‘Coker,’ I said, as we completed the meal sitting on a store counter and spreading marmalade on biscuits, ‘you beat me. What are you? The first time I meet you I find you ranting – if you will forgive the appropriate word – in a kind of dockside lingo. Now you quote Marvell to me. It doesn’t make sense.’
He grinned. ‘It never did to me, either,’ he said. ‘It comes of being a hybrid – you never really know what you are. My mother never really knew what I was, either – at least, she never could prove it, and she always held it against me that on account of that she could not get an allowance for me. It made me kind of sour about things when I was a kid; and when I left school I used to go to meetings – more or less any kind of meetings as long as they were protesting against something. And that led to me getting mixed up with the lot that used to come to them. I suppose they found me kind of amusing. Anyway, they used to take me along to arty-political sorts of parties. After a bit I got tired of being amusing and seeing them give a kind of double laugh, half with me and half at me, whenever I said what I thought. I reckoned I needed some of the background knowledge they had, and then I’d be able to laugh at them a bit, maybe, so I started going to evening classes, and I practised talking the way they did, for use when necessary. There’s a whole lot of people don’t seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he’ll take you seriously. If you talk tough and quote Shelley they think you’re cute, like a performing monkey or something, but they don’t pay any attention to what you say. You have to talk the kind of lingo they’re accustomed to taking seriously. And it works the other way, too. Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across – not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because most of the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary normal talk. So I reckoned the thing to do was to make myself bilingual, and use the right one in the right place – and occasionally the wrong one in the wrong place, unexpectedly. Surprising how that jolts ’em. Wonderful thing, that English caste system. Since then I’ve made out quite nicely in the orating business. Not what you’d call a steady job, but full of interest and variety. Wilfred Coker. Meetings addressed. Subject no object. That’s me.’
‘How do you mean – subject no object?’ I inquired.
‘Well, I kind of supply the spoken word just like a printer supplies the printed word. He doesn’t have to believe everything he prints.’
I left that for the moment. ‘How’s it happen you’re not like the rest?’ I asked. ‘You weren’t in hospital, were you?’
‘Me? No. It just so happened that I was addressing a meeting that was protesting over police partiality in a little matter of a strike. We began about six o’clock, and about half past the police themselves arrived to break it up. I found a handy trap-door, and went down into the cellar. They came down, too, to have a look, but they didn’t find me where I had gone to earth in a pile of shavings. They went on tramping around up above for a bit, then it was quiet. But I stayed put. I wasn’t walking out into any nice little trap. It was quite comfortable there, so I went to sleep. In the morning when I took a careful nose around, I found all this had happened.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Well, that racket’s finished, it certainly doesn’t look as if there’s going to be much call for my particular gifts from now on,’ he added.
I did not dispute it. We finished our meal. He slid himself off the counter.
‘Come on. We’d better be shifting. “Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new” – if you’d care for a really hackneyed quotation this time.’
‘It’s more than that, it’s inaccurate,’ I said. ‘It’s “woods”, not “fields”.’
He frowned, and thought.
‘Well, – me, mate, so it is,’ he admitted.
I began to feel the lightening of spirit that Coker was already showing. The sight of the open country gave one hope of a sort. It was true that the young green crops would never be harvested when they had ripened, nor the fruit from the trees gathered; that the countryside might never again look as trim and neat as it did that day, but for all that it would go on, after its own fashion. It was not like the towns, sterile, stopped for ever. It was a place one could work and tend, and still find a future. It made my existence of the previous week seem like that of a rat living on crumbs and ferreting in garbage heaps. As I looked out over the fields I felt my spirits expanding.
Places on our route, towns like Reading or Newbury, brought back the London mood for a while, but they were no more than dips in a graph of revival.
There is an inability to sustain the tragic mood, a phoenix quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part of the will to survive – yet, also, it has made it possible for us to engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over even an ocean of spilt milk – the spectacular must soon become the commonplace if life is to be supportable. Under a blue sky where a few clouds sailed like celestial icebergs the cities became a less oppressive memory, and the sense of living freshened us again like a clean wind. It does not, perhaps, excuse, but it does at least explain why from time to time I was surprised to find myself singing as I drove.
At Hungerford we stopped for more food and fuel. The feeling of release continued to mount as we passed through miles of untouched country. It did not seem lonely yet, only sleeping and friendly. Even the sight of occasional little groups of triffids swaying across a field, or of others resting with their roots dug into the soil held no hostility to spoil my mood. They were, once again, the simple objects of my suspended professional interest.
Short of Devizes we pulled up once more to consult the map. A little further on we turned down a side-road to the right, and drove into the village of Tynsham.
10
Tynsham
There was little likelihood of anyone missing the Manor. Beyond the few cottages which constituted the village of Tynsham the high wall of an estate ran beside the road. We followed it until we came to massive wrought-iron gates. Behind them stood a young woman on whose face the sober seriousness of responsibility had suppressed all human expression. She was equipped with a shotgun which she clasped in inappropriate places. I signalled to Coker to stop, and called to her as I drew up. Her mouth moved, but not a word penetrated the clatter of the engine. I switched off.
‘This is Tynsham Manor?’ I asked.
She was not giving that or anything else away.
‘Where are you from? And how many of you?’ she countered.
I could have wished that she did not fiddle about with her gun in just the way she did. Briefly, and keeping an eye on her uneasy fingers, I explained who we were, why we came, roughly what we carried, and guaranteed that there were no more of us hidden in the trucks. I doubted whether she was taking it in. Her eyes were fixed on mine with a mournfully speculative expression more common in bloodhounds, but not reassuring even there. My words did little to disperse that random suspicion which makes the highly conscientious so wearing. As she emerged to glance into the backs of the lorries and verify my statements, I hoped for her sake that she would not chance to encounter a party of whom her suspicions were justified. Admission that she was satisfied would have weakened her rôle of reliability, but she did eventually consent, still with reserve, to allow us in.
‘Take the right fork,’ she called up to me as I passed, and turned back at once to attend to the security of the gates. Beyond a short avenue of elms lay a park landscaped in the manner of the late eighteenth century and dotted with trees which had had space to expand into full magnificence. The house, when it came into view, was not a stately home in the architectural sense, but there was a lot of it. It rambled over a considerable ground area and through a variety of building styles as though none of its previous owners had been able to resist the temptation to leave his personal mark upon it. Each, while respecting the work of his forefathers, had apparently felt it incumbent upon him to express the spirit of his own age. A confident disregard of previous levels had resulted in a sturdy waywardness. It was inescapably a funny house, yet friendly, and reliable-looking.
The right fork led us to a wide courtyard where several vehicles stood already. Coach-houses and stables extended around it, seemingly over several acres. Coker drew up alongside me, and climbed down. There was no one in sight.
We made our way through the open rear door of the main building, and down a long corridor. At the end of it was a kitchen of baronial capacity where the warmth and smell of cooking lingered. From beyond a door on the far side came a murmur of voices and a clatter of plates, but we had to negotiate a further dark passage and another door before we reached them.
The place we entered had, I imagine, been the servants’ hall in the days when staffs were sufficiently large for the term to be no misnomer. It was spacious enough to seat a hundred or more at tables without crowding. The present occupants, seated on benches at two long trestles, I guessed to number between fifty and sixty, and it was clear at a glance that they were blind. While they sat patiently a few sighted persons were very busy. Over at a side-table three girls were industriously carving chickens. I went up to one of them.
‘We’ve just come,’ I said. ‘What do we do?’
She paused, still clutching her fork, and pushed back a lock of hair with the crook of her wrist.
‘It’ll help if one of you takes charge of the veg. and the other helps with the plates,’ she said.
I took command of two large tubs of potato and cabbage. In the intervals of doling them out I looked over the occupants of the hall. Josella was not amongst them – nor could I see any of the more notable characters among the group that had put forward its proposals at the University Building – though I fancied I had seen the faces of some of the women before.
The proportion of men was far higher than in the former group, and they were curiously assorted. A few of them might have been Londoners, or at least town-dwellers, but the majority wore a countryman’s working clothes. An exception to either kind was a middle-aged clergyman, but what every one of the men had in common was blindness.
The women were more diversified. Some were in town clothes quite unsuited to their surroundings, others were probably local. Among the latter group only one girl was sighted, but the former group comprised half a dozen or so who could see, and a number who, though blind, were not clumsy.
Coker, too, had been taking stock of the place.
‘Rum sort of set-up, this,’ he remarked, sotto voce to me. ‘Have you seen her yet?’
I shook my head, desolately aware that I had pinned more on the expectation of finding Josella there than I had admitted to myself.
‘Funny thing,’ he went on, ‘there’s practically none of the lot I took along with you – except that girl that’s carving up at the end there.’
‘Has she recognized you?’ I asked.
‘I think so. I got a sort of dirty look from her.’
When the carrying and serving had been completed we took our own plates, and found places at the table. There was nothing to complain of in the cooking or the food, and living out of cold cans for a week sharpens the appreciation, anyway. At the end of the meal there was a knocking on the table. The clergyman rose; he waited for silence before he spoke:
‘My friends, it is fitting that at the end of another day we should renew our thanks to God for His great mercy in preserving us in the midst of such disaster. I will ask you all to pray that He may look with compassion upon those who still wander alone in darkness, and that it may please Him to guide their feet hither that we may succour them. Let us all beseech Him that we may survive the trials and tribulations that lie ahead in order that in His time and with His aid we may succeed in playing our part in the rebuilding of a better world to His greater glory.’
He bowed his head.
‘Almighty and most merciful God…’
After the ‘amen’ he led a hymn. When that was finished the gathering sorted itself out into parties, each keeping touch with his neighbour, and four of the sighted girls led them out.
I lit a cigarette. Coker took one from me absentmindedly, without making any comment. A girl came across to us.
‘Will you help to clear up?’ she asked. ‘Miss Durrant will be back soon, I expect.’
‘Miss Durrant?’ I repeated.
‘She does the organizing,’ she explained. ‘You’ll be able to fix things up with her.’
It was an hour later and almost dark when we heard that Miss Durrant had returned. We found her in a small, study-like room lit only by two candles on the desk. I recognized her at once as the dark, thin-lipped woman who had spoken for the opposition at the meeting. For the moment, all her attention was concentrated on Coker. Her expression was no more amiable than upon the former occasion.
‘I am told,’ she said coldly, regarding Coker as though he were some kind of silt, ‘I am told that you are the man who organized the raid on the University Building?’
Coker agreed, and waited.
‘Then I may as well tell you, once and for all, that in our community here we have no use for brutal methods, and no intention of tolerating them.’
Coker smiled slightly. He answered her in his best middle-class speech:
‘It is a matter of viewpoint. Who is to judge who were the more brutal? – those who saw an immediate responsibility and stayed, or those who saw a further responsibility and cleared out?’
She continued to look hard at him. Her expression remained unchanged, but she was evidently forming a different judgement of the type of man she had to deal with. Neither his reply nor its manner had been quite what she had expected. She shelved that aspect for a time, and turned to me.
‘Were you in that, too?’ she asked.
I explained my somewhat negative part in the affair, and put my own question:
‘What happened to Michael Beadley, the Colonel, and the rest?’
It was not well received.
‘They have gone elsewhere,’ she said, sharply. ‘This is a clean, decent community with standards – Christian standards – and we intend to uphold them. We have no place here for people of loose views. Decadence, immorality, and lack of faith were responsible for most of the world’s ills. It is the duty of those of us who have been spared to see that we build a society where that does not happen again. The cynical and the clever-clever will find they are not wanted here, no matter what brilliant theories they may put forward to disguise their licentiousness and their materialism. We are a Christian community, and we intend to remain so.’ She looked at me challengingly.
‘So you split, did you?’ I said. ‘Where did they go?’
She replied, stonily:
‘They moved on, and we stayed here. That is what matters. So long as they keep their influence away from here they may work out their own damnation as they please. And since they choose to consider themselves superior to both the laws of God and civilized custom, I have no doubt that they will.’
She ended this declaration with a snap of the jaw which suggested that I should be wasting my time if I tried to question further, and turned back to Coker.
‘What can you do?’ she inquired.
‘A number of things,’ he said calmly. ‘I suggest that I make myself generally useful until I see where I am needed most.’
She hesitated, a little taken aback. It had clearly been her intention to make the decision and issue the instruction, but she changed her mind.
‘All right. Look round, and come and talk it over tomorrow evening,’ she said.
But Coker was not to be dismissed quite so easily. He wanted particulars of the size of the estate, the number of persons at present in the house, the proportion of sighted to blind, along with a number of other matters, and he got them.
Before we left, I put in a question about Josella. Miss Durrant frowned.
‘I seem to know that name. Now where – ? Oh, did she stand in the Conservative interest in the last election?’
‘I don’t think so. She – er – did write a book once,’ I admitted.
‘She – ’ she began. Then I saw recollection dawn. ‘Oh, oh that –! Well, really, Mr Masen, I can scarcely think she would be the sort of person to care for the kind of community we are building here.’
In the corridor outside Coker turned to me. There was just enough of the twilight left for me to see his grin.
‘A somewhat oppressive orthodoxy around these parts,’ he remarked. The grin disappeared as he added: ‘Rum type, you know. Pride and prejudice. She’s wanting help. She knows she needs it badly, but nothing’s going to make her admit it.’
He paused opposite an open door. It was almost too dark now to make out anything in the room, but when we had passed it before, there had been enough light to reveal it as a men’s dormitory.
‘I’m going in to have a word with these chaps. See you later.’
I watched him stroll into the room and greet it collectively with a cheerful ‘Wotcher, mates! ’Ow’s it going?’ and then made my own way back to the dining-hall.
The only light there came from three candles set close together on one table. Close beside them a girl peered exasperatedly at some mending.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Awful, isn’t it? How on earth did they manage to do anything after dark in the old days?’
‘Not such old days, either,’ I told her. ‘This is the future as well as the past – provided there’s somebody to show us how to make candles.’
‘I suppose so.’ She raised her head, and regarded me. ‘You came from London today?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘It’s bad there now?’
‘It’s finished,’ I said.
‘You must have seen some horrible sights there?’ she suggested.
‘I did,’ I said, briefly. ‘How long have you been here?’
She gave me the general picture of things without more encouragement.
Coker’s raid on the University Building had netted all but half a dozen of the sighted. She and Miss Durrant had been two of those overlooked. During the following day Miss Durrant had taken somewhat ineffective charge. There had been no question of their leaving right away, since only one among them had ever attempted to drive a lorry. During that day and most of the next they had been in almost the same relationship to their party as I was to mine away in Hampstead. But during the later part of the second day, Michael Beadley and two others returned, and during the night a few more had straggled back. By noon the day after that they had drivers for a dozen vehicles. They had decided that it was more prudent to leave forthwith than to wait on the chance that others would come.
Tynsham Manor had been chosen as a tentative destination for little better reason than that it was known to the Colonel as a place which could offer the compact seclusion which was one of the qualities they sought.
It had been an ill-assorted party, with its leaders well aware of the fact. The day after their arrival there had been a meeting, smaller, but otherwise not unsimilar to that held earlier in the University Building. Michael and his section had announced that there was much to be done, and that it was not their intention to waste their energies in pacifying a group which was shot through with petty prejudice and squabbles. The whole business was too big for that, and time too pressing. Florence Durrant agreed. What had happened to the world was warning enough. How anyone could be so blindly ungrateful for the miracle that had preserved them as even to contemplate the perpetuation of the subversive theories which had been undermining the Christian faith for a century, she was unable to understand. For her part, she had no wish to live in a community where one section would be continually striving to pervert the simple faith of those who were not ashamed to show their gratitude to God by keeping His laws. She was no less able to see that the situation was serious. The proper course was to pay full heed to the warning God had given, and turn at once to His teaching.
The division of parties, though clear, left them very uneven. Miss Durrant had found her supporters to consist of five sighted girls, a dozen or so blind girls, a few middle-aged men and women, also blind, and no sighted males whatever. In the circumstances there could be no doubt whatever that the section which would have to move must be Michael Beadley’s. With the lorries still loaded, there was little to delay them, and in the early afternoon they had driven away, leaving Miss Durrant and her followers to sink or swim by their principles.
Not until then had there been an opportunity to survey the potentialities of the Manor and its neighbourhood. The main part of the house had been closed, but in the servants’ quarters they found traces of recent occupation. Investigation of the kitchen garden later gave a pretty clear picture of what had happened to those who had been looking after the place. The bodies of a man, a woman, and a girl lay close together there in a scatter of spilled fruit. Nearby a couple of triffids waited patiently with their roots dug in. Close to the model farm at the far end of the estate was a similar state of affairs. Whether the triffids had found their way into the park through some open gate, or some undocked specimens already there had broken free, was not clear, but they were a menace to be dealt with quickly before they could do more damage. Miss Durrant had sent off one sighted girl to make a circuit of the wall, closing every door or gate, and herself had broken into the gun-room. Despite inexperience, she and another young woman had succeeded in blowing the top off every triffid they could find, to the number of twenty-six. No more had been seen within the enclosure, and it was hoped that no more existed there.
The following day’s investigation of the village had shown triffids about in considerable numbers. The surviving inhabitants were either those who had shut themselves into their houses to exist for as long as they could on what stores they had there, or those who had been lucky enough to encounter no triffids when they made brief foraging sorties. All who could be found had been collected and brought back to the Manor. They were healthy, and most of them were strong, but for the present at any rate, they were more of a burden than a help, for there was not one of them that could see.
Four more young women had arrived in the course of the day. Two had come driving a loaded lorry by turns, and bringing a blind girl with them. The other had been alone in a car. After a brief look round she had announced that she found the set-up lacking in appeal, and driven on. Of the several who continued to arrive over the next few days only two had stayed. All but two of the arrivals had been women. Most of the men, it seemed, had been more forthright and ruthless in extricating themselves from Coker’s group formations, and most of them had returned in time to join the original party.
Of Josella the girl could tell me nothing. Clearly she had never heard the name before, and my attempts at description roused no recollections.
While we were still talking, the electric lights in the room suddenly went on. The girl looked up at them with the awed expression of one receiving a revelation. She blew out the candles, and as she went on with her mending she looked up at the bulbs occasionally as if to make certain they were still there.
A few minutes later Coker strolled in.
‘That was you, I suppose?’ I said, nodding at the lights.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘They’ve got their own plant here. We might as well use up the petrol as let it evaporate.’
‘Do you mean to say we could have had lights all the time we’ve been here?’ asked the girl.
‘If you had just taken the trouble to start the engine,’ Coker said, looking at her. ‘If you wanted light, why didn’t you try to start it?’
‘I didn’t know it was there, besides, I don’t know anything about engines or electricity.’
Coker went on looking at her, thoughtfully.
‘So you just went on sitting in the dark,’ he remarked. ‘And how long do you think you are likely to survive if you just go on sitting in the dark when things need doing?’
She was stung by his tone.
‘It’s not my fault if I’m not any good at things like that.’
‘I’ll differ there,’ Coker told her. ‘It’s not only your fault – it’s a self-created fault. Moreover, it’s an affectation to consider yourself too spiritual to understand anything mechanical. It is a petty, and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him – and even her – brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to be praised: even in women it is a gap to be deplored.’
She looked understandably annoyed. Coker himself had been looking annoyed from the time he came in. She said:
‘That’s all very well, but different people’s minds work on different lines. Men understand how machines and electricity work. Women just aren’t much interested in that kind of thing as a rule.’
‘Don’t hand me a mess of myth and affectation; I’m not taking it,’ said Coker. ‘You know perfectly well that women can and do – or rather did – handle the most complicated and delicate machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally happens is that they’re too lazy to take the trouble unless they have to. Why should they bother when the tradition of appealing helplessness can be rationalized as a womanly virtue – and the job just shoved off on to somebody else? Ordinarily it’s a pose that it’s not worth anyone’s while to debunk. In fact, it has been fostered. Men have played up to it by stoutly repairing the poor darling’s vacuum cleaner, and capably replacing the blown fuse. The whole charade has been acceptable to both parties. Tough practicality complements spiritual delicacy and charming dependence – and he is the mug who gets his hands dirty.’
He lunged on, well started now:
‘Hitherto we have been able to afford to amuse ourselves with that kind of mental laziness and parasitism. In spite of generations of talk about the equality of the sexes there has been much too great a vested interest in dependence for women to dream of dropping it. They have made a minimum of necessary modifications to changing conditions, but they have always been minimum – and grudged, at that.’ He paused. ‘You doubt that? Well, consider the fact that both the pert chit and the intellectual woman worked the higher-sensibility gag in their different ways – but when a war came and brought with it a social obligation and sanction both could be trained into competent engineers.’
‘They weren’t good engineers,’ she remarked. ‘Everybody says that.’
‘Ah, the defensive mechanism in action. Let me point out that it was in nearly everybody’s interest to say so. All the same,’ he admitted, ‘to some extent that was true. And why? Because nearly all of them not only had to learn hurriedly and without proper groundwork, but they had also to unlearn the habits carefully fostered for years of thinking such interests alien to them, and too gross for their delicate natures.’
‘I don’t see why you have to come and pitch on me with all this,’ she said. ‘I’m not the only one who didn’t start the wretched engine.’
Coker grinned.
‘You’re quite right. It’s unfair. It was simply finding the engine there ready to work and nobody doing a thing about it that started me off. Dumb futility gets me that way.’
‘Then I think you might have said all that to Miss Durrant instead of to me.’
‘Don’t worry, I shall. But it isn’t just her affair. It’s yours – and everyone else’s. I mean that, you know. Times have changed rather radically. You can’t any longer say: “Oh, dear, I don’t understand this kind of thing,” and leave it to someone else to do for you. Nobody is going to be muddle-headed enough to confuse ignorance with innocence now – it’s too important. Nor is ignorance going to be cute or funny any more. It is going to be dangerous, very dangerous. Unless all of us get around as soon as we can to understanding a lot of things in which we had no previous interest, neither we nor those who depend on us are going to get through this lot.’
‘I don’t see why you need to pour all your contempt for women on to me – just because of one dirty old engine,’ she said, peevishly.
Coker raised his eyes.
‘Great God! And here have I been explaining that women have all the capacities if they only take the trouble to use them.’
‘You said we were parasites. That wasn’t at all a nice thing to say.’
‘I’m not trying to say nice things. And what I did say 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 – ?’
‘The engine just happened to be a symbol. The point is we’ll all have to learn not simply what we like, but as much as we can about running a community and supporting it. The men can’t just fill in a voting paper and hand the job to someone else. And it will no longer be considered that a woman has fulfilled all her social obligations when she has prevailed upon some man to support her and provide her with a niche where she can irresponsibly produce babies for somebody else to educate.’
‘Well, I don’t see what that has to do with engines…’
‘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 Coker 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.