The Second Life of Sally Mottram

by David Nobbs

  Now, in the buses and commuter trains and cafés and pubs, the optimists, who believed the threat had all been exaggerated, were well and truly routed. Now it was the turn of the pessimists, who had known all along that the threat had been underestimated, the council couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery, there was a criminal shortage of sandbags, Potherthwaite had learnt nothing from history and had been caught with its trousers down yet again.

  Many of the people who were now accusing the council of complacency were the same ones who had earlier accused it of panicking. But let us not despair of human nature. Large numbers of people were not debating these matters, because they had no time to do so. They were ready, waiting, to act, to help, to save. Several of them stood with short-wave radios, ready to exchange the latest situations and make the swiftest and most accurate decisions.

  If you have not stood around for hours, in the dark, on a wet night in a Pennine town, you will find it very hard to picture just how wet it was that night. Think of standing for five hours in the shower fully clothed with the cold water on maximum and you may just be beginning to get there.

  All over the town, people, anxious to help, anxious to be seen to help, were placing unnecessary sandbags on top of sandbags. At danger points in the town and in the Pother Valley beyond the town there were drenched people trying to keep their short-wave radios dry. In the kitchen of number 6 Cadwallader Road, six young men from the Baggit Estate were playing poker while waiting to be called to rescue Ellie from the front room. On the rising river the bipolar mallard were in skittish mood. Down at the Quays, some twenty or so boys and young men came down with extra boathooks, ready for the moment when the placid canal suddenly became a river after the sluice gates had been opened. These young men were also from the Baggit Estate, and had been sent by Luke Warburton. Since Sally had shown her trust in him the estate had been transformed. Flood Protection had become the New Hooliganism.

  The waters continued to rise, frighteningly so now. The river was almost brim full and running fast. Luke and his young men could barely concentrate on their poker, Conrad had his hand on the mechanism for opening the sluice. Marigold brought him a bottle filled with whisky and water, a flask full of hot tea, and a supply of cream buns. He had a weakness for cream buns.

  And what of the man who had worked so feverishly, so obsessively, all on his own, night after dark night, on his secret project? Up at the supermarket the last customers had left, and Matt Winkle, abandoned by his wife, abandoned by Jade Hunningbrooke, abandoned by the world, locked all the doors. Ten minutes later, when the last of the cars had left the sodden car park, he opened the great doors at the back, where the delivery lorries came. It was time to implement his plan.

  Back in the town, the water was hurling itself against the tops of the river banks, overlapping here and there against the walls of sandbags. Just in time Conrad opened half the great sluice gates. Water, released like sheep from a pen, poured down the sluice, rushed across the winding hole and formed quite a wave as it was funnelled into the narrow canal.

  The wave came rushing down the canal, sailing over the still waters as if they were solid. It surged past the Canal Basin, sped on towards the boats like the Severn Bore. It crashed into them, sending their bows out towards the centre of the cut. The mooring ropes stretched and moaned but did not break. The boats, able to swing no further, hurtled back towards the quayside. Their owners and some of Luke’s recruits from the Baggit Estate fended them off valiantly with their boathooks, preventing damaging collision with the merciless stone of the Quays. Now, after the first impact of that wall of water, the boats rode the unaccustomed tide more happily. Except for Harry and Jill’s. Water began to slip into the cabin of their new home, slowly at first, then a little faster as the leak grew worse. Harry and Jill cried out, and people ran to their rescue. Terence and Felicity Porchester left their boat to chance and the elements, and hurried over with bowls. Teams of balers scooped up the water, passed the full bowls through the companion-hatch, but the gap in the planks was widening, and it was hard, hard work to keep up with the rising water.

  They had barely started when Sally contacted them on the short-wave radio. She was coordinating matters from the middle of the bridge where the river was thundering under High Street West. She could just as easily have done it from home, but she was a commander who felt the need to be seen to be as wet as her troops. Her crackling message told of a crisis at the Canal Basin. The sandbags were barely holding.

  Jill and Harry shouted to their helpers to abandon their boat and go to the Canal Basin. Terence and Felicity Porchester and Eric Sheepshank abandoned their boats too. A crowd of Baggit Boys followed them. All was chaos. There was a slight bend in the cut near the Canal Basin and the water was hitting the side at an angle and was not able to flow away fast enough, so the level was rising over the canal itself and hitting the sandbags piled above the canal bank, and threatening the stability of the sandbags.

  Conrad opened the sluice gates still further, now that the waters had almost stabilized on the canal. As more and more of the diverted water began to pour along the canal, the level of the river began to fall back very slightly.

  Ben rushed to the Canal Basin. What a crowd there was. Harry and Jill, Terence and Felicity, Eric, the vicar, Linda Oughtibridge, several large Baggit Boys, and little slight Lucy. Love surged through him like an echo of the wave that had swept down the canal.

  People were pressing their weight against the sandbags, some of which were threatening to slide out of their flimsy, soaking wall. Other people were fetching more sandbags. People were getting in each other’s way, and there was panic and confusion everywhere, despite busy, bald Harry’s frantic commands.

  Sally’s radio burst into crackling life again. There was also a crisis on the river, right under where Sally was standing on the High Street West bridge. Ben grabbed hold of Lucy and took her off in that direction. Harry began to divide people between the two crises, shouting the names as if on the parade ground at Catterick Camp. And still the torrential, relentless rain continued. Everyone was soaked. Everything was soaked.

  His urgency, his joy, his insanity, gave huge strength to Matt Winkle. The force of the river here was huge, this really was a torrent. He couldn’t see the banks. He walked the length of the short canal that he had dug, and as he approached the river he was in at least a foot of water. He had placed a wooden barrier across the end of his canal, and it had held. He had made it too well, too strong, and now he had to remove it. He was bending down, standing in more than a foot of water, pulling with all his might. The barrier came up suddenly and he fell backwards, still holding on, and crashed down on to it. The barrier was now a raft. The water at the side of his little canal took his raft, with him on it, into the ditch that he had dug, which was filling with water pouring in from the river. He was white-water rafting on the raft he had built in the canal he had dug, the Matt Winkle Overflow Canal linking the River Pother and the supermarket in a miracle of modern science. He was ecstatic.

  His ride was short and exciting. The raft tossed and turned like an angry bronco. At the end of his short canal, it hit the edge of the lorry park. Matt jumped. Little helpless Matt. Callow, sallow Matt. Supermarket man but not Superman. Suddenly he was Superman. He jumped over the edge of the concreted lorry park, landed inelegantly on the concrete, but he just managed to stay on his feet. He had built two rudimentary walls of sandbags leading across the lorry park from the end of his canal to the big delivery doors at the back of the supermarket. He ran along them, waving insanely to non-existent crowds cheering the finish of his biathlon. He ran into the supermarket with the first of the water. Now he could have hurried through, opened one of the front doors, and slipped away. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He was mesmerized. He was ecstatic. He was orgasmic. He was mighty. He was God.

  Back in the town, Sally radioed through and put Luke and his boys on Red Alert. ‘Red Alert,’ she said. ‘Standby Positions.’ ‘Red Alert
Operating. Men at Standby Positions,’ radioed Luke excitedly, breathlessly. Sally couldn’t see the scene in number 6, but she could imagine it – six strong Baggit Boys standing proudly, three at each side of the bed, their hands out ready to dive under Ellie’s back at the call to action, Ellie smiling bravely if a little fearfully, Ali and Oli on tenterhooks.

  Despite the sterling efforts of the helpers at the Canal Basin, the sandbag wall was leaking. But it hadn’t yet collapsed. Leaks didn’t matter. Collapse did. And, at the newer crisis point, underneath the High Street bridge, the collapse of the river bank was distinctly possible. A small portion was on the point of breaking away. It was being shored up with sandbags, but not fast enough. The water was only trickling as yet, but the trickle was getting wider. Access was difficult. The bridge was held up on iron columns drilled into brick foundations. Behind these columns, deep in darkness, the water was banging against earth and sandbags. The sandbags weren’t holding. People were fetching more, but they couldn’t squeeze through under the bridge and have room to stand and place the sandbags in the correct positions. Lucy, slim and agile as an eel, with the balance of a trapeze artiste, was just what was needed.

  The bags were sodden and heavy. Ben could hardly carry them, but only he was slim enough to get through and throw the bags as gently as he could to Lucy. Their work rate was prodigious. They were winning the fight. After all, this was a girl who at the age of seven had balanced on a rubber ball and caught live fish in her mouth. The gap was narrowing fast. But then, when the job was almost done, Lucy reached out one more time, and slipped. She was in the water, tossed against one of the iron columns, she was away, downstream, carried on the roaring torrent, far beyond the bridge, with the remorseless waters pushing her towards the hard containing wall of the churchyard and its graves.

  Ben’s heart-rending cry of ‘Lucy!’ was swept away by the screaming wind, and then he hurled himself headlong into the angry water. He’d been swept to the middle of the swirling river before he even remembered that he could barely swim two struggling lengths of the municipal baths. He could see Lucy far ahead, still managing in her magnificent athleticism to swim in the choppy waters. And then he began to sink.

  But a third person had seen Ben’s jump, and now this person – a man, surely, from the bulk of his body – also flung himself into the torrent. Watchers on the bank could see that this man, whom they couldn’t recognize in the dark, was a strong swimmer, and before they could even think what to do he had been taken far down the river, and was swimming frenziedly, forcing himself away from the wall of the cemetery, which would crush him to death if he gave it the chance.

  ‘No point in following,’ shouted Harry. ‘Nothing we can do. Save the town. Get those sandbags. Plug the gap.’

  Lucy, swimming for her life, heard none of this over the wailing of the wind. Ben was barely conscious.

  The third swimmer couldn’t see Ben in the night’s darkness. There was no chance. No chance at all.

  Behind him, unbeknown to him, young men and women from the Baggit Estate continued their heroic battle against the waters.

  Far upstream, unaware of any of this, Matt Winkle was a happy man. He had climbed a stepladder and was surveying the huge customer area from the top of it, laughing maniacally as the waters rose. The amount of water was amazing – he hadn’t been aware till now how huge his temple of Mammon was. He was five foot eleven and couldn’t swim. God, he was enjoying this. The water rose remorselessly over bags of unripe, tasteless, artificially ripened fruit. Pears that would go bad before they ripened, nectarines with the texture of mush, stony-hearted avocados, peaches that had never even smelt the sun – water pouring over them, and the blatantly dishonest notices carried away on the flood, ‘Ripe and ready to eat’, ‘Juicy and full of summer promise’, ‘Crisp and orchard-fresh’. How he roared as they were carried away by the waters. Up yours, Mrs Walton, with your endless complaints. Up yours, Miss Mountford, with your delusions of style. He judged that there were at least eight feet of water everywhere. How he laughed. He was happier than he had been since he’d ceased to be an ambitious, hopeful youth. What a way to die, watching the destruction of his hated supermarket.

  Sally too had no knowledge of the drama on the river, even though it was happening so close to her. She was concentrating on Operation Ellie. ‘Red Alert Activated. Operation Ellie, Action,’ she called out urgently on her radio. ‘Red Alert Activated. Operation Ellie Activated,’ cried Luke Warburton ecstatically.

  Luke and his five helpers slowly raised Ellie’s mighty body, ready for the journey upstairs. Slowly, with infinite care, they approached the door out of the front room with their mighty cargo. Three of the young men went slowly backwards through the door into the corridor that led to the stairs. They walked backwards over towards the far wall of the corridor, beginning to turn Ellie’s front half slowly towards the left. In the room they were pushing her great nether regions to the right, hoping against hope that they would be able to get her through – she wasn’t a bendy bus. Luckily, although fat, she wasn’t tall. They just made it. They were breathing hard. They looked at the stairs, and the sharp corner on the stairs, and wondered how they could ever get her up the stairs.

  The unidentified swimmer could see only the foaming, tossing water of the River Pother. He felt in his heart that Ben must have drowned. But there were lights on the quay in front of the great lines of the old mills, and suddenly where a ray from one of the lights struck the water he saw a body hurled into the air like a dead dolphin. But the body was not dead – it was flailing its arms, though to no avail, and it was sucked under the surface again. Frantically the would-be rescuer swam on, though his arms were seizing up. He dived towards the spot where Ben – it had to be Ben – had disappeared, though by this time he wasn’t certain if it was the right spot. But then he felt him. He opened his arms and grabbed at Ben’s body. The water tried to tear Ben away, but he hung on. He was in pain. His heart was bursting. He was having a heart attack. He was dying. But he pushed on, pushed Ben upwards, upwards, upwards, their faces were suddenly above the water, Ben was still alive, they weren’t far from the quay, on the edge of the quay men were waiting to help, urging them on, he pushed on through swords of pain, he was there, the men were bending down and reaching out to pull them ashore, someone cried, ‘We’ve got him,’ and he let go of Ben. He was falling now, falling back, too weak to push himself any more, hands were grabbing him, pulling him upwards, but at the same time he was falling, falling into his grave. The darkness crept over him, covered him, now he was unconscious, now he was dead.

  Several strong men lifted him over the cobbles and then lowered him gently to the ground. The gentleness seemed unnecessary. He wasn’t breathing.

  Lucy, who had swum entirely single-mindedly, with no knowledge of the mayhem behind her, looked aghast at the choking, coughing Ben, and the lifeless body of the Revd Dominic Otley. Paramedics hurried towards the inert vicar, but a very square woman hurried faster than any of them, charging past the shattered Lucy, the vomiting Ben, the calm, measured paramedics.

  ‘Let me through,’ cried Linda Oughtibridge. ‘Let me through. I’m going to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.’

  The vicar suddenly coughed violently, and a great stream of river water and a small shoal of tiny perch emerged from his mouth.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said one of the paramedics.

  ‘I don’t care. I’m going to give it anyway,’ cried Linda Oughtibridge.

  Luke Warburton and his gang never did lift Ellie up the stairs, and Matt Winkle didn’t die. To his huge disappointment, the water level stopped rising. The river stopped rising too, and so did the canal. Conrad was the first to realize why. No more heavy rain was falling on the sodden moors. It had started earlier in the hills, and it had stopped earlier in the hills. It didn’t matter that it was still raining in Potherthwaite, that was no danger. It had stopped where the streams fed the river.

  The front t
hree of the six Baggit Boys were just stepping backwards on to the alarmingly narrow stairs when their radio crackled and there was Sally’s voice.

  ‘Sally to Luke. End of Red Alert. Beginning of Yellow Alert. Abort mission. Remain at action stations. Over,’ she said.

  ‘Luke to Sally. Thank the fuck for that. Over,’ said Luke Warburton.

  The Baggit Boys slowly manoeuvred Ellie back into the front room and into bed. Now, the rain was slackening off in the town as well, in fact it had almost stopped. Conrad announced that the weathermen had told him that there would be no more rain.

  Nobody left their posts for another hour. Conrad thanked everyone over the short-wave radio, and explained that since they were so close to the source of the river, the water level would start to drop quite soon, and quite rapidly.

  The emergency was over. Miraculously, although water did escape, it was not in amounts that threatened more than minor damage. Miraculously, Lucy, Ben and the vicar suffered no more than bruising. Miraculously, the town had survived with only three casualties. Linda Oughtibridge lost an earring, Digger Llewellyn broke one of Ali’s very best teacups, and Harry and Jill’s narrowboat, sacrificed for the greater need, sank back into the silt at the bottom of the Potherthwaite Arm of the Rackstraw and Sladfield Canal.

  FORTY-ONE

  After the deluge

  By the time they got into the pubs it was past closing time, but none of them had dared to close that night, and any policeman who had arrested anybody for drunkenness would never have felt it safe to set foot in the town again. There were, of course – there always are – a few catastrophiles who felt cheated of disaster. People who see everything in sexual terms find it difficult to cope with anything that doesn’t end in a climax. But these people kept a very low profile in Potherthwaite that long, noisy night.