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26
Module 1. FICTION
UNIT 4
Nevil Shute,
IN THE WET (excerpt)
He left the Palace, and walked along Pall Mall deep in
thought. He was vaguely on his way to the club, but when
he got near the R. A. C. and saw the streams of people
going in and out, he gave up the idea, and walked on slowly
down the street. It was quieter in the street, so that he
could think without the chance of some acquaintance both
ering him to come and have a drink. He walked on, won
dering what Cox had meant by saying that England could
not get along without people like himself, what the Queen
had meant – if she had meant anything at all.
It was May, and quite a warm evening. He came to the
National Gallery on the North side of Trafalgar Square and
crossed the road and stood for a lime looking out over the
square at the corner by Canada House. There was a bus stop
near him, and a long queue of whitefaced, patient Lon
doners waiting to go home. He thought of the vigour and
beauty of the people in similar bus queues in Brisbane and
in Adelaide, comparing the tanned skins with the sallow,
the upright carriage with the tired slouch. It wasn’t the
fault of these people that they looked white and tired; hard
ships had made them so, and overwork, and the errors of
dietary scientists who planned the rationing back in the
forties and the fifties, when most of them were children.
Badly treated people, out of luck, yet with a quality of
greatness in them still, in spite of everything.
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