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

In the quiet glamour of the night his mind was full of Section Officer Robertson. Gervase, Gervase Laura Robertson. Thinking of her, he discovered his own mind. She was attractive, and neat, and pretty as a picture; she was a friendly girl and, he thought, rather an unhappy one. He wished very much that he knew what it was that worried her, whether it was some prune that she had left at her last station. He liked her very much indeed; he knew himself already to be half in love with her. Quite suddenly he realized that much of the fun of this attempt to see a badger and a fox within a quarter of an hour would be in telling her about it.

A stave out of the theme song of a picture came into his mind and set him smiling at his own foolishness—

Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair—

You certainly know the right things to wear . . .

He could not remember any more words, but the tune stayed with him, and Fred Astaire. For him the moonlit glade was filled with music as he sat there waiting for the badger. Gervase, he thought, was pretty enough in uniform, but in civilian clothes—say in a cotton summer frock—she must look wonderful.

Forty minutes passed, and his only knowledge of the drift of time lay in his chilling feet and legs. Then Ellison pressed him very gently on the arm, and pointed stealthily to the far hedge.

The pilot followed his direction. It was a true bill; some animal was there. It trotted along the hedge, seen dimly in the variable light; then it came out into the glade making towards the earth. It was greyish-black in colour with a long black-and-white face that it carried close down to the ground. It went purposefully and fairly fast, pausing for an instant now and then to snuffle at some delicacy of the woods, then going on.

Near the entrance to the earth it paused and froze, warned by some sixth sense. Ellison stood up, clumsy with the cold, making a slight noise of clothes and crushing leaves and twigs. ‘Badger,’ he said. ‘See it?’

There was a quick scramble on the far side of the glade, and it was gone. Marshall stood up stiffly. ‘I’ll give you that one,’ he agreed. ‘Damn good show.’ Then, remembering their bet, he peered down at his wristwatch in the dim white light. ‘Six twenty-three,’ he said. ‘Now—fox before six thirty-eight.’

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.’