Free Pastoral by Nevil Shute

course—moonlight.”
    She glanced around her at the bare trees and the low undergrowth. “It must have been sort of eerie,” she said.
    Marshall said: “It was damn cold.”
    The girl laughed: “I forgot. I suppose being in the woods at night doesn’t mean anything to you.”
    He said: “Well, I usually try and keep above the tree-tops, matter of fact. The boys don’t care for driving through the woods at night.”
    She said: “But you do get accustomed to the darkness, don’t you? I mean, more than I should be?”
    Marshall said: “Yes, I think one does. I don’t think I find the black-out so difficult as I used to.”
    “Have you been flying bombers very long?”
    “Fifteen months,” he said. “I was with Coastal before that.”
    “All the time at Hartley?” she enquired.
    “Well—yes. I did my thirty operations here and then I was grounded for three months and sent to Stamford, and then I came back here again. I’ve done all my bomber flying from here.”
    Gervase glanced at him. “How many raids have you done?”
    “In all? Fifty-one, if you count four I did as second pilot when I came from Coastal.”
    He turned to her. “You came from Training Command, didn’t you?”
    She nodded. “I was at Hornby for a year after I got my commission. Then they sent me down here.”
    “Do you like it?”
    She said: “I thought at first it was the foulest hole I’d ever seen, but I’m getting to like it a bit better now.”
    He was surprised. “But why?” he said. “I think Hartley’s a good station.”
    She was not sufficiently accustomed to him to be able to shed reticence. She could not tell him yet that the grim anxiety of operations, and the casualties, had made her loathe the place. She said vaguely: “I don’t know. Some placesyou like, and some you don’t.”
    “I know,” he agreed. “But I like Hartley Magna. There’s always something to do here, not like Northolt or one of those places. I think they’re deadly.”
    She was with him in that. “Were you brought up in the country? I mean, how did you get to find out about the things you do?”
    He said: “I’m not country-bred. My home is in Northwood, a sort of suburb place north-west of London, about forty miles from here. I worked in Holborn, in an office, for a bit. No, my rear-gunner taught me how to fish, and Gunnar got keen on it, too. He’s my navigator.”
    She thought of the fifty-one raids that he had made. “You must have an awfully good crew,” she said.
    He nodded. “I’m frightfully lucky. Gunnar and Phillips were with me in my first turn, and then when I came back here after the three months I managed to get them with me again. We’ve been together for the thick end of a year.”
    “What are they like?” she asked. She was wondering what sort of supermen these were, who took a Wellington on raids all over Europe in the dark night fifty-one times without mishap, and apparently thought nothing of it. The risks were real enough; she had to look no further than Forbes and Bobbie Fraser to see that. What sort of supermen manned R for Robert?
    He said: “Gunnar’s a Dane; he was a medical student in Copenhagen when the Germans walked in. Phillips worked on a machine in Terry’s chocolate works in York. They’re grand chaps to be with.”
    He began to tell her all about them as they walked up through the woods towards the badger’s earth. She listened, a little bewildered. There was no explanation to the point that puzzled her about the incidence of casualties. These were ordinary young men, competent and likable perhaps, but not outstanding figures. Was it just luck that kept the flak away from R for Robert?
    He studied her furtively as they walked. She had a firm chin, he decided, beneath a kind mouth; she had rather large, intelligent eyes. Such station gossip as he had been able discreetly to collect led him to believe that she was a good officer, cool in emergency and well liked by her girls. It would be a