An end? Or a beginning?
They’d had trouble getting an air taxi. Thelma the producer
called four and the fourth said, “Yes if you come right now. We’ll get you in
there but we may not get you out. It depends who needs us. We’re landing on
Boltby Fell above the concentration site.”
“OK,” said Thelma, seeing no choice. “We’ll be there in 20
minutes.”
She rang off and turned to the cameraman. “Get Siobhan.”
“Siobhan? She’s useless. She’ll shit herself.”
“Tough,” she replied. ”Phil, she’s the only body in the
newsroom right now.”
Phil picked up Siobhan, a Sony PXW, two wireless microphones
and a battery charger. He thought the cellular network might be out and
collected a LiveU satellite backpack unit as well. “This is the bare minimum,”
he said as they got into the car. They drove out to the airport just as the
light began to show in the sky. Their route was on high ground and had not
flooded, but there was an inch or so of water on the surface from the ongoing
rain that hit it with force, the large droplets shining in the headlamp beams.
Thelma drove.
 |
| Winifred Knights (1899-1947): The Deluge (1920) |
“Siobhan, can you switch on the Today programme,” she
said. Siobhan did, and they heard the
presenter interview someone from the Met Office.
“It’s happened in Spain,”
said the Met man. ”A few times, actually. They call it the gota fría. In
October the water in the Med is still hot and the rising warm air from the sea
may collide with a cold front, causing heavy, dramatic rainfall and flash
floods. In recent years, as the Med has got warmer, it’s got worse. But it
hasn’t happened in the North Sea before, not like this.”
“Why now?” he was asked.
“The temperature in the
North Sea in October is usually 12°C to 16°C and wouldn’t normally exceed 20°C.
But it has been rising. On Thursday it was 24°C. Then a vicious cold front came
in from the east. There was a very rapid drop in air temperature.”
“Jolly good,” said Siobhan.
“Your house has gone and you’re up to your neck in mud and shit and you don’t
know where Granny is, but at least you know why.” Her voice was high and posh.
In the back, Phil winced.
The 6.30am news headlines
began. “The Government has declared an emergency for Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Derbyshire and Cumbria,” said the presenter. “People from the flood-affected
areas have been advised to gather at specific locations on high ground, where
local authorities and emergency services will attempt to assist them.” She
listed several, including Boltby Fell.
“Christ,” muttered Thelma.
She parked the car outside
the air taxi’s depot, hoping someone else from the office had its digital key
on their phone and could collect it later. The chopper was already warmed up
and they rushed through the paperwork then belted themselves in with grunted
greetings from the pilot, who was in a hurry. The rain had stopped, and dawn
had come; they climbed into a dirty grey and yellow sky. As they flew up the
river valley towards the moors Phil started shooting the landscape below. The
light seeped into the valley as the sun rose and they could see the river was
still beyond its banks; the gritstone villages nestled beside it were flooded.
There was no sign of movement on the road, which was mostly underwater.
As they neared the head of the valley the
ground rose to meet them, grey-green fields, drystone walls and then the rough
moorland of the fells. Then they crossed to the next valley, the ground fell
away and they could see the slope opposite. At first it resembled a vast
seabird colony, then they understood what they saw.
“Oh God. Phil, look,” said
Thelma, but he was already shooting it.
“It’s like Ethiopia,” said
Siobhan. “Those famous pictures of the famine. In the 1980s. Remember?”
No-one answered her.
They slowed and circled
towards the convex summit of Boltby Fell, where another helicopter was on the
ground; a second was taking off. They touched down and a small knot of people
ran towards them, heads bowed as they neared the rotor blades. Two were Sikhs
in high-viz jackets with the symbol of Khalsa Aid. The third, oddly, was a
vicar.
“I’ve got foil survival
blankets for them,” said the pilot. “And portable microwaves for the Khalsa
guys. I’ll unload, then I’m off. Good luck, OK?”
They grabbed Phil’s gear and
ran out to the edge of the field. In the distance an air ambulance crossed the
valley towards them. They climbed over the gate that separated the moorland
from the rough pasture that sloped down into the valley. There was scarcely a
patch unoccupied. A few people noticed their arrival. “Oooh, they’ve heard
about us. The telly people are here,” said someone. But most didn’t move; they
were hunched on the ground with an air of apathy. Some had foil blankets around
their shoulders. Here and there a few men and women in uniform picked their way
through the crowds, wearing the green shirts of the St John Ambulance or
high-viz jackets with a round British Red Cross symbol. Now and then one of
them would help someone up and guide them towards the gate; they seemed to be
triaging the injured.
Thelma tried to estimate how
many people were in the fields. She thought it was several thousand.
“Let’s do some interviews,”
she said.
“OK,” said Phil. He put the
Sony PXW on his shoulder. “But I feel like a dick.”
Siobhan was kneeling in
front of a middle-aged woman who was holding a young child. “Are you OK? Can
you tell us what happened?” she had asked, and she sounded gentle. It occurred
to Phil that she might be a good reporter after all.
“It was so sudden,” the
woman was saying. “Everything seemed all right last night. Geoff – that’s my
husband – he took the dog out about ten and when he came in he said the river’s
pretty swollen, running quite fast but, well, it does that sometimes, you know?
The weather forecast said maybe some local flooding. We watched Newsnight
then went to bed. Then we woke up and the wall – the bedroom wall – “ She
started sobbing.
“Is Geoff here?” asked
Siobhan.
“No! I don’t know where he
is! I was just swept – into the garden….”
She bent forward. Thelma
raised her hand to Phil and he stopped the camera. She took the woman’s name
and noted it down on a pad with the words HUSBAND GEOFF so they could identify
the clip later and add a caption.
They went on down the slope.
Most people just stared at them; they seemed to have nothing to say. Now and
then someone would raise their hand and want to tell their story but the crowd
was dense, and Phil wished he had his boom microphone. Once they came across a
woman kneeling on the sodden grass and sobbing. Another woman was trying to
calm her down. “Try to talk to her,” said Thelma, seeing that Siobhan did not
want to; finally: “What happened to you?” Siobhan asked. “Can you talk to us?”
The other woman shook her head. “No. Her baby was swept away. Fuck off,” she
said, and looked back at Siobhan with eyes full of hatred.
“I will run out of juice
soon,” said Phil, looking at the Sony’s power indicator.
“We may have what we need.”
Thelma nodded towards a group of SUVs and pickups at the bottom of the slope.
“I guess we need to get out of here. Can you upload with the LiveU?”
“I’m doing that.”
They stumbled down to the
cars. A twin-cab was preparing to leave, its flatbed scattered with the
detritus of takeaway meals; there were power packs and cables too, and the car
was towing what looked like a portable generator. Thelma ran towards it and tapped
on the window, which wound down to reveal a man with a beard and turban. Beside
him sat a slim young woman with a mass of black, curly hair, wearing a denim
jacket and jeans and a high-viz tabard.
“BBC camera crew,” Thelma
panted at them. “Where are you going? Can you get us out of here?”
The man looked back without
surprise. ”We’ll try and make Bradford,” he said. “The Red Cross wanted us to
take some people. But they’re better off waiting for the air ambulance, ‘cos we
don’t know if we’ll get back through. You want to take your chances, it’s OK.”
He jerked his head towards the rear doors. The three of them tumbled onto the
rear bench seat, Siobhan in the middle.
The car rumbled away down a green lane.
“Gurpreet,” said the driver.
“This is my sister Sunita.”
“Phil,” said Phil.
“Siobhan,” said Siobhan.
“Thelma,” said Thelma. Her
phone buzzed. “Hey. I’ve got a signal. It’s BBC North, the newsroom in
Salford.” She put the phone to her ear. “Yes,” she said. “No. Maybe. Bradford.
What? Yes, Phil just uploaded from the LiveU. Don’t know. What. What?” Her face
contorted and her eyes closed. “My God,
no. No. OK. Yes, OK. Yes, we’ll be fine.”
She rang off. “What,” said
Phil.
“Ten thousand dead,” said
Thelma. “A million homeless.”
No-one responded and for a
minute or so there was silence. The rain had started again but it wasn’t heavy.
The windscreen wipers hummed across the glass.
Gurpreet said something to
his sister in Punjabi. She nodded and replied. She turned towards them. “We’ll
try and reach the gurdwara in Bradford,” she said, in a strong Yorkshire
accent. “The kitchens we have in the gurdwaras are working overtime..”
“The Indian restaurants are
working full-on too,” said Gurpreet. “They’re giving us as many ready meals as
they can.”
“Aren’t they all Bangladeshi?”
asked Siobhan.
“Usually, and sometimes
Pakistani in Yorkshire,” said Gurpreet. “It doesn’t matter. We’re all in this mess
together.” He jabbed the touchscreen and turned on Radio 4.
Someone was talking about
the changing climate. Was this a result, she was asked.
“We don’t know. The
attribution people at Imperial College will crunch the numbers,” she replied.
“They’ll tell us the likelihood. We must get the science right.”
“But we know, don’t we,”
said Gurpreet.
“You know what pisses me
off,” said Phil. “We always knew.”
They turned onto a tarmac
road. After a few hundred yards they came to a village. Several houses had
fallen down. There was no sign of life. The road was strewn with rubble and
Gurpreet picked his way carefully through, mindful of the generator trailer behind.
They came out of the village; ahead, the road swung over an old stone bridge.
The centre span was missing.
“That’s our road to Bradford
out,” said Gurpreet.
“Go past the bridge,” said
Sunita. “There’s a back way into the Dales.”
He did as she suggested. But
past the bridge the road had collapsed into the swollen river. He stopped
quickly. “Damn,” he said, and added a few choice phrases in Punjabi. The river
was high, and brown with soil; it billowed down to the ruins of the bridge,
where the remaining spans were blocked by debris. They got out of the car. The
sky was a pale yellow-grey with darker tendrils that scudded in the wind.
“Look,” said Siobhan.
“Look.”
In an eddy close to the bank
an object swirled. Phil raised his camera. He zoomed onto it and could see the
shape of a small body in a playsuit, one arm stretched before it, its tiny hand
and fingers just visible in the dirty brown water. The playsuit was decorated
with teddy bears. He raised his eyes from the viewfinder. A woman’s body
drifted by in the main current, her arms stretched before her as if she were
praying. On the bank was the body of a dog, a small terrier in a dog-body
warmer; behind it a long dog lead floated in the current. Phil looked at the
bank of debris that lay across the broken bridge and saw that there were
several bodies trapped in the branches, their limbs moving obscenely with the
flow.
“God help us,” he muttered.
“God help us.”
He heard the national anthem
on the car radio. The familiar voice of an elderly man came from the speakers.
“You will know, by now, that
a terrible tragedy has befallen our country,” said the voice.
“Yes, we do. Sod off,” said
Thelma. She realised she was crying too and clenched her teeth in anger at
herself and the river.
“I cannot heal the damage
that has been done to people today,” said the voice. “But I know, as you all
do, that this is a turning point. For years we have tried to pretend this would
not happen. Now it has, and we have a choice.”
“Oh, do fuck off,” said
Siobhan. She knelt down on the bank close to the eddy and started to cry.
“We can let this break us,”
said the King. “Or we can let it be the making of us.”
Phil wandered off towards
the bridge to get footage of the bodies trapped in the branches.
“We can respond to this with
horror or with courage,” said the King. “We can scream denial. Or we can work
together to face a future we do not, as yet, quite understand. This can be an
end. Or it can be a beginning. It is up to us all.”
“Yes,” said Gurpreet. He
watched his sister as she helped Siobhan to her feet and guided her towards the
truck, and settled her in the seat, talking to her quietly, almost under her
breath.
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