Nevil Shute Norway - On the Beach

“I don’t know how I came to do it,” he apologized. “We were doing all right up till then.”

They completed the course without further incident, finishing last but one. They sailed in to the beach, and Peter met them waist deep in the water. He caught the boat and turned her into the wind. “Have a good sail?” he asked. “I saw you bottle her.”

“It’s been a lovely sail,” the girl replied. “Dwight bottled her and then my bra came off, so one way and another we’ve had a thrilling time. Never a dull moment. She goes beautifully, Peter.”

They jumped over into the water and pulled the boat ashore, let down the sails, and put her on the trolley on the slipway to park her up on the beach. Then they bathed off the end of the jetty and sat smoking in the warm evening sun, sheltered from the offshore wind by the cliff behind them.

The American looked at the blue water, the red cliffs, the moored motorboats rocking on the water. “This is quite a place you’ve got here,” he said reflectively. “For its size it’s as nice a little club as any that I’ve seen.”

“They don’t take sailing too seriously,” Peter remarked. “That’s the secret.”

The girl said, “That’s the secret of everything. When do we start drinking again, Peter?”

“The crowd are coming in at about eight o’clock,” he told her. He turned to his guest. “We’ve got a few people coming in this evening,” he said. “I thought we’d go down and have dinner at the hotel first. Eases the strain on the domestic side.”

“Sure. That’ll be fine.”

The girl said, “You’re not taking Commander Towers to the Pier Hotel again?”

“That’s where we thought of going for dinner.”

She said darkly, “It seems to me to be very unwise.”

The American laughed. “You’re building up quite a reputation for me in these parts.”

“You’re doing that for yourself,” she retorted. “I’m doing all I can to whitewash you. I’m not going to say a word about you tearing off my bra.”

Dwight Towers glanced at her uncertainly, and then he laughed. He laughed as he had not laughed for a year, unrestrained by thoughts of what had gone before. “Okay,” he said at last. “We’ll keep that a secret, just between you and me.”

“It will be on my side,” she said primly. “You’ll probably be telling everyone about it later on this evening when you’re a bit full.”

Peter said, “Maybe we’d better think about changing. I told Mary we’d be back up at the house by six.”

They walked down the jetty towards the dressing rooms, changed, and rode back on their bicycles. At the house they found Mary on the lawn watering the garden. They discussed ways and means of getting down to the hotel, and decided to harness up the grey and take the buggy down. “We’d better do that for Commander Towers,” the girl said. “He’d never make it back up the hill after another session in the Pier Hotel.”

She went off with Peter to the paddock to catch the grey and harness her. As she slipped the bit between the teeth and pulled the ears through the bridle she said, “How am I doing, Peter?”

He grinned. “You’re doing all right. Never a dull moment.”

“Well, that’s what Mary said she wanted. He’s not burst into tears yet, anyway.”

“More likely to burst a blood vessel if you keep going on at him.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be able to. I’ve worked through most of my repertoire.” She laid the saddle over the mare’s back.

“You’ll get a bit more inspiration as the night goes on,” he remarked.

“Maybe.”

The night went on. They dined at the hotel and drove back up the hill more moderately than before, unharnessed the horse and put her in the paddock for the night, and were ready to meet the guests at eight o’clock. Four couples came to the modest little party; a young doctor and his wife, another naval officer, a cheerful young man described as a chook farmer whose way of life was a mystery to the American, and the young owner of a tiny engineering works. For three hours they danced and drank together, sedulously avoiding any serious topic of conversation. In the warm night the room grew hotter and hotter, coats and ties were jettisoned at an early stage, and the gramophone went on working through an enormous pile of records, half of which Peter had borrowed for the evening. In spite of the wide-open windows behind the fly wire, the room grew full of cigarette smoke. From time to time Peter would throw the contents of the ash trays into the wastepaper bin; from time to time Mary would collect the empty glasses, take them out to the kitchen to wash them, and bring them back again. Finally at about half-past eleven she brought in a tray of tea and buttered scones and cakes, the universal signal in Australia that the party was coming to an end. Presently the guests began to take their leave, wobbling away on their bicycles.

Moira and Dwight walked down the little drive to see the doctor and his wife safely off the premises. They turned back towards the house. “Nice party,” said the submarine commander. “Really nice people, all of them.”

It was cool and pleasant in the garden after the hot stuffiness of the house. The night was very still. Between the trees they could see the shore line of Port Phillip running up from Falmouth towards Nelson in the bright light of the stars. “It was awfully hot in there,” the girl remarked. “I’m going to stay out here a bit before going to bed, and cool off.”

“I’d better get you a wrap.”

“You’d better get me a drink, Dwight.”

“A soft one?” he suggested.

She shook her head. “About an inch and a half of brandy and a lot of ice, if there’s any left.”

He left her and went in to get her drink. When he came out again, a glass in each hand, he found her sitting on the edge of the verandah in the darkness. She took the glass from him with a word of thanks and he sat down beside her. After the noise and turmoil of the evening the peace of the garden in the night was a relief to him. “It certainly is nice to sit quiet for a little while,” he said.

“Till the mosquitoes start biting,” she said. A little warm breeze blew around them. “They may not, with this wind. I shouldn’t sleep now if I went to bed, full as I am. I’d just lie and toss about all night.”

“You were up late last night?” he asked.

She nodded. “And the night before.”

“I’d say you might try going to bed early, once in a while.”

“What’s the use?” she demanded. “What’s the use of anything now?” He did not try to answer that, and presently she asked, “Why is Peter joining you in Scorpion, Dwight?”

“He’s our new liaison officer,” he told her.

“Did you have one before him?”

He shook his head. “We never had one before.”

“Why have they given you one now?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied. “Maybe we’ll be going for a cruise in Australian waters. I’ve had no orders, but that’s what people tell me. The captain seems to be about the last person they tell in this navy.”

“Where do they say you’re going to, Dwight?”

He hesitated for a moment. Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it. “People are saying we’re to make a little cruise up to Port Moresby,” he told her. “It may be just a rumour, but that’s all I know.”

“But Port Moresby’s out, isn’t it?”

“I believe it is. They haven’t had any radio from there for quite a while.”

“But you can’t go on shore there if it’s out, can you?”

“Somebody has to go and see, sometime,” he said. “We wouldn’t go outside the hull unless the radiation level’s near to normal. If it’s high I wouldn’t even surface. But someone has to go and see, sometime.” He paused and there was silence in the starlight, in the garden. “There’s a lot of places someone ought to go and see,” he said at last. “There’s radio transmission still coming through from someplace near Seattle. It doesn’t make any sense, just now and then a kind of jumble of dots and dashes. Sometimes a fortnight goes by, and then it comes again. It could be somebody’s alive up there, doesn’t know how to handle the set. There’s a lot of funny things up in the Northern Hemisphere that someone ought to go and see.”