What Happened to the Corbetts by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781889439198
Amazon: 1889439193
Publisher: Paper Tiger, Inc.
Published: 1966-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

GONE AWAY

Address care of Southern Counties Bank,

Southampton.

E. D. Littlejohn.

The notice, and the desolate, neglected appearance of the house, wrung his heart. It seemed to point an ending to the happiness that had existed in that house, a quiet, humdrum and plebeian happiness that had better have been allowed to fade into oblivion, that did not require to have been underlined. At the same time, the notice seemed to him to be a sensible and practical idea; he would put one like it on his own front door. But where should he give as his new address? Where should he say that he had gone to?

Better to give his bank address, as Littlejohn had done.

He turned away and went to his own house. The windows and the back door had been carefully boarded up; Littlejohn must have done that for them before he had gone away. He unlocked the front door and went in. Inside, the house smelt stale and damp. Wet drove in at the board-cracks over the windows, but little light or air came in; the house was cavernous and depressing. Materially, everything was quite all right; there had been no burglary nor, so far as he could see, had anybody been into the house.

He went upstairs. Joan’s powder compact was still lying on the dressing-table, and her lipstick; he picked them up and dropped them in his pocket. The room was full of her things, redolent of her personality. He knew that if she had been with him she would have wanted other things; he was at a loss what to take with him. Finally he took her bedroom slippers and a little bottle of scent, and went about his business.

For some time he went from room to room, a pencilled list in hand, collecting the various articles and clothing which they had decided he should bring away. He took them all out to the car. Finally he went into the house again and up to the nursery. He selected a few more books for the children: Little Black Sambo, the Story of a Fierce, Bad Rabbit and one or two others, and he took a battered kaleidoscope for Phyllis, and a little truck for John, and a much-sucked woolly animal for the baby. Then he was ready to go.

He went gladly. It did not seem as if it was his own home at all, that house. It was strange and rather unpleasant, a desolate shell where people once had lived a quiet, peaceful life and had been happy. His home, his real home, was on his battered, leaky little yacht.

‘Home’s where your people are,’ he muttered, to himself. ‘That’s about it.’

He wrote out a notice similar to Littlejohn’s, found a packet of drawing-pins, and pinned it securely to the front door. It would not last for long in that wet weather; perhaps when he came again he could do something more permanent for both houses.

In the road outside he paused and looked about him. Only about one house in three was still inhabited; the rest were empty, damaged and deserted.

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