In the Wet by Nevil Shute

Court life. It meant interrupting his career in the R.A.A.F. It meant many other changes in his life, most of which, he felt, would not be for the better.
    “Whose idea was this?” he said at last.
    “Frank Cox suggested your name first,” the High Commissioner replied. “When it was agreed in principle that the crew of this machine should be Australians. Cox put your name forward as a suitable officer for the captain.”
    “He doesn’t know anything about me,” David said. “I don’t think I should be suitable at all.”
    Ferguson smiled. “They’ve taken a good deal of trouble to investigate you, of course. They asked for details of your Service record, which we gave them. You’ve met the Assistant Private Secretary, haven’t you?”
    “What Secretary?”
    “The Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen—Major Macmahon. You had dinner with him, didn’t you?”
    “There was a chap called Macmahon there when I went to dinner with Frank Cox,” the pilot said. “Is that who he was?”
    “That’s right. You made a good impression.”
    “Didn’t eat my tucker with my fingers?”
    The High Commissioner laughed. “That’s right.”
    David sat in silence. At last he said, “Can I have a day or two to think it over?”
    “Of course. It might be a good thing if you had a talk with Frank Cox.”
    “I think it would be,” the pilot said. “There are a lot of things he ought to know before I take a job like this.”
    Ferguson eyed him for a minute. “I see that you don’t care about it much,” he said presently. “What’s the trouble?”
    The pilot shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care all thatabout this country,” he said. “All these empty houses and shops get me down. They’re still the best engineers in the world, and they build the best aeroplanes. But anyone can have the rest of it, so far as I’m concerned.”
    “How long have you been over here?” the High Commissioner asked. “Two months?”
    “Nearly three,” the pilot said. “I’ve only got another nine months to do here before I get back to Australia.”
    “Never been in England before?”
    David shook his head.
    “You want to look beyond the low standard of living,” the High Commissioner said. “They’re a great people still, and they can still teach us a thing or two. But anyway, you think it over, and have a talk with Frank Cox. Give me a ring on Monday or Tuesday of next week and let me know what you’ve decided.”
    David Anderson went away and lunched at the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall; like many officers in the Australian services he had found a welcome and hospitality in that club. In the lounge he met an Australian naval officer, a Queenslander like himself, that he knew fairly well. Lieutenant-Commander Fawcett said, “Hullo, Nigger. Come and have a drink.”
    “Have a tomato juice,” said David. They went into the bar.
    “What are you doing in Town?”
    “Mooching around and seeing the sights,” said David.
    “Have a pink gin.”
    “No, thanks. I never do.”
    He lunched with his friend, who was serving a tour of duty at the Admiralty, but he did not tell him anything about the Queen’s Flight. Commander Fawcett had just come back from a holiday in which he had motored to Scotland up one side of England and down theother. “Didn’t spend a single night in a hotel,” he said.
    “Camping?”
    “Empty houses,” the Commander said. “They’re the shot in this country. We had our swags, of course, and camp beds. It’s far better than messing about with a tent. The only thing is, in Scotland they take the roofs off.”
    “I heard about that,” said David. “That’s to keep up the value of the others, isn’t it?”
    “That’s right. I don’t know that it really does it, though. You can get a new house up there for the price of the roof, plus five quid for the rest of it. That’s the exempted houses—not owned by the Government.”
    “Down here it only costs the