Chapter 5: Trading

Three minutes later it was a fait accompli* that she was joining us!

Had I invited her?

Now you tell me, when did I invite Fish to come along? I'm damned sure I didn't.

I was gobsmacked, but when they asked where we were going to set off for I had the presence of mind to keep that to myself. I never did disclose Gramps' address, despite repeated demands. I was playing some things close to my chest. What would the future bring?

Events just took care of themselves then as we proceeded to include Fish in our planning. Naturally, another bike would be needed.

I felt better wearing a completely different jacket so that if anyone had seen and described me to the police, my appearance would not match their description. But let's face it, it's not that easy to disguise a young Indian woman. And if we had been seen then, apart from her auburn hair, my Nordic companion was spectacular in appearance to say the least.

Second thoughts were running through my mind as to the sense of taking two females with me. What use would they be? But then, could I leave them behind?

Leaving our purchases in the living room, we now had the empty rucksacks and I had a suitcase and a travel bag in which to transport the water. Our plan was to exchange bottled water for a bike each!

At the small rented garage, I left Kari to keep watch to see we were unobserved. Very wary of exposing my secret hoard, I suggested to her that the supply I had was very limited.

As we were leaving, the bags were filled with water bottles and a couple of full cases I pulled behind me in the wheeled suitcase, which I'd last used three years earlier. Another travel bag full of water was balanced over it until the wheels broke under their combined weight.

I was sure it made me look a right idiot.

Fuck! By that time we were near the cycle shop and it was getting late. I sent Sarita and Kari to the door with instructions. We all thought that any man knocking on a door was asking to be refused entry. A pair of not-unpleasant looking females arriving would be far more likely to be acceptable than if I were there.

Apart from the fact that three persons might appear to be more formidable to a scared household, I must admit I still looked scruffy from the ravages of a week spent ignoring my appearance and hair care. Studying can be a demanding occupation, taking its toll on niceties like personal appearance.

They knocked and rang a bell, making a sign to me that they could hear no reaction from inside. They rang the bell again and I was about to give it up as a bad job when their manner signified there was a response.

Eventually, a face appeared safely poking out of an upstairs window. Clearly many were aware of the outbreaks of violence in the area. Quietly, so no one could overhear, the girls conveyed their proposal to trade water for a bike. They threw up one bottle to prove they had bottles sealed at origin before the water problem had been made public. Even a torn part of the cardboard case had the date of bottling on it. Though I'm sure it was illegible, it was held up to confirm the authenticity of their trade goods and the 'consume by' date matched the bottle.

Kari had a better throwing hand than Sarita and she threw up a few more bottles. After delivering six in this way, Sarita said, "That's to show our good faith.

There's plenty more but we want a bike each in exchange for water."

Finally, the door was opened. I don't know what transpired but my pair disappeared inside. After ten minutes, which seemed more like twenty, because it was getting colder, the door re-opened. Kari emerged. She came over to me and hefted up her rucksack, "I think they'll trade."

I was invited in this time and lugged the bags through to the back, past a workshop to a fairly modern extension. James Carmody introduced himself.

His kids looked at the bottles of water eagerly.

"Have one each, we'll not include them in the negotiations," I offered, indicating for Mrs. Carmody to take a bottle, too. I was hoping to get a bit of goodwill into the bartering.

James Carmody's first question was, "How did you come by the water?"

"I bought it. I would show you the receipt but it's in my other trousers."

Sarita added, "We've just put them in the wash while the electricity's still on."

The Carmodys looked confused.

"With all this trouble, do you really think we shan't have power cuts?" I remembered Gramps' lessons about learning from history and the Three Day Week.*

"Back to your question, I got the water from Hepworth's yesterday, paid a premium for it, well above the odds."

That wasn't quite true. So what! I'm a liar but I wanted to buy three bikes with a vanload of WATER! OK! The water cost £800. I knew that was the retail price of less than one of the bikes, but that was yesterday!

I began to have second thoughts about my own sanity until it was obvious that James was taking my proposal seriously.

We started negotiating. "Water really is in short supply. I've got a couple more boxes. Can we come to an agreement how much a bike? We want a basic machine that will get us a couple of hundred miles and that won't collapse under our weight with luggage. Oh! And tyres for a mountain bike."

It went all technical when Kari took over arguing specifications. She quickly became our leading negotiator. It helped that she had no idea that I had over a hundred and seventy cases of water.

She looked back finally and announced, "You'd need five dozen for a bike like that."

"Five dozen cases? No way!" It was do-able but I'd learned from Gramps and had no idea what else I might need to barter for.

"No, five dozen bottles."

That was five cases, what a relief!

I pretended to think very carefully and worked out, "Do you think we have enough at five dozen each?"

Sarita played it cool, trying to calculate how many we had and then gave me a sly but confidential grin unseen by the others, "Well, you got more than that but you've given some away to your friend, the chemist. And then the policeman and your neighbours."

She really laid it on, "Oh, and that couple round your flat when you had a shower."

"Yes, close friends," I agreed straight-faced.

"I'm sure there's twenty cases left. We'll take three bikes then."

"Three bikes?"

"Yes, three bikes, that's fifteen boxes full." I announced.

"I thought you were wanting just one bike?"

"Hey, I said one for each of us here. You don't expect me to carry these two on my crossbar, do you?"

James, now, was beginning to have second thoughts. "There's going to be an awful demand for bikes if no one can use cars," he argued.

I nodded and it was Sarita who pointed out, "On the non-stop news programmes they're reporting that the virus has caused more deaths in all the large conurbations and the smaller towns around London.

"It's sure to spread here. They're saying it's contracted from the water and then by contact with infected people. If that's so, many people will die and you'll be able to pick up second-hand bikes for a song. There's going to be glut of things like bikes and houses. Your customers will be walking into back yards and garden sheds to pick up one honestly or dishonestly. Dead people don't use material goods."

I added, "We could have done that if we weren't honest." I don't think theft had occurred to any one of us.

James Carmody added, "It makes sense because we learned the neighbours at the back came back from Thailand and died a week later of a virus contracted overseas. After that, the plumber opposite returned from a week in the winter sun in Spain. The whole family has died as well as their neighbours. This was before people were correlating the statistics and knew about an epidemic."

I'm sure the government had seen the growing number of deaths. We'd heard nothing of this but then my head had been in the sand.

Already James had heard of others nearby being really ill. Mostly, they were people who had travelled to different parts of the country or the world.

Birmingham appeared to be the worst hit but it was getting obvious that the news from there was being censored.

Kari used her common sense to jump into the argument, "Do you know that water like this is being traded? It's worth seven times more than what it cost. I heard of a student giving his almost new Ford car away, all legally, for three bottles of water." She was just making that up but it sounded good.

He agreed to our rate of exchange when we pointed out that if he did not use all he won from us, he could sell it on at a premium, "After all, we don't know how long the water supply will stay polluted."

Kari jumped back in to ask if we had enough water for ourselves, "We don't want to run out."

I added to her fears by agreeing we should bear that in mind that but once we got to Gramps', the natural filtration through porous rock should filter out everything. Anyhow, I knew for a fact that in August we had a forty-tonne load from Machon Springs in those big shrink-wrapped pallets that you could pile on one another. Had Gramps anticipated every eventuality and shortage?

Perhaps he already had it up for sale?

The agreement was finalised for three bikes. I asked, "Have you anything that we can use to transport the water here? It's heavy stuff." Vehicles were banned.

We'd heard not one sound of a car or truck engine. When that was remarked upon, we all stopped to listen and then there was a nervous silence.

We were standing in the showroom at the time and suddenly I noted, on the wall a little camping trailer for touring. It could be pulled behind a bike.

"If we could borrow that, I could maybe get two boxes of water in it. I'd have to pull it by hand."

So, taking rucksacks too, we started bringing back the water. After we had brought in enough to pay for the first bike, the little cart was hitched up to it and things were going to go faster.

We discussed trading more water for the cart, but Kari saw James had his eye on it and we didn't want to alienate him; he mentioned something about it's being of use to him and for us not to break it.

"We're not taking it with us. Where we're going there are likely to be some very rural roads, unmade tracks even. Obviously with this lawlessness, we want to avoid all contact with people on the way. If that means we go on country lanes at a slow speed on a roundabout route, I'd prefer to do that than come up against any yobs*."

"It makes sense."

I set out my ideas that had been running through my mind, "Even if it takes three hours to travel ten miles, rather than a simple thirty minute trip, I'd prefer to do it without being seen."

"Oh, er, how long do you think this is going to take?"

"By bike, on my own and using the main roads, I reckon I'd be able to do it easily in nine hours and that's not using the motorways of course. In September, it took less than ninety minutes by car. I'm planning to take three or four days for the journey though."

"What?"

"We can't use the motorway and some of the 'A' roads are exempt from being used. We also want to keep away from contacting anyone, which means keeping away from towns and large villages. I think we will be using remote farm roads.

"When we leave here, we just hope that none of us has the virus and we want to keep it that way. From all accounts you can contract the 'flu' by drinking the water and by personal contact. I suggest we don't speak to people and I bet they won't want to speak to us."

Before I had finished, Sarita was trying to explain why this was NOT a strain of the influenza virus. Do you really think we were interested? She couldn't tell us what was safe and what was not.

"We keep well away from centres of population and avoid them. I'm also thinking of travelling by night, without lights," I proposed.

"We can't see at night."

"You want us to use lights?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Just think. We reckon the street lamps will be off, no electricity in houses, no light pollution. How faraway do you think people will see three, even dim, lights on bikes? Miles away! I want to AVOID people, not attract them."

"Oh, I never thought of that."

"He's right," added James. "You want be in the countryside at night. If there are no other forms of illumination around, even a dim torch would be seen miles away."