Flash Flood

Chapter Twenty-three

Ben lay in the pipe and let his forehead rest on the rough concrete. He was exhausted. He’d had enough. He just wanted to tune out the world and go to sleep.

The rain pattered onto the back of his head. It felt pleasantly cool. He hadn’t realized how hot he was getting, inching along in the confined space. His shoulders, knees and elbows were sore from the friction. As he looked at the concrete pipe, the water trickling down the silt in the middle, he imagined pulling himself along on raw elbows again.

Perhaps he should just wait there until someone came to the building site. At least he could breathe: he wasn’t going to suffocate.

Even Bel might give up in a situation like this. Especially if there wasn’t a camera to see it. She’d probably turn over and have a snooze, and then, when rescuers pulled her out, she’d be berating the government for allowing concrete to be used in construction, because it cost so much energy to produce and contributed to — you guessed it — global warming.

Ben shivered. He was cold again now. He’d have to get going again or he’d freeze. The purple cable snaked on into the distance. It had to lead somewhere. He just had to hope it was somewhere he could go too.

He started to inch down the tunnel again. His elbows, knees and feet were sore and his breathing was loud in his ears, echoing off the walls. In the confined space he could smell his own sweat and his clothes, which reeked of rat.

He started to think of his unpleasant Tube journey that morning, crowded in with people smelling wet and sweaty, water dripping off their umbrellas. He thought that had been unpleasant enough, with the wet seats and stale tunnel air, but compared with where he was now it was luxury.

He went on and realized that the tunnel was getting darker. Should he stop and turn back? He could barely see his hands in front of him on the ground now.

But he could smell something. He was no longer imagining being in the Tube; surely this was the Tube.

Suddenly his elbows had more room to move. Much more room. There was a big space beside him. He explored it with his hands. It was big enough to squeeze out of.

Ben felt almost dizzy with relief.

He pulled himself out and his hands met sharp items on a wet floor. As he brushed them aside, they made a metallic noise and one of them gave off a faint glint of light. But where was the light coming from?

In a wall high above Ben’s head he saw a row of narrow slits. In front of him he could make out an open tool box, with wire cutters, spanners and screwdrivers strewn around the floor. That was what he had felt. In the wall was a cable conduit, its cover off.

Ben stayed on his hands and knees for a moment, taking in deep breaths. He had done it: he had got out of the tunnel.

The smell of the Tube was really strong now, not just a faint odour stirring the memory, and he saw that the toolbox had a logo on it: London Underground. He must be in a station. The slits above him must be one of those ventilation shafts he had seen on the roofs of station buildings.

As he got to his feet, he realized he was in a tall room and below him he could hear a watery sound, like an open well. Nearby was a sign pointing to a staircase. He went over to have a look and saw that it led down into the dark depths. The slits of light in the roof above reflected down there as if in a mirror. The well was filled with water. Shapes floated there motionless, the water almost covering them like varnish. It was a few moments before Ben realized what they were: heads, backs, hands, a sodden baseball jacket, a hoodie, a Drizabone hat. An iPod floating like a white tentacled thing in the water. Bodies.

He moved away quickly, and saw, on the other side of the room, a heavy dark wood door. It was open. On the floor by the toolbox was a torch. He picked it up and flicked it on, being sure to point it away from the bodies floating in the stairwell, then went through the door.

He found himself in a corridor. At the end an open door led to the booking concourse, where a sign said WELCOME TO HYDE PARK CORNER.

On the back of a chair beside the ticket barriers Ben spotted a navy blue jacket with LONDON UNDERGROUND on it. He shrugged off the mac and put on the jacket instead. At least it was warm and dry.

Then he picked an exit from the concourse and went up to street level.

He found himself on an enormous traffic island. He’d almost hoped that the scene would have changed when he got out, but it was the same desolation he’d left behind when he’d gone into the sculptor’s studio in Belgravia. Car and burglar alarms still shrieked alongside the seagulls and the rain came down relentlessly. You didn’t need a compass to work out where the water was; you could see the cluster of helicopters hovering over it like birds of prey. Buses and coaches stood abandoned all round the island, and ducks, geese and swans from the royal parks still patrolled the puddles. Manhole covers lay on the tarmac, water bubbling up onto the road as though from some cauldron below. It stank of sewage.

But it wasn’t a bad vantage point. The land sloped down towards Buckingham Palace to the south; it was surrounded by the dark lip of the water. If he remembered right, Charing Cross was near the river. All he had to do was follow the edge of the flood water eastwards.

As Ben turned his collar up against the unforgiving rain, he was back in the same miserable rhythm, one foot in front of the other. It was almost as if he had never strayed into the studio; as if he’d just been walking the whole time and imagined the whole bizarre incident. He was hungry and cold. If he kept moving, he thought, surely he’d get warm.

The image of the bodies in the Tube station followed him like a ghost, sending shudders through his rain-soaked skin. He began to think how lucky he’d been. What time had he come out of the Tube at Waterloo? And when had the flood hit? His train into London had been delayed. It could so easily have been delayed longer. He could have been trapped in the Tube himself. How many people were cocooned in that black water?

He reached Green Park Station and smelled that stale wet Tube station smell like the breath of old drains, heard the slap of water on shaft walls; saw in his mind’s eye the bodies, hanging like discarded wetsuits in a dripping stairwell.

He passed the Ritz and glanced down a side street. He realized that he needed to keep closer to the edge of the water and went down a narrow street — one car wide and lined with very old, expensive-looking shops: a tailor with gold lettering on the window; a tobacconist with a dark oak humidifier, cigars laid out inside it like a bizarre delicatessen counter.

As he made his way south-east, Ben looked down the next street and realized it was flooded. He stopped and thought. Maybe he should turn back.

A figure was walking further down the street, his green gum boots splashing through the filthy water. The water was moving, as though it still carried the ferocious current of the Thames like an electric charge, but it didn’t seem to be causing him any trouble.

Ben stepped in cautiously and carried on, past a wine shop displaying a dusty bottle of champagne as big as a traffic cone. He was so wet anyway, he didn’t notice any difference between walking on dry land and wading. When he got to the end of the street he could head back up to the main road.

Ben had nearly caught up with the figure in wellies. ‘Hi there,’ he called out, but then the man took a step and vanished.

It was as if the ground had swallowed him.