Landfall (16 page)

The captain looked at him. “Can’t we fly it over a known ship and poop it off?” he said. “Poop off half a dozen of them, each with a different setting?”

The wing-commander said: “Surely we can bracket it like that?”

The civilian said slowly: “I don’t think you can go at it in that way. You see, you have to have a bursting
charge to free the satellites. You can’t do it with a dummy.”

Burnaby said: “I’m afraid I don’t quite get that point.”

“Well, if, in fact, the frequency is lower than the setting, it probably won’t work at all. If the frequency is high, then there’s a danger that the bomb will go off in the aeroplane. We can’t take out the bursting charge, you see.”

The naval officer said slowly: “I see that.”

There was a short silence. Burnaby sat marshalling his rather scanty knowledge of the subject that they were discussing. Not for the first time he cursed these newfangled weapons. Things had been easier in the last war. You got a bomb and stuck a simple fuse in the end of it. If you hit it with a hammer, it went off. It was as simple as that. But things were very different now.

He said: “I suppose if the bomb exploded in the aeroplane we’d lose both the machine and the pilot?”

The wing-commander nodded. “We mustn’t let that happen.” He paused, and then he said: “But I don’t think it need. We can go at this from the low-frequency end and work up gently. It should be all right that way so long as we don’t make any mistakes.”

Burnaby said: “That seems all right, so long as we go carefully.”

The civilian listened uneasily. For fifteen years he had worked in the seclusion of a Cambridge laboratory upon the research that war had switched to a new weapon. He was a practical man, and fully understood the urgency with which the Navy drove on the development. But with that understanding he had other understandings of his own. He knew that they knew so little of the influences round a ship; such things had never been plotted or explored. He had made estimates, and if his estimates were right, the weapon would work. If
not, either it wouldn’t work at all or else it would be set off prematurely in the aeroplane.

He said: “I don’t think we could possibly do that.”

Burnaby stared at him. “Why not?”

“Well, think of the risk.”

The wing-commander said: “If we get it wrong, of course we lose the aeroplane. But I don’t see any reason why we should go wrong.”

The civilian said stubbornly: “It seems to me that we’ll be taking very great risks if we go at it that way.”

Burnaby laid his arms down on the table and stared straight ahead of him. “Let me get this quite clear in my mind,” he said. “This is the last stage of our development, isn’t it? When these calibration trials are done—however they are done—it can be used against the enemy. That is right?”

Professor Legge said: “That’s quite right.”

The captain raised his head. “Mr. Winston Churchill was talking to the Admiral about this yesterday,” he said. “It’s very important that this thing should be in service in the spring. He wants three squadrons fitted up with it.”

The wing-commander said: “We could do that, all right.”

Burnaby turned to the civilian. “In time of war one has to take certain risks,” he said. “One has to rush through experimental work in a way that one would never do in time of peace. I grant you, we may lose the aeroplane in these trials. But we should save three months.”

Legge nodded. “Well, that’s outside my sphere, of course. If you go at it this way, we shall learn a great deal very quickly. But we may have accidents.”

The wing-commander turned to Burnaby. “I agree with you, sir. I think there’s a case here for taking a bit of a chance.”

The naval officer said: “Well, we’ll take that as a decision then.” He swung round on the paymaster-lieutenant at the desk behind. “Put that into the minutes.”

The young man nodded without speaking.

Professor Legge said: “The pilot must be very well instructed before anything is done.”

The naval captain nodded. “You must have a good, steady pilot for the work.”

The wing-commander said: “The pilot came down yesterday from Market Stanton. I had a talk with him this morning. He seems quite all right.”

“Good. Of course, you’ll do whatever can be done to safeguard him, if there should be an accident.”

The wing-commander made a grimace. “Not very much,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s so bad. There
is
some risk in it—we all know that. But if he were bombing ships in Heligoland Bight he’d have to take risks of the same order. It’s a different sort of risk. That’s all.”

Burnaby straightened up in his chair. “That’s settled, then. Now for the programme. I take it that you want to calibrate upon a battleship first?”

The civilian nodded. “We shall have to have the biggest ship you’ve got, lying across the meridian. That’s the least sensitive combination. A big ship going east or west.”

“I can’t let you have a battleship before Tuesday of next week.”

Legge said: “The more time I can have for computation between now and the first trial, the safer we shall be.”

They began to discuss the details of the programme.

That night Chambers picked up Mona at the back door of the Royal Clarence Hotel when the snack-bar shut, kissed her in the darkness of the mews, and took
her to the Pavilion. They went in a little furtively, glancing suspiciously from side to side, prepared to leave at once if they attracted any attention. Nobody took the least notice of them. They sat for ten minutes at one of the tables, warily alert; then greatly daring, they got up and danced.

They were very careful to avoid the floor until it was well crowded. Presently they gained confidence, as no one paid the least attention to them. It became a game.

“You’re not that important, after all,” she said.

“There’s nobody from Emsworth here tonight,” he replied. “Or nobody I know.”

“It wouldn’t matter if there was.”

“No. As a matter of fact, they’ve been shifting people round a good bit in the Coastal Command; there may be nobody there now that I know. And I don’t think very many people in the Navy knew me by sight.”

She said comfortably: “Anyway, nobody’s paying any attention to us.”

He grinned at her. “They will be soon.”

She glanced at him suspiciously. This was the old Jerry come to life again.

He said: “We’ll dance the next one as an Apache dance.”

“Not with me.”

“It’s quite easy; I’ll show you the steps. It goes side step, chassé twice, reverse. Then I take your right arm and right leg and swing you round.”

“I dare say.”

“It’s quite easy—honestly.”

“You can do it with that fat girl over there—the one what squints.”

He said persuasively: “I’ll buy you a strawberry ice afterwards.”

“You’ll buy me a strawberry ice before.”

“You’ll be sick if you have a strawberry ice before my Apache dance.”

“I’m not going to. Go on and buy me an ice.”

He called the waitress and she brought them ices. Presently he said:

“Are you doing anything on Sunday?”

She said: “Sometimes we go to church.” That was quite true. Her father and mother went each Sunday to the Cathedral, sometimes dragging an unwilling daughter with them.

He said: “That’s a pity.”

“Why?”

“I thought it would be nice to take the car and go up on to the Downs and have a walk.”

“All day?”

“That’s what I had in mind. Take a few sandwiches for lunch and have a real walk.” He grinned at her. “I’m sorry you’ve got to go to church.”

She said: “I’d have to be back by six, anyway. I’m on duty in the snack-bar then.”

“Swop your day off with Miriam. She can do your church for you, too.”

Mona said: “I know what it’ll be. I’ll go and get her to change her day, and then you’ll have to work, or something.”

He shook his head. “I shan’t be doing anything this week-end. After Tuesday I shall be working every day.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said: “A walk’ll do you good.”

“It’ll rain all day.”

“No, it won’t. I’ve arranged that.”

She said: “You think of everything, you do.”

At midnight the dance ended, and they went on to the Old Oak tea-room. The Old Oak was an establishment that served teas languidly in the afternoon, grills and ham and eggs later, and which really came to life
about eleven o’clock at night. After the pictures young men and young women went there to prolong the evening; it was unlicensed, but there was generally a gallon or two of beer in a white enamelled jug beneath the counter.

They sat there smoking and drinking coffee for an hour or more, listening to the radiogram, reluctant to go home. He told her about his radio set, and about the caravel that he was just beginning to build, and about the place in Cornwall where they had spent summer holidays when he had been at school. She told him about the pictures that she had seen since he had been away, and about Millie who was in the A.T.S. at Bordón, and about the lovely time that she had had last summer in the holiday camp in the Isle of Wight, all on two pounds ten. And all this was real and exciting to them; they could have gone on with it all night.

A hundred and fifty yards away a man sat in a sitting-room alone. A gas fire hissed gently in the grate. One shaded light flooded the big table at which the man was working, littered with sheets of paper, files, and books. A little black calculating machine stood upon the table at one side of him, an open attaché-case was on his other hand. Only the scratching of his pen and the hissing of the stove broke the long silence. The man was working quietly and methodically, covering sheet after sheet with close rows of figures, pausing now and then to tot up columns on the calculating machine. Slung casually across the back of a chair were the general arrangement blue prints of a battleship; upon the table were more confidential drawings.

In the stillness of the night he went on steadily, hour after hour. Professor Legge was working against time.

The little car drew up outside the furniture shop at about a quarter to two. In the room above the shop Mona’s mother jogged her husband with her elbow.

“Stevie,” she said. “Stevie—wake up.”

He stirred and rolled over. “Ugh—what’s the matter now?”

“There’s Mona coming in. It’s ever so late.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly two. She did ought to be in before this.”

They lay and listened. There was no sound from the car that had stopped before the shop.

“Fine goings on,” said her father.

Presently they heard her come in at the door, heard soft footsteps on the oilcloth as she slipped up to her room. Then the car started noisily and went away.

He said: “Who is it, Ma?”

“I think it’s that young officer, Stevie—the one in the Air Force.”

“I thought he went away.”

“I believe he’s back, if you ask me. But Mona never tells me nothing.”

He grunted. “She’ll tell me something when I get her in the morning. Coming in at two in the morning after being out with an officer! Fine goings on!”

She said: “If it’s the one I think, he’s the one what gave her that ship.”

He was silent. He had seen the galleon when Mona had first had it; from time to time since, when she had been out, he had crept up to her room to look at it again. He admired it very much. As a young man in the Navy he had once made ships himself, full-rigged ships inserted miraculously into whisky bottles. He had been taught the art by an old boatswain, who himself had learned it from an older man. Now his fingers were too stiff and clumsy for such delicate work; it was twenty years since he had put a ship into a bottle. The galleon had stirred memories in him. It was a bigger ship than he had ever tackled, and more complicated, though it hadn’t got to go into a bottle, of course.

He felt that Mona wanted checking. Two o’clock in the morning was no time to come home. It made a difference, certainly, that the young man had built a galleon. If it had been anyone else, he’d have been really angry.

He drifted into sleep, thinking of ships.

He caught her next day in the middle of the morning as she was dusting out the shop.

He said: “Here, girl, what time did you come home last night?”

She stared at him, surprised at this attack. Then she relaxed and smiled. “I dunno, Dad. The milkman hadn’t been.”

“Well, I can tell you what the time was.” He eyed her sternly. “It was two o’clock. That’s no time to come home. Your mother was proper fussed. Where had you been to?”

She tossed her head. “Dancing at the Pavilion. After that we went to the Old Oak. There’s no harm in that.”

He felt himself about to be defeated by his daughter, not for the first time. He said: “Who was you with?”

She said curtly: “An officer.”

He said: “Well, two o’clock’s too late for you to come home, Mona. You got to think of your mother and what the neighbours say. You know the way they talk. Make him bring you home by half eleven—anyhow, by midnight.”

“That don’t give much time for anything,” she said discontentedly. “I don’t get off till after ten.” She turned to him. “If he works all the day and I got to work all evening, where are we, Dad?”

He hesitated. It seemed to him to be a reasonable point; she should have time to meet a young man if she wanted to. He said:

“Who is this officer? Is he the one what gave you the ship?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought he went away.”

“He came back again.”

There was a little silence. The old man felt himself to be getting out of his depth. In the interval when this young man had been away Mona had been out very little, and when she had been late she had been home before midnight.

He said weakly: “Well, two o’clock’s too late.”

She smiled at him. “Don’t worry about me.”

He was silent. He want to say all sorts of things to her, but could not find the words to express himself. He wanted to tell her that it was no good for her to get ideas into her head about an officer, especially a regular officer, as he understood the young man was. He wanted to tell her that there were still classes in England, that there could be nothing but pain to come to her from an association with an officer—a real officer with a regular commission.