Garcia had released her and got to his feet. “Shut that goddamned…” he was shouting, when the wind picked him up and lifted him right over the back of the settee. He gave a despairing shriek as he was carried to the huge, empty window and gazed at nothing but space.
Alloan had released her wrists to turn and look at the door and the wind caught him in turn. He fell over the back of the settee with a shout of dismay. Jo, already half on the floor, lay against the heavy piece of furniture and felt it move, even as she flattened against it, all the breath being crushed from her body. She heard Alloan scream again and again, the last scream being a despairing wail. But now the settee was moving with increasing speed, carrying her with it as she threw her arms around as much of it as she could hold. She shrieked, and again as she left the floor, and then the gust slackened and the settee crashed into the wall beneath the window, causing her to release the springs and fall on her back, gasping and weeping.
“Mom!” Owen Michael was shouting from the bathroom. “Mom!”
“Get back inside,” Jo shouted. “Bolt the door.”
She struggled to her feet; the wind was still strong, but she could move against it until the next big gust. She drove herself forward, into the lobby. The outer door had only been slammed to, not bolted. The Yale lock had been torn from the wood, as had the ordinary lock. But the three bolts and the chain were still intact, and the door looked solid enough. Exerting all her strength, moaning and crying, she slowly forced it shut, shot the bolts, fixed the chain. The apartment was still a turmoil of wind, gusting in through the broken window; bottles were swept out of the bar, furniture thrown left and right, pictures torn from walls; from the kitchen she again heard the sound of shattering glass and crockery. But she could move, and regain the inner corridor, shutting every door behind her. She banged on the bathroom door, and Owen Michael let her in. She collapsed between the two children, and they gazed at her cut lip and bruised hands.
“Who was it, Mom?” Owen Michael asked.
“Nobody,” Jo gasped. “He went out again.”
SATURDAY 29 JULY: Evening and After
East Houston Street — 7.00 pm
Tootsie and Lila sat on the kitchen floor huddled against the cooker. During the lull they had managed to crawl back from the lounge door to the archway into the kitchen where they were slightly more protected from the wind and the rain and the flying debris. Tootsie sobbed occasionally while Lila swore, complaining that she had pulled a muscle in her chest trying to open that damned door. They had draped dishtowels over their shoulders but that didn’t stop them from shivering. They were both soaked to the skin.
Then the wind started again, louder than before with the window gone. It was impossible to speak above the continuous deafening noise, and neither had any idea how long they had sat there — it seemed like forever.
Lila started to pant and gasp. The pain in her chest was spreading, tightening, clutching her throat and sending rivers of agony into her left shoulder and down through her elbow. She hugged Tootsie as close as she could.
The younger sister stared in horror as air rattled in Lila’s throat and her back arched in agony. She gazed helplessly at the struggle for breath, put both arms round her sister and tried to comfort her.
She held her for several more hours — long after the body had gone limp and cold. Lila was her only companion, even if she was dead. Tootsie continued to hold her while the cracks, which had commenced in the basement as the tidal surge had smashed its way in, spread slowly upwards, while the already weakened building was struck time and again by lightning and the 200-mile-an-hour winds rocked it on its foundations, until, finally, it all came crashing down, disintegrating into a massive pile of rubble.
Park Avenue — 9.30 pm
Jo could hardly believe her ears. Having actually fallen into an exhausted sleep on the bathroom floor, she awoke with a start when the shrieking, howling, crashing, faded; the noise of the wind was still tremendous, but the thunder was only a distant growl, and the drumming rain had ceased.
The children were still asleep, even more exhausted than herself. Cautiously she opened the bathroom door, stepped into the corridor and made her way through the darkness into the shattered shambles that had been her lounge… able to see the damage because the room was fantastically illuminated by a magnificent full moon which dipped in and out of the thinning clouds racing across the sky above Manhattan. She saw that the apartment door had been blown open again, the bolts forced out of the wood, the entire structure torn from its hinges — yet in the bathroom they had survived. She clung to the lounge door, still intact, and allowed the wind, now blowing something above gale force but seeming no more than refreshingly cool, to play over her, while she looked out through the shattered picture window, shuddering as she remembered those traumatic moments only a few hours before. The flickering moonlight did not reach below the rooftops, and at this level the city appeared almost normal.
But it would never be normal again. And perhaps, for her less than anyone.
She returned to the bathroom, poured herself a cup of coffee from the last of the many vacuum flasks they had filled earlier, returned to the lounge, listening, to slowly rising sounds, as other people realized they had also survived. They were mostly unhappy sounds, wails and screams, cries for help, drifting up from the street. She even thought she heard several gunshots, to suggest the police were already having trouble with looters.
Then she heard a noise closer at hand. There was someone in the corridor outside the apartment, moving slowly, laboriously, and cautiously towards her.
Her blood seemed to freeze — there was no way she could keep an intruder out, and this time there would be no wind to save her. She ran into the kitchen to find the carving knife, any knife, but the kitchen had been gutted by the wind, and she could find nothing in the gloom. She turned, panting, and watched a man’s frame in the doorway.
“Jo?” he whispered. “Jo, are you alive? For God’s sake, Jo!”
“Richard!” she screamed, and hurled herself into his arms. “Oh, Richard!”
He hugged her close. “Sorry I took so long to get here, darling,” he said. “I’ve been trying… God, I’ve been trying.”
She stood away from him, stared at him in the moonlight. His jacket had been torn off and his tie, his shirt was buttonless and open to the waist. His hair was scattered and there were cuts and bruises on his face as well as his chest; his left arm hung awkwardly where he had fallen on it. And there was blood, all over him, but mainly on his torn trouser legs: “Oh, my God!” she cried. “You’re hurt!”
“Broken glass, mainly,” he said. “The street is ankle deep in it. After I was blown down the avenue and knocked out, I crawled part of the way on my hands and knees — I think there’s still quite a lot in there.”
“Knocked out?” she cried. “But…”
“A long time,” he said. “A couple of hours. I don’t know for sure. I lost my watch. But then, this…” he touched his arm and winced.
“Oh, Richard! It looks broken or something.”
“It sure hurts.”
“Oh, Richard!” She wanted to scream and scream… but at least partly with joy — and pride. “Oh, darling Richard, you came through the storm… what a risk you took.”
He gave his crooked grin. “Well, I had to wait for the old girl to say I could. Then she changed her mind. Women are like that.”
“You could have been killed.” She held his good arm and drew him towards the bathroom. “And I had better set that arm and patch you up before you bleed to death.”
He had been taking in the damage. “But you… and the children…”
“We’re okay,” she said, opening the bathroom door. “We’re really quite snug in here.” She closed the bathroom door behind them and lit a candle. Suddenly she felt faint and weak — from exhaustion mostly, but also from sheer relief at Richard’s presence. Despite his torn and ragged appearance, his legs dribbling blood int
o the rug, his broken arm, he was still a tower of strength. “Hey, kids,” she said, as they woke up. “You remember Mr Connors, the weatherman from NABS. He came over to see how we’ve been doing. Wasn’t that good of him?”
“Hi, Mr Connors,” Owen Michael said. “We’re doing fine. We had no problems at all.”
Richard looked at Jo.
“No problems at all,” she echoed.
SUNDAY 30 JULY: Morning
By daybreak Faith had long turned back to the northeast, and, dying, was spending the last of her vicious energy over Cape Cod. In New York the wind was no more than fresh. The rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and there was blue sky to accompany the sunrise.
The floodwaters had receded, and the survivors began to emerge from the hiding places they had used for eighteen hours and more, unable to believe they were alive.
Horror gripped them as they looked at the city. A jumbled mass of destroyed vehicles, uprooted trees and shrubs, shattered buildings, some totally collapsed, even the more substantial ones badly damaged. And dead bodies, choked into the most unlikely places, became too obvious.
It was time to work.
Assistant Commissioner McGrath and a handful of patrolmen had fought their way up to the emergency police headquarters in the Plaza Hotel, along with the Mayor and most of his staff, and from here McGrath assumed command of the city law and order, for Commissioner Grundy had not been seen since Police Headquarters had been flooded out. Using radio, McGrath began assembling his battered and exhausted men and women to control events, stop looting, and begin the job of clearing up and hopefully preventing disease.
He did not lack help; at dawn half the available United States Army, with their medical corps, was airlifted into the disaster area to assist.
At dawn, too, Chauffeur Murray awoke James Calthrop White; they had slept shoulder to shoulder in the back seat of the Rolls. Amazingly, although the ditch had filled with rain, the engine started first kick, and when an army helicopter landed nearby to see if they were all right, they managed to push the car back on to the road.
“You want to go into town, JC?” Murray asked.
“I want to go home, Joe,” J. Calthrop White said. “And have a large Scotch. Come to think of it, we’ll each have a large Scotch.”
Which they did. Amazingly, JC’s house had escaped serious damage.
And at dawn too the surviving New Yorkers, wherever they might be, gathered in church and chapel, synagogue, mosque and temple, to give thanks for their deliverance.
At 8.00 am the President of the United States arrived by helicopter, to be greeted by the Governor and Mayor Naseby, and taken on a bird’s-eye tour of the stricken city and its environments. “To think that one storm could do so much damage,” the President mused. “It makes one wonder what we’re doing, with our puny little bombs and bullets, when there is that lurking out there, waiting to strike. But do you realize how lucky we were that it happened on a Saturday? And that there was adequate warning? If all the banks and business places had been open and crowded… shit. Bill…” he turned to Naseby. “I have to hand it to you, Bill, because I reckon we were lucky in having you in charge, as well. That was some decision you took, to order the evacuation of the entire city, while the storm was still a good distance away. But by God, if you hadn’t…”
Naseby looked down at the ruins beneath him. “Yeah,” he said. “But I didn’t make that decision, Mr President. At least, not until it was forced upon me. The evacuation was ordered by a television weatherman, Richard Connors, on his own initiative. Because he knew what was coming, and the rest of us wouldn’t believe him.”
“Then Connors is someone I’d like to meet,” the President said. “Or is that confidential?”
“I think Mr President is asking, Bill, if you are going to tell that fact to the voters,” the Governor put in.
Naseby grinned. “I’ll have to think about that. But I sure intend to tell Mr Connors, supposing I can find him.” He looked down at the city again. “And supposing he’s alive.”
SUNDAY 30 JULY: Afternoon
“Yeah,” Mark Hammond said into his radio. “She’s clear of land and heading off to Newfoundland. Winds dropping all the time. Round the center they’re 80 miles an hour. I guess by tonight you’ll be able to downgrade her to a storm. That’s Faith, Doctor. We’re heading back to base.”
He turned the aircraft, allowing it to sink lower as he did so. They left the still turbulent mass of white behind them and dipped into clear skies with only little balls of cotton wool floating gently around and above them as they descended.
“Still some sea running,” Landry commented, looking down at the whitecaps and the waves, flattened by the angle but still clearly several feet high, surging up the Gulf Stream.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “I don’t give much for the chances of any ship caught out in that. Home, boys, where the sun shines all the time.”
“Hold it.” Mackenzie had come up to join them on the flight deck and was using binoculars. “There’s something down there.”
“Where?”
“I’ve lost it now. But there was something. Let’s make a sweep, skipper.”
“One sweep,” Mark grunted. He, and all his crew, were suffering from exhaustion and lack of sleep. Mackenzie was probably hallucinating.
“There it is,” Landry said.
“Show me.” Mark swung the plane again.
“Look,” Mackenzie said.
“Take her,” Mark told Landry, and leveled the binoculars. By now they were only 500 feet above the waves, and following Mackenzie’s pointing finger he saw the sudden spurt of orange amidst the blue and white. “That’s a life raft.”
“And there are men in it,” Mackenzie said.
Landry had dropped to 300 feet, and now they could clearly see the bodies draped across the half collapsed raft — the canopy had blown away and one of the compartments had deflated.
“Shit, what a position to be in,” Mackenzie commented. “You reckon those guys can be alive?”
“I reckon we’d better get a helicopter out here to find out,” Mark said, and thumbed his handset again.
AFTERWARDS
In a remarkable two weeks life was heading back to normal. It would take months, years, completely to restore the city to its old, sleazy, greatness, but over the next two days, as soon as the worst of the debris was cleared away from the streets, tunnels and subways and all the bodies that were going to be recovered had been found, services were working again on a limited scale, and the airport runways repaired and re-opened. People began to pick up their lives again. With massive help pouring in, not only from the rest of the United States but from all over the world, disease was averted and the job of cleaning away the demolished buildings was facilitated.
As soon as it was safe to leave Park Avenue, Richard took Jo and the children to his apartment, which had remained undamaged, and there they spent the next few days, while the roads were being cleared and the cleanup got under way. The city was supplied with food and drinking water by the army, using great trucks and containers; it was rather like being under siege, but at least there was no danger involved. Jo did not attempt to explain her situation to Owen Michael and Tamsin, who did not question it. In the aftermath of such a catastrophe questions about personal relationships seemed for the moment irrelevant.
But once power was restored Richard felt it his duty to go back to work — broken arm in a sling — nothing further having been said about his dismissal, or indeed heard from JC at all. With the NABS building a shambles, news and weather reporting was to say the least, primitive, but a service was provided.
Jo knew she had to regain contact with the family, but the telephones were still out. She and the children returned to Park Avenue, and were overwhelmed with joy to find Washington back on duty, even if the place was more of a wreck than they remembered — but the building itself remained sound, and the repairmen were already at work. While the Cadillac was st
ill in the garage, into which, miraculously, only a trickle of water had penetrated. Jo now discovered that Washington had a spare set of keys for it. She kissed him with relief. Sadly, he had no news of Florence, and in view of the total destruction of Coney Island the worst had to be supposed.
Nor was there any news to be had from Greenwich Village, where the destruction and loss of life had been massive; the entire area had been cordoned off by the army because bodies were still being recovered from the wreckage of houses and there the risk of disease had not yet been eradicated. “Next of kin will be informed as soon as identification can be made,” the major in charge told Jo. “If your sister-in-law is here, we’ll find her. But… you’d better pray she ain’t.”
Jo and the children called at the Profiles office and found it gutted and deserted, so they drove up to New Rochdale to collect Nana, then went on out to Bognor, which had been sideswiped by the storm but suffered no real damage; Faith, having turned north-east, had been losing force when she swept over Connecticut. The cottage was untouched save for fallen trees. It was a tremendous relief to find real normalcy at last. To walk from room to room, opening doors and windows to sunshine, to look at each room prettily arranged with pictures, and ornaments and undamaged furniture — drapes moving gently in the warm air. And clothes! Jo wanted to touch everything, flick electric switches to be sure they worked, check out the fridge and freezer…
She lifted the phone — and heard the dial tone. She wanted to scream with joy… then hesitated. But she had to find out. So she dialed.
Sally Davenport said, “Oh! Jo! Yes. I’ll just get Sam.” Her voice sounded quite odd.
But if Sam was back… Jo frowned, and waited.
Her Name Will Be Faith Page 39