The Hopkins Manuscript

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I must have slept for nearly seven hours, for when at last I opened my eyes the tilt of the sun upon the dining-room carpet showed me that it was close upon midday.

Even so, I lay there in a blissful doze for another hour – utterly regardless of what had happened to the rest of the world in my own surpassing gratitude for life. I desired no greater happiness than to wriggle my toes and to feel the gentle pulsing of my heart.

But gratitude is the shallowest and most transient of all emotions: within the space of an hour it began to grow thin and break up in the face of an increasing desire for breakfast.

Where was Mrs Buller? She ought to have been out of that dugout hours ago. I began to listen impatiently for the opening of the kitchen door – for Mrs Buller’s footsteps in the kitchen and the pleasant clatter of breakfast cups. But the silence continued, and my impatience grew to annoyance. Nothing is more irritating to a middle-aged man than the dislocation of long-established habits. While I had been through a most horrifying experience my housekeeper had spent a comfortable, sociable night in the dugout protected by steel doors from the privations I had myself endured. Instead of returning at once to renew her duties she was probably gossiping in the village, bursting with self-importance over her adventure, totally regardless of my comfort and callous of my safety! I began rehearsing a few sharp, sarcastic remarks for when she condescended to return.

‘It’s perfectly all right, Mrs Buller! I spent a most restful night and am quite content to make my breakfast upon air! – Please don’t hurry yourself!’

My watch had stopped, and I had no notion of the time, but the sun was now shining upon the end of the table as it shone when I sat down to lunch at one o’clock. I could contain my hunger no longer. I resolved to shame Mrs Buller by getting a meal for myself.

The pots and pans that usually hung upon the kitchen wall were scattered upon the floor, but thanks to my foresight in storing the crockery there was little damage done. I cut some bread and butter, opened a tin of sardines and began to enjoy the novel experience of ‘doing for myself’.

But when I returned to the stove to make my tea I received my first shock: the first indication of the state of affairs that I was now to face. I had filled the kettle, turned on the electric stove and given it ten minutes. I now discovered the stove to be stone cold: there was no electric heat.

The lights had failed in my dining-room at eight o’clock on the previous night. It was now past midday. A sixteen-hour failure in the electric supply suggested a more serious state of affairs than I had imagined. Because I had survived the night in safety, and because my house had withstood the storm so well, I had been lulled into the false belief that the rest of the world had suffered no worse than I had.

But there was coal in the scuttle and sticks prepared by the methodical Mrs Buller for the morning fires. I went back to the dining-room, laid the fire, put a match to it and placed the kettle there.

While it was boiling I decided to make a full inspection of the house. The crash I had heard upstairs during the height of the tornado had prepared me to meet with some disorder in the bedrooms but I was completely unprepared for the appalling sight that faced me as I reached the upstairs landing. My own bedroom, which faced westward, was in moderately good condition: the window was broken and the floor strewn with books and papers, but when I entered the best spare bedroom on the eastern side I was stunned with dismay. The whole roof had collapsed in the north-east corner and the room stood open to the sky: whatever had hit the house on the previous night had torn a jagged hole ten feet wide. The window had been blown inward bodily with its frame and lay splintered upon the bed, and the room had become the receptacle for masses of filth and rubbish from the tornado-stricken night.

The second spare bedroom was almost as bad: here again the window had been blown bodily from its socket and the debris lay a foot deep on the floor, rising breast high against the inner wall. I have never seen such an astonishing collection of rubbish: there were two dead rabbits and a Russian soldier’s cap in one corner, and in the fireplace I found a toy trumpet and a seed catalogue printed in Swedish. I had not realised until then the terribly widespread nature of the storm.

As I stood meditating upon this doleful mess I was alarmed by columns of black smoke coming up the stairs. I rushed down, fearing that the house was on fire and discovered to my chagrin that when I had lighted the dining-room fire I had forgotten the wet towel I had pushed up the chimney on the previous evening. I was almost suffocated as I got it down with the tongs and it was a good half-hour before the fire burnt up sufficiently to boil my kettle.

Food and hot tea revived me a little, but it helped in no way to dissipate my growing concern. Although the sun shone brightly it was deathly still outside: no sound of cars came from the road beyond the valley – no voice of man from the village or song of bird from the downs. I seemed to be as isolated now as I had been in the awful twilight of the previous evening. In retrospect I know that my attitude was childish and unreasoning that morning, but no man can gain full comprehension, in the space of a few short hours, of the complete dissolution of a world that he had taken for granted since childhood. Only by coming face to face with each hard fact in turn could understanding grow.

I had been looking forward to my first excursion into the outside world, but now I began to dread it. I had looked forward, in that first blissful hour of my awakening, to going down into a battered but cheerful village and being something of a hero to the villagers who had spent the night in the dugout. I could tell them the whole story of the tornado as an ‘eye witness’ and take a rise out of Dr Hax who had seen nothing.

But now the worst forebodings were oppressing me. The continued absence of Mrs Buller no longer annoyed me: it filled me with increasing concern. I went to the hall, took my hat and stick and threw open the front door.

The first thing I noticed was that my yew trees, cut to the shape of sitting hens, which had lined the path to my front door, had completely disappeared. I was surprised at this, but not altogether sorry. Since my gardener had ruined the uniformity of them by his clumsy cutting when we had tried to turn one of the chickens into a gamecock, the whole line of trees had been an eyesore to me and I was rather pleased that the tornado had removed them so completely and so neatly.

But I quickly discovered that the weird ocean outside my window on the previous night had been no ghostly apparition of a fevered brain. My garden was in a ghastly mess – thick with slimy mud, seaweed and the kind of rubbish one sees upon the beach of a seaside resort after a Bank Holiday – sodden newspapers, a pair of trousers… I will not dwell upon it.

Even this did not depress me as much as the reader might suppose. I was fond of hard gardening, and the obliteration carried out by the flood would afford me the opportunity of designing the garden upon entirely new and refreshing lines. The seaweed in particular would be a good fertiliser when dug well into the top soil.

My thoughts were now upon my meadow in the valley, where I kept my poultry. I knew that one of my chicken houses had gone because I saw it blown by in the storm, but I still had hopes that a few at least had survived in the comparative shelter of the valley. I walked over the hillcrest and looked down upon the piece of land that had always been my pride and joy.

I blinked my eyes – took off my spectacles and wiped them: what in the world had happened?

Was it an enormous mound of mud?… was it a stranded sea monster?

Sprawled in my meadow, almost covering the whole five acres of it, lay a huge black shape. I went down the hillside in mute bewilderment and as I drew nearer I saw to my amazement that it was an enormous ship.

Its great hull lay facing me – towering above me – its three immense funnels stuck out upon the other side, their tops resting upon the gentle slope that rose towards the downs.

The sun was glinting upon the great bronze screws as I stood staring up at them like a man in a trance. I walked to the bows and, by twisting my head, was able to read the name upon the vessel’s side. It was the King Lear.

The phenomenon is not difficult to explain. My meadow lay at the head of a great valley that widened southward to Southampton Water. When the huge backwash from the Atlantic Ocean struck the southern coast of Britain, the tidal waves took the line of least resistance up valleys that had once taken broad glacial rivers to the sea.

The greatest ships in the world had been like bottle corks in the face of those mighty waves. The King Lear, wrenched from her moorings, had ridden up this Hampshire valley until the lip of the downs had ended her nightmare voyage. The wave had receded as rapidly as it had come, leaving its wrack behind it.

It is useless to argue reason in the face of a thing like this. I had already suffered more in one night than any man before me had suffered in a lifetime. I was blind to the awe-inspiring power that had wrought this miracle: I was conscious only of a consuming, overpowering rage! What had I done to deserve it?… Nothing! This was my meadow! – my freehold property! I had paid £600 for it and reared in its quiet seclusion the finest poultry that had ever stepped in Hampshire! This lovely meadow had been the pride and the joy of my life, and here, sprawled upon it like a drunken giant, crushing and obliterating my life’s work, lay somebody else’s property – without my permission, without a word of apology! Of my poultry houses there was not a sign – of my cherished pullets not a feather…

I scrambled up the slimy hillside, panting – sobbing with impotent rage. I strode into my house and took up the telephone:

‘Give me the North Star Shipping Company immediately!’ I shouted.

The telephone was dead: as dead as my electric stove: as dead as my Bantam hens and Wyandotte pullets: as dead as the whole of this silent, barren world. I collapsed onto the sofa and burst into tears.

My breakdown brought infinite relief to me: the pent-up strain of many months released itself in those floodgates of despair. Gradually I grew calmer: a philosophical calmness came which I had never felt before, and my anger gave place to shame.

I had been so insanely obsessed with my own trivial misfortunes that I had given no thought to other tortured souls that may have survived. When I had left my house I had been so concerned about my garden and my meadow that I had not even glanced at the village beneath me. I had a duty – an urgent duty – towards my fellow beings. I might possibly be the only survivor: in that case there was nothing to be done but live like a Robinson Crusoe – Emperor of a dead world – until I, too, was dead. But there might be others, and my duty was to give them every hope and comfort in my power. I rose from the couch and went once again to my front door, determined this time to meet with courage whatever lay in store for me.

I walked down the slope of what had been my garden until the village came in view. I saw now that the flood which had left the King Lear in my meadow had not entirely gone. A grey, stagnant lake submerged the lower part of Beadle valley, and the ruined houses stood waist deep in mud and slime. The tower of the church was broken off – possibly by the great liner as it had passed overhead – a solitary black bird, which might have been a crow, was wheeling forlornly over the shattered roofs, but of human life there was no vestige nor sign. I walked up the slope until I could see the doors of the dugout in Burgin Park. Two doors were closed, but the third, the furthest from the main door, stood open. My hope surged up at the sight of that open door, but as I glanced around my bewilderment increased. Close upon a hundred people had entered the dugout: the open door suggested their escape and safety, but where were they?… where had they gone? Surely a few of them at least would have stood by the village to salvage what remained of their homes? It baffled me.

I was about to go and get my binoculars to search the surrounding country when I saw something which brought a shout of joy to my lips. I yelled like a madman and waved my hat.

Standing upon the opposite hillside was a solitary figure. It did not move – it did not answer my shout – but it was alive, and human. I felt in that moment as a shipwrecked man must feel when a wisp of smoke appears upon the distant horizon. I shouted again – ridiculously concerned lest the man should turn and go, as a ship might turn and leave the shipwrecked sailor.

This time the figure made a sign. An arm was raised, suspiciously and uncertainly, as if its owner doubted my existence.

I slithered down the muddy hillside and raced across the valley, but fast as I went my brain was racing ahead of me. Who could this stranger be with whom, quite possibly, I was to share the world? What a sorry anticlimax if it turned out to be Dr Hax or Murgatroyd the publican! I would rather live in solitude than share the world with Dr Hax, who would promptly make himself King and expect me to serve him. But I was across the valley now – I was scrambling up the other side, and as I drew near I saw that it was Robin Parker.

It was magnificent to find another fellow creature, no matter who it was, but it overjoyed me to find someone whom I knew to be a friend. As I hurried the last few yards I prepared to wring the boy’s hand and clap him joyfully upon the shoulder – and then I stopped in front of him. I did not take his hand. My greeting was never uttered.

It was Robin Parker, but only by his features did I recognise him. Nothing else remained to tell me of the carefree boy who had worked beside me in Burgin Park a few short days ago.

He took an uncertain step towards me: I think that he recognised me, although he seemed doubtful whether I were a real person or a vision of his anguished mind. He was terribly pale: an ugly, open wound ran from his cheekbone almost to the jaw, and the shirt was dark with blood: his hair lay matted upon his forehead and his eyes were upon me like those of a tortured, beseeching animal.

I felt quite powerless. I could not greet the boy. I could only stand before him and say: ‘You’re hurt, Robin.’

He made no answer to my obvious and futile remark: his eyes wandered vaguely, without any sense of surprise or curiosity, towards the great ship that sprawled across my meadow – then he trembled, and looked me up and down as if seeing me for the first time.

‘Will you come and help me?’ he said.

I took his arm as we turned to climb the hillside to The Manor House, for he swayed, and nearly fell, but he roughly shook my hand away and spoke in a harsh voice that I scarcely recognised: ‘I’m all right! – can’t you see!’

We walked slowly and in silence. Only as we reached the garden gate did the boy speak to me again.

‘My uncle’s dead.’

For a moment he looked me in the eyes, then turned and walked towards the house.

The terrible question upon my lips was only partly answered by the boy’s brief words, but in a moment the rest of the answer was given me. With intense thankfulness I saw the figure of a girl come from the house, and walk down the hill to meet us.

Pat smiled and took my hand.

‘I’m so glad you are safe,’ she said. ‘Has Robin told you?… it’s good of you to come.’

She was deathly pale: I saw that her hands, like Robin’s hands, were torn and bleeding, but she walked with a firm step and her eyes were clear and calm.

I followed them to the old panelled room where on a memorable evening I had dined with them so happily. The tragedy needed no words of explanation. The giant beech tree that stood upon the lawn had snapped from its base and crashed through the roof of the house, and the body of Colonel Parker lay crushed beneath the broad oak beam that had spanned the room. The force of the fall must have been terrific, for the tree had ploughed its way through the room above and its trunk loomed through the shattered ceiling – a glossy, satin-faced trunk, filled with the saps of spring.

A mass of fallen wreckage had been thrown to one side in a frantic effort to release the poor, broken body and I understood the reason for those torn, bleeding hands.

I could think of nothing for the moment. I stood there in helpless silence.

‘I don’t think that he suffered,’ said Pat, and her voice seemed to come to me from far away. ‘I think he was numbed… he tried to help us a little, and then it was over.’

There was a moment more of silence, and then I was startled by Robin’s voice.

‘Aren’t you going to do something!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you see!’

Pat was quickly beside him. ‘Don’t! Robin’… and she turned to me appealingly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘he’s badly hurt.’

The boy’s eyes were wide and racked with fever. ‘We must see to Robin first,’ I began… then suddenly the boy was calm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Will you help us?… could you… d’you think you could help us lift this beam?’

I am not physically a powerful man but I threw every ounce of strength into that terrible task. Little by little we raised the great beam, thrusting a brick beneath it as a wedge until at last, as Robin and I gave one superhuman effort, Pat was able to draw the body from beneath its prison. I admired her beyond words for the calm gentleness of those arms as they took their ghastly burden.

Only now would Robin allow us to dress his wound: the exertion of lifting the beam had caused the gash to bleed again. We led him to the kitchen. I washed the wound as Pat went away and returned with bandages. We gave him some brandy and forced him to lie down upon the couch in the wreck-strewn library.

‘Will you come outside?’ said Pat.

I followed her to the garden and she paused beside the skeleton of a great cedar that once had spread its dark foliage far across the lawn.

‘He was fond of this tree,’ she said. ‘It was a favourite place of his.’

I understood her meaning, and gently laid my hand upon her arm. ‘You must go back and look after Robin,’ I told her. ‘Leave me here.’

I found a spade beneath the ruins of a shed, and the sun was setting as I finished my sad task. Robin helped me to carry the body to the grave, and Pat followed with a coat upon her arm.

‘I think he would have liked this, too,’ she said.

It was the Colonel’s old military greatcoat, with tarnished crown and star upon its shoulders. I looked for the last time upon that proud, drawn face as Pat gently laid the coat across it. It was hard to believe that he was dead, for there was no sign of injury, and the rough tweed suit gave an eerie sense of life. I felt that I was saying farewell to an old, tried friend, and yet I had only twice been to his house: once to dine with him and once to dig his grave.

Twilight was coming as we laid the turf in place, and when it was over Pat looked at me with a grave, grateful smile.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You must be very tired. I’ve something ready for you.’

The girl had not been resting, as I had hoped. She had made a valiant endeavour to clear the ruined kitchen: she had lit the fire and made some tea. She had even laid a cloth upon the table with a plate of biscuits, some hot Bovril for Robin and a small bottle of wine for me.

Over that simple meal, as darkness came, we found it possible to speak for the first time of other things.

‘Do you know what’s happened?’ asked Pat. ‘I feel awfully selfish… just our own affairs… there must be thousands…’

‘There’s time for everything now, Pat’ – (and I spoke that name for the first time). ‘I know nothing more than you. Tomorrow we shall find out what there is to know – for the time being you must rest, for we shall need all our strength…’

‘We shall,’ said Pat, and her voice was scarcely above a whisper. There was a little silence and I felt the deathly stillness of the world. Then Pat spoke again.

‘If we could live through it, others may have lived… Oughtn’t we to… to see if we can help?’

‘There was no one in the village,’ I replied. ‘The dugout was open, I could see it from my garden: one of the doors stood wide open.’

‘Then they must be safe!’ cried Pat.

‘They must be,’ I said. ‘The door could only be opened from inside.’

‘Where are they, then?’

‘That I can’t say. We will see tomorrow.’

I looked around that stricken, stone-walled kitchen: a huge fracture gaped in the wall beside the fireplace – an ugly, open crack from floor to ceiling. As I had worked upon the Colonel’s grave I had paused now and then to look at the house and I knew that it had suffered far more than mine. The whole first floor lay ruined and open to the sky – no one could remain in this house with safety, and shyly I put the invitation that I had been planning all that afternoon.

‘I’ve been wondering,’ I said, ‘whether you would come and share my home for a little while? My house was lucky: it’s not badly damaged, and I’m quite alone. I should be very happy if you would come until… until things get straight.’

I saw the boy and girl exchange a quick, enquiring glance: I was very happy to see the spontaneous relief and agreement in their faces.

‘That’s awfully good of you. We’d like to come.’

I tried to dissuade them from clambering up those dark, ruined stairs, for the walls seemed to totter and parts of the broken roof were hanging by a thread, but they insisted upon a few things to bring along with them. I stood in the hall beneath and caught pyjamas, tooth-brushes and various odds and ends, and rolled them up in a tablecloth.

The stars were shining as we crossed the valley. ‘In an hour we shall know whether we’ve still got a moon,’ said Robin.

In the troubles of the day I had entirely forgotten about the moon. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘it’ll be interesting to see.’

‘Did you see it last night?’ asked Robin.

‘No – I saw lots of strange lights – nothing of the moon.’

‘Nor did we.’

The spirit of adventure springs eternal. Despite all our sufferings I honestly believe that all three of us enjoyed that weirdly exciting first evening in my desolate home. The leaving of The Manor House, with its personal tragedy, seemed to lift the veil of gloom from the boy and girl. I knew that much of their cheerfulness was a bravely acted part, but as they busied themselves in preparing supper they became again the Pat and Robin that I knew and loved.

We tried to persuade Robin to go to bed immediately but he stubbornly insisted upon playing his part. While Pat went with me to the kitchen, Robin re-lit the library fire, drew the curtains and set the table with plates and cutlery in a clumsy, boyish way.

I discovered a packet of candles in the kitchen drawer, but for economy we lit only two: one for the kitchen and one for the library table. Pat was surprised at the wide selection of preserved foods in my larder, for I had given much thought to laying in a proper supply. To take her mind from her own tragic home I made her decide what we should have for supper. She selected a tongue, with a jar of preserved pears to follow, and the romantic little feast that followed has lived always in my memory, for romantic it was, in the deepest sense of the word.

Romance is not easy to find in the placid conditions of civilised life: we strive to capture it by artificial means – through books, from the stage of the theatre and from the screen. But on that night, in that old book-lined room of mine, it came to us without conscious striving. Without our bidding, despite all that we had faced that day, its thrall enwrapped us. The fire gave us its golden glow: the candles sent our shadows creeping to and fro across the wall, and the curtains, drawn warmly against the stillness of the night, were symbols of defeated terror.

Robin had changed his blood-soiled shirt: he was wearing an old school sweater and grey flannels, and Pat the white pullover that she had worn at the cricket match. I was in my rough tweed walking suit: I felt my bristling, unshaven chin and apologised.

‘I must look a frightful tramp!’

‘You look like a Wild West pioneer,’ corrected Pat.

‘Perhaps all three of us are pioneers,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we set out to discover a new world.’

I saw Robin’s eyes light with a sudden dawn of excitement, and I smiled across at him.

‘We’ve suffered,’ I said. ‘You two have suffered far more than me, but we shall have our reward, I think – in the days to come. No matter what havoc lies out there – the world has survived: the moon may have gone, but the sun’s in the sky and the earth is full of life. Those of us who have survived will have a great duty ahead of us. We have to build the world again, and perhaps in doing so, we shall find little ways of improving it. All three of us have been re-born today – I at forty-seven – you at twenty, Pat… and Robin at seventeen. I may not live to enjoy the fruits, but you two have the best years of your lives ahead. Before you are old you may be living in a world much finer than any you would have known if this… cataclysm had not come to us.’

I was speaking to bring hope and encouragement to the tired, brave girl and boy before me, but even as I spoke I thought of my Uncle Henry, of how he had chortled over his years of full-spent life without consideration of my own desire to live. With Uncle Henry I was young, with years ahead of me, yearning to be lived, but with Pat and Robin I was old, with my best years gone. I had always been a lonely, self-sufficient man. At a pinch I could eke out an existence and even be happy in solitude – growing my own food – fishing in the river and perhaps snaring an occasional rabbit. With sufficient food, and my books around me, I would lose very little if I were to be a Robinson Crusoe for the rest of my life – but what of Pat?… this lovely girl upon the verge of womanhood?… what of the gaiety and travel and social life that were the due of her youth and charm?… where could marriage be found in a shattered world?… where could be found the peace and happiness of home life – and children?… And what of Robin, at seventeen?… with a year still due to him at Eton?… a last year that should have been filled with the interests and responsibilities of a senior boy?… where were his years at Oxford now?… and his cricket blue?… He was intended, I knew, for the diplomatic service. Where could Robin find, in this ruined world, a career to be worthy of his birth and character?

But these thoughts came only as a background to my words: I do not think that Pat and Robin had begun to consider the deep, bewildering problems that lay ahead of them, and even if they had I doubt if they would have been dismayed. Their eyes never left mine as I spoke to them, and the light in those eyes kindled fresh admiration in me: a resolve to live for them – to do all in my power for them.

Dog tired though we were, Pat insisted that we should clear away the meal and wash up before we went to bed.

‘Men in the jungles put on dinner jackets every night to keep civilised,’ she said. ‘We’re going to wash up tonight for the same reason!’

I gave Robin a glass of port and made him rest by the fire while Pat and I worked in the kitchen, for I could see that his wound was giving him great pain. I knew that it should have been stitched and properly sterilised, and I could only trust to his youth and health to heal the gash.

Even so, he would not keep quiet. As Pat and I returned from the kitchen Robin was standing at the front door, staring up into the night. He came in, grinning through his bandages.

‘There’s no moon,’ he said. ‘It’s disappeared. I wonder where it’s gone to?’

‘We’ll have a look for it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Now you be off to bed!’

I gave Robin Mrs Buller’s room, which lay upon the western side and was not badly damaged. I insisted that Pat should have my room and only persuaded her by declaring that I would not sleep at all unless she did.

But the girl refused to sleep until she had brought the sheets and pillows from one of the wrecked spare rooms and made my bed upon the library couch.

I took up the candle when she had finished. ‘Take this,’ I said. ‘I can see quite well by the light of the fire.’

And then she took my hand in hers. She held it, and I saw that tears were in her eyes.

‘You’ve been wonderful today,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been for you… for your help… I don’t think Robin and I could have faced it alone. You saved us.’

I had to turn my head away: a lump came throbbing into my throat and I had to struggle before I could reply to her.

‘You and Robin are the wonderful ones – you saved me.’

There was a moment of silence: I heard the fire rustle in its glowing bed.

‘What are we going to call you?’ said Pat. ‘Mr Hopkins sounds all wrong, doesn’t it! – we’ll call you “uncle”!’

She laughed. She kissed my cheek and was gone before I could reply. I felt like a silly yokel, standing there.

Tired though I was, I sat a long while by my library fire. I sat there until the last coal glowed and died. I listened to the quiet voices of Pat and Robin overhead, I listened to their footsteps until all was silent.

It was the first time that youth had ever moved in those bedrooms overhead: the first time that young life had ever come to me for help and offered me its gratitude. It seemed a little strange that the desolation of the world should have brought to me the first love and happiness that I had known since boyhood: the first great chance to live and strive for something beyond my own indulgent comfort.

I threw back the curtains and undressed myself in the steel light of the stars. I drew aside the neatly turned sheets that Pat had prepared for me, and slept.