Nevil Shute Norway - Pastoral

The guard at the gate grinned broadly as he rode into the camp with a very large fish drooping at his handle-bars, and took occasion to salute him very formally. Marshall returned the salute and rode on to the mess past laughing groups of aircraftmen and WAAFs; nobody in the camp would ever say again that he could not catch fish. He parked the bike and, carrying the fish, went through into the kitchen and induced the WAAF cook to put it on the scales. It weighed eleven and a quarter pounds.

‘My!’ she said. ‘That is a nice bit of fish now, isn’t it?’ Her words were like music to him. ‘Will you have it stuffed, Mr Marshall, like we did the other?’

He agreed, and she gave him a dish for it and arranged it stretched out at full length, and he carried it through into the dining-room and put it on the table for display. Then he went through to the ante-room to see whom he could find to show it to.

It was half past five. There were half a dozen officers sitting reading in armchairs, and two WAAF officers looking at the illustrated papers. Marshall looked around for Pat Johnson to confound him, but Pat was not there, nor Lines, nor Humphries. Davy would have to do. Davy was reading about Lemmy Caution and his gorgeous dames, and detached his mind with an effort as Marshall said:

‘I caught a bloody fine fish this afternoon. Come and have a look at it.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the dining-room.’

‘See it some other time, old boy.’ The dame had brunette chestnut hair that fell down on a bare shoulder, and slim bare ankles thrust into white mules, and grey eyes, and curves in all the right places, a small black automatic pistol that pointed straight at Mr Caution’s heart. It was asking too much to leave that for a dead fish.

Slightly damped, Marshall looked around. None of the old sweats of the Wing, the men that he had known for many months, happened to be in. There were only new arrivals that he did not know so well, officers who had been drafted to the station in the last month to replace casualties. There was a Canadian that he had hardly spoken to since he arrived a week before, just getting to has feet. Marshall said: ‘Like to come and see my fish?’

‘What kind of fish?’

‘Pike. Eleven and a quarter pounds.’

‘I guess that’s pretty big, isn’t it?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Pike. Is that the same as a muskie—what we call a muskellunge in Canada?’

‘I think it is. Come and have a look—it’s in the dining-room.’

The other said: ‘I’m real sorry, but I’ve got a date. I’m late for it already. Say, you want to come to Canada one day. I’ll take you where you can get a muskie, thirty pounds, any day of the week. Gee, I wish I was back there!’ He waved his hand. ‘Be seeing you.’

The glamour was fading fast. Outside the light was going; the sun was setting behind trees in a clear sky. A WAAF mess waitress came in and put on the lights and began to draw the black-out. Marshall lit a cigarette and looked around.

He saw Pilot Officer Forbes sitting pretending to read the Illustrated London News and staring at the coal-scuttle. Pilot Officer Forbes had been sitting and pretending to read things for three days now, since Stuttgart. They all knew what was wrong with him; it was Bobbie Fraser. But what could anybody do?

Marshall hesitated, and then crossed over to him. ‘I caught a bloody nice fish today,’ he said gently. All the conceit had gone out of his voice. ‘Like to come and have a look at it? It’s in the dining-room.’

Forbes said without moving: ‘I don’t think so.’

Marshall said in a low tone: ‘Come on, old boy. Snap out of it.’

Forbes raised his head. ‘If you don’t muck off and let me alone,’ he said, ‘I’ll kick your bloody face in.’

Marshall moved away towards the table with the periodicals upon it. Section Officer Robertson looked up from Punch as he passed her. He looked like a little boy, she thought, disappointed because nobody would play with him. It was too bad.

She got up from her chair. I’ll come and see your fish,’ she said, ‘if I may. Where did you say it was?’

Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,

And take the harmless folly of the time!

We shall grow old apace, and die

Before we know our liberty.

And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,

Once lost, can ne’er be found again,

So when or you or I are made

A fable, song, or fleeting shade,

All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drowned with us in endless night.

Then, while times serves, and we are but decaying,

Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.

ROBERT HERRICK, 1648

Marshall turned to her in pleased surprise. ‘Would you really like to see it?’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

‘Will you listen if I tell you how I caught it?’

‘Not for very long. But I’d quite like to see it.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got it in the dining-room.’

It was the first time that he had spoken to Section Officer Robertson. She had been with the Wing for about a month, but the WAAF officers kept themselves very much to themselves. They used the ante-room and lunched with the officers, but they had their own sitting-room in their own quarters to relax in. In the mess and in the ante-room they were carefully correct, and brightly cheerful, and rather inhuman; when they wanted to read the Picturegoer or mend their underwear they went to their own place to do it. It was suggested to them when they took commissions that good WAAF officers did not contract personal relationships with young men on their own station. As candidates for commissions they were serious about their work and desperately keen about the honour of the Service, and so some of them didn’t.

Marshall took the girl through into the deserted dining-room. The fish lay recumbent on its dish, its sombre colours dulled. Death had not improved it; it leered at them with sordid cruelty, and it was smelling rather strong.

Section Officer Robertson said brightly: ‘I say, what a lovely one! How much does it weigh?’

‘Eleven and a quarter pounds.’

‘Did you have an awful job landing it?’

‘Not bad. I had it on a wire trace; I was spinning for it.’

‘In this river here?’

He nodded. ‘Up at Coldstone Mill.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ she said. ‘A great tall building in the fields.’

‘That’s the place,’ he said. ‘I got it in the pool below the mill.’

‘It must have been lovely out there this afternoon,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a heavenly day.’

Recollection came to him suddenly: the black-haired girl in the grey jersey. ‘I saw a lot of WAAFs this morning out in the field doing physical jerks,’ he said. ‘I saw them from my window as I was getting up. Was that you drilling them?’

She nodded. ‘I took them out because it was so lovely. Were you just getting up then?’

He said indignantly: ‘I didn’t get to bed till three!’

She laughed. ‘Sorry.’ She turned back to the fish.

‘It really is a beauty.’ That, after all, was what she had come to say.

She had overdone it. Marshall looked at it with clearer eyes. ‘I don’t know that I quite agree,’ he said. ‘I think it looks ugly as sin, and it’s starting to pong a bit. Be better with a lemon in its mouth.’

She laughed again, relaxed. ‘Well—yes. We’d better open a window if you’re going to leave it here. What are you going to do with it?’

‘Have it for lunch tomorrow. Mollie, in the kitchen, said she’d stuff it for me. Would you like a bit?’

‘I’d love it. I’ve never eaten pike.’

‘All right—I’ll tell them.’ He hesitated. ‘I say, what’s your name? Who shall I say, to give it to?’