Shute, Nevil Read Free

for the two older children on the floor, protected by the garden, roller and the box of silver sand. Then he lay down upon the floor himself with the two women and the baby in the basket cot. He had brought a bottle of whisky from the house; he opened it and gave Joan and the nurse a drink. It made them feel a little better.
    They had lain there all night on the damp, oily floor. The raid had gone on continuously till after three o’clock, the explosions sometimes distant, sometimes very near at hand. The children had been crying for much of the time; the nurse had cried softly to herself most of the night.
    It was over now. Corbett put his empty glass down on the table and stretched himself erect in the morning light; he was feeling more himself.
    It had been bad while it lasted. Now he must get the family indoors again and start cleaning up the mess, try and do something about the windows. After that, he must go down as soon as possible to see if everything was all right at the office. If he had time, it would be nice to find out if the country was at war and, if so, who the war was with.
    He went first to the kitchen, to put on the kettle for a pot of tea before he brought them from the garage. The hot water boiler was alight, and the water was hot. That was a good first step; things weren’t so bad, after all. He raked the boiler out and filled it up with coke. Then he filled the electric kettle at the hot-water tap and switched it on to boil while he went out to fetch them from the garage.
    The indicator showed that no current was flowing to the kettle.
    He jerked the mains switch once or twice without result; his lips set to a thin line. This was very bad. He did the whole of his cooking on an electric range; there was no gas in the house. He tried a light switch and a radiator plug; then he went to the front door and tried the bell. He looked at the main fuse in the box, which was intact. Very soon he had proved that there was no electricity supply at all.
    He went into the dining-room and tried the telephone, to ring up the supply company. Like Littlejohn, he found the line was dead.
    He searched around the kitchen but could not find an ordinary kettle in the house, though there were three electric ones. He filled a saucepan with hot water, took off the cooking disc from the hot-water boiler, and put the saucepan on; it would boil slowly there. He stood then for a minute thinking hard; there was the breakfast to be cooked. Finally be shrugged his shoulders’ there were only two alternatives for cooking, the dining-room or drawing-room fire. The drawing-room was uninhabitable with no windows; he went into the dining-room, laid the fire with paper, wood, and coal, and lit it.
    Then he went out to fetch his family indoors.
    A quarter of an hour later they were all in the dining-room, the children dressing by the fire, Joan beginning to consider breakfast. She had made a quick trip through the shattered rooms with him, and had retired to wash her face in warm water. She came down to find him wrestling with the fire, which had gone out and filled the room with smoke.
    Sophie, their nurse, went straight up to her room and came down half an hour later, glum and silent.
    He was half through lighting the fire for the second time when the front door was pushed open, and Mr. Littlejohn came in. ‘Thought I’d just come in to see if you were quite all right,’ he said. ‘I did ring, but the bell’s out of order.’
    Corbett stood up, wiping his coal-stained hands. ‘That’s very nice of you,’ he said. ‘The bell works off the main. I’ve got no current in the house at all.’
    ‘Neither have I,’ said the builder, ‘-nor gas, either. Is your telephone working?’
    Corbett shook his head. “That’s off, too. I tried to ring them up about the electricity. We do all our cooking by electricity. That’s why I’m mucking about with this fire.’
    The other nodded. ‘It’s the same with us. Got any water?’
    The