James Herbert: ‘48

‘You ready?’ I called from the open window, returning Cissie’s smile.

‘It’s done?’ she said in reply.

‘Can’t you see?’ My thumb indicated the huge cloud of smoke darkening the horizon behind me.

She nodded. ‘I hope it burns the whole city. We don’t need London any more.’

The women, helped by the two men, were already lifting the children into the back of the truck.

‘Sit up front?’ I asked Cissie.

She strolled over and opened the passenger door. The sun was behind her, shadowing her face as she leaned in, but I could still see the whiteness of her smile, the fine little scar running across her nose. She climbed up, flopping purposely into the seat beside me.

‘You needed to ask?’ she said.

‘Guess not,’ I replied. ‘Ready to roll?’

She banged on the screen behind us. ‘Everybody set?’ she called.

A chorus of yeses came back, followed by a few muffled giggles.

‘We’re ready,’ Cissie declared. She looked ahead through the dusty windshield. ‘I always fancied the Surrey hills.’

‘I always liked the sea.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not one bit There’re plenty out there just like us.’

I pushed the stiff lever into gear and pulled the truck away from the kerbside – funny how they’d all been waiting safely out of the road – and we rolled onto the bridge. As ever, the river beneath us was silver with specks of dazzling gold.

For no particular reason – old habits again? – I glanced into my wing mirror and my foot almost slipped off the accelerator. Without saying anything to Cissie, I stuck my head out the window, looking back. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for at first, it seemed so, well, so out of place. Then I grinned. It was, it really was.

The zebra – yeah, four legs and a whole lot of black and white stripes – was ambling across the broad road some distance behind us, heading, I figured, for the overgrown green in Parliament Square. I ducked back inside the cab again, just in time to swerve round a Ford parked in the very middle of the bridge.

‘What are you grinning at, Hoke?’ Cissie was still smiling herself.

‘Nothing,’ I told her. ‘Nothing at all.’

And maybe that zebra was nothing. It set me thinking though. And hoping too. Although I had no idea what I was hoping for.

‘48 required a great deal of research into World War II and conditions in London around that time. Where possible, I’ve stuck to the facts, but in instances such as the escape along the Tube line between Holborn and the Aldwych, which was in truth closed down during the war years, I’ve allowed the story to stretch the actuality. There also appears to be some confusion between the experts as to whether trams were allowed to run through the tunnel beneath Kingsway during those dangerous years, so again I’ve opted for artistic licence (or not, whichever the case may be). Most other details should be accurate, but please forgive any mistakes I’m bound to have made and certain elaborations used for the sake of dramatization.

JAMES HERBERT

Sussex, 1996

JAMES HERBERT

James Herbert is not just Britain ’s No.1 best-selling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since the publication of his first novel, but he is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty novels have sold more than fifty million copies worldwide.