Sixty Days to Live (35 page)

Again next day the low grey clouds covered the sky as far as they could see in every direction, bearing out any chance of taking the altitude of the sun. To everybody’s surprise Lavina appeared shortly after breakfast in an extremely abbreviated swim-suit with the intention, now the waters were calm and only lapping gently round the Ark, of bathing from its circular platform.

The instant Derek saw her he exclaimed: ‘By Jove! What a grand idea. I’ll be with you in ten secs.’

But by that time Lavina was back again inside the centrally-heated sphere. She loathed the cold and one sniff through her delicately-arched nose at the chill air outside had been quite sufficient to make her abandon all idea of having a swim. Nevertheless she did not change into anything else but lay about all day displaying her admirable limbs.

Hemmingway could hardly keep his eyes off her although he did his level best to expunge from his agitated brain the memories which crowded into it; and Derek fidgeted nervously to such an extent that Gervaise inquired what was the matter with him. He then got down
Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour
and, turning his back on Lavina, determinedly buried his nose in it.

After lunch there was trouble about the cigarettes. They had a fair supply on board but, with a view to making them last as long as possible, it had been agreed the previous night that they should each be issued with a packet of 20 Virginians per day, except Oliver who smoked only his own long cheroots. In addition, they were to allow themselves one Turkish cigarette each after lunch and dinner; for which purpose a box was to be kept in the drawer with the silver for passing round the table at the end of every meal.

As the first box of a hundred had been opened the previous night at dinner only five cigarettes should have been missing from it for Margery, being ill, had not had one; but a whole additional row was gone.

On opening the box Gervaise noticed the shortage at once and, looking round the table, said quietly:

‘I’m afraid somebody’s been cheating.’

‘I have, darling,’ Lavina confessed at once. ‘Twenty cigarettes a day isn’t half my usual ration. As I ran out last night, I raided the box before I went to bed.’

‘Well, you mustn’t do that sort of thing, dearest; it’s not fair to the rest of us.’

‘Now, don’t get excited,’ she said quickly. ‘I only took a couple and I’m not having one after lunch or dinner to-day, to make things even.’

‘But, my dear, there’s a whole row missing,’ he protested.

She shrugged. ‘Well then, somebody else has been at the
box besides myself. If I’d taken more than two I should say so.’

Gervaise knew that in many ways Lavina might be spoilt and selfish but quite definitely she was not a liar. She had never told him a deliberate untruth in her life and he would have staked his beloved home, had he still possessed it, on her veracity. He glanced round inquiringly at the others.

They sat there with blank faces and, after a moment, each in turn denied having had any hand in the matter, so the episode was closed. But it left an uncomfortable feeling and, as Lavina was such an inveterate smoker, those who did not know her as well as her father remained under the impression that she had taken a greater number of the cigarettes than she would admit.

She knew what they were thinking but nothing would have induced her to protest her innocence further; and she was extremely intrigued at the thought that the unusual conditions had already produced a sneak-thief and liar among them. Who it was she had no idea but, with the leagues of water on every side of them and no sign of land, she felt that time would show.

The whole of that second day they spent nursing their hurts and recovering from their bouts of sickness. There were many things still to be done to put the Ark ship-shape but they felt too fagged out to give their attention to it and sat about dozing or speculating on what sort of fate the future might hold for them.

On the third morning after the flood it was still cloudy, but as the weather was calm all of them except Sam and Oliver put on their warmest clothes and went outside to get some exercise by walking round the platform. Although they had little hope of seeing a ship or raft with other survivors, they had kept a fruitless watch all through the previous days on the chance that they might sight a piece of high land which was still above the waters. Now as they made the first circuit of the sphere, they strained their eyes once again to peer into the distance by the pale, wintry, morning light, but in every direction the greenish-grey ocean stretched away unbroken to the horizon.

It was a depressing spectacle for, apart from their own utter loneliness, they saw many evidences of the terrible fate which had stricken Britain. As the Ark drifted gently westward on the current the strangest collection of flotsam and jetsam bobbed along beside it, amongst which were great trees, chicken coops, odd pieces of furniture and dead cattle, poultry and human beings. Once they saw a structure which they thought might be another ark with living people in it, but as it drifted closer it proved to be only a wooden barn. At another time they saw an overturned boat and a little later the wreckage of an aeroplane.

After a couple of dozen turns round the sphere the exercisers went inside again except Derek, who declared that he must keep fit somehow and, weather permitting, intended to do at least 500 turns a day; although he found later that he could not yet manage that number because he was still limping from his injured shin and it began to pain him badly.

Under Gervaise’s directions they set about giving the contents of the Ark a thorough overhaul, a job they had not previously felt up to, and they spent several hours rearranging cargo that had shifted, fixing cords along the book-shelves and making many other arrangements to ensure that things should not be thrown about quite so readily if the sphere were to receive another buffeting.

It was as well that they had done so as, on the fourth day, a wind got up and from a gentle rocking the motion of the Ark increased to a heavy roll. Margery was ill again and Sam, too, was overcome by sea-sickness. By midday they could not see more than fifty yards from the port-holes as huge waves lashed the Ark, tossing it to and fro while blinding sheets of spray hissed over it. The constant rolling proved a frightful strain upon their nerves, as they could settle to nothing in any comfort but had to cling on to fixtures to prevent themselves from being thrown about.

Hemmingway had been feeling ill all day and lost what little lunch he had eaten. Lavina followed suit but she refused to go to her bunk and made those of the party who were still well enough play ‘Consequences’ with her.

Margery lay groaning in her cabin; Sam could not trust himself to stand for long on the heaving floor owing to his ankle, which although better was still weak, and none of the others felt like making tea; so Gervaise went below to get a bottle of brandy from their small cellar. When his grey head appeared above the hatch again and he staggered forward to a chair, Lavina noticed that his expression was unusually grave.

Looking round at them he said sternly: ‘I should be glad if you would remember that when you elected me Captain of the Ark I stipulated that I should have control of all stores. One of you has had a bottle of brandy out of the wine locker without my authority.’

Everyone denied having taken the bottle and Sam suggested that Gervaise might have miscounted.

He assured Sam that he had not. But Hemmingway went below with him to check the cellar and pointed out that although, allowing for the bottle he had just brought up, there were now only ten out of the original dozen instead of eleven as there should have been, owing to the arrangement of the bins it was
quite possible that there had only been eleven bottles there in the first place; and that one might have been found broken in the case when the whole consignment of wines and spirits had been unpacked on arrival from Justerini and Brooks’ London cellars. As there was no other explanation Gervaise had to agree that it might have been so but, all the same, he felt quite certain that there had been twelve bottles of brandy there when he had taken a look round the cellar on the day before the comet had struck the earth.

It was pointless to argue further, so the matter was dropped. Their cellar space being limited, Hemmingway had ordered only of the best, and the mellow, sixty-year-old brandy warmed their stomachs; but the waves continued to thud upon the Ark, making the whole sphere shudder. Restless, uneasy and shaken, they made a scratch evening meal of biscuits and then as there seemed no object in remaining up they lurched to their cabins; but the storm continued throughout the night so they spent miserable hours pitching and tossing in their bunks, able to snatch only brief periods of troubled sleep at intervals.

Derek was first up the following morning and he noticed an unpleasant mess at one end of the living-room. When the others, a hollow-eyed, woebegone-looking crew, had assembled for breakfast, he pointed it out to them.

‘I don’t know who’s responsible for that but, whoever it was, if they hadn’t time to find a basin to be sick in, they might at least have mopped it up afterwards.’

Everyone looked at everyone else but no one confessed to having been the culprit and they were all so miserable that it hardly seemed worth holding an inquest on the matter. Derek, who was as strong as a horse and had never in his life known what it was like to be seasick, mopped up the mess himself. On Gervaise’s then insisting that they should try to eat a little if they could, as it would give their stomachs something to work on, the party sat down to the swaying table and sipped the hot coffee Margery had made for them in spite of her wretchedness.

For the whole of the fifth day the storm continued. Rain sheeted down, obscuring the view from the port-holes. The Ark alternately wallowed in the troughs of the waves or was cast high up on their crests to slide down a farther slope. It never actually turned over, owing to the weight of the stores on its
lower deck which acted as ballast, but it pitched about in so terrifying a manner that even those who were not sea-sick were utterly worn out by the evening. Margery, Sam and Hemmingway lay prostrate in their bunks. Lavina was sick again but would not give in and staggered or sat about the living-room, her eyes unnaturally large, and her small face chalk-white.

On the second night of the storm it eased somewhat and the morning of the sixth day after the flood they crawled from their bunks to find that the sea had subsided to an oily swell. During the past few days the rocking of the Ark had been too violent for any of them to have a bath so they employed the best part of the forenoon in that way and by midday were feeling considerably better. The rain had ceased but low clouds still covered the whole sky, so, although they knew from the compass that they were now drifting south they were still unable to calculate their position and had not the faintest idea in which direction or the number of miles that the wind and currents might have carried them. It was still too rough for them to go outside and exercise without danger but by evening they were in normal spirits and had all taken up their allotted duties once more.

Twelve hours later the sea was calm again, but when they looked out of the port-holes they were amazed to see that it had changed colour: it was as black as ink. On going out on to the platform they found the explanation to be that the Ark was now drifting through a great expanse of water which had a foot of sodden black ash floating on its surface.

‘This is the result of a terrific volcanic eruption,’ said Gervaise. ‘The ash has either drifted up here from southern Europe or we have been washed down there by the storm.’

Derek’s leg was now all right and, as the sea was now calm he decided to do his five hundred turns round the Ark but it was a raw and bitter morning so the others hurried inside again.

By an adjustment of the ventilators and the heating plant the interior of the Ark could be kept at a pleasantly warm temperature without becoming stuffy, so Lavina changed into an old suit of beach-pyjamas. As her normal high spirits had returned to her and they had now been cooped up in the Ark for over a week, she was becoming extremely bored. Having danced for an hour to the gramophone with Derek she decided to occupy herself
by writing a film scenario and cast round among the others for possible assistance.

Sam declared that he was quite useless at that sort of thing. Oliver, who had become a little morose during the last few days, was still automatically busying himself with astronomical calculations which could now be of little value. Gervaise was too interested in the books on folk-lore he was reading. Lavina mentally ruled out Margery as having little imagination and, in any case, being much too busy with her work in the kitchen. That left only Derek and Hemmingway.

Derek was willing enough but, unfortunately, suffered from a complete dearth of ideas. His only contribution, forgetting for the moment the calamity which had overtaken the world, was that there would be a splendid appeal in it if she made her characters hunting people. Hemmingway, although he had failed in his attempts to sell such works of fiction as he had himself produced, at least understood the rudiments of the game and was brim-full of suggestions about types and scenes which might be included in Lavina’s
magnum opus
.

During the next three days they worked out the story. Hemmingway thoroughly enjoyed the business but Derek did not. He thought it a silly game and would have thrown in his hand quite early on had it not been that he was not prepared to allow Hemmingway the satisfaction of remaining Lavina’s sole collaborator. As it was, he used the gramophone as his ally to distract her with dance records as often as he could and, when she was tired of dancing, sat with them at their story-conferences, making occasional facetious comments which were designed to irritate Hemmingway but which Lavina found amusing.

They had passed out of the area covered with floating ash within eight hours of entering it, since when the weather had remained fairly calm but almost consistently rainy. It was on the tenth day that they woke to find the grey clouds had changed to an angry black. Soon after breakfast a strange rain began which was more like black snow; ash-laden clouds from another volcanic area were releasing their burden and, within an hour, the sea was a blackish-grey from the rain of ash and small pieces of pumice-stone which came down with it. The same day, after lunch, Gervaise looked round the table and said: