Half-way down Regent Street the engine started to miss and splutter; finally it stopped. In her hurried start she had not looked at the gauge: it was the reserve tank she had run dry.
She sat there for a moment, dismayed. Every face in sight was now turned towards her, but she had realized by this time that not one of those she saw could see or help her. She got out of the car, hoping to find a garage somewhere nearby or, if there was none, prepared to walk the rest of the way. As she slammed the door behind her, a voice called:
‘Hey! Just a minute, mate!’
She turned, and saw a man groping towards her.
‘What is it?’ she asked. She was by no means taken with the look of him.
His manner changed on hearing her voice.
‘I’m lost. Dunno where I am,’ he said.
‘This is Regent Street. The New Gallery cinema’s just behind you,’ she told him, and turned to go.
‘Just show me where the kerb is, miss, will you?’ he said.
She hesitated, and in that moment he came close. The outstretched hand sought and touched her sleeve. He lunged forward, and caught both her arms in a painful grip.
‘So you can see, can you!’ he said. ‘Why the hell should you be able to see when I can’t – nor anyone else?’
Before she could realize what was happening he had turned her and tripped her, and she was lying in the road with his knee in her back. He caught both her wrists in the grasp of one large hand, and proceeded to tie them together with a piece of string from his pocket. Then he stood up, and pulled her on to her feet again.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘From now on you can do your seeing for me. I’m hungry. Take me where there’s a bit of good grub. Get on with it.’
Josella dragged away from him.
‘I won’t. Undo my hands at once. I – ’
He cut that short with a smack across her face.
‘That’ll be enough o’ that, my girl. Come on now. Get cracking. Food, d’yer hear?’
‘I won’t, I tell you.’
‘You bloody well will, my girl,’ he assured her.
And she had.
She’d done it watching all the time for a chance to get away. And he’d been expecting just that. Once she almost brought it off, but he had been too quick. Even as she had pulled free he had put out a foot to trip her, and before she could get up he had a grip on her again. After that he had found the strong cord and tethered her to his wrist.
She had led him first to a café, and directed him to a refrigerator. The machine was no longer working, but it was stored with food that was still fresh. The next call was a bar where he wanted Irish whiskey. She could see it, perched up on a shelf beyond his reach.
‘If you’d untie my hands – ’ she suggested.
‘What, and have you crown me with a bottle? I wasn’t born yesterday, my girl. No, I’ll have the Scotch. Which is it?’
She told him what was in the various bottles as he laid his hand on them.
‘I think I must have been dazed,’ she explained. ‘I can see now half a dozen ways I could have outwitted him. Probably I’d have killed him later on if you hadn’t come along. But you can’t change and turn brutal all at once – at least, I can’t. I didn’t seem to be able to think properly at first. I’d a sort of feeling that things like that didn’t happen nowadays, and that somebody would come along and stop it soon.’
There had been a row in that bar before they left. Another party of men and women discovered the open door and came in. Incautiously her captor instructed her to tell them what was in the bottle they found. At that they all stopped talking, and turned their sightless eyes towards her. There was a whisper, then two men stepped warily forward. They had a purposeful look on their faces. She jerked at the cord.
‘Look out!’ she cried.
Without the least hesitation her captor swung out his boot. It was a lucky kick. One of the men folded up with a yell of pain. The other jumped forward, but she side-stepped and he brought up against the counter with a crash.
‘You bloody well leave her alone,’ roared the man who held her. He turned his face menacingly this way and that. ‘She’s mine, blast you. I found her.’
But it was clear that the rest were not intending to give up that easily. Even had they been able to see the danger in her companion’s expression it would not have been likely to stop them. Josella started to realize that the gift of sight, even at second hand, was now something vastly surpassing all riches, and the chance of it not to be released without bitter contest. The others began to close in, with their hands questing in front of them. Reaching out with one foot, she hooked the leg of a chair, and overturned it in their way.
‘Come on!’ she cried, dragging the other man back.
Two men tripped over the fallen chair, and a woman fell on top of them. Swiftly the place became a struggling confusion. She steered a way through it, and they escaped into the street.
She scarcely knew why she did it save that the prospect of being enslaved to act as the eyes of that group had seemed even worse than her present plight. Nor did the man give her any thanks. He merely directed her to find another bar: an empty one.
‘I think,’ she said judicially, ‘that though you wouldn’t have guessed it to look at him, he wasn’t perhaps too bad a man really. Only he was frightened. Deep down inside him he was much more frightened than I was. He gave me some food and something to drink. He only started beating me like that because he was drunk, and I wouldn’t go into his house with him. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.’ She paused. Then she added: ‘But I am pretty ashamed of myself. Shows you what a modern young woman can come to after all, doesn’t it? Screaming, and collapsing with the vapours – Hell!’
She was looking, and obviously feeling, rather better though she winced as she reached for her glass.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that I’ve been fairly dense over this business – and pretty lucky. I ought to have made more of the implications when I saw that woman with the child in Piccadilly. It’s only been chance that’s stopped me from falling into the same kind of mess that you did.’
‘Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence,’ she said, reflectively.
‘I’ll go on bearing that in mind, henceforth,’ I told her.
‘It’s already very well impressed on mine,’ she remarked.
We sat listening to the uproar from the other pub for a few minutes.
‘And what,’ I said at last, ‘just what do we propose to do now?’
‘I must get back home. There’s my father. It’s obviously no good going on to try to find the doctor now – even if he has been one of the lucky ones.’
She seemed about to add something, but hesitated.
‘Do you mind if I come, too?’ I asked. ‘This doesn’t seem to me the sort of time when anyone like us should be wandering about on his or her own.’
She turned with a grateful look.
‘Thank you. I almost asked, but I thought there might be somebody you’d be wanting to look for.’
‘There isn’t,’ I said. ‘Not in London, at any rate.’
‘I’m glad. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of getting caught again – I’ll be much too careful for that. But, to be honest, it’s the loneliness I’m afraid of. I’m beginning to feel so – so cut off and stranded.’
I was starting to see things in another new light. The sense of release was tempered with a growing realization of the grimness that might lie ahead of us. It had been impossible at first not to feel some superiority, and, therefore, confidence. Our chances of surviving the catastrophe were a million times greater than those of the rest. Where they must fumble, grope, and guess, we had simply to walk in and take. But there were going to be a lot of things beyond that…
I said: ‘I wonder just how many of us have escaped and can still see? I’ve come across one other man, a child, and a baby: you’ve met none. It looks to me as if we are going to find out that sight is very rare indeed. Some of the others have evidently grasped already that their only chance of survival is to get hold of someone who can see. When they all understand that, the outlook’s going to be none too good.’
The future seemed to me at that time a choice between a lonely existence, always in fear of capture, or of gathering together a selected group which we could rely on to protect us from other groups. We’d be filling a kind of leader-cum-prisoner rôle – and along with it went a nasty picture of bloody gang wars being fought for possession of us. I was still uncomfortably elaborating these possibilities when Josella recalled me to the present by getting up.
‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Poor father. It’s after four o’clock.’
Back in Regent Street again, a thought suddenly struck me.
‘Come across,’ I said. ‘I fancy I remember a shop somewhere here…’
The shop was still there. We equipped ourselves with a couple of useful-looking sheath knives, and belts to carry them.
‘Makes me feel like a pirate,’ said Josella, as she buckled hers on.
‘Better, I imagine, to be a pirate than a pirate’s moll,’ I told her.
A few yards up the street we came upon a large, shiny saloon car. It looked the kind of craft that should simply have purred. But the noise when I started it up sounded louder in our ears than all the normal traffic of a busy street. We made our way northward, zigzagging to avoid derelicts and wanderers stricken into immobility in the middle of the road by the sound of our approach. All the way heads turned hopefully towards us as we came; and faces fell as we went past. One building on our route was blazing fiercely, and a cloud of smoke rose from another fire somewhere along Oxford Street. There were more people about in Oxford Circus, but we got through them neatly, then passed the BBC, and so north to the carriageway in Regent’s Park.
It was a relief to get out of the streets and reach an open space – and one where there were no unfortunate people wandering and groping. The only moving things we could see on the broad stretches of grass were two or three little groups of triffids lurching southwards. Somehow or other they had contrived to pull up their stakes and were dragging them along behind them on their chains. I remembered that there were some undocked specimens, a few tethered, but most of them double-fenced, in an enclosure beside the zoo and wondered how they had got out. Josella noticed them, too.
‘It’s not going to make much difference to them,’ she said.
For the rest of the way there was little to delay us. Within a few minutes I was pulling up at the house she pointed out. We got out of the car, and I pushed open the gate. A short drive curved round a bed of bushes which hid most of the house front from the road. As we turned the corner Josella gave a cry, and ran forward. A figure was lying on the gravel, chest downwards, but with the head turned to show one side of its face. The first glance at it showed me the bright red streak across the cheek.
‘Stop!’ I shouted at her.
There was enough alarm in my voice to check her.
I had spotted the triffid now. It was lurking among the bushes, well within striking range of the sprawled figure.
‘Back! Quick!’ I said.
Still looking at the man on the ground, she hesitated.
‘But I must – ’ she began, turning towards me. Then she stopped. Her eyes widened, and she screamed.
I whipped round to find a triffid towering only a few feet behind me.
In one automatic movement I had my hands over my eyes. I heard the sting whistle as it lashed out at me – but there was no knockout, no agonized burning, even. One’s mind can move like lightning at such a moment: nevertheless, it was more instinct than reason which sent me leaping at it before it had time to strike again. I collided with it, overturning it, and even as I went down with it my hands were on the upper part of its stem, trying to pull off the cup and the sting. Triffid stems do not snap – but they can be mangled. This one was mangled thoroughly before I stood up.
Josella was standing in the same spot, transfixed.
‘Come here,’ I told her. ‘There’s another in the bushes behind you.’
She glanced fearfully over her shoulder, and came.
‘But it hit you!’ she said, incredulously. ‘Why aren’t you – ?’
‘I don’t know. I ought to be,’ I said.
I looked down at the fallen triffid. Suddenly remembering the knives that we’d acquired with quite other enemies in mind, I used mine to cut off the sting at its base. I examined it.
‘That explains it,’ I said, pointing to the poison-sacs. ‘See, they’re collapsed, exhausted. If they’d been full, or even part full…’ I turned a thumb down.
I had that, and my acquired resistance to the poison, to thank. Nevertheless, there was a pale red mark across the back of my hands and my neck that was itching like the devil. I rubbed it while I stood looking at the sting.
‘It’s queer – ’ I murmured, more to myself than to her, but she heard me.
‘What’s queer?’
‘I’ve never seen one with the poison-sacs quite empty like this before. It must have been doing a hell of a lot of stinging.’
But I doubt if she heard me. Her attention had reverted to the man who was lying in the drive, and she was eyeing the triffid standing by.
‘How can we get him away?’ she asked.
‘We can’t – not till that thing’s been dealt with,’ I told her. ‘Besides – well, I’m afraid we can’t help him now.’
‘You mean, he’s dead?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. There’s not a doubt of it – I’ve seen others who have been stung. Who was he?’ I added.
‘Old Pearson. He did gardening for us, and chauffeuring for my father. Such a dear old man – I’ve known him all my life.’
‘I’m sorry – ’ I began, wishing I could think of something more adequate, but she cut me short.
‘Look! – oh, look!’ She pointed to a path which ran round the side of the house. A black-stockinged leg with a woman’s shoe on it protruded round the corner.
We prospected carefully, and then moved safely to a spot which gave a better view. A girl in a black dress lay half on the path and half in a flower-bed. Her pretty, fresh face was scarred with a bright red line. Josella choked. Tears came into her eyes.
‘Oh! – oh, it’s Annie! Poor little Annie,’ she said.
I tried to console her a little.
‘They can scarcely have known it, either of them,’ I told her. ‘When it is strong enough to kill, it’s mercifully quick.’
We did not see any other triffid in hiding there. Possibly it was the same one that had attacked them both. Together we crossed the path and got into the house by the side-door. Josella called. There was no answer. She called again. We both listened in the complete silence that wrapped the house. She turned to look at me. Neither of us said anything. Quietly she led the way along a passage to a baize-covered door. As she opened it there was a swish, and something slapped across door and frame, an inch or so above her head. Hurriedly she pulled the door shut again, and turned wide-eyed to me.
‘There’s one in the hall,’ she said.
She spoke in a frightened half-whisper, as though it might be listening.
We went back to the outer door, and into the garden once more. Keeping to the grass for silence we made our way round the house until we could look into the lounge-hall. The french window which led from the garden was open, and the glass of one side was shattered. A trail of muddy blobs led over the step and across the carpet. At the end of it a triffid stood in the middle of the room. The top of its stem almost brushed the ceiling, and it was swaying ever so slightly. Close beside its damp, shaggy bole lay the body of an elderly man clad in a bright silk dressing-gown. I took hold of Josella’s arm. I was afraid she might rush in there.
‘Is it – your father?’ I asked, though I knew it must be.
‘Yes,’ she said, and put her hands over her face. She was trembling slightly.
I stood still, keeping an eye on the triffid inside lest it should move our way. Then I thought of a handkerchief and handed her mine. There wasn’t much anyone could do. After a little while she took more control of herself. Remembering the people we had seen that day, I said:
‘You know, I think I would rather that had happened to me than be like those others.’
‘Yes,’ she said, after a pause.
She looked up into the sky. It was a soft, depthless blue, with a few little clouds floating like white feathers.
‘Oh, yes,’ she repeated with more conviction. ‘Poor Daddy. He couldn’t have stood blindness. He loved all this too much.’ She glanced inside the room again. ‘What shall we do? I can’t leave – ’
At that moment I caught the reflection of movement in the remaining window-pane. I looked behind us quickly to see a triffid break clear of the bushes and start across the lawn. It was lurching on a line that led straight towards us. I could hear the leathery leaves rustling as the stem whipped back and forth.
There was no time for delay. I had no idea how many more there might be round the place. I grabbed Josella’s arm again, and ran her back by the way we had come. As we scrambled safely into the car, she burst into real tears at last.
She would be the better for having her cry out. I lit a cigarette, and considered the next move. Naturally, she was not going to care for the idea of leaving her father as we had found him. She would wish that he should have a proper burial – and, by the looks of it, that would be a matter of the pair of us digging the grave and effecting the whole business. And before that could even be attempted it would be necessary to fetch the means to deal with the triffids that were already there, and keep off any more that might appear. On the whole, I would be in favour of dropping the whole thing – but then, it was not my father…
The more I considered this new aspect of things, the less I liked it. I had no idea how many triffids there might be in London. Every park had a few at least. Usually they kept some docked ones that were allowed to roam about as they would, often there were others, with stings intact, either staked, or safely behind wire-netting. Thinking of those we had seen crossing Regent’s Park, I wondered just how many they had been in the habit of keeping in the pens by the zoo, and how many had escaped. There’d be a number in private gardens, too; you’d expect all those to be safely docked – but you never can tell what fool carelessness may go on. And then there were several nurseries of the things, and experimental stations a little further out…
While I sat there pondering, I was aware of something nudging at the back of my mind; some association of ideas that didn’t quite join up. I sought it for a moment or two: then, suddenly, it came. I could almost hear Walter’s voice speaking, saying:
‘I tell you, a triffid’s in a damn sight better position to survive than a blind man.’
Of course, he had been talking about a man who had been blinded by a triffid sting. All the same, it was a jolt. More than a jolt. It scared me a bit.
I thought back. No, it had just arisen out of general speculation – nevertheless, it seemed a bit uncanny now…
‘Take away our sight,’ he had said. ‘And our superiority to them is gone.’
Of course, coincidences are happening all the time – but it’s just now and then you happen to notice them…
A crunch on the gravel brought me back to the present. A triffid came swaying down the drive towards the gate. I leant across, and screwed up the window.
‘Drive on! Drive on!’ said Josella hysterically.
‘We’re all right here,’ I told her. ‘I want to see what it does.’
Simultaneously I realized that one of my questions was solved. Being accustomed to triffids, I had forgotten how most people felt about an undocked one. I suddenly understood that there would be no question of coming back here. Josella’s feeling about an armed triffid was the general idea – get well away from it, and stay away.
The thing paused by the gatepost. One could have sworn that it was listening. We sat perfectly still and quiet. Josella staring at it with horror. I expected it to lash out at the car, but it didn’t. Probably the muffling of our voices inside had misled it into thinking we were out of range.
The little bare stalks began abruptly to clatter against its stem. It swayed, lumbered clumsily off to the right, and disappeared into the next driveway.
Josella gave a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, let’s get away before it comes back,’ she implored.
I started the car, turned it round, and we drove off Londonwards again.
5
A Light in the Night
Josella began to recover her self-possession. With the deliberate and obvious intention of taking her mind off what lay behind us she asked:
‘Where are we going now?’
‘Clerkenwell first,’ I told her. ‘After that we’ll see about getting you some more clothes. Bond Street for them, if you like, but Clerkenwell first.’
‘But why Clerkenwell – ? Good heavens!’
She might well exclaim. We had turned a corner to see the street seventy yards ahead of us filled with people. They were coming towards us at a stumbling run, with their arms outstretched before them. A mingled crying and screaming came from them. Even as we turned into sight of them, a woman at the front tripped and fell; others tumbled over her, and she disappeared beneath a kicking, struggling heap. Beyond the mob, we had a glimpse of the cause of it all: three dark-leaved stalks swaying over the panic-stricken heads. I accelerated, and swung off into a by-road.
Josella turned a terrified face.
‘Did – did you see what that was? They were driving them.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s why we are going to Clerkenwell. There’s a place there that makes the best triffid-guns and masks in the world.’
We worked back again, and picked up our intended route, but we did not find the clear run I had hoped for. Near King’s Cross Station there were many more people on the streets. Even with a hand on the horn it was increasingly difficult to get along. In front of the station itself it became impossible. Why there should have been such crowds in that place I don’t know. All the people in the district seemed to have converged upon it. We could not get through the people, and a glance behind showed that it would be almost as hopeless to try to go back. Those we had passed had already closed in on our track.
‘Get out, quick!’ I said. ‘I think they’re after us.’
‘But – ’ Josella began.
‘Hurry!’ I said shortly.
I blew a final blast on the horn, and slipped out after her, leaving the engine running. We were not many seconds too soon. A man found the handle of the rear door. He pulled it open, and pawed inside. We were all but pushed over by the pressure of others making for the car. There was a shout of anger when somebody opened the front door and found the seats there empty, too. By that time we had ourselves safely become members of the crowd. Somebody grabbed the man who had opened the rear door under the impression that it was he who had just got out. Around that the confusion began to thrive. I took a firm grip of Josella’s hand, and we started to worm our way out as unobviously as possible.
Clear of the crowd at last, we kept on foot for a while, looking out for a suitable car. After a mile or so we found it – a station-waggon, likely to be more useful than an ordinary body for the plan that was beginning to form vaguely in my mind.
In Clerkenwell they had been accustomed for two or three centuries to make fine, precise instruments. The small factory I had dealt with professionally at times had adapted the old skill to new needs. I found it with little difficulty, nor was it hard to break in. When we set off again there was a comforting sense of support to be derived from several excellent triffid-guns, some thousands of little steel boomerangs for them, and some wire-mesh helmets that we had loaded into the back.
‘And now – clothes?’ suggested Josella, as we started.
‘Provisional plan, open to criticism and correction,’ I told her. ‘First what you might call a pied-à-terre: i.e. somewhere to pull ourselves together and discuss things.’
‘Not another bar,’ she protested. ‘I’ve had quite enough of bars for one day.’
‘Improbable though my friends might think it – with everything free – so have I,’ I agreed. ‘What I was thinking of was an empty flat. That shouldn’t be difficult to find. We could ease up there awhile, and settle the rough plan of campaign. Also, it would be convenient for spending the night – or, if you find the trammels of convention still defy the peculiar circumstances, well, maybe we could make it two flats.’
‘I think I’d be happier to know there was someone close at hand.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘Then operation Number Two will be ladies’ and gents’ outfitting. For that perhaps we had better go our separate ways – both taking exceedingly good care not to forget which flat it was that we decided on.’
‘Y-es,’ she said, but a little doubtfully.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I assured her. ‘Make a rule for yourself not to speak to anyone, and nobody’s going to guess you can see. It was only being quite unprepared that landed you in that mess before. “In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” ’
‘Oh, yes – Wells said that, didn’t he? – Only in the story it turned out not to be true.’
‘The crux of the difference lies in what you mean by the word “country” – patria in the original,’ I said. ‘Caecorum in patria luscus rex imperat omnis – a classical gentleman called Fullonius said it first: it’s all anyone seems to know about him. But there’s no organized patria, no State, here – only chaos. Wells imagined a people who had adapted themselves to blindness. I don’t think that is going to happen here – I don’t see how it can.’
‘What do you think is going to happen?’
‘My guess would be no better than yours. And soon we shall begin to know, anyway. Better get back to matters in hand. Where were we?’
‘Choosing clothes.’
‘Oh, yes. Well, it’s simply a matter of slipping into a shop, adopting a few trifles, and slipping out again. You’ll not meet any triffids in Central London – at least, not yet.’
‘You talk so lightly about taking things,’ she said.
‘I don’t feel quite so lightly about it,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m not sure that that’s virtue – it’s more likely merely habit. And an obstinate refusal to face facts isn’t going to bring anything back, or help us at all. I think we’ll have to try to see ourselves not as the robbers of all this, but more as – well, the unwilling heirs to it.’
‘Yes. I suppose it is something like that,’ she agreed, in a qualified way.
She was silent for a time. When she spoke again she reverted to the earlier question.
‘And after the clothes?’ she asked.
‘Operation Number Three,’ I told her, ‘is, quite definitely, dinner.’