Pastoral (11 page)

She knew vaguely that the coarse-fishing season came to an end some time in the middle of March. She said: “You’ll have to think of something else to do.”

“So will the boys,” he said. “I want to go farther up the river one day in the next week, though, and see if I can’t get another pike.”

“How far?”

“There’s a place about two miles farther up, by Riddington, where there’s a little sort of pool. Sergeant Phillips went up there one Sunday after roach. He says he thinks there are pike there. It’s a good long way to go.”

“Five miles,” she said. “That isn’t much.”

He said: “It may not be to you, but I took to biking very late in life.”

She laughed. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” he said. He glanced at her. “How old are you?”

She said: “I’m twenty-one.” Then they told each other all about their birthdays.

They ate with one eye on the clock, watching the time to catch their bus back to Hartley Magna. Peter said: “Look, Gervase—would you rather that I didn’t come on this bus? There’s that other one at half-past ten; I could come on that.”

She said: “That means you’d have to wait about here for an hour, though.”

“I could go and get drunk,” he said.

She laughed. “You needn’t do that for me, unless you want to for your own evil purposes. It doesn’t matter our going back on the same bus if we don’t sit together. After all, we might have come here quite independently.” She paused, and then she added: “It doesn’t matter a bit, anyway, if people do see us.”

He paid the bill and they left the restaurant and walked towards the market-place, where the bus started. In the dark, crowded street they jostled against people in the black-out; he took her arm to guide her and they walked so to the bus, each thrilling with the contact.

In the darkness, fifty yards from the dim-lighted oblong of the bus, they paused. “We’d better say good-night here,” he said. “It’s probably full of people from the station.”

She turned to him; he reached for her hand, and held it. He did not think that she was ready to be kissed. She said: “It’s been a lovely afternoon, Peter. Thank you for bringing me.”

She had called him by his Christian name. He said thickly: “Thank you for coming, Gervase.” He stood there in the darkness caressing her hand. “You’d better buzz along and get a seat,” he said at last. “I’ll come on in a minute.”

She left him, and he followed her a little later, and they rode back to Hartley Magna at opposite ends of the bus.

He did not speak to her again, alone, for several days.

A string of circumstances prevented them from meeting in the afternoons; one or other of them had duties to perform except for one day, when it rained. For five days Marshall had to watch her without talking to her. It was impossible for him
to avoid her even if he had wanted to, and he did not want to; at the same time it was impossible for them to meet and talk without starting gossip all around the station, and he was unwilling to do that.

He found himself continually seeing things that he wanted to tell her about. He saw a blue tit on a branch one day; he did not know what it was, except that it was blue. Gervase would know; he suffered a sudden mad impulse to go to the signals office and ask her to come out and see it. He saw a Halifax without a front turret and heard from the pilot why it was given up; he wanted to pour out to her this vital and most interesting news. Down by the river, standing very quiet, he saw three tiny water-rats learning to swim; it irked him that she was not there with him to see. Gunnar Franck received a letter from his mother that had come via Switzerland and Spain; he was unable to talk to her about it. He could only catch her eye occasionally across the table or the ante-room and smile.

He slept badly during that five days; that is to say, instead of sleeping solidly for nine hours as he was accustomed to, he slept for seven and lay awake for two, and got up in the morning stale and tired. After the third such night it seemed to him that they could hardly go on as they were; they would have to work out some means of meeting—if she wanted to. He was not sure of that, however. Gervase might be quite satisfied with their relationship, for all he knew. He was uncertain and upset; in those five days his friends found him sharp and irritable. Even his crew found him to be difficult to please, a novel and unusual trait developed in their captain.

Gervase saw nothing of this restlessness because she did not meet him. When circumstances allowed, she knew she would go out with him again; the two afternoons that she had spent with him had been happy ones, the happiest she had spent since she had been at Hartley. She was not in any hurry for the third. She knew, with a little glow of wonder and of pride, that this casual, competent, and kind young man was coming to be very much in love with her. She knew that this would raise enormous problems for her in the future that she did not in the least know how to tackle. She was grateful for the respite that prevented them from meeting. Her whole instinct was to take it slowly; when it rained on the one afternoon when they were both free, she was almost glad.

They did an operation on the fifth day: Essen. It was a
massed raid of more than six hundred aircraft, Lancasters, Halifaxes, Wellingtons, and a few Stirlings. The Wellingtons from Hartley were scheduled to arrive in the last quarter of an hour; they got there when the target was a sea of flame with smoke-clouds rising up above ten thousand feet. Most of the searchlights had ceased functioning and the flak was weak and inaccurate; for the Wellingtons it was an easy raid. There were night fighters over the target, but a layer of cloud at thirteen thousand gave them cover for the journey home; Phillips got off a couple of bursts at one as they climbed up beside Lines in the dim light, covering each other. Then they were in the cloud and sheering apart, and so they came home, and landed back at about three in the morning. There were no losses, though Sergeant Pilot Nutter came back swearing like a sergeant pilot with the fabric missing from one elevator and his rear-gunner wounded in the shoulder from a burst beside the tail.

Throughout this raid Marshall was absent-minded and
distrait
. He took the machine off and flew it normally, checked his instruments with his usual care, talked to his crew down the inter-com, did all his normal duties. But there was no life in his work that night; he performed it automatically, thinking about other things. All the way from Hartley Magna to Essen and back from Essen to Hartley Magna his mind was only on Gervase. The vast glow of smoke and flame that they saw fifty miles away did not excite him; he was oppressed with the feeling that the present position with Gervase was intolerable; the artificial constraint that life upon the station placed between them must be ended as soon as possible. The target was too far obscured by smoke and fire for him to be able to identify the engine assembly shops that they were detailed to destroy. Gunnar Franck took over and from the river bend guided him across the inferno for about the right distance, and they dropped their bombs and fell into formation beside Lines as they climbed up towards the clouds, and Marshall was free again to think about his trouble. He would have to reach an understanding with Gervase. They could not go on like this.

He got to bed at about half-past three, and slept restlessly and late. He woke up at about half-past eleven; there was no tea for him in spite of the pigeon that he had given to the Flight Officer, and his batwoman had gone downstairs. He lay for half an hour in bed rather unhappy and resentful of the circumstances
of his life; then he got up and shaved and went downstairs to drink his pint of beer before lunch.

He saw Gervase in the ante-room and crossed over to her, can in hand.

“Morning,” he said.

She turned to him. “Good-morning. Did you get your cup of tea?”

He grumbled: “No, I didn’t. Fat lot of good giving her a pigeon.”

The girl said: “But she told the girl that you could have it! I know she did.” In fact, he had been asleep at the time when his batwoman might have brought it to him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said gloomily. “Beer is best.”

She laughed. “What’s the matter with you?”

He yawned. “I stayed up too late last night.”

Gervase said: “It’s going to be a lovely afternoon. You’d better get out and get some exercise.”

He nodded. “I thought of going out to that place Riddington up the river, that I told you about, to try and get another pike. Like to come with me?” He paused, and added persuasively: “I’d let you have a crack with the little rod, if you like.”

She said: “All right. I’ll meet you out there.”

He fixed details of the time and place with her, and left her almost immediately, conscious of Flying Officer Davy watching them across the room. He went in presently to lunch, and then up to his room to collect his fishing gear. He rode out of the station on his bicycle ahead of Gervase; when she reached the river he had already fitted up his rod and made a cast or two with the red plug.

The river here swelled out into a wide pool, rather black and muddy, and overhung with trees. At one time it might have been a millpool or perhaps a reservoir; now nothing remained to show its purpose save the stone retaining wall and rusty sluice. Gervase found him at the deep end of it; she came to him by a little path through beds of nettles.

“You do find nice places,” she said. “I think this is fun.”

The sun shone on them through the bare trees; the shadows of the branches made thin pencilled lines upon the water. “It’s nothing like that Kingslake place,” he said. “I was just thinking it looks pretty grim.” He glanced at the dark water and the black sunken branches sticking out of it up at the shallow end.

“We won’t spin too deep,” he said. “We might bring up the body.”

She made a little gesture of distaste. “Loathsome ideas you have.”

“Well, I didn’t want to spoil our afternoon.”

He showed her his rod, reel, and tackle. She had never fished in that way; indeed, she had never fished at all except for one or two abortive trials with a fly, as she had told him. They stood there together on the bank of the dark pool as he explained the tackle to her; he stumbled once or twice during his explanation, confused by her proximity. The tension communicated itself to her, because she moved away from him a little and said:

“All right. Go on, and let’s see you do it.”

He cast out over the still pool; the plug went flying thirty yards and landed with a little splash; he began to reel in slowly. “That’s nice,” she said. She watched as the little red fish wiggled up towards them as he reeled it out and cast again.

Presently he handed her the rod and showed her how to do it; it was necessary to adjust her hand upon the handle and her thumb upon the reel, and that was difficult for both of them. She cast, and got an overrun that tangled up the line; cast again when he had straightened it for her and got another. The third time the plug sailed correctly up the still pool a little way, giving her the thrill of achievement.

They fished on for half an hour and caught nothing, which was not surprising. Their minds were not upon the job but on very different matters; a fish, if fish there were, might have looked out of the water at them brandishing the rod above his head and wondered at their few, constrained remarks and the long, difficult silences.

For Gervase, the afternoon was a disappointment. For some reason that she did not clearly understand it was not working out so well as the day in Kingslake Woods. That and the evening in Oxford had been sheer pleasure; this was different, and awkward. She became aware that she wanted to get away, and quickly too, before something frightful happened.

She handed him back the rod. “Thanks ever so much for letting me try,” she said. “I’ve got to go back now—I said I’d be back for tea. I hope you catch a fish.”

He smiled at her. He had felt the awkwardness between them as much as she had; if she wanted to escape he would not try to stop her. “There’s a dance in the Town Hall tomorrow
night,” he said. “Would you like to come to it?”

She said, to gain time: “You mean the one in Hartley Town Hall?”

He nodded. “That’s the one.”

She hesitated, and then said: “I think that’s a bit near the station, isn’t it?”

There was a long pause.

“I’m not so struck upon this hole-and-corner business,” he said at last. “I think we ought to give ourselves a chance.”

She realised in panic what was happening and tried to laugh it off. “We wouldn’t have much chance if we went to the Hartley dance together.” She moved away. “I really must go now.”

“Just one more thing,” the pilot said.

She glanced at him and realised that, as she saw him then, so he must look over the target just as Gunnar Franck said “Bombs away, Cap.”

She said weakly: “What’s that?”

“I think you’re a grand person,” he said quietly. “I’m working up to ask you if you’d like to marry me.”

The date was March the fourteenth, the last day of the season for coarse fishing.

There was a long silence between them. Now that the worst had happened, Gervase found that all awkwardness had disappeared; his frankness seemed to give her licence to speak freely herself. “Look,” she said at last, “that’s perfectly absurd. We’ve only met twice or three times.”

He said: “Well, that’s not true, because we’ve been meeting almost every day in the mess. But if it was true—so what? Do you think that matters?”

She thought for a moment. “No, I don’t,” she said. “I think you’re right there. I think if you wanted to marry anybody you’d probably know in the first five minutes.”

Their agreement only served to deepen the message of her words. “Well, I did,” he said quietly, “even if you didn’t. I knew I wanted you to marry me that first day of all, when we went to see the badger.”