In The Wet is a novel by Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute Norway was a popular British-Australian novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He used his full name in his engineering career, and 'Nevil Shute' as his pen name, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.-...

 that was first published in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 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.

Plot summary

The story is opened by its initial narrator - an Anglican priest 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 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

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 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

Royal Australian Air Force

The Royal Australian Air Force is the air force branch of the Australian Defence Force. The RAAF was formed in March 1921. It continues the traditions of the Australian Flying Corps , which was formed on 22 October 1912. The RAAF has taken part in many of the 20th century's major conflicts...

, telling his story to Hargreaves. But this is a story yet to happen - in 1983, to be exact.

'Nigger' (the name is used quite unselfconsciously and in a manner which may make the modern reader uncomfortable) is a quadroon

Quadroon

Quadroon, and the associated words octoroon and quintroon are terms that, historically, were applied to define the ancestry of people of mixed-race, generally of African and Caucasian ancestry, but also, within Australia, to those of Aboriginal and Caucasian ancestry...

, 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. It is an England in which the Royal Family is both revered, and abused - revered by the common people, and abused by politicians who use them as whipping boys for the economic woes of England. When the politicians attempt to control the foreign travel of the monarch by curtailing her use of 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.

The Royal family, though, is delighted at the gift of the aircraft, and the middle-aged Queen and Consort

Prince consort

A prince consort is the husband of a queen regnant who is not himself a king in his own right.Current examples include the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , and Prince Henrik of Denmark .In recognition of his status, a prince consort may be given a formal...

 come down to inspect them.

Nigger repeatedly meets, and slowly falls for, a junior secretary to the Queen, Rosemary, daughter of an Oxford don, who is assigned to help streamline the administrative aspects of the Commonwealth aircraft joining the Queen's Flight. Nigger learns of the difficult political situation the Queen is faced with.

The Queen's visit to Canada in the Canadian craft coincides with another attack on the Royal Family by Labour politicians. The Prince of Wales has Nigger fly him to Ottawa so he can meet with the Queen. It is later made clear that the Prince carries an ultimatum from himself and his sister (the Queen has only two children)--they will not take the job of monarch as it now stands.

Nigger is ordered to fly the Queen and her entourage, including Rosemary not back to England, but on to Australia to meet with politicians there. En route, they have a lengthy refueling delay on Christmas Island

Kiritimati

Kiritimati or Christmas Island is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands, and part of the Republic of Kiribati....

, allowing the Queen to relax a bit—until local officials show up with their wives, in formal dress. Nigger, struck with food poisoning, dreams of the scene with Hargreaves and Stevie in the cabin in the wet. After he recovers, the party move on to Australia. The Queen meets not only with current Australian politicians but with elder statesmen Sir Robert Menzies

Robert Menzies

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....

 and Arthur Calwell

Arthur Calwell

Arthur Augustus Calwell Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, Immigration Minister in the government of Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949 and Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.-Early life:Calwell was born in...

. After the meetings, the Queen is flown back to England but ground control diverts the flight hundreds of miles to Yorkshire on the pretext that the Australian airmen are not qualified to land at a commercial airport - Heathrow - in poor weather. In reality the Australian and Canadian crews which have been trained by BOAC are well qualified to make the landing and the diversion to Yorkshire is apparently for no other purpose than to cause the Queen inconvenience. After Royal intervention the crews are all granted accreditation as civil aviators without further ado.

Nigger asks Rosemary to marry him, but she refuses so long as the Queen needs her. Rosemary arranges for Nigger to meet her father, a political scientist, who inadvertently spills the beans of what the Queen is contemplating doing to make the monarchy bearable for her and her family—Britain is to have a Governor General who will deal with the politicians, while the monarch devotes herself to Commonwealth affairs.

The Queen announces this on her Christmas broadcast, and makes it clear that she and her family will not return to Britain without the country having undergone political reforms, meaning the multiple vote. Though David takes every precaution to protect the aircraft, which takes off with the Queen soon afterwards, a sixth sense, deriving from his Aboriginal heritage, tells him something is wrong. He searches the party's luggage, and finds a sealed metal box, obviously a bomb. It seems impossible to get the box outside due to winds, but through skilled flying, he is able to create the right conditions. The Queen swears all to secrecy, and awards David the Seventh Vote, given only by Royal commission.

The party makes it to Australia safely. Meanwhile, in Britain, the new Governor General has summoned Parliament to debate the multiple vote. Prime Minister Jones' government falls, and a new government, still Labour, is expected to institute the political reform. Now that the Queen is no longer in a crisis situation, Rosemary can leave the royal employment and marry David.

In an epilogue, the framing story resumes. Stevie has died peaceably and an exhausted Hargreaves tries to separate dream from reality. This becomes more difficult when the child who will grow to be Nigger is presented to him for christening.

Multiple vote

Perhaps the most interesting, and enduring, feature of the book is the "multiple vote", seen as a necessary reform of democracy

Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

. A person can have up to seven votes. Everyone gets a basic vote. Other votes can be earned for education (including a commission in the armed forces), earning one's living overseas for two years, raising two children to the age of 14 without divorcing, being an official of a Christian church, or having a high earned income. The seventh vote, which in the book is awarded to Nigger for his heroism, is only given at the Queen's discretion by Royal Charter.

Multiple votes have been known in history. Until the late 1940s, the graduates of Oxford University and Cambridge University sent representatives to Parliament. The graduates of the National University of Ireland

National University of Ireland

The National University of Ireland , , is a federal university system of constituent universities, previously called constituent colleges, and recognised colleges set up under the Irish Universities Act, 1908, and significantly amended by the Universities Act, 1997.The constituent universities are...

 and of Trinity College

Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

 are still represented in the upper house of Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

's parliament. Part of the Reform Act 1885, as originally proposed, would have granted some Britons a second vote. That part of the Act was never enacted.