Wyndham, John (17 page)

She looked understandably annoyed. Coker himself had been
annoyed from the time he came in. She said:

“I don’t see why you need to pour all your contempt for
women onto me—just because of one dirty old engine.”

Coker raised his eyes.

“Great God! And here have I been explaining that women have
as many brains as anyone else, if they’d only take the trouble to use them.”

“You said we were all petty and vain. That wasn’t at all a
nice thing to say.”

“I’m not trying to say nice things. And what I meant was
that in the world that has vanished women had a vested interest in acting the
part of parasites.”

“And all that just because I don’t happen to know anything
about a smelly, noisy engine.”

“Hell!” said Coker. “Just drop that engine a minute, will
you.”

“Then why---“

“Listen,” said Coker patiently. “If you have a baby, do you
want him to grow up to be a savage or a civilized man?”

“A civilized man, of course.”

“Well, then, you have to see to it that he has civilized surroundings
to do it in. The standards he’ll learn, he’ll learn from us. We’ve all got to
understand as much as we can, and live as intelligently as we can, in order to
give him the most we can. It’s going to mean hard work and more thinking for
all of us. Changed conditions must mean changed outlooks.”

The girl gathered up her mending. She regarded Cokes
critically for a few moments.

“With views like yours I should think you’d find Mr.
Beadley’s party more congenial,” she said. “Here we have no intention of
changing our outlook—or of giving up our principles. That’s why we separated
from the other party. So if the ways of decent, respectable people are not good
enough for you, I should think you’d better go somewhere else.” And with a
sound very like a sniff, she walked away.

Coker watched her leave. When the door closed he expressed
his feelings with a fish porter’s fluency. I laughed.

“What did you expect?” I said. “You prance in and address
the girl as if she were a reactionary debating society—and responsible for the
whole western social system as well. And then you’re surprised when she’s
huffed.”

“You’d think she’d be reasonable,” he muttered.

“Most people aren’t, even though they’d protest that they
are. They prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never
make a mistake: if there is one, it’s at’ ways due to something or somebody
else. This going headlong for things is a mechanistic view, and people in
general aren’t machines. They have minds of their own—mostly peasant minds, at
their easiest when they are in the familiar furrow.”

“That doesn’t sound as if you’d give Beadley much chance of
making a go of it. He’s all plan.”

“He’ll have his troubles. But his party did choose,. This
lot is negative,” I pointed out. “It is simply here on account of its
resistance to any kind of plan.” I paused. Then I added:

“That girl was right about one thing, you know. You would k
better off with his lot. Her reaction is a sample of what you’d get all round
if you were to try to handle this lot your way. You can’t drive a flock of
sheep to market in a dead straight line, but there are ways of getting ‘em
there.”

“You’re being unusually cynical, as well as very metaphorical,
this evening,” Coker observed.

I objected to that.

“It isn’t cynical to have noticed how a shepherd handles his

sheep.”

“To regard human beings as sheep might be thought so by
some.”

“But less cynical and much more rewarding than regarding

them as a lot of chassis fitted for remote-thought control.”

“H’m,” said Coker, “I’ll have to consider the implications of that.”

My next morning was desultory. I
looked around, I lent a hand here and there, and asked a lot of questions.

It had been a wretched night. Until I lay down I had not
fully realized the extent to which 21 had counted on finding Josella at
Tynsham. Weary though I was after the day’s journey, I could not sleep; I lay
awake in the darkness feeling stranded and planless. So confidently had I
assumed that she find the Beadley patty would be there that there bad been no
reason to consider any plan beyond joining them. It now came home to me for the
first time that even if I did succeed in catching up with them I still might
not find her.
As
she had left the Westminster district only a short time
before I arrived there in search of her, she must in any case have been well
behind the main party. Obviously the thing to do was to make detailed inquiries
regarding everyone who had arrived at Tynsham during the previous two days.

For the present I must assume that she had come this way. It
was my only lead. And that meant assuming also that she bad gone back to the
university and had found the chalked address—whereas it was quite on the cards
that she had not gone there at all, but, sickened by the whole thing, had taken
the quickest route out of the reeking place that London had now become.

The thing I bad to fight hardest against admitting was that
she might have caught the disease, whatever it was, that had dissolved both our
groups. I would not consider the possibility of that until I had to.

In the sleepless clarity of the small hours I made one discovery—it
was that my desire to join the i3eadley party was very secondary indeed to my
wish to find Josella. If, when I did find them, she was not with them ... Well,
the next move would have to wait upon the moment, but it would not be
resignation...

Finding Coker’s bed already empty when I awoke, I decided
to devote my morning chiefly to inquiries. One of the troubles was that it did
not seem to have occurred to anyone to find out the names of those who had
considered Tynshan uninviting and had passed on. Josella’s name meant nothing
to anyone save those few who recollected it with disapproval. My description of
her raised no memories that would stand detailed examination. Certainly there
had been no girl in a navy-blue ski suit—that I established—but then I could by
no means be certain that she would still be dressed that
way.
My
inquiries ended by making everyone very tired of me and increasing my
frustration. There was a faint possibility that a girl who had come and gone a
day before our arrival might have been she, but I could not feel it likely that
Josella could have left so slight an impression on anyone’s mind—even allowing
for prejudice....

Coker reappeared again at the midday meal. He had found most
of the men to be plunged in gloom by a well-meant assurance from the vicar that
there would be plenty of useful things for them to do, such as—er—basketmaking,
and—er— weaving, and he had done his best to dispel it with more hopeful
prospects. Encountering Miss Durrant, he had told her that unless it could
somehow be contrived that the blind women should take some of the work off the
shoulders of the sighted the whole thing would break dawn within ten days, and,
also, that if the vicar’s prayer for more blind people to join them should
happen to be granted, the whole place would became entirely unworkable. He was
embarking upon further observations, including the necessity for starting
immediately to build up food reserves and to start the construction of devices
which would enable blind men to do useful work, when she cut him short. He
could see that she was a great deal more worried than she would admit, but the
determination which had led her to sever relations with the other party caused
her to blaze back at him unthankfully. She ended by letting him know that on
her information neither he nor his views were likely to harmonize with the
community.

“The trouble about that woman is that she means to be boss,”
he said.

“It’s constitutional—quite apart from the lofty principles.”

“Slanderous,” I said. “What you mean is that her principles
are so impeccable that everything is her responsibility—and so it becomes her
duty to guide others.”

“Much the same thing,” he said.

“But it sounds a lot better,” I pointed out.

He was thoughtful for a moment.

“She’s going to run this place into one hell of a mess
unless she gets right down to the job of organizing it pretty quickly. Have you
looked the outfit over?”

I shook my head. I told him how my morning had been spent.

“You don’t seem to have got much change for it. So what?” he
said.

“I’m going on after the Michael Beadley crowd,” I told him.

“And if she’s not with them?”

“At present I’m just hoping she is. She must be. Where else
would she be?”

He started to say something and stopped. Then he went on:

“I reckon I’ll come along with you. It’s likely that crowd
won’t be any more glad to see me than this one, considering everything—but I
can live that down. I’ve watched one lot fall to bits, and I can see this one’s
going to do the same— more slowly and, maybe, more nastily. It’s queer, isn’t
it? Decent intentions seem to be the most dangerous things around just now.
It’s a damned shame, because this place
could
be managed, in spite of
the proportion of blind. Everything it needs is lying about for the taking, and
will be for a while yet. It’s only organizing that’s wanted.”

“And willingness to be organized,” I suggested.

“That too,” he agreed. “You know, the trouble is that in
spite of all that’s happened this thing hasn’t got home to these people yet.
They don’t want to turn to—that’d be making it too final. At the back of their
minds they’re all hanging on, waiting for something or other.”

“True—but scarcely surprising,” I admitted. “It took plenty
to convince us, and they’ve not seen what we have. And, some way, it does seem
less final and less—less immediate out here in the country.”

“Well, they’ve got to start realizing it soon if they’re
going to get through,” Coker said, looking round the hail again. “There’s no
miracle corning to save them.”

“Give ‘em time. They’ll come to it, as we did. You’re always
in such a hurry. Time’s no longer money, you know.”

“Money isn’t important any longer, but time is. They ought
to be thinking about the harvest, rigging a mill to grind flour, seeing about
winter feed for the stock.”

I shook my head.

“It’s not as urgent as all that, Coker. There must be huge
stocks of flour in the towns, and, by the look of things, mighty few of us to
use it. We can live on capital for a long while yet. Surely the immediate job
is to teach the blind how to work before they really have to get down to it.”

“All the same, unless something is done, the sighted ones
here are going to crack up. It only needs that to happen to one or two of them
and the place’ll be a proper mess.”

II had to concede that.

Later in the afternoon I managed to find Miss Durrant. No
one else seemed to know or care where Michael Beadley and his lot had gone, but
I could not believe that they had not left behind some indications for those
who might follow. Miss Durrant was not pleased. At first I thought she was
going to refuse to tell me. It was not due solely to my implied preference for
other company. The loss of even an uncongenial able-bodied man was serious in
the circumstances. Nevertheless, she preferred not to show the weakness of
asking me to stay.

In the end she said curtly:

“They were intending to make for somewhere near Beaminster
in Dorset. I can tell you no more than that.”

I went back and told Coker. He looked around him. Then he
shook his head, though with a touch of regret.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll check out of this dump tomorrow.”

“Spoken like a pioneer,” I told him. “At least, more like a
pioneer than an Englishman.”

Nine o’clock the next morning saw us already twelve miles or
so on our road, and traveling as before in our two trucks.

There had been a question whether we should not take a
handier vehicle and leave the trucks for the benefit of the Tynsham people, but
I was reluctant to abandon mine. I had personally collected the contents, and
knew what was in it. Apart from the cases of anti-triffid gear which Michael
Beadley had so disapproved, I had given myself slightly wider scope on the
last load, and there was a selection of things made with consideration of what
might be difficult to find outside a large town: such things as a small
lighting set, some pumps, cases of good tools. All these things would be available
later for the taking, but there was going to be an interlude when it would be
advisable to keep away from towns of any size. The Tynsham people had the means
to fetch supplies was in London. A couple of loads would not make a great deal
from towns where there was no sign yet of the disease that of difference to
them either way, so in the end we Went as we had come.

The weather still held good. On the higher ground there was
still little taint in the fresh air, though most villages bad become unpleasant.
Rarely we saw a still figure lying in a field or by the roadside, but, just as
in London, the main instinct seemed to have been to hide away in shelter of
some kind. Most of the villages showed empty streets, and the countryside
around them was as deserted as if the whole human race and most of its animals
had been spirited away. Until we came to Steeple Honey.

From our road we had a view of the whole of Steeple Honey as
we descended the hill. It clustered at the farther end of a stone bridge which
arched across a small, sparkling river. It was a quiet little place centered
round a sleepy-looking church, and stippled off at its edges with whitewashed
cottages. It did not look as if anything had occurred in a century or more to
disturb the quiet life under its thatched roofs. But, like other villages, it
was now without stir or smoke. And then, as we were halfway down the hill, a
movement caught my eye.

On the left, at the far end of the bridge, one house stood
slightly aslant from the road so that it faced obliquely toward us. An inn sign
hung from a bracket on its wall, and from the window immediately above that
something white was being waved. As we came closer I could see the man who was
leaning out and frantically flagging us with a towel. I judged that he must be
blind, otherwise he would have come out into the road to intercept us. He was
waving too vigorously for a sick man.

I signaled back to Coker and pulled up as we cleared the
bridge. The man at the window dropped his towel. He shouted something which I
could not hear above the noise of the engines and disappeared. We both
switched off. It was so quiet that we could hear the clumping of the man’s feet
on the wooden stairs inside the house. The door opened, and be stepped out,
holding both hands before him. Like lightning something whipped Out of the
hedge on his left and struck him. He gave a single high-pitched shout and
dropped where he stood.

I picked up my shotgun and climbed out of the cab. I circled
a little until I could make Out the triffid skulking in the shadows of a bush.
Then I blew the top off it.

Coker was out of his truck, too, and standing close beside
me. He looked at the man on the ground and then at the shorn triffid.

“It was—no, damn it, it can’t have been
waiting
for
him?” he said. “It must have just happened. It couldn’t have
known
he’d
come out of that door... I mean, it
couldn’t—
could it?”

“Or could it? It was a remarkably neat piece of work,” I
said.

Coker turned uneasy eyes on me.

“Too damn neat. You don’t really believe

“There’s a kind of conspiracy not to believe things about
triffids,” I said, and added: “There might be more around here.”

We looked the adjacent cover over carefully and drew blank.

“I could do with a drink,” suggested Coker.

But for the dust on the counter, the small bar of the inn
looked normal. We poured a whisky each. Coker downed his in one. He turned a
worried look on me.

“I didn’t like that. Not at all, I didn’t. You ought to know
a lot more about these bloody things than most people, Bill. It wasn’t—I mean,
it must just have
happened
to be there, mustn’t it?”

“I think—” I began. Then I stopped, listening to a staccato
drumming outside. I walked over and opened the window. I let the already
trimmed triffid have the other barrel too; this time just above the bole. The
drumming stopped.

“The trouble about triffids,” I said as we poured another
drink, “is chiefly the things we don’t know about them,” I told him one or two
of Walter’s theories. He stared.

“You don’t seriously suggest that they’re ‘talking’ when
they make that rattling noise?”

“I’ve never made up my mind,” I admitted. “I’ll go so far as
to say I’m sure it’s a signal of some sort. But Walter considered it to be
real ‘talk’—and he did know more about them than anyone else that I’ve ever
met.”

I ejected the two spent cartridge cases and reloaded. “And
he actually mentioned their advantage over a blind man?”

“A
number of years ago, that was,” I pointed out.

“Still—it’s a funny coincidence.”

“Impulsive as ever,” I said. “Pretty nearly any stroke of
fate can be made to look like a funny coincidence if you try hard enough and
wait long enough.”

We drank up and turned to go. Coker glanced out of the
window. Then be caught my arm and pointed. Two triffids had swayed round the
corner and were making for the hedge which had been the hiding place of the
first. I waited until they paused and then decapitated both of them. We left by
the window which was out of range of any triffid cover, and looked about us
carefully as we approached the trucks.