’ good eating. In my country we eat many pigeons.’

‘Well, see if you can lay your hands on that gun, and let’s have a crack at them.’

‘The farmer—it will be all right?’

‘I’ll see the people at the mill and see if they mind. They ought not to. I’ll race around the mess and see if I can borrow a shot-gun. It’s a good thing to shoot pigeons. They eat the crops. It says so in the paper.’

‘Perhaps the farmer does not read the paper.’

‘Get that rifle, anyway.’ The pilot wound the last of the line back smoothly on to the reel. He raised the little rod above and behind his head and flicked his arm; the plug went sailing out into the stream smoothly and with no effort.

‘Nice,’ said Gunnar. He stooped to the bag and picked out a reddish, translucent plug bait. ‘I think this one will be the best.’ He pointed to the shallows and the backwater between beds of reeds. ‘There is the best place for a pike.’

The pilot said: ‘Too weedy and too shallow.’ He paused. ‘Do you think we could get the run-up a bit shorter?’

‘I will try.’

Marshall reeled the plug in to his feet and drew it dripping from the water. ‘I’ll try telling you the evasive action that I’m going to take, down the intercom. Each move, so that you know what’s coming. And you can tell me which way to bias it. We’ll have to waltz into position before levelling off.’

‘It will be ver’ difficult,’ said Gunnar doubtfully.

‘We’ll have a stab at it tomorrow on the flight test.’

‘Okay.’ The Dane picked up his rod. ‘Now I will catch a roach for tea.’

Marshall called after him: ‘Don’t forget about that rifle.’

Gunnar raised his hand, and the pilot stood watching him for a moment as he went away down-stream between the trees in the dappled sunshine. He was a damn good chap, Marshall thought. That matter of the tanks—Gunnar never missed a thing. He’d probably get his roach all right.

Marshall turned back to the pool and began casting.

A quarter of an hour later he rested again, thoughtful. There might be something in what Gunnar said; pike liked sunny spots and sometimes came into quite shallow water. He did not think he could cast in among those reeds without catching his plug and losing it eventually; still, if it wouldn’t catch a fish what good was it to him? He cast the lame mouse up the backwater into a shallow swim between green beds of weed and drew it fluttering towards him. Was it his fancy, or was there something following behind the bait?

He cast to the same place a second and a third time, without result. Then he changed to the reddish plug that Gunnar had advised, and made an experimental cast or two out into the rough water of the pool. Having got his length he cast again to the same place, the gravelly, weedy shallow, and began reeling in.

In the backwater there was a sudden splashing gulp upon the surface. The line tightened and the little rod bent suddenly; he gripped it with both hands and heard the reel scream as the line went out. He knew at once that it was a bigger fish than he had ever hooked before; indeed, he had only caught two pike in his life, both very small. In the backwater there was a thrashing turmoil in the weeds with quick jerks on the line. He grasped the handle of the reel and got in line. The fish dashed from him up the backwater taking out line as he went; the pilot reeled him in again. Then, in the manner of a pike, the fight went out of him, and Marshall drew him through the swift water of the stream without a kick. He woke up when he saw the pilot and made a short run; then he was finished and came up to the surface as Marshall pulled him in. The great snapping mouth, cream-coloured underneath, was open, the red plug hooked firm in the lower jaw.

The young man breathed: ‘God, he’s a bloody monster.’

He had neither gaff nor landing-net nor priest. He had too much sense to touch the fish; he towed it with the rod, limp and supine in the water, to a little beach and pulled it up the sandy mud, wriggling and snapping the great jaws. Then with a stone he hit it gingerly upon the head, divided in his anxieties to kill it before it could escape, to kill it without injuring the look of it, and to avoid being bitten. Presently it lay still, and he pulled it up on to the grass.

He was excited and exultant; it seemed to him to be a most enormous fish. As soon as he dared put his hand near it he measured it with his thumb, which he knew to be an inch and a quarter from knuckle to tip; it was thirty-three inches long.

His heart was fluttering with excitement. Mechanically he began to take down his rod and pack up his gear; he would fish no more that afternoon. Anything after this magnificent experience would be an anti-climax; there was a time to stop and rest upon achievement, and this was it. Gingerly and timorously he poked a bit of string through the gills and made a loop. He slung his bag over his shoulder, and with the fish in one hand and his rod in the other went to find Gunnar.

A wet fish thirty-three inches long suspended by a bit of thin string is not a convenient burden if you want to keep its tail from dragging on the ground. Carrying it with his arm crooked Marshall found the muscular exertion quite considerable and it spread its slime all down his battledress trousers; carrying it over his shoulder upon the butt end of the rod was easier, and it spread its slime all down the back of his blouse. In the open air, and while the slime was fresh, this did not seem to matter very much; it became important to him later in the day.

Gunnar saw him coming in the distance and stood up from his little stool, and came to meet him. ‘That is ver’ good,’ he said genially. ‘It is a ver’ good fish, that one.’

Marshall said: ‘Thirty-three inches.’

‘So?’ The Dane felt the weight of it. ‘With which plug?’

‘The red one—and over in the shallows.’

Gunnar nodded. ‘He pull ver’ hard?’

Marshall said: ‘He gave up pretty soon.’ He paused. ‘Have you done any good?’

‘Two.’ The sergeant pilot opened his bag and showed two quarter-pound roach lying upon a bed of grass.

‘Coming back to the camp?’

Gunnar shook his head. ‘They are feeding well; I shall stay here.’ He grinned. ‘I think that they have heard the news; so they come out to feed.’

Marshall glanced down at his fish. ‘I bet this one’s eaten a few roach in his time.’

He left Gunnar and walked up the bank towards his bicycle, carrying his awkward burden. He speculated as he went how much it weighed; his estimates showed a tendency to rise as he went on, so that the buoyancy of his spirits offset the fatigue of his arm. He reached the mill at last and spread the fish, now stiffening across his bicycle-basket and tied it insecurely there with string. Then he rode back to the camp.