“O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.”

CLEM AND GOZ mimed the words from the sixth-form pews in the organ loft. At the close of the hymn, while the boys shuffled and clonked onto their seats, Stinker Bloxham stood at the lectern wearing his fur-trimmed bat robe and an ironically patient expression. When something close to silence had been achieved, he turned to the man who sat onstage among the school staff.

“Over to you, Mr. Wagstaff.”

Wagstaff was a trim little man in a dark-blue uniform with an armband embroidered with the words CIVIL DEFENSE.

“Thank you, Headmaster, and good morning, young gentlemen. Yesterday, as I’m sure you’ll remember, I spoke to you about the ways you can help your parents prepare their homes against the possibility of nuclear attack.”

Clem grinned, noting Tash Harmsworth’s scowl. Tash was a bugger for an incorrect preposition.

“The very unlikely possibility of nuclear attack. However, preparedness is everything, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Wagstaff waited for a response, but none came. So he soldiered on.

“Today I’m going to tell you what to do if you are caught in the open when the four-minute warning sounds. Let me remind you what the four-minute warning will — might — sound like.”

Wagstaff closed his eyes and emitted a doglike wail. As it rose in pitch, he slowly lifted his arms. As it faded, he lowered them. As it rose again, he lifted them. Some of the younger boys tittered and sniggered. Stinker got to his feet and glared. From their stations at the ends of the pews, the Gestapo, like hunting dogs, aimed their fierce gazes at offenders.

“It’s not funny,” Wagstaff said, opening his eyes. “It really isn’t. Anyway. When you hear that, gentlemen, you must take cover in any available building and adopt the blast position that I demonstrated yesterday. It is exceedingly unlikely that you will be unable to reach a protective building. After all, these days an Englishman can run a mile in less than four minutes.”

Again, he waited vainly for appreciation.

“However, if you are caught in the open some considerable distance from cover, here is what you must do. First, look for a depression in the ground. A trench or ditch, for example. Lie in it with your face to the ground. And make sure that exposed parts of your body, such as your head and hands, are protected. If you happen to be carrying a newspaper or something similar, place it over your head. If you are not, use your clothing to cover yourself completely. I shall demonstrate.”

Wagstaff unbuttoned his tunic and prostrated himself on the stage. He pulled the back of his tunic up over his head, then tucked his hands between his thighs.

“Like so,” he said, muffled.

A man lying on the stage of Newgate’s school hall with his head covered by his jacket, his braces showing, and his hands on his nadgers. The silence that ensued was like the insuck of the sea before a tidal wave, or the ponderous gap between lightning and thunder.

Clem nudged Goz, then looked at him, expecting his face to be taut with suppressed laughter. It wasn’t. It was pale with rage. Grim.

“Goz?” (Whispered.)

Nothing.

Wagstaff got to his feet and adjusted his clothing.

“Now,” he said, “a word about fallout. Fallout is the radioactive material that falls from the sky after a nuclear explosion. It might fall in the form of rain or, more likely, ash or dust. If you do find yourselves in an exposed space, and you are in a fallout area, you should remain in the covered position, which I have just demonstrated, for two hours, which is the maximum time in which fallout will occur. After that time, you should seek shelter within the nearest building. However, before you do so, you must remove the fallout from your clothes, thus.”

He removed the tunic and shook it vigorously with his face averted. Then he used the tunic to slap at his trousers, fore and aft. Finally he flapped a handkerchief at his shoes.

“Fallout is a form of contamination, and it is vital that you free yourself of it before you rejoin your families or other groups. I cannot stress enough the importance of this, gentlemen.”

He regarded his audience somberly. Then he smiled.

“So pick yourselves up, dust yourselves off, and start all over again, as the song has it. Thank you for your attention.”

He returned to his seat.

There came a light scattering of uncertain applause from the Worms and Maggots in the front pews, which the Gestapo quickly suppressed.

Goz walked slightly ahead of Clem toward the sixth-form common room. He went past the doors, saying over his shoulder, “Fag. Bogs.”

The Newgate lavatories had been built a hundred years earlier, less as a convenience than a warning, their squalor and discomfort a stern reminder of the vileness of human bodily functions and their attendant temptations. The building was roofless, the urinal a black-painted wall with a low gutter at its foot. The cubicles lacked doors, doors being an encouragement of the Solitary Vice. Now and again Hake, the school caretaker, sluiced the place out with a bucket of diluted Jeyes Fluid, which added an acrid sweetness to the bogs’ ancient aroma.

Goz went to the far corner and leaned against the stained trough that served as a washbasin. He took a packet of ten Anchor from his inside pocket and lit one up. Clem waited silently. After three drags, Goz passed him the ciggie and let forth a stream of elaborate obscenities.

Clem laughed smoke.

“What’re you laughing at, Ackroyd? You think it’s funny, sitting there and being idiotized?”

“Is that a word?”

“Yeah. I just used it. Give us that fag back.”

Goz emitted a mean stream of smoke and said, “One: nuclear missiles do not explode when they hit the ground. They explode above it. So lying in a ditch with a bloody newspaper over your head is . . . is about as stupid as you can get. Two: fallout is effing radioactive. What did that moron mean, brush it off? Like it was dandruff, or somethun? Lie in a ditch with that shit dropping on you for two hours, then just tidy up and go home?”

“Goz, I know all that. Why’re you —?”

“Three: RAF Beckford is five miles away. It’s a base for V-bombers, if I remember correctly. Planes that’re got nuclear bombs on them. Plus, there are two Yank air force bases within fifty miles of here. They’re got nuclear bombers there as well. And what that means, comrade, is that we are slap in the middle of a Russian target. If Kennedy presses the button, Khrushchev’ll press his bloody button, and we get wiped out five minutes later. And to have to sit there listening to that gormless, lying little twot . . .”

“Goz, Goz. Orright. But look, it’s not really gonna happen, is it? It’s too . . .”

“You not been watching the box? Reading the papers?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

Goz opened the tap behind him and drowned the cigarette end and flicked it backward over the wall into the butcher’s yard that bordered the school.

“Listen,” Goz said, “and no offense, comrade, but I know for a fact that the be-all and end-all of existence for you is getting your end away with the lovely doe-eyed Miss Mortimer. Fair enough. But I’ve got plans, comrade. I’ve got ideas about what I want to do with my life. And it dunt include getting fried alive because some pillock wants missiles on Cuba and some other pillock don’t. And you know what? It seriously cheeses me off when some bloke called Wankstaff stands there and tells me that all I have to do is lie down and pull my jacket over my head and then carry on as normal. ’Cos we are gone, comrade, when the Bomb goes off. Gone.”

Tash Harmsworth appeared around the far end of the urinals and said, “Ah. My Fool and my Bastard. I was wondering where you were.”

(Harmsworth was not being gratuitously offensive. Goz was reading the part of Edmund, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester.)

“Sir,” Goz said, straightening up but keeping his eyes on the stained concrete floor.

Tash pushed his vampire robe aside and took a metal cigarette case out of his pocket. He lit an untipped Capstan with a gold Dunhill lighter.

“The rest of the cast is disturbed by your absence. Cordelia is particularly distressed; it’s her big scene this morning.”

“Sorry, sir,” Clem said.

“I’m sure you are. I assume you had something of significance to discuss?”

“Only the end of the world, sir,” Goz said.

“Ah,” Tash said. “That. And here was I thinking you’d merely sloped off for a smoke. May I inquire as to what conclusions you have come to, regarding the Apocalypse? Ackroyd?”

“We’re against it, sir.”

“Are you, indeed? I shall write notes to President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev immediately. I’m sure that when they learn that two scholars as eminent as yourselves disapprove of their actions, they will come promptly to their senses.”

Tash took a deep pull on his Capstan, studying the bitterness on Goz’s unresponsive face.

“Nothing to say, Gosling?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well.” Tash tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the urinal. “Shall we go, then? Because ‘at my back I hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.’ Who wrote that, Ackroyd?”

“Don’t know, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Andrew Marvell,” Goz muttered as if he didn’t want to but couldn’t help it.

“Correct, Gosling. Give that man a cigar. ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ You’ve not read it, Ackroyd?”

“No, sir.”

“You should. A rare example of a poem with a practical purpose. Even you, Ackroyd, might find it handy one of these days.”

The boys followed him out of the bogs.

“Essentially,” Tash said as if resuming an interrupted lecture, “each of us is a single consciousness. Therefore, when we die, all else dies. The light goes out, and all is darkness. Some find that concept bleak. I find it comforting.”

Goz said, “What about envying the people that go on living, sir?”

“I bloody well don’t,” Tash said.