Sixty Days to Live (33 page)

‘Of course, you old sweet, if you want me to, and I’ll offer to set her hair for her this evening into the bargain.’

When the two girls returned from the kitchen everyone began to talk at once, to cover Margery’s embarrassment, and Lavina inquired quickly what Gervaise thought of Derek’s prospects of recovery.’

‘He’s still unconscious, as you know,’ Gervaise said. ‘I had a look at him several times during the night, and this morning we stripped him and washed him all over. He was in a shocking mess with bruises and cuts, but otherwise uninjured, apart from his head.’

‘That’ll be the packet he got when he was beaten up in Hyde Park,’ declared Hemmingway, ‘unless he’s collected a fresh lot since.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Gervaise shook his grey head. ‘All his major injuries were bandaged, so they’re almost certainly the ones to which you attended three nights ago. I put fresh lint on them, but until he comes round there’s nothing else we can do.’

‘I can’t think why Roy wasn’t with him,’ remarked Oliver. ‘It’s been worrying me all night.’

‘But they became separated in Hyde Park. We told you, Oliver, dear,’ murmured Lavina, with a warning glance at Hemmingway.

‘That’s it,’ he agreed, ‘and Roy may still be quite all right. I expect most people are who had the sense to go underground yesterday, and so avoid the rays of the comet.’

‘Well, we can only hope so,’ Oliver sighed.

Directly after lunch Lavina set about clearing the things and washing up without making any parade of doing so as, having decided to do it, her one idea was to get through the business as quickly as possible.

During the afternoon the weather cleared a little, but the tremors continued, and they sat about uneasily, disinclined to read as the shocks still made them feel sick and shaky every time they came. At four o’clock the sun broke through the clouds, but
it was a pale, watery disc, quite unlike the splendid giver of light and life which had been blazing upon them throughout the mid-June days. Its sinister companion now having rushed from the heavens to bury itself in the North Pacific, the red radiance had disappeared, and, removing the coloured mica shades from the portholes, they looked out once more upon a landscape of normal colours. The lake was greatly swollen from the hundreds of tons of water that had rushed into it both from the skies and down its slopes. The broken trees looked more bedraggled than ever, and the fields to the south were flooded as far as they could see.

What with Lavina’s incessant smoking, Oliver’s cheroots, and all the others puffing at cigarettes from time to time, the atmosphere of the big room had become so loaded that it was almost blue. On Margery’s remarking on it, Gervaise suggested that they should get some air and exercise by walking round the circular landing-stage outside the Ark.

The damp, cool air soon cleared their heads, and they began to feel more cheerful as they followed each other round and round the narrow platform in single file like, as Sam jokingly said, a bunch of convicts.

Once a sudden ‘quake nearly threw them off their balance, but they halted in their tracks, and, flattening themselves against the curving sides of the sphere, hung on by its lifelines until the tremor was over.

Hemmingway was leading the little procession, and it was just five o’clock when, having circled the Ark a dozen times, he passed round its eastern side, and again reached its northern flank. The second he could see round the curve to westward he gave a shout of dismay.

‘Run! Run!’ he cried. ‘Get back inside!’ And plunging forward himself, he dashed towards the door. It was about forty feet away, in the section of the Ark that was facing south-southwest, and, although he was by no means a coward, as he ran his scalp began to prickle with sheer horror. Some of the others followed him, the rest turned and headed back the other way; but a moment later all of them were goggling at the terrifying thing that he had been the first to see.

To westward, over the burnt-out mansion, something that looked like a solid black cloud was advancing rapidly. It had
first appeared as a long, low line over the distant trees, but with extraordinary speed its dead flat edge, straight as a ruler, seemed to leap up into the sky. It was denser than any cloud, and at the second glance they realised that it was a huge wall of water; a vast tidal wave, hundreds of feet in height, approaching at the speed of a racing aeroplane and engulfing hills, trees, gardens, as it rushed upon them.

A mighty wind, caused by the air displaced by the oncoming terror, moaned through the trees, its note increasing to a scream. Trees were snapped off short or torn up by the roots and carried high into the air. From a dull, sullen murmur the voice of the rushing waters leapt in a moment to a thunderous roar. The whole earth shook, winced, and writhed, and tormented nature screamed aloud in a hundred tongues as, tumbling over each other, the six humans fell into the Ark, and Sam, who was last in, slammed its door.

Scrambling to their feet, they staggered to the portholes, and Hemmingway was just in time to see the ruined house crumble to pieces as the giant wave crashed against it and roared on.

Next second it had blacked out the whole landscape, and towered above them to the skies.

‘Hold on!’ yelled Gervaise; and, as they gripped the nearest fixtures, the Ark shot forward like a bullet from a gun, carried away deep in the roaring waters.

For minutes on end they were too terrified even to attempt to think. It was as though some gigantic foot had kicked the ball and sent it spinning. They were flung from side to side and from floor to ceiling like a handful of peas in a tin that is sent rolling down a hillside. Screaming, groaning, their muscles wrenched, their senses reeling, they clung with the strength of desperation to any fixed object they could get a grip on until another twist of the sphere dragged them from it.

At last, the engines and stores in the lower portion of the Ark steadied it and brought the deck almost horizontal again.

Panting, groaning, sobbing, they picked themselves up. As they did so, the Ark began to rise.

The lights had gone out, which added to the confusion, and the portholes showed only as faint, grey patches in the blackness. But as the sphere wobbled upwards they lightened, and it seemed as though a mass of turgid green water was rushing downwards
past them with here and there a dark object glimpsed for a second, which might have been a tree trunk or a body.

With unexpected suddenness daylight flashed into the room again. The air the Ark contained had brought it rushing to the surface; its speed had increased as it rose, so that it popped up like a cork, almost leapt clear of the water, splashed back, and settled to a heavy roll.

To add to the discomfort of the shaken and bewildered party, the floor was now awash with nearly a foot of water which had spurted in through the ventilators, Gervaise having had no time to close them. Slowly and painfully they began to pull themselves together.

All of them were bruised, giddy, half-fainting. With the water splashing about them, and the Ark still lurching from side to side, they dragged themselves to sitting positions, and began to examine their injuries. Hemmingway lay still, under the table. At first they feared that he was dead, but Sam crawled over to him, and, raising his head, found that he had only been knocked unconscious. Oliver was moaning with a broken arm, Margery was being violently sick. Lavina, chalk-faced and gasping, was wishing she could die where she lay, her back propped up against a bookcase.

Gervaise had suffered least. He had managed to throw himself down in the small hallway where the other cabins opened into the living-room and, bracing himself with his shoulders against one door and his feet against another, had succeeded in preventing himself from being flung about like the rest.

Standing up, he went over to help Sam with Hemmingway. As they lifted him into a chair Sam groaned from the pain of a wrenched ankle. Lavina pulled Margery to her feet and, half leading, half carrying her, pushed her into another chair; then she flung herself, sobbing, into Sam’s arms. He nearly fell. She was heavier than she looked, but he managed to support her and, staggering to the settee which ran round two sides of the dining-table, collapsed upon it, drawing her down beside him.

Gervaise helped his brother to a seat, and, looking round, saw that for the moment no more could be done for any of the shattered party. The first thing was to get the sphere clear of water. Wading through it, he fetched a broom from the kitchen;
then, sloshing back across the living-room, he exerted all his strength and wrenched open the door of the Ark.

So far, he had had no time to think or to realise the full significance of what had happened to them; that they had been spared once again and were all alive seemed the only matter of importance. But, as he opened the door and the water gushed out round his knees, he drew a sharp breath. Using the broom to steady himself, he began to stagger slowly round the platform, gripping the handholds on the sphere’s surface with his free hand as he went to prevent himself from being washed overboard.

Far away to the east there was a faint line of whiteness; the foaming crest of the colossal wave as it raced over the country devouring everything before it. He watched it for a few minutes until it had disappeared, fading into the grey of the horizon. Lurching on, he made the full circuit of the sphere.

When he reached the door again he remained there for a moment motionless. They were at sea. The houses, trees, and fields of England lay hundreds of feet below them. On every side, as far as he could see into the grey distance, there lay only the gently heaving waters. They were utterly alone on a huge and desolate ocean.

After Gervaise had come back into the Ark and swept it clear of water, his next job was to attend to the casualties. With Lavina’s help he carried the unconscious Hemmingway into the men’s cabin, but directly they entered it their attention was drawn to Derek by low groans issuing from his bunk.

Having hardly recovered their own wits after their frightful tossing, they had not yet had a chance to think of him; but when the Ark had been overwhelmed by the flood he, like themselves, had been thrown up and down like a pea in a box, and the bumping of his head on the upper bunk had brought him back to consciousness.

After the first blow he had instinctively braced himself against the sides of the bunk and so saved himself from being thrown out or from further injury, but during those awful moments when he was being whirled head over heels like a man in a revolving coffin he had not had the faintest idea where he was or what was happening to him.

While Gervaise undressed Hemmingway, Lavina attended to Derek. It was now four days since he had received his beating-up in the Park and three since he had been trampled on while escaping. But during the last twenty-four hours he had had complete rest, so only his major injuries still pained him, and when he regained consciousness he was perfectly clear-headed.

In his delight at seeing Lavina safe and sound he seized both her hands and kissed them. Giving him a quick kiss on the forehead in return she pushed him back into his bunk and, herself still shaken by her recent terrifying experience, asked him how he had come through the upheaval.

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ he smiled. ‘Until you came into the room I thought I was suffering from a nightmare. The great thing is that
you’re here in the Ark. God! What a time I had trying to find you. But what on earth’s been happening?’

In a few brief sentences she told him of what had occurred when the comet had hit the earth and how a giant tidal wave had just carried them away with it; then, remembering Hemmingway’s suggestion, she added that they had thought it wise not to tell Oliver of the fate that had befallen Roy.

He nodded. ‘Yes, it’d be kinder not to let the old chap know that Roy was killed in a drunken brawl. If he’d been with me in the Park, we might easily have got separated when the prisoners burst out of the enclosure.’

‘What happened to you after you left St. James’s Square in Hemmingway’s car?’ she asked. ‘He was furious about your taking it, you know.’

‘Oh,
damn
Hemmingway! Just because he’s got an outsize brain he behaves as though he were the Prime Minister, Chief of the Imperial General Staff and the Archbishop of Canterbury rolled into one. The smug fool! He tried to order me about as though I was a child, and I wasn’t having any. Naturally I took his car. I was so darned anxious about you and there was nothing else to get around in.’

‘You must have got the note he left, though, saying that he had found me; or didn’t you go back to St. James’s Square that night as you said you would?’

‘No, I couldn’t make it. The trouble was, I thought I’d traced you to Tilbury where they were loading a lot of women on to the liners in the Docks. I didn’t get there till late afternoon and then the rays of the comet sent everybody berserk. People were doing the most extraordinary things. One chap tried to kill me; and a bank manager, who had opened up his bank and was standing outside it giving money away, insisted on my accepting a ten-pound note. I felt pretty gay myself but I more or less managed to keep my wits because the really urgent matter of finding you was never out of my mind. Getting back to St. James’s Square didn’t seem particularly important and it wasn’t till nearly eleven o’clock that I could get anybody to talk sense. Round about midnight I managed to hire a speedboat and went off to the
Kenilworth Castle
which was lying in the estuary of the Thames. I found the woman I was looking for all right and she was pretty as a picture, but it wasn’t you.’

‘Poor darling. It was a gallant effort, though.’

‘Well, naturally I did my damnedest. But when I got back to Tilbury I found that some A.R.P. people had commandeered Hemmingway’s car. I had hell’s own job to get it back again and I only succeeded after sun-up, when the whole world had started to go mad. I wasted two hours myself, playing shove-halfpenny with a fellow in the garage, before I suddenly woke up to the fact that I’d got a job of work to do. After that, the whole business was a kind of nightmare. I’ve no idea what time I got back to St. James’s Square, but I read Hemmingway’s note and set off again for Stapleton. The scenes I saw on my way down just beggar description and I was driving like a lunatic. I suppose the strain proved too much for me by the time I’d reached the park because everything simply blacked out.’