The Last Diary by Raymond Hopkins - HTML preview

Some days digging with the help of a tractor has turned up the fault in the sewage. Broken pipes, as we thought. We have managed to fix these, but who knows for how long. More digging of several trenches on higher ground. These will have to do as outside toilets when the need arises. That’s for later, as the present system functions properly after our repairs. Fresh water? Collected rainwater in clean barrels does the job nicely. Things are getting difficult. Still manageable, but decidedly more difficult.

Early May 

Still cold. Not the cold of the winter, but definitely not the pleasant warmth we had last year. Not only is the temperature low, some ten degrees above freezing at the most, but the water level is high. Not only high, but getting higher, as the rain has scarcely stopped for the past two weeks. Some days have been a light drizzle, but most days have thrown a heavy downpour at us. We have plenty of fresh water, more than enough of it, but the food situation seems serious. Our freezers are far from empty, but it appears there will be nothing to refill them with. The fruit bushes and apple trees came into flower just before a sharp night frost killed them all off. So, no fruit. Nor have we been able to set anything in the fields, as it is simply too wet to sow seed. Much of the land is still under water, more of it every day. The garden has a few things in - potatoes and so on. It’s doubtful if anything will grow. If it was warmer, we could have a go at planting rice, since that seems to thrive underwater. Mainly we stay indoors and stare out of the window, feeling very much like Noah, but without a handy boat, and with only one dog, although the hens still thrive.

Early July, probably the tenth 

Fliss’s baby was born last night, or rather early in the morning, around two o’ clock. It’s a girl. We intend to call her Margaret. The problem that Fliss mentioned earlier doesn’t exactly loom, but it’s obviously a good deal closer than it was. It doesn’t worry me yet, but it is a matter of concern. Everything went well, helped by Beth’s experience, and there are four healthy females on the premises. Thank goodness for small mercies. Perhaps the next ones will be boys, and that goes some way towards solving the problem, although the gene stock can never be as varied as desired. We are still fit and healthy, although our food stocks are going down at an alarming rate.

After the rain we had earlier, the weather has cleared and the ground dried reasonably well. There are some potatoes growing, though not as many as we had hoped for. The fruit, as mentioned before, is a dead loss. There is nothing, absolutely nothing on any fruit bush or fruit tree, not even the smallest currant. We’ll survive the winter all right, as far as food is concerned, but after that, it’s anyone’s guess. We were doing so well, and now, suddenly, we are on the brink of disaster. Even if the cereals have enough time to grow, if they grow at all, I can’t see that there’ll be enough grain left over for sowing next year.

Sometime in August 

This is dreadful. We have lost track of the calendar again. Since there is no mains electricity, the computers work only from our generator, and that’s a supply which is a little erratic. More than one computer has crashed completely, and the dates given on any others which we can get to work is variable, sometimes even from one day to the next on the same machine. We’ve had similar problems earlier, but now we cannot trust anything. Not that it matters. There are more important problems to solve.

Our grain harvest will be a washout. A few straggly spikes of semi green leaf has pushed through the ground, and that is all. We are eating what little there is left of our seed, kept by in case of emergency, although there is still a fair bit of that left. Well, the emergency has arrived, sooner than we expected, and we don’t know what to do about it. It seems irresponsible now to bring children into a world without a future. It seems likely that we will have to develop into a hunting society if we are to survive, and how that is done we have no idea at all. We had such great hopes but nothing seems to work. We are very despondent. At least, I am very despondent. Fliss and Beth have enough to do with baby care to worry overmuch about the wider picture. They haven’t yet realised, thank goodness, that if we die, so do the children. What we do if we know we are about to die, and the children are still alive and healthy, yet unable to care for themselves is a horrifying thought. One winter. That’s all we have left. Another poor summer, and we are dead. We simply don’t know enough. We don’t have the essential survival skills. Oh, they can be learned, but I doubt if there is enough time for that.

From Fliss Barker’s journal 

Little Margaret is a joy to me, to us all. So is Beth’s baby. Having said that, there is precious little joy in the rest of our lives. We are happy enough together and still pulling as a team, but a team with a decreasing effectiveness. Barry is very worried about the situation, I know, but tries to hide his concern from us. He’s not very successful in his attempts, but in any case, we can forecast the future for ourselves, and it looks bleak. We’ll manage somehow, but it gets more and more difficult. Nothing much is growing in the garden, even less in the fields. Our freezers are fairly full still, but even those stocks won’t last forever. Even so, as long as we have hens, and can catch fish, we’ll have something to put on the table. If matters don’t improve soon, that is, if the weather doesn’t improve soon, we may have to move. Where to, I don’t know, but there must be places with a more moderate climate than this. It doesn’t have to be superb, just kind enough to be able to grow our own food.

Late September 

Margaret is a little over two months old, and Susan is about nine months. They are both healthy and growing well, as far as we can judge from the books on baby care and child development. Susan already sleeps for much of the night, which eases things quite a bit. We had a long talk today, a talk about the future.

‘As I see it, Barry,’ said Fliss. ‘Our options are a bit limited. We can’t live on what we managed to grow this year, and there’s nothing left to plant out for next. At least, very little, and we may have to dig in to that.’

‘We  still have plenty of food left in the freezers,’ I said.

‘And when that’s gone, what then?’

‘I don’t know, Fliss. I really don’t know. We can try trapping wild animals, rabbits and the like. Perhaps keep some in a cage.’

‘Of course we can,’ she said patiently. ‘But that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it? I mean, we can live on rabbit pie, chicken soup and fish for a while, but we do need more than that. The children need more than that.’

‘I know,’ I said miserably. ‘Just put it down to another failure on my part.’

‘Nonsense, Barry. This is no failure of yours, and I don’t want you to even think that, let alone talk like that. It’s a failure of the weather, that’s all.’

‘A pretty big “that’s all”,’ I said.

‘A very big one,’ she agreed. ‘That’s why I think we have to move on somewhere else.’

We looked at each other, pondering. It was a thought that hadn’t really occupied much of my time. Beth broke the silence.

‘The same thought came to my mind,’ she said. ‘Just a few days ago. We can’t live here any longer. Well, we can, but it would be a bare existence, nothing more. We need a kinder climate. Oh, I know last year was all right, but this year has been simply foul, and there’s no guarantee that next year will be any better. Let’s move, as soon as possible.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘This needs thinking about. It’s all very well saying move, but where to? We don’t know that the weather will be any better anywhere else.’

‘We don’t,’ said Fliss calmly. ‘But the alternative is to stay here and starve. I’d rather do something and take the risk. It would be, after all, only a risk, whereas staying here leads to certainties, and it’s not the sort of certainty I’m looking forward to. We’ve had that, Beth and I, in the early days, before you found us, and we don’t want to do that again. Certainly not with children to look after.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’ve convinced me. It’s logical at least. I know we won’t have enough next year, not unless a miracle happens. Supposing it does? What then? We’d have to start all over again. We could start again here.’

‘So we could. I just happen to think that the chances elsewhere would be better. Somewhere more reliable.’

All right,’ I said again. ‘Where do you have in mind?’

‘France,’ she said. ‘Or Spain. Along the Mediterranean anyway, somewhere a little distance from the sea perhaps, a bit inland, where the weather might be a bit more moderate. You know how much bleaker it is here on the coast.’

‘Why just those places? Do you know them?’

Fliss nodded. ‘Not very well. I’ve only seen them as a holiday maker, but there are large agricultural areas in both countries. People used to go there for the winter because it was warmer than England. I can’t face too many winters like the last one, Barry. None of us can. We don’t have the infrastructure that would make it easy otherwise. There’s something wrong with the climate, that’s clear. Global warming or something, I suppose, if you can call it warm. It was predicted to happen this way, after all. I always thought that it was something we would have to live with. I never thought we might have to die because of it.’

‘Beth?’ I asked. ‘What do you say? This involves you as well.’

‘I say yes,’ she said. ‘I can’t take cold winters either, and neither can the girls. It may be the wrong thing to do, I agree, but staying here is hardly the right thing to do. I say let’s go, as soon as possible.’

‘Not too soon,’ said Fliss. ‘There’s no enormous hurry. The babies are a bit young for that sort of travelling yet, and we have to organise things so as to give us a good start wherever we go.’

‘It’ll need a boat,’ I mused. ‘Not too big. Small enough for the three of us to handle, preferably only for two of us.’

‘You weren’t thinking of leaving one of us behind, were you?’ asked Beth. She wasn’t being serious, but the question needed some explanation.

‘If one goes, we all go, naturally. I was just thinking that the babies will be a full time occupation for one. It would be better if the boat could be handled by two persons at the most. At the same time, it needs to be big enough to carry a lot of what we think we may need. We don’t know what we might find over there, and I, for one, don’t know the language.’

‘I can read French,’ said Fliss. ‘Speak it too, though that’s not likely to be needed. I even know a little Spanish. I might need a dictionary for the technical terms, but that’s all. What I suggest is this. We continue here over the winter again. We know we can cope with that. Use the time for planning and gathering things together. Find a suitable boat. In Spring, Susan will be over a year old, and even Margaret will be old enough to travel. Let’s go then, as soon as the weather settles and warms up a bit. We should have plenty of time to start again before another winter sets in, and remember, winters in the Mediterranean area are usually much milder than here.’

I wasn’t too sure, but on reflection, considered that they might have the right of it. I suppose there was a reluctance to give up all the hard work I had gone to already, but really, there did seem to be little option. Tomorrow I start looking for a boat, while Beth and Fliss plan for our future needs.

October 

We have found a boat. To be more accurate, I have found a boat which would seem to be suitable for our purposes. It is rather bigger than the one we looked at earlier, and is purely a motor boat. There are no sails at all. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not, but since none of us knows how to sail, the question becomes irrelevant. An engine is something we can manage. It is, perhaps, rather larger than we need, certainly larger than we had first envisaged, but a tentative trial in the bay shows that it is as easy to use as a car. Bringing it in to the jetty is the only problem, but even that is not too difficult if coming in slowly. After all, it isn’t our boat, and I don’t care if it gets scratched, just as long as I don’t sink it with ourselves and our possessions on board.

There are beds, or bunks I suppose they should be called, for six people, so it should be comfortable enough, especially since the babies will be sharing one of them. There is a sort of rope net that goes over the bunks to prevent the occupants from being thrown out in heavy seas. Not that we intend to move in such bad weather, but it is a decided safety feature for the babies under any circumstances. It also has a small rowing boat slung across the back. We’ll keep that in place, as it might prove useful. Besides, it isn’t easy to figure out how to release it and lower it into the water. Or rather, getting it down is probably just a matter of releasing the fastenings, by brute force if necessary, but lifting it up again is more problematical. We can keep it where it is for when there is a definite need for it.

The boat is well equipped with water carriers and a little kitchen. Should that be a galley? I don’t know. I never had anything to do with boats before. There is bedding and even a small supply of food concentrates which are not far beyond their use by date. Amongst other things, there is an awesome looking compass which I don’t know how to use, a radio which is singularly useless, and a variety of other navigation devices which are all a complete mystery to me. However, we all have reasonably good eyesight, and as long as we cross at the shortest point, we should manage.

There isn’t a lot that can be done at this time of the year, but it is good to know that there is something available.

November 

I have spent some time on the boat in the past few weeks, not doing very much, but getting to know it, taking it out in the bay, even a couple of times into the open sea. It is remarkably easy to use. It steers very precisely, although it is necessary to take heed of the tides and currents. Even the wind is a factor to be considered, but we are not looking for pin point accuracy. As it is, the boat can be handled from what I think is called the cockpit, a small, semi covered area at the back, where there is a wheel, a compass, and the engine controls. I have left it now for the winter, having filled the tanks with fuel, and placed enough extra fuel for an estimated fifty hours of travelling near to the cockpit. If we can’t cross the Channel on that, we have real problems, but it seems we should be able to make the crossing in three or four hours at the most, so there is plenty in reserve. All this assumes, of course, that our calculations are correct. If we get it wrong... But we must not get it wrong.

It feels odd to make all these preparations, and odder still to continue with what has become a normal life style in the full knowledge that we will certainly be moving on before very long.

Christmas 

If it is Christmas, that is. We have long since lost track of any accurate dating, and already rely on the sun as a calendar. Just now, it seems to be at about its lowest point, so we have designated today as Christmas Day. We exchanged presents, and had a special meal to mark the occasion, but our hearts were not really in it. We are all very dispirited. It isn’t that the joy has gone out of life, not exactly, but obviously we are worried about the future. At least the weather has been reasonably moderate up to now. There has been a little snow, but even that has melted and disappeared, leaving the ground dry and not even the least bit frosty. If only we had a bit of sunshine, things wouldn’t seem so bad, but we have been living under a permanent cloud cover for what seems to be forever. We miss the sun badly.

Sometime late in the New Year

The cloud shifted. The cold has returned. It has returned with a vengeance. For over a week now, the thermometer has indicated an unbelievable minus twenty eight. Everything is frozen up. Our water supply is unusable, and we have to rely on collecting snow from outside and melting it on the stove that burns continuously. There is plenty of wood which we use in the fireplace, and we use plenty of it. Much of my time goes in collecting supplies of firewood, breaking up doors and staircases from nearby houses. When I moved in here, the house had an electric fire in the living room, but this has long since been ripped out and converted to running on solid fuel, the way it must have been when new. Today is a good deal warmer, although the word warm is only relative, as the temperature is still minus five. There has been a change in the weather all round. From having to look at crystal clear skies, with stars twinkling like cold, frosty jewels, there is now heavy cloud again, and an equally heavy snowfall to go with it. I sink in past my knees wherever I go. Still, the house seems a lot warmer, and that’s a relief, as it has been difficult to heat even the one room sufficiently to keep the babies comfortable. If this is really global warming, I’ll eat my hat without salt. Whatever it is, we can’t survive it.

Probably late Spring   

We have tried to keep count of the days, marking off each morning in an exercise book, but I, for one, am certain that we have lost several days in the process of keeping alive. There has been so much to do over the winter, the savage winter we have just come through, that keeping a check on the passage of time often seems irrelevant. It isn’t, not really, but there hasn’t been a lot of energy for minor details.

Well, the sun has returned, and the snow melted. That took a long time, and longer still for the ground to defrost. Even then, there are patches of soil which are still frozen deeper down. It seems pointless to sow any seeds, even if we had seeds to sow. Most of them have been eaten during the winter. We are all very tired and listless, having missed the light badly, as the cloud cover has been thick for so many months. The date is not at all certain, but already the hours of daylight are longer than those of the night, so we have a guide of sorts. Time to move on. Our stocks are practically exhausted, and there seems to be no possibility of growing more for ourselves, at least not here. Another bad summer, and it looks like being bad, with heavy rain for part of almost every day, and we are dead. Choices are limited. Choices, in fact, hardly exist. If the weather improved now, it would be too late to grow enough for our needs, as it would take a very long time for the ground to dry out. It is clear what we have to do while we still have the strength to do it. If we have the strength to do anything, that is. Even that is by no means certain.

From Fliss Barker’s journal

We will soon be on our way, travelling again, as we travelled once before, this time with a good deal more purpose and hope. At least we have each other, and as long as we have each other, I think we can face anything that life throws at us.

We moved a few days ago to the coast where we have our boat, and settled there temporarily while everything is made ready for our departure to what should be a better climate. It is warm enough now, although the land is still very wet, and there is a dead calm, which should help with the sea crossing. Even the sky is clear, without even a suggestion of haziness, and we can see the other side quite clearly through binoculars. France. A good place for a holiday. A good place, hopefully, to live in.

I have time to write this, as Barry is working like a slave, finding provisions, sorting out our possessions, loading the boat, helped by Beth, who is much stronger than I am. I feel, in fact, quite weak. Childbirth and baby  care have taken more out of me than I have admitted, more than I care to admit, except to myself, and the poor winter hasn’t helped. Given better living conditions, I’m sure I will pull round quite quickly. I hope so, although I feel there may be other problems, problems of a medical nature, and there is no doctor, no surgeon. Poor Barry takes it all so personally, although he cannot be blamed for anything. Nobody is responsible for the weather, unless we all are, with our past insistence on a highly technological lifestyle. Maybe this is the payment for luxury. Whatever. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. The whole question is out of our hands, and we can only do whatever we can to cope with circumstances as we find them.

I’m looking after the babies, while Beth and Barry continue with the work of loading. There are meals ready for them at regular intervals. All in all, it’s quite a pleasant sort of life, apart from the feeling that we are constantly on the verge of disaster. When I wrote earlier that it is warm enough, I really meant that it is so by comparison. We still need to be well dressed. There’s none of the earlier lounging around in bikinis or less. It’s not exactly fur coat weather, but a thick sweater is very welcome.

Later, on the boat

Our new, temporary home moves a little sluggishly through the water. It is a good thing the sea is calm, as we are very heavily loaded. We even brought pushchairs with us. I’m sure they can be found in wherever it is we find ourselves, but this way we are saved the bother of looking for what is, after all, an essential item. The girls are getting a bit heavy to carry already. I no longer have the strength, and Beth is only small herself. Apart from pushchairs, we are laden with food, such seed as we managed to salvage, tools, nails, screws, ropes, small machinery, clothing for all of us, including fur coats as principles soon disappear under the strain of reality, toys for the girls, everything we could think of and could get on board, in fact. Some things we didn’t bother with. We doubt if there will be any customs and immigration formalities to go through, so no paperwork apart from our diaries and gardening notes, which we hope may prove useful in the future. It’s a good thing we chose this bigger boat instead of the one we looked at earlier. Another size up would have been even better, except for the greater difficulty of handling.

It is taking us longer to cross the Channel than we anticipated, but there is still plenty of fuel, and the coast of France draws ever closer. We can already see roads and houses in the distance, and that without using binoculars. It remains only to find a suitable landing place.

Beth is steering, as she has proved to be the best at the job, just like her ploughing. She has a sensitivity which keeps the boat more firmly on course than either Barry or myself can do. We are a good team, of that there is no doubt. I look at them both with love, and hope we make it well in the future.

We have been coasting up and down the shore line, looking for somewhere to land. One or two places look promising, but what we really want is some sort of a jetty where we can tie up and which would make unloading easier. There seems to be nothing of that sort here, and the day is coming to an end. The main problem seems to be the vast number of small islands in the area, many of them sharp and jagged rocks. We obviously cannot go too close for fear of ripping our boat open. A smaller one could get closer, but this size was only just big enough for us and our possessions. We had hoped to end up in one of the major ports, but tide and wind have obviously driven us off course, and we have no clear idea of just whereabouts we are. It’s a very rocky area, so presumably Brittany, but even that is inspired guesswork. We could be a hundred miles out in our reckoning.

     *

‘What do you think?’ asked Barry. ‘Should we land somewhere, anywhere, or stay at sea for the night?’

‘Would that be safe?’ asked Beth.

‘I don’t see why not. The water is calm enough. There’s no sign of bad weather, and it isn’t very deep here. I think we could let the anchor down and get a good night’s sleep on the boat.’

‘What about the tide?’

Barry shrugged. ‘Let out a good long length of rope on the anchor, enough to cope with any rise in the tide, but without any risk of drifting away. We can’t do much now even if we do land. It’ll be dark soon.’

It made sense. Man, both women and two tiny girls settled down for the night, rocked by a gentle swell that came from the tide water lifting and lowering during the hours of darkness. Morning came, a strong sun promising real warmth for once. By midday, Barry had stripped to his waist, enjoying the sensation of sunshine on his pale skin. Neither Fliss nor Beth were much more fully dressed either. It made a pleasant change. They smiled at each other in contentment as they coasted along slowly, eyes flickering ever and again to the shore, a shore they were prevented from reaching because of the rocks in their way. Suddenly Beth gave a cry.

‘Smoke,’ she said. ‘Look. Over there. It’s smoke.’

Smoke it was. Not the sort of smoke that comes from a forest fire, but the sort that is emitted from a chimney. They could see the house. They could see the chimney.

‘It’s a long way off,’ said Barry. ‘But there’s somebody there for sure. The problem is, how do we get on shore?’

‘There’s the dinghy,’ said Beth. ‘Even if this boat can’t get very close in, the dinghy should manage over the rocks. I mean, if we hit the ground, it shouldn’t be impossible to push it off again, which we can’t do in the bigger boat. Once somebody’s on shore, it shouldn’t be so difficult to find a more suitable landing place. Whoever lives here would know that, surely.’

‘Good thinking, Beth,’ said Barry. ‘All right, I’ll take the dinghy and see what I can find out.’

‘Two of us would be better,’ said Beth. ‘I mean, it’s still quite a distance in, or looks to be, and if there is somebody to share the rowing, it’ll make the job easier.’

‘As Barry said, good thinking, Beth,’ said Fliss. ‘I’ll go with Barry, if you look after things here. It makes sense. You’re much better at handling this boat than we are. As soon as we find somewhere suitable, we’ll come back and let you know.’

It took time to find out how to release the dinghy. It wasn’t as difficult as they had thought. Indeed, it was fairly logical, but for people who had no experience whatsoever, the task took longer than expected, just like all the tasks they had been involved with over the months past. At last, the little boat sat in the water, bobbing about in the waves. Gingerly, Barry and Fliss lowered themselves into the dinghy and set off. They took little with them, only a canister of water and a little food, thinking that if the task was too protracted, they would simply return and try again later. Rowing wasn’t easy, even in the relatively still sea. Barry realised with hindsight that a little practice earlier would have been a good thing. Another problem arose almost immediately. The sun became obscured by a heavy mist, and it was harder to see where they were headed for.

The water was almost totally calm close to the shore, with only a gentle swell further out. Barry rowed with long, energy saving strokes for some time. He began to feel tired, but the urge to reach land drove him on long after he would have liked to simply give up and rest. Progress was slow but steady, and soon the boat and the occupants they had left was seen as no more than a blur in the misty light. The sun, so recently risen, began to fall again, and the air became a little cooler, although by far more comfortable than the climate they had put behind them. Island after island came into view and was passed and left behind.

’Oops, sorry,’ said Barry, as his left oar caught the top of the water and raised a sudden shower of spray which flew across Fliss.

She laughed with a lighthearted chuckle that did him good to hear. The laugh was somewhat strained, but better than the serious silences that had afflicted her so recently.

’That’s alright,’ she said. ’But you’re getting tired, I can see. Shall I row for a bit?’

’I must admit I wouldn’t mind a break.’

He shipped the oars carefully, and as carefully moved to the stern, while Fliss changed places with him. She sat down, and took up the oars, wielding them with an expertise that proclaimed not even a minimal practice. An aghast expression came to her face as more water poured in down the blades and on to her.

’ I’ve got all wet here,’ she exclaimed. ’The bench is covered in water. My dress is soaking, and that’s not the only thing, either.’

She tried a dozen or so more experimental strokes, getting the proper rhythm quickly, then brought the oars back in.

’This is not very comfortable,’ she complained. ’My dress is rubbing against my legs.’

She hitched the wet parts of her skirt high over her knees and began to row again. Barry gave an appreciative glance from time to time. Custom had not staled the experience.

Direction was an easy matter to judge, as the mist had lifted closer to the shore, clearing altogether in fact to reveal a bright blue sky. Luckily, the slight wind that had arisen seemed to be coming from behind, as near as they could judge from the sun and the passing of time. Every now and again, Barry glanced at the young woman next to him and smiled. Her skirt had dried and was pulled down chastely over her knees. Once, she took his free hand in hers, and squeezed it, then placed his hand on her knee and encouraged him to caress her. Concentration lapsed, and the boat rocked. He withdrew his hand with reluctance.

’Better concentrate on the job in hand,’ he said. ’There’ll be time enough for all that later.’

With an enormous effort Barry took the oars again and started rowing. He found it far from easy. Every joint, every muscle ached fiercely. Gradually the pain dulled and he settled down to a slow and steady stroke, aiming for