Ice Diaries (4 page)

I was out of the flat a lot. I dream of
getting away from London and going south to where the snow stops.
Everyone shares this dream, even if we seldom talk about it. A means
to get south is like Rick’s letters of transit in Casablanca,
universally desirable. And I’ve worked out a possible way to do
it: a powerkite. I had a friend from uni who was into them, and I’ve
got his four-line kite and control bar. Back in the early days,
before the snow was as deep as it is now, I went to Tom’s home,
painstakingly working out the street with an A-Z – you could do
that then, enough buildings’ roofs showed – and dug down
to his flat. It was strange, seeing the place so different from how I
remembered it; cold, dark and silent like an excavated tomb. I was
afraid his body would be there, but the flat was empty. I hope he got
away.

Tom used the kite on water with a
special surf board, which is no good for snow, so I’d have to
make some sort of sledge. Ideally with a steering mechanism, because
otherwise I’d spend too much time waiting for a north wind,
whereas with steering, most winds would do. If I found a go-cart or
something similar I might be able to fit skis instead of wheels –
if I could find skis – but I don’t have the engineering
skills or tools to make one from scratch. It needs to be light and
able to hold provisions as well as me, and has to be reliable to take
me all the way. It’s a matter of getting lucky while
scavenging. Meanwhile I take the kite out regularly and practise
controlling the lines. I’m determined to master the darned
thing. The others have seen me with the kite, but don’t know
what it’s for. Nina takes it as evidence of my frivolity.

Sometimes I think it’s evidence
of my futility, because the task is beyond me. Which may be all to
the good, because going south and leaving Greg and Claire and the
rest to a fate I’d evaded might give me survivor’s guilt
for the rest of my life.

I worry about the future. Surely the
others must too, but they hardly ever mention it. A month ago we ran
out of tinned raspberries. No big deal, you may say, we’ve
still got pineapple, pears and peaches. But what happens when we run
out of other things? What happens when we run out of everything?

Our monthly meeting is always held at
Nina and Archie’s flat in Cromwell Tower, the next building
along from Claire and Paul, at ten o’clock on the last
Wednesday in the month – that is the last
Thursday
, if
like me you’ve kept correct track of time. (I’ve got to
stop thinking this, as we all operate on Nina Time these days;
henceforth I’ll use her, wrong, dates. Except for important
ones, like David’s birthday.)

On impulse I popped in to see Claire on
my way there. Paul had already left for the meeting. Toby was asleep,
and Gemma was practising the recorder in a corner. Claire looked
bright-eyed and pretty and I told her so.

“It’s the relief –
I’m just so happy it’s over and Toby’s fine, I feel
like dancing round the room. I hated being pregnant, quite apart from
knowing the birth was coming up. I never got that bloom you’re
supposed to. I feel much better now.”

“Well, you look terrific.”

“I put a bit of makeup on this
morning, and that helps. I look washed out without it. I’m not
like you, Tori. It’s so unfair.” Her eyes ran over me.
“Even when you’ve got straight out of bed and your hair
needs washing and your clothes are all baggy, you still look like a
model. It’s those cheekbones.”

“I don’t, I look a mess.”
I twisted a neglected lock round my finger. “It’s such a
business washing my hair. I should do it more often, but I’m
lazy.”

I stayed to chat longer than I meant.
Claire wanted to hear all about Morgan, not that there was much to
tell, then Gemma wanted to play me her latest tune. So I was the last
to arrive – I could see the others through the windows as I
climbed on to the terrace, a big space which must have been lovely
for eating outside in summer. The roof juts out so they aren’t
always having to sweep the snow from the tiles as I am at my place. I
took off my jacket in the warmth of the living room – Nina is
home more than me, so can keep their stove fed – and said hello
to everyone.

The flat has a similar layout and
dimensions to Claire and Paul’s; a generously sized three
bedroom apartment with dining room and study, but tidier, with no
indication of the daily struggle to survive in hostile circumstances.
Nina is house-proud. The big round carpet is spotless, every surface
free of fingerprints and dust – though there is very little
dust these days. My theory is a lot of it used to come from car tyres
wearing away. Once inside, the place gives the illusion that
civilization is still going strong, and if you went and looked over
the terrace wall, far below you would see traffic and people hurrying
by on the pavements. They don’t have children, something which
is I think a regret to Archie, but just as well for the children.
(I’m being unkind, but I wouldn’t want Nina for a mother,
she’s far too bossy.)

They sleep in one of the bedrooms, and
the firewood is stacked in another room, even though this arrangement
means a lot of fetching and carrying for Archie. He never complains.
Archie is probably the nicest person I’ve ever met, always
looking for the best in people, and finding it. He’s a Church
of England vicar, although this is not necessarily the secret of his
niceness. I don’t know what he’s doing married to Nina.
There’s a big carved crucifix on the wall Archie salvaged from
his church before it disappeared beneath the snow. On Sundays he
celebrates Holy Communion there. I’m afraid most of us don’t
attend, being unbelievers.

Though I don’t share his beliefs,
I find his faith oddly comforting. I once asked him why God had let
billions of people die miserably. His brow furrowed. “I don’t
know. God moves in mysterious ways. We are like moths living in a
carpet, unable to see the pattern. One day we will.” He smiled.
“That includes you, Tori, when to your surprise you come to
glory.”

Archie called me over and I joined him
and Paul. “Paul was telling me he doesn’t know what he’d
have done without you while little Toby was being born.”

“He’s being kind. Claire
did all the work. I mostly watched and tried not to panic.”

Paul said, “You stopped both of
us panicking.”

Archie nodded. Nina insists he shaves,
so he is the only beardless man here; with no running hot water or
electricity it’s a daily chore the other men see no point in.
He smiled at me, shifting his head a little to get a clear view. The
left lens of his spectacles is cracked across, and of course he will
never be able to get it replaced. “And I hear she rescued a
stranger lost in the snow on her way home.”

“Hey, I can’t help being
awesome. It’s just the way I am.”

Nina had put sheets of paper at the
head of the polished wooden dining table ready for the meeting,
glasses and a carafe of water. She is chairman – she’d be
interrupting all the time if anyone else did it, so we’ve taken
the line of least resistance and her tenure of the post is permanent.
She tapped a glass with her pen.

“Can I have your attention? We’ll
start now Tori’s arrived, if you’ll all sit down.”

We took our seats round the dining
table. Silence fell, and Nina picked up her agenda. She read the
minutes of the last meeting, which we approved by a show of hands.
Every time, this clinging to ancient formalities amid the wreckage of
civilization strikes me as slightly bizarre.

“First on the list,
congratulations to Claire and Paul on the new addition to our little
community.” Murmurs of good wishes ran round the table, and
Paul thanked us and said mother and baby were doing well. “Next,
Morgan. You all know we have a stranger in our midst as of last
Sunday, staying with Tori. Tori, perhaps you can tell us a little
about him and his plans?”

“There’s not much to tell.
He’s slept most of the time he’s been here, just waking
to wolf down food and going back to sleep. He was exhausted and had
lost some blood from a cut on his side when he arrived.”

“Do you know if he’s
staying or passing through?”

“I think he’s on his way
somewhere, but he hasn’t said much. I really know very little
about him.”

Nina gazed at me over the tops of her
spectacles, waiting for more. Greg helped out. “He’s got
a big black tattoo on his back. Tori said it’s called a tribal
tattoo.”

“Thank you, Greg, but that’s
not really the sort of information I was after,” Nina said
repressively. “I was actually wondering when he’d start
to contribute to joint projects. Which brings me to, if that’s
really all Tori has to offer, the subject of firewood. How are
everyone’s stocks lasting? Should we schedule a Firewood Day?”

We agreed we’d have one next
Wednesday, and talked a bit about where to scavenge the wood from,
and whether there was any prospect of laying our hands on another
axe. The discussion wandered off-topic, and Nina glanced at her watch
and brought us back to order.

“Let’s move on. Rats in the
shops. Charlie says their numbers are building up. Any ideas for how
we can deal with this?”

Greg opened his mouth, and I think was
about to volunteer to lessen their numbers by taking one home, but in
the end he kept quiet. Nina suggested Sam and Charlie’s cat
might help out, but they shook their heads in unison. She wasn’t
used to hunting and might get bitten. Charlie fetched Nina’s
Argos catalogue to look for traps, but they only had plug-in Rodent
Repellers, no good without power. None of us were enthusiastic about
looking for nests and hitting rats over the head, a solution
tentatively proposed by Paul. Dissatisfied, Nina switched topics.

“While we’re on the subject
of the shops, may I remind everyone that we agreed we’d only
use them as a group? There are plenty of other places you can go to
do personal foraging, or you can wait for our set days. I expect
everyone to behave responsibly about this, else it’s not fair
on the rest of us.”

Expressions round the table were
carefully bland and innocent; only Greg looked shifty and hung his
head. Nina has a bee in her bonnet on this subject, and it’s
easier to humour her. The fact is, we all go on our own if there is
something we need – I even saw Archie in Argos on one occasion.
Nina suspects we don’t keep to the rule, and it irks her that
she has no way of enforcing it.

“Now, contacting other groups of
survivors.”

Every so often, we talk about
travelling to check out Londoners like us who are living in scattered
enclaves. Greg is keen on this; he fancies having more people to
trade with, and Archie feels it his duty to reach out if at all
possible, because there might be people needing a priest. Charlie
dreams of moving into a larger community where there would be a
bigger audience for literary events and it would be possible to start
a writing group – maybe even set up a micro-publishing
business. The problem is, travelling on foot is arduous and although
the smoke from their fires seems deceptively near, it would take the
best part of a day to get to them. And we don’t know what our
reception would be like, or whether they’d put us up overnight
which we’d need if we weren’t to walk solidly for a day
and a night. Tantalizingly, below ground is the tube network,
reaching out like a spider’s web throughout London. Once in the
tunnels, you could walk anywhere without getting lost. The difficulty
is access; most underground stations are in low rise buildings. You’d
have to dig down to them, and dig up when you reached your
destination. Our nearest, Old Street, is beneath twenty metres of
snow. So for practical purposes, those other settlements might as
well be on distant planets. As ever, we decided to postpone a
decision.

“Moving on. The book club. Tori,
what have you got for us?”

We take turns to choose a book to read
and discuss; it has to be one the chooser can find several copies of.
The last novel we read was Charlie’s choice,
Madame Bovary
.
Charlie said it was a seminal work and a masterpiece, and is no doubt
right, but I found it depressing. Nina objected to the dislikeable
and immoral heroine, and Claire said the ending when poor little
Berthe went to work at the cotton mill made her cry. I don’t
think it was Archie’s cup of tea either, but he said you had to
admire it as a fascinating study of nineteenth century French
provincial life. (We’ve yet to read a book he didn’t find
something nice to say about.)

I dug in my bag. “
Can You
Keep a Secret
, Sophie Kinsella. I’ve got four copies.”
I handed them round to a certain amount of eye rolling and lip
pursing from Nina. She prefers more literary works, though she has a
weakness for family sagas. “It was that or
Bleak House
–
I found six copies – but I thought we could do with something
frothy and feel-good next.”

There was no other business; Nina
reminded us there was a group forage on Friday, and a ceilidh on
Saturday, and we all went home. A typical meeting.

That evening Greg came over for his
postponed wash. He could do it at his place, but I suspect he’d
be tempted not to bother, and anyway, he’s in the habit of
coming here. Greg is my nearest neighbour. His flat is in a council
block not far from me, just off Old Street. It’s not
particularly nice; the rooms are small and the ceilings are low –
though admittedly this makes it easier to heat – and the
windows are UPVC with those ugly thick glazing bars. Nina told him he
should move into the Barbican, Bézier or the office block
where Charlie and Sam live above Liverpool Street Station. Not so
he’d have a nicer home, but because she thinks he needs keeping
an eye on. But he chose this flat himself, and likes it, which is all
that matters. Like the rest of us he lives in one room, and uses the
two bedrooms to house his collections, arranged on shelves he has
found and installed all round the walls. He keeps his stores in the
flat next door. Greg is the only one of us – possibly the only
person on the planet – who prefers life after the collapse of
civilization. He used to live in sheltered accommodation, with rules
and restrictions, being told what to do all the time. Even choosing
his clothes was done under supervision. Now he is his own boss, and
has friends and things to do that keep him busy every day. He has
blossomed. He’s actually happy.