1. Day One
By the banks of the Lea, the Peck, and the Fleet
Where time and tide and history meet
Grant that we might see the day
When all these cares are swept away
Prologue
The River lay like grey slate under teeming rain… The clouds massing out in the Estuary seemed ready to topple over and squash everything in their path… The Essex marshes stretched out to the north and appeared yellowish in the curious light; lightning split the sky over Kent…
The newly-completed outer Barrier glinted in the watery sunshine behind them; the pilot was a fifth generation waterman and even he seemed unusually preoccupied,
“…what do you think?” asked Karen…
Her colleague, Justin, was scanning the horizon with his new hi-tech field glasses,
“…I think that the new Barrier will finally be justifying its excessive construction costs when high tide comes…”
And that was just it; a perfect storm of coincidence put a North Sea surge, a spring tide, and record river flows at Teddington all together on this one freezing January day…
The new barrier stretched almost 1.8 kilometres between East Tilbury to the north and Cliffe on the Kent side; flood defences had been raised downstream on either bank, but also moved back from the Kent shoreline to permit more of the excess water to flow into the salt marshes,
“…I’m turning back,” said the pilot…
She was about to protest, but she noticed Justin hadn’t moved; he was still focussed on the open sea, but something about the set of his shoulders drew her attention,
“…something’s not quite right…take a look!”
She took the field glasses and after the usual fumbling to get things in focus she saw it,
“…the horizon…it’s rising…”
Other eyes had seen same thing; the hands were scurrying to emergency stations, and the pilot boat was now swinging about, pointing its prow downstream once more. Karen just had time to hear the pilot speaking urgently on the radio before a crewman ordered her and Justin below…
1
People sitting in their offices in Canary Wharf later described it as the defining image of their lives; one minute it was an ordinary Friday afternoon, grey with freezing rain beating against the windows, to be spent trying to kill time on Escenema without your boss noticing, looking forward to the weekend and an after-work drink, and not thinking about the crush on the DLR on the way home, then a tsunami moved majestically into view around North Greenwich, and calmly made its way up the River.
Mariyam’s attention was drawn away from the great wave as it headed southwards around the Isle of Dogs; she was looking instead at the glass and steel towers of Calatrava’s iconic Greenwich Peninsula development on the other bank, she realised that they looked wrong…
Eventually it occurred to her that they were surrounded by swirling dirty-brown water…
She found herself sitting on her chair with no memory of having got there; the office was uncannily quiet, but she could hear the sound of a woman quietly sobbing in the background…
There had been a portent earlier that day when the rising waters of the River finally overtopped the embankment at the Tower of London, submerging Traitor’s Gate, and quietly refilling the Moat for the first time in over a century.
The staff found themselves temporarily (or so they thought!) cut off from the exits by the rising flood water, so they retreated upwards into the various towers. Jessica found herself separated from her colleagues, but from her vantage point she could see the ruins of the old Lion Tower, and (if she leaned her head out far enough), the wire sculptures of some of the beasts that had once lived in the Menagerie.
As the waters rose steadily Jess realised she might be there for some time, and found her thoughts turning to those for whom the ancient palace had been a refuge in the distant past. Some of them had been Jews like herself, brought in from abroad by the English Crown for their financial acumen, but relying on the King’s protection from the anti-Semitism of the mob. These people had lived close to and (on occasion), inside the Outer Ward.
She mused on the fate of the various animals, condemned to be locked up in tiny cages in a foreign land. There’d been lions, leopards, an elephant, even a polar bear. You could pay to see the lions of the Royal Menagerie right up to 1830; if you didn’t have the ninepence entry fee, a live cat or dog would substitute (the unfortunate animal being fed to the lions). There was apparently even a ghost of one of the bears, but no-one currently employed by the Tower had ever seen it.
With nothing better to do she phoned her wife Sam in Enfield; Sam was on pre-maternity leave and eight months gone, she spent her days watching rolling news coverage (Sam was a journalist when not preparing to give birth), and told her there was reports of serious flooding on the East coast,
“…I’m not sure when I’m going to be able to leave work…I’ll call you when I know more,”
…be safe, huh!
“…love you…”
For Karen the next thirty minutes were utterly terrifying, a visceral fear that never really left her. She’d managed to get video of the approaching wave on her watch; she assumed that the feed came from a cam mounted on the Barrage itself.
She could see the vessel (themselves, basically!) looking like a toy boat floating in a bathtub, silhouetted against the mountain of water approaching them. The whole thing had an air of unreality, as if they weren’t really there, but somehow watching themselves from a safe vantage point.
They got a terse message on the tannoy from the pilot, telling them to flatten themselves against the rear bulkhead and hang on. The boat was already tipping upwards by the time they’d done this; too late they remembered all the loose objects in the cabin, objects that would be coming in their direction…
A series of shudders passed through the craft as it rose by the bows, and the angle of tilt just kept on increasing…
The loose items all came sliding their way, gently at first, but then all in a rush. She managed to dodge most of the debris, but noticed (almost as an afterthought) that there was blood trickling down her cheek…
Looking out of the porthole during that awful climb, sundry old movies came back to her; Inception, mainly, as the world appeared to be on the verge of turning upside down, but another film she couldn’t place, but which had featured a tidal wave on an alien planet.
After a subjective eternity they reached the top and seemed to hesitate, as if balanced there; the tannoy crackled into life once more,
…you need to get to the forward bulkhead now…
In the shock of the moment it hadn’t occurred to them that they would be sliding down the other side…
They only just made it; their descent turned out to be far more precipitous than their ascent, and the far bulkhead now became the deck…
She reached over and took hold of his hand. She hardly knew her image capture tech, but they were now united in their little piece of frozen space and time, and he squeezed back fiercely…
Clive was halfway up the escalator at Greenwich Peninsula when water started trickling past his shoes. For second he thought about trying to make his way back down, but realising this was madness, and after a moment of paralysed hesitation, he started to run up the risers. Other people were beginning to do the same, but some just stood where they were, as if unable to process what was happening…
The patch of daylight at the top seemed to shrink and the water had now reached his knees; by some miracle the power hadn’t been shut off and even though he was now wading against a torrent, they were making steady progress. He still wouldn’t have made it, but the man in front of him, on getting to the top, had braced himself against the mechanism and reached down to pull him to safety…
There was no time to thank him; waves of water were sweeping across the concourse from the entrance, the water was up to their thighs and the current wanted to sweep them back to the escalator. The stranger had wanted to stay to save more people but Clive knew their only chance was to reach the stairs to the upper level…
A woman came past, swimming desperately against the current, grabbing for the railing. Clive reached out his hand and managed to grasp hers and pull her from the water. The man swimming behind also tried to reach their refuge, but was taken by the tide and swept down the escalator shaft. The woman watched this with a sort of apathetic horror; when they tried to get her to come with them she refused to move and sat leaning against the railing, seeing nothing,
“…we should try to get higher…”
This was the first thing either of them had said since the water had swept normal life away. Clive wanted to ask the other man his name, but it just didn’t seem appropriate…
He remembered now something he had glimpsed as his saviour had pulled him out of the torrent; half a dozen pale faces further down the shaft, their owners clinging desperately to the handrails, sure in the knowledge of their imminent death,
“…the water, it’s receding…”
The man’s voice rescued him from that terrible memory; and he was right. Like the tide ebbing on a beach, the water had stopped flowing in through the entrance and was now pouring back out. Several people who had been in imminent danger of being swept to their deaths now found themselves being carried back out of the station.
In five minutes the water level had dropped to ankle deep and Clive and the man who’d saved him felt able to leave the mezzanine where they’d taken refuge and venture outside…
Once they’d got there the floodwater seemed largely to have drained away, leaving stagnant pools, and stunned soaked people, some wandering aimlessly, others just staring into space…
Clive looked at the River; it looked shrunken, as if at extreme low tide…
He could hear a roaring sound, and looked south towards its source…
And then he saw it; a mountain of water sweeping upriver, its margins drowning the banks on either side, ant-like people fleeing before it…
Clive and the other man just stood there and watched it; what would be the point of running?
2
Aboard the Serbia an argument had broken out. The first mate wanted to keep heading out to sea and look for a safe haven further up the Essex coast, while the pilot maintained it was their duty to render assistance to those affected by the flooding upriver; the two men had squared up to each other,
“…there’s fuck all we can do…you saw that wave…we’ve got to think of the safety of the vessel…and its crew and passengers, and seek a safe harbour,”
“…for one thing, you are wrong if you think anywhere on this Estuary is going to be safe; and for another, we have a duty to render assistance,”
“…I’m not prepared to do that,”
“…I’m the master of this ship and you are relieved of duty and confined to quarters until such time as I am able to deal with you…”
The pilot turned to the deckhands,
“…take Mr Francis below…”
For a second the men hesitated, Karen could see the internal battle reflected in their facial expressions, but the pilot stared them out and grudgingly they obeyed…
Karen didn’t miss the look that passed between one of the men and the first mate once the pilot had turned his attention back to the River…
“…what’s going on up top?”
Justin had hurt his ankle during that heart-stopping descent after they had crested the wave, and he was resting on the bunk,
“…we’ve decided to turn back up River, so we can render assistance…”
She could see from his expression that this wasn’t the news he’d been hoping for,
“…or at least that’s the pilot’s decision, I don’t think the crew are too happy about it,”
“…I think his family live in Beckton,” said her colleague, after a moment’s reflection, “…he probably wants to see if there’s anything left,”
“How’s your ankle?” she said, changing the subject,
“…it’s really swollen and I can’t put any weight on it! I think it may be broken,”
“…we need to get you some proper medical attention asap,” but even as she said these words, it occurred to her that this was probably easier said than done…
The ship had now completed its turn and was heading upstream once more; up the River to whatever the wave had left…
The Palace of Westminster having survived one calamity was facing another; the fire of 2028 had finally persuaded the authorities that something had to be done, and also convinced the elected Members that it might be a good idea to meet somewhere else for a while. So Parliament had become peripatetic, rather like the Royal Court in Mediaeval times, moving between provincial capitals before eventually taking root in Birmingham.
The works took rather longer than anticipated; twenty five years passed before the Palace was finally deemed ready for re-occupation. By this time the Commons had rather got used to its new modern surroundings and although the Lords did move back, most Parliamentary business remained in the Midlands with only the historic state occasions now being held at Westminster.
Shortly after one, part of the Embankment gave way and a cataract poured into the space beneath Elizabeth Tower, filling Old Palace Yard to a depth of five metres in minutes. Fortunately, not even the Lords were in session, so relatively few people drowned, with most of the staff being able to seek safety on the upper floors.
Edwin found himself looking out across the River…
He noticed a strange phenomenon; the tide seemed to have gone out, gone out with extraordinary rapidity, and the water which had filled Palace Yard was now pouring back over the ruins of the Embankment into the suddenly shrunken River…
He had an unaccountable feeling of impending doom…
Leaving Justin to rest his hurt leg, she went back up on deck and looked out on a different world,
“…where’s the barrier?” she asked one of the deckhands…
The man shrugged helplessly…
The skipper leaned out of the wheelhouse,
“…according to the GPS it should be here,” he looked at a complete loss, “…but I don’t think anything is where it should be…”
Karen took in her surroundings for the first time; at his point on the River both banks should be less than a klick away, clearly in view, but all she could see was muddy brown water stretching away into the distance…
She looked to starboard (which should be north, but who knew in this strange new world), looking for any kind of landmark. She caught sight of it then, a small stone structure, dark against the water, thrust up from the waves, reminding her of the battlements of a sandcastle,
“…what’s that?” she asked the pilot,
“…that…is the church tower of Chadwell St Mary,”
“…where’s the rest of the village?” she asked stupidly…
Edwin was musing on history; how the grand edifice in which he was now marooned had itself been a product of a great disaster, the Fire of 1834, apparently started when they tried to burn some wooden tally sticks formerly used by the Treasury in one of the basement furnaces.
He wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination an intellectual, but he’d taken a keen amateur interest in the history of the building in which he worked. He knew, for example, that there had been several contenders for the prize of designing the new building; the early favourites, all variations on the then-fashionable neoclassical style, were rejected (presumably for their revolutionary and Continental connotations), in favour of a design that looked back instead, into England’s past. The Gothic Revival style of Charles Barry (an architect best known to that point for a grammar school in Birmingham), was seen as somehow solid and comforting in an uncertain world. Barry’s collaborator Augustus Welby Pugin (who’d done the interiors) was a Catholic, but in a tribute to the new-found religious tolerance of the times, this hadn’t been held against him, although he was paid a fraction of what Barry received.
He didn’t know why he was thinking about these things, but it occurred to him that the exercise held off the moment when he would have to confront the enormity of what he had just witnessed…
It was coincidence (and initially she thought bad luck) that led her to be here at all…
Her editor, a hardened Fleet Street hack of the old school (from the time when newspapers had actually been printed), had suggested that it would add to her journalistic experience to cover a different kind of story; in this case live coverage of the first real test of the new Thames Barrier, combining this with a background piece on the people who lived in the shadow of the River’s flood defences, the people who worked the Thames navigation, and the technicians who manned the new Barrier control centre. There was even space for a valedictory piece on the old Barrier, to be decommissioned and thrown on the scrap heap of history once the new one had proved its worth.
They’d done that piece first, Justin had deployed his drone cams to film the now-redundant structure from the water, she (meanwhile), had been interviewing people who’d worked on it over the years; they’d even managed to dig up someone who’d actually worked on the construction of the old Thames Barrier. Tom had been a real revelation, still alert and spry, despite his ninety five years. He’d been surprised and heartened to have been contacted by the paper, had been a mine of stories, and had clearly enjoyed his trip out on the River, to view ‘his’ Barrier as it prepared to slip into history.
They’d taken the old boy back to his daughter in Canning Town before they’d set sail for the new flood defences, Karen didn’t want to think about his likely fate…
The original plan had been to sail through the Barrier before it closed, film the effects of the rising tide on the Kent and Essex Marshes before returning to film the structure itself holding back the waters at high tide.
The first part of this had gone swimmingly…
They were now passing what would have been Tilbury container port, with the associated settlements of West Tilbury and East Tilbury further inland,
‘…inland,’ thought Karen, thinking the concept now somewhat redundant as the River seemed to have tripled in size…
The loading cranes of the container port were still visible above the waves, but the other settlements were completely submerged and no trace of them was visible. In the distance Stanford le Hope and Chafford Hundred could be seen, well clear of the floodwater. The A13, the main road from Southend, was also visible, and traffic appeared to still be moving…
Nearer at hand various ships dotted the water; some were still moored or anchored at the container port, but others were apparently adrift and posing a danger to navigation. One or two appeared to have run aground further north where the land rose as it neared the main road…
Karen had Justin’s field glasses and viewed the road; traffic had now stopped and people had got out of their cars and seemed to be staring out over the River, almost as if sightseeing…
She’d begun to notice bodies floating the water…
One of the ships that had apparently been adrift now came about; power had clearly been restored and the ship’s horn split the afternoon air. A seaman had manned the vessel’s light and had begun signalling, presumably in Morse code. The pilot answered briefly in kind, and spoke tersely on the radio. He then addressed those on board via the tannoy,
…the ship is a freighter called the Ulysses, I have apprised them of the situation and they are prepared to render assistance…I will be transferring to the vessel to pilot it up the Estuary,
Karen noticed that the merchantman had now hove to and appeared to be lowering a boat; it occurred to her that if she were the pilot she would not be so keen to leave her command in the hands of others, but she kept these thoughts to herself.
Instead she turned her attention to the other bank and scanned the Kent side with her binoculars. Grays appeared to have largely disappeared, but the terrain rose sharply further south and a new shoreline of inlets and coastal bluffs had been magicked into existence.
In twenty minutes the pilot had transferred to the Ulysses and the second mate was now in command of the Serbia. The pilot boat now led this fleet of two as they made their way cautiously up the tidal reach…
3
When he became aware of his surroundings he found he was hanging onto an old-fashioned wooden desk. There were a lot of people in the water with him, but it didn’t take him long to work out that they were all dead…
Why he should have been singled out for God’s Mercy defeated him. He hadn’t even been particularly religious. His mother, and her parents before her, had been religious; like many people of the West Indian diaspora they’d been regular church goers, but Clive had never seen the sense in this…
He thought of the man who had saved him, surely he was more worthy…
He noticed a flat roof projecting above the floodwaters about two hundred metres away, and decided to swim for it…
On the roof he found a ginger cat and small girl, aged no more than three. The girl seemed to have lost the power of speech. He’d come upon a half empty bottle of water during his swim, and he shared this with the child and the animal. He later found some old sacks just inside the door that led to the stairwell back down into the building; as night fell the three of them curled up together, fellow orphans of the storm…
Mariyam had been trying to follow events from her workstation; attempts to use wireless tech had been frustrating as coverage was now very patchy, she assumed many of the masts were now unserviceable. But their desktops were connected by cable and she was able to get news and vid content; the BBC was broadcasting from Manchester but worryingly not from London. She had BBC rolling news on, and the reports were confused and often contradictory; they were reporting severe flooding not just in London but all down the North Sea coast, there were also brief reports of similar inundations from Denmark in the north to the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France further south. The Prime Minister was safe, apparently she’d been in Leeds, but other members of the Cabinet were unaccounted for, and there was concern for the safety of the Royal family…
The speculation on the causes of the disaster was only just beginning, but the BBC had received reports of a category 8 earthquake on the seabed just southeast of Iceland… Mariyam was getting the strong impression that the sheer scale of the day’s events had temporarily overwhelmed the capacity of the civil authorities and of the emergency services to respond effectively…
There were reports from inside One Canada Square as well; people who had been down to the lower floors reported the stairwells were flooded up to level three and bodies had been spotted floating in the water. None of the lifts were working…
At 3 pm the power failed without warning and Mariyam began to realise how serious their situation was…
Just before the light faded she looked again at the Greenwich Peninsula; the great Dome of the Arena appeared to have fallen in on itself, putting her in mind of something she had seen as a child, the big top of a travelling circus settling to the ground once the poles were removed, as it was taken down after the show…
Jessica spent the morning assuming that the waters would subside and waiting for that to happen so she could make her escape, but she’d got bored of patrolling the musty corridors and had headed up to the battlements; this was to save her life…
Just after one o’clock what she had been praying for seemed about to happen. The floodwater suddenly seemed to retreat and began pouring back over the embankment into the River. She was so astonished by the speed of this that she stayed where she was watching the River, rather than heading down to the exit…
The River had now diminished to a level lower than any low tide she could remember; she could see fish flopping about on the suddenly-exposed mudflats…
A cry from below drew her gaze away from this strange phenomenon; it was one of her colleagues waving at her, presumably encouraging her to come down and join them. She was about to do so when she heard it; a peculiar roaring that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and the sound was getting louder…
She looked back out over the river; counter-intuitively, a sheet of water was rapidly making its way upstream, drowning the normal downstream flow…
She looked down at her friend and the others, now hesitating,
“…GET BACK INSIDE!” she screamed, her words drowned by the appalling noise coming from the River…
Her friends realising the danger were now running for the doorway from which they’d just emerged…
Jessica could see the returning flood was angling upwards, and sweeping along the embankment towards them, mowing down the trees like a giant combine harvester; when she looked down her colleagues had reached the building and disappeared inside…
She looked back towards Tower Bridge, and in almost surreal slow motion, a wave the size of an office block tipped on its side swept between and around the main towers. The roadways linking them to the north and south abutments were instantly ripped away leaving the suspension cables dancing crazily above the heaving water, only the bascules linking the central span resisted…
Almost as a afterthought, she flattened herself behind the battlements, and prayed…
When the wave struck them, it was with the force of an earthquake. She was thankful that she’d taken cover because she could feel the whole structure shudder and was sent skidding over over the suddenly wet flagstones towards the other side of the tower…
The wave had swept along the length of the wall of the inner ward, and completely engulfed the outer ward. Only her station at the top of Wakefield Tower had preserved her, and she knew there was no hope for her workmates…
She peered over the battlements, onto a changed riverscape…
Tower Pier had gone completely, presumably swept upstream, the Mayor’s office directly opposite was still there, but now canted over to one side with most of the glass on the lower levels apparently missing. Her attention was drawn to the floodwaters closer at hand; several cars (presumably from the roadway) were now floating in the River, on top of one of them (she remembered its garish fluorescent yellow paintwork which stood out from the brown of the river water), crouched a man who had presumably got out of an open window and was now assessing his chances in the water. He was still hesitating when the resumption of the normal current swept him out of Jessica’s sight…
Further up the river she noticed that HMS Belfast had been torn from its moorings and swung across the Thames partially blocking it; the ship didn’t look in good shape and was listing heavily to port. As far as she could see the River had burst its banks, with the flood submerging structures on the former embankment completely, and surrounding the taller buildings…
Suddenly she didn’t want to look anymore and sat with her back to the battlements, until the realisation that she was wet through and very cold drove her to seek shelter inside…
His first thought after the wave had passed had been to ring his mother in Forest Gate. They shared a housing association maisonette, new when he’d been born, but now showing its age…
Edwin (named by his late father who thought it had been a good old-fashioned English name), had never lived anywhere else, and couldn’t imagine a different sort of life. His father had been a porter at the Palace of Westminster all his working life, and it had been inevitable that son would follow father. They’d worked together happily until the old man’s sudden death from a heart attack five years before. It seemed to Edwin that nothing had been right since,
“…bleedin’ thing! Why won’t you work?”
His rather antiquated phone was stubbornly failing to get a signal no matter where in the corridor he stood; he was beginning to get really worried about his mum who was now virtually housebound. He was trying frantically to remember how high above the Thames their building was; he knew they were higher than Ilford which lay close to River Roding, and also higher than Stratford which was in the Lee Valley, but were they high enough?
He couldn’t get the sight of that mountain of water tearing up the River (…his River!), and destroying everything in its path…