Ice Diaries (5 page)

Baths and showers are a thing of the
past, but as Florence Nightingale said, with two pints of water and
privacy any woman may be clean. Morgan’s presence forced me to
take my hot water and soap and strip off in the icy bathroom, but
Greg didn’t have this problem. I heated the water then
disappeared into my bed corner and read a book to give him privacy.
When he’d finished I trimmed his hair for him. He told me he
wouldn’t mind getting a tattoo like Morgan’s because it
was cool. I got a black felt pen and inked him a small tribal tattoo
on the inside of his wrist. It looked rather convincing. He was
enchanted, and made me promise to renew it when the ink wore away.

Before lunch the next day Morgan
surfaced and said he felt better. He looked it, too; more alert, his
face not as drawn, younger. The thought crossed my mind for the first
time that Morgan was reasonably attractive, his features actually not
at all bad under the short scrubby beard and unkempt hair; his cool
assessing eyes, a mouth both firm and sensuous, those hard muscles;
if the clichéd tough guy type seen in a thousand movies was
your bag, here was the real thing. He went to the windows and scanned
the view, and asked me where we were. When I changed the bandage, the
cut was less red and swollen, its edges closer together as if the
fight was going out of it. I cleaned the area and taped it up again.

“I got these for you.” I
dumped a selection of men’s sweaters, tee shirts and jeans from
Peacocks in front of him on the counter. I’d chosen an
assortment of sizes. Clothes are one of the easiest things to find,
which is lucky as washing and drying anything bigger than underwear
is a huge task. It’s simpler to throw them away.

He shuffled the pile warily, and looked
up at me through his tangle of hair as if there was some catch. “I’ll
pay you back before I move on.”

“I can always do with more
firewood if you’re offering. As long as you don’t overdo
it and open up the cut just as it’s healing. You need to take
it a bit easy. There’s a group forage all day tomorrow if you
want to come and help.”

“I’ll take a look.”

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

A heavy weight of misery was waiting to
pounce when I woke Saturday morning. The 5th May is David’s
birthday. He would be twenty-six today. We celebrated his
twenty-fifth together, just as people started getting sick; it seems
a long, long time ago. There is a remote chance he is still alive,
but I don’t think so. He’d have come looking for me if he
was.

David. Tall, skinny, dark eyed,
laughing, intellectual, words spilling out of him in an effort to
keep pace with his mind, a doctor fascinated by his work, hopeless
with anything mechanical, the last person to get involved in a fight;
my sort of man. We had barely a year together. I found the man I
loved, and I lost him. Thinking about him is so depressing, I do it
as little as possible. I keep the photo of him on holiday in Kos –
the solitary one I have left – in a wooden box in a drawer, and
only take it out on his birthday, the anniversary of the day we met,
Christmas, New Year’s Eve and my birthday. He looks so happy,
sitting on the sand in the golden light of the sunset. It makes me
smile, but I always end up in floods of tears.

Morgan had gone off somewhere, rather
to my relief, so I ate breakfast alone, feeling glum. It was lucky I
was meeting the others for the group forage mid-morning; it would
take my mind off David. I’ve never told them about him, not
even Claire. I couldn’t bear their sympathy.

When Morgan reappeared just before it
was time to go he was stripped down to jeans and a tee shirt with
dark patches of sweat on it. He’d found the gym in the basement
and been working out with weights by candlelight. Ten minutes later
after he’d changed we set off in a light snowfall, me wearing
my old black ski suit and holding the rope of my roof box trailer,
which slid along behind like a faithful hound. I told him about the
excavation on the way. He listened, pacing beside me without saying
much, scanning the area as watchful as a commando on patrol expecting
trouble.

Nearly a year ago, we’d
researched and discussed the best place to dig. Old Street west of
the roundabout won, as it has a chemist, a clothes shop, Argos and a
supermarket. Nowhere else nearby had as useful a mix close together.
Even Nina agreed without arguing. Then we started digging. We kept at
it for two days of gruelling slog before we came to our senses. Paul
turned up on day three with a piece of paper covered in figures and
diagrams. He’d worked out we would need a trench two metres
wide and over twenty metres long to accommodate stairs reaching to
ground level. Approximately 420 cubic metres of snow would need to be
removed, meaning that if seven of us shifted two cubic metres each
per day, it would take sixty days. But he doubted we could move that
much; just getting the snow out of the excavation would get more and
more laborious the deeper we went. We’d spend most of our time
hauling buckets of snow up the stairs.

We stood around, crestfallen. Paul
diffidently suggested a better idea would be to break into the block
of flats above the shops, at the western edge of the building where a
sort of tower sticks out of the surface, find a way down to the
ground floor, and from there, work from shop to shop, making a short
tunnel through the snow where necessary. There was a long thoughtful
pause while each of us wondered why we hadn’t come up with this
two days ago. When we investigated, we found a door leading to stairs
which ran right the way down to another emergency door at pavement
level, next to the Co-operative supermarket.

Still, once the plan had been put into
action, we entered a new era of comparative luxury. Before, we relied
on supplies from homes we broke into, which was a lot more hit and
miss. Now, I explained to Morgan, we just do that independently, as
an extra, and to give us stuff to trade.

“So who’s in charge? Who
makes the decisions?”

“We all do. We decide things
together.”

“And you reckon that works?”

“Mostly. Especially if Nina’s
not there. Archie, that’s her husband, is fine on his own, but
if she’s there he generally feels he has to support her.”

One of the few times he hadn’t
supported her was when she got everyone to a meeting without Greg,
and said he shouldn’t have a vote. None of us agreed to this.
Archie said gently that he could understand her viewpoint, but felt
one person, one vote was fair; we were all in this together. And
honestly, Greg’s views are generally as sensible as anyone
else’s.

We’d arrived at the entrance.
Before we went down the stairs, I pointed out the flat roof of the
block of flats above the shops we were about to visit, which sticks
out less than a metre above snow level. We cleared this of snow, and
painted a huge sign, white on the black surface, saying HELP PLEASE
RESCUE US. This was one of the first things we did as a group. The
idea is to attract the attention of any aircraft flying overhead,
though it seems obvious to me things are in a mess down south, and
rescuing UK survivors is not high on the agenda, if indeed it figures
at all. Still, the others think it’s a possibility; one which
helps to give our current life the illusion of transience. We have a
rota and go in turns each morning to sweep the snow off, a job that
takes twenty minutes and seems particularly futile when it’s
actually snowing and the letters get covered up even as you clear
them. Yellow paint, or red, might have been a better choice. But we
all go on doing it faithfully. It’s a habit now.

Morgan raised his eyebrows. Now and then
when the light catches his eyes you can see they are ice blue like a
sled dog’s. “When was the last time you saw a plane or
helicopter?”

“Nearly a year ago, when they
were evacuating. Before we had the sign painted.”

“Bit of a waste of effort, then.”

“There’s a chance a plane
will fly over. You never know.”

“There’s a chance Father
Christmas and his reindeer will fly over too, but I wouldn’t
hold my breath.”

Morgan was right, of course. We’re
wasting our time. Rescue won’t come.

I led the way into the tower, torch at
the ready, though I didn’t need it yet. Whoever gets there
first lights tea lights in glass holders positioned at intervals down
the stairs with a communal Bic lighter. It’s there because none
of us wanted to use up our own matches or lighters, though we all
carry them. (Sometimes people forget to bring the lighter to the top
again, and the first arrival the next time gets ratty and holds an
inquisition to find out who was responsible. Most of us can be quite
petty on occasion, I think because of the strain of our isolated
circumstances.) Today they were lit, meaning someone was already
there. We went down the eight flights of narrow staircase, each
darker than the last, snow pressed against the windows. At the
halfway mark we passed my favourite notice, written by a now defunct
Nina-type, asking the person who had been spitting into the chute
hopper to desist as it could spread TB, also the person who had been
smoking on the stairs to stop this practice with immediate effect. At
every other floor doors lead to a lobby with lifts, and long dingy
corridors that access the flats. I’ve broken into all of them
over time, looking for a go-cart or other useful items.

It’s strange when you get to
street level as it’s so very different from how things used to
be. The shops are dark, enclosed and claustrophobic. The lack of
light makes it seem even colder than on the surface. I wear a small
torch on a chain round my neck which is surprisingly effective,
lighting my feet so I can see where I’m treading. We passed
through an emergency door to a passage hollowed out of compacted
snow, and stepped into the supermarket via a large hole smashed in
the plate glass. Dim lights glimmered at the back, and we went
towards them. Rats chirped and squeaked, skittering away from our
torchlight. At the entrance to the stockroom Sam was stacking boxes
ready to take out. A candle in a lantern enabled her to see what she
was doing. She looked up and smiled at me.

“Hi Tori.”

“Hi, how’s it going?”

Morgan had wandered off, poking round
the displays (he had his own torch) and now he joined us. His gaze
went to Sam, and stayed there. For a moment I saw her through his
eyes. Petite, curvy, blonde and immaculate in a white ski suit, she
glowed against her surroundings like a Hollywood star on a
post-apocalyptic film set. She’s the only one of us who bothers
with her appearance on a daily basis. Me, I stick with basic hygiene
and practical clothes except for our parties once a month when I make
a bit of an effort. Sam is pretty, and makes the most of it. She
streaks her hair with Charlie’s help, always wears makeup, and
puts polish on her nails. At home she even wears skirts and high
heels. You have to admire her attitude.

Morgan moved in like a leopard who’s
spotted a gazelle. “Hi. I’m Morgan. Who are you?”

“Sam. Greg told us all about you.
Including your tattoo. He was very taken with your tattoo.”

“Any time you want to check it
out for yourself, you have only to ask …”

Sam batted her mascara-ed eyelashes. “I
might just do that one day. We have to make our own entertainment
round here.”

“I’m in favour of that.”

“Are you coming to the ceilidh
tomorrow?”

“Is that an invitation?”

Charlie materialized in the doorway,
dumped a couple of boxes on top of the pile and put a proprietorial
arm around Sam’s shoulders. She gave Morgan a straight look.
“You’re Morgan,” she told him. “I’m
Charlie. I see you’ve met my other half.”

Charlie couldn’t be more of a
contrast to Sam. She is thickset, with cropped hair, and noticeably
lacks any form of personal vanity. She used to be a research
assistant to a Labour MP whose name didn’t mean anything to me,
but she said he was a rising star. She’s hardworking, bright,
and devoted to Sam whom she spoils rotten. Watching Morgan’s
reassessment of the situation made me grin irrepressibly. He shot me
a glance and I tried to straighten my face.

“What are you collecting?”
I asked. “I forgot to look at the list.”

The list is sellotaped to the wall at
the bottom of the stairwell. Now and then it falls off because of the
damp. We worked it out together ages ago, as soon as we’d
accessed the shops. It’s designed to make us more methodical by
focusing our group forages on basics we all need, and stop us being
distracted by inessentials. We can go after those on our own.

“The list says dry goods,”
Charlie said. “But the rats have got what’s left of them.
It’s a real mess.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Might
have been a smart move to shift the stuff the rats could get at
first.”

“Some of us wanted to.”
Charlie sounded defensive. “Personally, I thought we should
come every day till we’d cleared things like biscuits,
spaghetti, rice, and flour. They’d be safe in our homes. None
of us have rats.”

“Why didn’t you then?”

“Me and Sam and Tori were
outvoted. The others thought we should take a mixture of things, just
in case something happened to stop us getting down here.”

“You could have come on your own.
For fuck’s sake, it’s the end of the world, and you’re
counting votes like you’re a borough council.”

Charlie bridled. “We happen to
think a democracy is fairer. We all work together. That’s got
to be more efficient than each of us doing our own thing.”

Sam chimed in. “Anyway, why
should we do it if the others won’t? It’s not much fun,
lugging boxes about alone in the dark with the rats under twenty
metres of snow.”

Morgan shrugged and walked away.
Charlie turned her back on him and said to me, “We’re
doing mainly tins and a few toiletries, as we haven’t done them
for a while.”