Shute, Nevil by Lonely Road

Author:Lonely Road [Road, Lonely]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-03T19:05:27+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THAT EVENING we went up to Thompson’s field and sat and I waited for the aeroplane. Mollie had gone up to her room directly after lunch, and had come down in half an hour to find me working in the model room. She had changed into a jumper and an old brown skirt, and she had come to ask me if she would do. “I haven’t put hardly any powder on, or anything,” she informed me. “Do you think I’ll be all right like this for Lady Stenning ?”

Her mind was still running on Joan. I laid my set-square down and grinned at her. “You’re quite all right,” I replied. “Looking very nice. You don’t want a lot of powder and stuff in those sort of clothes. It doesn’t go, does it ?”

She smiled, and looked up at me. “You don’t like a lot of that, do you ?” she inquired. “It’s funny how people are about that. Lots of the gentlemen just don’t care about taking you out unless you’ve got a lot on.”

She glanced down at her shoes; they were black, high heeled, and ornamental. “I didn’t bring my other pair of walking shoes down with me,” she said ruefully. “I thought they’d be too old for me to bring here. Does it matter ?”

I laughed. “Not a hoot. But would you like to get a pair of country shoes ? We’ll slip down in the car, if you like.”

She said: “I’d love it, ever so. But not now-when you’ve finished working.” And she indicated the drawing board.

“Playing,” I said, “up here. I do my work down at the office.”

“What is it?” she inquired.

I moved aside the T-square for her to examine the drawing. “It’s a ship,” I said. “The hull layout of a little yacht I want to build.”

She stared at it, uncomprehending. “You do love ships,” she said at last. “I wish I knew about them more.”

And so we left the house and went down to the town at gossip time, and drew the Bentley up before the local shoe emporium to provide fresh matter for discussion at the local tea tables. I knew all that before we went, of course, but Mollie came back in new brown brogues with tasselled laces and was happy for the afternoon.

They say that a man has licence to take off whatever clothes he puts on to a girl. I thought that I might take that risk, with shoes.

We sat on the gate to Thompson’s field for half an hour and waited for the aeroplane. We heard it first, and then we saw it in the sky, a speck above Kingswear. We watched it closer till the engine was shut off above the harbour, and the Moth came in on a wide gliding turn, side-slipped down across the hedge, and ran gently to rest in the middle of the field. Stenning swung her round and taxied in towards us; Mollie turned to me: “Wasn’t it pretty the way it did that?”

“He’s not got much to learn about an aeroplane,” I said.

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