On the Beach (9 page)

“They have quite a time here in the evenings,” Dwight remarked.

“It’s nothing like so bad as it used to be,” the girl replied. “It was much worse than this just after the war.”

“I know it. I’d say they’re getting tired of it.” He paused, and then he said, “Like I did.”

She nodded. “This is Saturday, of course. It’s very quiet here on an ordinary night. Almost like it was before the war.”

They walked on to the restaurant. The proprietor welcomed them because he knew her well; she was in his establishment at least once a week and frequently more often. Dwight Towers had been there half a dozen times, perhaps, preferring his club, but he was known to the head waiter as the captain of the American submarine. They were well received and given a good table in a corner away from the band; they ordered drinks and dinner.

“They’re pretty nice people here,” Dwight said appreciatively. “I don’t come in so often, and I don’t spend much when I do come.”

“I come here pretty frequently,” the girl said. She sat in reflection for a moment. “You know, you’re a very lucky man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’ve got a full time job to do.”

It had not occurred to him before that he was fortunate. “That’s so,” he said slowly. “I certainly don’t seem to get a lot of time to go kicking around on the loose.”

“I do,” she said. “It’s all I’ve got to do.”

“Don’t you work at anything? No job at all?”

“Nothing at all,” she said. “Sometimes I drive a bullock round the farm at home, harrowing the muck. That’s all I ever do.”

“I’d have thought you’d have been working in the city some place,” he remarked.

“So would I,” she said a little cynically. “But it’s not so easy as that. I took honours in history up at the Shop, just before the war.”

“The Shop?”

“The University. I was going to do a course of shorthand and typing. But what’s the sense in working for a year at that? I wouldn’t have time to finish it. And if I did, there aren’t any jobs.”

“You mean, business is slowing down?”

She nodded. “Lots of my friends are out of a job now. People aren’t working like they used to, and they don’t want secretaries. Half of Daddy’s friends—people who used to go to the office—they just don’t go now. They live at home, as if they were retired. An awful lot of offices have closed, you know.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” he remarked. “A man has a right to do the things he wants to do in the last months, if he can get by with the money.”

“A girl has a right to, too,” she said. “Even if the things she wants to do are something different to driving a bullock round the farm to spread the dung.”

“There’s just no work at all?” he asked.

“Nothing that I could find,” she said. “And I’ve tried hard enough. You see, I can’t even type.”

“You could learn,” he said. “You could go and take that course that you were going to take.”

“What’s the sense of that, if there’s no time to finish it, or use it afterwards?”

“Something to work at,” he remarked. “Just as an alternative to all the double brandies.”

“Work just for the sake of working?” she enquired. “It sounds simply foul.” Her fingers drummed restlessly upon the table.

“Better than drinking just for the sake of drinking,” he observed. “Doesn’t give you a hangover.”

She said irritably, “Order me a double brandy, Dwight, and then let’s see if you can dance.”

He took her out upon the dance floor, feeling vaguely sorry for her. She was in a prickly kind of mood. Immersed in his own troubles and occupations, it had never occurred to him that young, unmarried people had their own frustrations in these times. He set himself to make the evening pleasant for her, talking about the films and musicals they both had seen, the mutual friends they had. “Peter and Mary Holmes are funny,” she told him once. “She’s absolutely nuts on gardening. They’ve got that flat upon a three years’ lease. She’s planning to plant things this autumn that’ll come up next year.”

He smiled. “I’d say she’s got the right idea. You never know.” He steered the conversation back to safer subjects. “Did you see the Danny Kaye movie at the Plaza?”

Yachting and sailing were safe topics, and they talked around those for some time. The floor show came on as they finished dinner, and amused them for a while, and then they danced again. Finally the girl said, “Cinderella. I’ll have to start and think about that train, Dwight.”

He paid the bill while she was in the cloakroom, and met her by the door. In the streets of the city it was quiet now; the music was stilled, the restaurants and cafés were now closed. Only the drunks remained, reeling down the pavements aimlessly or lying down to sleep. The girl wrinkled her nose. “They ought to do something
about all this,” she said. “It never was like this before the war.”

“It’s quite a problem,” he said thoughtfully. “It comes up all the time in the ship. I reckon a man has a right to do the things he wants to when he goes ashore, so long as he doesn’t go bothering other people. Some folks just have to have the liquor, times like these.” He eyed a policeman on the corner. “That’s what the cops here seem to think, in this city, at any rate. I’ve never seen a drunk arrested yet, not just for being drunk.”

At the station she paused to thank him and to wish him good night. “It’s been a beaut evening,” she said. “The day, too. Thanks for everything, Dwight.”

“I’ve enjoyed it, Moira,” he said. “It’s years since I danced.”

“You’re not too bad,” she told him. And then she asked, “Do you know when you go off up north?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. A message came in just before we left, telling me to report Monday morning in the First Naval Member’s offices, with Lieutenant-Commander Holmes. I imagine we’ll get our final briefing then, and maybe get away on Monday afternoon.”

She said, “Good luck. Will you give me a ring when you come back to Williamstown?”

“Why, sure,” he said. “I’d like to do that. Maybe we could go sailing again some place, or else do this again.”

She said, “That’ld be fun. I’ll have to go now, or I’ll miss this train. Good night again, and thanks for everything.”

“It’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “Good night.” He stood and watched her go till she was lost in the crowd. From the back view, in that light summer dress, she was not unlike Sharon—or could it be that he was forgetting, muddling them up? No, she really was a bit like Sharon
in the way she walked. Not in any other way. Perhaps that was why he liked her, that she was just a little like his wife.

He turned away, and went to catch his train to Williamstown.

He went to church next morning in Williamstown, as was his habit on a Sunday when circumstances made it possible. At ten o’clock on Monday morning he was with Peter Holmes in the Navy Department, waiting in the outer office to see the First Naval Member, Sir David Hartman. The secretary said, “He won’t be a minute, sir. I understand he’s taking you both over to the Commonwealth Government Offices.”

“He is?”

The Lieutenant nodded. “He ordered a car.” A buzzer sounded and the young man went into the inner office. He reappeared in a moment. “Will you both go in now.”

They went into the inner office. The Vice-Admiral got up to meet them. “Morning, Commander Towers. Morning, Holmes. The Prime Minister wants to have a word with you before you go, so we’ll go over to his office in a minute. Before we do that, I want to give you this.” He turned, and lifted a fairly bulky typescript from his desk. “This is the report of the commanding officer of U.S.S.
Swordfish
on his cruise from Rio de Janeiro up into the North Atlantic.” He handed it to Dwight. “I’m sorry that it’s been so long in coming, but the pressure on the radio to South America is very great, and there’s a good deal of it. You can take it with you and look it over at your leisure.”

The American took it, and turned it over with interest. “It’s going to be very valuable to us, sir. Is there anything in it to affect this operation?”

“I don’t think there is. He found a high level of radioactivity—atmospheric radioactivity—over the whole area, greater in the north than in the south, as you’d expect. He submerged—let’s see” he took the typescript back and turned the pages quickly “—he submerged in Latitude Two South, off Parnaiba, and stayed submerged for the whole cruise, surfacing again in Latitude Five South off Cape Sao Roque.”

“How long was he submerged, sir?”

“Thirty-two days.”

“That might be a record.”

The Admiral nodded. “I think it is. I think he says so, somewhere.” He handed back the typescript. “Well, take it with you and study it. It gives an indication of conditions in the north. By the way, if you should want to get in touch with him, he’s moved his ship down into Uruguay. He’s at Montevideo now.”

Peter asked, “Are things getting hot in Rio, sir?”

“It’s getting a bit close.”

They left the office in the Navy Department, went down into the yard, and got into an electric truck. It took them silently through the empty streets of the city, up tree-lined Collins Street to the Commonwealth Offices. In a few minutes they found themselves seated with Mr. Donald Ritchie, the Prime Minister, around a table.

He said, “I wanted to see you before you sailed, Captain, to tell you a little bit about the purpose of this cruise, and to wish you luck. I’ve read your operation order, and I have very little to add to that. You are to proceed to Cairns, to Port Moresby, and to Darwin for the purpose of reporting on conditions in those places. Any signs of life would be particularly interesting, of course, whether human or animal. Vegetation, too. And seabirds, if you can gather any information about those.”

“I think that’s going to be difficult, sir,” Dwight said. “Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, I understand you’re taking a member of the C.S.I.R.O. with you.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Osborne.”

The Prime Minister passed his hand across his face, a habitual gesture. “Well. I don’t expect you to take risks. In fact, I forbid it. We want you back here with your ship intact and your crew in good health. You will use your own discretion whether you expose yourself on deck, whether you expose your ship upon the surface, guided by your scientific officer. Within the limits of that instruction, we want all the information we can get. If the radiation level makes it possible, you should land and inspect the towns. But I don’t think it will.”

The First Naval Member shook his head. “I very much doubt it. I think you may find it necessary to submerge by the time you get to Twenty-two South.”

The American thought rapidly. “That’s south of Townsville.”

The Prime Minister said heavily, “Yes. There are still people alive in Townsville. You are expressly forbidden to go there, unless your operation order should be modified by a signal from the Navy Department.” He raised his head, and looked at the American. “That may seem hard to you, Commander. But you can’t help them, and it’s better not to raise false hopes by showing them your ship. And after all, we know what the conditions are in Townsville. We still have telegraphic contact with them there.”

“I understand that, sir.”

“That leads me to the last point that I have to make,” the Prime Minister said. “You are expressly forbidden to take anybody on board your ship during this cruise, except with the prior permission of the Navy Department
obtained by radio. I know that you will understand the obvious necessity that neither you or any member of your crew should be exposed to contact with a radioactive person. Is that quite clear?”

“Quite clear, sir.”

The Prime Minister rose to his feet. “Well, good luck to all of you. I shall look forward to talking to you again, Commander Towers, in a fortnight’s time.”

Nine days later U.S.S.
Scorpion
surfaced at dawn. In the grey light, as the stars faded, the periscopes emerged from a calm sea off Sandy Cape near Bundaberg in Queensland, in Latitude Twenty-four degrees South. She stayed below the surface for a quarter of an hour while the captain checked his position by the lighthouse on the distant shore and by echo soundings, and while John Osborne checked the atmospheric and sea radiation levels, with fingers fumbling irritably upon his instruments. Then she slid up out of the depths, a long grey hull, low in the water, heading south at twenty knots. On the bridge deck a hatch clanged open and the officer of the deck emerged, followed by the captain and by many others. In the calm weather the forward and aft torpedo hatches were opened and clean air began to circulate throughout the boat. A life line was rigged from the bow to the bridge structure and another to the stern, and all the men off duty clambered up on deck into the fresh morning air, white faced, rejoicing to be out of it, to see the rising sun. They had been submerged for over a week.

Half an hour later they were hungry, hungrier than they had been for several days. When breakfast was sounded they tumbled below quickly; the cooks in turn came up for a spell on deck. When the watch was relieved more men came quickly up into the bright sunlight. The officers appeared upon the bridge, smoking, and the ship settled into the normal routine of surface operation, heading southwards on a blue sea down the Queensland coast.

The radio mast was rigged, and they reported their position in a signal. Then they began to receive the broadcasting for entertainment, and light music filled the hull, mingling with the murmur of the turbines and the rushing noise of water alongside.

On the bridge the captain said to his liaison officer, “This report’s going to be just a little difficult to write.”

Peter nodded. “There’s the tanker, sir.”

Dwight said, “Sure, there’s the tanker.” Between Cairns and Port Moresby, in the Coral Sea, they had come upon a ship. She was a tanker, empty and in ballast, drifting with her engines stopped. She was registered in Amsterdam. They cruised around her, hailing through the loud hailer, and getting no response, looking at her through the periscope as they checked her details with Lloyds Register. All her boats were in place at the davits, but there seemed to be nobody alive on board her. She was rusty, very rusty indeed. They came to the conclusion finally that she was a derelict that had been drifting about the oceans since the war; she did not seem to have suffered any damage, other than the weather. There was nothing to be done about her, and the atmospheric radiation level was too high for them to go on deck or make any attempt to board her, even if it had been possible for them to get up her sheer sides. So, after an hour, they left her where they found her, photographing her through the periscope and noting the position. This was the only ship that they had met throughout the cruise.