Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [85]
“There’d be no point in surviving,” Clem said. “Okay, so you live in your shelter for a fortnight —”
Ruth said, “George, whatever would we do for a toilet?”
George ignored her. “Aye?”
“And then,” Clem said, “you come out. And there’s nothing left. No houses, no trees, nothing. It’d be a desert of radioactive dust.”
“You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Yes, actually.”
“Oooh. Actually,” George mimicked. “Well, thank you, Einstein. I’ll get on the phone and tell the government that. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. Probably revise their plans accordingly.”
Clem pushed his chair back and stood up.
Ruth looked up from her plate. “Where’re you gorn to, Clem?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Just out.”
“You won’t be wantun that chop, then?”
From the hallway Clem said, “No. You can eat the bloody thing.”
“Hoy!” George yelled as the back door slammed.
Later, after the rice pudding, when George and Ruth were watching some rubbish or other, Win went quietly upstairs and closed her door. She clicked on her bedside light, got stiffly down onto her knees, and groped under the bed for her Robe of Deliverance. She’d cut it out of her bottom bedsheet. It shouldn’t have mattered, but she was unhappy with its roughly cut hem. It didn’t seem right to her that she would go Home looking all raggedy. She straightened up and got her sewing things out of the cupboard drawer. She perched her old bum on the side of the bed and started to stitch, humming the words of the twenty-third psalm.
“O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.”
CLEM AND GOZ mimed the words from the sixth-form pews in the organ loft. At the close of the hymn, while the boys shuffled and clonked onto their seats, Stinker Bloxham stood at the lectern wearing his fur-trimmed bat robe and an ironically patient expression. When something close to silence had been achieved, he turned to the man who sat onstage among the school staff.
“Over to you, Mr. Wagstaff.”
Wagstaff was a trim little man in a dark-blue uniform with an armband embroidered with the words CIVIL DEFENSE.
“Thank you, Headmaster, and good morning, young gentlemen. Yesterday, as I’m sure you’ll remember, I spoke to you about the ways you can help your parents prepare their homes against the possibility of nuclear attack.”
Clem grinned, noting Tash Harmsworth’s scowl. Tash was a bugger for an incorrect preposition.
“The very unlikely possibility of nuclear attack. However, preparedness is everything, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Wagstaff waited for a response, but none came. So he soldiered on.
“Today I’m going to tell you what to do if you are caught in the open when the four-minute warning sounds. Let me remind you what the four-minute warning will — might — sound like.”
Wagstaff closed his eyes and emitted a doglike wail. As it rose in pitch, he slowly lifted his arms. As it faded, he lowered them. As it rose again, he lifted them. Some of the younger boys tittered and sniggered. Stinker got to his feet and glared. From their stations at the ends of the pews, the Gestapo, like hunting dogs, aimed their fierce gazes at offenders.
“It’s not funny,” Wagstaff said, opening his eyes. “It really isn’t. Anyway. When you hear that, gentlemen, you must take cover in any available building and adopt the blast position that I demonstrated yesterday. It is exceedingly unlikely that you will be unable to reach a protective building. After all, these days an Englishman can run a mile in less than four minutes.”
Again, he waited vainly for appreciation.
“However, if you are caught in the open some considerable distance from cover, here is what you must do. First, look for a depression in the ground. A trench or ditch,