Pastoral by Nevil Shute Read Free Book Online Page A

being as attractive as she was. Anyway, she was going to get mixed up with somebody on this one; he knew that very well already.
    He wondered whether it was any good casting to the same place in the millpool for another pike, and he wondered very much what her name was. He had already discovered her initials from the file of postings to the station. He wondered how old she was; he was twenty-two himself and he was pretty sure that she was younger than that. If he could find out how long she had been a Section Officer, that might give him a line. But he could ask her that.
    He began casting in a desultory way over the running water, but soon gave it up, and sat down on a stone and lit his pipe. Over his head the pigeons flapped and fluttered in and out of the trees, small clouds sailed slowly past on a blue sky, and once an early bee flew past his ear. Presently he got up and, smoking still, began to walk down the river, rod in hand. It was no good flogging the same place two days running, he thought.
    He passed a couple of aircraftmen fishing where Gunnar had been on the previous day, and went on towards a pool at the next weir. Just above the pool he came on Sergeant Phillips sitting on a little stool, his float between the weed beds in mid-stream. The pilot paused beside him.
    “Done any good?” he asked.
    The sergeant shook his head. “Don’t seem to be nowt stirring. I reckon Gunnar must ha’ caught them all yesterday.”
    “How many did he get?”
    “Four.”
    The pilot glanced back up the river. “I told Gunnar to see if he could borrow Sergeant Pilot Nutter’s little rifle, and we’d have a crack at those pigeons up by the mill.”
    “Aye, he was talking about that. He’s got the gun.”
    “We’ll have a crack at them one day.”
    The sergeant nodded. “Make a change to get a pigeon for tea.”
    Marshall left him, and went on to the weir. He cast for anhour above it and below but rose nothing; either there were no pike there or it was an off day when they would not feed. Presently he walked slowly back up-stream towards the mill, casting here and there as he went. At the mill he took down his rod, got on his bicycle, and rode back to the station.
    He had packed up early with a vague hope that if he got back to the mess by half-past four he might, quite accidentally, see Section Officer Robertson drinking a cup of tea. He did not find her there; either she was having tea in her office or else in her own quarters. He lingered for some little time until hope died; then he went up to his room to write his weekly letter to his mother.
    He got out his pad, squared his shoulders at the deal table at the end of his bed, and began to write. He never knew what to say. His mother, he knew, lived each day in an agony of fear for him, a gnawing pain that she had suffered and concealed for nearly two years now. He could not write to her about the difficult raids, the ones that had not been so good, and he had long ago exhausted all that could be said about the uneventful ones. He wrote:
    My darling mother,
    We had a lovely flight the night before last, over to Turin and back. The moon got up as we were getting to the Alps and it was frightfully pretty with snow on the mountains and lakes and everything. They don’t have any black-out there and you could see the street lamps in the towns, and cars going along the road and everything. We went up to seventeen thousand and it was frightfully cold, but it was dry and there wasn’t any icing. I wore your leather waistcoat under everything else, and it was fine.
    He paused, and then he wrote:
    I’ve seen Switzerland three times now and I’d love to go there one day for a holiday, ski-ing and skating. I don’t think I want to go to Italy much.
    He paused again; there really wasn’t much else to say about flying. He went on presently:
    I caught a pike yesterday on one of the plugs, in the river here; eleven and a quarter pounds, it was awful fun. Ibrought it back and a