BooksBarbecue
Back The Night of the Flood
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1954
  7. PART 1
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. 5.
  13. 6.
  14. 7.
  15. 8.
  16. 9.
  17. PART 2
  18. 1.
  19. 2.
  20. 3.
  21. 4.
  22. 5.
  23. 6.
  24. 7.
  25. 8.
  26. 9.
  27. 10.
  28. PART 3
  29. 1.
  30. 2.
  31. 3.
  32. 4.
  33. 5.
  34. 6.
  35. 7.
  36. PART 4
  37. 1.
  38. 2.
  39. 3.
  40. 4.
  41. 5.
  42. 6.
  43. 7.
  44. 8.
  45. 9.
  46. 10.
  47. 11.
  48. 1954
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the author
  51. An Invitation from the Publisher

Below the quay, hidden from the fishermen, the drunks and the children, by the old boat where she’d made the bonfire, she sat with the leftover chips Jack had brought her and licked the salt from her fingers. She could still smell his hair oil mingling with the chip fat. Chips and nylons for chaste kisses and posing. It seemed a fair exchange. He’d been distracted today and it made her afraid that the attention and the favours would be coming to an end. She knew him for a charlatan, a honey-voiced liar, but the things he offered were too good to resist. And it had been a laugh, putting herself in different poses for the camera. She had no idea what it was all for but she hadn’t cared. Now, she sensed that change was coming and the change would bring her something new. She just didn’t know what.

Away on the quayside she saw Arthur climb onto his bike and cycle off along Beach Road, a tiny moving figure. She ought to warn him. A storm was coming. She could feel it in the wind, in the greenish colour of the clouds. But he was too far away. She watched him pedal to the end of Beach Road, then she wiped her fingers on her skirt and jumped up. In the grey bowl of sky above the saltmarsh, the terns wheeled as if the wind had sucked them into a whirlpool. She drew her coat tight around her and climbed back onto the quay.

2.

Deepening Atlantic depression moving south-east down to the North Sea

The wind buffeted Arthur as he pedalled. At the quay, boats bobbed up and down. The water in the harbour was flint-grey, the sky heavy. He struggled to keep steady, but it was good to be out of the shop. Mother had been in one of her funny moods again. She’d been to the doctor’s surgery about a pain she referred to vaguely and he hadn’t asked about it, though he knew he should.

As he cycled he mulled over his latest idea for a headline article to take his mind off Verity: Nuclear Armageddon on Our Doorstep. He would use the story to alert readers to the possibility of an accident or retaliation. He’d make them question why our government was allowing the Americans to use us as stooges in their hidden war.