by Robin Crumby
She couldn’t see any of the others from her Hayling Island group on the trucks and feared they were still stuck in Portsmouth when they closed the barrier to the ferry. There was a chance she would be taken to the same place as the other group from the caravan park, assuming they had made it this far. For the first time in many months, she felt completely alone and vulnerable. She looked around the faces in the truck, their bodies tightly pressed together, damp and steaming as their clothes began to dry out. She recognised the same indefatigability and humanity stripped bare. These people were beaten but not broken. Their spirits and good humour kept them going. They had survived this far and the prospect of salvation on the island carried them further. They were silent and hopeful, so close to safety.
Heather looked ahead down the track as the convoy slowed, approaching another checkpoint leading towards a newly constructed compound. Two soldiers emerged from what looked like a garden shed, dumped at an angle next to the roadway that offered some shelter from the wind and rain. Dark clouds hurried across the sky above their heads, but at least it had stopped raining. The guards were dressed in long, army green raincoats with rifles slung over their shoulders. They saluted the driver in the first truck and checked his paperwork before lifting the barrier and waving them forward through the open gateway. Either side was a hastily dug chain-link fence some twelve feet high that stretched around the compound, with wooden posts sunk into the grass and mud every three meters or so.
Ahead she could see row upon row of large green tents and beyond them a dozen timber-framed buildings set on newly-erected concrete foundations. It reminded Heather of a school summer camp she was sent on when she was eleven, to Normandy or someplace in the north of France. She remembered rock climbing, canoeing, water slides and swimming in freezing cold rivers and lakes, eating marshmallows and burgers round a camp fire, laughing with school friends. She smiled at the memory, wiping her nose with her sleeve. The whole compound looked like it had just been completed. Huge piles of building waste and freshly dug earth stood waiting to be cleared near the road and farm buildings.
They pulled up near a simple stone-built farm cottage set with four symmetrical windows either side of a door in its centre. Ivy climbed its walls from planters set in front. A stern-looking officer with grey hair and a red armband walked down the line of trucks, banging his hand against the side.
“Everybody out. Let’s be having you. We don’t have all day.”
A woman in a beige Tilley hat, who might have been the farmer’s wife, unhooked the board at the back of the truck and held her hand out to help the new arrivals down onto the hard. Heather waited patiently as the others shuffled their feet, moving slowly towards the tailgate. When it was her turn, she jumped down, grimacing as her boots splashed in a muddy puddle that was pooling under the truck, soaking her jeans in freezing water.
She brushed the worst of it off before it could soak in and joined the line of people queuing for supplies. Each was handed a blanket, a small bottle of water from a pallet wrapped in polythene and an energy bar from boxes stacked high, one bar per person. They trudged into the field and were split up into groups, six per tent. When the woman with the headscarf noticed Heather all alone, she pointed her and another older girl towards a family group huddled together with their arms around each other outside one of the tents. They were shepherded inside the canvas structure, its entrance flaps folded back to reveal an empty interior with a waterproof ground sheet stretched across the floor and an unlit paraffin lamp swaying from the centre. There was no furniture, no beds or mattresses. A pile of flat sheets of cardboard had been left inside for comfort against the cold hard earth. It wasn’t much but it would be dry and warm after being exposed to the elements for the last few hours.
When it was her turn, she followed the older girl in front into the tent and picked up a long sheet of cardboard ready to sit on. The older girl snatched it from her hand and pushed her aside.
“Hey that’s mine. Find your own.”
Heather sat down on the cold earthen floor, running her hand over the bumps and grooves through the plastic. She glared at the girl nearest her who was making herself comfortable on the folded cardboard, wrapping her shoulders and head in the folds of a blanket. She looked about fifteen or sixteen years-old and physically much bigger than Heather.
The family of four were keeping themselves to themselves in the corner, watching their fellow occupants warily. Heather caught the kindly eye of the mother. She was cuddling her sons one on each side, rubbing their arms and backs to warm them. She noticed Heather shivering all alone and waved her over.
“Why don’t you come and sit with us, dear. You’ll get warm quicker that way. This is my husband Paul and these two are Joey and Rick.”
Heather smiled at their kindness and moved across next to the smaller of the two boys. She scowled back at the older girl and unhooked the straps of her rucksack, placing it against the tent wall. She sat back against it, making herself as comfortable as possible in the close confines of the tent, wrapping the blanket round herself as she fought the cold.
“How old are you?” asked Joey. He looked to Heather to be about the same age as her.
“Thirteen. You?”
“Same. Where’s your family?”
“Joey, don’t you know it’s rude to ask questions. Why don’t you eat your snack and settle down, try and get some sleep?” said the mother.
“Honestly, it’s ok,” replied Heather disarmingly. “I don’t mind talking about it. I came here with my brother, Connor, but he didn’t make it through quarantine. They took him someplace else.”
“What about your parents?”
“Mum and Dad were separated,” she said with a shrug. “He was working away from home and then he moved out, or rather Mum kicked him out and we lived with her for a while. But then, she was one of the first to get sick in the first outbreak.”
“What happened to your brother, was he infected?”
“He had a fever, but it wasn’t the virus.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much. As soon as his temperature drops and he’s better, they’ll soon realise it was just a cold,” said the father, who sounded confident, like he might be a doctor or nurse.
“What about your father, do you know what happened to him?”
“No, not really. We thought he might come and find us, but he never came. We left notes and messages at our old home and with friends and neighbours.”
“Maybe he’s still searching for you. The whole world’s been upside down. People are scattered all over the place. So where have you been living all this time? Has it just been the two of you? You and your brother?”
Heather looked down at her hands and wiped some mud on her jeans.
“It was really hard to begin with. Our next-door neighbour back home in Winchester looked after us, but when it all started breaking down, we drove down to Hayling Island, to a caravan she used to rent in the summer. We’ve been living there ever since. We came to Portsmouth this morning with our group, but we got separated.”
“Well you’re here now. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. You poor love. Come here and sit closer, you look freezing. Paul, why don’t you go and try and find a hot drink or something? Nice cup of cocoa, that’s what you need, dear.”
“That would be great. Me and Connor have been talking about cake and tea all day.”
Her voice caught in her throat, remembering her brother, thinking about what he must be going through, surrounded by people dying, pleading for help. She imagined him rocking backwards and forwards with his hood over his head, clutching his arms around his knees, like he did when he was scared. She used to read him extracts from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ which they carried with them. Connor used to love the story of the Ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Traal who thought he became invisible if he closed his eyes or hid his head. It always used to make her laugh seeing him adopt this defensive pose, clenching his eyes shut.
She used to comfort him by wrapping her arms round his chest from behind, enveloping him, like their Mum used to do. It seemed to comfort him and remind him of home. She so wished she could hug him right now.
“Come here and let me give you a hug, you poor brave girl. You can stick with us OK? We’ll look after you, won’t we boys?” she nodded at Joey and Rick who were smiling at her. They both looked completely disinterested. The prospect of another mouth to feed prompted a shake of the head from the father.
“Family’s all we’ve got. We look out for each other, don’t we boys? You’re one of us now. OK?”
Heather nodded at her and felt her tired limbs begin to relax. She looked back at the adolescent girl who was lounging back on the cardboard, with the blanket covering her head and shoulders. She could just make out her eyes glaring at Heather, jealous of all the attention she was getting.
“Go on Paul. Get this girl a hot cup of something. Off you go now.”
The father reluctantly got to his feet and brushed aside the flap of the entrance, sending a shower of raindrops down on his head. He marched up the path, muttering to himself, heading towards one of the wooden framed buildings which had smoke pouring out of the chimney on its roof.
A few minutes later, he returned with three cups of tea, in the company of a kind-looking man with an oval face and trimmed beard. He was carrying a clipboard under his arm. The man waited a few moments for the father to go inside and hand out the tea before knocking in a cheery “Shave and a Haircut” musical rhythm on the tent pole. He stuck his head inside with a grin like a Cheshire Cat, crouching down on his haunches. Heather found his good humour deeply irritating. In fact, considering the poverty of their situation, she considered his levity faintly disrespectful. He wrote down their full names, dates of birth and explained that he needed to ask them each a few questions. He started with the family, asking the adults about where they had come from, their education, their jobs, any training they had had, hobbies or skills, noting everything down in what looked to Heather like illegible scrawl. When it came to her turn, the questions were a little different. They wanted to know her parents’ names, relatives, where they lived previously, and what she had studied at school before moving on to the other children.
When the bearded man had left, the two adults looked at each other, puzzled.
“What do you think that was all about? What will they do with all that information?”
“Well, we can’t stay here forever. This is just a quarantine zone. A holding area. Anyway, who would want to stay here? Davy was saying…”
“Who’s Davy when he’s at home?” interrupted his wife.
“Lives three doors down. Anyway, stop interrupting. Davy was saying that we’ll all be reassigned to work parties. They’ll keep family groups together. There’s a medical centre at Newport, so we’ll probably go there on account of my medical training, as an anaesthetist. There’s a fully functioning hospital there, so makes sense. Or else there are smaller medical centres and hospitals scattered around the island, so who knows, we might go there too.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen to people like me, with no family?” asked Heather.
“I heard that any unaccompanied children are being sent to a boarding school not too far from here in Ryde.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? You’ll be with other children your own age. They’ll look after you better than being stuck here with the rest of us,” reassured the mother with a smile.
“But I want to work too. I don’t want to go back to school. What use is learning about the world? Why does any of that stuff matter anymore?”
“Of course it still matters. If we’re going rebuild then it’ll be up to your generation. You’re the future. You’ll need to learn practical skills. How to fix stuff when it’s broken, how to build houses, make tools, grow vegetables, that kind of thing.”
“I suppose. But we won’t have to learn languages or useless stuff like geography or history?”
“You probably don’t realise it now, but all of that stuff is still important. It teaches you about the world, how to think, how to communicate. Okay, maybe learning French is less relevant right now, but your generation needs to understand what’s gone before, to pass that knowledge on to future generations. Without that continuity, then thousands of years of progress risks being lost. Who’s going to tell stories about Henry VIII or the Battle of Hastings if all that history stays locked away in libraries? Now more than ever, you’ll need to learn to be self-sufficient, not to rely on others like we used to. We need to make what we’ve got last for a long time. The world is changing. We need to make sure that our future is secure. That there’s enough food to feed everyone, that we have medicines to treat the sick, that we have fuel and water. All those things we took for granted.”
“You said that everyone on the island has to work, has a job to do. What about us children?” asked Joey.
“I did say that. Thank you for actually listening for a change,” nodded their father. “You two will have to go back to school, but you’ll have chores to do too. Cleaning up, fixing things, the sort of jobs you used to do at home before all this. You’re going to have to learn all about the world around you. How to hunt and fish, how to cook and clean, how to change a spark plug in an engine, how to defend yourself. How to splice rope, how to treat injuries and a million and one other things to help you survive and thrive.”
“Will we get pocket money if we do real work?” asked Rick, the younger boy.
“I’m sure you’ll get something,” said Paul, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Sweets or cake most likely. Don’t you worry about that!”
They all stopped talking simultaneously as a strange sound, like an air raid siren, grew in volume until all the children covered their ears, wincing in mock pain. The noise continued for almost thirty seconds before slowly dying again. Voices could be heard throughout the camp shouting instructions.
“Lights out. You there, put that light out. Curfew.”
The father checked his watch.
“It’s only seven thirty.”
“What are we meant to do now?”
“Rest, sleep if you can. If it’s anything like today, they’ll wake us at the crack of dawn. I wouldn’t be surprised if we move out tomorrow. Reassigned to wherever they’re sending us next.”
Heather wriggled further under the blanket and lowered her heavy head on to the rucksack she was using as a pillow. It was wrapped in a filthy towel, but she found it more comfortable than the scratchy canvas against her skin.
“Good night,” whispered Heather. The father mumbled a response, but from the snuffles, it sounded like the boys were already asleep.
She rolled on to her side and said a silent prayer for Connor. It felt good to be part of a family unit again. Like being part of a group, there was safety in numbers. People to look out for you. It reminded her of her father. She wondered whether he was still alive. Who knew? Maybe one day he would come for her. That’s what she had always told her brother.
At bedtime, their father had always told them stories and Connor had insisted Heather kept up the tradition. She would repeat the half-remembered stories her mother or father had told them. About trips to faraway places, holidays by the seaside, about fantasy worlds, myths and legends. A world that seemed so distant and alien from her current situation. They had both revelled in the tales of kings and queens, princes and princesses, magical kingdoms, goblins, elves and dwarves.
In the distance, from one of the other tents, she heard someone humming a sad mournful tune. Heather blinked a tear from her eye as it ran down her cheek, falling on to the towel. The last few months, scraping a living out there, had been hard. She could admit that to herself now. She didn’t have to pretend to Connor any more. She allowed herself to hope, to dream for the first time in too long. Going back to school seemed like an absurd notion, like eating with a knife and fork, or using conditioner in her hair. Yet, she wanted to believe that l
ife could return to the way it was, that somehow everything would be alright again. She shook her head, refusing to accept that such a life was possible, before slipping into a restless sleep, tossing and turning on the hard, cold earthen floor.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Armstrong was true to his word and returned to Hurst Castle around lunchtime the next day, to address the remaining unanswered questions. Jack had consulted with his team and heard them out. There had been a robust exchange of views. No one liked what had been proposed, though by the end of the session they seemed resigned to their fate.
Leaving their adopted home and all they had worked so hard to build was a bitter pill indeed. Whilst the island undoubtedly promised them all a new start, no one looked forward to starting again from scratch. A phased evacuation to the island now seemed inevitable. The consensus seemed to be that the sooner it happened the better. Jack for one had volunteered to stay behind until the bitter end to oversee an orderly withdrawal. Several others raised their hands, offering to keep him company, putting off the inevitable.
By the time Armstrong joined the group, there was little left to be said. There were a few clarifying questions, assurances sought, details agreed. The two leaders shook hands and Armstrong thanked them all for their understanding.
Jack wandered outside to get some fresh air. It had been claustrophobic in there. He felt overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding. He was not one for holding grudges, but would not forget in a hurry that he had been backed into a corner, pressured into a decision he accepted, but didn’t necessarily support. “For the greater good” was the expression used a little too frequently for his liking.
His head was still pounding from the vodka Anders had plied him with the night before. They had stayed up into the early hours playing cards in the lighthouse round Jack’s kitchen table, putting the world to rights. The two men enjoyed each other’s company. Anders was someone he trusted implicitly.