In the Wet by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780884113188
Google: RwqXTZLJGP4C
Amazon: 0884113183
Publisher: Amereon Ltd
Published: 1953-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

SHE stood in the slanting light of the low moon, looking up at him. “If I wanted to marry you, I’d marry you for what you are and what you’ve done, David,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind about the colour. But I’m not marrying anybody yet.”

He smiled down at her. “How long is Yet?” he asked.

She looked down at her hands that he was holding. “It’s a long, long time,” she said. There was a pause, and then she raised her head and faced him. “I don’t want to make things difficult for you, David,” she said. “I know you’re fond of me. A girl knows that, and it’s made me very proud that you should like me. But now I’ve got to tell you I’m not marrying, not for a long time, anyway. Perhaps it would be better if we didn’t go about so much together.”

“I think it would be worse,” he said.

“I’m not so sure,” she replied. “You must try and understand that I’m not marrying anybody, David—anybody at all. If I was, I’d probably jump at the chance of marrying a man like you. But there’s no question of it. So far as I’m concerned, marrying is out.”

He stood looking down at her, holding her hands, puzzled by her attitude. At last he asked her, “Can you tell me honestly and truthfully that it’s not the colour? If that’s really in the back of your mind, I’d like you to tell me now. Because that would be definite and final, and I wouldn’t worry you again.”

She shook her head. “It’s not the colour.”

He felt he had to press the point, to search her mind before they went on any further. “Suppose some day you were to marry me, and we had a kid,” he said. “You might have a dark baby.”

She nodded. “I’ve thought of that. I don’t think that would worry me, David. Honestly, I don’t think the colour comes into it.” She paused. “You see, if I were to marry you—ever—it would be because I was proud of you, and because I was in love with you. I’d be marrying one of the coming men in the Royal Australian Air Force. I don’t believe I’d care about the colour any more than you do. I’d probably be more troubled about leaving England to go and live with you in Australia than I would be about the black baby.”

“Brown,” he corrected. “I’m not as black as all that.”

She said seriously, “But you can get a throw-back.”

“Well …” She looked up at him, and became aware to her amazement that he was laughing at her. “That depends on you.”

“On me?”

“You want to read up your genetics, if you’re thinking of marrying a quadroon,” he said.

“I’m not. But if I was, what ought I to read?”

“A gentleman called Edward M. East. You can only get a really dark child if both parties have a touch of the tarbrush.” He grinned down at her. “I didn’t think you had.”

“I haven’t—not that I know of, anyway.

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