Shute, Nevil Read Free Page B

been down Salisbury Road yet?’
    ‘Not this morning.’
    ‘There’s a house down there-it’s terrible, Mr. Corbett. Really and truly. I never seen anything like it-not even in the war-not from one shell, that is. Still, what I meant to say was this. Two of them fell in the road, one at the far end and another a little bit this way. Well, the one at the far end, the water main’s bust for sure. There’s a regular fountain coming up, properly flooding the place. And it’s not running away, neither-like it should. That looks as if the surface drains is crushed.’
    There was a momentary silence.
    ‘You see, Mr. Corbett, a lot of people, they forget about the water. It don’t give no trouble in the ordinary way, and you don’t think. But once the mains is cracked, they take a power of a lot of getting right again. Water ain’t like electricity, where you can string a bit of wire along on poles to the house and everything’s all right. Water’s water, and it takes a long time to get the mains in order once they’re cracked.’
    ‘And where one of them bombs has fallen,’ he said soberly, ‘it’ll all be cracked. Water and gas and sewers-all mixed up together.’
    Corbett went back into his house and told Joan about the water. She wrinkled her brows. ‘We’ll have to get it put right before tonight,’ she objected.
    ‘There’s the children’s baths. Phyllis and John could go without perhaps, but baby must have hers.’
    ‘I should think you might take a little in a basin for baby. The other two will have to go dirty.’ He went on to tell her about the drains. ‘I’ll see if it’s possible to do anything about the water to-day,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime, we’ll just have to go slow on what we’ve got.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Seems funny, doesn’t it? Here, come and eat your breakfast.’ She leant over the smoking fire, and transferred a couple of rather smutty eggs from the frying-pan to a luke-warm plate.’
    He asked: Where’s Annie?’ They had a daily maid who came in before breakfast.
    ‘She hasn’t turned up yet. I hope her rabbit dies.’
    She busied herself about the grate; he sat down with the children to the meal. Phyllis asked him:
    ‘Daddy. Are we going to sleep in the garage again tonight?’
    He was startled. The possibility had not occurred to him before. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Not unless the bangs start coming again.’
    His answer was digested in silence for a minute. Then: ‘Daddy, if the bangs come again, may I take Teddy to bed with me in the garage?’
    ‘May I take Horsey, Daddy?’ asked his son.
    ‘Why-yes,’ he said patiently. Joan came to his rescue.
    ‘Get on and eat your breakfasts,’ she said. ‘You’ve not eaten anything. If you don’t eat your breakfasts up, Daddy won’t let anybody sleep in the garage tonight.’
    That finished them for the rest of the meal. Corbett got up from the table, lit a cigarette. He said:’ I must get down to the office right away. I want to see how things are there. If anything’s happened to our files and records -there’ll be awful trouble.’
    ‘You can’t go down without having a shave,’ said Joan. ‘Make yourself tidy, dear. This water will be hot in a minute.
    He stared at her in wonder. ‘I must be off my head,’ he said at last. ‘Fancy thinking of going down to work without having shaved… .’ He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin.
    She pressed his arm. ‘Don’t worry. I expect everything will be all right down there.’
    Twenty minutes later, spruce and neat in his business suit, bowler hat, and dark overcoat, and carrying a neatly furled umbrella on his arm, he came to her again.
    ‘I’m off now,’ he said. ‘I can’t ring you up because the phone’s put of order-I’ll try and get that put right. I’ll be back to Lunch if I possibly can, but don’t worry if I’m not.’
    She stood for a moment in thought. ‘Candles,’ she said at last.