Shute, Nevil (8 page)

‘You got to have a case to start it off, though.’

He shook his head. ‘Not necessarily.’ He laid his fingers on a line; she bent over to read the small print. ‘Plenty of carriers in a seaport town like this.’

‘Is that a carrier, like a typhoid carrier, Peter?’

‘That’s right. It might be a Lascar sailor.’

She looked at him seriously. ‘You think it’s happened just because the drains are broken up?’

‘I suppose so.’

She turned again to the book. ‘It says here, case mortality, fifty per cent. In plain English, does that mean what it seems to mean?’

He smiled, a little grimly. ‘I should think it probably does.’

She stared up at him, wide-eyed. ‘But, Peter, what ought we to do?’

He laid his hand upon her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have to get inoculated as soon as we can. I’ll go and find out what’s happening as soon as I’ve done the washing-up.’

He hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t let the children go out today, if I were you. Keep them in the garden.’

‘You bet,’ she said. ‘Peter, I’ve been thinking about the boat. It’ld be frightfully inconvenient, but I believe I’d really rather we were there.’

He nodded. ‘I know. This puts the lid on it.’

More in hope than in confidence he went and tried the telephone. He found it out of order.

He did the washing-up with Joan, and shaved, and dressed. He went out to the garden and had a look at the trench; there was standing water in the bottom of it. He decided to leave the car over it as some protection from the rain, and walked down to the town. On his way, he was shocked at the condition of the town. The damage was of the same character as after the last raid, but he noticed that there were far fewer people in the streets. The cumulative effect of the damage, coupled with the rain and the deserted aspect of the streets, gave to the town a ruined and a desolate appearance.

He went first to his office. From the street he saw that there were broken windows; he let himself in with his key and made a quick inspection of the rooms. Practically all the windows had been shattered. The rain streamed in on to his desk; the sodden papers and the broken glass gave to the room an atmosphere of squalor and depression. He set his lips and moved all his documents to an untidy heap at the far side of the room, remote from the window. Then he did the same in Bellinger’s office.

There was nothing else to be done. There was no post to go through, no newspapers to be read. He did not think that there was any likelihood of clients coming in. He went out into the street again, locking the door behind him.

Andrews’s car was standing outside his office. Corbett went in and found the accountant alone, moving furniture away from the windows in much the same way as he had been doing. Corbett sat down on the edge of a desk.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’re in a pretty pickle now.’

‘Right in,’ said Mr. Andrews grimly. He offered him a cigarette.

They sat smoking in silence for a minute or two. ‘Bloody things seem to come over and do just what they like,’ said the accountant at last.

‘How the hell do they do it?’

‘I met an Air Force chap since I saw you last,’ said Mr. Andrews. ‘He said that in the first raid they came at some colossal height, fifteen or twenty thousand feet, and just bombed through the clouds. No pretence of aiming at anything-they just dumped the stuff. What he couldn’t tell me was, how they knew where to dump it.’

They sat in silence again. ‘I suppose that’s against all the rules of war?’ said Corbett.

‘I suppose so. Anyway, nobody bothers about that sort of thing these days.’

There was a pause. Corbett said: ‘Are your people all right at home?’

‘So far. You didn’t know the Rossiters?’

Corbett shook his head.

‘You’ve missed your opportunity,’ said Mr. Andrews.

He stubbed out his cigarette, half smoked, in an ashtray, hesitated for a minute, and lit another. He flicked the match away, and stepped nervously over to the shattered window. ‘I’m not going through another night of it. I’m getting my family out of it this afternoon.’

‘Where are you going?’

The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose one will be able to get in anywhere. I’ve got a tent. I’m taking that with me.’

Corbett told him about the cholera, and the cordon that had been put upon the roads. ‘It’s reasonable,’ he said. ‘If this really is cholera, they want to localise it.’ The accountant’s lips set in a thin line. ‘Nobody’s going to localise me,’ he said. There was an ugliness in his manner. ‘Inoculated or not, I’m getting out.’

Corbett nodded slowly. ‘I’m going over to the Civic Centre to see if I can find out how one gets the inoculation done.’

He walked across the park to the new buildings. He found the centre in a ferment, the car-parks jammed with little air-raid fire engines, lorries, and ambulances. The group of buildings had been hit in one or two places; one wall had slipped, revealing the teeming office life inside like a section of a hive of bees.

He had two or three friends in the Town Clerk’s department, and he was well known to the minor officials. He made his way into the corridors and waited till he found an opportunity. Presently he met a young man that he knew, who drew him into an office away from the crowd, Corbett offered him a cigarette.

‘I came to see if I could find out anything about this cholera inoculation,’ he enquired. ‘Where one gets it done?’

The young man laughed, without humour. ‘They’re hoping to set up a clinic to do the whole city.’

Corbett eyed him keenly. ‘A big job. When will that be?’

‘When the serum comes.’

‘I see,’ said Corbett quietly.

The young man explained. ‘They’ve got any amount of stuff for typhoid-or so they say. And, anyway, that seems to take a long time to incubate. But they’ve used up what little they had for cholera already, on the patients’ families. Now they’ve got to wait till they can get some more.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘In fact, we’ve been caught napping?’

‘Seems like it. But who’d ever think of cholera? I thought that was a thing you only got in India. Typhoid and diphtheria-yes. But not cholera.’

Corbett shook his head. ‘There used to be a lot of epidemics of it in this country.’

The young man sighed. ‘Well, it looks as if we’ve got another one.’ He paused. ‘Somebody was saying this morning that they’ve got it in Bristol, too.’

‘Seaport town,’ said Corbett. ‘That might be.’

He turned to the young man. ‘This cordon on the roads,’ he said. ‘Is it still working.’

‘I think so.’

‘I don’t see how they can keep people in the town tonight, to face another raid. They’ll have to let them out, inoculated or not.’

The other agreed. ‘Well, that’s what I think. But they’re very keen to keep the cholera from spreading. And if we aren’t careful it’ll be all over the country.’

Corbett nodded. ‘It’s difficult,’ he said, a little heavily. ‘Do you know what they’re doing about it?’

‘They’re having a conference upon it now, in the Town Clerk’s office. There’s someone down from the Ministry of Health, and the Town Clerk, and the M.O.H., and General Fitzroy.’

‘General Fitzroy?’

‘The military have taken over the cordon for the police. Didn’t you know?’

Corbett went out into the town. The damage to the houses and the shops was much more extensive than it had been after the first raid. There seemed to have been a certain amount of looting; in one or two places there were constables on guard over badly damaged shops. He tried to sort out the new damage from the old, but found it practically impossible to differentiate. All he could say for certain was that the town now was very gravely injured. It seemed to him that in the centre of the city nearly one building in five had suffered serious damage, apart from broken windows which were everywhere. He did not think it was so bad in residential districts such as he lived in.

Once more the roads were full of bomb-holes; this time, however, little water came from them. Again in the centre of the town squads of men were working at the repair of mains, cables, and sewers; again, parties of workmen were boarding up windows that had been smashed. He got the impression that the work was not so active as it had been after the first raid. The squads seemed weaker in numbers, more dispersed. There did not seem to be the same enthusiasm to get the city right again that he had noticed formerly.

He noticed many soldiers working with the corporation squads. He noticed also, and very definitely, that the town smelled. It was difficult to define the smell. It was not wholly drains. It seemed rather to be an atmosphere of mustiness and squalor, such as you might find in a poor, dirty house with tight-shut windows. Not very nice.

He made his way back home on foot. On his way he passed a garage and saw cars being filled up. He went inside and found the proprietor, whom he knew.

‘I’ll put six gallons by for you, in cans,’ the man told him. ‘But you must come and get it before dinner-time, Mr. Corbett. I’ll be sold right out by that time at this rate, and I may not be able to keep it. Some of the chaps get real nasty if they think you’re holding any back.’

He saw the petrol put in cans and placed beneath the desk of the small office; then he went on. He reached his house to find his wife with Mrs. Littlejohn, doing the baby’s washing.

‘It don’t take but a minute,’ said the older woman, ‘rinsing out a few things like this. Many hands make light work, that’s what I say.’

He took Joan into the next room on some pretext. ‘She’s been such a help, Peter,’ said the girl. ‘I’d have been off my head with the children and the washing if it hadn’t been for her.’

He told her what he had learned in the town. ‘We’ll never get to the boat while they keep this cordon up,’ he said. ‘And Lord knows when we’ll get inoculated.’ He paused. ‘I might creep through alone, or you might, if we thought it was worth while to try. But we’d never make it with three children and the car.’

‘I don’t want to separate, Peter. There’s no point in that. Let’s stick together.’

‘All right.’

‘That means we stay here for tonight, does it?’

‘I’m afraid it does.’

She smiled. ‘The electricity’s off, so the cooker’s out of action. Still, we’ve got the cold lamb to eat.’

He said: ‘I’ve got to take the car down for petrol. I’ll look around and see what food I can get hold of.’

‘Do see if you can get some milk. Fresh if possible-otherwise get some tins.’

‘All right.’ He paused. ‘I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go along and see if I can find Gordon. He might be able to help with this inoculation business.’

He drove the car off the trench and out of the back gate. He fetched his petrol from the garage, and then drove down into the town to look for food. There was very little fresh meat to be got, and what there was was bad in quality and smelling a little. He did not buy any. ‘It isn’t very nice,’ they admitted in one butcher’s shop. ‘Still, it’ld be all right for stewing, or making a curry, or anything like that. It’s a job to keep meat good, these times.’

He asked: ‘Why is that?’

‘The refrigerator downstairs. It’s electric.’

He bought a small sack of flour, and a fair quantity of miscellaneous tinned foods. He could not discover any fresh milk in the town at all; at three dairies they told him that none had come in that day. He got six tins of condensed milk, however, and was glad to do so.

Finally he drove to Gordon’s house. He hesitated to ring the bell, thinking that the surgeon might be sleeping after his night’s work. Instead, he pushed at the front door; it was open, and he walked in.

He stood in the hall and called softly: ‘Is anybody here?’

The door of the consulting-room opened, and Gordon appeared. ‘Hullo, Corbett,’ he said quietly. ‘Come along in. I’m just going back to the hospital.’ Corbett said: ‘I won’t keep you, then. But first I want to thank you for troubling to ring us up that afternoon about boiling water and stuff. It was good of you to think of us.’

The surgeon said: ‘That’s nothing. As a matter of fact, I very nearly didn’t. At the time I didn’t really believe that it was cholera. It seemed-incredible.’

‘How did it start?’

The other shook his head. ‘I don’t think anyone knows. The only explanation is, there must have been a cholera carrier in the city. Of course, immediately you get a real case of it it’s bound to spread, with conditions as they are.’

‘ I came to see if you could help us over the inoculations.’

Gordon said wearily: ‘I can’t, old man. I only wish I could. There’s not a drop of serum in the town-for anyone. The pathologists are working on it at the hospital, but it will be forty-eight hours before they get their first batch through. And we want such a devil of a lot of it.’

‘I won’t keep you, then,’ said Corbett, ‘But how’s Margaret?’

‘She’s gone back into uniform-you know she was a nurse before we married. She’s down in Northam, with the cholera cases.’ He smiled. ‘So we’re both busy.’

‘You got a lot of casualties last night?’

‘Just about the same as last time-five or six hundred at the hospital. The difficulty is in evacuating them. They’ve got to be got out of the city. A woman who’s been blown up by a bomb doesn’t get on well if you keep her in a town that’s bombed each night. But with this quarantine cordon things are awfully difficult. And anyway, there’s nowhere we can send them to. We filled the country hospitals bung full after the first night.’

Corbett nodded. ‘You’ve been operating all night?’

‘Two tables-just the same. It’s a bad business, Corbett.’

The solicitor said very quietly: ‘You make me feel ashamed of myself. You’re working like this for the city, Margaret’s nursing cholera, and I ‘m doing nothing at all. All I do is come and worry you for morphia and serums for myself and my own family.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Gordon.’

The surgeon said: ‘Don’t hurry away. And don’t be a bloody fool -or not more than you can help being.’ He pushed across a box of cigarettes, and lit one himself.

‘This thing has been a great disaster to us all,’ he said after a time. ‘I never thought, if war should come again, that it would be like this. Still, that’s the way it is.’ He paused. ‘I’ve got my job to do, and you’ve got yours. Mine’s very easy-just hard work at doing what I’m used to.’