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

On the third day, he walked to the village hall again. The sky was low and thick with snow. He pulled his coat tighter around him against the biting wind coming off the North Sea. Lists of the dead were placed on an inside wall. The telephone lines were back up and he thought the base must have been in touch with the police about the numbers of missing or dead. He tried to imagine seeing the name in someone’s black scrawl in order to face it, to see it off, but it merely produced a queasy wash of unease.

At first, he couldn’t see it. He scanned down the names: Patricia Blackfoot, 72; Maurice Blackfoot, 78. It was all old people. Frederick Gittings, 15 months. He swallowed. Muriel’s baby brother, it must be. But then underneath, he saw that someone had tacked up another list with tape. This one listed people from the neighbouring parishes and included the Holkham airbase. Whole families were listed, and the names rolled over his vision like newsreel. The name he was looking for. He couldn’t see it. It wasn’t there. He felt like laughing but held it in. But what exactly did that mean? Had Jack survived by some miracle and was back at the base? Why, in that case, wasn’t he here? He looked at the names again and his eyes snagged on one name on the list from the base: John Henry Doherty, 27. His first thought was Jack had told them he was twenty-two. Why would he lie about that? Then: Missing. For a few seconds he breathed heavily but slowly. Different scenarios crowded his brain. If Jack was still missing, he could be far away from here, perhaps he would never be found, perhaps they would forget, in the turmoil of the flood and its aftermath. They would assume he’d been in Hunstanton. He could tell the police, he could tell them Jack had been with him but then had disappeared, he could tell them… But the thought of speaking to the police made him falter and stagger back from the wall. The names merged and bled.

He half ran, half stumbled out of the hall. Grabbing his bike, he cycled down Staithe Street to the quay and kept going until he reached Beach Road. He had no real idea of what he was doing.