Read Shute, Nevil for Free Online Page B

they’re getting on.’ He laughed. ‘That’s if they don’t have it all to do again, after tonight.’
    He looked up at the sky, brilliantly clear and starry. ‘Good luck, Mr. Corbett,’ he said soberly. ‘Remember that I’m just over the way, if you want any help.’
    Corbett went back into his house. Joan came to meet, him, looking tired and worn. ‘I’ve got the children into bed,’ she said. ‘They were awfully disappointed that they weren’t going to sleep in the garage. We had tears about it. Peter, do you think they’ll come again tonight?’
    ‘It’s a bright, starry night,’ he said. ‘It must be perfect for a bombing raid. I’m afraid they may.’
    She nodded. ‘I thought that, too. I’ve been looking out what we’ve got for first-aid, if we wanted it.’
    ‘That’s a good idea. How are we fixed?’
    ‘Not so bad. We’ve got a lot of bandages and cotton wool, and some iodine and plaster. I keep it for the children, knees and elbows. And one could always make a splint out of something or other. The only thing we haven’t got is any sort of sedative-morphia, or anything like that.’
    He eyed her. ‘Do you think we need it?’
    ‘Well, do you?’
    She hesitated for a minute. ‘They say the maid at that house down the road lay out in the front garden for three hours before the ambulance came. It’s like the war, Peter, I do think we should have something of the sort.’
    He nodded. ‘I’ll have to get it from a doctor. I could go round and see if Gordon’s in.’
    The surgeon had been godfather to his son. They were great friends, a friendship born of week-ends spent together on the little yacht, fishing and bathing in the Solent. Corbett walked round to his house, a quarter of a mile away, and told his need to Mrs. Gordon. ‘I’ll see if he’s awake, Peter,’ she said. ‘I think he is. But he was up at the hospital all night, and he didn’t get back till nearly midday.’
    ‘Don’t wake him, Margaret, whatever you do.’
    She shook her head. ‘I won’t do that.’
    She went upstairs; in a few minutes the surgeon came down in his shirt-sleeves. ‘I was just getting up,’ he said. ‘My God, Corbett-what a night! Are your people all right?’
    The surgeon rubbed his hand across his eyes. ‘You never saw anything like it at the hospital,’ he said. ‘Two hundred and thirty major operations in seven hours. Each of us had two tables going-operating on the one while they were getting the other ready. God help us if there’s another raid tonight. We haven’t been able to evacuate them yet, and we’re in an awful jam. They’re lying all along the corridors on mattresses.’
    ‘I’d no idea that it was anything like that. How many casualties do you suppose there were?’
    ‘The inside of a thousand-say one for every bomb. Of those about three hundred must have been killed outright. We had five or six hundred at the hospital.’
    Corbett said: ‘You must be frightfully tired. I won’t keep you.’ He explained his need for morphia.
    The surgeon scribbled a prescription. ‘Get this at the chemist,’ he said. ‘One tablet only, in water. Not more, in any circumstances. And look, this is important. Get hold of a blue pencil, and chalk a big cross on the patient’s cheek if you’ve given it.’
    ‘What about the children?’
    ‘Half a tablet-not that unless you absolutely must. Don’t give it to the baby at all.’
    Corbett thanked him, and walked down into the town to find a chemist. Over his head in the clear night the aircraft roared on their patrol; in the distance an occasional searchlight shot a white beam to the deep blue sky. As he went, he saw the progress that had been made with the craters in the streets since morning. There were none now that had not been attended to; those that had not been filled in were boarded over, and the flow of water to the gutters had been stopped.
    In one part of the town the electricity was on. The street-lamps were turned out