We were silent for a while, then:
‘Ah, well, ’t’weren’t a bad ole life while it lasted,’ he said.
We talked a little about the kind of life it had been for him. He’d had various jobs, each of which seemed to have included some interesting under-cover work. He summed it up:
‘One way an’ another I didn’t do so bad. What was your racket?’
I told him. He wasn’t impressed.
‘Triffids, huh! Nasty damn things, I reckon. Not natcheral as you might say.’
We left it at that.
Alf went away, leaving me to my cogitations and a packet of his cigarettes. I surveyed the outlook, and thought little of it. I wondered how the others would be taking it. Particularly what would be Josella’s view.
I got off the bed, and went across to the window. The prospect was poor. An interior well with sheer, white-tiled sides for four storeys below me, and a glass skylight at the bottom. There wasn’t much to be done that way. Alf had locked the door after him, but I tried it, just in case. Nothing in the room gave me inspiration. It had the look of belonging in a third-rate hotel, except that everything save the bed had been thrown out.
I sat down again on the bed, and pondered. I could perhaps tackle Alf successfully, even with my hands tied – providing he had no knife. But probably he had a knife, and that would be unpleasant. It would be no good a blind man threatening me with a knife; he would have to use it to disable me. Besides, there would be the difficulty of discovering what others I would have to pass before I could find my way out of the building. Moreover, I did not wish Alf any harm. It seemed wiser to wait for an opportunity – one was bound to come to a sighted man among the sightless.
An hour later Alf came back with a plate of food, a spoon, and more tea.
‘Bit rough-like,’ he apologized. ‘But they said no knife and fork, so there it is.’
While I was tackling it, I asked about the others. He couldn’t tell me much, and didn’t know any names, but I found out that there had been women as well as men among these that had been brought here. After that I was left alone for some hours which I spent doing my best to sleep off the headache.
When Alf reappeared with more food and the inevitable can of tea, he was accompanied by the man he had called Coker. He looked more tired now than when I had seen him before. Under his arm he carried a bundle of papers. He gave me a searching look.
‘You know the idea?’ he asked.
‘What Alf’s told me,’ I admitted.
‘All right, then.’ He dropped his papers on the bed, picked up the top one, and unfolded it. It was a street-plan of Greater London. He pointed to an area covering part of Hampstead and Swiss Cottage, heavily outlined in blue pencil.
‘That’s your beat,’ he said. ‘Your party works inside that area, and not in anyone else’s area. You can’t have each lot going after the same pickings. Your job is to find the food in that area, and see that your party gets it – that, and anything else they need. Got that?’
‘Or what?’ I said, looking at him.
‘Or they’ll get hungry. And if they do, it’ll be just too bad for you. Some of the boys are tough, and we’re not any of us doing this for fun. So watch your step. Tomorrow morning we’ll run you and your lot up there in lorries. After that it’ll be your job to keep ’em going until somebody comes along to tidy things up.’
‘And if nobody does come?’ I asked.
‘Somebody’s got to come,’ he said grimly. ‘Anyway, there’s your job – and mind you keep to your area.’
I stopped him as he was on the point of leaving.
‘Have you got a Miss Playton here?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know any of your names,’ he said.
‘Fair-haired, about five-foot six or seven, grey-blue eyes,’ I persisted.
‘There’s a girl about that size, and blonde. But I haven’t looked at her eyes. Got something more important to do,’ he said, as he left.
I studied the map. I was not greatly taken with the district allotted to me. Some of it was a salubrious enough suburb, indeed, but in the circumstances a location that included docks and warehouses would have had more to offer. It was doubtful whether there would be any sizeable storage depots in this part. Still, ‘can’t all ’ave a prize’ as Alf would doubtless express it – and anyway, I had no intention of staying there any longer than was strictly necessary.
When Alf showed up again I asked him if he would take a note to Josella. He shook his head.
‘Sorry, mate. Not allowed.’
I promised him it should be harmless, but he remained firm. I couldn’t altogether blame him. He had no reason to trust me, and would not be able to read the note to know that it was as harmless as I claimed. Anyway, I’d neither pencil nor paper, so I gave that up. After pressing, he did consent to let her know that I was here, and to find out the district to which she was being sent. He was not keen on doing that much, but he had to allow that if there were to be any straightening out of the mess it would be a lot easier for me to find her again if I knew where to start looking.
After that I had simply my thoughts for company for a bit.
The trouble was that I was not wholeheartedly set on any course. There was a damnable ability to see the points on both sides. I knew that common sense and the long-term view backed up Michael Beadley and his lot. If they had started, Josella and I would doubtless have gone with them and worked with them – and yet I knew I would have been uneasy. I’d never be quite convinced that nothing could have been done for the sinking ship, never quite sure that I had not rationalized my own preference. If, indeed, there was no possibility of organized rescue, then their proposal to salvage what we could was the intelligent course. But, unfortunately, intelligence is by no means the only thing that makes the human wheels go round. I was up against the very conditioning that the old Doctor had said was so hard to break. He was dead right about the difficulty of adopting new principles. If, for instance, some kind of relief should miraculously arrive, I knew just what kind of a louse I’d feel to have cleared out, whatever the motives – and just how much I’d despise myself and the rest for not having stayed here in London to help for as long as it was possible.
But if, on the other hand, help did not come, how would I have felt about having wasted my time and frittered my efforts away when stronger-minded people had started getting on with the salvage while the going was good?
I knew I ought to make my mind up once and for all on the right course, and stick to it. But I could not. I see-sawed. Some hours later when I fell asleep I was still see-sawing.
There was no means of knowing which way Josella had made up her mind. I’d had no personal message from her. But Alf had put his head in once during the evening. His communication had been brief.
‘Westminster,’ he said. ‘Cor! Don’t reckon that lot’s goin’ to find much grub in the ‘Ouses o’ Parliament.’
I was woken by Alf coming in early the following morning. He was accompanied by a bigger, shifty-eyed man who fingered a butcher’s knife with unnecessary ostentation. Alf advanced, and dropped an armful of clothes on the bed. His companion shut the door, and leaned against it, watching with a crafty eye, and toying with the knife.
‘Give us yer mitts, mate,’ said Alf.
I held my hands out towards him. He felt for the wires on my wrists, and snipped them with a cutter.
‘Now just you put on that there clobber, chum,’ he said, stepping back.
I got myself dressed while the knife-fancier followed every movement I made, like a hawk. When I’d finished, Alf produced a pair of handcuffs. ‘There’s just these,’ he mentioned.
I hesitated. The man by the door ceased to lean on it, and brought his knife forward a little. For him this was evidently the interesting moment. I decided maybe it was not the time to try anything, and held my wrists out. Alf felt around, and clicked on the cuffs. After that he went and fetched me my breakfast.
Nearly two hours later the other man turned up again, his knife well in evidence. He waved it at the door.
‘C’mon,’ he said. It was the only remark I ever heard him make.
With the consciousness of the knife producing an uncomfortable feeling in my back, we went down a number of flights of stairs, and across a hall. In the street two loaded lorries were waiting. Coker, with two companions, stood by the tailboard of one. He beckoned me over. Without saying anything he passed a chain between my arms. At each end of it was a strap. One was fastened already round the left wrist of a burly blind man beside him; the other he attached to the right wrist of a similar tough case, so that I was between them. They weren’t taking any unavoidable chances.
‘I’d not try any funny business, if I were you,’ Coker advised me. ‘You do right by them, and they’ll do right by you.’
The three of us climbed awkwardly on to the tailboard, and the two lorries drove off.
We stopped somewhere near Swiss Cottage, and piled out. There were perhaps twenty people in sight, prowling with apparent aimlessness along the gutters. At the sound of the engines every one of them had turned towards us with an incredulous expression on his face, and as if they were parts of a single mechanism they began to close hopefully towards us, calling out as they came. The drivers shouted to us to get clear. They backed, turned, and rumbled off by the way we had come. The converging people stopped. One or two of them shouted after the lorries; most turned hopelessly and silently back to their wandering. There was one woman about fifty yards away; she broke into hysterics, and began to bang her head against a wall. I felt sick.
I turned towards my companions.
‘Well, what do you want first?’ I asked them.
‘A billet,’ said one. ‘We got to ’ave some place to doss down.’
I reckoned I’d have to find that at least for them. I couldn’t just dodge out and leave them stranded right where we were. Now we’d come this far, I couldn’t do less than find them a centre, a kind of headquarters, and put them on their feet. What was wanted was a place where the receiving, storing, and feeding could be done, and the whole lot kept together. I counted them. There were fifty-two; fourteen of them women. The best course seemed to be to find a hotel. It would save the trouble of fitting out with beds and bedding.
The place we found was a kind of glorified boarding-house made up of four Victorian terrace-houses knocked together, giving more than the accommodation we needed. There were already half a dozen people in the place when we got there. Heaven knows what had happened to the rest. We found the remnant huddled together and scared in one of the lounges – an old man, an elderly woman (who turned out to have been the manageress), a middle-aged man, and three girls. The manageress had the spirit to pull herself together and hand out some quite high-sounding threats, but the ice, even of her most severe boarding-house manner, was thin. The old man tried to back her up by blustering a bit. The rest did nothing but keep their faces turned nervously towards us.
I explained that we were moving in. If they did not like it, they could go; if, on the other hand, they preferred to stay and share equally what there was, they were free to do so. They were not pleased. The way they reacted suggested that somewhere in the place they had a cache of stores that they were not anxious to share. When they grasped that the intention was to build up bigger stores their attitude modified perceptibly, and they prepared to make the best of it.
I decided I’d have to stay on a day or two just to get the party set up. I guessed Josella would be feeling much the same about her lot. Ingenious man, Coker – the trick is called holding the baby. But after that I’d dodge out and join her.
During the next couple of days we worked systematically, tackling the bigger stores nearby – mostly chain-stores, and not very big, at that. Nearly everywhere there had been others before us. The fronts of the shops were in a bad way. The windows were broken in, the floors were littered with half-opened cans and spilt packages which had disappointed the finders, and now lay in a sticky, stinking mass among the fragments of window-glass. But as a rule the loss was small and the damage superficial, and we’d find the larger cases in and behind the shop untouched.
It was far from easy for blind men to carry and manoeuvre heavy cases out of the place and load them on handcarts. Then there was the job of getting them back to the billet, and stowing them. But practice began to give them a knack with it.
The most hampering factor was the necessity for my presence. Little or nothing could go on unless I was there to direct. It was impossible to use more than one working party at a time, though we could have made up a dozen. Nor could much go on back at the hotel while I was out with foraging squads. Moreover, such time as I had to spend investigating and prospecting the district was pretty much wasted for everyone else. Two sighted men could have got through a lot more than twice the work.
Once we had started I was too busy during the day to spend much thought beyond the actual work in hand, and too tired at night to do anything but sleep the moment I lay down. Now and again I’d say to myself, ‘by tomorrow night I’ll have them pretty well fixed up – enough to keep them going for a bit, anyway. Then I’ll light out of this, and find Josella.’
That sounded all right – but every day it was tomorrow that I’d be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult. Some of them had begun to learn a bit, but still practically nothing, from foraging to can-opening, could go on without my being around. It seemed, the way things were going, that I became less, instead of more dispensable.
None of it was their fault. That was what made it difficult. Some of them were trying so damned hard. I just had to watch them making it more and more impossible for me to play the skunk and walk out on them. A dozen times a day I cursed the man Coker for contriving me into the situation – but that didn’t help to solve it: it just left me wondering how it could end…
I had my first inkling of that, though I scarcely recognized it as such, on the fourth morning – or maybe it was the fifth – just as we were setting out. A woman called down the stairs that there were two sick up there; pretty bad, she thought.
My two watchdogs did not like it.
‘Listen,’ I told them. ‘I’ve had about enough of this chain-gang stuff. We’d be doing a lot better than we are now without it, anyway.’
‘An’ have you slinkin’ off to join your old mob?’ said someone.
‘I’d not fool yourself,’ I said. ‘I could have slugged this pair of amateur gorillas any hour of the day or night. I’ve not done it because I’ve got nothing against them other than their being a pair of dim-witted nuisances…’
‘’Ere – ’ one of my attachments began to expostulate.
‘But,’ I went on, ‘if they don’t let me see what’s wrong with these people, they can begin expecting to be slugged any minute from now.’
The two saw reason, but when we reached the room, they took good care to stand as far back as the chain allowed. The casualties turned out to be two men, one young, one middle-aged. Both had high temperatures and complained of agonized pain in the bowels. I didn’t know much about such things then, but I did not need to know much to feel worried. I could think of nothing but to direct that they should be carried to an empty house nearby, and to tell one of the women to look after them as best she could.
That was the beginning of a day of setbacks. The next, of a very different kind, happened around noon.
We had cleared most of the food-shops close to us, and I had decided to extend our range a little. From my recollections of the neighbourhood I reckoned we ought to find another shopping street above half a mile to the north, so I led my party that way. We found the shop there, all right, but something else, too.
As we turned the corner and came into view of them, I stopped. In front of a chain-store grocery a party of men were trundling out cases and loading them on to a lorry. Save for the difference in the vehicle, I might have been watching my own party at work. I halted my group of twenty or so, wondering what line we should take. My inclination was to withdraw and avoid possible trouble by finding a clear field elsewhere; there was no sense in coming into conflict when there was plenty scattered in various stores for those who were organized enough to take it. But it did not fall to me to make the decision. Even while I hesitated a red-headed young man strode confidently out of the shop door. There was no doubt that he was able to see – or, a moment later, that he had seen us.
He did not share my indecisions. He reached swiftly for his pocket. The next moment a bullet hit the wall beside me with a smack.
There was a brief tableau. His men and mine turning their sightless eyes towards one another in an effort to understand what was going on. Then he fired again, I supposed he had aimed at me, but the bullet found the man on my left. He gave a grunt as though he was surprised, and folded up with a kind of sigh. I dodged back round the corner, dragging the other watchdog with me.
‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Give me the key to these cuffs. I can’t do a thing, like this.’
He didn’t do anything except give a knowing grin. He was a one-idea man.
‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Come orf it. You don’t fool me.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you damned clown – ’ I said, pulling on the chain to drag the body of watchdog number one nearer so that we could get better cover.
The goon started to argue. Heaven knows what subtleties his dim wits were crediting me with. There was enough slack on the chain now for me to raise my arms. I did, and hammered both fists at his head so that it went back against the wall with a crack. That disposed of his argument. I found the key in his side pocket.
‘Listen,’ I told the rest. ‘Turn round, all of you, and keep going straight ahead. Don’t separate, or you’ll have had it. Get moving now.’
I got one wristlet open, ridded myself of the chain, and scrambled over the wall into somebody’s garden. I crouched there while I got rid of the other cuff. Then I moved across to peer cautiously over the far angle of the wall. The young man with the pistol had not come rushing after us as I had half-expected. He was still with his party, giving them an instruction. And now I came to think of it, why should he hurry? Since we had not fired back at him he could reckon we were unarmed, and we wouldn’t be able to get away fast.
When he’d finished his directions he walked out confidently into the road to a point where he had a view of my retreating group, and then began to follow them. At the corner he stopped to look at the two prone watchdogs. Probably the chain suggested to him that one of them had been the eyes of our gang, for he put the pistol back in his pocket and began to follow the rest in a leisurely fashion.
That wasn’t what I had expected, and it took me a minute to see his scheme. Then it came to me that his most profitable course would be to follow them to our headquarters, and see what pickings he could hijack there. He was, I had to admit, either much quicker than I at spotting chances, or had previously given more thought to the possibilities that might arise than I had. I was glad that I had told my lot to keep straight on. Most likely they’d get tired of it after a bit, but I reckoned they’d none of them be able to find the way back to the hotel and so lead him to it. As long as they kept together, I’d be able to collect them all later on without much difficulty. The immediate question was what to do about a man who carried a pistol, and didn’t mind using it.
In some parts of the world one might go into the first house in sight, and pick up a convenient firearm. Hampstead was not like that; it was a highly respectable suburb, unfortunately. There might possibly be a sporting gun to be found somewhere, but I would have to hunt for it. The only thing I could think of was to keep him in sight and hope that some opportunity would offer a chance to deal with him. I broke a branch off a tree, scrambled back over the wall, and began to tap my way along the kerb, looking, I hoped, indistinguishable from the hundreds of blind men one had seen wandering the streets in the same way.
The road ran straight for some distance. The red-headed young man was perhaps fifty yards ahead of me, and my party another fifty ahead of him. We continued like that for something over half a mile. To my relief, none of the front party showed any tendency to turn into the road which led to our base. I was beginning to wonder how long it would be before they decided that they had gone far enough, when an unexpected diversion occurred. One man who had been lagging behind the rest finally stopped. He dropped his stick, and doubled up with his arms over his belly. Then he sagged to the ground and lay there, rolling with pain. The others did not stop for him. They must have heard his moans but probably they had no idea he was one of themselves.
The young man looked towards him, and hesitated. He altered his course, and bore across towards the contorted figure. He stopped a few feet away from him, and stood gazing down. For perhaps a quarter of a minute he regarded him carefully. Then slowly, but quite deliberately, he pulled his pistol out of his pocket, and shot him through the head.
The party ahead stopped at the sound of the shot. So did I. The young man made no attempt to catch up with them – in fact, he seemed suddenly to lose interest in them altogether. He turned round, and came walking back down the middle of the road. I remembered to play my part, and began to tap my way forward again. He paid no attention as he passed, but I was able to see his face: it was worried, and there was a grim set to his jaw…I kept going as I was until he was a decent distance behind me, then I hurried on to the rest. Brought up short by the sound of the shot, they were arguing whether to go on further or not.
I broke that off by telling them that now I was no longer encumbered with my two i.q.-minus watchdogs we would be ordering things differently. I was going to get a lorry, and I would be back in ten minutes or so to run them back to the billet in it.
The finding of another organized party at work produced a new anxiety, but we found the place intact. The only news they had for me there was that two more men and a woman had been taken with severe belly pains and removed to the other house.
We made what preparations we could for defence against any marauders arriving while I was away. Then I picked a new party, and we set off in the lorry, this time in a different direction.
I recalled that in former days when I had come up to Hampstead Heath it had often been by way of a bus terminus where a number of small shops and stores clustered. With the aid of the street-plan I found the place again easily enough – not only found it, but discovered it to be marvellously intact. Save for three or four broken windows, the area looked simply as if it had been closed up for a week-end.
But there were differences. For one thing, no such silence had ever before hung over the locality, weekday or Sunday. And there were several bodies lying in the street. By this time one was becoming accustomed enough to that to pay them little attention. I had, in fact, wondered that there were not more to be seen, and had come to the conclusion that most people sought some kind of shelter either out of fear, or later when they became weak. It was one of the reasons that one felt a disinclination to enter any dwelling-house.
I stopped the lorry in front of a provision store and listened for a few seconds. The silence came down on us like a blanket. There was no sound of tapping sticks, not a wanderer in sight. Nothing moved.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Pile out, chaps.’
The locked door of the shop gave way easily. Inside there was a neat, unspoiled array of tubs of butter, cheeses, sides of bacon, cases of sugar, and all the rest of it. I got the others busy. They had developed tricks of working by now, and were more sure of their handling. I was able to leave them to get on with it for a bit while I examined the back storeroom and then the cellar.
It was while I was below, investigating the nature of the cases down there that I heard a sound of shouts somewhere outside. Close upon it came a thunder of trampling boots on the floor above me. One man came down through the trap-door, and pitched on his head. He did not move or make another sound. I jumped to it that there must be a battle with a rival gang in progress up there. I stepped across the fallen man, and climbed the ladder-like stair cautiously, holding up one arm to protect my head.
The first view was of numerous scuffling boots, unpleasantly close, and backing towards the trap. I nipped up quickly and got clear before they were on me. I was up just in time to see the plate-glass window in the front give way. Three men from outside fell in with it. A long green lash whipped after them, striking one as he lay. The other two scrambled among the wreckage of the display, and came stumbling further into the shop. They pressed back against the rest, and two more men fell through the open trap-door.
It did not need more than a glimpse of that lash to tell what had happened. During the work of the past few days I had all but forgotten the triffids. By standing on a box I could see over the heads of the men. There were three triffids in my field of view: one out in the road, and two closer, on the pavement. Four men lay on the ground out there, not moving. I understood then why these shops had been untouched; and why there had been no one to be seen in the neighbourhood of the Heath. At the same time I cursed myself for not having looked at the bodies in the road more closely. One glimpse of a sting mark would have been enough warning.
‘Hold it,’ I shouted. ‘Stand where you are.’
I jumped down from the box, pushed away the men who were standing on the folded-back lid of the trap, and got it closed.
‘There’s a door back here,’ I told them. ‘Take it easy now.’
The first two took it easy. Then a triffid sent its sting whistling into the room through the broken window. One man gave a scream as he fell. The rest came on in panic, and swept me before them. There was a jam in the doorway. Behind us stings swished twice again before we were clear.
In the back room I looked round panting. There were seven of us there.
‘Hold it,’ I said again. ‘We’re all right in here.’
I went back to the door. The rear part of the shop was out of the triffids’ range – as long as they stayed outside. I was able to reach the trap-door in safety, and raise it. The two men who had fallen down there since I left re-emerged. One nursed a broken arm; the other was merely bruised, and cursing.
Behind the back room lay a small yard, and across that a door in an eight-foot brick wall. I had grown cautious. Instead of going straight to the door I climbed on the roof of an outhouse to prospect. The door, I could see, gave into a narrow alley running the full length of the block. It was empty. But beyond the wall on the far side which seemed to terminate the gardens of a row of private houses, I could make out the tops of two triffids motionless among the bushes. There might well be more. The wall on that side was lower, and their height would enable them to strike right across the alley with their stings. I explained to the others.
‘Bloody unnatural brutes,’ said one. ‘I always did hate them bastards.’
I investigated farther. The building next but one to the north side turned out to be a car-hire service with three of its cars on the premises. It was an awkward job getting the party over the two intervening walls, particularly the man with the broken arm, but we managed it. Somehow, too, I got them all packed into a large Daimler. When we were all set I opened the outer doors of the place, and ran back to the car.
The triffids weren’t slow to be interested. That uncanny sensitiveness to sounds told them something was happening. As we drove out, a couple of them were already lurching towards the entrance. Their stings whipped out at us, and slapped harmlessly against the closed windows. I swung hard round, bumping one, and toppling it over. Then we were away up the road, making for a healthier neighbourhood.
The evening that followed was the worst I had spent since the calamity occurred. Freed of the two watchdogs, I took over a small room where I could be alone. I put six lighted candles in a row on the mantelshelf, and sat a long while in an armchair, trying to think things out. We had come back to find that one of the men who had been taken sick the night before was dead; the other was obviously dying – and there were four new cases. By the time our evening meal was over, there were two more still. What the complaint was I had no idea. With the lack of service and the way things were going in general, it might have been a number of things. I thought of typhoid, but I’d a hazy idea that the incubation period ruled that out – not that it would have made much difference if I had known. All I did know about it was that it was something nasty enough to make that red-haired young man use his pistol, and change his mind about following my party.
It began to look to me as if I had been doing my group a questionable service from the first. I had succeeded in keeping them alive, placed between a rival gang on one side, and triffids encroaching from the Heath on the other. Now there was this sickness, too. And, when all was said and done, I had achieved only the postponement of starvation for a little while.
As things were now, I did not see my way.
And then there was Josella on my mind. The same sorts of things, maybe worse, were as likely to be happening in her district…
I found myself thinking of Michael Beadley and his lot again. I had known then that they were logical, now I began to think that perhaps they had a truer humanity, too. They had seen that it was hopeless to try to save any but a very few. To give an empty hope to the rest was little better than cruelty.
Besides, there were ourselves. If there were purpose in anything at all, what had we been preserved for? Not simply to waste ourselves on a forlorn task, surely…?
I decided that tomorrow I would go in search of Josella, and we would settle it together…