Nevil Shute Norway - Pastoral (Nevil Shute Norway) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

He had packed up early with a vague hope that if he got back to the mess by half past four he might, quite accidentally, see Section Officer Robertson drinking a cup of tea. He did not find her there; either she was having tea in her office or else in her own quarters. He lingered for some little time until hope died; then he went up to his room to write his weekly letter to his mother.

He got out his pad, squared his shoulders at the deal table at the end of his bed, and began to write. He never knew what to say. His mother, he knew, lived each day in an agony of fear for him, a gnawing pain that she had suffered and concealed for nearly two years now. He could not write to her about the difficult raids, the ones that had not been so good, and he had long ago exhausted all that could be said about the uneventful ones. He wrote:

My darling mother,

We had a lovely flight the night before last, over to Turin and back. The moon got up as we were getting to the Alps and it was frightfully pretty with snow on the mountains and lakes and everything. They don’t have any black-out there and you could see the street lamps in the towns, and cars going along the road and everything. We went up to seventeen thousand and it was frightfully cold, but it was dry and there wasn’t any icing. I wore your leather waistcoat under everything else, and it was fine.

He paused, and then he wrote:

I’ve seen Switzerland three times now and I’d love to go there one day for a holiday, ski-ing and skating. I don’t think I want to go to Italy much.

He paused again; there really wasn’t much else to say about flying. He went on presently:

I caught a pike yesterday on one of the plugs, in the river here; eleven and a quarter pounds, it was awful fun. I brought it back and a lot of us had it for lunch today, stuffed.

Dare he say that Section Officer Robertson had liked it? Better not. He went on:

The biggest one caught for years was only fifteen pounds, so mine was a pretty good show. I got it on the new rod with the multiplying reel; it’s fine to use. A chap I met says he can show me a fox and a badger both in a quarter of an hour and we’re going out to try it tomorrow very early, about four. Next week I hope we shall be able to go pigeon-shooting.

He drifted into reverie. G.L. . . . Gertrude Lucy? He took up his fountain-pen again and wrote:

I like being on this station more and more; there are some awfully nice people here. Has Bill got his second pip yet? All my love to Daddy and to you, darling.

Peter.

It exactly filled the double-page, which was his statutory length. He read it through and put it in the envelope, and took it downstairs to the post.

He rang up Ellison and confirmed their meeting in the morning; then he retired into the ante-room with a can of beer. He was called to the telephone five minutes before dinner.

‘Marshall speaking,’ he said. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Sergeant Phillips here, sir. I don’t think that Section Officer can be the one you meant. What did you say her name was? The one that was the sister of the chap you knew?’

Damn it, what had he said? Cynthia? Sylvia? What on earth was it?

‘Sylvia,’ he said. ‘It was just a thought I had, that it might be the same. What’s this one called?’

‘You said the name was Sheila this morning, Cap. I suppose he had two sisters in the WAAFs. But it’s not the same family at all.’

Marshall said very slowly and emphatically: ‘What—is—this—one—called?’

‘Gervase, Cap. Uncommon sort of name.’ He spelled it out. ‘Gervase Laura. Did your friends live in Thirsk?’

Marshall said: ‘No, they lived near—er—Reading.’

‘Can’t be the same, Cap. This one comes from Thirsk in the North Riding.’

‘Oh well—thanks.’

‘Okay.’

Marshall put down the receiver, conscious that he had had his leg pulled by the sergeant. Still he had got the information that he wanted.

He went to bed early that night, having thoughtfully secured a packet of sandwiches from the kitchen. He ate these as he was dressing in the middle of the night. At ten minutes to four he was riding out of the station on his bicycle, yawning and rather cold, and wondering if it was really worth it.

He met Mr Ellison, a dim shadow with a bicycle, in Hartley market as they had arranged. ‘Couple of bloody fools, we are,’ said Mr Ellison. ‘This isn’t worth ten bob of anybody’s money. Let’s get going.’

‘How far?’

‘Seven or eight miles. Kingslake Woods, over by Chipping Hinton.’

They rode off down the main road leading north. The sky was practically clear; a half-moon was rising, making it light enough to see the detail of the countryside. They rode on steadily for nearly an hour, growing warm with the exertion. In the end Ellison slowed down.

‘Steady a moment,’ he said. ‘There’s a gate just here somewhere.’

They found the gate and left their bicycles inside it, and went on up a muddy track that wound slowly uphill through the woods. The leafless branches made a fine tracery over their heads, screening the white clouds drifting past the moon. There was little wind; the woods were very quiet. From time to time a rabbit shot away before them; once an owl swooped low over their heads with a great whirr of wings.

Ellison led on steadily for a quarter of an hour or more. Once Marshall asked: ‘How in hell do you know where to go?’

The motor salesman said: ‘I came here last month, that time when we were shooting foxes. Then old Jim Bullen brought me here again to see a badger, because I told him that I’d never seen one.’ He paused, and then he said: ‘They’re a bit scarce where I come from, around Great Portland Street.’

The pilot nodded. ‘There aren’t so many down in Holborn, where I used to work.’

In the end they paused on the edge of a clearing, full of dappled moonlit shadows. Ellison whispered. ‘This is the place—keep damn quiet now. If we have any luck we’ll see the badger here.’ He pointed across the clearing to a little earthy cliff. ‘There’s an earth there. . . . See? And there’s another one about a hundred yards along. . . . There.’

Marshall strained his eyes, but could see nothing but the dappled moonlight. The wind was blowing to them from the earth; it was as good a place to watch as any. ‘Take your word for it,’ he whispered. ‘How long shall we have to wait?’

Ellison said: ‘It must be close on six. We’ll give it an hour before we call it off.’

‘We’ll be bloody cold by then.’

They settled down upon a log to wait and watch, motionless. The silvery radiance that filled the clearing, ebbing and flowing with the passing clouds, was nothing novel to Marshall; he knew moonlight very well. For many hours he had sat patterned in black and white within the moonlit cockpit, uneasy and vigilant for night fighters; home to him was the appearance of a moonlit landfall seen through gaps of cloud, faint, silver, ethereal cliffs and fields. He had seen so much moon in the last fifteen months that he had absorbed a little of its serenity, perhaps. At the beginning of his career as a bombing pilot he had been confused and distressed and bewildered by the casualties, by the deaths of friends that he had known and played with in their leisure hours. The casualties had less effect upon him now; they were things that happened, that must be accepted as they came. One day he would probably go too; the thought did not distress him very much. Life in the RAF was real, and exciting, and great fun—better by far than the life he had known in his insurance office before the war. Everything had to end some time. It was undesirable to be killed, but it was also undesirable to go creeping back into the office when the war was over.