Nevil Shute Norway - Pastoral

‘Eleven pounds?’ the man said. He was a delicate-looking chap about thirty years of age, dressed in a golf coat and grey trousers. ‘That’s a good weight. Not many pike that weight in the Fittel.’ His words were like music to the pilot. ‘A chap at Uffington got one last year that weighed fifteen and a half pounds—that’s the biggest that there’s been in recent years.’

‘Have a beer,’ said Marshall. And when he had provided it, he said. ‘You’ve lived here a long time, I suppose?’

The other laughed. ‘Eighteen months,’ he said. ‘I come from London. I’m in the motor trade—Great Portland Street. Now I’m in tractors. I run the service depot up the road. Now and again I flog a second-hand Morris, but it’s mostly tractors.’

Marshall said: ‘A bit quiet after London?’

‘God, no. I love it down here.’

‘I should have thought it would have bored you stiff.’

The man said: ‘Well, you might think so. But—what I mean is, up in London you arse around and go to the local and meet the boys and perhaps take in a flick, and then when you go to bed you find you’ve spent a quid and wonder where in hell it went and what you got for it. Down here there’s always something to do.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Well—shooting, for example. I know most of the farmers because I keep the tractors turning over for them, don’t you see? And any time I want to take a gun and shoot a rabbit or a pigeon, they like to have me do it round the farm, see? And it’s all in the day’s work, because you see the tractor at the same time and have a chat with the driver and show him how to change the oil in the back axle, and then you go on and take a pot at a hare or anything that’s going, see? I got a hare last Thursday—no, Friday.’

The pilot said: ‘Do you know the people out at Coldstone Mill?’

‘Up the river—where you caught the pike? It’s on Jack Barton’s land. I don’t know the people in the mill, but I know Jack Barton.’

‘Would he let me have a go at the pigeons in the trees below the mill?’

‘Sure he would. I sold him an eight-horse-power Ford last June.’

‘If you know him, would you like to ask him for me? Or give me a chit to him?’

The man said: ‘Give me twopence for the call, and I’ll give him a tinkle in the morning.’

‘That’s awfully good of you.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marshall. What’s yours?’

‘Ellison. If I don’t see you tomorrow night, I’ll leave word with Nellie there, behind the bar.’

They lit cigarettes. Ellison exhaled a long grey cloud. ‘There’s always something to do here. We had a fox shoot last month, all through the woods. They can’t keep them down, now that the hunt’s packed up.’

‘Are there many foxes here?’

‘The woods are stiff with them.’ The tractor salesman leaned forward impressively. ‘I tell you, I could guarantee to take you and show you a fox and a badger both within a quarter of an hour.’

The pilot, fifty miles from London, stared at him incredulously. ‘You couldn’t!’

‘I could.’ Neither of them was drunk nor anywhere near it, but their inhibitions were relaxed by beer. ‘I’d take you and show you a fox and a badger both within a quarter of an hour.’

‘Where?’

‘Never you mind.’

‘But wild?’

‘Sure—out in the woods. A wild fox and a wild badger, both within a quarter of an hour.’

‘Bet you couldn’t.’

‘Bet you ten bob I could. What about it?’

‘It’s a bet. What do we have to do?’

‘Let’s get this straight,’ said Mr Ellison. ‘If I show you a wild fox and a wild badger both within a quarter of an hour, you give me ten bob. And if I don’t, I give you ten bob.’

‘That’s right,’ said Marshall. ‘What do we do?’

‘Christ,’ said Mr Ellison, ‘the missus won’t half tear me to bits. We meet in Hartley market-place, by the cross, at four o’clock in the morning.’

‘Christmas!’ said the pilot. ‘All right. But it’s pitch dark till seven.’

‘That’s right—that’s what we want. Come on your bike. If either doesn’t turn up, he loses the ten bob.’

They discussed the detail of their plan and drank another beer or two; then it was closing time, and the ‘Black Horse’ vomited its occupants out into the dim, moonlit street. Marshall walked back to the station with his companions and went up to bed. Lying in bed before sleep, he thought that he had had a splendid day. He had got up in the middle of the morning, and it had been fine and bright and sunny. He had gone fishing with his new rod. He had caught one of the biggest fish in the river and landed it without either net or gaff. He had showed it to a girl, quite a pretty girl, and she had been nice to him about it. He was well on the way to a day’s pigeon-shooting, and he had contracted to be shown a wild fox and a wild badger both within a quarter of an hour. A splendid day.

Quite a pretty girl. He wondered how he could find out her Christian name without calling attention to his curiosity.

He slept.

He was out next morning at dispersal soon after nine. Gunnar was there already, preparing to start up; the ground crew were plugging-in the battery. Marshall walked up and inspected the fabric patches on the fuselage, still red with dope. His rear-gunner joined him.

‘Come up nice and tight, haven’t they?’ he said. ‘It’s the dry weather does it.’

Marshall straightened up. ‘They want a lick of paint now. We don’t want to go around like that.’ He liked things to be neat and tidy and good-looking, like that Section Officer.

Sergeant Phillips said: ‘I’ll get hold of some paint and give them a lick this afternoon, after we come in.’

His captain said: ‘Hear about my pike?’

The sergeant grinned: ‘Aye. The young lady I took out last night, she saw you riding into camp with it. How much did it weigh?’

‘Eleven and a quarter pounds.’

‘My young lady, she was just coming off duty in the signals office. She said they didn’t half have a good laugh to see you riding with it on your handle-bars.’

‘They’d laugh louder if you did that with a roach,’ said the pilot.

Sergeant Pilot Franck came up to them. ‘I have been thinking about what you say yesterday,’ he said. ‘It is I that should tell you how to weave. Right weave . . . Left weave . . . So. If every time you weave exactly in the same way, then we run up for ver’ short time.’

‘All right if I could weave the same each time. I think you’ll find I go thirty degrees one way and fifty the other.’

‘If you were German,’ said the Dane severely, ‘you would always weave the same.’

‘If I was a German,’ said the pilot equably, ‘I’d be flying a Heinkel and kicking your bloody arse because you didn’t say “Heil Hitler” before you spoke. All right, let’s have a crack at it that way, and see how it goes.’ He turned round to the crew of four, gathered around him in their flying kit. ‘We’re going to practise a few run-ups this morning, taking the gasometer at Princes Risborough as the target. Eight thousand feet.’ He turned to the wireless operator, a pale lad from Stockton-on-Tees. ‘Leech, you can do the navigation, and Phillips, you can help him if he gets it wrong.’ He did all he could to ensure that everybody understood the wireless and the navigation and the guns.

They took off presently, and went climbing away into the distance. It was nearly two hours later when they landed back again, taxied in, and wheeled round into wind at the dispersal point with a grinding squeal of brakes. In turn the engines died and came to rest.

Marshall stood up beside Gunnar, who had landed the machine, with Sergeant Phillips’ notebook in his hand. ‘Take out runs three and seven, when you weren’t on,’ he said. ‘The rest go fifty-two seconds, fifty-four, forty-four, forty-four, forty-one, forty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, thirty-nine. It’s not bad.’