Bill said, “You were doing it all right. He was under water for the thick end of an hour. Ten minutes—well, you might have got him back. But an hour’s different. You did all that anyone could do.”
He looked over to the L.C.T.; she was weighing anchor to get away before the falling tide left her stranded, too. She still had three tanks on board; apparently the exercise was cancelled. “They ought to survey the beach before these practices,” he said. “It only needs a chap to wade ashore ahead of the tanks, that’s all. If he has to swim for it the beach is crook.”
She wondered a little at the word, but each Service at that time had its own slang; to her the army were all Pongoes. “Couldn’t do that operationally,” the other sergeant said. “Not with Jerry on the beach.”
The marine officer came aft to them. “Well, we’re here till six o’clock, the coxswain says.” Already the L.C.P. was high out of the water on the beach; in another quarter of an hour they would be able to get off her dryshod. He picked up the walkie-talkie and got communication with some station on the other side of the Solent, and told them to telephone a message to Mastodon.
Presently they were able to climb down from the deck of the L.C.P. on to the wet sand. They stood talking with the soldiers about the accident while the tide went down still further, till the tank lay half submerged in a long pool of sea water on the beach. “There’s been another L.C.T. there,” said the officer. “That’s where she used her engines, getting off. That’s the wash from her propellers did that, scoured away the sand and left that hole …”
Dinner was arranged for the marines and Wrens by the army at a gun station on the cliff half a mile away; Janet and Bill walked up together and had dinner in a mess tent after the Bofors crews had finished. “Where are you stationed?” she enquired. “I didn’t know about your party.”
“We’re at Cliffe Farm,” he said. “About two miles westwards down the coast from where you picked us up today. I was over at your place the week before last, but I didn’t see you.”
She said, “I was probably down the river.”
They lunched sitting side by side in the mess tent, a heavy, badly served meal of stew and jam roll. After lunch they all strolled down again to the beach. The L.C.P. lay high and dry, far from the sea. An ambulance stood at the cliff top and medical orderlies were loading a stretcher covered with a blanket into it. “What’s your name?” asked the sergeant.
She told him. “What’s yours?”
“Bill Duncan,” he said. He indicated the other sergeant. “He’s Bert Finch.”
She asked, “Do you live in London?”
“He does, but I don’t. I’m Australian. Did you think I was a Londoner?”
She was confused, not wanting to be rude. “I don’t know why I thought that.”
“It’s the way I talk,” he said. “Back at home people would say I hadn’t got any Australian accent, but they know it all right here.”
She was intrigued. “Have you been in England long?”
“I came over just before the war,” he said, “after I left school. I was at Geelong Grammar.” The Eton of Australia meant nothing to her. “I was doing a course of Agriculture when the war broke out. We’ve got a farm at home.”
“What made you go into the Marines?” she asked.
“More fun than just the ordinary army,” he replied. “More special jobs, like this sort of thing.”
She knew too much about the Service to ask specifically what he did when he wasn’t pulling drowned men out of tanks. Instead, she said, “You volunteered for this?”
He grinned at her. “I always did like swimming.”
They walked across the beach together to inspect the tank; it lay in the middle of a long pool in the sand with the tops of the tracks just showing. Presently there was a clatter of tank tracks on the cliff and a priest appeared, a Sherman chassis mounting a gun-howitzer. It nosed delicately down a very steep slope to the beach, loaded with men and steel ropes. The soldiers coupled the wires to the towing eyes on the sunk tank; the priest went ahead and towed the Sherman from the pool above high water mark. It made an attempt to tow the Sherman up the cliff but the incline defeated it; the men uncoupled the wires and the priest struggled up the cliff alone and made off.
Bill stayed with Janet all the afternoon and she was glad to have him; she found him an unassuming young man, easy for her to talk to. She admired him a little, too, for the instant courage that had sent him down into the interior of the flooded tank. He told her that he had never been inside a tank of any sort before, and it had been rather dark, but he had managed to find his way around all right. She had once been inside a tank, stationary, in broad daylight on dry land, and she knew a little bit about the contortions that you had to make to move about in them. She felt that his effort for the drowned man had been a good show, and she told him so.
They strolled up to the A.A. site again and got the cooks to give them cups of tea; then they went down and sat smoking and chatting in the L.C.P. while the tide rose around them. Soon after six she floated off, and Viola turned the boat and headed her for the Beaulieu River.
They turned in to the long entrance reach between the sea marshes in the cold dusk of the March night. At Needs Oar Point the truck was waiting for the Marines; as they approached the mud flats Janet said, “We’ve got a dance on Saturday. Why don’t you two come over?”
That’s how it all began.
FOUR
I SAT there by the fire in my room at Coombargana fingering the photographs, lost in memories. I sat there in the still night thinking how different everything would have been if Bill hadn’t been killed. He would have come back to Coombargana directly the war was over, and almost certainly he would have brought Janet Prentice with him. They would have made a good pair to run the property after my parents’ time. Bill was never very keen on going to England; I think he only went to Cirencester for his course of agriculture because it was the thing to do, because it is fashionable for young people in my country to reach out for wider experience than they can get at home. He would have been happy to return and make his life at Coombargana, and I think he would have made a better grazier than I.
Janet would have come to Coombargana as its mistress-to-be, not as its house parlourmaid. Presently I would have to violate her privacy further to find out why she had come at all. The answer to that one lay almost certainly within the case upon the table by my side, amongst her private papers that I was reluctant to explore. I could stall a little longer, sit a little longer by the fire thinking of the girl that I already knew so much about.
It was probably true that I knew more about her than I would ever have learned if she had come to live at Coombargana as Bill’s wife, living with him in my parents’ old room just along the corridor from mine. If it had turned out that way I might have gone back to England in 1948 to take my degree at Oxford, as in fact I did, but I wouldn’t have gone back to look for Janet Prentice. I would never have met or talked with Warrant Officer Finch at Eastney Barracks or with C.P.O. Waters in the Fratton Road, and I would never have met May Cunningham or Viola Dawson.
I knew so much about her, most of it from hearsay, and I had packed all that knowledge away for good, as I thought, only a few days before, sitting in my bedroom in the St. Francis Hotel. I had packed all that knowledge away as in a trunk, and put it in a lumber room out of my life, and now the trunk had burst open before me when I least expected it, spilling all that knowledge and those memories into my life again. The memories, of course, concerned the one day only, the day that we had spent together in the boat before the balloon went up. That day remained etched sharp in my memory; ten years later I still knew exactly how she moved and spoke and thought about things, so that it gave life to all the knowledge I had gleaned about her from these other people.
Bill had got rather English in the five years he had been away from home, I think, or perhaps he had been lonely. At home I don’t think he would have made a pet of a mon
grel dog like Dev, short for de Valera. Dev was an Irish terrier by courtesy that had strayed into their camp one day, probably about two years old, probably a part of some military or naval unit that had moved away. He had adopted Bill and Bill had adopted him and made a pet of him, and now he was adopting Janet, too. At home Dev might have been a candidate for the rabbit pack; he would certainly never have been allowed inside the house. I doubt if he’d have made the grade for the rabbit pack, though. He wasn’t fierce enough; he was one of those bumbling, good humoured, rather incompetent dogs, good for a lonely man or girl to look after.
They had Dev in the boat with them that day when we went round from Lymington to Keyhaven, sitting up in the bow looking out forward, ears pricked, obviously enjoying his trip. “I think he’s a love child from an unsatisfactory family,” Janet said, explaining him to me. “He’s such a fool you can’t help liking him.”
When we reached the entrance to the Lymington River she turned the boat to the west and we began to skirt the marshes on the north shore of the Solent. The sea was rough outside, but moving along close inshore we were in calm water. “We’ll keep fairly close in because of your uniform,” she said. “Keep a look-out for snags or stumps or anything sticking up out of the mud. I’ll get in a fearful row if I knock a hole in this boat on a trip like this. It’s not as if I were a boat’s crew Wren, even.”
Bill and I stood up and watched the water ahead. I asked, “How did you manage to get hold of a boat at all?”
She grinned. “I’ve been here long enough to know the ropes. As a matter of fact, they’re not very fussy on Sundays when the boats aren’t being used.”
We had great luck with the weather, for it was a warm, sunny day. We skirted along the mud flats for the best part of an hour under the lee of the long spit that terminates in Hurst Castle, and then turned in to the next river to the west of Lymington, which led to Keyhaven. We went up between the mud flats till we came to a tumbledown jetty at the end of a track across a meadow; Janet brought the boat alongside this and we made her fast, and went ashore. We had brought lunch with us from the hotel and three bottles of beer, and on shore we settled down to lunch and talk and smoke, lazing upon the short grass in the sun not far from the boat, looking out over the Solent. It was so seldom in the war that I had had the chance of a day like that.
As we ate she said curiously, “Bill told me you were at Oxford before the war.”
I nodded. “I was at the House.”
“Were you really? What were you reading?”
“Law,” I said. “You live in Oxford, don’t you?”
She nodded. “My father’s a don at Wyckham. We live in Crick Road.”
“I know Crick Road,” I said. “It’s a nice part.”
“I’ve lived there all my life,” she said. “What made you come to Oxford? Can’t you do Law in Australia?”
“I did a little Law at Melbourne University,” I told her. “I’m an old, old man. I don’t know why I came to Oxford, except that I wanted to. I got a Rhodes scholarship, and it seemed a waste not to use it.”
She opened her eyes, for this meant something to her. “You’re a Rhodes scholar?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was a bad year for the selectors.”
“Did you go into the Air Force when the war broke out?”
“I was in it before, in a way,” I said. “I was in the University Air Squadron.”
“Bill said you were in the Battle of Britain.”
“I suppose you’d call it that,” I said. “I did two operational tours on fighters, the first at Thorney Island and the second in the Western Desert. I did a bit of instructing in between. After the second one they sent me up to Fighter Command.”
“Do you like it there?”
I shook my head. “I want to be operational again. My present job comes to an end when the balloon goes up. I’ll put in for an operational posting then.”
She said, “Will they give you a Wing?”
I laughed. “A Wing Commander doesn’t get a Wing, and I’m only acting, anyway. I’ll have to drop a rank. Lucky if I get a Flight to command.”
She said in wonder, “It’s a bit hard to have to come down in rank. Does it make a lot of difference in the pay?”
“A bit,” I said. “But I’ve had the office.”
“Are you going back to Oxford after the war?”
“I don’t know. I think I’d like to go back for a bit and take a degree. They had a sort of shortened course for Service people after the first war.”
“Wouldn’t you find it awfully slow, going back to school, after all this?”
“I’d like to finish off what I began,” I said. “One doesn’t like to leave a loose end hanging out.” I glanced at her. “What will you do?”
“I was going to try and go to Lady Margaret Hall,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d have got in. I can’t see myself getting in there now. I don’t know what I’ll do. I haven’t thought about it.”
Bill laughed. “We’ll all get bumped off when the balloon goes up,” he said. “Then it’ll be decided for us.”
A new sort of landing craft came down the Solent. I forget what it was; it wouldn’t have meant much to me anyway, but it was of great interest to Janet and to Bill. They began to talk about it, and about other sorts of ship that were novel to the invasion, and I had leisure to lie quietly on the grass in the warm sun and study her. I wanted to do that because it was pretty clear to me that this girl was to be my sister-in-law. True, they didn’t appear to be engaged and she wore no ring, but from the way she talked to him and the way he looked at her it was clear that they were very much in love. When the balloon had gone up and they had more time for personal affairs they would almost certainly become engaged, and they might marry before the war was over. I thought of that one and approved the idea. Bill was tired and strained with the exacting work he had been doing, and a long engagement could only mean an added strain. I had seen some of that in the R.A.F. and I had become fanatically opposed to long engagements in war time. If they were going to marry, let them marry and have done with it.
When they became engaged or married my mother would want to know what the girl was like. She could not come twelve thousand miles from Australia in time of war to meet Bill’s girl, nor could she leave the property even if travel had been possible. She would want my assurance that this girl would make Bill a good wife, and studying her quietly as she talked to Bill I felt that I could make my mother happy on that score. She wasn’t a good-looker. Her face was too square and homely, her shoulders too broad; her short, dark hair had little wave though there were pretty dark brown lights in it. I could assure my mother, anyway, that Bill hadn’t fallen for a glamour girl.
I tried to visualise her as the mistress of Coombargana in the future, to speculate on how she would be able to adapt herself to the Western District. She had strength of character and a directness of speech that would make her good with the men; she would be able to control the station hands all right when Bill was away. She was a good shot with a gun, which would help her prestige a little. She probably couldn’t ride a horse, but she was young and quite capable of learning to ride. In any case, that wasn’t so important as it used to be in the old days. She was very practical, which was the important thing, and she was fond of dogs. She might well become really interested in the cattle and the sheep, and in the conduct of the work on our big property.
On the social side, she was probably adequate. She would never be much interested in any social functions, perhaps never dress very well, never take much pleasure in the organisation of charity balls or Red Cross garden parties. Her interests would probably lie more in the home; she might become a typical homestead wife. She would always be a pleasant hostess to visitors to Coombargana but she would never want to give great entertainments there, unless she changed very much. She was much more likely to develop an interest in Australia itself, and to want to travel widely over our vast country. She might want to keep
a seagoing motor yacht or something of that sort, and if so Coombargana could afford it.
My report on Janet Prentice to my mother would be wholly good. She was not the sort of girl my mother would have visualised or expected as a daughter-in-law, but I was confident that she would grow to like her and to appreciate her very solid virtues. She would make a good mistress of Coombargana in the future, and a good wife to Bill, and lying there upon the grass at Keyhaven that day I thought he was a very lucky man.
I listened unashamedly while she talked to Bill, half oblivious of my presence. The dog, Dev, had laid his head upon her knee as she sat upon the grass, in sentimental affection, and she was fondling his ears. “You’re very lucky to be able to keep a dog,” she said to Bill. “I wish we could.”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone has tried. I don’t believe the Captain would allow a dog in Mastodon. Everyone would want to have one if he did.”
Bill nodded. “We wouldn’t be allowed dogs if we weren’t in such a lonely place. I don’t know what ’ll happen to him when we get moved on.”
“Are you likely to be shifted soon?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We seem to be able to do everything by going off on a party from here. We’ll get moved on some day, of course.” There was no permanency in the Services. He looked down thoughtfully at Dev. “I don’t know that it’s really a good idea letting us have dogs,” he said thoughtfully. “You get too fond of a dog, and then you’re in trouble when you get moved to a place where you can’t have one.”
“You can’t send him home, of course,” she said. “Not to Australia. Haven’t you got any relations in England you could send him to?”
He shook his head. “No one like that.”
She said, comforting, “If you’re stuck I might be able to get Mummy to have him.”
“Difficult, with the rationing,” he replied.