The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When I left the village on Wednesday morning, I quickly discovered that the organisation of the rest of the world had not stood up to the strain as successfully as it had in Beadle.

The Railways had instituted a ‘skeleton service’ in order to release all possible men for Defence Work, and upon arriving at the station I discovered that the 10.23 was no longer running. I had to kick my heels for nearly an hour, and when at last a long, lazy train crept in, we proceeded to stop at every station between Beadle and London. Most of the passengers reminded me of war refugees, travelling with untidy parcels of luggage. They were country folk, unused to travelling, on their way to spend the critical days with friends and relatives. In my compartment was an old lady with a parrot that kept saying: ‘Catch ’im! – catch ’im!’ with such monotonous regularity that I got absolutely sick of it.

The appearance of the countryside did nothing to cheer me. In Beadle the farmers had sown their land as usual. They had bought their corn, and whatever the future held in store, they had decided that they might just as well sow the stuff as waste it.

But I noticed as we crawled along that, despite strict orders from the Ministry of Agriculture, many fields were weed-grown and neglected. This was particularly noticeable in the regions of towns from which unwholesome influences had spread. Now and then, upon a hillside, I saw the new-turned earth from dugouts, with men and women moving about beside them: here and there I saw labourers lopping tall trees by the roadside in accordance with the ‘streamlining’ scheme, and although I saw a few men wandering aimlessly in the fields and lanes, only once did I see a pair of horses drawing a harrow.

Waterloo Station was more like a deserted exhibition building than a busy railway terminus, and the collector took my ticket as if it were an outworn formality of no further meaning. Even the taxi driver accepted my instructions as if he were doing me a favour, and meandered along with no apparent desire to return for another fare.

The only normal things in London seemed to be Westminster Abbey, Uncle Henry and Aunt Rose. My uncle and aunt were delighted to see me, and far from being annoyed at my late arrival, expressed surprise that I should have come up so well. I was hungry for my lunch, but hungrier still for news: I quickly told them my own experiences: under normal conditions I would have dwelt at length upon my adventures as a Member of the British Lunar Society, but today I dismissed them in a few words.

‘And now, Uncle,’ I said, ‘tell me everything – just as if you were speaking to a man from the back of beyond – as indeed I am!’

Uncle Henry was fond of talking, and eagerly seized the opportunity, but what he told me killed all desire for a second helping of Aunt Rose’s excellent sponge pudding and made me wish devoutly that I had remained in the blissful ignorance of Beadle.

London, it seemed, had behaved very much like Beadle upon receiving first news of the approaching calamity. The people were stunned and incredulous: they accepted the assurances of the Government, the radio and newspapers because they were not in a fit condition to reason for themselves. They responded magnificently, at first, to the appeal for ‘business as usual’, but as the days went by – as the great March moon had grown and waned – ominous happenings began to wrinkle the smooth surface of the great city’s life.

It is not fair upon London to compare it with Beadle: it was clearly impossible to find ‘defensive work’ for more than the smallest percentage of those teeming millions. The construction of the London dugouts was for the most part in the hands of trained men of the Army and Navy, and the people, unlike those in Beadle, were thrown back upon their own morbid reflections. While the novelty lasted, all went well – but as the hideous reality began to dawn upon them they could no longer concentrate upon their work, and the ‘business as usual’ effort collapsed into chaos.

Thousands, of course, were idle through no fault of their own: who, for instance, was going to keep the shipping agencies busy by booking cabins for a summer cruise? – who was there to keep the building trade in occupation by ordering new houses, or even alterations to an old one?

The most serious aspect of all was something that I had not anticipated. The passing of each moon had brought freakish and terrible convulsions to the sea. On the 23rd February the giant liner Gibraltar had disappeared in mid-Atlantic after one frantic, garbled SOS, and not a single fragment had been found to show what terrible fate had befallen her.

The Queen Elizabeth, upon docking at Southampton a few days previously, had reported sudden whirlpools, and a towering wave, one evening towards sunset, that spanned the ocean from horizon to horizon. Driving northward with terrible power it had lifted the giant liner bodily with it – two miles from its course.

Shipping was now almost at a standstill. The Government had foreseen this possibility and had for six months been laying in reserves of food, but the rationing which had already become necessary had not contributed to the public peace of mind.

Still more disturbing were the outbreaks of lawlessness which had increased with terrible rapidity during the past few weeks. Every great city contains, by the laws of nature, a certain number of people who only keep the law through fear of long terms of imprisonment. This fear, in such people’s opinion, had now ceased to exist.

‘The trouble began,’ my uncle said, ‘in the East End two weeks ago, when the March moon was at its full. One night a hundred or so hooligans came together – apparently without any pre-arrangement. They smashed down the doors of a dozen public houses and drank themselves mad: then looted some restaurants and grocery stores and beat six people to death.’

‘But the police…’ I began indignantly, and my uncle laughed.

‘The police are brave men,’ he said, ‘but what could a handful of police with puny truncheons do against a gang of raving madmen? They dispersed them in the end but several were killed. Those hooligans were not only mad with drink – they were crazed with fear as well. It must have been ghastly – in the glaring red light of that moon…

‘Martial law was declared next day: a battalion of Grenadier Guards took over the bad areas and it was announced that looters would be shot on sight. That put a stop to the hooligans working together in big gangs, but every night we get a dozen or more sudden riots and violent robberies.

‘We’re safe enough in our houses: they go for the pubs and drink them out, then career around in twos and threes holding up people for their money: the soldiers and police do what they can, but it happens so suddenly – in such unexpected places – and the police can’t be everywhere.’

I was getting impatient and rather angry at my uncle’s long, disagreeable story.

‘But there are millions of decent, law-abiding people to set against these miserable wretches!’

‘Millions,’ agreed my uncle, ‘and they are magnificent. They just carry on – quietly and stubbornly. If it’s done nothing else, this trouble has shown us the meaning of family life. In other days the boy was at the pictures every night: the girl was at a dance: father was playing billiards at his club and mother was alone, looking after baby. Every night in these days they gather in their homes. I don’t know what they do,’ he added rather lamely.

I was getting very tired of Uncle Henry. Up to a point his views were interesting, but he had neither the imagination nor the humour to brighten what he said with inspiration or excitement. I began to feel an intense longing to be back in Beadle – to help build those rafts – to hear Robin’s merry laugh – to take a steaming mug of tea from Pat – to sit and smoke my pipe with the ‘timber club’…

‘They’ve had to open a lot of emergency asylums,’ remarked my uncle. ‘There’s a closed van goes by here every morning, with screams coming out of it. They’ve cleared all the London prisons and filled the cells with lunatics: they’re mostly pretty violent and want careful handling.’

‘Every morning,’ put in Aunt Rose, ‘they have to go through all the shrubberies in the parks and cart away the suicides in an Army lorry. They’ve given up having inquests anymore: they just bury them.’

I rose from the table. I could not stand this any more. ‘I’ll go for a walk around London,’ I said, ‘and see what it looks like.’

‘Dinner sharp at seven,’ called out my uncle. ‘We’ve got tickets for Money Bags at the Coliseum: they say it’s a jolly show!’

‘A show!’ I exclaimed. ‘Surely the theatres aren’t running!’

Uncle Henry gave a booming laugh. ‘Of course they’re running! – and doing jolly well! Cheer up, Edgar! – things aren’t as bad as you think!’

I left the house, admiring and yet despising my aunt and uncle. I admired them for their extraordinary calmness: I despised them for that gloating smugness that seemed to say: ‘We’re old, but you are not: we’ve little to lose, but you have much.’ I may be doing them a gross injustice: their detached, cold-blooded behaviour may have been an expression of bravery as great as that of Professor Hartley, the Vicar, or Colonel Parker, but I could not help feeling that Uncle Henry had mashed up those suicides and riots with his second helping of sponge pudding and swallowed them with a gloating relish.

It was a typical April afternoon with spells of warm sunlight quenched now and then by sudden, heavy showers.

I put on my mackintosh, took my umbrella and sauntered out into the Bayswater Road with no set purpose or destination. A casual observer would have noticed little different from the ordinary routine of London life. Although the traffic was sparser, there were plenty of buses on the streets, and through the Park railings I saw nurses upon their afternoon parade with perambulators.

But I was no casual observer that afternoon, and visible evidence was quick to come my way. The windows and doors of the King’s Head public house at the corner of Ladbroke Grove were boarded over: through the boards I could see broken windows and a splintered door and beneath the first–floor window hung a flaunting, rather pathetic notice: ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL!’.

Massive steel doors, like those to our dugout at home, had been built across the opening to Notting Hill Tube Station. The tube railways had been closed for a month and the railwaymen had been employed in turning the tunnels and underground halls into massive fortresses against the moon. They were designed to hold a million people and tickets had already been issued to denote the entrance that each holder was to use, and his position in the tunnels.

Massive barriers of reinforced concrete had been built in the tunnels between the stations so that if one entrance to the railway system were broken down, the flooding would be limited to that section alone.

The whole of St James’s Park Tube Station with its adjoining tunnels had been reserved and fitted up for Government use – with offices, radio apparatus and even a miniature House of Commons a hundred feet beneath the surface!

I was told that a huge dugout beneath Hyde Park, constructed by the Coldstream Guards, would hold a thousand people on its own, and similar dugouts existed in many other parts of London.

If you can imagine an enormous ants’ nest, with every ant robbed of its purpose and its powers of concentration, you have some idea of the appearance of London in those final days. It took me some while to understand why the crowds in Oxford Street and Hyde Park Corner looked so much the same as usual and yet so subtly different: it was simply that purpose and concentration had gone from them. They were dressed as any London crowd is dressed upon an April afternoon: I saw no sign of neglect or untidiness in clothing: their appearance had not changed: it was just their manner that was different.

Usually the seats within Hyde Park are occupied by rows of people who seem rooted there for the whole day: they lie sprawled in every attitude of repose. This afternoon there was no permanency in those rows of seated people: always they were getting up, wandering on – getting up – wandering on. I noticed, too, a far greater number of half-smoked cigarettes upon the ground, a far greater consciousness of one another – far more smiles from stranger to stranger – faint, pathetic smiles of brave passengers upon a sinking liner.

The band was playing from the stand in Hyde Park: they played lively, catchy music: a crowd surrounded them, but the seats were almost empty. The listeners stood awhile – wandered away – stared into space, and wandered back.

It was interesting to notice the varying activity of the shops in Oxford Street. Some were completely neglected – others even closed altogether. These were mostly the jewellers’ shops, the furniture shops – the shops that catered for wants of permanence that were no longer desired.

On the other hand, the outfitters’ shops that sold readymade shirts and pullovers, socks and underclothes were almost besieged. There was a widespread belief amongst Londoners that, should the world survive in a semblance of its present form, there would certainly be a long period of chaos during which the wardrobe and storeroom would have to stand up to a long siege. Even if the world did survive, money would be useless anyway, so people were buying warm, serviceable clothes, stout boots and shoes and any tinned food they could lay their hands upon. In Woolworth’s I noticed a large crowd around the chocolate and sweet department, while a tray of curtain hooks was quite deserted.

The Government had avoided every possible announcement suggestive of danger or panic: they had put no restrictions upon the banks and everyone was free to draw his money if he chose. Millions of paper money had been printed – for millions desired to have their savings in their hands – but strict orders against profiteering had prevented the panic-stirring effects of inflation. Beyond the purchase of useful things I saw no sign of reckless squandering.

I returned from my walk with a greater admiration for these Londoners than I had had before. They had so much less to hold them together than we had in Beadle. In Beadle we had our Village Hall, our church and sports clubs, a tight little community in which every member had his place. But in those vast, sprawling suburbs of London there was no such bond of community life: just miles of houses, filled with people who frequently did not even know which Borough they lived in, what Council they came within or which church served them. Their clubs and interests were frequently outside the districts in which they lived: their families and their gardens were the only communities that they had ever known… and yet they held together. I saw no madmen, no suicides upon my long, wandering walk that afternoon. I saw calm people – tired, pale faces – haunted, restless eyes – swinging arms and wandering feet – eager, chattering children staring up at the grave, bent heads of their parents. I saw a woman with a tin of toffee under her arm and a man tightly clenching a little First Aid box as he came from a chemist’s shop. The only people I disliked were those who laughed and talked in loud, raucous voices, who stared around with eyes that said: ‘Just look how brave I am!’

And in the pocket-book of every one of them I visualised a small buff ticket with the Government stamp upon it: a ticket that admitted its owner to a little, steel-protected space beneath the ground: a ticket, for so many, to the grave.