Flash Flood (2 page)

Through the open window they could hear the sound of a train approaching. Pierced Nose got up, stuck his head out and yelled at the train.

‘Any chance of a lift, mate?’ His last word was swallowed up by the thunder of the train
approaching. Pierced Eyebrow and his companion, who had a septic-looking piercing through his top lip, grabbed Nose’s Abercrombie hoodie and yanked him back in.

The train bowled past close to the windows; the clearance couldn’t have been more than half a metre.

The three youths looked shaken for a moment, then started to laugh. Pierced Nose shook the rain out of his hair. ‘Hey, man, that was cool – you gotta try it.’

Septic Lip stood up and stuck his head out of the window. ‘There’s another one coming. Watch this.’ He pushed the window all the way down and leaned his whole upper body out, waving with both arms while the train drummed closer. ‘Woo-hoo!’ he called.

Now everyone in the carriage was staring at them. This train was going a lot faster; it was an inter-city. They could feel it shaking the floor of the carriage. Its horn blared.

‘Woo-hoo!’ called Septic Lip, his arms waving wildly out of the window. Nose and Eyebrow grabbed the back of his jeans and pulled him in. The train passed in a blur of blue and white. The shock wave shook the stationary carriage from side to side.

The youths were laughing. Septic clutched at Eyebrow’s sweatshirt and pushed him towards the window. ‘Come on, man: your turn.’

Eyebrow wasn’t going to stick his head out without the audience’s attention. He looked around at the rest of the passengers to see how well the show was going down. Ben thought he looked as if he expected some kind of praise for being so brave.

Pierced Nose noticed Ben’s expression. ‘What are you looking at?’

Rachel had been looking too. She looked away immediately the youth started talking to them. But Ben held his gaze. ‘Be careful,’ he said.

Now the other people in the carriage were looking at Ben.

‘Go back to reading
Harry Potter
,’ said Eyebrow. He turned away and looked out of the window, planning when he’d stick his head through. When he glanced back, Ben was still looking at him.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Well, it’s just that I had this friend …’ Ben said. ‘But go ahead, it’s your life.’ He turned back to the novel he’d been reading.

Pierced Eyebrow couldn’t stand losing his audience’s attention. That wasn’t meant to happen. Especially as that audience was now paying more attention to Ben than to him. He walked over to Ben. ‘Yeah? And what are you saying?’

Ben put his bookmark carefully back in his book before looking up at Pierced Eyebrow. ‘He was a good friend too. I’d known him for years.’

‘That’s lovely,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Very touching.’

Ben nodded, as though considering the matter, but said nothing. He opened his book again to resume reading.

Eyebrow looked irritated. ‘And … ? Your point is … ?’

Ben gave a sigh and carefully replaced his bookmark. He definitely had Eyebrow’s attention now: he could take all the time he wanted.

‘It was very sad. He got on a train – one of the old ones with windows like this. He’d had a burger at a stall in the station – you know how they can be a bit dodgy. Well, he started feeling sick, which serves him right really for eating such rubbish.’ Ben paused again.

‘Come on, I haven’t got all day,’ said Eyebrow, but Ben wasn’t to be hurried.

‘There was a woman sitting next to him,’ said Ben, ‘and my friend thought, I’m going to be sick, what shall I do? I can’t be sick on her. But he couldn’t stop it, so he put his head out of the window.’

Septic and Nose looked at Ben as if they suspected the story was about to turn into a joke and make them look foolish. But they couldn’t help but listen.

‘And then what?’ said Eyebrow testily.

‘A train came the other way and took the top of his head off. Like an egg.’ Ben mimed it, one hand slicing over the top of the other.

For a split second the look on the youths’ faces was shocked. Then they covered it up with bluster.

‘Yeah, right,’ sneered Nose. Eyebrow glanced towards the window as though he was still going to take his turn playing chicken with the next express, but Ben noticed he didn’t put his head out again.

Ben opened his book and scanned the pages, as if taking time to look for the bit he’d been reading. ‘But you go ahead. Carry on doing what you’re doing.’

Rachel got a magazine out of her bag and held it up in front of her face to stop herself laughing. She could see the dilemma clearly. The youths were shaken, but they didn’t want to show it or they would look stupid. But they certainly no longer felt like sticking their heads out of the window. Eyebrow and Nose fidgeted, and Septic had put up his sopping wet hood and was trying to use it to dry off his short spiky hair. With just a well-chosen story, thirteen-year-old Ben had completely disarmed them.

She couldn’t help but admire him. If she’d been there on her own she’d have sat there quietly and hoped the lads would disappear; she’d never have had the guts to say anything. But then, Ben’s mother was the environmental campaigner Dr Bel Kelland, and often appeared live on television and had arguments with world leaders and the chairmen of big corporations. Maybe that’s where he got his confidence. He certainly didn’t get it from his father, Russell Tracey, who was a brilliant scientist but rather shy.

‘Man, it’s boring in here,’ said Pierced Eyebrow. ‘Let’s go and find somewhere more interesting.’ He
swaggered up to the doors leading to the next carriage and pushed through. The others followed him.

Rachel put down her magazine. ‘That was an interesting story. Who was the friend?’

‘My cousin Jack,’ said Ben. ‘And he wasn’t that polite. He threw up over the woman.’

Rachel laughed. ‘Is that how your mother deals with troublesome people?’ She was rather in awe of Ben’s mother, and fascinated. Bel travelled the world, making her mark. When the tsunami struck South East Asia in 2004 she was filmed in the devastated villages, warning politicians and the public alike that this was the kind of thing that happened when you didn’t look after your planet. With her slight figure, straight red hair and trademark crumpled safari shirt, she was instantly recognizable. No wonder she had outgrown an insignificant town in the north-west like Macclesfield.

‘No,’ said Ben. ‘My mother would have waded in and had a fight. It would be very embarrassing.’

‘Your dad’s not like that at all.’

‘Yeah. If Dad had been here too he’d have sat in the corner and fumed in silence.’

‘How did they ever get together?’

‘Beats me.’

The train began to move again, slowly, painfully. The guard spoke over the tannoy. ‘
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now on the move again. We’re running forty-five minutes late. But just to cheer you up, the weather in London isn’t any better than the weather here
.’

Around the carriage, people sighed, looked at their watches and flipped open their phones. They were thoroughly fed up with all this rain.

The groundsman at Lord’s Cricket Ground in northwest London looked miserably into the grey sky. The rain pounded on his umbrella as if it was a drum; the water ran off the edges like a cascade. Most of the summer had been like this. The Wimbledon tennis championships had dragged out to four weeks instead of two, in order to get enough dry days to play all the matches. If the weather didn’t improve, it looked as though the summer’s cricket might never start at all.

He put the collar of his Barbour up and stepped onto the pitch. The grass was so soggy, his feet sank in; it was like standing on a wet sponge. Even if the
rain stopped, it would be a good few days before play was possible. But there was no let-up forecast.

The drumming on the top of his umbrella became louder, as though the clouds had detected his thoughts and were offended by them. Thunder rumbled out of the glowering sky. Now a storm was coming too.

He decided there was no point in staying. There wasn’t any work he could do today. He squelched off the grass, grateful when his feet met the solid tarmac of the car park. The rain was so hard it was hopping off the asphalt like jumping beans.

The groundsman opened the door of his car, pulled his Barbour off and bundled it, dripping, into the passenger seat, then scrambled in.

He couldn’t see through the windscreen. The rain was so hard it blurred it as though the glass was melting. He started the engine and put the wipers on. Even on extra fast they struggled to create a clear space he could see through. He edged along the drive and pulled out into St John’s Wood Road.

The engine stalled, which it often did. His car didn’t like wet weather. As he pulled the handbrake on and turned the ignition key again, he caught a glimpse of
looming headlights behind. There was a wail of a horn and a screech of tyres. A big silver saloon, travelling too fast, aquaplaned on the road and hit his rear bumper with a dull crunch.

For a few nanoseconds he got a clear view through the rear window of the driver of the car getting wearily out, then the rain blurred the glass again.

Great. Just what he needed.

Ensign Henrik peered through the windscreen on the bridge of the ship. The wipers could barely keep up with the volume of water streaming down the glass.

Outside was the grey choppy surface of the river Thames. It blended into the brooding grey of the sky. From time to time he could see the lights of boats in the distance, pinpricks of red bobbing up and down on the choppy waters.

‘You’re doing fine,’ said a voice behind him. The captain leaned back in his chair and took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Just keep her steady. Remember you’ve got a full load.’

The
Agnetha
was a big ship, about the length of a football pitch from bow to stern. She was also old and
took some careful handling. Particularly with several hundred tonnes of aggregates in the hold, which slowed down the responsiveness of the controls so much it was as if the ship had gone to sleep. Henrik had piloted her before, but that was only on the return journey, when she was empty. Today he was taking her all the way from the port of Hango, on the southernmost tip of Finland, to the deep-water terminals at Greenwich docks.

What a day he’d picked. This weather was terrible; he could hardly see a thing. At least it wasn’t far now to their destination.

He looked to the shores of the Thames on either side of him. They were virtually invisible. There were lights on the banks but they were blurred, as though the windows had been smeared with Vaseline. His own masthead light, the length of a football pitch away at the front of the boat, had disappeared into the murk. Even the sound of the engines, usually a low throbbing hum, was drowned out by the relentless quantities of rain drumming on the metal roof of the bridge.

‘Watch out! Hard right!’ Henrik saw a pinprick of
light right at the very corner on the radar display. Instantly the captain was standing over him, pulling the steering column hard to the right. The boat outside looked as if it was still some distance away. On the radar, it blipped slowly to the edge of the display and disappeared as the
Agnetha
turned. The captain stepped back again but he watched the radar closely for a few more anxious moments. Then he sank back into his chair.

‘You need to give her far more time to turn when she’s loaded like this,’ he said.

Henrik nodded, chastened. ‘But we didn’t hear the collision alarm.’

‘If we hear the alarm when we’re fully laden it’s too late,’ was the acerbic reply.

The captain was looking tired, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, his forehead resting on his hand. The cigarette lay forgotten, its smoke curling into a grey column in the air while the captain recovered from the shock. Henrik felt ashamed. They must have had a close call.

Henrik turned back, checked the instruments, looked at the radar very closely. He wouldn’t make
that mistake again. The river was still wide at this point, almost like a big lake. But the closer they got to Greenwich, the more it narrowed and the more hazards there were to navigate. This journey would only get more tricky.

When he next looked round at the captain, he got a shock. The captain was slumped in the chair, his right arm dangling on the ground like an ape’s. He was twitching as though he was trying to get up but had no control over his body.

The cigarette fell from the fingers of his left hand. He didn’t move to pick it up.

Henrik moved quickly over to him. ‘Sir? Sir, are you all right?’

The captain tried to move. Again he only managed a fitful jerk, as if the swinging arm was a lead weight keeping him down.

‘Sir, what’s the matter?’

‘I can’t move. I can’t see. Help me.’

Henrik wasn’t sure if he’d heard him right. The captain’s voice was slurred, as if he’d just been to the dentist. ‘You can’t see?’

The captain was staring ahead. He blinked as if he
was trying to clear his vision. ‘I can’t see.’ He tried to shake his head but he only managed another twitch. One side of his mouth didn’t seem to be working.

Henrik suddenly realized that the captain’s strange behaviour reminded him of his grandmother after she had had a stroke.