Published by One Fine Day Reading 2013

www.onefinedayreading.co.uk

Edward Chilvers asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work

edwardjchilvers@onefinedayreading.co.uk

By the Same Author

The Shallow Valleys

Perished

The Executioner’s Apprentice

The Executioner’s Apprentice: The Siege

The Executioner’s Apprentice and the Royal Pretender

To the Land of the Vertical Mountains

The Man of One Million Years

I can still remember those first few drops of rain. It was the final day of our honeymoon, eighteen months ago now, and Helen and I were sitting in our car with the windows down in the campsite in the Lake District that overlooked Windermere. We had enjoyed the most wonderful weather those past two weeks and had hiked and climbed until our skin was tanned a deep brown. In all we were as hopeful for the future as two newlyweds could be, especially as we would be welcoming our first child not seven months from here. As we sat there eating our fish and chips and watching the sails of the pleasure boats dance homeward on the lake I looked up at the skies to see the unbroken blue slowly give way to darkening cloud. “It seems we have a storm coming,” I said without concern.

My wife just shrugged. “At least we have had a good run of the weather. Kind of appropriate it has to rain just as we have to go back to the real world, don’t you think?” She leaned in close to me. I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. A large drop of rain splashed down on to the windscreen of the car. Then another. I looked out towards our tent, making sure I had closed it up properly. “I daresay it will all blow over soon.”

The torrential storm flooded us out of the tent at three in the morning. I woke up to the gale howling all around, the canvas shaking violently as the winds battered against it. A peg had been uprooted and the fly sheet had come into contact with the inner net so that a steady stream of water splashed down on to my sleeping bag. I was soaked, Helen too.  We got up quickly, threw our things together, ripped down the tent and threw it all into the car and drove home there and then, stopping for some coffee at the motorway service station along the way. Listening to the radio as we drove the forecasters told of how a thick blanket of cloud was moving in to cover the entire country and predicted harsh weather, with possible localised flooding, for several days hence.

I insisted upon carrying Helen across the threshold despite the rain. Nothing could taint our happiness, for we were young and in love. We had purchased the house just  two months back, our first home. It was in a good area, or so the estate agents said, and a fairly new build situated in the suburbs of the town with a good view of the water meadows and the river just beyond. It contained three bedrooms, the perfect place in which to start a family, a starter home from which good things could only follow. The following day Helen returned to her postgraduate course and I went back to my job as a claims handler for the insurance company where I had worked for the past five years and where I had just been promoted to assistant manager. Everybody welcomed me back, congratulated me on the wedding and asked how the honeymoon had been. And of course we all talked about the weather.

“We had a good run of the sun but of course it couldn’t last.”

“I feel sorry for the farmers trying to get the harvests in.”

“I’ll be off to Spain in a few weeks and leave all this behind.”

Four more days passed and still it did not stop raining. The weather began to dominate the news schedule. The television showed sandbags being deployed, people rowing boats down what had once been the high street of  a quaint market town; weather forecasters were questioned like they were shaman in the hope that they could somehow magic away the downpour. Economists number crunched and tried to predict how much money would be paid out by the insurance companies to compensate those who had been flooded from their homes. Comedians made jokes. The traffic was delayed. But it would stop soon, of course it would. This was England after all.

In the end we were one of the lucky ones, although it did not seem like that at the time, for ours was one of the first homes to be flooded. A  week after the rains first came a man from the council drove round with sandbags. We had already watched the meadows flood and the water encroach closer and closer towards our property. The whole neighbourhood came together as one, the younger ones deploying sandbags and the older ones making tea and sandwiches. It almost made you feel proud to be British. But the precautions we took depended on the rain stopping at some point, and the rain did not stop. When the flood defences were overwhelmed we had less than an hour to get out. It was gut wrenching to have to leave our new home, with the new furniture and freshly decorated nursery awaiting our new arrival, but we comforted ourselves with the prospect of returning to it sometime soon. We did not know as we drove away with a few clothes and essentials packed into suitcases that we were leaving for the last time. Some of our neighbours headed for a rescue centre, in reality a sports hall attached to high school, but we headed to my grandparents and their farm high upon a hill in the South Downs. It was a treacherous drive down. Another day and the motorway would have been completely inaccessible in places but somehow we made it.

Three days after we arrived on the farm the rising water levels overwhelmed the Thames Barrier. London was flooded. The sight of some of the most famous landmarks of the world partially submerged in the brown water brought home the scale of the catastrophe like never before. And still the rain kept on coming. The experts offered various explanations. Some crowed about global warming, some said it was a freak natural occurrence which took place just once in ten thousand years. Some said it was Doomsday come at last. Of all the theories I think the last was the closest to being true. Seven days after the flooding of London the electricity in the farmhouse failed. Below us in the valley the village carried on for a little longer, long enough for the local doctor to make his way to the farmhouse a few months later and deliver Helen of a healthy baby girl, whom we named Verity. But when I awoke a week later and looked out of the window I saw the church and houses submerged like rocks between the heavy currents. We never saw the doctor, or any of the others, again.

My cold, unfeeling hands grip the hard wet metal of the ladder. I look upwards towards the roof and place my foot upon the first rung. The ladder sinks a little further into the sodden ground. I climb tentatively. The tiles are wet and slippery and I pause when I reach the roof, wondering just how I am supposed to go about this. The loose tiles are right next to the chimney, in about the worst place they could possibly be come to think of it, and it will require quite a scramble across a slippery surface to reach them. But they must be fixed. The rainwater started leaking into our bedroom late last night during the gale and it is only now, mid-morning of the following day, that the wind has finally dropped enough for me to attempt to remedy the situation. Slowly I climb off the ladder and lean forwards against the roof then position my feet against the metal guttering  which creaks in protest as I apply my full weight. I have no idea how to proceed, for the guttering will surely come down altogether if I try to push off from it, and send me crashing to the floor. I cannot afford to be injured. It would be the death of us all. I reach out my hands but can see straight away I have no chance of reaching the peak of the roof. Instead I hold my breath, count to three then bend my legs as far as I dare and move off lightly from the guttering, which cracks sharply but otherwise holds. I half scramble, half run up the roof and throw my hands around the ridge at the top. The wetness from the tiles has soaked through my coat right to my skin and the rain beats down on to my back so that I am completely sodden. I pull myself up a little way until I reach the affected area and spend a careful few minutes pushing and forcing the tiles back into place with my free hand. It is a good job none of them have cracked or broken for I do not relish the prospect of having to go back down the roof to find replacement then carry them all back up again.

Finally I am done. I inch, crab like, back down the roof until my feet touch first the guttering and then the first rung of the ladder. Just as I am starting to apply pressure my foot slips and now I am falling freely down the roof and towards the ground. I manage to grab a hold of the guttering with my hands just before I go over completely and to my relief it holds, albeit with another sharp crack. I swing over to the ladder and do not dare to breathe until I am right back down at the bottom. I need a few seconds to regain my courage. By now, despite my waterproof clothing, I may as well have thrown myself into a lake for how wet I am. Above me the leaden grey sky continues to let forth its never-ending torrent.

I make my way through the squelching, churning mud of what used to be the lawn around to the front of the house. Smoke is coming from a makeshift chimney in the coal shed where my grandfather is heating a large tin bath full of water over a fire. It is just coming to the boil. I help him to carry the bath inside and upstairs into the house bathroom and we pour the tin bath into the house bath then add a bucket or two of cold water from the butts to cool it down. “Bath up,” I call to my wife. I strip down to my boxer shorts in the shower room, dry my body down with a towel and pull on another pair of dry clothes, another dry coat. I will soon be getting these soaked as well but for now I enjoy the dryness and their natural warmth. Helen is waiting for me in the kitchen when I come out, holding Verity in her arms. “Did you sort out the tiles?” She asks me.

I nod. “Bit slippery.” I do not tell her about my near fall. My daughter reaches out for me. I take her in my arms and kiss her forehead, rock her gently from side to side. “Are you going out again?” Asks Helen.

“Yes,” I reply. “I need to dig some trenches in the garden. The ditches have become blocked again. I shall need to go out in the boat tomorrow as well.”

“Again?”

“Yes. I need to check on the pigs on the island,” I say. Since the waters rose almost all the low ground in this area has become flooded and there are many newly created islands from the hills of the Downs.

“But not today?”

“No,” I say with slight irritation. “I told you I have to drain the garden today.”

“I shall come and help you,” says my wife.

“It is fine,” I reply. “You stay behind and look after baby. Go and sit by the fire. I can manage just fine.”

“I want to come,” she persists. “I’m sick of being stuck in this damned house all day every day. Your gran will take care of Verity, won’t you Olive?”

“Stay inside dear,” comes the voice of my grandmother from the other room. “It won’t do any good for a young mum to be out and about in this weather.”

“It is always this weather, Olive,” says Helen with exasperation.

My grandmother never goes out anymore, not since this rain started anyway, and if she had her way Helen would join her in this self-imposed prison.

Of all of us this situation must be especially hard for Helen. She has always been used to being out and about, a hiker and a camper, as am I. During her pregnancy, and immediately after she gave birth, it was me who had to go about the harder manual work of shoring up the house and flood defences, sorting out the pigs and firewood and all the other unexpected odd jobs this catastrophe entails. Even though Verity is a little older, and my grandmother is able to take care of her, I am still doing most of the work, and although Helen now desperately wants to help my grandparents, and my grandmother in particular, are traditional in their outlook, believing a woman has no place doing hard outdoor work. My grandparents are both in their early eighties with my grandfather being a few months older. My father left my mother before I was born and my mother died when I was just fourteen. Grandma and granddad have looked after me ever since. My grandfather has been a farmer all his life and is in better shape than anyone I have ever known of his age. Indeed I feel he could still pass for a man in his mid-sixties. He helps me out a great deal, sometimes comes over to the island with me and helps with the pigs and firewood. He is strong but not agile. We make a good team. My grandmother, though physically fit, is possibly in the very early stages of dementia, I think, although I have never voiced that opinion out loud. She spends most of the day cooing after Verity, washing our clothes and preparing our meals, which she does by simply putting saucepans over the embers of the house fire.

It is half an hour later and Helen and I are outside with a spade each, digging a trench along to the ditch to let the water drain off the lawn. Even though we are up on the higher ground small floods still form in the dips and these, grandfather tells me, must be dealt with quickly before they undermine the foundations of the house itself. The rain splashes off our waterproofs. The dirt squelches and heaves as we lift it from the ground and dump it to the side. The water congregates in the trench and advances slowly as we dig. When we have dug the trench to the ditch the water flows in to join the slow torrent making its way downwards, down the hill to join the vast floods below. Slowly, but before our eyes, the patch of water begins to empty out. We move on to the next patch. “How many pigs are left?” Asks Helen.

“Around about thirty but they’re not breeding,” I tell her. “Still enough to keep us fed for a few more months as yet even if a few of them do die off. We’ve still got a few young ones, best leave the fully grown females and the boar until last of all just in case they do start to breed. Did I tell you I spotted a few cows when I was out on the boat the other day? Not sure how many just yet but I’ll go and have a look next time I get the chance. I don’t know what they’re eating with most of the grass being washed away – I suppose there must be grubs and worms under the ground or something.”

“So we eat the pigs and then the cows,” says Helen. “What about after that? We don’t have that many tins of vegetables left.”

I shrug. “I’m hoping this might all have stopped by then.”

“I don’t think it is going to stop,” says Helen bitterly.

“Well in that case we’ll all just have to wait to die won’t we?” I say with a flash of anger.

“Don’t you dare say such things!” Snaps Helen.

“Well you started it,” I say bitterly. “What else do you think will happen if it is never going to stop? Of course it will stop, it has to; why it has probably stopped already in some places. All we need to do is to hold out and keep our spirits up. We’ll be fine.”

Just before the electricity went down, when we still had access to the television and radio, there were reports of mass suicides, rioting and widespread desperation. I somehow think that without the fire in the evenings we might have gone the same way. The fire at the end of the day is what we all look forward to the most, more than the repetitive, endless meals of roast pork and canned potatoes, more than the night times when we lie in bed and listen to the sound of the rain beating down on the tiles above, a sound that was once so comforting, now ominous and endless. The fire is our only light, for we do not have candles, and so when it gets dark we all go and sit in the living room and just stare into the flames. Tonight my grandmother holds Verity on her lap in her armchair. They are both asleep. Helen is also asleep and resting her head on my shoulder and we half sit and half lie on the settee. Only myself and my grandfather are awake. I look across at the old man with his pure white hair and grizzled, wrinkled face, large strong farmer’s hands. He just stares into the fire as if hypnotised. Sitting here in front of the fire allows me the time to think and reflect. I daresay my grandfather is thinking too. All day is spent in a constant series of tasks to prepare for the next – find food, find firewood, protect the shelter. My biggest fear is in the unexpected. Provided nothing changes we can carry on just the way we are for months. Each day that goes on is another day closer to the end of the rain. Or so I surmise anyway. But all the times the water is slowly creeping upwards, the rain is running off the hills and flowing down into that great newly created sea below, slowly rising up the hill, soon to engulf the farm. We stand around halfway up the hill. In theory we could go higher but there is no shelter going upwards. Grandmother could not handle it. Verity could not handle it. There is no way we would all survive in a tent. It has rained, non-stop, for eighteen months. It has not snowed. We have not seen the sun. The temperature has remained constantly at around eight degrees, the only difference has been in the length of the days. If it carries on, at this rate, for another eighteen months then we will be completely submerged. The farmhouse is all we have, there are no other buildings in sight and I cannot see any from the island or anywhere else I have been either, not since the village was submerged.

“I shall definitely have to go out in the boat tomorrow,” I tell granddad.

“Don’t take Helen,” says the old man, nodding towards my wife. “I shall go with you if you need a hand.”

“I won’t,” I tell him. “Neither of you need come. We need wood and we need another pig. I shall take the shotgun.”

“We’re alright for pigs,” says my grandfather. “It’s the vegetables I’m worried about. We only have another week or two of tins and I’m surprised they’ve lasted that long.”

“Well we can’t exactly start to grow any,” I says. “And I can’t see the roofs of the village houses anymore so it’d mean a dive down if we wanted to do any looting, something I’m not prepared to do. The only other thing we can do is go out into the boat and try and find more houses.”

“If we do that we might find other survivors.”

“Yes and that might be a mixed blessing,” I say. “Because they might not have what we have up here. They might not have the pigs or the fireplaces even. They may be wanting things from us.”

“At least we still have those pigs,” says my grandfather. “As long as we have them we shall not starve even if our teeth do fall out with scurvy.”

“Maybe there is still something left of the old post office in Livermore,” I say. “That was on the higher ground. I shall row that way in the next few days, see what I can find.”

“We are going to need more than that in the long run,” says my grandfather. “Even if the rain were to stop tomorrow it will take a long time to get back to normal. There would still be no crops and most of the animals will have died.”

“For now we shall just have to do what we can.”

“You are doing too much as it is,” says my grandfather critically. “I can help too, you know. I know you are trying to look after us but you must be careful of taking on too much.”

“You are doing more than enough,” I tell him. “There’s not many people who know how to prepare a pig like you do, and you heat the bath and build the coal shed fires as well. But I think you are better here, granddad, doing jobs around the farm. Grandma would only worry if not.”

“That maybe so but I can’t stand to be shut indoors like she can,” he mutters.

“Stray too far and you’ll give yourself a chill and then what use would you be?”

The old man mutters a reply which I do not quite catch. The rain beats down upon the panes of glass on the windows; sometimes light, sometimes heavy, sometimes blown. Never stopping.

The following day dawns dark and cold. Needless to say it is raining hard. I have almost forgotten what the sun looks like, forgotten what it is to feel it’s warm rays in the summer. I am up early, just as it is getting light. Helen still sleeps and Verity sleeps in her cot beside our bed. She is a good baby, rarely wakes during the night and does not often cry. I dress quickly and go to make up the fire. Granddad and grandma are both sleeping in their chairs where they have spent the night, quite a habit of theirs these days. “You are trying to slip off before we are awake,” chuckles my grandfather. “So nobody tries to insist upon coming with you.”

I shrug but otherwise make no reply, instead breakfasting on the usual cold pork and put a pot into the fire to boil water for tea. I reach my hands towards the new fire and enjoy the warmth against my face, relish the feeling of being dry. It is a feeling that does not last for long. I drink my tea quickly and take out the shotgun, count the cartridges. I should only need one but I take more, just in case. I have never relished the thought of shooting a pig. They have always seemed such docile creatures and whenever I am forced upon the task I always feel remorseful afterwards. Prior to the rain I had never picked up a gun in my life; but I have no other choice if we are to eat. I pull on my waterproofs, which my grandmother has dried by the fire for the night. I am ready to go.

The boat is around a quarter of the way down the hill, pulled up well above the waterline for now, and measures around three metres long. Its presence here is nothing less than a gift from God as far as I am concerned. I spotted it one day from my bedroom window, floating gently down what had once been the village street, looking quaint and out of place between the half submerged houses and drowning trees. I waded out to retrieve it straight away. It even had its oars. The pigs were still kept in the barn at the farm until a few months ago before the last stocks of straw and food were gone and so, just before the flood waters closed it off, my grandfather and I drove them down one hill then up another to where a small copse of trees around a quarter of a mile wide would hopefully sustain them in food and shelter for the time being. We started putting up a fence to keep them in but the waters closed in before it was finished and so now the animals are trapped, like us, on an island. I pull the boat down to the edge of the water. It gets stuck a few times in the mud and I am forced to get behind and push, slipping and sliding and once even falling over completely. You would think I was used to being wet and sodden by now but somehow it is never quite so. In the end I am able to slip and slide for most of the way and the boat enters the water with a splash. I take the gun from my shoulder and place it inside, get in, retrieve the oars and start the short row across to the island. The rain is coming down harder than usual now and a small puddle has formed in the boat by the time I am across. It is a good job the shotgun is safe from rust in its special waterproof casing. I drag the boat up on to the higher ground. The trees stand dark and tall against the forbidding sky. From within the dark folds of woodland I can hear the sound of grunting. The pigs have made the ground muddier than ever and each step I take sinks me halfway up to my boots. The large pile of logs which I cut last month stands before me. I spend a good half hour loading the boat with soaking armfuls. When I get them back we shall load them into the coal shed where they will hopefully warm in the heat of the bath-fire. I am relieved that after retrieving the logs and shooting the pig we should not need to return to the island for another week. I never enjoy coming here. I finish loading the wood and climb the higher ground in search of a kill. I look for one of the younger ones and finally set my sights on a large piglet slurping noisily at the water’s edge. I  creep up behind, trying not to make a sound. The pig must surely hear me but it makes no move. I feel sick, as I always do when I am forced into this. My grandfather always offers to come with me and do the deed himself but I always turn him down. I do not like the old man straying too far from the farm. How strange it is now that before the rains came I was seriously considering becoming a vegetarian. I am around five feet away now, the perfect distance according to my grandfather. I draw an imaginary line with my eye behind the pig’s right ear. My finger tightens around the trigger. Then I stop. There is something beyond the trees, something white and massive and groaning as it creaks in the wind and rain. I lower the shotgun and move forward. The piglet continues to grunt and slurp by the waterside. I shall let it be. Instead I make my way through the trees so that I am facing the other side of the hill and stand there, open mouthed, looking at the leviathan in front of my for a long time. Could this be salvation?

“A ship?” Exclaims Helen in astonishment.

“And not just any ship,” I tell her triumphantly. “I would not have believed it could have sailed so far inland, even with all the flooding but it is there alright, I saw it with my very eyes.”

“What does it look like?” Asks my grandfather.

“I think it is a cruise ship,” I tell them. “And a big one to boot. I can’t tell you what type except it is not an aircraft carrier or a yacht. It is just, well, big – three stories by the looks of things and pretty long too.”

“And what kind of condition is it in?” Demands my grandfather. “Is it intact? Will it float, do you think?”

”It is lying slightly on its side,” I tell them. “I cannot see any damage, but then I was a little way away.”

With the exception of my grandmother, who finds the steep stairs difficult at the best of times, and Verity, who remains sleeping in her cot, we hurry upstairs to the attic window and look out. The ship is there alright, partially obscured by the woodland, and seems to be beached against the side of the hill, for the time being at least.

“Do you see it?” I say excitedly. “Just think what an opportunity this could be for us! Just think what we might find in there – why it could change everything! Do you see it, granddad? And if the farmhouse was ever threatened we would still have a place to go.”

“Let’s not get over-excited just yet,” cautions my grandfather. “You don’t know what might be on that ship. If it has sailed inland, out of control for this long. there is no telling what kind of state it is in. There may be bodies.”

“But we must check it,” says Helen, her enthusiasm undimmed.

“Of course,” says my grandfather calmly. “But you will not go by yourself, Tom, I know what you’re thinking. I shall be going with you at the very least.”

“Neither of you need come,” I say firmly. “You can see how it is on its side. It will not take much to explore.”

“It could still be dangerous,” says Helen.

“All the more reason for you not to come.”

“No,” says my wife firmly. “I am sick of being stuck inside here all the time whilst you strut around like the caveman – man work and woman stay at home. This is an opportunity right here and I intend to be a part of it.”

Slow footsteps come up behind us. My grandmother at last wheezes into the room. “Now I don’t see why any of you need to go,” she says. “We do alright here don’t we? We have food and firewood from the island. Did you shoot the pig, Tom?”

“Never mind the pig,” I say erratically. “It is what is on that ship that concerns me. We don’t have any vegetables and we are running short on other essentials as well. There may even be some baby food on there for Verity. She will be of that age soon. What is she supposed to eat otherwise, mashed up pork?”

“Well I am going with you and that’s that,” says Helen again.

“And I,” says my grandfather.

“Very well,” I say, throwing up my hands in resignation. “We shall all three of us go. But we shall return to this house at the first sign of trouble. Whatever is on that ship certainly isn’t worth our lives.”

The rain has thinned a little by the time we set off but it is still coming down steadily. We have hastily unloaded the wood into a pile by the waterline; we shall return and clear it away later. Right now it is hard to think of anything else except investigating that ship. Granddad sits at one end of the boat, Helen at the other. I sit in the middle and row. It takes us almost half an hour to reach the ship. The currents are strong and I imagine the waters must have risen to the extent that the floods have merged with the sea. In that case it would mean the country has, in effect, become an archipelago.

The ship is even larger than I imagined it to be and has seemingly run aground between a narrow valley. It leans at an angle of what I would imagine to be around ten degrees. From where I am looking the ship seems to be stuck fast and has scraped and dug right in between the valley. It must have been going at quite a pace when it crashed. We have brought a rope and a ladder. We land the boat and pull it a little way up the hill, looking for a place to scramble up. I go along the side of the ship’s stern. “Careful Tom,” says my grandfather. “You don’t know it isn’t going to lean again.”

“It seems pretty stuck for the time being,” I say, feeling my way along the side and looking for a suitable foothold.

“Look!” Exclaims Helen, hurrying to stand beside me. “There is a ladder.”

I look up. The ladder is around twenty yards above, attached to the hull, so close and yet so far. But perhaps with the ladder we brought along ourselves we might stand a chance of reaching it. Granddad and Helen bring the ladder over and hold it against the slippery metal of the hull. I sling the rope around my shoulder and climb slowly, right to the top, so that my feet are on the uppermost rung. It takes a little jump but I am able to reach the bottom rung of the next ladder and hold on to it tightly. Helen lets out a little gasp as I launch myself. I scramble up, using my upper body strength to rise one step at a time. From there I attach the rope tightly around the top ladder. Soon Helen has joined me on the sloping deck. “Don’t be stupid,” I shout down as my granddad also starts to climb the rope. But the old man is having none of it. How he manages it I don’t know but he is up and over the rail of the deck almost as fast as I was.

I cannot begin to describe how strange it is to be stood on the sloping deck of a ship when all around is nothing but hills and floodwater. The funnels of the ship tower overhead. Something clangs, something clicks. Otherwise it appears completely deserted. Plastic chairs and sun-beds have fallen to the side and now crowd the downwards railing on the far side. Some of the planks on the deck are cracked and broken, presumably from the force of impact with the hillside, and perhaps there have been other collisions as well. There is no telling how long the ship may have floated, or when it was abandoned, if indeed it is abandoned as it seems. We lean upwards and step cautiously towards a door which seems to lead from the deck into the main body of the ship itself. We open the door and step inside. The interior smells damp and musty. Most of the windows are smashed. Everything we touch is coated in a thin layer of damp and green mildew has started to appear on some of the surfaces. The floor is slippery. I imagine this room used to be a restaurant for there are a multitude of chairs and tables scattered around. I shiver with the cold and some of my previous hopefulness dissipates slightly. If this is to be the state of the entire ship we have little hope of living here if the farmhouse is ever threatened. “Look at this place,” breathes Helen, moving forward quickly, her eyes scanning every inch of the lopsided room. I proceed more slowly and granddad is the slowest of all. “We need to search this ship,” I say. “Just a quick once over to begin with then we can decide what we need.”

“The most important stuff first, though,” says my grandfather. “We don’t want the thing to float away again before we’ve had the chance to get what we need.”

“The most important thing is food,” calls Helen. “And for that we are most certainly in the right place. Why a ship this size must have a good three restaurants, and an eating area for the crew as well.” We proceed slowly through the restaurant. As we move I see discarded bags and items of clothing, the odd children’s toy and other personal items. Clearly, I think, this ship was abandoned in a hurry. We move into the bar area. I smile and wink at granddad when I see a bottle of whiskey lying intact and unopened underneath one of the shelving units. The old man laughs softly, picks it up and places it in his rucksack. We proceed through the bar into the kitchen. It is larger than I expected. Metal cabinets predominate. The cookers stand sad and stained to the side. Brown stains and patches of mould on the floor testify to foodstuffs that have long since rotted away. “Look at this!” Exclaims Helen, throwing open one of the cupboards. “Tins!” we all crowd around the cupboard excitedly, as if we have discovered gold. “Enough for months!” Exclaims my grandfather. The two of them begin to load the tins into their rucksacks whilst I go round and explore more cupboards. I find one more that is also stacked full of tins and another cupboard filled with vegetables so decomposed and rotting I doubt even the pigs would touch them. I do not even contemplate opening the fridge. When I am done I turn back to my grandfather and Helen. “I shall go and look around the ship some more,” I tell them. “You two stay here and fill up with tins.”

“You doing everything again,” mutters Helen resentfully.

“I shall not be long,” I tell her. “And it might be dangerous, as granddad says. “Look Helen, Verity needs at least one of us.”

“And she doesn’t need you?” Demands my wife.

“This being the case it should be me who goes,” says my grandfather.

“I won’t be long,” I tell them, and I turn and am off out of the kitchen before they have had the chance to argue.

I leave the restaurant area and cautiously make my way down the corridor, arms outstretched for balance. I make my way down the steps to the lower level. It is drier in here and I am surprised to note the electric lights are still working. Creaking noises sound ahead of me. I wonder if the ship is at risk of breaking up, stuck fast as it is, but then if we were able to make it here on the rowing boat the currents cannot be too extreme as yet. I emerge into what appears to have been the ballroom. A grand piano has been bolted down near the stage and leans comically, about the only thing still attached in the right position. I can see straight away there is nothing for us in here. I am simply not interested in the upturned chairs and tables, the tapestries or the smashed chandeliers. I carry on, past the abandoned musical instruments and the shredded curtains. I am looking for a place for us all to stay, perhaps even a space where we could build a level floor. The thought that one day we will be flooded out of the farmhouse haunts me every day. Perhaps I am a fool for thinking this ship could be our salvation, for we have no means of controlling it and if it ever comes loose from the valley and smashes against the side of something else it would surely be the end of us. Perhaps there is a way to drop the anchor so that it will not move even if it rights itself. But would this then serve to trap us? Perhaps we should set off sooner and aim for the higher ground. But then there is the nightmare vision of my grandmother slipping and sliding as she tries to negotiate the mud, or falling over and hurting herself more severely than we are able to help her. No, I decide, this ship can never compare to the farm.

A noise from behind the curtain drags me from my thoughts. I instinctively tense. Something is moving. I approach with caution and rip back the curtain which leads on to the stage area beyond. Myself and the man on the other side leap back in shock at the same time. I am the first to rally my nerves. “Who the hell are you?” I demand angrily, lowering my fists when I see the stranger is just as afraid as I am.

“You first,” says the stranger shakily. “You are, after all, the uninvited guest on our ship.”

“My name is Tom,” I say. “We saw this ship from our farmhouse and came to have a look.”

“My name is White,” says the stranger warily. “How many of you are there?”

“Myself, my wife, daughter and two grandparents,” I reply briskly. “And you?”

“Just myself and my wife,” says White.

“What about the rest of the crew?”

“Abandoned ship,” he replies. “It was just after we ran aground at Southampton .”

“You mean to say you have sailed up here all the way from Southampton ?” I ask in amazement.

“Blown and tossed here more like,” replies White. “Most of the time we just had to hold on and brace ourselves for the collisions. We beached a few more times but the rains always rose us up again. I’m not sure that will be happening again anytime soon however. The ship looks stuck pretty fast this time.”

“Why did you stay when everybody else decided to cut and run?” I ask him.

“What else was there to do?” Asks White. “We’re from the Lincolnshire Fens – you can imagine how quickly that lasted in this weather, flattest place in the country and all. We had nowhere else to go. Oh there was talk of a rescue centre on the higher ground but I saw the way things were going on the mainland – rioting, drowning, mass starvation, lawlessness and panic. Better to take our chances on the ship.”

A woman emerges from a doorway which I would imagine leads to the dressing rooms and comes to stand behind White, regarding me with the expression of a distrustful cat. I nod at her. She says nothing.

“Did you say you are still living on your farmhouse?” Asks White hopefully. Something in his tone leads me to conclude I have said too much.

“That’s right,” I tell him cautiously. “How long for I don’t know. The water levels are rising all the time, as you well know. I reckon you might be better off on something that floats.”

“I don’t know about that,” says the woman keenly. “You cannot even begin to imagine what it has been like for us on this boat, stuck on here for months with seemingly no hope of escape.”

“My wife is right,” says White. “Look Tom, maybe we can work something out. There are quite a few tins of food in the restaurant area and even more in the hold, enough to keep the seven of us alive for the best part of a year.”

“I see,” I say, my mind going back to the kitchen where my grandfather and Helen are surely loading those precious tins of theirs into bags ready to be taken back to the farmhouse.

“Indeed,” says White, nodding his head keenly. “Look here, Tom. You are married yourself, aren’t you, and your grandparents – well they can’t be getting any younger, can they? Wouldn’t it be good to have two more on your team?”

I shrug in a non-committal manner but my mind is racing. They want to share our home, and our pigs and the bath water. They will want to have a say in the affairs of the farm, in the affairs of my family, and their viewpoint will be based solely upon advancing their own selfish cause.

“What do you say, Tom?” Persists White hopefully. “You have the space don’t you? Let us come and stay with you for a while, at least until this all blows over.”

“I shall have to run it past the others,” I say slowly. “My grandfather – well it is his home you see. He is the man in charge really.” But I already know what the answer will be. My grandfather will not leave people behind. He will take them in, no doubt about it.

“Well that’s just perfect!” Exclaims the woman in delight, clapping her hands together. She clearly takes my grandfather’s hospitality as a foregone conclusion, which of course it is. “I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to being on dry land. We have been staying in our cabin for the most part and you can imagine how uncomfortable that is with the ship lying at an angle like this – and then when it is floating you can never really relax for the constant fear you’re about the ram into something”

“To make matters worse we have had a leak open up from one of the cabins,” says White. “The water has come in and covered part of the corridor and so now we are forced to wade knee deep in water whenever we want to go to and from our own cabin.”

“I see,” I say, not really taking any of it in. “Well I suppose if you are going to come back with us I had better help you pack up your cabin, hadn’t I?”

“That would be wonderful,” says Mrs White reasonably.

We proceed along the corridor. I don’t know how my grandfather and Helen will respond to the two new arrivals, probably the same as me – forced politeness mixed with secret dread. As we go I see that the overturned chairs and tables could make a good source of firewood and I also see a fire axe on the wall which I retrieve for that purpose. “Never pass up on the opportunity for extra tools,” I mutter by means of an explanation. We go down some more steps and enter into the area where the cabins are located. I view the locked doors hopefully, for there must surely be some things of interest here, especially if the ship was abandoned quickly as Mr and Mrs White appear to suggest. One of the doors flaps open on its hinges, clearly beyond repair. Inside I imagine the porthole window must have broken and a steady stream of rainwater has formed a small pool around three feet deep in the corner where the corridor turns. “You can wait here if you like,” says Mr White. “No point in you getting your feet wet when ours are already soaked through. We haven’t got much to bring and it won’t take us a minute.” The two of them take off their shoes and start to gingerly paddle across. I look and see a large electric cable climbing the side of the wall. “How come the power still works?” I ask conversationally.

“Simple economy I suppose,” replies White. “We haven’t touched anything down in the engine room – or the power room or whatever the hell it is called. We simply turn off the lights we don’t use. I presume there is a generator somewhere, keeps the thing running.”

I take a firm hold of the axe and swing it across to cut the power line. Sparks fly from all directions. The lights go off but the wire itself is alive and dangerous. Shielding my hands with the sleeve of my coat I take a hold of the plastic lower half of the cable and rip it from its placing then throw it as far as I can into the water. A spark of lightning flashes and bangs across the pool and then dies. Two bodies splash down heavily into the water.

I must try not to judge myself too harshly. I could not allow these two parasites to intrude upon our little piece of salvation, upon the survival which I have worked so hard to make for us. They had nothing to offer except what we were going to take anyway, nothing except the false hope of the ship, wet and sodden and leaking and un-sailable that it is. We shall strip it bare of all it has and then abandon it to the weather. We did not ask for company and they would have been nothing to us except a burden, for here I look after my family, my wife, my child. Nobody else shall encroach. The lights flicker on and off. I turn and make my way back from the cabin area, up the steps and out through the entertainment room and then back to the kitchen. My grandfather is still checking around the cupboards for more tins, although his bag seem bulging full to me. “Where is Helen?” I ask him.

“Loading up the boat outside,” he replies. “We have discovered quite a bounty, Tom. No more pork for us for a while. Those pigs can rest easy. Your grandmother will be delighted as well.”

“Great.”

My grandfather looks at me closely, concern etched across his face. “But you are white as a ghost, Tom,” he says gravely. “Are you alright?”

“I – I saw some bodies,” I say heavily. “Down in the cabin area, a man and a woman. Freshly dead by the looks of things.”

“Good Lord,” breathes my grandfather, visibly shocked. “Were there any more down there? Any idea how they died?”

“There may be more in the cabins but I didn’t see any more,” I tell him heavily. “As to how they died I don’t know for sure. I saw a severed electric cable and so I presume they were electrocuted when the ship ran aground yesterday.”

“Good Lord,” says my grandfather again. He furrows his brow and appears lost in thought for a moment. “Let us not tell your grandmother or Helen about what you have seen,” he says at last. “There is no need to upset them unnecessarily, especially after this ship has given them some hope at last.”

“I agree granddad,” I say warily. I sit down heavily against one of the cabinets. I look upwards towards the white, moulding ceiling above. “I would never dream of telling them, of hurting you or grandma or Helen. Or darling Verity. Everything I have done these past few months I have done for the four of you and if, as Helen says, it seems as though I am doing everything then it is only because of how much I love you all. No matter what happens, how much it rains or how far the water rises, I shall be there for you all. There is nothing I would not do for you. Nothing.”

“Oh Tom, of course we know that,” says my grandfather gently, coming to place his hand on my shoulder. I thank him and feel like I am about to burst into tears, something I have not done throughout the entire duration of the rains, no matter how bad things have become.

I need to get outside for a bit. I get up and make my way through the decimated restaurant area and out on to the deck. Helen stands at the railing and looks up at the sky above. I approach her. “Are you alright?”

She turns to me and her face is welled up with tears but at the same time she appears to be laughing. “Can you not see?” She asks me.

The sun is shining down upon her face, illuminating her pale features. The rain has stopped. I take a step back and now I can feel the warmth of the sun beating down on to my face as well. It has actually stopped! I collapse to the floor of the deck, salt tears flowing freely from my eyes.

What have I done?