Free Pastoral by Nevil Shute Page A

disaster if she got a transfer to another station.
    “Is your job interesting?” he asked. “What do you do,apart from the control office?” He knew about her supervision of the R/T; it had been in his mind intriguingly as he was coming in to land soon after half-past one.
    She told him what she did. “It’s interesting enough,” she said at last. “A bit too much so sometimes.”
    He glanced down at her. “What does that mean?” he asked.
    She wanted to confide in him. She walked on for a pace or two in silence. Then she said without looking at him: “It’s awful sometimes. Do you remember about C for Charlie?”
    He wrinkled his forehead. “You mean that chap Sawyer? The time we went to Kiel?”
    She nodded. “He asked for a fix,” she said. “And when we gave it, he couldn’t make it out and said our transmission was all wrong. That was all we ever got from him.”
    He said: “I remember. But there wasn’t anything in that, was there? I mean, the station was all right. We got a bearing from you that night, I think.”
    Gervase said: “Our strength was quite all right. But he thought it wasn’t, and we tried and tried to get it up and make it stronger for him.” She hesitated, and then said: “It was beastly.”
    Peter Marshall looked down at her, and said kindly: “Did that worry you a lot?”
    She glanced up at him. “Yes, it did,” she said. “I suppose one gets accustomed to that sort of thing in time. I’ve been in Training Command, and I’m new to it.”
    He was immensely sorry for her. “Look,” he said. “Sawyer went in just ahead of me, and I saw him going away after he dumped his load, and he seemed to be quite all right. Sawyer may have been hit, of course, or else the navigator. But, anyway, he went hundreds of miles away off course.”
    She said: “That’s true. He was right over by the mouth of the Skagerrak.”
    “That’s what I heard.” He looked down at her, smiling. “It’s just plain crackers to go worrying over that.”
    She forced a laugh, colouring a little. “I suppose it is. But it’s difficult not to.”
    He said: “I used to worry about things a bit. But then I took up golf and found what worry really meant. It got me down, so I gave it up and took up fishing.”
    She laughed. “Counter-irritant!”
    He grinned down at her. “That’s it. You find yourself a nicenew worry and stop bothering about fixes that are all right, anyway.”
    She walked on for a pace or two in silence. “When I was in Training Command,” she said, “I wanted to be on an operational station, so as to be doing a bit more for the war. I never thought how anxious it would be.”
    Marshall nodded. “When I joined the R.A.F. I thought it would be lovely, all flying about in sunshine and blue sky among the dear little fleecy clouds, like a lamb gambolling in the fields.” She laughed. “Honestly, I did think of it like that.”
    “Like the posters in Wings for Victory Week.”
    He said: “Just like that. You aren’t the only mutt round here, if that’s any comfort to you.”
    They came out of the woods into a clearing. They had been walking up a gentle slope for some way, and now they found that they were on a piece of rising ground looking away towards the east. The clearance in the trees showed them the country over towards Princes Risborough and its range of hills, sunny and hazy.
    “This is the place,” said Marshall. “We waited just here, on this log.”
    The girl stood and looked out over the low, flat country. “It’s lovely to be looking down on something, for a change.” She glanced up at him. “I come from a hilly part of the world,” she said. “I’ve been awfully bored with this flat country here.”
    “Where do you come from?” he enquired. He knew already, but he wanted her to tell him.
    “We live at Thirsk, in Yorkshire,” she said. “Just by the Clevedon Hills.”
    He wrinkled his forehead. “Helmsley way?”
    She nodded. “That’s not very