Chapter 6

Lizzie pressed up against me and rubbed her fluffy pink bed socks against my calf. 'Ratty want to tell Mummy what the cruel bad boys did to poor old Ratty-ums at school today?' she coaxed.

'No,' I snapped. 'I don't want to tell you.' I turned my back to her and inched away.

'Why not?' asked Lizzie with faintly hurt surprise. 'Was it as bad as all that?' She snuggled up against my back.

'It was worse,' I growled. 'It was totally fucking humiliating. I was set up and made a fool of. I lost my rag totally. In public.'

'Oh come on, Ratty-pie,' cajoled Lizzie, 'It couldn't have been any worse than that dreadful oil mess you were involved in.' She pulled me over on my back and put her hands on my chest.

'They didn't slap a D-Notice on that one, worse luck,' I replied sharply.

'A D-Notice?' asked Lizzie. 'You mean one of those security thingies they used to use all the time during the Cold War to keep the newspapers shut up about things everyone else in the world knew about?'

'Yeah, the very same,' I said, 'But now it's a security clampdown on ecological information. They called me everything but an ecological terrorist, dammit.'

'So is that what that creepy grey man was poking all over the house for?' Lizzie asked with a surprised laugh.

'That's right,' I replied. 'He was making sure I didn't have any Government papers about COCE stashed away.'

'You can't be serious,' said Lizzie with a muffled giggle.

'It's not so funny,' I rasped. 'You didn't have to spend all day with a bloody, ugly copper in tow.'

'I can't help it, Ratty,' giggled Lizzie, 'I keep on seeing that horrid little man going through my knickers drawer, looking for state secrets. Thank God they were clean. The knickers, I mean. I'm sure the state secrets are as filthy as they ever are.'

'Well, he was serious enough, I can tell you,' I said, completely failing to see the humour of it.

Lizzie convulsed with giggles. 'You mean,' she gasped, 'We're not even allowed to talk about the weather now?'

'Ha, bloody, ha,' I said gruffly. 'That's exactly what I thought when I heard COCE's recommendations. But you won't think it's so funny if I end up in the slammer.'

Lizzie tried to stop herself laughing. 'Oh, you've got to be kidding, Ratty, aren't you? You can be so dramatic.' She wiped her eyes with the corner of the sheet.

'No, I'm not kidding, goddammit,' I grated. 'It's no bloody joke, Lizzie.'

Lizzie propped herself up on her elbows and looked at me in the dim light. 'You're not kidding, are you, Dick?' she asked.

'No, I'm not kidding, Lizzie,' I replied. 'That's what I keep on telling you. Those bastards even threatened, in the very nicest possible way, to put me away if talked about it. I'm one hundred percent serious.'

'So what the hell's going on then?' Lizzie asked, suddenly frightened. 'What are they trying to hide, Dick? Is it about this wind? Is that what it's about?'

'That's only a part of it, I suspect,' I replied gloomily. 'The wind may only be a symptom.'

'What do you mean it's only a symptom?' Lizzie asked.

'Well, you know everyone used to talk about a global three degree increase in temperature and a two foot rise in sea level within the next hundred years?' I asked.

'That's what I've always read,' replied Lizzie. 'You don't think that's right, Dick?'

'From things that I heard in COCE, I think we could possibly see that amount of change in ten years,' I said, 'Maybe faster.'

'Oh, my God,' she said. 'How serious is that?'

'Well, it's not all that serious, if the rises just stop there,' I said. 'Naturally, it'll disturb weather patterns quite a bit. But if temperatures and sea level keep on rising at that rate, we'll start to be in really big trouble in just twenty or thirty years. I mean total Disasterville. That's London and most of the Thames Valley drowned for a start. Just get yourself a good topo map and see what a few meters does to the coastline of much of Britain.'

'But twenty years should be enough time to get ourselves ready for it,' said Lizzie. 'There's enough time to study the problems and maybe even reverse the effects. It's enough time at least to get people settled away from the areas that could be flooded.'

'Yeah, if anyone knows what's happening,' I said. 'But that's exactly what the Government seems to be trying to stop.'

'Why should they do that?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I replied. 'That's worrying me, too. I guess maybe they really want to believe it's another silly scare. They hope that it'll all just go away. They don't want a public panic, unemployment, inflation or an economic downturn. Spouting disaster's not exactly going to be a big vote-getter, is it?'

'God, Dick,' said Lizzie, 'Who the hell's going to care about the sodding rate of inflation if the country's being slowly drowned?'

'Maybe you'd better get on down to London and have a little chat with Herself, Lizzie,' I said sarcastically.

'Now don't get nasty with me, Dick,' she replied. 'I know you've had a bad day, but there's no point in taking it out on me.'

'Yeah, OK, sorry, love,' I said. 'There's not a hell of a lot anyone can do. I mean, look what happened to me and I was well placed to be able to do something.'

'But what on earth did you put in your report, Dick?' asked Lizzie. 'Was it really panicky or something?'

'All I wrote was that there appeared to be some serious indications that the rate of global warming and sea level rise appeared to be considerably greater than had been predicted in the late 1990s,' I quoted. 'I pointed out that the consequences of global warming were so potentially dangerous, especially for an island nation, that the slightest possibility of its happening required urgent large scale scientific study and serious government contingency planning.'

'That sounds pretty low key to me,' agreed Lizzie.

'Yeah, well that's not how they saw it,' I said. 'Instead they wrote a moronic song of praise for all sectors of the British economy and said that because the scientists couldn't agree on what was happening, if anything, then nothing serious could possibly be happening.'

'But, Dick, any fool can see that the weather's changing,' said Lizzie earnestly. 'All these storms and floods. We haven't had a normal winter for twenty years. Or a normal summer, if it comes to it.'

'Nonsense, my girl!' I fluted in my best Sir Anthony imitation. 'Mere random weather incidents in a non-significant pattern. I call your attention to the rapid warming trends of the 1920s. I would like to remind you of the hurricanes and widespread flooding in 1953. May I remind you, madam, of the Glasgow and Sheffield gales; the Fastnet disaster? Serious weather incidents, indeed, but precursors to absolutely no trend at all. All caused a great deal of bother at the time and all for nothing. Things settled back to normal. There is no cause for alarm, my little woman, simply no cause for alarm at all. Now just cut along back to your shopping, my dear, and don't worry your pretty little head any more.'

'Oh, Dick, that can't be what they're saying,' said Lizzie. 'They can't be that stupid.'

'That's exactly the problem, Lizzie,' I said glumly. 'They're not stupid at all. Grasping, frightened and unprincipled; but never stupid. That's why they're where they're where they are. That's how they stay there. They're for keeping the status quo, even if it's the earth itself they're fighting.'

'Well, maybe they're right then, Ratty,' said Lizzie. 'We haven't had any really big storms for a couple of months now and it's almost winter.' She rubbed her hands across my chest. 'Maybe it's all just a fluke.' She kissed my neck lightly. 'It's been beautiful all day here. Lovely and still.

'Yeah, maybe you're right,' I agreed. 'Maybe I'm just seeing bogey men in the dark.'

'Remember all that silver you bought in 1988 when you were convinced the Russians were just going to walk into Europe unopposed?' said Lizzie. 'You see any Russians in Europe today?'

'Yes, Europe's totally full of Russians,' I said.

'Peaceful, economically-motivated Russians helping enrich the country, not the Mongol Hordes you were blathering on about, not the raping, looting Red Army.'

'They looked pretty fierce at the time,' I replied defensively. 'Selling silver would have been better than peddling your delicious ass on the street to the passing Mongol Hordes. Anyway, we made a lot of money out of that silver.'

'Later,' reminded Lizzie. 'But that wasn't why you bought it, was it?'

'OK, OK,' I agreed. 'So maybe I'm just a bloody panicker, paranoid.' I slipped my hand under Lizzie's night gown.

'Panic doesn't seem to have harmed your libido a great deal,' giggled Lizzie.

'My name's not Dick for nothing, my dear,' I growled playfully, tugging at her gown.

Lizzie froze and tilted her head sideways. 'Shhh,' she hissed. I could hear it too. 'Oh shit,' she hissed. The wind blew up suddenly, with a chugging sound like a heavy locomotive, a panting animal. A sound almost too low in frequency to be heard. The house bumped and shook. The windows whistled thinly and the attic trap thumped out an irregular beat. The gale boomed and clashed around the house. Hail crashed against the window panes and pin-balled down the chimney, rattling off the hearth and spitting across the bedroom floor.

'Spoke a bit too soon there,' I said with glum satisfaction.

'Oh, Christ,' snapped Lizzie. She turned over and inched away from me.

* * *

Betcha thought I was going to get into some really steamy slap and tickle there, didn't you, boy? Well, you can forget all about that kind of stuff. Can't say I find the general atmosphere exactly sexy these days. There's plenty of slap, but not a hell of a lot of tickle going around at present. Some of the really young and stupid girls around here have managed to have babies, not mine you may be sure, and survive, but for a woman of Lizzie's age, and that's not exactly ancient, getting pregnant would probably be suicide.

"You can say that again, Buster," says Lizzie. She says that if the constant thought of a death sentence isn't enough, under a thousand calories a day and a pint of indifferent water isn't exactly oysters and champagne, libido-wise. I'll have to admit that my idea of a good wet dream now is one where I get caught in the rain. Lizzie and I just about manage a friendly cuddle, every now and again, and that's what post-disaster sex is like.

To get back to the story, you can see that we were living in a fool's paradise, even at that late date. Thinking that the sea level and temperature might just rise an inconvenient, but totally predictable, little amount every year. God, we were so linear, so almighty cocky in our feeble knowledge, totally Newtonian. We thought we were the Masters of the World. Well, we turned out to be just a bunch of jumped up monkeys prancing around in the green smear around the middle of the earth. Like mould growing on the skin of an orange. And maybe with about as much effect, one way or the other. We didn't have even ten years as it turned out. Events soon outstripped our ability to comprehend, let alone deal with them. We were just at the beginning of an non-linear curve.

Lizzie says I'm just being glum. Of course I'm glum. Who wouldn't be, dammit? My pet cocoa plant has gone and bloody died on me. Lizzie says it had been dead for months. It was just a dry stick using up water. That's not true, Lizzie, it still had a little green spot on it after its leaves fell off. It wasn't mould, Lizzie, I'm sure it was a tiny, beautiful little bud. Well, whatever it was, it's dead now for sure; I put it outside, it's gone. It may have been the last cocoa plant in the world, for all I know.