Since deciding to experiment with the possibility that screen exposure late at night is responsible for my general sleeplessness, I have shown that I can quickly read a trashy propaganda novel of 70 years ago without much difficulty, and that's all I've done. OK. So In the Wet (1953) was a Nevile Shute book that tells a story-within-a-story linked slightly with a bit of musing/speculation on buddhism, though that link is so loose it's easy to imagine it not being in there at all. Basically, a north Queensland vicar called Roger Hargreaves (I remember his name because of course that is the name of the author of the Mr. Men books) who is not properly recovered from a bout of malaria attends to the deathbed of an old alcoholic called Stevie Figgis. Stevie is in severe pain, sometimes alleviated with opium supplied by his Chinese housemate. So both he and Hargreaves are possibly hallucinating. It doesn't help that (sort of as per the book cover, above) they are in flooded terrain on a temporary island with a large number of animals in a circle outside watching the hut they are in. Almost without us noticing it, Figgis' rambling conversation with Hargreaves becomes an extensive (like, 4/5 of the book) narrative set in the early 1980s, so, thirty years in the future, concerning a North Qld pilot called David Anderson (known to everyone as 'Nigger')* who is in charge of jetting the royal family from place to place throughout the commonwealth.
To put it succinctly, the issue in the early 1980s is that Britain has been in the throes of socialist governments for decades largely because of its refusal to graduate from the primitive 'one man, one vote' system. Australia, Canada and New Zealand - these are the only three mentioned, though apparently Kenya and Gambia are also in the Commonwealth still, South Africa isn't discussed at all (all three remained in the c'wealth until the 1960s). On p. 177 Rosemary's father says 'One man one vote has never really worked' and on the next page he explains that 'the common man has held the voting power, and the common man has voted consistently to increase his own standard of living, regardless of the long term interests of this children, regardless of the wider interests of the country.' In the white-dominated commonwealth countries, individuals can achieve such greatness as to obtain up to seven votes compared to the one accorded everyone at birth. So, Britain is backward and losing population at a rapid rate because anyone intrepid or motivated to better themselves is migrating to Australia (mainly) (Shute lived in Australia for the last ten years of his life, migrating in 1950). At one point it is suggested that Australia can reach a population of 150 million.
Pretty thrilling so far, right?
Well there there is what might pass for an action sequence where Anderson locates a bomb on his plane while it has the Queen and Prince Philip on it, and he has to find a way to get rid of it. This is one of the strangest bits of the book, because although there is quite a bit of discussion about various ways to get rid of the bomb, I read these pages twice and could find no description of how it was actually disposed of. It was, though, as Anderson is awarded the highest honour of the commonwealth by the Queen - seven votes. But where do they drop it? I just can't say. Does it explode? Don't know. Maybe not. How do they drop it? All I can say is it was very difficult to decide how to do it, because they tried some alternative scenarios.
I feel duty bound to mention Anderson's love interest, a sort of attache to the Queen whose name is Rosemary, who is only described as slender (Shute is really bad at describing people, or at least, if he's good at it he doesn't do it here). (The Queen, by the way, is by contrast, 'plump'). Rosemary and the man she soon learns to be comfortable calling 'Nigger' spend a bit of leisure time on boats or having dinner in their apartments but never having sex (although he does once see her unmade bed and it makes him feel a bit giddy) and arguing about whether they should get married; she is conflicted, or rather, completely against it because her first duty is to the Queen. Also, they have a long conversation about new houses; Rosemary has never seen one before. Except she thinks she might have, actually, in France or something (oh really, how interesting). She is delighted by the idea that if they move to Australia when they are married, she will be able to not only have a new house but have a say in its design.
So yeah, the book is kind of like this. Sort of science fiction except no science (maybe the aeroplanes of 1983 are imaginatively conceived, I don't know, but no-one watches TV, everything's on the radio or in the papers; there are films, with made-up popular stars; etcetera).
Shute ends the whole blessed shower thus:
*He is described as, and describes himself as, a 'quadroon', no inverted commas.
