Alec thought his father was exaggerating, but that night the wind rose to hellish proportions. The sea roared inland once more and this time nothing could stop it. The men who had been working on the breach quailed before its fury and were lucky to escape with their lives. Alec and Bob slept uneasily in their borrowed beds that night, when they finally got back to them in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Alec was first to wake and opened his eyes to the grey light of dawn. For a moment he lay there, puzzled by the unusual hardness of the bed and the fact that the window was in the wrong position, but then it all came back to him and he sat up, glancing around him. Mrs Agar had taken in any villager who needed shelter and Bob, Betty and himself were bedded down on the kitchen floor. His mother and father had a mattress and blankets but Alec himself was simply wrapped in a car rug, with a sofa cushion for his head. Sitting up, he rubbed his elbows ruefully. Last night the kitchen floor and sofa cushion had seemed soft as any feather bed for he was weary to the bone, but this morning both felt pretty damned hard. He glanced towards his parents, still slumbering peacefully, and then got cautiously to his feet. He folded the rug neatly and went over to the window. Outside, the dawn light shone upon what looked like a huge inland sea. From his present position, he could not see a single roof, not even the tips of trees.
Alec frowned. From where he stood he was pretty sure that he should have been able to see, in the far distance, the roofs of the farmhouse, the outbuildings and the tops of the trees which surrounded them. He leaned closer to the window, letting his gaze travel slowly from left to right, but could still see nothing, no familiar landmarks, only water in every direction.
On the mattress behind him, his father stirred and sat up, knuckling his eyes. Alec went over to him. ‘The gale has died down, Dad,’ he said in a whisper, ‘but something strange seems to have happened. I can’t believe the water is as high as the elms and oaks and beeches around the farm, but I can’t see a sign of them. Come and take a look.’
His father got cautiously out from under the blankets – like Alec, he was still fully dressed – and went to stand beside him at the window. Presently, he turned away with a sigh. ‘I int familiar with the lie of the land from here but I’m sure the water int as high as them trees,’ he said heavily, at last. ‘I can’t say as I’ve ever stood in the Agars’ kitchen afore, lookin’ towards Honeywell Farm, but I reckon it’s hid by their outbuildings. It’ll be more to the left, if you see what I mean. But there’s no good ever come of meetin’ trouble halfway. We’d best get down there and tek a look.’
They would have left at once only Betty stirred and sat up, saying in a sleep-drugged voice: ‘Is it morning? What day is it? The wind’s dropped, thanks be to God; I woke in the night and saw the moon and the clouds scudding across it and realised I couldn’t hear the howling of the wind.’ She began to get out of bed. ‘Now don’t you two go chargin’ off until you’ve got something inside you. I’ll blow up the fire and pull the kettle over the flame, then there’ll be hot tea ready for the Agars when they get up and you can start off with something to line your stomachs.’
The two men exchanged glances and Alec began to demur, to say they must not waste time, but his mother ignored him, and very soon they were drinking hot tea and eating bread and jam as quickly as they could.
‘Oh, I know you’re in a hurry,’ Betty said, smiling indulgently at them both. ‘But there won’t be much you can do until the water goes down. Then there’ll be work enough for an army, I dare say.’
Bob mumbled that she was probably right and he and Alec escaped into the yard, leaving Betty making porridge in a huge black cauldron and advising them to return before it was all eaten by the other refugees from the storm.
‘Well, now to see what damage has been done,’ Bob said grimly, as they set off in the direction of their home. ‘Your ma will have lost them beehives, though, more’s the pity. She’s been doin’ so well with ’em, too. Still, we can buy in new stock, though it’ll be a blow if the hives have gone.’
As they got to the end of the lane, the water met them, ankle deep at first, then knee deep, then up to their thighs. ‘We’d best take to the fields,’ Bob advised his son. ‘They’re a bit higher than the lane and the water won’t be so deep.’
They struggled through the hedge and stood for a moment, surveying the bleak and terrible scene. It was just water. The tops of the hedges were beginning to show, but of other landmarks there was no sign. Alec glanced to his left, to where there should have been the protective stand of trees which had surrounded the farm. He grabbed his father’s arm and pointed. ‘Half our trees have gone,’ he said bluntly. ‘The big oak is down and must ha’ brought a couple of the elms with it. Oh, my God, look at the house!’
It was impossible to believe, at first, that they had lost everything. The house where Alec had been born and brought up was little better than a ruin. Most of the roof had gone and the windows stared, glassless, across the wreck of the stack yard to the tumbledown remains of the farm buildings.
Alec gasped and pointed. The roof of one of the pigsties was more or less intact and sitting on it, looking remarkably sheepish, was Patch. Close to him squatted Betty’s little cat, Tansy, amidst half a dozen bedraggled hens. ‘Look at that,’ Alec marvelled. ‘Thank God old Patch is safe – and Tansy, of course. But I doubt anything in the barns or the sties could have survived.’ Bob nodded grimly.
When they made their way, in stricken silence, down to the meadows where the stock had been grazing, they found only bloated corpses and, in the lee of a hedge, quantities of freshwater fish that had been killed by the sudden influx of salt water. Alec saw one of his mother’s six hives, but it had been smashed to matchwood and would never house bees again. He discovered Dolly, the oldest and most productive of the Wessex sows, dead in her pen, with the tiny forms of her newborn piglets dead around her, and realised that, despite the open gate, she would not have deserted her helpless babies to venture out into that terrible storm.
All around them, disaster lay thick. The new orchard had gone – he had expected nothing less – but so had the old. The young apple, pear and plum trees had been torn out of the ground by the fury of the waves, and where the water had receded furthest a thick layer of stinking mud covered everything, forbidding growth.
That evening, the Hewitts assembled in the Agars’ big kitchen with another farming family who were in an equally sorry plight. No one knew what to do or what to say. They had lost everything and that, it seemed, included hope. Starting again might have been possible had their homes not been wrecked. Rebuilding was essential, but how could they hope to do that? They had nowhere to lay their heads while such work went on, for the Agar family could not be expected to house them indefinitely. Mr Agar murmured that there would surely be government aid to help them rebuild their homes, their lives, and already a public subscription had been opened for the flood victims . . . but such words meant little to men who had seen their life’s work wrecked in three days and nights of appalling storms.
Alec thought he had never seen his father so totally defeated. Like all farmers, they had known bad years when nothing seemed to go right for them, but Bob had always jutted his jaw, tilted his cap forward over his nose and advised his family to ‘get on with it’, and they had always obeyed him. They had built up the farm into one of the best in the area and now, Alec knew, they must set to and build it up again.
Things were not quite as bad as they had first appeared, however. Almost half the milking herd had sought higher ground and were still safe, although on someone else’s property, and though the farm and outbuildings were in a terrible state they could be rebuilt given time. Alec said as much and saw, to his relief, some of that determination and grit which were part of his father’s character begin to gleam from the older man’s eyes.
‘Aye, you’re right, boy,’ Bob said after a moment’s thought. ‘Most of us what’ve been hardest hit are Mr Rumbold’s tenants. He’s a good man, and when it comes down to it you could say the buildings are his’n and not our’n. Mebbe he’ll see fit to house us somewhere – anywhere – until the farm is rebuilt and fit for occupation again.’
The other tenant farmer, Harry Mills, spoke for the first time and Alec saw how his father’s sudden rush of hope had affected the other man. ‘I reckon you’re right, Bob, and he’ll see we don’t suffer unduly,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a sister what lives with her husband in Martham; they’ve only got a small house but I know she’ll take us in until we can find something else. There int going to be no work on the land, not for months mebbe, so I reckon if we all turn to and help one another we can rebuild our houses after a fashion and mebbe move back into them before next winter.’
Mrs Mills and their two grown sons had listened silently as he spoke, but now Bernard, the eldest, put his oar in. ‘Sam and me will get work somewhere,’ he said gruffly. ‘Then we can send money home. No point in housin’ us and feedin’ us when there’s no work for us to do. We’re both strong fellers and can earn good money, I reckon.’
Alec looked at Bernard with dawning respect. The older man was right. He, too, could earn good money away from the farm and there was little point in hanging about here when the money he made could be used to give his parents some degree of independence. He nudged his mother. ‘I’ll do the same as Bernard,’ he whispered. ‘I dunno what I’ll do but whatever it is I’ll send money home. It’ll be a deal more useful than hanging round here, eating my head off with no farm to work.’
He half expected his parents to disagree, to urge him to stay, but they were both nodding; his mother took his hand and carried it to her cheek. ‘You’ve always been a good lad, Alec,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We shall hate to see you go, but – but the money will be so useful. I don’t know if your father’s remembered, but we’ve a sizeable bank loan . . . all those fruit trees and the dairy herd . . . so any money that we can scrape together will probably go on that. In fact, if I’m able, I’ll take on a bit of work myself. We’re on better terms with your grandparents than we were – I’m sure they’d give me work on the farm if I couldn’t get anything anywhere else.’
Alec stared at her, scarcely believing his ears. When Betty had first married Bob, her parents had been furious, making no secret of the fact that they thought him a poor bargain for their girl. Until Alec was ten, the two families had exchanged Christmas and birthday cards but had not met since the wedding, but as Bob Hewitt gradually increased the size of his holding, and improved Honeywell Farm, old Mr Grainger had been big enough to acknowledge that he had been mistaken about his son-in-law. He had suggested a visit, had brought his wife and his two youngest daughters round to Horsey, and had admitted he was impressed by what Bob was doing and how he was managing his land. Later, when Bob had been considering taking on the Browns’ farm, old Mr Grainger had been enthusiastic, had actually offered to lend him money should he need it for the project. Bob, however, had been determined to take nothing from his in-laws and had gone to the bank for a loan instead. Would he now allow his wife to return to her father’s farm and work there whilst he himself laboured to bring life and prosperity back to his acres once more? Bob Hewitt was a proud man but this, Alec realised, was no time for pride. When a man was drowning in heavy seas, he would grasp any hand that offered. If old Mr Grainger said he would lend them money Bob would have no choice but to accept it, for Alec was realist enough to see that any money he himself earned would be but a drop in the ocean when compared to the bank loan his father had taken out.
‘Well, chaps, I’m glad to see you’ve already decided to fight your corner, and I don’t need to tell you that the wife and myself will do anything we can to help,’ Mr Agar said jovially. ‘The first thing to do is to arrange a meeting with Mr Mathews; I can do that for you, or you can go up to the office yourselves; he might see you on the spot. And the next thing to do is to decide where you’ll be living for the next few weeks, for though you’re very welcome to remain here my kitchen floor makes a hard bed and I know you ladies’ – his eyes encompassed Betty, Mrs Mills and the wives of two of the farmhands who had taken shelter with him after their cottages had been devastated – ‘like to have your own things around you and your own fireside to sit by.’
‘We’ll go over to Stalham this afternoon,’ Betty said. Alec was smiling to himself at Mr Agar’s unconscious faux pas, for none of his guests were likely to have their own things around them or their own fireside to sit by for many a long week. ‘My sister Irene is a good sort and she’ll take us in, no problem. D’you suppose my bike – and Bob’s old machine – will be usable when the water goes down, because we’ll have to feed the cows and do the milking morning and night, same as always. I’ve ridden over to visit Irene often enough; it’s a reasonable distance for cycling. And once we can get at the trap, we can drive Feather back and to if someone in Stalham will stable her for us,’ she concluded.
‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem,’ Alec said reassuringly.
Betty smiled. ‘Then we’ll be staying at Irene’s tonight, though words can’t express how grateful I am for your kindness, Mrs Agar.’
‘You’d ha’ done the same for me,’ their hostess said equably. ‘But if you’re off to Stalham, Mr Agar will give you a lift in the old Ford, because you don’t want to be caught out at dusk. What’ll the rest of you be doing?’
‘We’ll be off to Norwich,’ Bernard said. He glanced across at Alec. ‘Coming with us, young Hewitt? We can walk to Martham and catch a bus.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Got any money, bor?’