The door seemed stuck. She pushed hard and water came rushing down around her legs when she got the door open. It was higher in here, nearly shin-height. Moonlight streamed through the bay windows illuminating a ghostly scene. A flooded room, sparkling. Shadowy bookshelves enclosed the walls, books from the lower shelves bobbed in the floodwater, and a figure was slumped onto the enormous desk, twitching, grumbling, but not awake. She had a pang of sorrow for the saltwater-swollen, lost books.
He’d been drinking so heavily the flood must have risen around him without him knowing. Was it because of her? Her rational self knew that this was how he’d been since her mother died, but she’d heard the catch in his voice when he said ‘Your mother’. And she’d let the door shut on his face. When she tried to wake him to get him upstairs, he jerked and grouched and called her ‘bloody woman’ and she wondered if he’d spoken to her mother that way. She got him upstairs, with his arm around her neck, holding him up and cajoling him. Her arms ached with the weight of him. He was not an old man, and still strong from the farm, his arms ruddy and thick, but drink weakened him and he stumbled with slow effort up to his bedroom. They didn’t need to retreat to the old servants’ quarters in the attic to be safe from the flood, she decided. The house was strong, and with its position of power, the water could not get up there. She laid him down on the bed that had been his alone for the past year and a half, pulled a cover over him. He turned away from her, without a word, and slept.
For a minute after she shut the door on him she sank down on the landing and had to hold onto the banister to keep herself from lying down. Why couldn’t he look after her? Why did he have to make her feel so guilty?
Back down the stairs, she felt her way through the cold floodwater in the dark to the pantry. Leaning against the cool wall, she was overcome with nauseous hunger and took some bread and cheese in a napkin. Clutching it, she returned upstairs and along the landing to her own room, which overlooked the back fields to the sea. Through the window she could just see the sea above the pine trees, churning and foaming in the moonlight. Out in the fields somewhere was Peter. And somewhere else, Jack. Was he thinking of her? She closed her eyes in a silent prayer. For all that she was a hypocrite, maybe God would listen. Save Peter. Save us. Save the farm. Save Jack. And Arthur too, she added at the end. She sat down in the window seat and picked at her bread, looking down over the flood. A lookout in a crow’s nest, watching a seastorm.
Her heart beat hard. There was a crazed beauty to the storm. It was almost miraculous, the way it took away all the mess of life, sweeping all in its path. A biblical flood. A kind of cleansing. She wondered if her mother had thought that when she’d swum into the sea for the last time.
*
Third breach of the sea wall: close to the town next to the old lifeboat house
The bike was gone. Where it had been, there was now a river of water. It was up to his knees. He reached down to where he’d left it but there was nothing but freezing cold seawater. Then he saw it, the handlebars sticking up, across the street over by a closed shop on the corner of the Buttlands. He waded over and took the light off the front, pocketed it, then he turned down Staithe Street. There was no point taking it now. He needed a boat, not a bike. Figures huddled outside the village hall. The band were coming out with their instruments above their heads and he half laughed, they looked so ridiculous.
He tried to peer into the dance floor, but it had been abandoned and water was sloshing over the floor where the dancers had been. Someone must have evacuated them all.
A young policeman was directing stragglers up the street, away from the sea. Arthur tried to go past him.
‘Not this way, sir, town’s flooding, it’s not safe down there.’
‘But there’s people down there… my mother…’
‘Arthur!’ And there was Jack, his uniform on, grinning at him as if it were all a great wheeze. ‘Don’t worry, officer, this chap is with me.’
‘I see, sir. Well, mind how you go there. Look after your mother, Mr Silver,’ he added.
‘We will,’ said Jack.
Arthur and Jack waded down the street towards the sea. Typical. The unfailing magic of a uniform. He considered his draft article on the base. Nuclear Armageddon. He had another possible title: Revealed: Secrets of Atom-Bomb Base. He’d hardly seen Jack but the one American airman he personally knew would never tell him anything. He had to rely on the ones who frequented the Shipwright’s or the Crown, whose sense of secrecy waned after a few pints. He thought again about Norwich and what he’d seen through the misted café window. It could be nothing. And yet the feeling of distrust was almost physical. He wasn’t going to mention the article.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Jack? I’ve got to get to the shop.’
‘I was at the dance. No point going back to the base. No flights tonight.’
Arthur stopped, floodwater rushing around his legs. Jack had been at the dance at the village hall. Verity had said she was going to the same one, hadn’t she? His legs quivered in a strange way. He struggled to find the words to ask Jack about her, but the American was already talking.
‘Listen, I’ve got an idea. Pete went back to the farm. He’s going to need help with the animals. We should go out there.’
And Verity must be there. She’d be mad with worry for the horses. He wanted to go – the thought of her out there in that isolated farm, the sea raging all around – but his conscience tugged at him.
‘Yes, we should. But my mother’s in the shop, she’ll need me.’
They were outside Thurgood’s darkened shop window, shouting above the slap slap of the sign. Jack came up close to him. He had his hand on Arthur’s arm.
‘Is your apartment above the shop?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then she’ll be fine. Come on, they need us.’
He thought of his mother alone and bitter with him for being out in it. ‘No, I have to. She’s my mother.’
‘All right. I’ll go on my own.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Jack. You can’t.’ He couldn’t let Jack do this, play the hero. It couldn’t be him to save her. ‘Come with me, I know where we can get a boat.’
They splashed down to the quay. The water was sweeping over the quay wall and it was slow work wading even the few yards to the shop. Clouds covered the moon and his bike light provided the only light, illuminating the patch of water in front of them. The shop window was dark and for a second he thought his mother was dead, drowned, saving her livelihood. The image of a drowned woman could only remind him of the mother he’d lost. In a cold rush of nausea and panic, he heaved himself at the door. Jack was next to him, his face taut with strain. Together, they edged the door open with their shoulders and found her, up to her waist in swirling water in her hair net and bedcoat, arms full of white bags of sugar and flour.
‘Where have you been?’ she said, her voice strangled and sour.
‘Deliveries,’ he said, staring at her stricken form. ‘Sorry. I’m here now.’
‘Well, help me then. Who’s this?’ She peered at Jack, standing next to him.
Her question propelled him forward and he half put an arm around her. ‘This is Jack. From the American base. He’s come to help. But we can’t stay long, Mother, we just need to get you to safety.’
‘The stock, Arthur. Just get the stock.’
He sighed. It was impossible. They took as much as they could but they soon saw it was hopeless. The water was rising fast and soon they wouldn’t be able to wade to get a boat, to row to the farm. The harvest would already be ruined by the salt, the land leached of life for many years; there was nothing anyone could do about that now. But he imagined Peter trying to save the livestock and Verity rescuing her beloved Gyps. It knotted his stomach in pain at the thought of her out there in this storm.
In the kitchen, Arthur took his mother’s arm. ‘You’ve got to stay up here now, Mother. There’s no alternative. We’ve done as much as w
e can.’
‘You stay with me,’ she said, pleading with him. The electrics had gone and she’d lit a candle next to the sink. The dark yellow light flickered on her face, throwing deep lines across it. Her small hand gripped onto his arm.
‘I can’t. I have to get a boat.’
‘It’s not safe. Oh Lord, Arthur, you can’t leave me. I’m dying.’
‘Mother, please. You’re hysterical.’
‘Art, it’s getting worse down here!’ Jack called up from the shop, and that was his cue. He bent down and kissed her on her thin, papery cheek and she dug her fingers into his arms.
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘You’ll be fine, just stay here.’ He gently prised her fingers off his arm and pulled away. He heard the coldness in his voice and hated it. ‘Please, Mother,’ he said.
‘We need to go, Art!’ Jack shouted from below. He imagined Jack rowing out to Howe Farm like a hero and him here with his mother, and for all that it was a mad act, he couldn’t let Jack do it.
He patted her hand, turned and left.
How long had they been? He didn’t know but the harbour had overflowed the quay wall and they were now waist-deep in seawater. Little boats had broken their moorings and were out to sea or crashed into one another. All around them, what had once been solid ground was now a shining, silvery mass, glimmering in the moonlight.
He could hardly hear Jack above the roar of the wind. ‘Boat?’ he seemed to be shouting. Arthur laughed, mirthlessly. There were boats everywhere. Pulled along by the force of the current, the two of them blundered back towards Staithe Street where there were a couple of small rowing boats banging against the shops along the quay. He grabbed Jack’s arm and led him towards one of them. He had to use all his strength to right the damn thing and get it steady. God knows how they would both get in it. And they needed oars.
‘Oars!’ he shouted and pointed at the freemasons’ hall behind them. There was a set on hooks on the wall in the yard, a boat too, but he didn’t fancy his chances in that old craft. The abandoned boat was sturdier. He indicated to Jack to keep hold of the boat and he plunged himself along with the current to the yard to grab the oars. There was a moment of nervous laughter as they almost tipped the boat over on itself as they tried to get in. He wondered if he would find it funny one day.
‘Can you row?’ he said, passing Jack one of the oars.
‘Of course I can,’ Jack shouted back.
It was said defiantly but he knew Jack would be lost out here on the flooded marsh with its creeks and banks and he knew it far better than the cocky American did. So in the end they agreed he would row first, and Jack would navigate.
They set off for Beach Road. Arthur attached the bike light with his belt and used its pale, weak beam to guide them. He rowed while Jack knelt behind him at the stern, with a torch nabbed from the shop, holding it aloft like the captain of a ship on a raid. Thank God he could row. The water was black and the thought of going out in it was terrifying.
*
Wind rattled the window pane. Verity twitched, shivered, woke up. A light flicked on and off. For a moment she forgot why she was sitting in the window seat of her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her room was dark. In her hand, she was holding a silver flask, Peter’s hip flask. On the seat in front of her, a crumpled napkin was flecked with crumbs. It came back to her: the flood, the struggle back to the farm, splashing vomit into the floodwater flowing down Leafy Lane. The nausea had gone but she was empty, hollowed out. Looking out of the window, the light flashed again, a distant starburst from the direction of the sea, then gone. Come back, she urged, but it didn’t. Staring out into the night, she could see nothing reassuring. Cut off from the town, what would happen if they were engulfed? It felt as if the house was floating in the sea.
Father? Then she remembered he was safe, asleep down the corridor. She ran along the landing and looked in at him. Through the uncurtained window, moonlight fell on her father’s ghostly shape, mouth gaped open, rasping. She breathed out, slowly.
But Peter was out there. It must have been his light she’d seen. In her bedroom, she looked at her bedside clock. Ten to midnight. Oh God, Peter had been out there so long. What time had they got back to the house? She didn’t know. Hours. It must be hours. She thought of Peter wading through the water, leading a stranded cow to safety. It would be bellowing and thrashing. And the horses! With a lurch of anguish she remembered Gyps and then Peter’s horse, Heather.
Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she took off the uncomfortable purple dress she was still wearing, changed into some jodhpurs and a thick sweater and ventured out onto the landing. At her father’s door, she listened. Snoring. She wanted to ask him to help her, to do something, to be a child again and have him solve everything, but he couldn’t help her. Not any more, and not in that state. She would just have to do it by herself. Get the horses to safe ground. Find Peter. Not drown. She laughed aloud at this last one as if defying herself not to give in. She would not end up like her mother, drowned in grief for all that she’d lost.
Near the bottom of the stairs, she stopped. The water was high above the skirting board. She noticed the strong smell of manure as if the fields had come into the house. They had. The whole of the downstairs had been infiltrated by a layer of the outside. To her right, the dining room, the old furniture, salt-ruined. All their history – her mother’s history – desecrated.
But there was nothing she could do now. The horses needed her. She rolled up her jodhpurs and dipped her feet into the water. The cold made her gasp but she gritted her teeth and stepped in it up to her knees. She waded to the back door of the scullery where she found her old wellingtons floating. They would have to do. Standing on a chair, she pulled them on. Back at the front door, she took a mac off the peg. It was her mother’s, the one she’d worn to the dance. She pulled it tight around her and it made her feel a little better somehow, as if her mother was with her. In the pocket she found the little cigarette case she had filched from her mother’s drawer, and Jack’s Zippo. To them she added her brother’s hip flask and a small torch she’d found in the useful drawer in the scullery. These little preparations made her feel as if she had a plan, as if she was off on an adventure. She almost laughed at the absurdity.
Outside, the wind rushed around her and a bright, white full moon appeared from behind dark clouds. It shone on the glistening water, which was streaming away from her as if it was trying to escape back to the sea. Wading away from the farmhouse, towards the lower fields, she stopped and looked back. The old, imposing building was surrounded by a lake of water. It had become its own island, with her father in it, marooned. Like his whole generation, he was cut off now. Battle-scarred and exhausted, the tide of change threatened to engulf them.
For a moment she stood motionless. She had never been so alone. But she turned her back on the house and pushed on in the direction of the sea.
6.
Tidal surge receding on Norfolk coast
Tidal surge reaches Essex coast by 10 p.m.
The moon had quickly disappeared behind clouds once more. All Arthur could see, if he turned to look, was the patch of water in front of them, illuminated by the pale beam from the bike light and the golden one from the torch. His arms hurt with the effort of rowing against the current. The tide must have turned but the wind made the water a living thing, a surging, roaring beast crashing into their matchstick town.
Passing the shop, he saw a flicker of candlelight in the rooms and it both relieved him and confronted him with his absence.
As they tried to turn against the surge of water up to Beach Road, he heard calls. They must be coming from the prefabs down on the low-lying piece of land on the left-hand side of the road. His mother hated the prefabs. ‘A scourge on the landscape’ she called them and tsked each time she looked down at them from their flat above the shop. There were no lights on in any of the bungalows, but, craning round, Arthur could see their squat shapes in the
dark. Down here, the wind seemed stronger, the night blacker and the calls eerie, like dogs or wolves. Maybe some of them were dogs. But then he thought he could hear children crying too and he shivered.
He twisted his neck round and shouted, ‘There are people down there. Children.’ The light illuminating his face, Jack nodded.
Arthur plunged his oars into the water and dragged the boat west, down towards the buildings. They bashed into the side of one of the prefabs and he realised that it was already almost fully submerged: the boat came up to its gutters.
‘Help!’ Arthur heard from what sounded like close by.
They were up against the side of the roof. He shipped the oars while Jack held onto the roof, leaned forward to his bike light and tried to tilt it to shine upwards. Jack did the same with his torch. The beams lit up a man’s face, haggard and deep-lined.
‘My wife,’ he said. He was holding something in his arms. Arthur steadied the boat while Jack reached up and, legs braced, rocking, took the bundle from the old man. It was a thin, wretched woman, swaddled in a blanket, trembling, white with shock to match her hair, but alive. They manoeuvred the man down too and set back towards the town. As they were turning, a searchlight swept over the quayside and they rowed hard for it. The old couple were hunched in their blanket in between them. Jack kept up a steady stream of comforting talk. ‘We’ll get you a nice cup of tea soon enough,’ he said. How could he possibly sound so smooth and charming when all Arthur could think about was how teeth-achingly cold it was? How they could easily drown out here in the dark.
They came up alongside the source of the searchlight, a rescue boat from the coastguard. A grizzled man took the old couple. ‘Best get you fellas back to town now. You’ll be better off at the rescue centre.’
But Jack shouted back, ‘There are more old folk in the bungalows, sir. Children too,’ as if it had been his idea. They exchanged a quick glance of shared purpose.
The Night of the Flood Page 18