Sixty Days to Live (44 page)

In order to save themselves the labour of thawing out fresh bedding they took their blankets and sheets with them, tied round their bodies like bandoliers. Derek, Sam and Hemmingway each carried in addition one of the bucket-braziers, into which
they had packed the remainder of the unused tinned foods from the inn, some bottles of drink, and various oddments such as the chopper, candles, razors, soap etc., which would come in useful.

As they advanced they came upon many hummocks in and alongside the roadway, which concealed abandoned cars and lorries. When they rested for a little at 9.15, on the slope of another great, snow-covered mound of rubble which blocked the highway, Sam, who knew the road well, was able to tell them that the debris had formed part of Whetstone.

Soon afterwards the road divided and they took the right-hand fork, reaching Finchley by half-past ten. After another rest they pressed on again, arriving just after midday at Golders Green, where they sat down to lunch off some of the cold food they had brought. There was no possibility of mistaking the point at which they had arrived as Sam, Hemmingway, Lavina and Derek were all able to identify the clock tower, near which they ate their lunch, and the long snow-covered roof of the station on the far side of the open square. Part of the station roof had fallen in, as had several of the houses, but most of the blocks were still standing. Further out of London the silence had not seemed unnatural, but here, while they sat eating their picnic lunch on a site that most of them had seen filled with the bustle of modern life, it seemed extraordinary and rather frightening.

By half-past twelve they were on their way again, passing between big banks of snow along the roadsides which partially obscured the low houses set back amid their gardens. As they trudged on the going became more difficult. The sunshine was melting the upper crust of snow, and walking in overcoats with blankets tied round them made warm work. Coming down the Finchley Road past the eastern portion of Hampstead the trek became more laborious still, as most of the way had been lined with big blocks of buildings and many of these had fallen in so that at times the road entirely disappeared.

To their right, as they went downhill, they could get a view of London between the piles of snow-covered ruins, but in spite of the sunshine it was difficult to get a clear impression of the great metropolis. Every roof and spire was snow-covered, which blurred the outlines, and, except for buildings in the foreground, the countless thousands of houses, innumerable big blocks and
well-known landmarks all merged into an uneven carpet of white which stretched as far as the eye could see.

It was three o’clock before they reached the easily distinguishable road junctions at Swiss Cottage, after which the way proved better for a little while as they were once more passing through an area where the houses stood back from the road, but soon the way was again choked by debris where several large blocks of flats had been swept away. By the time they had got to St. John’s Wood Church, where they paused for another snack and a welcome go at the liqueurs, they were all very tired, and the two girls were thoroughly fagged out.

Their thickest clothes, in which they had left the Ark, were only English winter weight and much too light to protect them properly from the rigours of this frozen world. Each time they halted there seemed to creep up their limbs a deathly chill which they could check only by flailing their arms and stamping their feet. Their faces tingled and their eyes smarted from the snow-glare.

Sam suggested that they should shelter in Lord’s cricket pavilion for the night, but as there was still an hour or more to go before sunset Gervaise insisted that they should not lose the balance of the day’s good weather now when, by a last effort, they could cover the remaining two miles into Central London.

At four o’clock they started off once more. The sun had lost its power and all traces of the temporary thaw which had set in at midday had disappeared. The snow crust had frozen solid again but, owing to the partial thaw, it was now treacherously glassy, which made walking hazardous.

The half mile south from St. John’s Wood Church was not so bad, as for a good part of the way they had Regent’s Park on their left but when they entered the north end of Baker Street their real troubles began. The Abbey Road Building Society’s block still reared its tower to the sky, but great numbers of the shops and flats had been demolished by the flood. Instead of a broad thoroughfare Baker Street was an uneven mass of snow-covered debris from ten to thirty feet in height.

At half-past five they were still only half way along it, plodding and scrambling wearily from mound to mound of concealed bricks, beams and girders. Then, from the top of a high mound near the Telephone Exchange they sighted Selfridge’s in the
distance and all agreed that, somehow, they must reach it, as there they would be certain of finding everything they could want, as well as shelter for the night.

Soon afterwards it began to snow again, blotting out both the sinking sun and also the Selfridge building, which caused them extreme anxiety as they might now lose their way among the unidentifiable piles of demolished houses and shops. The next hour was a nightmare. Darkness fell, which added further to their difficulties; their extremities ached with the cold, their legs were giving under them and they were no longer certain that they were moving in the right direction as they dragged themselves wearily through the falling snow from one heap of rubble to another.

A little before seven they stumbled into a level space that Sam and Hemmingway felt reasonably certain must be Portman Square. The girls were now almost fainting with fatigue but the men half-pulled, half-carried them for a further ten minutes up and down a fresh chaos of slopes and valleys until, to their unutterable relief, the great Selfridge building loomed up before them.

As soon as Sam was able to get his bearings he led the stumbling group back a little along Orchard Street to the annexe in which the Provision Department was situated. Its windows were shattered and snow was piled up eight feet deep on the pavement, half-filling the empty frames. They scrambled over it and down into the store. It was dark in there but they lit some of the precious candle-ends they had brought from Barnet and staggered forward.

The floor was slippery with ice and jagged with broken glass. Some of the counters must have floated about in the flood waters as they were piled up at all sorts of odd angles and, as at first the weary party could see no food, they thought that the place had been completely looted; but soon they discovered that most of the remaining stocks had been swept by the water to one side of the gloomy cavern that they were exploring and had been frozen into a solid mass against the wall.

A brief examination of this glassy bank revealed it to be composed entirely of fruit and vegetables, so they turned through an opening into the next department. The same scene of havoc was shown as far as the flickering light of the candles penetrated, but
to their relief they found there a considerable quantity of groceries among which were many tins and bottles, lying in scattered heaps about the frozen floor.

‘The first thing to do is to get a fire going and warm ourselves,’ said Gervaise after an effort to stop his teeth from chattering.

Lavina was almost crying with the cold. The tips of her ears and of her nose were smarting and her fingers ached so much that she thought they were going to drop off. ‘Yes, for goodness’ sake, get one going quickly!’ she stuttered. ‘Even if you have to burn down the whole building.’

‘No need for that,’ Derek grunted. ‘Everything here’s so frozen up it’d take a week to melt it.’

As he spoke he produced the chopper which he had brought with him and started hacking pieces off one of the wooden showcases. Shaking with cold they worked until they had their three braziers going in a clear space near the middle of the department, then stood about them trying to restore some warmth to their chapped hands and half-frozen limbs.

‘We’ll have to make do as well as we can here to-night,’ said Gervaise. ‘It would take us hours to thaw out mattresses.’

‘The carpet section is only above the next entrance so we might get down some piles of rugs,’ Lavina suggested.

Taking the spades and a couple of candle-ends Sam and Hemmingway made their way along and up the ice-covered stone stairs. They found some woolly lamb-skin rugs and bashed at them till they fell apart, each a stiff, solid slab. As the rugs would have taken too long to thaw and dry they beat them. The ice among the springy wool was like spun glass and, once broken into powder, could be shaken out.

By the time they got downstairs with these makeshift mattresses the others had dug into the frozen piles of provisions and set some tins of soup on the fires to warm. Having drunk the soup they spread the rugs on some of the counters, converted their overcoats into pillows and, wrapping their blankets round them, did their best to get to sleep. The counters made hard beds but they were so exhausted that, one by one, they dropped off with the firelight still glowing and flickering on the strange scene about them.

Although it was late when they woke, only a gloomy halflight filtered through the gutted ground floor windows of the
store as these were now almost filled with snow and the snow was still falling. Having breakfasted off a tinned tongue and some
café au lait
, which they mixed with snow and heated over one of the braziers, they prepared for the day’s activities.

It was clear that with the vast resources of the great store at their disposal they could not find a better place for their permanent headquarters and their first business was to select a more comfortable spot in which to settle themselves. Putting out the fires they cooled the braziers with snow so that they could use them to transport the oddments they had accumulated. Then they climbed over the snow bank in one of the windows, made their way to the main block and entered it by a window that gave on to the Tobacco Department.

Deep snow which had drifted in covered the wrecked cases near the windows, but farther in cigar cabinets, tobacco jars, pouches and lighters littered the place in incredible confusion; yet Lavina gave a little sigh of relief as she saw the tumbled piles of cigarettes. Many of them were in tins and the others might still be good for smoking after they had been dried out. Passing into the Book Department they saw that although thousands of volumes lay heaped on its floors most of the shelves were still full, as the weight of the books had kept them from shifting. Scrambling over the piles of books to a back staircase they made their way upstairs.

Owing to the store’s huge bulk its central departments had suffered comparatively little. The flood wave had been less violent when it reached them, and although show-cases and goods had been washed about and left in considerable confusion on the icy floors, no snow had swept so far in through the broken windows.

Beds were the first consideration and going to the Furniture Department on the first floor they took their choice. As the Department abutted on the big windows overlooking Oxford Street they moved the beds back behind the shelter of a row of lifts and decided to screen off this small section of the store. Derek and Hemmingway smashed up some of the surplus beds and relit the braziers while the rest went off to find bedding, screens and other items that they required. To their relief they did not come across any dead bodies but if any of them was alone for a few minutes they found the eerie silence of the place unnerving. It seemed to be peopled by the ghosts of countless dead
shoppers, but the many jobs to be done left them little time to grow morbid. They all worked hard, contenting themselves with snatching a cold lunch, and by mid-afternoon had thawed out mattresses and pillows, provided themselves with screens, tables and chairs, and broken up a good stock of wood to keep their fires going.

While Lavina settled down to warm her feet at the blaze, Gervaise, Hemmingway and Derek returned to the Provision Department. Out in the street another blizzard was raging, but that worried them no longer as they had not far to go and, having buffeted their way through it, they pried a good variety of tinned stores from the icy piles, and several unbroken bottles of wine; all of which they carried back to their new quarters.

In the meantime Margery had taken Sam with her across to the Turnery Department, where she selected an oil stove and such cooking utensils as she would need. Later, it took Sam an hour’s roaming round the store before he found a drum of paraffin, but by six o’clock they were all gathered together with food, drink, warmth and bedding. For the first time in four days their immediate anxieties were relieved and they were able to speculate on the future with some cheerfulness, Lavina becoming her old self again and keeping them in fits of laughter until they turned in for the night.

On their second morning at Selfridge’s it was still snowing, so they set about improving their circumstances by collecting a canteen of silver, china ware, glasses, rugs for the floor, games, a clock, candlesticks, books and all sorts of other items. But a little after eleven the snow stopped and Gervaise said to Hemmingway:

‘I’m still extraordinarily puzzled by this amazing change of climate. To-day is only the 19th of August yet we might be in Moscow in mid-winter. I believe my theory that the axis of the earth has been tilted by the comet must be right and that my observations in the Ark
were
correct. Now the sun has come out I’m going to try to find some instruments to check them.’

‘We ought to be able to find a sextant in the Optical Department,’ Hemmingway declared, ‘and logarithm tables among the books. Let’s get down to the ground floor and see.’

Amongst the piles of smashed glass and wreckage they found several sextants, undamaged in their plush-lined cases. Having
selected one they took also two pairs of powerful binoculars. At the inner end of the Book Department, where the maps and other geographical matter were kept, they succeeded in finding the tables they wanted; then, crossing the small intervening street to the other building, they helped themselves to paper, rubbers, pencils and a set of geometrical instruments.