On the Beach (8 page)

She changed, leaving her outer clothes and her bag on the bunk, scowled at her appearance in the little mirror, and went out and down the corridor to find her host. He came forward to meet her. “Well, here I am,” she said. “Looking like hell. Your submarine will have to be good, Dwight, to make up for this.”

He laughed, and took her arm to guide her. “Sure, it’s good,” he said. “Best in the U.S. Navy. This way.” She repressed the comment that it was probably the only one in the U.S. Navy; no sense in hurting him.

He took her down the gangplank to the narrow deck and up on to the bridge, and began explaining his ship to her. She knew little of ships and nothing about submarines, but she was attentive and once or twice surprised him with the quick intelligence of her questions. “When you go down, why doesn’t the water go down the voice pipe?” she asked.

“You turn off this cock.”

“What happens if you forget?”

He grinned. “There’s another one down below.”

He took her down through the narrow hatchways into the control-room. She spent some time at the periscope looking around the harbour and got the hang of that, but the ballasting and trim controls were beyond her and she
was not much interested. She stared uncomprehending at the engines, but the sleeping and messing quarters intrigued her, so did the galley. “What happens about smells?” she asked. “What happens when you’re cooking cabbage under water?”

“You try not to have to do it,” he told her. “Not fresh cabbage. The smell hangs around for quite a while. Finally the deodoriser deals with it, as the air gets changed and re-oxygenated. There wouldn’t be much left after an hour or two.”

He gave her a cup of tea in the tiny cubicle that was his cabin. Sipping it, she asked him, “Have you got your orders yet, Dwight?”

He nodded. “Cairns, Port Moresby, and Darwin. Then we come back here.”

“There isn’t anybody left alive in any of those places, is there?”

“I wouldn’t know. That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

“Will you go ashore?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It all depends upon the radiation levels, but I wouldn’t think we’d land. Maybe we won’t even go outside the hull. We might stay at periscope depth if the conditions are really bad. But that’s why we’re taking John Osborne along with us, so we’ll have somebody who really understands what the risks are.”

She wrinkled her brows. “But if you can’t go out on deck, how can you know if there’s anyone still living in those places?”

“We can call through the loud hailer,” he said. “Get as close inshore as we can manage, and call through the loud hailer.”

“Could you hear them if they answer?”

“Not so well as we can talk. We’ve got a microphone
hooked up beside the hailer, but you’d have to be very close to hear a person calling in reply. Still, it’s something.”

She glanced at him. “Has anybody been into the radioactive area before, Dwight?”

“Why, yes,” he said. “It’s okay if you’re sensible, and don’t take risks. We were in it quite a while, while the war was on, from Iwojima to the Philippines and then down south to Yap. You stay submerged, and carry on as usual. Of course, you don’t want to go out on deck.”

“I mean—recently. Has anyone been up into the radioactive areas since the war stopped?”

He nodded. “The
Swordfish
—that’s our sister ship—she made a cruise up in the North Atlantic. She got back to Rio de Janeiro about a month ago. I’ve been waiting for a copy of Johnny Dismore’s report—he’s her captain—but I haven’t seen it yet. There hasn’t been a ship across to South America for quite a while. I asked for a copy to be sent by teleprinter, but it’s low priority upon the radio.”

“How far did she get?”

“She got all over, I believe,” he said. “She did the Eastern States from Florida to Maine and went right in to New York Harbor, right on up the Hudson till she tangled with the wreck of the George Washington Bridge. She went to New London and to Halifax and to St. John’s, and then she crossed the Atlantic and went up the English Channel and into the London River, but she couldn’t get far up that. Then she took a look at Brest and at Lisbon, and by that time she was running out of stores and her crew were in pretty bad shape, so she went back to Rio.” He paused. “I haven’t heard yet how many days she was submerged—I’d like to know. She certainly set a new record, anyway.”

“Did she find anyone alive, Dwight?”

“I don’t think so. We’d certainly have heard about it if she did.”

She stared down the narrow alleyway outside the curtain forming the cabin wall, the running maze of pipes and electric cables. “Can you visualise it, Dwight?”

“Visualise what?”

“All those cities, all those fields and farms, with nobody, and nothing left alive. Just nothing there. I simply can’t take it in.”

“I can’t, either,” he said. “I don’t know that I want to try. I’d rather think of them the way they were.”

“I never saw them, of course,” she observed. “I’ve never been outside Australia, and now I’ll never go. Not that I want to, now. I only know all those places from the movies and the books—that’s as they were. I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a movie made of them as they are now.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be possible. A cameraman couldn’t live, as far as I can see. I guess nobody will ever know what the northern hemisphere looks like now, excepting God.” He paused. “I think that’s a good thing. You don’t want to remember how a person looked when he was dead—you want to remember how he was when he was alive. That’s the way I like to think about New York.”

“It’s too big,” she repeated. “I can’t take it in.”

“It’s too big for me, too,” he replied. “I can’t really believe in it, just can’t get used to the idea. I suppose it’s lack of imagination. I don’t want to have any more imagination. They’re all alive to me, those places in the States, just like they were. I’d like them to stay that way till next September.”

She said softly, “Of course.”

He stirred. “Have another cup of tea?”

“No thanks.”

He took her out on deck again; she paused on the bridge, rubbing a bruised shin, breathing the sea air gratefully. “It must be the hell of a thing to be submerged in her for any length of time,” she said. “How long will you be under water for this cruise?”

“Not long,” he said. “Six or seven days, maybe.”

“It must be terribly unhealthy.”

“Not physically,” he said. “You do suffer from a lack of sunlight. We’ve got a couple of sunray lamps, but they’re not the same as being out on deck. It’s the psychological effect that’s worst. Some men—good men in every other way—they just can’t take it. Everybody gets kind of on edge after a while. You need a steady kind of temperament. Kind of placid, I’d say.”

She nodded, thinking that it fitted in with his own character. “Are all of you like that?”

“I’d say we might be. Most of us.”

“Keep an eye on John Osborne,” she remarked. “I don’t believe he is.”

He glanced at her in surprise. He had not thought of that, and the scientist had survived the trial trip quite well. But now that she had mentioned it, he wondered. “Why—I’ll do that,” he said. “Thanks for the suggestion.”

They went up the gangway into
Sydney
. In the hangar of the aircraft carrier there were still aircraft parked with folded wings; the ship seemed dead and silent. She paused for a moment. “None of these will ever fly again, will they?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“Do any aeroplanes fly now, at all?”

“I haven’t heard one in the air for quite a while,” he said. “I know they’re short of aviation gas.”

She walked quietly with him to the cabin, unusually subdued. As she got out of the boiler suit and into her own clothes her spirits revived. These morbid bloody ships, these morbid bloody realities! She was urgent to get away from them, to drink, hear music, and to dance. Before the mirror, before the pictures of his wife and children, she made her lips redder, her cheeks brighter, her eyes sparkling. Snap out of it! Get right outside these riveted steel walls, and get out quick! This was no place for her. Into the world of romance, of make-belief and double brandies! Snap out of it, and get back to the world where she belonged!

From the photograph frames Sharon looked at her with understanding and approval.

In the wardroom he came forward to meet her. “Say,” he exclaimed in admiration, “you look swell!”

She smiled quickly. “I’m feeling lousy,” she said. “Let’s get out of it and into the fresh air. Let’s go to that hotel and have a drink, and then go up and find somewhere to dance.”

“Anything you say.”

He left her with John Osborne while he went to change into civilian clothes. “Take me up on to the flight deck, John,” she said. “I’ll throw a screaming fit if I stay in these ships one minute longer.”

“I’m not sure that I know the way up to the roof,” he remarked. “I’m a new boy here.” They found a steep ladder that led up to a gun turret, came down again, wandered along a steel corridor, asked a rating, and finally got up into the island and out on to the deck. On the wide, unencumbered flight deck the sun was warm, the sea blue, and the wind fresh. “Thank God I’m out of that,” she said.

“I take it that you aren’t enamoured of the navy,” he observed.

“Well, are you having fun?”

He considered the matter. “Yes, I think I am. It’s going to be rather interesting.”

“Looking at dead people through a periscope. I can think of funnier sorts of fun.”

They walked a step or two in silence. “It’s all knowledge,” he said at last. “One has to try and find out what has happened. It could be that it’s all quite different from what we think. The radioactive elements may be getting absorbed by something. Something may have happened to the half-life that we don’t know about. Even if we don’t discover anything that’s good, it’s still discovering things. I don’t think we
shall
discover anything that’s good, or very hopeful. But even so, it’s fun just finding out.”

“You call finding out the bad things fun?”

“Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “Some games are fun even when you lose. Even when you know you’re going to lose before you start. It’s fun just playing them.”

“You’ve got a pretty queer idea of fun and games.”

“Your trouble is you won’t face up to things,” he told her. “All this has happened, and is happening, but you won’t accept it. You’ve got to face the facts of life some day.”

“All right,” she said angrily, “I’ve got to face them. Next September, if what all you people say is right. That’s time enough for me.”

“Have it your own way.” He glanced at her, grinning. “I wouldn’t bank too much upon September,” he remarked. “It’s September plus or minus about three months. We may be going to cop it in June, for all that anybody knows. Or, then again, I might be buying you a Christmas present.”

She said furiously, “Don’t you
know?”

“No, I don’t,” he replied. “Nothing like this has ever
happened in the history of the world before.” He paused, and then he added whimsically, “If it had, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

“If you say one word more I’m going to push you over the edge of that deck.”

Commander Towers came out of the island and walked across to them, neat in a double-breasted blue suit. “I wondered where you’d got to,” he remarked.

The girl said, “Sorry, Dwight. We should have left a message. I wanted some fresh air.”

John Osborne said, “You’d better watch out, sir. She’s in a pretty bad temper. I’d stand away from her head, if I were you, in case she bites.”

“He’s been teasing me,” she said. “Like Albert and the lion. Let’s go, Dwight.”

“See you tomorrow, sir,” the scientist said. “I’ll be staying on board over the week-end.”

The captain turned away with the girl, and they went down the stairs within the island. As they passed down the steel corridor towards the gangway he asked her, “What was he teasing you about, honey?”

“Everything,” she said vaguely. “Took his stick and poked it in my ear. Let’s have a drink before we start looking for a train, Dwight. I’ll feel better then.”

He took her to the same hotel in the main street. Over the drinks he asked her, “How long have we got, this evening?”

“The last train leaves Flinders Street at eleven-fifteen. I’d better get on that, Dwight. Mummy would never forgive me if I spent the night with you.”

“I’ll say she wouldn’t. What happens when you get to Berwick? Is anybody meeting you?”

She shook her head. “We left a bicycle at the station this morning. If you do the right thing by me I won’t be
able to ride it, but it’s there, anyway.” She finished her first double brandy. “Buy me another, Dwight.”

“I’ll buy you one more,” he said. “After that we’re getting on the train. You promised me that we’d be going dancing.”

“So we are,” she said. “I booked a table at Mario’s. But I shuffle beautifully when I’m tight.”

“I don’t want to shuffle,” he said. “I want to dance.”

She took the drink he handed her. “You’re very exacting,” she said. “Don’t go poking any more sticks in my ear—I just can’t bear it. Most men don’t know how to dance, anyway.”

“You’ll find me one of them,” he said. “We used to dance a lot back in the States. But I’ve not danced since the war began.”

She said, “I think you live a very restricted life.”

He managed to detach her from the hotel after her second drink, and they walked to the station in the evening light. They arrived at the city half an hour later, and walked out into the street. “It’s a bit early,” she said. “Let’s walk.”

He took her arm to guide her through the Saturday evening crowds. Most of the shops had plenty of good stock still in the windows but few were open. The restaurants and cafés were all full, doing a roaring trade; the bars were shut, but the streets were full of drunks. The general effect was one of boisterous and uninhibited lightheartedness, more in the style of 1890 than of 1963. There was no traffic in the wide streets but for the trams, and people swarmed all over the road. At the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets an Italian was playing a very large and garish accordion, and playing it very well indeed. Around him, people were dancing to it. As they passed the Regal Cinema a man, staggering along in front
of them, fell down, paused for a moment upon hands and knees, and rolled dead drunk into the gutter. Nobody paid much attention to him. A policeman, strolling down the pavement, turned him over, examined him casually, and strolled on.