The House outquestioned any quiz. The replies were more assured than assuring.
The relevant Ministries and Departments were actively taking all the steps necessary, claims should be submitted through Local Councils, priorities of men and material had already been arranged. Yes, warnings had been given, but unforeseen factors had intruded upon the hydrographers' original calculations. An Order in Council would be made for the requisition of all earth-moving machinery. The public could have full confidence that there would be no repetition of the calamity; the measures already put in hand would insure against any further extension. Little could be done beyond rescue-work in the Eastern Counties at present, that would of course continue, but the most urgent matter at the moment was to ensure that the water could make no further inroads at the next high-tides.
The requisition of materials, machines, and manpower was one thing; their apportionment, with every seaboard community and low-lying area clamouring for them simultaneously, quite another. Clerks in half a dozen Ministries grew pale and heavy-eyed in a welter of demands, allocations, adjustments, redirections, misdirections, subornments, and downright thefts. But somehow, and in some places, things began to get done. Already, there was great bitterness between those who were chosen, and those who looked like being thrown to the wolves.
Phyllis went down one afternoon to look at progress of work on the riverside. Amid great activity on both banks a superstructure of concrete blocks was arising on the existing walls. The sidewalk supervisors were out in their thousands to watch. Among them she chanced upon Bocker. Together they ascended to Waterloo Bridge, and watched the termite-like activity with a celestial eye for a while.
'Alph, the sacred river and more than twice fives miles of walls and towers,' Phyllis observed.
'And there are going to be some deep but not very romantic chasms on either side, too,' said Bocker. 'I wonder how high they'll go before the futility comes home to them.'
'It's difficult to believe that anything on such a scale as this can be really futile, but I suppose you are right,' said Phyllis.
Bocker waved a hand at it.
'The basis of all this is an assurance by that old fool Stackley, who is a geographer who knows damn-all about oceans, that the overall rise cannot be more than ten or twelve feet at the most. Heaven knows what he bases it on: a desire to create full employment, by the look of it. Some departments have accepted that as the authentic dope. They seem to think they can muddle through this thing as they muddle through their wars. Others, thank God, have a bit more sense. However, this isn't being interfered with because it is felt that some kind of show is necessary for morale.'
'I've had to speak to you about this undergraduate attitude before, A. B.,' said Phyllis. 'What is being done that's useful?'
'Oh, they're working out plans,' Bocker said, with deliberate vagueness.
They continued to regard the medley of men and machinery down below for a time.
'Well,' Bocker remarked, at length, 'there must be at least one figure among the shades who is getting a hell of a good laugh out of this.'
'Nice to think there's even one,' Phyllis said. 'Who?'
'King Canute,' said Bocker.
We were having so much news of our own at that time that the effects in America found little room in newspapers already straitened by a paper shortage. Newscasts, however, told that they were having their own troubles over there. California's climate was no longer Problem Number One. In addition to the difficulties that were facing ports and seaboard cities all over the world, there was bad coastline trouble in the south of the United States. It ran almost all the way around the Gulf from Key West to the Mexican border. In Florida, owners of real estate began to suffer once again as the Everglades and the swamps spilt across more and more country. Across in Texas a large tract of land north of Brownsville was gradually disappearing beneath the water. Still worse hit were Louisiana, and the Delta. The enterprise of Tin Pan Alley considered it an appropriate time to revive the plea: 'River, Stay 'Way from My Door,' but the river did not nor, over on the Atlantic coast, did other rivers, in Georgia and the Carolinas.
But it is idle to particularize. All over the world the threat was the same. The chief difference was that in the more developed countries all available earth-shifting machinery worked day and night, while in the more backward it was sweating thousands of men and women who toiled to raise great levees and walls.
But for both the task was too great. The more the level rose, the further the defences had to be extended to prevent outflanking. When the rivers were backed up by the incoming tides there was nowhere for the water to go but over the surrounding countryside. All the time, too, the problems of preventing flooding from the rear by water backed up in sewers and conduits became more difficult to handle. Even before the first serious inundation which followed the breaking of the Embankment wall near Blackfriars, in October, the man in the street had suspected that the battle could not be won, and the exodus of those with wisdom and the means had already started. Many of them, moreover, were finding themselves forestalled by refugees from the eastern counties and the more vulnerable coastal towns elsewhere.
Some little time before the Blackfriars breakthrough a confidential note had circulated among selected staff, and contracted personnel such as ourselves, at EBC. It had been decided as a matter of policy in the interests of public morale, we learnt, that, should certain emergency measures become necessary, etc., etc., and so on, for two foolscap pages; with most of the information between the lines. It would have been a lot simpler to say: 'Look. The gen is that this thing's going to get serious. The BBC has orders to stay put, so for prestige reasons we'll have to do the same. We want volunteers to man a station here, and if you care to be one of them, we'll be glad to have you. Suitable arrangements will be made. There'll be a bonus, and you can trust us to look after you if anything does happen. How about it?'
Phyllis and I talked it over. If we had had any family, we decided, the necessity would have been to do the best we could by them in so far as anyone could possibly know what might turn out to be best. As we had not, we could please ourselves. Phyllis summed up for staying on the job.
'Apart from conscience and loyalty and all the proper things,' she said. 'Goodness knows what is going to happen in other places if it does get really bad. Somehow, running away seldom seems to work out well unless you have a pretty good idea of what you're running to. My vote is for sticking, and seeing what happens.'
So we sent our names in, and were pleased to find that Freddy Whittier and his wife had done the same.
After that, some clever departmentalism made it seem as if nothing were happening for a while. Several weeks passed before we got wind of the fact that EBC had leased the top two floors of a large department-store near Marble Arch, and were working all-out to have them converted into as near a self-supporting station as was possible.
'I should have thought,' said Phyllis, when we acquired this information, 'that somewhere higher, like Hampstead or Highgate, would have been better.'
'Neither of them is quite London,' I pointed out. 'Besides, EBC probably gets it for a nominal rent for announcing each time: "This is the EBC calling the world from Selvedge's." Goodwill advertising during the interlude of emergency.'
'Just as if the water would just go away one day,' she said.