Will North

by Water, Stone, Heart (v5)

  There wasn't the slightest indication of a problem in the cozy confines of the Cobweb, and Flora lifted an eyebrow and gave him a look.

  Jamie caught it. “Flora, I'm going to tell you right here and now: I love you, lass. But you're in danger. We all are.”

  Flora stood stock-still for a moment, then grabbed Jamie's shirtfront, pulled him across the bar, and gave him the wettest kiss of his life. Then she released him, and while he tried to catch his breath, she bellowed, “All right you lot, here's the latest news: The river's risin' fast and the car park's about to be flooded! If you value them fancy BMWs and Land Rovers out there, you'd all better look to your vehicles. No rushin' about, mind you; nice and easy out the door, please.”

  No one moved.

  She slammed her beefy hands on the bar. Glasses danced. “Oi!” she shouted. “Is there somethin' about out we don't understand? Bar's closed, got it? Drinks are the least of your worries, people. Out you go, then, everyone.” Like a plump-breasted mother hen, Flora came out from behind the bar and, arms spread wide as if to corral vagrant chicks, edged the crowd toward the door. It was only when they got outside that they truly understood. The river, which normally slipped quietly through its channel beyond the car park and behind the connected stone buildings of Bridge Walk, had formed a second route, a shallow but fast-flowing delta that spread across the lot and consolidated again to speed down the main street, oblivious to the constructions of man on its headlong rush to the harbor.

  Some of the Cobweb's customers gathered up their family members and dashed through the intensifying rain to their cars. Despite the fact that it was midafternoon, the light was sepulchral, as if a shroud had been thrown across the roof of the village. Cars started and headlights snapped on. Taillights reflected on the surface of the water streaming across the macadam. The cars bunched up at the entrance as drivers tried to decide which direction to take. Those who had been to Boscastle before knew to turn right and head uphill to the north, in the direction of Bude. Those who did not, or were simply too stubborn to recognize the obvious, turned left toward the bridge over the raging river, only to be stopped there by the flood. Many of the Cobweb's patrons stood as if paralyzed along the pavement, too fearful to move uphill or toward their cars. Flora shooed them back into the inn and up the stairs to the formal dining room, a space typically reserved for weddings and funerals.

  Jamie strode across the street, itself a fast-flowing rapids, to help people in the car park. He'd only got twenty feet when the water swept him off his feet.

  Lee reached the footbridge for the path up to Minster Wood and the farm just in time to see the river lift the delicate wooden structure off its footing on the north bank. Slowly, even gracefully, it pirouetted some ninety degrees until it angled downstream, dangling from the footing on the south side. Then it toppled sideways into the flood and was gone.

  Lee watched this event transfixed. She'd had no idea water could do such a thing, and the born observer in her was fascinated. In fact, she found the entire experience of being in the storm—of watching the placid river she knew so intimately turning into something altogether different and powerful—thrilling, exhilarating.

  But as she continued running along the sodden path downstream, for there was nowhere else to go, from upstream she heard a groan like that of an agonized beast, a crash, and then a low rumble, lower in pitch than any thunder she had experienced before, followed by more crashes. She was at the edge of the meadow above the weir when she turned to look backward, even though she'd already intuited what had happened: The fallen tree that had dammed the river and lowered its level downstream had given way. Squeezed between the slate outcroppings on the north bank and the steep, forested slopes on the south, a ten-foot wall of water, black as night, was twisting its way down the valley with the speed of a train, tearing at everything in its path and carrying a tangled mass of roots, limbs, trunks, and shrubbery at its crest. And in a moment, her excitement turned to panic.

  Lee did the only thing she knew to do, the only thing she had time to do: She sloshed through the rising, fast-moving water by what had once been the riverbank and threw her arms around “her” tree, the one steadfast, familiar thing left in a landscape that was changing from pastoral to diabolical before her eyes. The wall of water and debris hit when she'd climbed halfway up to her accustomed perch. The gnarled sessile oak lurched, but its deep roots held. Lee clung to her tree with the passion of a child clutching a parent; the oak was her protector. After the first surge passed, she climbed higher. She expected the flood would lessen after the wall of water passed, but it did not. It kept rising, inching up the twisted trunk of the ancient oak.

  A few yards downstream from the witchcraft museum, Trudy Walters was watching the river from one of the arched windows of her shop, the Harbour Light. The store, which specialized in nautical clothing and gifts and also served rich Cornish ice cream in the rose-bedecked garden terrace out front, had been busy all morning. The sporadic rain had driven most of her customers to cafés or either the Cobweb or the Wellington Hotel after lunchtime, but now the sun was out and the garden was once again filled with ice cream customers. Though she could see the river rising, she wasn't much concerned. The building that housed the shop, a whitewashed former pigsty with a picturesque swaybacked stone roof, had been there for more than three hundred years. It had seen everything.

  But by 3:30, Trudy decided it was time to take precautions. The river had risen before. Indeed, there had been serious flooding back in 1959. The exterior frame of the shop's front door was equipped with slats to hold storm boards. Trudy and an assistant thanked their remaining customers, locked the garden gate, and slid the storm boards down the slats to protect the door. Then each of them headed home.

  At 3:35, though the sun was shining in Boscastle, the rain gauge at Lesnewth recorded rain at the astonishing rate of nearly a foot an hour.

  Colin Grant was descending the exterior stone stairs from his library and office at the Museum of Witchcraft just as Andrew arrived. Colin had been working with his usual bookish concentration upstairs and had only just noticed the river out his window. He'd come down more out of curiosity than worry. Andrew changed that instantly.

  “River's over its bank just upstream, Colin,” he yelled above the din of the rapids behind him. “Where's Nicola?”

  “Ticket window.” Colin peered around the corner of the building and immediately returned. He yanked open a door beneath the stairs and pulled out a uniform jacket for the coast guard. “Tell Nicola and the others to shift what exhibits they can to the upper floor. I'm the town's coast guard; I've got to get to the bridge and warn people away.”

  Andrew went into the museum. The light was dim and there was soft, New Age music playing. The river's roar barely penetrated the museum's ancient, thick stone walls. Nicola looked up and smiled. Then she saw the tension in Andrew's face and the smile vanished.

  “The river's flooding. Colin says you're to get your visitors out and take what you can upstairs. He's gone to warn people on the bridge. The water's already risen to within a few feet of your cottage.” Nicola came out to the door and looked across the river to her house. Randi stood beside her, his body vibrating with anxiety.

  “Shit; I should have paid attention.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Randi's been barking all morning. He knew.”

  Andrew looked at them both, shook his head in disbelief, and said, “I'm going to go help Colin.”

  “You got your white horse tied up outside?”

  “Horse?”

  “You know, knight in shining armor on his white horse; protecting the citizenry…”

  “Not funny. Look, the sun is shining, right? But the river is full to overflowing. That means it's raining hard somewhere up in the hills. And the way this valley's shaped, there's no place for that water to go but straight through this village. The tourists are strolling around the flooding banks and standing on the bridges gawki
ng like this is some kind of a spectacle staged for their benefit. That's how people get killed: by not thinking. Don't be one of them, okay?”

  This was something new for Nicola. Until now, Andrew had seemed a shy but brainy chap, sort of an intellectual, though also easygoing. But here was another Andrew: assertive, direct, responsible, taking charge. But caring, too. His worry was palpable.

  “You're right,” she said. “I'm sorry. Go; I'll tend to things here.”

  A moment after he left, she ran out of the building and called after him, “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  But the noise of the furious river drowned her out.

  Jamie had rolled and slid across the car park in the swift floodwater until he slammed up against a parked car. He got to his feet and leaned on the vehicle to catch his breath and discovered there were two middle-aged women inside, rigid with panic. In the same instant, he felt the car lift slightly and begin to drift. He yelled for help to the crowd gathering on slightly higher ground near the pub. People looked at one another helplessly, but finally a couple of heavyset men waded out into the flood, holding each other's hand for stability, and inched toward the car. Jamie yanked open the door and coaxed the first of the women out of the passenger seat, passing her to the nearest man in what was becoming a human chain. The other woman seemed incapable of moving, paralyzed by fear.

  “I can't swim!” she cried, and tears etched tracks through her heavy pancake makeup.

  “I'll tell you a secret, luv,” Jamie said in the kindest voice he could muster given the circumstances. “Neither can I. Which is why we both need to get away from this car before it goes bob, bob, bobbing along right out of here and into the harbor. Ready, then?”

  The woman managed a single nod.

  “You'll have to climb over here to the passenger door, then, dear; I don't want to risk us being on the downstream side. Understand?”

  She nodded again. Finally, she hitched up her skirt, clambered over the gearshift, and fell into his arms. She even found the presence of mind to kick off her heels. Then he passed her to the outstretched hands of the other men. He looked around and could see other people trying to get to their cars, becoming frightened, and giving up. A couple with a small child in the middle of the lot had climbed up to the roof of their Mercedes, and now Jamie headed for them, placing each foot carefully, moving crabwise across the current. Some of the other men who had been helping saw where he was going and followed. It took some persuading, but Jamie finally got the mother to release her hold on the little boy, and the men passed the child from hand to hand like a water bucket at a fire until the boy reached safety. The mother followed, but the husband hesitated.

  “It's brand-new!”

  Jamie was momentarily confused, then understood the man was talking about his car.

  “That's why God invented auto insurance, mate; now get off of that roof before your wife has to check into your life insurance as well!”

  By 4:15 p.m., the rain gauge at Lesnewth had recorded rain averaging between 100 and 150 millimeters (4 to 6 inches) per hour for more than an hour and a quarter.

  By the time Andrew reached Colin on the south side of the upper bridge, it was raining torrents again. Colin had the coast guard vehicle parked there with its emergency lights flashing. They were joined by a team from the fire brigade from the nearby village of Delabole, who were wading about shepherding people toward higher ground.

  “It's still rising!” Colin shouted. “I just phoned an incident report to headquarters in Falmouth. You can hardly credit it, but people keep trying to get on the bridge to watch. Bloody idiots! Help me string emergency tape across the road.”

  Andrew nodded. They stretched the blue and white tape between two poles on the north side and were just crossing to the south side again when, upriver, they saw a small red Ford shooting down the river's channel like a kayak. Colin looked at it in disbelief as it swept beneath the bridge toward the sea.

  “Definitely speeding,” he deadpanned.

  “Nobody in it, thank God,” Andrew noted. Seconds later, it slammed into the smaller, lower bridge downstream. The water there was already too high. The car twirled like a top for a moment and finally got wedged, nose down, beneath the bridge arch, the ebony flood churning like surf around and above it.

  As they were cordoning off the south side of the road bridge, Andrew looked up Dunn Street, the steep one-way road that ran from the upper village to the harbor, meeting the main road just past the Wellington Hotel.

  “Jesus,” he said. The narrow street had become a river itself, channeling water nearly a foot deep downhill at frightening speed. People parked there were trying desperately, and largely unsuccessfully, to reverse their cars uphill away from the flood. Pedestrians trudged up the same hill in muddy shin-deep water, clinging to walls and fences as they went, slipping often.

  “Oh, bloody hell!” he heard Colin cry. Andrew thought Colin was looking up Dunn Street, too, but when he turned he realized the man was facing upriver, his mouth open. Andrew followed his gaze and froze. Far up the Valency, at the curve just above the car park, a wall of water at least a building-story high was bearing down on the village. And not just water. Tons of debris and entire uprooted trees, their root masses upturned like hideous bouquets, were borne along, bouncing and twisting, on the foaming crest of the wall like so many weightless straws. And as it advanced, it mowed down everything in its path.

  Andrew had been worried about people's safety ever since the river broke its banks. Now he knew people would die.

  With rainfall readings now confirmed in the vicinity, it seems likely that nearly 200 mm fell in the space of four hours.

  Boscastle Flood Special Issue,

  Journal of Meteorology 29, No. 293

  fifteen

  Lee's special friend Elizabeth Davis, manager of the Visitor Centre at the south end of the main car park, was at a distinct disadvantage as the floodwaters rose. The center was designed to face the lot, not the river behind it, so it was a surprise to her when she realized there was water flowing through the entry hall. The storm had been an annoyance all afternoon, and the power in the building had failed several times, but she'd been too busy rebooting the center's computer to pay much attention to what was happening outside. When she understood that a safe exit was no longer possible, she closed the double doors and called both the fire brigade and the Environment Agency, to whom she reported. She also turned off the power. There were two families of five in the Visitor Centre at the time, along with Elizabeth's assistant.

  Despite the closed doors, water rose in the center. First, the group moved to a raised children's play area. Then, when Elizabeth realized that this area, too, would soon be underwater, she shepherded parents and children up a ladder into the storage loft. They had just reached safety when the wall of water smashed into the building. The whole structure shuddered. There was nothing upstream of the Visitor Centre; it was the first point of resistance. Though it was a relatively new stone building, the front doors could not withstand the attack and failed. The ground floor was immediately inundated. Upstairs, what had seemed to the children an exciting adventure now became frightening. While trying to keep them occupied and their parents calm, Elizabeth called her husband, who worked for the county council, so he could let the police know where they were hiding. It was one of the last cell phone calls from Boscastle; immediately afterward, the phone service failed. Soon thereafter, so did the power. Each time Elizabeth peered down to the ground floor from the loft, the water had risen another rung on the ladder.

  Jamie had seen it coming, or rather had heard it—a thunderous rumble as the cresting river churned through the upper valley, tumbling boulders beneath its surface and lofting anything that floated to its surface. Thankfully, when it hit, there was no one left in the dozens of cars and camper vans still stranded in the lot. The instant he saw the wall of water, he understood that its effect would be catastrophic. Though it hadn't come from schoolbooks, Jami
e knew his physics. He knew a cubic foot of stone weighed between 100 and 150 pounds. He knew that a cubic foot of water weighed only a little over 60 pounds. But he also knew that water moving at ten miles an hour exerted a force of more than 250 pounds on a given cubic foot of stone, and guessed that this mass of water and debris was moving at more than forty miles per hour.

  And he knew the new hedge would fail.

  It did so with grace, however, and this gave Jamie some semblance of comfort. The wall of water ignored the curve in the riverbend and aimed directly at the car park. It hit the hedge of stone and, to his amazement, passed right over it. It was only a few moments later, as the stronger force far beneath the surface of the flood worked on the base of his creation, that the entire structure seemed to soften before his eyes and slowly, elegantly melt away. It put him in mind of something without real substance, like a bowl of ice cream dissolving on a sunny café table. It made no sound as it vanished—at least no sound he could hear above the thunder of the flood itself—and Jamie thought this a form of passing he would like to emulate when his own time came. It was dignified, a sort of yielding to the inevitable.

  The connected shops along Bridge Walk—the continuous block of stone-built structures that included the Cornish Stores general store, the Spinning Wheel Restaurant, the Rock Shop, the Boscastle Bakery, and the sixteenth-century building that housed the Riverside Hotel—had become an island in the stream. The Valency normally ran peacefully behind the buildings, and the apartments above the shops had balconies to take advantage of the river view.

  There was a small footbridge over the river leading to tables in a popular tea garden on the bank opposite the hotel. Both had vanished. The front side of this block of buildings normally faced the main road through town. The road, too, had disappeared, to become an entirely new branch of the Valency—a vicious, snarling water beast that ripped at anything in its path and carried with it a swirling, pitching stew of half-drowned automobiles, trees, recycling bins, fences, and traffic signs, all of it just so much detritus purged by what seemed an insanely vengeful God of Street Sweeping, intent on flushing the entire village into the ocean.