Wyndham, John (21 page)

She bad seen no smoke, and in all the miles within her view
there had not been a gleam of light until the evening I came.

In a way, the worst affected of the original trio was
Dennis.

Joyce was still weak and in a semi-invalid state. Mary held
herself withdrawn and seemed capable of finding endless mental occupation and
compensation in the Contemplation of prospective motherhood. But Dennis was
like an animal in a trap. He did not curse in the futile way I had beard so
many others do; he resented
it
with a vicious bitterness, as
if
it
had forced him into a cage where he did not intend to stay. Already, before I
arrived, he had prevailed upon Josella to find the Braille system in the
encyclopedia and make an indented copy of the alphabet for him to learn. He
spent dogged hours each day making notes in it and attempting to read them
back. Most of the rest of the time he fretted over his own uselessness, though
he scarcely mentioned it. He would keep on trying to do this or that with
a
grim persistence that was painful to watch, and it required all my
self-control to stop me offering him help—one experience of the bitterness which
unasked help could arouse in him was quite enough. I began to be astonished at
the things he was painfully teaching himself to do, though still the most
impressive to me was his construction of an efficient mesh helmet on only the
second day of his blindness.

It took him out of himself to accompany me on some of my
foraging expeditions, and it pleased him that he could be useful in helping to
move the heavier cases. He was anxious for books in Braille, but those, we
decided, would have to wait until there was less risk of contamination in towns
large enough to be likely sources.

The days began to pass quickly, certainly for the three of
us who could see. Josella was kept busy mostly in the house, and Susan was
learning to help her. There were plenty of jobs, too, waiting to be done by me.
Joyce recovered sufficiently to make a shaky first appearance, and then began
to pick up more rapidly. Soon after that Mary’s pains began.

That was a bad night for everyone. Worst, perhaps, for Dennis
in knowing that everything depended on the care of two willing but
inexperienced girls. His self-control aroused my helpless admiration.

In the early hours of the morning Josella came down to us,
looking very tired:

“It’s a girl. They’re both all right,” she said, and led Dennis
up.

She returned a few moments later and took the drink I had
ready for her.

“It was quite simple, thank heaven,” she said. “Poor Mary
was horribly afraid it might be blind too, but of course it’s not.

Now she’s crying quite dreadfully because she can’t see it.” We drank.

“It’s queer,” I said, “the way things go on, I mean. Like a
seed—it looks all shriveled and finished, you’d think it was dead, but it
isn’t. And now a new life starting, coming into all this...”

Josella put her face in her hands.

“Oh God! Bill. Does it have to go on being like this? On—
and on—and on?”

And she, too, collapsed in tears.

Three weeks later I went over to Tynsham to see Coker and
make arrangements for our move. I took an ordinary car, in order to do the
double journey in a day. When I got back Josella met me in the hall. She gave
one look at my face.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“Just that we shan’t be going there after all,” I told her.
“Tynsham is finished.”

She stared back at me.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. It looks as if the plague got there.”

I described the state of affairs briefly. It had not needed
much investigation. The gates were open when I arrived, and the sight of
triffids loose in the park half warned me what to expect. The smell when I got
out of the car confirmed it. I made myself go into the house. By the look of
it, it had been deserted two weeks or more before. I put my head into two of
the rooms. They were enough for me. I called, and my voice ran right away
through the hollowness of the house.

I went no farther.

There had been a notice of some kind pinned to the front
door, but only one blank corner remained. I spent a long time searching for the
rest of the sheet that must have blown away. I did not find it. The yard at the
back was empty of trucks, and most of the stores had gone with them, but where
to I could not tell.

There was nothing to be done but get into my car again and
come back.

“And so—what?” asked Josella when I had finished.

“And so, my dear, we stay here. We learn how to support
ourselves. And we go on supporting ourselves—unless help comes. There may be an
organization somewhere...”

Josella shook her head.

“I think we’d better forget all about help. Millions and
millions of people have been waiting and hoping for help that hasn’t come.”

“There’ll be something,” I said. ‘There must be thousands of
little groups like this dotted all over Europe—all over the world. Some of them
will get together. They’ll begin to rebuild.”

“In how long?” said Josella. “Generations? Perhaps not until
after our time. No—the world’s gone, and we’re left We must make our own lives.
Well have to plan them as though help will never come -. .“ She paused. There
was an odd blank look on her face that I had never seen before, It puckered.

“Darling.. .“ I said.

“Oh, Bill, Bill, I wasn’t meant for this kind of life, If
you

weren’t here I’d—”
“Hush, my sweet,” I said gently. “Hush.” I stroked her hair.
A few moments later she recovered herself.
“I’m sorry, Bill. Self-pity... revolting. Never again.”
She patted her eyes with her handkerchief and sniffed a
little.
“So I’m to be a farmer’s wife. Anyway, I like being married
to you, Bill—even if it isn’t a very proper, authentic kind of
marriage.”
Suddenly she gave the smiling chuckle that I had not heard
for some time.
“What is it?”
“I was only thinking how much I used to dread my wed-
ding.”
‘That was very maidenly and proper of you—if a little unexpected,” I told
her.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly that. It was my publishers, and the
newspapers, and the film people. What fun they would have
had with it. There’d have been a new edition of my silly book
—probably a new release of the film—and pictures in all the

papers. I don’t think you’d have liked that much.”

“I can think of another thing I’d not have liked much,” I
told her. “Do you remember—that night in the moonlight you made a condition?”

She looked at me.

“Well, maybe some things haven’t turned out so badly,” she
said, smiling.

From then on I kept a journal. It is a mixture of diary,
stock list, and commonplace book. In it there are notes of the places to which
my expeditions took me, particulars of the supplies collected, estimates of
quantities available, observations on the states of the premises, with memos
on which should be cleared first to avoid deterioration. Foodstuffs, fuel, and
seed were constant objects of search, but by no means the only ones. There are
entries detailing loads of clothing, tools, household linen, harness,
kitchenware, loads of stakes, and wire, wire, and more wire, also hooks.

I can see there that within a week of my return from Tynsham
I had started on the work of erecting a wire fence to keep the triffids out.
Already we had barriers to hold them away from the garden and the immediate
neighborhood of the house. Now I began a more ambitious plan of making some
hundred acres or so free from them. It involved a stout wire fence which took
advantage of the natural features and standing barriers, and, inside it, a
lighter fence to prevent either the stock or ourselves from coming
inadvertently within sting range of the main fence. It was a heavy, tedious job
which took me a number of months to complete.

At the same time I was endeavoring to learn the A B C of
farming. It is not the kind of thing that is easily learned from books. For one
thing, it has never occurred to any writer on the subject that any potential
farmer could be starting from absolute zero. I found, therefore, that all works
started, as it were, in the middle, taking for granted both a basis and a
vocabulary that I did not have. My specialized biological knowledge was all but
useless to me in the face of practical problems. Much of the theory called for
materials and substances which were either unavailable to me or unrecognizable
by inc if I could find them. I began to see quite soon that by the time I had
dismissed the things that would shortly be unprocurable, such as chemical
fertilizers, imported feeding stuffs, and all but the simpler kinds of
machinery, there was going to be much expenditure of sweat for problematical returns.

Nor is book-installed knowledge of horse management, daisy
work, or slaughterhouse procedure by any means an adequate groundwork for these
arts. There are so many points where one cannot break off to consult the
relevant chapter. Moreover, the realities persistently present baffling dissimilarities
from the simplicities of print.

Luckily there was plenty of time to make mistakes, and to
learn from them. The knowledge that several years could pass before we should
be thrown anywhere near on our own resources saved us from desperation over
our disappointments. There was the reassuring thought, too, that by living on
preserved stores we were being quite provident reaUy in preventing them from
being wasted.

For safety’s sake I let a whole year pass before I went to
London again. It was the most profitable area for my forays, but it was the
most depressing. The place still contrived to give the impression that a touch
of a magic wand would bring it awake again, though many of the vehicles in the
streets were beginning to turn rusty. A year later the change was more
noticeable. Large patches of plaster detached from house fronts had begun to
litter the sidewalks. Dislodged tiles and chimney pots could be found in the
streets. Grass and weeds had a good hold in the gutters and were choking the
drains. Leaves had blocked downspoutings so that more grass, and even small
bushes, grew in cracks and in the silt in the roof gutterings. Almost every
building was beginning to wear a green wig beneath which its roofs would damply
rot. Through many a window one had glimpses of fallen ceilings, curves of
peeling paper, and walls glistening with damp. The gardens of the parks and
squares were wildernesses creeping out across the bordering streets. Growing
things seemed, indeed, to press out everywhere, rooting in the crevices between
the paving stones, springing from cracks in concrete, finding lodgments even in
the seats of the abandoned cars. On all sides they were incroaching to
repossess themselves of the arid spaces that man had created. And, curiously,
as the living Things increasingly took charge, the effect of the place became
less oppressive. As it passed beyond the scope of any magic wand, most of the
ghosts were going with it, withdrawing slowly into history.

Once—not that year, not the next, but later on—I stood in
Piccadilly Circus again, looking round at the desolation and trying to
recreate in my mind’s eye the crowds that once swarmed there. I could no
longer do it. Even in my memory they lacked reality. There was no tincture of
them now. They had become as much a back cloth of history as the audiences in
the Roman Colosseum or the army of the Assyrians, and, somehow, just as
far
removed
from me. The nostalgia that crept over me sometimes in the quiet bours was able
to move me to more regret than the crumbling scene itself. When I was by myself
in the country I could recall the pleasantness of the former life: among the
scabrous, slowly perishing buildings I seemed able to recall only the muddle,
the frustration, the unaimed drive, the all-pervading clangor of empty vessels,
and I became uncertain how much we bad lost....

My first tentative trip there I took alone, returning with
cases of triffid bolts, paper, engine parts, the Braille books and writing
machine that Dennis so much desired, the luxuries of drinks, candies, records,
and yet more books for the rest of us. A week later Josella came with me an a
more practical search for clothing, not only, or even chiefly, for the adults
of the party so much as for Mary’s baby and the one she herself was now
expecting. It upset her, and it remained the only visit she made.

It was at the end of the fourth year that I made my last
trip, and found that there were now risks which I was not justified in taking.
The first intimation of that was a thunderous crash behind me somewhere in the
inner suburbs. I stopped the truck, and looked back to see the dust rising from
a heap of rubble which lay across the road. Evidently my rumbling passage bad
given the last shake to a tottering house front. I brought no more buildings
down that day, but I spent it in apprehension of a descending torrent of bricks
and mortar. Thereafter II confined my attention to smaller towns, and usually
went about them on foot.

Brighton, which should have been our largest convenient
source of supplies, I let alone. By the time I had thought it fit
for
a
visit, others were in charge there. Who or how many there were, I did not know.
I simply found a rough wall of stones piled across the road and painted with
the instruction:

KEEP OUT!

The advice was backed up by the crack of a rifle and a spurt
of dust just in front of me. There was no one in sight to argue
with—besides, it arguing kind of gambit.

I turned the truck round and drove away thoughtfully. I
wondered if a time might come when the man Stephen’s preparations for defense
might turn out to be not so misplaced after all. Just to be on the safe side, I
laid in several machine guns and mortars from the source which had already
provided us with the flame throwers we used against the triffids.

In the November of that second year Josella’s first baby was
born. We called him David. My pleasure in him was at times alloyed with
misgivings over the state of things
we
had created him to face. But that
worded Josella much less than it did me. She adored him. He seemed to be a
compensation to her for much that she bad lost, and, paradoxically, she started
to worry less over the condition of the bridges ahead than she had before.
Anyway, he had a lustiness which argued well for his future capacity to take
care of himself, so I repressed my misgivings and increased the work I was
putting into that land which would one day have to support all of us.

It must have been not so very long after that that Josella
turned my attention more closely to the triffids. I had for years been so used
to taking precautions against them in my work that their becoming a regular
part of the landscape was far less noticeable to me than it was to the others.
I had been accustomed, too, to wearing meshed masks and gloves when I dealt
with them, so that there
was
little novelty far me in donning these
things whenever I drove out. I had, in fact, got into the habit of paying
little more attention to them than one would to mosquitoes in a known malarial
area. Josella mentioned it as we lay in bed one night when almost the only
sound was the intermittent, distant rattling of their hard little sticks
against their stems.

“They’re doing a lot more of that lately,” she said.

I did not grasp at first what she was talking about. It was
a sound that had been a usual background to the places where I had lived and
worked for so long that unless I deliberately listened for it I could not say
whether it was going on or not. I listened now.

“It doesn’t sound any different to me,” I said.

“It’s not
different.
It’s just that there’s a lot
more of it— because there are a lot more of them than there used to be.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said indifferently.

Once I had the fence fixed up, my interest had lain in the
ground within it, and I had not bothered about what went on beyond it. My
impression on my expeditions was that the incidence of Triffids in most parts
was much the same as before. I recalled that their numbers locally had caught
my at-tendon when I had
first
arrived, and I had supposed that there
must have been several large triffid nurseries in the district.

“There certainly are. You take a look at them tomorrow,” she
said.

I remembered in the morning, and looked out of the window
as I was dressing. I saw that Josella was right. One could count over a hundred
of them behind the quite small stretch visible from the window. I mentioned it
at breakfast. Susan looked suprised.

“But they’ve been getting more all the time,” she said.
“Haven’t you noticed?”

“I’ve got plenty of other things to bother about,” I said, a
little irritated by her tone. “They don’t matter outside the fence, anyway. As
long as we take care to pull up all the seeds that root in here, they can do
what they like outside.”

“All the same,” Josella remarked with a trace of uneasiness,
“is there any particular reason why they should come to just this part in such
numbers? I’m sure they do—and I’d like to know just why it is.”

Susan’s face took on its irritating expression of surprise
again.

“Why’
he
brings them,” she said.

“Don’t point,” Josella told her automatically. “What do you
mean? I’m sure Bill doesn’t bring them.”

“But he does. He makes all the noises, and they just come.”

“Look here,” I said. “What are you talking about? Am I
supposed to be whistling them here in my sleep or something?”

Susan looked huffy.

“All right. If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you after
breakfast,” she announced, and withdrew into an offended silence.

When we had finished she slipped from the table, returning
with my twelve-bore and field glasses. We went out onto the lawn. She scoured
the view until she found a triffid on the move well beyond our fences and then
handed the glasses to me. I watched the thing lurching slowly across a field.
It was more than a mile away froa us and heading east.

“Now keep on watching it,” she said.

She fired the gun into the air.

A few seconds later the triffid perceptibly altered course
toward the south.

“Seer she inquired, rubbing her shoulder.

“Well, it did look—Are you sure? Try again,” I suggested.
She shook her head.

“It wouldn’t be any good. All the triffids that heard it are
coming this way now. In about ten minutes they’ll stop and listen. If they’re
near enough then to hear the ones by the fence clattering, they’ll come on. Or
if they’re too far away for that, and we make another noise, then they’ll come.
But if they can’t hear anything at all, they’ll wait a bit and then just go on
wherever they were going before.”

I admit that I was somewhat taken aback by this revelation.

“Well—er,” I said. “You must have been watching them very
closely, Susan.”

“I always watch them. I hate them,” she said, as if that
were explanation enough.

Dennis had joined us as we stood there.

“I’m with you, Susan,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’ve not
liked it for some time. Those damn things have the drop on us.”

“Oh, come—” I began.

“I tell you, there’s more to them than we think. How did
they
know?
They started to break loose the moment then was no one to
stop them. They were around this house the very next day. Can you account for
that?”

“That’s not new for them,” I said. “In jungle country they
used to hang around near the tracks. Quite often they would surround a small
village and invade it if they weren’t beaten off. They were a dangerous kind of
pest in quite a lot of places.”

“But not here—that’s my point. They couldn’t do that here
until conditions made it possible. They didn’t even fly. But when they could,
they did it at once—almost as if they
knew
they could.”

“Come now, be reasonable, Dennis. Just think what you’re
implying,” I told him.

“I’m quite aware of what I’m implying—some of it, at any
rate. I’m making no definite theory, but I do say this: they took advantage of
our disadvantages with remarkable speed. I also say that there is something
perceptibly like method going on among them right now. You’ve been so wrapped
up in your jobs that you’ve not noticed how they’ve been massing up and waiting
out there beyond the fence, but Swan has— rye heard her talking about it. And
just what do you think they’re waiting
for?”