Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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It was there that she had stood waving me good-bye.

I turned away, and walked up the main road through the shopping part before turning off up Aerodrome Lane to the works. And now I was scared stiff that I'd meet her dad or mum out doing the shopping, or some of her family. I don't know why it was, but I was afraid to meet them, and I knew as I walked up to the works that I could never work in that place again. I'd never have the courage to walk round those streets as we had walked together, or go to the picture house that we had used, or lunch in the works canteen where we had lunched.

The managing director, Mr. Norman Evans, he was very nice to me. I think he must have heard about my trouble, because when I said that I'd been back two days and I'd had personal things to see to first, he said quickly, "I know, Cutter. Things get a bit tangled up when one's away for a long time. I'm very sorry indeed." And then he went on to talk about the work, so that I didn't have to answer.

The business was all upset, of course, because it had been expanded greatly in the war years with war orders, and now those had come to an end and it was having to contract again. It's easy enough to expand an aviation business, but it's bloody difficult to get it back to what it was before. Mr. Evans couldn't have been nicer. "I want to tell you how much I appreciate the job you did in Egypt," he said. "We've got to make a lot of changes now. What I want you to do is to take over the whole of our repair and servicing side in the British Isles--here, and at Bristol and at Belfast."