The Far Country by Nevil Shute
They sat smoking together after they had finished eating, discussing the cabin, where the door was to be, where the fireplace, the window and the bed. Presently they stubbed their cigarettes out carefully and packed away the lunch; they got up and began to investigate the place more closely. Zlinter took the spade and cleared the briars and the undergrowth from the vertical earth face. The sooty, blackened earth extended over about three feet of the face, showing clearly that the fireplace had been there and about centrally disposed upon the end of the flat.
He stood looking at it critically. “The side walls, they would run outwards from the face,” he said, “at right angles. Perhaps one was somewhere here.” He set to work and began slicing the turf and leaf-mould from the level ground; in a few minutes he was rewarded by a charred stump of rotten wood sticking up out of the soil. They examined it together.
“Here was a wall,” he said. He threw off his thin jacket and went on working in shirt and trousers only, and gradually uncovered the remnants of the charred walls, shown mostly by blackened streaks in the top soil. In half an hour he had laid bare two rectangles of blackened soil and charred stumps, and rested, wiping the sweat from his neck and arms.
“It’s fascinating, Carl,” the girl said. “It’s like digging up Pompeii or something. What would this one have been?” She indicated the outer rectangle.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps a hay-shed, or a stable. No, he could not have put eight bullocks in there. For hay, I think, and harness.”
They rested together, looking at what he had uncovered. Presently she asked, “Where will your cabin go now, Carl?”
“I must make a drawing,” he said. “I will do that this week, and give an order to Mr. Forrest for the timber and the planking. I think it would be best to have the chimney there, and the door here, opposite.”
She shook her head. “It’s going to be very draughty. You won’t have a warm corner in the place, if the door’s opposite the chimney.”
He nodded. “That is true. I want to keep the outer wall for a window, to see the height of the river when I shall get out of bed, to see if I will fish or stay in bed.” She laughed. “The door should be on this side, but we will put the chimney here, on the side of the earth bank but four feet away.”
“That’s like Charlie Zlinter had it, but moved out a bit.”
“That is right.”
He measured four feet with his eye from the blackened chimney marks on the earth face, and said, “Here will be the new fireplace.” He drove his shovel down into the ground, to mark the place for her.
It hit with a metallic clang on stone. “There is rock here,” he said in surprise; till then he had encountered nothing but soft earth. He sliced away the leaves and top soil and uncovered a smooth face of rock, level with the surface of the ground.
Jennifer cried, “It’s Mary Nolan’s stone, Carl!”
“Mary Nolan’s stone?”
“She said there was a slab of stone in front of the fireplace in his cabin, to keep the ashes back in the fire. She said it weighed four hundredweight, and he used to lift it up and carry it about to show her how strong he was. This must be it.”
He glanced at her. “If it weighs four hundredweight, I do not think that I will pick it up and carry it about to show you how strong I am. I think we will do that another day.”
She laughed. “You’re no man!”
“That is true,” he said. “Nor are you Mary Nolan.” He went on clearing away the soil and revealed at last an irregularly-shaped slab of stone about four square feet in area, practically level on the top. A thrust of the spade showed a white residue of ash between it and the earth face. “There was the fire,” he said. “It is as she said it was.”
“That settles it, anyway,” the girl said. “This is Charlie Zlinter’s cabin.”
He nodded. “This is the cabin. I suppose they used to put saucepans and kettles on that, to keep them warm before the fire.”
She wrinkled her brows. “Would there have been a wooden floor?”
“I think so,” he said. “I think they would have had a wooden floor, and not just earth. This stone was to prevent the fire from coming forward to burn the floor. I think that is a good idea.”
“If you’re going to use it again, you’ll have to shift it,” the girl said. “It’s right in the middle of where your fire is to be, now. You’ll have to do what Charlie Zlinter did, Carl—pick it up and carry it about.”
He nodded. “It will have to be moved.” He stood studying it for a moment, and then smiled at her. “I will pick it up and carry it about in my two hands one day when you are not here,” he said. “Then you can come and see it in the new place.”
She looked up at him. “I shan’t be able to do that, Carl,” she said quietly.
He glanced at her. “Why not?”
“I’m going away.”
“But you will be coming back again in your holidays, to stay with the Dormans?”
She shook her head. “I won’t be coming here again, Carl. I’m going home—to England.”
He stared at her in consternation. “To England?”
She nodded. “I wanted to have this last day in the Howqua and tell you about it here, not at Leonora with other people about. I’ve got to go back to England, Carl—at once. I’m going by air on Tuesday, on the Qantas Constellation from Sydney. I’ve got to leave Leonora tomorrow.”
He dropped the shovel, and crossed to her and took her hand. “What is it that has happened, Jenny?” he asked quietly. “Is it something very bad?”
She looked up at him, blinking. “We got a cable last night,” she said, “soon after you’d gone. It was from Daddy. My mother died yesterday, Carl—yesterday or the day before—the times are all so muddling.” She hesitated. “It means that Daddy’s all alone there now. I’ve got to go.” A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek.
He put an arm around her shoulders. “Come and sit down,” he said, “and tell me.”
He led her to the bank and they sat down together. She was crying in earnest now with the relief from keeping up the strain of a pretence with him. He pulled out his handkerchief and glanced at it doubtfully. “You have a handkerchief, Jenny?” he asked. “This one is a little sweaty.” She smiled through her tears and took it; he held her with one arm round her shoulders and wiped her eyes. “I’ve got one of my own somewhere,” she said, but made no effort to find it. “I’m sorry to be such a fool, Carl. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I would never think you were a fool,” he said. “Would you like to tell me what has happened, or would you rather not?”
She took his hand that held the dirty handkerchief, and held it in her own. “I’ve told you most of it,” she said miserably. “Mummy had bronchitis and asthma, and she died.”
A flicker of technical interest lightened his concern for her. “Was she ill when you came away from England?”
“She was always ill in the winter,” the girl said. “Not very ill, you know, but not too good. She didn’t go out much in the worst winter months. I never thought that she was in any danger, or I wouldn’t have come away.”
He nodded, thinking of cases he had known in the camps of Germany; a small additional strain or an infection, and the heart would give out, somewhat unexpectedly. “The paper says that it has been a very bad winter in Europe.”
She said listlessly, “I suppose that’s it.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two. Carl Zlinter sat staring through the trees down at the river, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, thinking of the blank space that would be coming in his life when she had gone. “Tell me, Jenny,” he said at last, “have you got any brothers and sisters?”
She knew what was in his mind, and she shook her head. “I’m the only child. I’ve got to go home, Carl. I spoke to Daddy last night on the telephone and told him I was coming right away. I never should have come out here at all.”
“It was a very good thing for me
She nodded. “Mr. Dorman said it could be done, and he arranged it all. The call came through at about four in the morning, six in the evening at home; I could hear Daddy quite well. It only cost three pounds …” She paused. “The Dormans have been awfully kind, Carl. I hadn’t got quite enough money left to go home by air, and it would have taken months to get a passage home by sea. They wouldn’t hear of me going any other way. They’re driving me to a place called Albury tomorrow to get the train for Sydney, and Jane’s coming with me to Sydney to see me off in the aeroplane. They couldn’t have been kinder.”
He looked down into her face. “Are you quite sure that it is the best thing for you to go back?” he asked. “Could not your father come here from England, to join you?”
She shook her head. “I thought of that, of course,” she said, “and I tried to see it that way, but it wouldn’t work. Daddy’s been in practice in Leicester all his life. He doesn’t like the new Health Service, but he’d never leave Leicester at a time like this. You haven’t met my father, Carl. He and my mother were so wrapped up in each other, he’ll be absolutely lost, for a time, anyway. But in Leicester he’s got all his interests, and his friends in the Rotary Club, and the Conservative Club, and the Masons, and the British Medical Association, and all the other things he does. He’ll be all right there once he’s got over the first shock, if I’m there to look after him and run the house. He couldn’t leave all his friends on top of this, and come out here to a strange place where he knows nobody. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him.”
“But you,” he said. “Would you rather live in England, or live here?”
“I’d rather live here, of course,” she said. “There’s no comparison. It’s a pity I ever came out here and saw this country, since I’ve got to go back.”
“It was a very good thing for me,” he said again.
She pressed his hand. “I’m sorry, Carl. It’s just one of those things.”
They sat together in silence for a time; she had told him everything now, and he had to have time to digest what he had heard. Presently he asked her, “Do you think you will ever come back to Australia?”
“I shall try,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s all I can say, Carl, I shall try. There may be a war and we may all get atom-bombed in England, or there may not be enough money for me to get back here.” She paused. “If the Health Service keeps on getting worse for doctors it might be possible to get Daddy to think about trying it out here, but he’s nearly sixty, and that’s awfully old to uproot and leave everything and everyone you know. I don’t believe I’ll ever be satisfied again with England, after seeing this. I shall keep trying to get back here, Carl. I can’t say if I’ll ever manage it.”
His hand caressed her shoulder. “Do you know what would have happened if you had stayed here for another year?”
She looked up at him. “What?”
He said, “I should have got a job as soon as I was free from the camp, and then I should have asked if you would marry me.”
She sat motionless in his arms, not looking at him, staring down towards the river. “What sort of job, Carl?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know. In a business office, perhaps. Any sort of job that would give enough money to be married on.” He paused, and then asked gently, “What would you have said?”
“I don’t know, Carl.” She looked up at him, unsmiling, “One doesn’t always do the right thing. I suppose I’d have said yes. I’d like to think that I’d have had the guts to say no.”
“Why do you say that, Jenny?”
She saw pain in his eyes. “Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m going back to England, after all,” she said wearily. “I’d hate to think of you taking any sort of job, just so that you could get married. I’d hate to be the girl that did that to you.” She freed herself a little from his arm and turned to face him. “You ought to be a doctor again, Carl. I know it means another three years in a medical school, and I know you haven’t got the money. Maybe you haven’t tried very hard yet. But if you gave up medicine and just took any sort of job to marry me—well, I wouldn’t like myself very much. With your ability, you ought to be a doctor or a surgeon.”
“It is not possible,” he said quietly. “I have thought of this many times. For me to be a doctor means three years’ training in a medical school again. It would cost at least fifteen hundred pounds, and I have not got one tenth part of that money. It would mean that I would be nearly forty years old before I could work in Australia as a doctor. I know it is a waste of my experience, but wars bring much waste in the world, and this is part of it. I shall never be a doctor again.”
“I think you will,” she said. “I don’t believe you’d be happy in any other sort of job, starting at your age.”
They sat in silence for a time. At last he asked quietly, “Shall I ever see you again, Jenny?”
She did not answer, but sat looking at the ground, and watching her he saw another tear escape and trickle down her cheek. He put his arm around her shoulders again and drew her close to him, and wiped it away with the sweaty handkerchief. “I am sorry,” he said. “I should not have asked that question.”
She raised her face. “That’s all right,” she said. “It was right to ask it, Carl—one’s got to face up to things. I’m going back where I belong, twelve thousand miles away upon the other side of the world, and it may be years before I manage to get back to Australia again. You’ve got another nine months to do in the camp, and after that you’ll have no money and nothing to bring you to England.”
“I would come to England, somehow, if I thought that you would want to see me there,” he said.
“I’d always want to see you,” she said simply. “We’ve not known each other very long, Carl. We don’t know each other very well. If everything had gone right for us and you had wanted to marry me in a year’s time, I’d probably have been a very happy person. But things haven’t gone right for us, and maybe it’s just as well. While you’re on your own, living as a single man, you’ll have a chance, somehow, somewhere, to get to be a doctor again. With a wife and perhaps a baby on your hands, you wouldn’t have a hope. You’d have to take just any sort of job that offered, whether it suited you or not. I don’t believe that you’d be happy. I don’t believe that I’d be happy if I married you upon those terms.”
He looked down at her, smiling gently. “I thought that I knew what you were like, what sort of a person you are,” he said. “I now find that I know nothing about you, nothing at all.”
“That’s what I said,” she replied. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that we might have been very happy if we’d married.”
He sat staring down at the river, rippling in the sun over the white stones, holding her in his arms. “I would like to think that we shall meet again before we are too old,” he said. “I know that what you have said is true, and that you are now to go twelve thousand miles away to the other side of the world. Perhaps it is not very likely that we shall see each other again. But I am older than you, Jenny, and I have learned this; that if you want something very badly you can sometimes make it happen. I want very badly to find you again, before we have both forgotten the Howqua valley and each other. May I write to you sometimes?”
She said, “If you do, Carl, I shall be nagging at you all the time about becoming a doctor again.”
“You may do that,” he said quietly. “A doctor in this country could save enough money to get to England.”
They sat almost motionless after that for a long, long time, perhaps a quarter of an hour; they had said all that there was to say. At last she stirred in his arms and sat up, and said,
“You’ll go on building your cabin here just the same, Carl, won’t you?”
He was doubtful. “I am not now sure. It will cost some money even if I get the timber
She said, “I think you ought to go on with it, Carl. You’ve got another nine months in the camp, and after that it will be somewhere cheap for you to come for a holiday. Write and tell me how you’re getting on with it, and what it’s like.”
“If I go on with it,” he said, “I shall always hold the memory of you, and of this day when first we found this place of Charlie Zlinter’s.”
She smiled faintly. “Go on with it, then. I wouldn’t like you to forget about me too quickly.”
Presently he asked her, “Before I take you back to Leonora, will you tell me some things about your home, Jenny? So that I can imagine where you are when I shall write to you?”
“Of course, Carl,” she said. “What sort of things?”
“This Leicester,” he said. “You told me once that it was rather ugly. Is it damaged by the war?”
“It didn’t get bombed very much,” she said. “Not like some places. Nobody could call it beautiful, though. It’s an industrial city, mostly boots and shoes. It’s rather ugly, I suppose. I don’t think anyone would choose to live there if they hadn’t got associations, or a job.”
“Is there beautiful country outside the city?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s all just farming country, as flat as a pancake, rather grey and foggy in the winter.”
“Do you live in the city, or outside it?”
She said, “We live in a house about a mile and a half from the centre of the city,” she said, “in a fairly good part, near the university. It’s a suburban street of houses in a row, all rather like the one next-door. It’s not far from the shops. I shall have nothing very interesting to tell you in my letters, Carl, because very interesting things don’t happen to women who keep house in Leicester. But I’ll do my best.”
“One other thing,” he said. “There is so much I ought to know about you, that I do not know. When is your birthday?”
She said laughing, “Oh, Carl! It’s in August, the twenty-fifth. And I’m twenty-four years old, in case you want to know. When is yours?”