As Osgood’s senses returned, he tried to focus, looking up from a settee in the lounge bar of the pub. The stench of stale beer made his nausea worse. The features of a grey and puffy face came together slowly, the anxious face of the publican gazing down at him. From far away Oz heard the conversation, though he had difficulty understanding.
‘Okay, mate, there’s no use trying the phone. Look — he’s coming round. He’s a tough bastard …’
Osgood heard the ambulances, the shrill of police whistles and the blaring car-horns. He could smell burning and, as he clambered to his feet and staggered to the door, he heard the publican yelling after him: ‘You’re safer in here, Jack. Come down to the cellar, with the others…’
But Osgood pushed open the swing doors and vomited into the gutter. Holding his splitting head, he localized the pain where his skull had cracked against the cast iron of the booth. He was sick again and then started blindly staggering towards the telephone-box, obsessively searching for his groceries.
The red booth was tilted on its side, his purchases spilled across the pavement.
As he looked up to identify his way back to Cunningham Street, he saw the clear blue sky, blackened by billowing clouds of brown and orange smoke. Where there should have been houses there was nothing but space between the outlines of jagged masonry and drunken, leaning walls which were collapsing irregularly to the ground. From not far away he heard the screams of trapped people, crushed beneath the tons of rubble. High up in a half-demolished block, a woman clung, screaming dementedly, clutching a baby in one arm, a child in the other. As he watched, the structure slowly crumbled beneath her. The dust shot skywards, the horror of it mercifully obliterated by a cloud of swirling smoke.
Owen … he knew now the meaning of blind terror. As he stumbled across the heaps of masonry, towards what must have been Cunningham Street, there was only one thought in his distraught mind: he had to reach her, to identify the house, though it might be only a hole in the ground. He shouted, ‘Gwen! Gwen!’ and searched frenziedly in the rubble for what might once have been her street.
A couple of policemen, their uniforms streaked by filth and dust, grabbed his arms. ‘This area’s out of bounds. Can’t you read the notices on the barriers, mate?’
In spite of his struggling, they were gentle with him, firmly sending him on his way: ‘Inquire at the emergency centre. They’ll be the first to know.’
But it was hopeless: nothing but a smouldering, barren wilderness. A sullen anger began seething inside him, displacing the numbed despair, as he staggered, half-running, towards the. main road. He was gasping for breath when he finally reached a trail of cars crawling towards Saltash Bridge.
Chapter 5
Trevellion was watching the transit of the tower behind Gulval steadying against the western edge of Si Michael’s Mount In a depth of twenty-two metres HMS Furious was now within the lee of Land’s End — and the transit protected him from any further easting He turned from his position against the for’d windows of the aircraft-carrier’s bridge and called across to Jasper Craddock, his Commander, Air in Flyco, the flying control position protruding from the port after end of the bridge ‘Carry on, Wings 814 Squadron can begin embarking ‘ ‘Right, sir I’m getting in the engineers’ stores first ‘
Captain Pascoe Trevellion, DSC, turned to his navigation officer ‘Keep her within these limits, Pilot ‘ ‘Aye, aye, sir ‘
Trevellion took a final look through the windows, before leaving his bridge It was 1740 and the sun, a hazy, crimson orb, was already merging into the murkiness hanging like a shroud over the Cornish coast He did not like the look of it and the barometer was falling steadily He extracted his tobacco pouch from his hip pocket and began filling his battered pipe Twelve miles to the north-east, on the other side of Carrick Roads, Rowena Trevellion was going about her chores and preparing supper for Ben She too must be thinking about the Prime Minister’s broadcast So it was war, after all the pussy-footing and the frenetic contortions by a few of the Nato countries to buy peace at any price But the alliance had stood the strain — and the enemy attack on Plymouth would consolidate those loyalties Martial law was being declared in the city, after the looting following the bombardment by an unidentified attacker — though Trevellion realized from the classified signal he had received this evening that the perpetrator of the outrage was probably the Echo II which CINCCHAN had sunk off Bishop Rock — possibly the sub contact which the minesweeper had picked up The commander, John Bellairs, an ex-submariner, heavily built and with a sense of humour, came up quietly behind him Ship’s darkened,’ he said ‘First time for real, sir ‘
‘I wonder, John, how many nights it will be before the lights go on again,’
Trevellion said ‘Our lords and masters think it will be over in a few weeks ‘
‘Let’s hope they’re right, sir war has a funny habit of not going the way you expect’
The captain was poking his finger at the armoured plate-glass window before him ‘Here they come — the first of the Wessexes ‘
The red lights of the helicopters were blinking in an endless string from across the cliff tops, as they homed in on the carrier ‘The last of the draft are being brought off by the Scillies ferry from Penzance, sir I’ve lowered the port gangway ‘
Trevellion drew in upon the tobacco as the bowl of his pipe flamed to his match He snuffed out the flame ‘Can’t do that any more,’ he grumbled ‘Rotten example I’m setting, John,’ and he grinned at his second-in-command ‘Is the ship’s company complete?’
‘Only two absentees, sir All the Culdrose team made it, in spite of the Plymouth blitz ‘Good We’d better wear our Mae Wests from now on ‘
‘Right, sir I’ve warned the ship’s company ‘
‘Thank heavens we got the Harriers stowed when we did,’ Trevellion went on ‘The trials finished only just in time ‘
‘The operational readiness inspection couldn’t have been better timed, sir ‘
Trevellion didn’t answer, his thoughts ranging over those months now behind him He had been pleased by the chance of commanding this ship a senior captain, he had been in the right place at the right time when his predecessor had been invalided out Perhaps the Admiralty had decided that Furious should be commanded by an officer who had suffered the first shock of war to show the Russians that the British meant business ‘I’ve organized a mail, sir, if you’ve got anything ‘
‘Thanks, John. I’ll give it to my steward, if I have time to write.’
Trevellion was alone again with his thoughts, while the sun merged with the darkening horizon above Land’s End. He felt cold and tired after this long day, his spirit at a low ebb. For all these weeks the free world had tried to postpone this awful event. From the moment last month when the Soviet Northern Fleet sailed west from the Barents, he had known that Armageddon was approaching. Two days ago, the us president had told the Kremlin that the sailings of the reinforcement convoys for Europe were imminent; he had also made it plain that any Soviet submarine interfering with these convoys would be sunk, and that the submarine bases from which they operated would be attacked. The corollary presumed to apply to Russian surface forces was obvious.
The Soviets had retaliated by attacking Plymouth. If the Kremlin thought that an act of such ruthlessness would weaken British will, it was making a profound mistake, one which had been made before. It was already clear from the radio and television newsflashes that the Plymouth atrocity was welding the British nation together, unifying the people as for World War II — and Trevellion breathed a prayer of thankfulness that out of chaos, providence had created once again a national leader with the capacity to unite the people and to fire them with the will to resist — to the end, if need be.