They wouldn’t wait for one another to finish speaking; it wasn’t a debate. Like my father’s lists, the men shouted over each other, interrupting and heckling.
“I tell you, it’ll be a natural disaster: tidal wave, flood, earthquake. What good will your shelter be then, James, when you and your family are buried alive?”
Standing in the hall, I flinched at the thought, my fists balled, and I held in a whimper.
“Flood? We could bloody do with a flood now.”
“Look at those poor buggers in that earthquake in Italy. Thousands dead.” The man’s words were slurred and he had his head in his hands. I thought perhaps his mother was Italian.
“It’ll be the government that lets us down. Don’t expect Callaghan to be knocking on your door with a glass of water when the standpipes have run dry.”
“He’ll be too busy worrying about inflation to notice the Russians have blasted us to hell.”
“My cousin has a friend at the BBC who says they’re producing public information films on how to make an inner refuge in houses. It’s just a matter of time before the bomb drops.”
A man with a greying beard said, “Frigging idiots; they’ll have nothing to eat and if they do the army will confiscate it. What’s the frigging point?” A bit of spittle caught in the hairs on his chin and I had to look away.
“I’m not going to be in London when the bomb falls. You can stay, James, locked in your dungeon, but I’ll be gone—the Borders, Scotland, somewhere isolated, secure.”
“And what will you eat?” said my father. “How will you survive? How are you going to get there with all the other fools heading out of the cities as well? It’ll be gridlock and if you get to the countryside, everyone including your mother and her cat will have gone too. Call yourself a Retreater? It’ll be the cities where law and order are restored soonest. Not your commune in North Wales.” From behind the door frame, I swelled with pride as my father spoke.
“All those emergency supplies in your cellar are meant to be just that,” said another man. “What are you going to do when they run out? You don’t even have an air rifle.”
“Hell, give me a decent knife and an axe and we’ll be fine,” said my father.
The Englishmen carried on arguing until an American voice cut through them all: “You know what the trouble is with you, James? You’re so damn British. And the rest of you—you’re all living in the dark ages, hiding in your cellars, driving off to the country like you’re going on a fucking Sunday picnic. You still call yourself Retreaters; the world’s already moving on without you. You haven’t even figured out that you’re survivalists. And James, forget the cellar. What you need is a bug-out location.”
The way he spoke was authoritative, with an assumption of attention. The rest of the men, my father included, fell silent. Oliver Hannington lolled in the armchair with his back to me, while all the others stared out the window or at the floor. It reminded me of my classroom, when Mr. Harding said something none of us understood. He would stand for minutes, waiting for someone to put their hand up and ask what he meant, until the silence grew so thick and uncomfortable that we looked anywhere except at each other or him. It was a strategy designed to see who would crack first, and nine times out of ten it would be Becky who would say something silly, so the class could laugh in relief and embarrassment, and Mr. Harding would smile.
Unexpectedly, Ute strode through from the kitchen, walking in that way she did when she knew she had an audience, all hips and waist. Her hair was tied in a messy knot at the back of her neck and she was wearing her favourite kaftan, the one that flowed around her muscular legs. Every man there, including my father and Oliver Hannington, understood that she could have gone the long way round, via the hall. No one ever described Ute as beautiful—they used words like striking, arresting, singular. But because she was a woman to be reckoned with, the men composed themselves. Those standing sat down, and those on the sofa stopped slouching; even Oliver Hannington turned his head. They paid attention to their cigarettes, cupping the lit ends and looking around for ashtrays. Ute sighed: a quick intake of breath, an expansion of her ribcage and a slow exhalation. She berated the men as she walked past them to kneel in front of me. For the first time, my father and his friends turned and saw me.
“Now you have woken my little Peggy, with all your talks of disaster,” Ute said, stroking my hair.
Even then I knew she did it because people were watching. She took my hand to lead me upstairs. I pulled back, straining to hear who would break the silence.
“There is nothing bad going to happen, Liebchen,” Ute crooned.
“And a bug-out location is?” It was my father who surrendered first.
There was a pause, and Oliver Hannington knew we were all hanging on his answer.
“Your very own little cabin in the forest,” he said, and laughed, although I didn’t think it was funny.
“And how are we going to find one of those?” one of the men on the sofa asked.
Then Oliver Hannington turned to me, tapped the side of his nose, and winked. In the glow of his attention I let Ute tug me by the hand up to bed.
When the work on the fallout shelter was coming to an end, my father put me into training. It started as a game to him—a way to show off to his friend. My father bought a silver whistle, which he hung around his neck on a length of string, and he bought me a canvas rucksack with leather straps and buckles. Its side pockets were embroidered with blue petals and green leaves.
His signal was three short blasts on the whistle, which were sounded from the bottom of the stairs. Ute would have nothing to do with this either; she stayed in bed with the sheet over her head or played the piano, propping the top board fully open so the sound reverberated throughout the house. The whistles, which could happen at any point before bedtime, were my signal to pack the rucksack. I ran about the house, gathering the things from a list my father had made me memorize. I flung the rucksack on my back and sped down the stairs in time to an angry “Revolutionary Étude” by Chopin. My father would be looking straight ahead, the whistle still in his mouth and his hands clasped behind his back, while I raced around the newel post, the rucksack bouncing. I rushed down the cellar stairs two at a time and jumped the last three. In the fallout shelter, I knew I had about four minutes to unpack before my father blew the whistle again. I yanked out the chair at the head of the table, facing away from the stairs. And from the rucksack I pulled out a pile of clothes—underwear, denim dungarees, trousers, cheesecloth shirts, jumper, shorts, nightie—and, making sure they didn’t unfold, placed them on the table. My hand went back in the rucksack to snatch the next item, like a lucky dip at the funfair. Out came my comb, placed horizontally just above the nightie; to the left, an extending spyglass; my toothbrush and toothpaste, side by side on top of my clothes; and next, my doll, Phyllis, with her painted-on eyes and sailor suit, beside them. In a final rush, I produced my blue woollen balaclava and squeezed my head inside it. Despite the heat, matching mittens were meant to go on next, and when everything was perfectly aligned on the table and the rucksack was empty, I was supposed to be sitting quietly with my hands on my legs, looking straight ahead toward the gas stove. Then the whistle would go again and a nervous excitement would run through me, as my father came down the stairs for the review. Sometimes he straightened the comb or moved Phyllis over to the other side of the clothes.