Колин Бейтман: Titanic 2020: Cannibal City

Claire stared at her computer.

Nine-thirty arrived without any news. Nobody wanted to phone the bridge because nobody wanted to be the first to hear the bad news.

Finally, at a few minutes before ten a key was turned and the door opened. Jimmy stood there. Claire forced herself to look up from her screen. Jimmy's face was pale, the set of his mouth grim.

'Well?' Ty asked.

Jimmy took a deep breath. 'I have bad news, and I have good news.' He nodded around the news team. 'Which do you want to hear first?'

'The bad.' That was Claire. She was wringing her hands together.

'The bad news is that Babe was slaughtered at five past nine.' There was a communal groan. 'It was over quickly. She made no sound.'

'And the good news?' Claire falteringly asked.

Jimmy hesitated for a moment before producing a brown paper bag from behind his back.

'Fresh sausages!'

It was, he later acknowledged, a spectacular misjudgement. He had thought a joke might lighten the mood. There weren't actually sausages in the bag, he didn't actually walk in with bits of Babe minced up into pork bangers, but there might as well have been, given the instant, revolted reaction from his captive audience. If he hadn't had the presence of mind to realise the extent of his mistake and throw himself back out into the corridor and slam the door shut and lock it, they would have turned him into sausage meat.

Jimmy stood breathing heavily while the door was battered hard by the angry mob inside.

He rubbed at his brow, suddenly aware that his moment of stupidity had quite probably robbed him of all the respect he'd worked so hard to achieve.

Jimmy cautiously approached the door. 'Listen, folks, I'm really sorry — I was only trying to—'

'JIMMY ARMSTRONG.' It was Claire, her voice as cold and hard as he had ever heard it. 'I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN AS LONG AS I LIVE .'

Claire meant it. She hated Jimmy Armstrong. She would never speak to him again. He tried to apologise to her in half a dozen different ways, but she heard none of it — he might as well have been whispering in a force ten gale. She gave no indication that she was even aware of his existence.

Which made running the newspaper rather difficult.

In fact, nobody was speaking to him. Claire had a secret meeting with the news team early the next morning to decide what to do if he did turn up for work — he was, after all, still their boss. It was suggested that they quit their jobs, but they enjoyed working there too much to go along with that. If anyone was to quit it should be Jimmy — and if he wouldn't do it voluntarily they would force him out by sending him to Coventry. This was an old expression meaning to give someone the silent treatment.

If he was bold enough to come to work.

Nobody wanted to see him, but everyone was there to see if he turned up.

The working day usually started at nine a.m. Jimmy was always late. At ten-past nine there was no sign of him. At half-past he had still not turned up. They were just beginning to relax by ten when the door opened and Jimmy sauntered in, cup of tea in hand and smiling widely.

'Morning all,' he said, crossing to his desk.

Silence.

'Beautiful out there — never seen the sea so calm.'

Silence.

'OK then, let's see what we have on today.' Jimmy took out the diary, a large red book which showed the various assignments he had to give to the reporters and photographers each day. Ninety-nine per cent of the time these were stories which needed to be covered on board ship, but occasionally, like today, there was something more exciting — overnight the Titanic had dropped anchor off another new settlement, this one called Tucker's Hole. They had requested medical assistance. Captain Smith was sending Dr Hill and a team of nurses ashore to help treat an outbreak of chicken pox — a disease that would once have been routinely dealt with, but since medicines were no longer readily available was now much more dangerous — in fact, potentially lethal. Places had been set aside on the speedboat for a reporter and photographer from the Times. Normally Jimmy's team would have been fighting to get ashore — but this morning when he asked for volunteers, not a single hand was raised.

Jimmy shrugged. 'OK then, I'll go myself.' Everyone kept their eyes down. 'But I still need a photographer.'

Still nobody volunteered.

'OK. Claire, as chief photographer, I'm selecting you to go ashore. See you up top in fifteen minutes. And seeing as how you've all lost the power of speech, I'll email you all your assignments before I go.'

Jimmy switched on his computer and set to work.

Tucker's Hole was set near the mouth of a small river and had been entirely constructed from panels of wood looted from a Home Depot about half a mile away. It was, essentially, a town constructed from garden sheds.

As the inflatable approached the shore, Dr Hill shouted out what had become a familiar list of orders. 'Don't get separated from the group! Stick together! Be pleasant, be respectful, but don't trust anyone! Do not wander off! If you see anything suspicious report it to me immediately! If you do get separated from the group and cannot make it back, the alternative pick-up point is two clicks to the east of the river — you've seen it on the map, so don't forget it!'

Jimmy always felt excited on these trips — because the unknown lay ahead. Everything had changed since the plague. They might be speeding towards a happy community full of jolly optimists — or into a violent ambush. The reality usually lay somewhere in the middle. The Titanic brought hope, and it also brought jealousy over the relatively good standard of living on board. It brought relief, but it also reinforced the knowledge that life could never be the same again. Usually he shared this excitement with Claire, but she sat stiff and remote. She would normally be snapping away by now, but the camera lay neglected in her lap. He smiled at her. She ignored him.

The clinic was set up in one of the larger huts and a queue of anxious mothers with their spotty children and pale-looking, blotchy orphans soon formed. Other women and children stood around watching from doorways or perched on teetering piles of wooden frames. The surrounding houses themselves stretched back for nearly two hundred metres, most of them running crookedly into each other. Some of their owners had added inadequate little chimneys which only seemed to disperse about half of the smoke from the small fires within, leaving the rest to blacken the faces and clog the lungs of their inhabitants. There was no system for getting rid of the sewage, and garbage lay everywhere. Rats wandered undisturbed. Jimmy had visited many settlements, but this was the worst yet. Winter had not yet arrived, but when it did he doubted if Tucker's Hole would survive for long.

Jimmy was pleased at least to see that the squalor had inspired Claire to wield her camera. Ordinarily he would have suggested ideas for photographs, or she would have sought his advice, but he decided it was better to keep his distance. Instead, after quickly checking that Dr Hill was too busy to keep a proper eye on him, Jimmy ducked into one of the narrow alleys that lay between the houses and began to make his way into the heart of Tucker's Hole. He was intrigued by the fact that there seemed to be no men around — yet he was sure he could hear them: raucous voices, snatches of songs. As he negotiated his way towards the enclosed centre of the settlement, scabby-faced children gawped at him as he passed. His first clue as to what awaited him came when he had to step over a man lying face down and snoring, clearly completely drunk. Then he found a pair of them, arms round each other as if they'd been singing together and then had collapsed into unconsciousness at the same time. There was a half spilled bottle beside them. Jimmy picked it up — there was a clear liquid within. He sniffed it cautiously — and his head shot back, his nostrils burning. This was what they called 'moonshine' in America, or 'poteen' back home in Ireland. Pure alcohol that was so strong it could turn you blind or kill you if it wasn't made in just the right way.