Читать книгу Pastoral - Nevil Shute Norway - Страница 5

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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.’

Elaborately casual, Marshall said: ‘I can show you this earth any time you like. Show you the badger, too, if you like to put your hand in and pull him out.’

They laughed together. ‘Would you like to do that one afternoon?’ he said. ‘You’ve got a bike, haven’t you?’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’d love to see it,’ she said. ‘If I met you out there, would you show it me?’

His heart warmed to her for her discretion. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll take you about an hour to get there on your bike. What about half past three tomorrow afternoon?’

She was suddenly frightened at his confidence. Between then and half past three tomorrow afternoon there lay an operation, a thing of darkness and of terror, of bombs and fire and flares and flak and death. Beyond that, he was making an assignment to go walking in the woods with her.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Half past three tomorrow.’ That wouldn’t bring bad luck, would it?

He said: ‘That’s a date. Have you got a map?’

She had a map, a map on which in lonely absorption she had traced in red the solitary cycle rides that she had made around Hartley Magna. He studied it for a minute or two and then drew a little pencil circle at an intersection of two lanes. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Half past three tomorrow.’

She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll be there.’

He went back to the mess and she went over to her quarters and up to her room. She undressed partially and lay down on her bed, pulling a blanket over her. Life for her had suddenly become very full of incident. First there was the operation immediately ahead. She took her work very seriously. She had been bored with the work of training at her last station; she had wanted to be more closely in contact with the war. Now that she was at an operational station the war terrified her. From time to time when the machines were coming back from the target she had to bear quite heavy responsibilities in the fleeting moment. There had been a terrible occasion ten days previously when a crippled aircraft running short of petrol over the North Sea had appealed for a W/T fix, and when she gave it had complained, in a thin whisper of Morse, that their transmission had been weak and undecipherable. For a desperate half-hour she had laboured with a flight sergeant and two wireless mechanics to check the station transmission and to get in touch again with C for Charlie, while a stream of signals from the other aircraft were passing in and out. There had been nothing wrong with the transmission. The fault must have been some damage to the receiving set in the aircraft, but they were never to know that. That last whisper of Morse haunted her, making her more vigilant and serious about her work than ever.

Beyond the problems and the perils of the night there lay this matter of the badger’s earth, and Flight Lieutenant Marshall. At her last station she had been out from time to time with young officers, had been kissed once or twice at dances, and had taken it all with an air of detachment that showed her lack of interest. None of them had ever touched the Achilles heel, her interest in country matters. To her this little expedition to see the badger’s earth was like the opening of a door. It was a return to the sane, pleasurable matters that she had abandoned as a schoolgirl, when she had first joined the WAAFs. For the last couple of days she had been well aware that the things she liked to do were to be found at Hartley and that a young man called Peter Marshall was doing them. Now she was to join him in them, for an afternoon at any rate. For her that made an enormous difference to the Hartley scene.

She lay for some time wakeful, thoughtful, and feeling herself to be much occupied, very much involved. Presently she dozed a little. She was called at half past four and went down for a cup of tea before the briefing.

Marshall also lay upon his bed, reviewing the many calls upon his time. He was consciously and absurdly happy; this week, he felt, had been a splendid week. First there had been the big pike; he still got a thrill from the memory of the first snatching take, and the scream of his reel in the first rush. It must, he thought, be rather like catching a salmon, only in the case of the salmon it went on for half an hour or so. It was always in his mind that one day he might be transferred back to Coastal to fly Liberators over the Atlantic; if that should ever come off he would try to get a station in the West of Scotland or the Hebrides, where he could have a crack at salmon. Then there was the badger and fox business, which had been wizard.

Tomorrow afternoon there would be this expedition to the badger’s earth; he looked forward immensely to that. Everyone else upon the station seemed to think him crackers except his own crew, who had similar interests, and possibly the Wing Commander, and now Gervase Robertson.

This operation, he thought, was a bloody nuisance. Certainly it was his job and one had to do a spot of work sometimes. Still, but for that he might have been walking through the woods with Gervase at that moment, showing her things, talking to her, and watching her smile. She would have come with him that very afternoon; he was sure about that, but for the raid. Still, it was something to look forward to, to think about till tomorrow. He wondered anxiously about the weather, would it keep fine for them? He was not concerned that afternoon about low cloud in the night, or ground mists, or icing; it was only important to him that the sun should shine in Kingslake Woods at three-thirty the next day.

And, after that, there was the chance of pigeon-shooting, and he simply must contrive an afternoon to have another go at the pike before the season for coarse fish ended in a week or so, and there might possibly be other afternoons with Gervase Robertson which would take precedence over everything.

He lay for a while revolving his many occupations pleasantly in his mind, and presently he slept, to be awakened in time for his high tea before briefing.

Section Officer Robertson was on duty that night in the control office. She had taken over from her predecessor, and she was now in charge of radio and telephone communications at Hartley, working closely under the control of a flight lieutenant at Group Headquarters, Charwick. Three stations formed the Group: Charwick, Wittington, and Hartley Magna. There was a Group W/T station at Pilsey, a hamlet three miles from Hartley; this was manned for operations by the signals officers from the three stations working in rotation.

In the control building on the aerodrome a radio and telephone room opened out of the control office; this housed the R/T sets and the more secret equipment, and a small telephone switchboard. Four girls were normally on duty in this room upon an operations night, with Section Officer Robertson in charge of them, unless she was on duty at the Group W/T station, when Section Officer Ford took the control. The work was not very difficult. It mainly consisted of taking signals as they came in and marking up a very large blackboard, showing the position of each aircraft in the successive stages of its flight in order that the Wing Commander and the control officer could see the operational position at a glance.

That night the aircraft took off for Dortmund in succession between seven-thirty and eight-fifteen. Miss Robertson was busy with her chalk upon the blackboard while all that was going on; then there was a lull as the machines were winging outward to the target. At ten o’clock she gave the Squadron Leader who was serving as control officer a cup of tea and a piece of cake, and had a little meal herself, sitting at her desk in a corner of the control-room. At 10.35 the first ‘Mission completed’ signal came through, and began another round of duty for her with her bit of chalk.

One by one she marked them up as the messages came through upon the telephone from the W/T station. D for Donald—that was Sanderson. L for London, Humphries. S for Sammy, Johnson. N for Nuts, Davy. R for Robert, Marshall.

She chalked up N for Nuts and R for Robert on the board. The bare office room seemed suddenly more cheerful; she looked through into the radio-room and asked the WAAF corporal for another cup of tea. From his desk the control officer glanced up at the board. ‘Davy and Marshall,’ he remarked. ‘I wasn’t losing any sleep for them.’

She was curious, and vaguely resentful. ‘Why not, sir?’ she enquired. ‘The risk’s the same for all of them, isn’t it?’

He said briefly: ‘Those two have been at this for years. They know all the answers.’

He sat thoughtful for a moment, his eyes fixed on the blackboard, studying the ciphers and figures written neat in the lined spaces. ‘Check back to Group,’ he said quietly, ‘and see if they’ve got anything from H for Harry.’

H for Harry was Pilot Officer Forbes, the second aircraft to take off that night. A minute later Section Officer Robertson said: ‘Nothing yet from H for Harry, sir.’

The control officer said absently: ‘Okay.’

At one-fifteen the first aircraft, D for Donald, was heard making a wide circuit overhead, and the operation of landing the machines began. By two o’clock they were down and parked at the dispersal points, all except the one. Gervase Robertson stayed on with her sergeant and her corporal in the control-room till after four o’clock, combing by telephone the aerodromes and W/T stations throughout the country for some news of H for Harry. In the cold hour before the dawn she walked back grave and sleepy to her bed, unsuccessful.