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Authors: Louise Lawrence
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convinced him it was really happening. His first instinct was to turn the car around and head for home. But home was thirty miles away across the river Severn, and London had already been hit. With Bristol next on the strike list he knew he would never make it. All he had time for was to save the woman and himself.
'My pass will cover both of us,' she said urgently.
Shocked out of thinking, Bill Harnden followed her directions, drove along by-roads east of Bath. The road led uphill towards a wooded escarpment and he could see the streets of Georgian houses below, traffic snarl-ups along the motorway, and hear the sirens of police cars waiting. Then the road dipped down again and the quiet fields took over, England on a sleepy afternoon in early summer, full of bluebells and buttercups and cattle grazing. He could not believe it was all about to end.
'Turn left at the next junction,' Erica Kowlanski said.
High wire fences and red notice boards told him that the area ahead belonged to the Ministry of Defence, and wire gates guarded the entrance to a disused stone quarry. Soldiers checked the woman's pass and waved Bill through. He parked among armoured cars and black official limousines, transferred to an army truck full of civic dignitaries and top civil servants, and was driven away.
A concrete tunnel and a roadway of curving light led deep inside the hill. Corridors branched away in all directions like blood vessels from a heart. He stood and waited in a great reception hall, a lone civilian among all the military personnel. It was more than a bunker. It was a vast purpose-built subterranean city, a labyrinth of rooms and passageways, as if the whole hill had been hollowed out. It was not the only one, Erica Kowlanski informed him. Scattered over England there were maybe a dozen underground complexes such as this. He guessed he could count himself lucky as the outer doors closed and sealed him inside.
Or was it luck, Bill thought, to be separated from his wife and children, to know that they died whilst he lived on? Alone in his cell room shared with a couple of American GIs, sitting on a hard bunk bed and staring at the blank pale green walls around him, somehow he could not think of it as luck. Apart from his briefcase containing lecture notes, a volume of Shakespeare's Hamlet which Veronica had given him for Christmas, and a photograph of her and the children which he kept in his wallet, he had brought nothing with him to remind him of his former life. He was a man in a vacuum, and everything he loved was swept away.
Time, of course, healed his grief. He grew used to the regimented routine of the bunker, mealtimes and work shifts, days and nights that began and ended with the sound of a buzzer. He grew used to the communal living of dining halls, assembly halls, shower and relaxation rooms, Grant and Elmer who shared his cell, and the total lack of privacy. A degree in English literature was useless there, and so was he. He was put to work in the supplies department, shifting dehydrated foodstuffs from the storerooms to the canteen kitchen, a man in a navy blue government-issued overall, number 423 on the admissions list, his identity gone.
Among all the high-ranking Army and Air Force personnel, among all the Lord Mayors, County Surveyors, Education and Police Chiefs, top scientists, communications experts, District Administrators, and gum-chewing Americans from the nearby airbase, Bill was just a low-status civilian in the bottom grade of the hierarchy. He did what he was told and was not expected to question it, nor did he know what went on among the upper echelons of power.
General MacAllister, who was in charge of the Avon bunker, was not a man to be found mixing socially with his subordinates. A remote moustachioed figure in a khaki uniform, he issued the orders, but he did not confide. All Bill knew of the overall situation was what filtered down to him through the ranks. As Elmer so succinctly put it, the
'My pass will cover both of us,' she said urgently.
Shocked out of thinking, Bill Harnden followed her directions, drove along by-roads east of Bath. The road led uphill towards a wooded escarpment and he could see the streets of Georgian houses below, traffic snarl-ups along the motorway, and hear the sirens of police cars waiting. Then the road dipped down again and the quiet fields took over, England on a sleepy afternoon in early summer, full of bluebells and buttercups and cattle grazing. He could not believe it was all about to end.
'Turn left at the next junction,' Erica Kowlanski said.
High wire fences and red notice boards told him that the area ahead belonged to the Ministry of Defence, and wire gates guarded the entrance to a disused stone quarry. Soldiers checked the woman's pass and waved Bill through. He parked among armoured cars and black official limousines, transferred to an army truck full of civic dignitaries and top civil servants, and was driven away.
A concrete tunnel and a roadway of curving light led deep inside the hill. Corridors branched away in all directions like blood vessels from a heart. He stood and waited in a great reception hall, a lone civilian among all the military personnel. It was more than a bunker. It was a vast purpose-built subterranean city, a labyrinth of rooms and passageways, as if the whole hill had been hollowed out. It was not the only one, Erica Kowlanski informed him. Scattered over England there were maybe a dozen underground complexes such as this. He guessed he could count himself lucky as the outer doors closed and sealed him inside.
Or was it luck, Bill thought, to be separated from his wife and children, to know that they died whilst he lived on? Alone in his cell room shared with a couple of American GIs, sitting on a hard bunk bed and staring at the blank pale green walls around him, somehow he could not think of it as luck. Apart from his briefcase containing lecture notes, a volume of Shakespeare's Hamlet which Veronica had given him for Christmas, and a photograph of her and the children which he kept in his wallet, he had brought nothing with him to remind him of his former life. He was a man in a vacuum, and everything he loved was swept away.
Time, of course, healed his grief. He grew used to the regimented routine of the bunker, mealtimes and work shifts, days and nights that began and ended with the sound of a buzzer. He grew used to the communal living of dining halls, assembly halls, shower and relaxation rooms, Grant and Elmer who shared his cell, and the total lack of privacy. A degree in English literature was useless there, and so was he. He was put to work in the supplies department, shifting dehydrated foodstuffs from the storerooms to the canteen kitchen, a man in a navy blue government-issued overall, number 423 on the admissions list, his identity gone.
Among all the high-ranking Army and Air Force personnel, among all the Lord Mayors, County Surveyors, Education and Police Chiefs, top scientists, communications experts, District Administrators, and gum-chewing Americans from the nearby airbase, Bill was just a low-status civilian in the bottom grade of the hierarchy. He did what he was told and was not expected to question it, nor did he know what went on among the upper echelons of power.
General MacAllister, who was in charge of the Avon bunker, was not a man to be found mixing socially with his subordinates. A remote moustachioed figure in a khaki uniform, he issued the orders, but he did not confide. All Bill knew of the overall situation was what filtered down to him through the ranks. As Elmer so succinctly put it, the
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