But it wasn’t the BBC we wanted to hear. The only station we were interested in was Radio True Britain. It didn’t have reliable or predictable broadcasting times so it was always pot-luck as to whether or not we’d be able to tune into it. Even when we did manage to tune in, we could never be sure if what they were broadcasting was true. Still, it was our only real source of news and we clung to every word…
“This is the news from Radio True Britain. People Of Britain. The time for Resistance has arrived. We are hearing reports that Infected groups have taken control of Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Plymouth. The Government claims that the situation in London is under control. However, we have received reports that significant bombing operations have been undertaken across central London resulting in mass casualties. It is not known whether the majority of the casualties are among the Infected or the Resistant. We advise you to stay clear of the cities. We repeat: stay clear of the cities. We also advise you to make contact with other Resistants. How can you tell who is Resistant and who is Infected? If you are listening to this, you are Resistant. The Infected are no longer rational. To all intents and purposes, the Infected are no longer human. They are not sane. They are animals. Do not trust them. Please keep listening to Radio True Britain. We hope to bring you more news shortly. And now over to Peter Quinn for the All 80s Radio Hour…”
14
One day we heard a huge explosion. At first I thought it was thunder. It seemed to come from over the hills to the North west. Then there was another explosion. It wasn’t thunder. The explosions were happening in rapid succession now. It sounded like a distant firework display: bam! bam, ba-ba-bam! bam!
I’d never heard bombs falling in real life. I’d only heard sounds like this on the TV news. Coming from war-zones: Baghdad, Gaza, Afghanistan. I can’t begin to tell you how chilling it was to hear those sounds echoing across the Chiltern Hills. Then we saw fighter jets, streaking across the sky. They were leaving the bombing zone to return, I presumed, to wherever they had set off.
Leila and I were out in the garden at the time, trimming back a beech hedge. “Ours?” I said.
“The RAF?” She shrugged. “Could be the Americans.”
The idea that the Americans, our long-term, trusted allies, would sent fighter planes to bomb us as though we were the enemy filled me with dread.
“What?” said Leila, smiling broadly, “You’d rather it was our own air force bombing us than a foreign air force?”
“If it’s the RAF, they must have a good reason,” I said.
Leila laughed. “Personally, if it was me they were bombing, I wouldn’t care whose bombs they were. American bombs? British bombs? The end result is the same.”
The air was clear that day and when we glanced back in the direction from which we’d heard the bombing, we saw smoke drifting lazily into the sky.
“What’s over there?” I asked, “Is it a town? A military base?”
“How do you expect me to know? I have only the vaguest idea of which bit of the country we are in anyway. Somewhere to the North and West of London. It could be anywhere from Norwich to Newcastle, as far as I know.”
“Norwich is North-east of London,” I said.
Leila pruned back an innocent beech branch with unnecessary violence and gave me a look which indicated that if I didn’t tread very carefully, I’d be next.
“Could be Bristol,” I said.
“Are we near Bristol?”
I didn’t know. My knowledge of British geography is sketchy at the best of times. Since I wasn’t ensure exactly in which bit of the English countryside Degris Manor was located, I could only guess wildly as to what town might lie on the other side of the ridge of hills. Later on, I asked Mrs Clompton if she’d heard the bombing and what she made of it.
“The Russians. That’s what I reckon. Bombing Cheltenham. They’ve always had their eyes set on Cheltenham, the Russians have.”
The idea that the Russians would want to bomb Cheltenham struck me as hilariously preposterous. All I knew about Cheltenham was that it was a quiet, quaint little town that was the home of the famous Cheltenham Ladies’ College. That didn’t seem like the sort of place the Russians would seek out as a particular target for aerial bombardment. Then again, I wouldn’t have thought that Russian spies would have sought out the little town of Salisbury with its cathedral “famous for its 123-metre spire”. So who can tell?
I asked Lord Degris later. He said he was of the opinion that the target of the bombing had been rather further away than we supposed. Bristol perhaps? Or even Birmingham.”
I told him that Mrs Clompton believed the Russians had been bombing Cheltenham.
“Ha! She believes that, does she? Well, if it were the Russians, it would be a damn’ good target. After all, that’s where all the intelligence chaps are based, isn’t it. GCHQ, I mean.”
I’d forgotten that GCHQ was based in Cheltenham. Suddenly, Mrs Clompton’s theory didn’t sound so farfetched.
“But I don’t believe that for a moment,” Lord Degris added, “Oh no, take my word for it – that was the RAF we saw this morning. Restoring order and so forth. I’m sure they’ll have things under control soon. Yes, no doubt at all about that.”
15
“This is the news from Radio True Britain. People Of Britain. America has fallen. Repeat. America has fallen. We have received credible reports from our contacts in America that the American Government has been suspended and that the USA is now under Martial Law. I repeat, the USA is now under Martial Law.
“Over the past couple of weeks we have been hearing conflicting reports about the current situation in the USA. We have heard that the President is dead, that he fled the country, that he was imprisoned by the military, and all kinds of other unsubstantiated reports. Since most commercial American TV and radio stations are now off the air, it is hard to piece together the truth of the matter. We are in contact with several independent broadcasters in the States and as far as we can ascertain, it seems that the first case of the sickness in North America was identified in Colorado about four weeks ago. This was not associated with any major weather event to compare with the Great Snow in Britain and the supposition is that an infected person brought the pathogen back from Europe. At first, the US authorities believed they had the disease contained. But soon the sickness began breaking out in other areas – Washington State, Alabama, Arkansas, New York…
“As we reported some weeks ago, the Americans initially considered the disease to be a purely European problem. High-level discussions were taking place on how to deal with it. No plans were formally announced, but when asked what the solution to the European problem might be, the President repeatedly used the expression ‘nothing is off the table’. This was widely interpreted to mean that military action against Europe was being contemplated.
“The spread of the disease in the USA began much more slowly than in Britain and Europe. We believe this may be due to the fact that the agent was not dispersed atmospherically over a huge landmass as seems to have been the case here. It appears that the means of transmission must therefore have been person-to-person contact.
“This raises the question of why a second wave of the disease has not affected Britain. According to the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, it is conceivable that those who have not been infected may already have an acquired immunity. He warned, however, that a mutation of the pathogen cannot be ruled out in which case a second wave of the pandemic is to be expected.
“Two days ago we are told that the American Government was, in effect, taken over in a military coup. The whereabouts of the President are still not known. And now back to Peter Quinn for another scintillating selection of hits from the 1980s…”
The strange electronic-percussive opening of the Tears For Fears song, ‘Mad World’ wavered in and out thanks to the uncertain reception of our little radio. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom. A couple of candles in saucers res
ting on the floor provided a flickering illumination.
“It’s a very, very mad world… mad world… mad world…”
“America’s gone down the tubes then,” Geoff said.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Oh well,” he said, “No chance the yanks will come and rescue us then.”
“Did you really think they would?”
“Don’t know. You can only hope, can’t you.”
“Oh, you two crack me up!” Leila said, “The Americans never had the slightest intention of coming to the rescue. If they came at all, they would be bearing gifts of atom bombs and poison gas.”
“Don’t be daft,” Geoff said, “The Americans are on our side.”
“How sweet to be naïve! When it’s a case of life or death, they are on whatever side will keep them alive. However if they are in as bad a state as we are, I don’t think they’ll be wasting their time and money by sending their bombers over here.”
“That’s good news, then,” I said.
“Of course,” Leila added, casually, “I could be wrong. I often am.”
16
The time we spent at Degris Manor was one of the most pleasant periods of my entire life. It was a little world unto itself. Time passed there as though time was in plentiful supply and nobody much bothered to economise on it. Walking through the extensive woodlands on the estate, I watched the primroses bloom and the wild daffodils and early purple orchids. March began cold and wet and everywhere I went was muddy. But towards the end of the month the weather changed for the better. It grew warmer, the sun shone more frequently and some days were so unseasonably warm that I was able to go about wearing a T-shirt.
In the evenings we would gather together in what Lord and Lady Degris referred to as ‘the sitting room’. It looked like a cross between the lounge at a country house hotel and the library of a small university. It was a huge room by the standards of any normal house but quite small and cosy by the standards of Degris Manor.
Sometimes I sat there and read – the walls were lined with shelves of books by authors ranging from Aristotle to Agatha Christie (I skipped ‘The Metaphysics’ and went straight for ‘Murder At The Vicarage’). Sometimes we drank wine (Lord Degris had a well-stocked cellar and I tried to give the impression that I could tell a good Chablis from an indifferent Chateauneuf du Pape but I don’t think he was fooled). And then one night he brought out the Beast. That’s what he called it. In fact, it was beautiful and magnificent. The Beast was a guitar. A hand-made classical guitar. Its body was made of light, golden spruce with a Rosewood fretboard and a Spanish Cedar neck. The sound-hole was surrounded by a decorative inlay of mixed-colour woods. This was not the sort of guitar you walk into a shop and buy. This was a one-off, custom-made by a skilled luthier.
“Percy’s guitar,” he said, handing it over to me, “If you’d like to play it…”
Of course I wanted to play it! I loved my old Harald Peterson guitar, the one that had been smashed to pieces by vandals. But The Beast was altogether an instrument of a different calibre. It was, in fact, by far the finest guitar I had ever seen, let alone played.
I held it as gently as a new-born kitten. I tuned it and even in the tuning of the strings, the tone was exquisite. It could have done with a new set of strings, but that was a minor matter and not something I would have been so impolite as to mention.
That first evening, I sat in front of the fire but not so close that the heat would detune the strings – the Sitting Room boasted a huge open hearth that blazed with logs – and I played the Bourrée in E minor by Bach, the Romance del Pescador by Manuel de Falla and a couple of pieces by Dowland. I played for the pleasure of playing but the others treated it as a concert. They clapped after I finished each piece. I got the impression that my repertoire was a bit too classical for Lord Degris’s taste so I branched out into a few lighter pieces – I remember I played Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin and Yesterday by The Beatles. Half way through that one, Leila began singing the words. Once again, I was astonished by the diversity of her talents. She had a glorious soprano voice. Here was a young woman who could ram a car into a crowd of people, calmly work out the best way to kill a cow with a knife and yet could reduce people to tears with the beauty of her singing voice!
Then Lady Degris asked me if I knew the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. Fortunately, I did. It was one of the examination pieces I had studied at college. I played the famous and beautiful Adagio. When I finished, I looked up and was surprised to see Lady Degris walking out of the room. I was horrified. I assumed that the quality of my playing had disappointed her.
After a short pause, Lord Degris looked at me and said “Percy used to play that. It was my wife’s favourite.”
Leila told me later that tears had been running down Lady Degris’s face while I had been playing. She had been remembering her son. I played the guitar on many other evenings after that. But never again did I play the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo.
Apart from working in the greenhouses, I also did a bit of gardening. At that time of year, there wasn’t much to do. I did some digging and I cut back some of the more egregious brambles. But mostly I either worked in the glasshouse or else I helped Geoff with the fortifications. Ah, yes, the fortifications: they are worth explaining.
As I mentioned, the manor house was moated. The house itself was a huge square construction whose walls rose straight up from the water of the moat. The only access to the house was over a narrow stone bridge across the moat. Sadly, there was no drawbridge but even so the house would not have been easy to launch a sneak attack upon. The moat was surrounded by gardens. And the gardens, which must have taken up four of five acres, were surrounded by a high stone wall. The wall would have been difficult to climb but certainly not impossible with the aid of a ladder.
Lord Degris had the idea of adding rolls of barbed wire to the tops of the walls. Which would have been fine if we’d had some rolls of barbed wire. As we hadn’t, we had to come up with other ideas. Geoff spent some time scouting around the locality in the Land Rover looking for something suitable. My first idea was to cement pieces of broken glass into the tops of the walls. Going around the houses and pubs it was easy to find plenty of glass. The cement came from a local builders’ yard. Geoff and I mixed up the cement, smashed some bottles and stuck the glass on top of a wall. It was a lovely job and we were proud of it. It took us about four hours to do two yards of wall. As I said, the wall surrounded four or five acres. In other words, there was a heck of a lot of wall. At the rate we were working, we’d be lucky to have it finished within Lord Degris’s lifetime. So we went back to the barbed wire approach. Luckily there was a farmers’ merchant about ten miles away. They had plenty of barbed wire. We ferried back as much as we could in the Land Rover and gave that a try. Geoff and I managed to do about four yards of wall in about four hours this time. Twice the speed of the broken glass. Even so, it was still going to take us years to finish the job.
Lord Degris surveyed our work, strode along beneath the two yards of wall studded with glass and the four yards of wall topped with barbed wire. He hummed and he hawed and he scratched his chin and he bounced up and down on his toes (activities which, I gathered, were necessary to his intellectual analysis of the problem) and then he declared, “It’ll never work! Just have to rely on Old Dooley then.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about until he went and fetched Old Dooley. It turned out that Old Dooley was not, as I’d supposed, some elderly gent who specialised in the fortification of mediaeval manor houses. Old Dooley was a gun. A rather fine gun at that. It’s what I, in my ignorance, would have called a rifle because it had long barrels and a big wooden stock – in other words, it wasn’t a revolver and, in my limited knowledge of guns, if a gun is not a revolver and it’s not a machine gun then it must be a rifle. But Lord Degris insisted that it was a sporting gun – a 16-bore percussion double-barrelled sporting gun at that. It was a wonderful looking t
hing but it looked more like an antique than a workable weapon.
“You plan to shoot people with it?” I asked.
“If necessary.”
I laughed. Geoff glared at me. The idea of being shot by Old Dooley wasn’t as funny for him as it was for me. I’d never been shot in my life. Geoff had. Luckily he’d only been shot with some clapped-out old pheasant gun. Looking at Old Dooley, I had the feeling that anyone who got shot by that wouldn’t be in any state to talk about it later on.
“Have you every shot anyone? Killed anyone, I mean?” I asked.
Lord Degris paused before answering. “Once.”
His grim expression didn’t encourage further enquiry so I left it at that.
Lord Degris had quite a collection of guns. He kept them all locked away in an oak cabinet. He had deer guns and pigeon guns. He had modern guns and antique guns. He had an old Webley revolver and a newer SIG Sauer semi-automatic pistol.
“Is this all legal?” I said, “I mean, was it all legal when we still had laws about that sort of thing?”
He raised an aristocratic eyebrow. “Do I look like an East End gangland thug, dear boy?”
He had elegantly avoided my question. I suspected he had spent his lifetime elegantly avoiding awkward questions and he was very good at it.
“Suffice to say,” he continued, “that we have a great many pigeons around the manor and I am a very good shot.”
“That explains,” I said.
“You speak in riddles, dear boy. What does it explain?”
“The gunshots we hear sometimes. In the mornings and evenings mostly.”
“Ah, indeed so. The morning and the evening is when the pigeon is at his most troublesome.”
The Exodus Plague | Book 1 | The Snow Page 18