In the Wet by Nevil Shute Page B

upon the tin roof was insistent, too loud for me to hear his weak voice, but he answered, “I got sent to Boscombe Down after the war. And then I got sent to White Waltham. I met her at the Palace.”
    In my fever I asked him, “What Palace?”
    “Buckingham Palace,” he said. “Where the Queen lives, cobber.”
    I knew with my intellect, of course, that this was nonsense. He was delirious, and I was not much better. I knew it was all rubbish, but I was too dazed and fuddled to be able to think clearly why it should be so. I sat there holding his hand, thinking that presently Sister Finlay would wake up and hear what I could not, that he was talking, and she would do something to relieve me. In the meantime, I could sink into the daze, and we could go on talking without speaking; it was easier that way.
    “Where’s Boscombe Down?” I asked.
    “In England,” he said. “West o’ London.” He said that it was where new aeroplanes for the R.A.F. were tested in flight. In a dazed stupor I remembered that this man had been a pilot in France in the first war, so it was possible that he had been to such a place. He said it was a very big place on an aerodrome, staffed by many engineers and scientists, all testing these aeroplanes. The pilots were a mixture of every nationality in the British Commonwealth because each country used to send its best pilots to Boscombe Down, so that there were British and Canadian and Australian and Rhodesian and Indian pilots, and many others, all working together test flying these aeroplanes and living in the same mess.
    I sat there, feverish and confused, listening to his fantasy while the rain drummed down upon the roof, drowning all sound. He said that he had been there for about six weeks, flying on some experimental test flight every day, when he first met Group Captain Cox. He had done a job early in the morning which had involved a climb to eighty thousand feet in an experimental fighter followed by a long dive down to a lower altitude, but the refrigeration had been unsatisfactory and he had had to pull out and reduce speed at forty thousand feet as the temperature in the cockpit became unbearable. He went up and tried it again, and managed to hold the dive down to thirty-two thousand feet; he landed after an hour and ten minutes in the air, very exhausted. He wrote some notes for his report while the details were still fresh in his mind, and went back to his quarters for a shower and a change. Then he went over to the mess for lunch.
    There were three Australian pilots on the course at that time, one from the Navy and one other with himself from the Air Force. In the ante-room he saw the other two standing with the C.O. and this strange Group Captain. The C.O. called him over, and introduced him to Cox. “This is Squadron Leader Anderson.”
    The Group Captain was evidently English, and an officer of the old type, lean and soldierly and handsome, with perfect manners. “Morning,” he said. “I’m in the book. What are you drinking?”
    He said, “Tomato juice, sir.”
    “Flying this afternoon?”
    He shook his head. “I grounded my thing for a refrigeration check. It’s got to go into the hot hangar; it won’t be ready till tomorrow.”
    “Have a sherry, then.”
    “No, thanks. I never do.”
    He found that the Group Captain was interested in the work that he had been doing on the fighter, and wanted to know a good deal about it. Quite early in the conversation David Anderson became mindful of security and parried one particularly direct question skilfully by turning it into a joke, which made the C.O. and the Group Captain laugh, not altogether at the joke. “
It’s
all right, Anderson,” the C.O. said. “You can talk to him.”
    “Everything?”
    “Oh yes, everything. We’re not afraid of him.”
    They lunched together, and in conversation it became evident to David that the Group Captain’s main interest lay in the flight trials of the new de Havilland 316,