We filtered through the station, hundreds of us, to the gulllike cries of the NCOs and MPs.
Once we were out of the station we joined a unit of troops, laden with kit, already formed up. And then we set off on foot. We walked out to St John’s Hill and turned right, towards the river. It was my first return to London since I and Alice had fled from the first advance of the Martians from Uxbridge, more than two years earlier. Falling back on my journalistic experience, I tried to keep my mind open, my reactions fresh.
To begin with, I had oddly positive impressions. I heard little but a lapping of water somewhere nearby – that puzzled me – and the singing of birds, and the quiet voices of the men as they walked along. The air smelled clear if a little stale – like a blocked drain, I thought. I saw a stretch of blue sky above. Many of the buildings had a peculiarly streaked effect on their grimy surfaces, pale stone showing under the black. The coming of the Martians had extinguished London’s smoking chimneys, and the rain had weathered away some of the grime, centuries thick, from the faces of the buildings. I wondered what was going on in the parks – if the trees and birds were flourishing, if wildlife had come in from the country. It was a Wednesday in May; I felt a burst of absurd springtime optimism.
And then – too soon! – we came to the river. But not to its old bank.
Where the water lapped, I saw from the signs, was the York Road. To our right was a small park area, sodden and flooded. And before us was the river itself, evidently spread up from its course and over the feet of the buildings. I looked out across a stretch of grey water, to the silhouettes of buildings on the far shore, their foundations drowned as on our side.
Where the cobbled road surface ducked under the water there was an improvised jetty. Here a series of rowing boats waited for us, with more standing out on the river. The NCOs spoke their orders, and we shuffled down towards the water. Once in my boat I sat cautiously at the prow, beside Gray, while Lane sorted out men to take the oars, and a rough type in a heavy waterproof leather coat sat at a tiller in the stern and glowered at us.
I murmured to Gray, ‘What is this vessel?’
He shrugged. ‘Scarcely matters, does it? Might even have been a lifeboat from one of the warships the Martians smashed up in the Pool…’ He fell silent, watchful, as the boat inched its way down the flooded street, and over what I supposed to be a drowned embankment. ‘Always the trickiest part, over the streets, there’s all sorts of hazards – was on a boat once that got spiked by a smashed lamppost, sharp as a bit of broken bone, and that was no fun.’
We joined a line of such boats. The oars lapped, and gulls wheeled overhead, cawing, perhaps seeking food. The old route of the river was easy to make out as we progressed, for I could see the spans of bridges, every one of them broken as if snipped with scissors: Battersea Bridge, Albert Bridge, Chelsea Bridge. But the far bank was as drowned as the Clapham side, or more so; the river, vast and extensive, seemed to spread far inland to the north and east, over Chelsea and Westminster. The river itself was scummy, dirty, and scattered with debris – bits of wood, the remnants of clothing, dead birds and animals. And it was littered with wrecks; the heat-twisted hulks of battleships protruded, rusted and pathetic, above the lapping water. And it smelled foul, even in the middle of the river. It was hard to believe this was the river of empire.
Gray was watching me, as if interested in my reaction. ‘More marvels for your newspaper stories, Miss Elphinstone?’
‘Hardly marvels… The flooding. Is that the work of the Martians?’
‘Not directly. Indeed I doubt the Martians, from their arid world, know enough about hydrology to have managed this deliberately. No, this is all accident and neglect; nobody is in a position to maintain the drains and the flood gates and the pumping stations. So the Thames is regaining its old banks: flooding lost lagoons at Hammersmith, Westminster, Bermondsey, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich.’ He smiled. ‘The old rivers are coming back too, bursting out of the culverts under which we buried them. I have a friend who swam down the course of the Fleet, for a dare, from St Pancras to Blackfriars… Of course as much damage is being done underground as over.’
‘The flooded Underground tunnels.’
‘An awful lot of people sought shelter from the Martians down there, for an awful long time.’
So much damage had been done – so much suffering! I felt ashamed of my own self-absorption.
Now followed perhaps the most extraordinary part of that strange urban journey. We cut in from the river’s true bank, and rowed our way cautiously north-east – I think we followed the line of the drowned King’s Road, through Chelsea towards Belgravia. Our pilot navigated cautiously, peering to left and right and every so often calling a halt if he suspected we were to encounter some submerged obstacle. To my right the broad, placid river; to my left I thought I glimpsed the great museums of South Kensington rising pale. And ahead, the jagged ruins of General Marvin’s new Palace of Westminster protruded from the water like the skeleton of some vast aquatic mammal.
Still on the river, we passed Buckingham Palace – its roof was melted and skirted the Victoria Memorial, and our pilot seemed to make his way more confidently over the drowned St James’s Park. At last we came to Trafalgar Square, which rose up out of the water, and along with the boats that had preceded us we berthed on the Gallery steps; iron posts had been driven into the stone for the purpose. Once I had climbed out onto the steps, looking away from the water, I had a brief, odd feeling of normality, of routine, despite the khaki-clad men all around me. But a glance down Northumberland Avenue showed the waters of the swollen river, glinting in the sun between the buildings, its surface littered with unidentifiable debris.
Gray came to me. ‘Now we have lunch.’
‘A little late for that.’
‘You’re in the Army now, Miss Elphinstone; you eat when you’re fed. And then it’s a walk for us, I’m afraid.’
‘Which way?’ I knew my destination was to the west and the Cordon, eventually.
But he pointed east, along the Strand. ‘That way, along the new shore. Dry enough, if we cut up a couple of streets. The Strand, you know – a Saxon word for “beach”, and that’s no accident, for this was once the bank of the ancient river.’
‘How far?’
‘All the way to Stratford.’
‘Stratford? East, then, not west, to where the Martians are – I imagine there’s a plan.’
‘As much as the Army ever has.’
12
FROM ALDWYCH TO STRATFORD
So that extraordinary day continued. We walked, but I am used to that, and was glad of the exercise after days of travel on boat and train. We headed along the Strand – where, as I have previously remarked, I had the opportunity to inspected the war wreckage of landmarks familiar to me – and then through Aldwych and around the London Wall to Aldgate, and then on up the Whitechapel Road to Stepney and Bow. As we progressed the scouts would peel off to the locations of telephone equipment, left by those who had come this way before; they checked the gear and made hasty reports. The engineers suspected that the Martians could detect our wireless transmissions, and could track us that way – but they could not detect our telephone calls.