Free On the Beach by Nevil Shute Page B

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 everhappened in the history of the world before.” He paused, and then he added whimsically, “If