In the Wet

In The Wet is a novel by Nevil Shute that was first published in the United Kingdom in 1953. It contains many of the typical elements of a hearty and adventurous Shute yarn such as flying, the future, mystic states, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

The story is opened by its initial narrator – an Anglican priest in the Bush Brotherhood named Roger Hargreaves – who describes his ordinary circumstances in a large parish of the Australian outback in 1953. As part of his duties, he has to minister to the dying and this brings him into contact with an aged, alcoholic, opium smoking, diseased, ex-pilot and ex-ringer named Stevie.

Caught in Stevie's squalid cabin in a heavy rainy season, Hargreaves struggles with recurring malaria whilst on deathwatch for Stevie. As both men are in altered mental states the story shifts and Stevie becomes David 'Nigger' Anderson, a decorated member of the Royal Australian Air Force, telling his story to Hargreaves. But this is a story set 30 years in the future, in 1983.

'Nigger' is a quadroon, of mixed European and Aboriginal ancestry. As a first rate pilot he is chosen by his country to be a member of an elite test pilot team in the UK. Although of humble origins, Nigger has advanced quickly in the RAAF and is soon offered a position commanding one of two aircraft of the Queen's Flight.

The England of the 1983 in the story is a technically advanced country that has been abused and bled dry by Socialism. Austerity is the watchword, and rationing is still in force. It is an England in which the Royal Family is revered by the common people, but abused by politicians who use them as whipping boys for the economic woes of England. When the politicians attempt indirectly to control the foreign travel of the monarch by curtailing her use of UK government aircraft, the Canadian and Australian governments each donate a modern jet transport to the Queen's Flight, provide for operating expenses, and furnish crews. Nigger is chosen as the captain of the Australian plane. Both Canada and Australia are heavily royalist countries, and Nigger is shocked at one point by the suggestion that Australia could become a republic. Both are democracies, though subject to the "multiple vote"—everyone gets one vote, but other votes can be earned by individuals, up to a maximum of seven. Nigger himself has three votes in Australian elections.

At first absorbed by the job, Nigger slowly becomes aware of what is going on around him. He sees the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Coles, inspect the advanced aircraft, and insist that a signal gun be placed in the radio-equipped aircraft in case it needs to land in a field. The Prime Minister, Iorweth Jones, is more intelligent, but only interested in scoring political points.

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