Over the next couple of days I met everyone left on the estate. There weren’t many of us, but that made it easier to trust each other. When people found out how few of us remained, they were shocked, and when I asked if I could tell people they had survived, they all agreed. I suppose all of us were a bit desperate for company, even those that were living with family must have wanted to see fresh faces. After a couple of weeks, once we had built up some trust, we decided to meet up all together in the primary school.
The school was roughly in the centre of Carpenders Park; up the road from the shops. I arrived early and found the broom cupboard. I swept away the glass from the broken front door and set out some chairs in the hall. I looked around trying to imagine how they might feel. With the broken glass swept away, the entrance was still fairly appealing; the path leading in might be knee high with weeds, but once inside there was a small welcoming atrium, decorated in primary colours, with posters of children’s books on the walls.
The hall was accessed through a short corridor to the side and compared to the secondary school halls I was used to, this one felt very small, but there were so few of us that we would easily fit. There was a stage at the front, and the far wall had windows all the way along with two set of double doors at each end. Unfortunately, some of the windows were broken so I worked my way around the room, brushing away the glass and the debris that had been blown in by the wind. I opened wide the double doors; extra exits might make people feel more comfortable. It certainly made me feel better.
I looked around, would people talk to each other? I was desperate for conversation and I bet the others were too. But like me they might be a little nervous to start with. We needed an icebreaker. Spying some tables stacked in a corner, I began bringing them out. I took some large sheets of poster paper, and wrote a single question on each sheet placing them on the different desks. Questions such as; ‘Would you be willing to trade food?’ ‘Do you think there is enough on the estate for all of us?’ As people arrived, I handed them a marker and asked them to jot down some ideas as they waited. Initially people were cautious, standing in isolated pockets around the room, but after a couple of people started writing on the sheets, more joined in as they arrived, and a certain amount of small talk began as they wrote. People who had vaguely known each other, started to make conversation and the noise soon became quite loud, with the children running around laughing and adding to the din.
It was startling after the quiet of the last few months, and I could see that a couple of people were looking uncomfortable, so I climbed up onto the stage and waited until everyone had quieted down. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘You all know me, but let’s do some quick introductions.’ I sat down on the stage and indicated the two eldest in the room, ‘This is Beryl and George.’
They nodded and smiled, and then realised I meant for them to say something. ‘Um, good morning, I’m Beryl, this is George, and we live in a bungalow on Pen Avenue,’ said Beryl.
A couple of murmured welcomes could be heard, Beryl seemed to have stopped, and it looked like George wasn’t going to say anything, so I moved on, ‘This is Helen and Brian.’
Helen smiled faintly and Brian said, ‘Hi everyone, Helen and I are keen gardeners and we live in George Drive.”
There were a couple more welcoming noises, so I moved to the last of the older couples.
‘This is Robert and Sheila’ I said, ‘whom most of you know anyway.”
Robert and Sheila stepped forwards; they were involved in several committees on the estate and were familiar faces to most people. ‘Hi’ they said together, smiling. ‘Hopefully we can help each other out, until things return to normal,’ added Sheila.
Then I looked at the two single adults, one was a tall spare gentleman, elderly but upright, the other a lady, short and somewhat stout. Both were wearing shirts and shorts, but somehow their outfits looked entirely different. ‘This is Frank, and this is Cathy,’ I said.
Frank smiled and said nothing, but Cathy looked around and said rather brusquely, ‘I know I live alone, but I am not sharing my food, I have enough for me and think we should keep our stuff for ourselves.’
Several people looked uncomfortable at her plain speaking, but I noticed several others nodding in agreement. I didn’t want to say anything, I sort of agreed with her, but said out loud, it sounded very selfish.
I looked at the five kids playing on the floor. ‘So, who are you guys?’ I asked them.
‘I’m Adam, this is Heather and Andrew, and those are Rachel and William,’ He said, pointing at them in turn. Rachel and William were both very young, maybe three or four years old.
‘Are you twins? I asked. Their mother stepped forward to reply.
‘No, William is four, Rachel is almost three,’ she said, ‘I’m Nina, I live in my mums house in Foxglove lane’
Nina was the lady I had met first, she lived in one of the houses round the back of the school. It was a bit of a warren back there and the gardens were tiny, she couldn’t be growing food, so how was she keeping her family fed?
An Asian man and his wife stepped forward, ‘we are Amin and Rabia,’ ‘and this is our younger son, Adam’ they said. ‘We live just down the road.’ They had a sad look in their eyes and I wondered what had happened to their elder son, an accident or had it been the virus…? The people here were the lucky survivors; it would have been odd if none of them had suffered any losses.
‘We also lost our youngest daughter,’ said the last lady. ‘Heather and Andrew are ours, I am Elizabeth, and this is my partner, Richard.’ Richard smiled briefly, worry lines creasing his forehead, but Elizabeth looked around through kind eyes with a large open smile.
That was everyone. I wasn’t quite sure what to do next; I stood up and paused uncertainly. After Cathy’s statement, I didn’t want to mention food. ‘Is everyone ok for water?’ I asked. There was a murmur of voices and nods and I smiled vaguely and then stepped off the stage. Most people were looking quite comfortable now, and after the glut of social interaction, I was tired and needed some peace and quiet. I sat on a chair and watched the kids play. Eventually one fell over and started to wail. It seemed that was the signal for people to disperse, and as people started to leave, I slipped away home.
For the next couple of days I carried on with the water deliveries. I knew where everyone lived, although I had been less specific about where I was; naming the street but not the number. I was also very busy in the garden. The crops were doing well. The Matina tomatoes were ripe, and I was able to pick four or five every day. The sweetcorn was swelling up nicely, and I spent a lot of time searching the runner beans for ripe pods so as not to accidently leave any to set seed. I even started experimenting with drying out some of the beans after picking so I could keep them through winter and have seed for next year. The first-early potatoes in the pots were mostly done, the stems had shrivelled up and dried out.
One sunny morning, I emptied all the pots onto a tarp and collected up a bucketful of small tubers, which were all that remained after my careful harvesting. The tarp now held a huge pile of old compost. I always used bags of fresh compost for the potatoes, as they were pest free and held water well. The potatoes that formed were much smoother and cleaner than they would have been in the ground; they could be cooked with the skins on, as there was little scab or slug damage.
I looked at the compost and the empty pots. I was going to need to grow another crop of potatoes but I couldn’t just buy new bags of compost. I would have to re-sterilize the soil myself, and for that, I would need a microwave. The bramble around the side gate had put on a lot of growth and the only way I would be able to open it again, was if I cut it all down, which I didn’t want to do. Instead, I took the wheelbarrow through the house, up the drive and across the road.