Pastoral by Nevil Shute Page A

in the Army for three years; I don’t suppose he’ll want to when it’s all over. He’ll be too old.”
    Gervase said: “What a shame. What do you think he’ll do?”
    He told her about Bill, who wanted to be a solicitor and probably would be one day. And then she asked:
    “What will you do when it’s over?”
    He said: “I can always go back to the office—they said they’d keep the job for me.” He was not really interested in what might happen to him after the war was over; for most people in his way of life that was an academic question.
    He glanced at her. “What about you?” he asked. “What would you do if the war ended now?”
    She said: “I did a course of shorthand and typing just before I joined up, and I did a bit of that at first before I was an officer. Then they let me go into signals, and then I got my commission. I think I’d try and get a job as secretary tosomebody in the radio business.”
    “That means working in a town,” he said. “Would you like that?”
    She grimaced and shook her head.
    “There’s only one thing for it, then. You’ll have to marry a farmer and settle down in the country.” He did not want her in the least to marry a farmer; already he had other plans for her.
    “I don’t know about marrying a farmer,” she said. “I’d like to settle down in the country. But I don’t want to do that yet.”
    “Why not?”
    She said: “I think when people are young they ought to do an honest job of work. There are lots of beastly things that have to be done, like working in towns, in offices. I don’t think anybody ought to shirk that side of life.”
    “I suppose that’s right,” he said. “But most people never get beyond the office and the town.”
    She nodded. “I don’t want to get stuck in a groove. I’d like to work in some business for seven or eight years and then marry and go back to the country.”
    He said: “I’d like to go on flying with Imperial Airways, or whatever they call it, after the war. But I don’t suppose I’ll be able to. There’ll be an awful lot of us milling after just a few jobs.”
    They talked for some time about Hartley Magna, and the people on the station, and the life. He found that Gervase was much more reconciled to life there than when he had talked to her last. “You get to like it,” he said. “At least, I did.”
    She nodded. “I’m liking it a bit better now. I suppose it’s because I’m finding more to do, like you and your fishing.”
    Peter said: “The fishing ends in a week’s time.”
    She knew vaguely that the coarse-fishing season came to an end some time in the middle of March. She said: “You’ll have to think of something else to do.”
    “So will the boys,” he said. “I want to go farther up the river one day in the next week, though, and see if I can’t get another pike.”
    “How far?”
    “There’s a place about two miles farther up, by Riddington, where there’s a little sort of pool. Sergeant Phillips went up there one Sunday after roach. He says he thinks there are pike there. It’s a good long way to go.”
    “Five miles,” she said. “That isn’t much.”
    He said: “It may not be to you, but I took to biking very late in life.”
    She laughed. “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-two,” he said. He glanced at her. “How old are you?”
    She said: “I’m twenty-one.” Then they told each other all about their birthdays.
    They ate with one eye on the clock, watching the time to catch their bus back to Hartley Magna. Peter said: “Look, Gervase—would you rather that I didn’t come on this bus? There’s that other one at half-past ten; I could come on that.”
    She said: “That means you’d have to wait about here for an hour, though.”
    “I could go and get drunk,” he said.
    She laughed. “You needn’t do that for me, unless you want to for your own evil purposes. It doesn’t matter our going back on the same bus if we don’t sit together. After all, we