Sixty Days to Live (45 page)

With this gear they mounted the stairs of the main block and, as the proper exit was hopelessly blocked, climbed out to the roof through a broken skylight. Before taking the altitude of the sun they mounted the iron staircase to the top of the two-storey tower overlooking the roof gardens for a good look over London through their binoculars. They were amazed to see, in the clear, frosty air, that towards the south a huge section of the city had been entirely blotted out. In the near distance they could see the tops of Grosvenor House and the Dorchester to their right, and the Air Force Headquarters in Berkeley Square to their left. Farther off, the modern tower of Westminster Cathedral was still standing, but Big Ben and the dome of St. Paul’s had disappeared, evidently having been overthrown. The queer thing was, however, that about a mile away in each direction, towards the curve of the river, the roof-tops of the medium-sized houses merged into a flat plain of snow.

‘It looks to me as if the river is still flooded to a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet,’ said Gervaise.

‘Surely the water all over the world couldn’t have risen as much as that,’ Hemmingway murmured doubtfully.

‘One would hardly think so, but the water in the Thames Valley may have frozen over before the flood had time to seep away to a permanent level. There may be several feet of solid ice out there which is supported by the houses. But by this time an air cavity might have been created below it as the flood water runs out into the sea which must still remain unfrozen a few hundred miles farther south.’

‘That’s about it,’ Hemmingway agreed. ‘Anyhow, as it’s just on midday, let’s shoot the sun.’

The simple operation was soon completed and there was no question that the latitude of London was now 71 degrees 14 minutes north instead of 51 degrees 30 minutes north as it had been before the deluge. The city was nearly 20 degrees nearer to the North Pole.

‘All the same, you were wrong about our longitude,’ Hemmingway remarked. ‘Must have been, as we know that London is on 0 and you made us 9 degrees west.’

Gervaise smiled. ‘But if the earth has been thrown off its old axis, as we are now quite certain that it has been, the longitude of London would have altered too.’

‘No. Latitude is calculated from the Equator to the Poles so, if they shift, the latitude of every place on the earth shifts too; but longitude is calculated from London so, however cockeyed the earth becomes, London is still neither east nor west, but dead on zero.’

‘Theoretically, yes; but, in practice, surely all the astronomical tables would be thrown out by an alteration in the point of rising of the sun? I don’t know sufficient about astronomy to prove my point, but one thing is beyond doubt. We are now right up in the new Arctic Circle.’

‘Sure,’ Hemmingway agreed, ‘and it’s one hell of a nasty thought.’

When they went below they found that Sam was preparing to set out on a visit to St. James’s Square. The others thought it rather pointless, as everything which had remained unruined by the flood was available in the store, but he said that he preferred his own clothes to ready-made ones and intended to collect a bag full. Hemmingway volunteered to accompany him so they had an early lunch and the two friends started out at a quarter past one.

As snow began to fall again in the mid-afternoon the others became extremely anxious about them, but they got back after a three-hours’ absence and had a strange story to tell of the changed face of London. Where the streets and squares still remained unblocked by rubble they were now twelve feet deep in snow, but the queer part about it was that where the surface should have sloped downwards in Berkeley Square it no longer did so. The little valley at the bottom of Hay Hill had been filled up so that, in passing it, they were on the level of the second-floor windows. The same thing had occurred on the far side of Piccadilly where the road level should again have sloped south and west. Urged by curiosity to see more of this odd change, they had turned left towards the Ritz and found that the whole of the Green Park was buried under many feet of snow and ice, and
that only the top storey of Buckingham Palace showed above it in the distance.

Turning back they had reached St. James’s Square, which was submerged to its second-floor windows but before going into the house they had penetrated south-west as far as Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s column was broken off short and the square was submerged to a depth of over thirty feet, while the roofs of the buildings at the lower end of Whitehall only just appeared, like a row of bungalows, above the snow line.

They returned with a couple of heavy bags containing clothes for themselves and a certain number of things for Lavina but their journey back had been difficult. At half-past three a bitter wind had started to blow, and with it had come the snow, driving so thick and fast they could see no more than a dozen yards ahead and had constantly had to check their bearings.

On Lavina’s inquiring how the house had fared, Sam told her that it had been impossible to descend to the downstairs rooms as they were full of ice, while the upper ones were in the usual state of chaos and part of the roof had fallen in owing to the weight of snow. Before packing the clothes they had had to get a small fire going to thaw them partially; a process which they set about completing on their return.

Fortunately the others had made and lit additional braziers in their absence, as they had been selecting entirely new outfits of clothes that afternoon, all of which had to be thawed. Lavina had also had a grand time in the Jewellery and Perfumery Departments, while Gervaise and Derek were transporting a supply of cigarettes and, at her special request, a ping-pong table upon which they played after dinner that night.

The blizzard continued the following day and the snow level in Oxford Street had now risen to fifteen feet, bringing it up to the sills of the first-floor windows of the store.

On the previous evening Derek had noticed some canvas baths in the Camping Department so he brought them down after breakfast and, having boiled a number of kettles of water on the braziers, they were all able to enjoy the luxury of a warm tub.

When they had dressed again it seemed to most of them that during the last twenty-four hours their prospects had assumed a much more roseate hue but they were soon to be sadly disillusioned
as Gervaise, who had been watching the snow most of the morning with a worried look on his fine, lined face, called a conference after lunch.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that as leader of our party it falls to me to put forward a proposal which some of you may not regard at all favourably; but I have been considering it for the past two days and it’s only right that I should place the facts before you.

‘As you know, London is now situated in the same latitude as that of Greenland before the deluge. I checked that quite definitely with Hemmingway yesterday. Mercifully we have been spared the horror of seeing the thousands of drowned and mutilated bodies which must lie all about us under the snow; but the thing which concerns us is that London must now for ever remain a city of the dead.

‘The Arctic winter is only just setting in. You have seen for yourselves how the level of the snow has risen in these last few days. Blizzards will continue for many weeks to come, so that long before the winter is over the whole city will be buried in snow and ice. During the flood walls, roofs, floors all became saturated. As water expands when it freezes every structure beneath the snow line is now cracked and would fall to pieces if it were not for the ice which still binds it. When the spring comes a thaw will set in. Everything, even the strongest buildings, will crash in heaps of ruins; then, after a brief Siberian summer, they will be buried deep in snow and ice again.

‘We might drag out a miserable existence through the winter, like cave-dwellers, living many feet under the surface of the snow and moving to other places when our stores here are exhausted; but, when the thaw comes, the thousands of dead bodies will be exposed again and pestilence will set in. It is unthinkable that we could live through next summer with rotting bodies in every house and street. I know we’ve made ourselves comfortable here; that we seem to have everything that any reasonable person placed in our strange situation could want, and that for a little time we are apparently secure from every hardship and danger. But it is only a temporary security. That is why, however much we may dislike the idea, we have to go on the march again and leave this City of Death behind us.’

‘Leave London!’ gasped Lavina.

‘Yes. And at once. Every day we delay will make things harder
for us as places along the road where we can get supplies will become more difficult to break into. And if we wait until the spring it will be impossible to break into them at all before the thaw comes; because they will be buried too deep. We would be caught too, before we had gone fifty miles, by the plague that will sweep right over England. That is why we must go now.’

‘But where can we go?’ asked Sam in a low, worried voice.

‘To a part of the world that is not frozen. The Equator is now twenty degrees farther south; but conditions there must be much the same as they were in the old equatorial belt. Therefore, there are still semi-tropical lands below the new ice-caps which are forming so rapidly. I know I’m asking you to face incredible hardships but somehow we
must
make the journey out of this land of death to a country beyond the ice-caps where we can dig the soil and make food grow.

‘To live like animals in a burrow, feeding on such tinned food as we can find, until we’re overtaken by pestilence and die a miserable death is no fitting end for people of spirit. It may be that we are the last survivors of the human race. Whatever your beliefs, have any of you the temerity to suggest that among all these countless thousands of the dead we have not been spared for a purpose? Life is in our keeping, and Life must go on. Whatever the dangers and difficulties, we must cross the frozen Channel into France and march south to the Mediterranean.’

‘I can’t!’ wailed Margery suddenly. ‘I can’t! I can’t!’

‘You will,’ Gervaise said firmly. ‘I am determined that we shall live or die in an attempt to preserve that thing which makes us different from the animals. To-morrow we take the Dover Road.’

There was no argument. They all knew that Gervaise was right. If they were to die it would be better to do so soon, numbed into sleep, after a gallant failure, by the coldness of the snow than to cling on for a few brief months tortured by the thought of being stricken down by plague in the coming spring. It was now clear, too, that their one hope of escaping that agonising death lay in starting at once while they would still have easy access to the houses on their route.

That afternoon, very silent and subdued, they made their preparations; visiting many departments of the store and collecting every item they could think of which might make their trek across the snowy world a little easier.

From the sports rooms they carried down a fair-sized sledge, snow-shoes, snow goggles, ski-sticks and three folding tents, each six feet long by four wide by four high, as these would be simpler to erect than one large one. Hemmingway collected maps and instruments while Gervaise selected the food, which had to be easily portable and highly nutritive and stimulating. Such items as glucose, Brand’s Essence, Horlicks Malted Milk Tablets, Oxo cubes and tins of Bantam coffee figured largely in his choice. To eliminate the possibility of breakages he filled a number of silver flasks with brandy while for light and fuel he took candles, two Primus stoves, methylated spirit and a drum of paraffin.

Then all of them went in search of clothes suitable for their journey, selecting fur coats with big collars, fur gloves, fur-lined boots, baggy trousers that could be tucked into the tops of thick socks, loose jerkins and light, woollen underclothes of which three sets could be worn one on top of the other as a better protection against the cold than a single, thicker garment. All of these had to be thawed out and dried, after which they sewed the collars of the fur coats into hoods and a number of fur rugs
into sleeping-bags. They put in eight hours’ hard work with only a short break for dinner, but by ten o’clock their preparations were completed. Still overawed by the vastness of the adventure before them they went to bed wondering when they would spend a night in comfort again.

It seemed to them a good omen that when they woke pale sunlight was filtering through the windows of the store. Gervaise was anxious that they should not lose a moment of it as getting out of London seemed likely to be one of the most difficult parts of their journey. Immediately they had breakfasted they dressed in their furs and looking like six Eskimos pulled the already loaded sledge out of the first-floor window onto the snow which now buried Oxford Street to a depth of nearly sixteen feet.

They would have given a lot for a team of dogs to drag the sledge but there was no alternative to pulling it themselves. It was not very heavy and two of the men could draw it easily, but they knew that hours of hauling it behind them, up hill and down dale, were certain to add considerably to the strain of their journey. Gervaise and Derek formed the first team, strapping the harness round them, while Sam and Hemmingway were to steady the sledge behind and help to lug it over obstructions; it being understood that the parts played by the two teams would be reversed after the halt for rest which they intended to make every hour.

Lavina and Margery shared the task of guiding the party. Margery had no bump of location and was of little use in finding the way, so her function was to walk no more than twenty yards ahead of the sledge, signalling to the men to show the places where the snow lay smoothest. Lavina acted as advance guard. She knew her London better and was less likely to lose her way when it might seem best to make detours down side-streets to avoid dragging the sledge up the hills of snow which covered buildings that had fallen into the roadway.

Gervaise had given her a map of London and pointed out the route he wished them to follow; down Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand, over the river where the frozen ice covered Waterloo Bridge, and thence into South-East London. There they would try to pick up the Old Kent Road where it emerged from the frozen, flooded area. But Lavina had other ideas. It was certain
that the broad thoroughfares were less likely to be blocked than the narrower turnings off Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, so she decided to lead them straight along Oxford Street to Holborn, then down Kingsway to the river; and when they reached Oxford Circus she sent back by Margery a message to that effect.