Coker watched her leave. When the door closed he expressed his feelings with a fish-porter’s fluency. I laughed.
‘What did you expect?’ I said. ‘You prance in and address the girl as if she were a public meeting of delinquents – and responsible for the whole western social system, as well. And then you’re surprised when she’s huffed.’
‘You’d expect her to see reason,’ he muttered.
‘I don’t see why. Most of us don’t – we see habit. She’ll oppose any modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously trained feelings of what is right and polite – and be quite honestly convinced that she’s showing steadfast strength of character. You’re in too much of a hurry. Show a man the Elysian Fields when he’s just lost his home, and he’ll think mighty little of them: leave him there a bit, and he’ll begin to think home was like them, only cosier. She’ll adapt in time as she has to – and continue to deny with conviction that she’s done so.’
‘In other words, just improvise as necessary. Don’t try to plan anything. That won’t take us far.’
‘That’s where leadership comes in. The leader does the planning, but he’s wise enough not to say so. As the changes become necessary, he slips them in as a concession – temporary, of course – to circumstances, but if he’s good, he’s slipping in the right bits for the ultimate shape. There are always overwhelming objections to any plan, but concessions have to be made to emergencies.’
‘Sounds Machiavellian to me. I like to see what I’m aiming at, and go straight for it.’
‘Most people don’t, even though they’d protest that they do. They prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one it’s always due to something or somebody else. This going headlong for things is a mechanistic view, and people in general aren’t machines. They have minds of their own – mostly peasant minds, at their easiest when they are in the familiar furrow.’
‘It doesn’t sound as if you’d bet much on Beadley’s chance of making a go of it. He’s all plan.’
‘He’ll have his troubles. But his party did choose. This lot is negative,’ I pointed out. ‘It is simply here on account of its resistance to any kind of plan.’ I paused. Then I added: ‘That girl was right about one thing, you know. You would be better off with his lot. Her reaction is a sample of what you’d get all round if you were to try to handle this lot your way. You can’t drive a flock of sheep to market in a dead straight line, but there are ways of getting ’em there.’
‘You’re being unusually cynical, as well as metaphorical this evening,’ Coker observed.
I objected to that.
‘It isn’t cynical to have noticed how a shepherd handles his sheep.’
‘To regard human beings as sheep might be thought so by some.’
‘But less cynical and much more rewarding than regarding them as a lot of chassis fitted for remote thought control.’
‘H’m,’ said Coker, ‘I’ll have to consider the implications of that.’
11
…And Further On
My next morning was desultory. I looked around, I lent a hand here and there, and asked a lot of questions.
It had been a wretched night. Until I lay down, I had not fully realized the extent to which I had counted on finding Josella at Tynsham. Weary though I was after the day’s journey, I could not sleep; I lay awake in the darkness feeling stranded and planless. So confidently had I assumed that she and the Beadley party would be there that there had been no reason to consider any scheme beyond joining them. It now came home to me for the first time that even if I did succeed in catching up with them I still might not find her. As she had only left Westminster district a short time before I arrived there in search of her, she must in any case have been well behind the main party. Obviously the thing to do was to make detailed inquiries regarding everyone who had arrived at Tynsham during the previous two days.
For the present I must assume that she had come this way. It was my only lead. And that meant assuming also that she had gone back to the University and had found the chalked address – whereas, it was quite on the cards that she had not gone there at all, but, sickened by the whole thing, had taken the quickest route out of the reeking place that London had become.
The thing I had to fight hardest against admitting was that she might have caught the disease, whatever it was, that had dissolved both our groups. I would not consider the possibility of that until I had to.
In the sleepless clarity of the small hours I made one discovery – it was that my desire to join the Beadley party was very secondary indeed to my wish to find Josella. If, when I did find them, she was not with them…well, the next move would have to wait upon the moment, but it would not be resignation…
Coker’s bed was already empty when I awoke, and I decided to devote my morning chiefly to inquiries. One of the troubles was that it did not seem to have occurred to anyone to take note of the names of those who had found Tynsham uninviting, and had passed on. Josella’s name meant nothing to anyone save those few who recollected it with disapproval. My description of her raised no memories that would stand detailed examination. Certainly there had been no girl in a navy-blue ski-suit – that I established, but then, I could by no means be certain that she would still be dressed in that way. My inquiries ended by making everyone very tired of me and increasing my frustration. There was a faint possibility that a girl who had come and gone a day before our arrival might have been she, but I could not feel it likely that Josella could have left so slight an impression on anyone’s mind – even allowing for prejudice…
Coker reappeared again at the midday meal. He had been engaged on an extensive survey of the premises. He had taken a tally of the livestock and the number of blind among it. Inspected the farm equipment and machinery. Found out about the source of pure water supplies. Looked into the stores of feed, both human and stock. Discovered how many of the blind girls had been afflicted before the catastrophe, and arranged classes of the others for them to train as best they could.
He had found most of the men plunged in gloom by a well-meant assurance from the vicar that there would be plenty of useful things for them to do such as – er – basket-making, and – er – weaving, and he had done his best to dispel it with more hopeful prospects. Encountering Miss Durrant, he had told her that unless it could somehow be contrived that the blind women should take part of the work off the shoulders of the sighted the whole thing would break down within ten days, and also, that if the vicar’s prayer for more blind people to join them should happen to be granted the place would become entirely unworkable. He was embarking upon further observations, including the necessity for starting immediately to build up food reserves, and to begin the construction of devices which would enable blind men to do useful work, when she cut him short. He could see that she was a great deal more worried than she would admit, but the determination which had led her to sever relations with the other party caused her to blaze back at him unthankfully. She ended by letting him know that on her information neither he nor his views were likely to harmonize with the community.
‘The trouble about that woman is that she means to be boss,’ he said. ‘It’s constitutional – quite apart from the lofty principles.’
‘Slanderous,’ I said. ‘What you mean is that her principles are so impeccable that everything is her responsibility – and so it becomes her duty to guide others.’
‘Much the same thing,’ he said.
‘But it sounds a lot better,’ I pointed out.
He was thoughtful for a moment.
‘She’s going to run this place into one hell of a mess unless she gets right down to the job of organizing it pretty quickly. Have you looked the outfit over?’
I shook my head. I told him how my morning had been spent.
‘You don’t seem to have got much change for it. So what?’ he said.
‘I’m going on after the Michael Beadley crowd,’ I told him.
‘And if she’s not with them?’
‘At present I’m just hoping she is. She must be. Where else would she be?’
He started to say something, and stopped. Then he went on:
‘I reckon I’ll come along with you. It’s likely that crowd won’t be any more glad to see me than this one, considering everything – but I can live that down. I’ve watched one lot fall to bits, and I can see this one’s going to do the same – more slowly, and, maybe, more nastily. It’s queer, isn’t it? Decent intentions seem to be the most dangerous things around just now. It’s a damned shame because this place could be managed, in spite of the proportion of blind. Everything it needs is lying about for the taking, and will be for a while yet. It’s only organizing that’s wanted.’
‘And willingness to be organized,’ I suggested.
‘That, too,’ he agreed. ‘You know, the trouble is that in spite of all that’s happened this thing hasn’t got home to these people yet. They don’t want to turn to – that’d be making it too final. At the back of their minds they’re all camping out, hanging on, and waiting for something or other.’
‘True – but scarcely surprising,’ I admitted. ‘It took plenty to convince us, and they’ve not seen what we have. And, somehow, it does seem less final and less – less immediate out here in the country.’
‘Well they’ve got to start realizing it soon if they’re going to get through,’ Coker said, looking round the hall again. ‘There’s no miracle coming to save them.’
‘Give ’em time. They’ll come to it, as we did. You’re always in such a hurry. Time’s no longer money, you know.’
‘Money isn’t important any longer, but time is. They ought to be thinking about the harvest, rigging a mill to grind flour, seeing about winter feed for the stock.’
I shook my head.
‘It’s not as urgent as all that, Coker. There must be huge stocks of flour in the towns, and, by the look of things, mighty few of us to use it. We can live on capital for a long while yet. Surely the immediate job is to teach the blind how to work before they really have to get down to it.’
‘All the same, unless something is done, the sighted ones here are going to crack up. It only needs that to happen to one or two of them, and the place’ll be in a proper mess.’
I had to concede that.
Later in the afternoon I managed to find Miss Durrant. No one else seemed to know or care where Michael Beadley and his lot had gone, but I could not believe that they had not left behind some indications for those who might follow. Miss Durrant was not pleased. At first I thought she was going to refuse to tell me. It was not due solely to my implied preference for other company. The loss of even an uncongenial able-bodied man was serious in the circumstances. Nevertheless, she preferred not to show the weakness of asking me to stay. In the end she said curtly:
‘They were intending to make for somewhere near Beaminster in Dorset. I can tell you no more than that.’
I went back and told Coker. He looked around him. Then he shook his head, though with a touch of regret.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll check out of this dump tomorrow.’
‘Spoken like a pioneer,’ I told him. ‘ – At least, more like a pioneer than an Englishman.’
*
Nine o’clock the next morning saw us already twelve miles or so on our road, and travelling as before in our two lorries. There had been a question whether we should not take a handier vehicle and leave the trucks for the benefit of the Tynsham people, but I was reluctant to abandon mine. I had personally collected the contents, and knew what was in it. Apart from the case of anti-triffid gear which Michael Beadley had so disapproved, I had given myself slightly wider scope on the last load, and there was a selection of things made with consideration of what might be difficult to find outside a large town; such things as a small lighting set, some pumps, cases of good tools. All these things would be available later for the taking, but there was going to be an interlude when it would be advisable to keep away from towns of any size. The Tynsham people had the means to fetch supplies from towns where there was no sign yet of the disease. A couple of loads would not make a great deal of difference to them either way, so, in the end, we went as we had come.
The weather still held good. On the higher ground there was still little taint in the fresh air, though most villages had become unpleasant. Rarely we saw a still figure lying in a field or by the roadside, but just as in London, the main instinct seemed to have been to hide away in shelter of some kind. Most of the villages showed empty streets, and the countryside around them was as deserted as if the whole human race and most of its animals had been spirited away. Until we came to Steeple Honey.
From our road we had a view of the whole of Steeple Honey as we descended the hill. It clustered at the further end of a stone bridge which arched across a small, sparkling river. It was a quiet little place centred round a sleepy-looking church, and stippled off at its edges with whitewashed cottages. It did not look as if anything had occurred in a century or more to disturb the quiet life under its thatched roofs. But like other villages it was now without stir or smoke. And then, when we were half-way down the hill, a movement caught my eye.
On the left, at the far end of the bridge one house stood slightly aslant from the road so that it faced obliquely towards us. An inn sign hung from a bracket on its wall, and from the window immediately above that something white was being waved. As we came closer I could see the man who was leaning out and frantically flagging us with a towel. I judged that he must be blind, otherwise he would have come out into the road to intercept us. He was waving too vigorously for a sick man.
I signalled back to Coker, and pulled up as we cleared the bridge. The man at the window dropped his towel. He shouted something which I could not hear above the noise of the engines, and disappeared. We both switched off. It was so quiet that we could hear the clumping of the man’s feet on the wooden stairs inside the house. The door opened, and he stepped out, holding both hands before him. Like lightning something whipped out of the hedge on his left, and struck him. He gave a single, high-pitched shout, and dropped where he stood.
I picked up my shotgun, and climbed out of the cab. I circled a little until I could make out the triffid skulking in the shadows of a bush. Then I blew the top off it.
Coker was out of his truck, too, and standing close beside me. He looked at the man on the ground, and then at the shorn triffid.
‘It was – no, damn it, it can’t have been waiting for him?’ he said. ‘It must just have happened…It couldn’t have known he’d come out of that door…I mean, it couldn’t – could it?’
‘Or could it? It was a remarkably neat piece of work,’ I said.
Coker turned uneasy eyes on me.
‘Too damn neat. You don’t really believe…?’
‘There’s a kind of conspiracy not to believe things about triffids,’ I said, and added: ‘There might be more around here.’
We looked the adjacent cover over carefully, and drew blank.
‘I could do with a drink,’ suggested Coker.
But for the dust on the counter, the small bar of the inn looked normal. We poured a whisky each. Coker downed his in one. He turned a worried look on me.
‘I didn’t like that. Not at all, I didn’t. You ought to know a lot more about these bloody things than most people, Bill. It wasn’t – I mean, it must just have happened to be there, mustn’t it?’
‘I think – ’ I began. Then I stopped, listening to the staccato drumming outside. I walked over and opened the window. I let the already trimmed triffid have the other barrel, too; this time just above the bole. The drumming stopped.
‘The trouble about triffids,’ I said, as we poured another drink, ‘is chiefly the things we don’t know about them.’ I told him one or two of Walter’s theories. He started.
‘You don’t seriously suggest that they’re “talking” when they make that rattling noise?’
‘I’ve never made up my mind,’ I admitted. ‘I’ll go so far as to say I’m sure it’s a signal of some sort. But Walter considered it to be real “talk” – and he did know more about them than anyone else that I know.’
I ejected the two spent cartridge cases, and reloaded.
‘And he actually mentioned their advantage over a blind man?’
‘A number of years ago, that was,’ I pointed out.
‘Still – it’s a funny coincidence.’
‘Impulsive as ever,’ I said. ‘Pretty nearly any stroke of fate can be made to look like a funny coincidence if you try hard enough and wait long enough.’
We drank up, and turned to go. Coker glanced out of the window. Then he caught my arm, and pointed. Two triffids had swayed round the corner, and were making for the hedge which had been the hiding-place of the first. I waited until they paused, and then decapitated both of them. We left by the window, which was out of range of any triffid cover, and looked about us carefully as we approached the lorries.
‘Another coincidence? Or were they coming to see what had happened to their pal?’ asked Coker.
We cleared the village, running on along small, cross-country roads. There seemed to me to be more triffids about now than we had seen on our previous journey – or was it that I had been made more conscious of them? It might have been that in travelling hitherto chiefly by main roads we had encountered fewer. I knew from experience that they tended to avoid a hard surface, and thought that it perhaps caused them some discomfort in their limb-like roots. Now I began to be convinced that we were seeing more of them, and I started to get an idea that they were not entirely indifferent to us – though it was not possible to be sure whether those that we saw approaching across fields from time to time just happened to be coming in our direction.
A more decisive incident occurred when one slashed at me from the hedgerow as I passed. Luckily it was inexpert in its aim at a moving vehicle. It let fly a moment too soon, and left its print in little dots of poison across the windscreen. I was past before it could strike again. But thenceforward, in spite of the warmth, I drove with the nearside window closed.
During the past week or more I had given thought to the triffids only when I encountered them. Those I had seen at Josella’s home had worried me as had the others that had attacked our group near Hampstead Heath, but most of the time there had been more immediate things to worry about. But, looking back now over our trip, the state of things at Tynsham before Miss Durrant had taken steps to clear it up with shotguns, and the condition of the villages we had passed through, I began to wonder just how big a part the triffids might have been playing in the disappearance of the inhabitants.
In the next village I drove slowly, and looked carefully. In several of the front gardens I could see bodies lying as they had evidently lain for some days – and almost always there was a triffid discernible close by. It looked as if the triffids only ambushed in places where there was soft earth for them to dig their roots into while they waited. One seldom saw a body, and never a triffid in those parts where the house-doors opened straight into the street.
At a guess I would say that what had happened in most of the villages was that the inhabitants emerging for food moved in comparative safety while they were in paved areas, but the moment they left them, or even passed close to a garden wall or fence, they stood in danger of the stings slashing out at them. Some would cry out as they were struck, and when they did not come back those who remained would grow more afraid. Now and then another would be driven out by hunger. A few might be lucky enough to get back, but most would lose themselves and wander on until they dropped, or came within range of a triffid. Those who were left might, perhaps, guess what was happening. Where there was a garden they might have heard the swish of the sting, and known that they faced the alternatives of starvation in the house or the same fate that had overtaken the others who had left it. Many would remain there, living on what food they had while they waited for help that was never going to come. Something like that must have been the predicament of the man in the inn at Steeple Honey.
The likelihood that in the other villages we were passing through there might still be houses in which isolated groups had managed to keep going was not a pleasant thought. It raised again the same kind of question that we had faced in London – the feeling that one should, by all civilized standards, try to find them and do something for them; and the frustrating knowledge of the frittering decline which would overtake any such attempt as it had before.
The same old question. What could one do, with the best will in the world, but prolong the anguish? Placate one’s conscience for a while again, just to see the result of the effort wasted once more.
It was not, I had to tell myself firmly, any good at all going into an earthquake area while the buildings were still falling – the rescue and the salvage had to be done when the tremors had stopped. But reason did not make it easy. The old doctor had been only too right when he stressed the difficulties of mental adaptation…
The triffids were a complication on an unexpected scale. There were, of course, very many nurseries besides our own company’s plantations. They raised them for us, for private buyers, or for sale to a number of lesser trades where their derivatives were used, and the majority of them were, for climatic reasons, situated in the south. Nevertheless, if what we had already seen was a fair sample of the way they had broken loose and distributed themselves they must have been far more numerous than I had supposed. The prospect of more of them reaching maturity every day and of the docked specimens steadily regrowing their stings was far from reassuring…
With only two more stops, one for food and the other for fuel, we made good time, and ran into Beaminster about half past four in the afternoon. We had come right into the centre of the town without having seen a sign to suggest the presence of the Beadley party.
At first glimpse the place was as void of life as any other we had seen that day. The main shopping street when we entered it was bare and empty save for a couple of lorries drawn up on one side. I had led the way down it for perhaps twenty yards when a man stepped out from behind one of the lorries, and levelled a rifle. He fired deliberately over my head, and then lowered his aim.
12
Dead End
That’s the kind of warning I don’t debate about. I pulled up.
The man was large and fair-haired. He handled his rifle with familiarity. Without taking it out of the aim, he jerked his head twice sideways. I accepted that as a sign to climb down. When I had done so, I displayed my empty hands. Another man, accompanied by a girl, emerged from behind the stationary lorry as I approached it. Coker’s voice called from behind me:
‘Better put up that rifle, chum. You’re all in the open.’
The fair man’s eyes left mine to search for Coker. I could have jumped him then if I’d wanted to, but I said:
‘He’s right. Anyway, we’re peaceful.’
The man lowered his rifle, not quite convinced. Coker emerged from the cover of my lorry which had hidden his exit from his own.
‘What’s the big idea? Dog eat dog?’ he inquired.
‘Only two of you?’ the second man asked.
Coker looked at him.
‘What would you be expecting? A convention? Yes, just two of us.’
The trio visibly relaxed. The fair man explained:
‘We thought you might be a gang from a city. We’ve been expecting them here raiding for food.’
‘Oh,’ said Coker. ‘From which we assume that you’ve not taken a look at any city lately. If that’s your only worry, you might as well forget it. What gangs there are, are more likely to be working the other way round – at present. In fact, doing – if I may say so – just what you are.’
‘You don’t think they’ll come?’
‘I’m darned sure they won’t.’ He regarded the three. ‘Do you belong to Beadley’s lot?’ he asked.
The response was convincingly blank.
‘Pity,’ said Coker. ‘That’d have been our first real stroke of luck in quite a time.’
‘What is or are Beadley’s lot?’ inquired the fair man.
I was feeling wilted and dry after some hours in the driving cab with the sun on it. I suggested that we might remove discussion from the middle of the street to some more congenial spot. We passed round their vans through a familiar litter of cases of biscuits, chests of tea, sides of bacon, sacks of sugar, blocks of salt, and all the rest of it to a small bar-parlour next door. Over pint pots Coker and I gave them a short résumé of what we’d done and what we knew. Then it was their turn.
They were, it seemed, the more active half of a party of six – the other two women and a man being stationed at the house they had taken over for a base.
Around the noon of Tuesday, 7 May, the fair-haired man and the girl with him had been travelling westwards in his car. They had been on their way to spend a two weeks’ holiday in Cornwall, and making pretty good time until a double-decker bus emerged from a turning somewhere near Crewkerne. The car had made contact with it in a decisive way, and the last thing the fair-haired young man remembered was a horrified glimpse of the bus looking as tall as a cliff, and heeling over right above them.
He had wakened up in bed to find, much as I had, a mysterious silence all about him. Apart from soreness, a few cuts, and a thumping head, there didn’t appear to be a lot wrong with him. When, as he said, nobody kept on coming, he had investigated the place, and found it to be a small cottage-hospital. In one ward he had found the girl and two other women, one of whom was conscious, but incapacitated by a leg and an arm in plaster. In another were two men – one of them his present companion, the other suffering from a broken leg, also in plaster. Altogether there had been eleven people in the place, eight of whom were sighted. Of the blind, two were bed-ridden and seriously ill. Of the staff there was no sign at all. His experience had been, to begin with, more baffling than mine. They had stayed in the little hospital, doing what they could for the helpless, wondering what went on, and hoping that someone would show up to help. They had no idea what was wrong with the two blind patients nor how to treat them. They could do nothing but feed and try to ease them. Both had died the next day. One man disappeared, and no one had seen him go. Those who were there for injuries suffered when the bus had overturned were local people. Once they were sufficiently recovered, they set out to find relatives. The party had dwindled down to six, two of whom had broken limbs.
By now they had realized that the breakdown was big enough to mean that they must fend for themselves for a time at least, but they were still far from grasping its full extent. They decided to leave the hospital and find some more convenient place, for they imagined that many more sighted people would exist in the cities and that the disorganization would have brought mob rule. Daily they were expecting the arrival of these mobs when the food stores in the towns should be finished, and had pictured them moving like a locust army across the countryside. Their chief concern, therefore, had been to gather supplies in preparation for a siege.
With our assurances that that was the least likely thing to happen, they looked at one another a little bleakly.
They were an oddly assorted trio. The fair-haired man turned out to be a member of the Stock Exchange by the name of Stephen Brennell. His companion was a good-looking, well-built girl with an occasional superficial petulance, but no real surprise over whatever life might hand her next. She had led one of those fringe careers – modelling dresses, selling them, putting in movie-extra work, missing opportunities of going to Hollywood, hostessing for obscure clubs, and helping out these activities by such other means as offered themselves – the intended holiday in Cornwall being apparently one such. She had an utterly unshakeable conviction that nothing serious could have happened to America, and that it was only a matter of holding out for a while until the Americans arrived to put everything in order. She was quite the least troubled person I had encountered since the catastrophe took place. Though just occasionally she pined a little for the bright lights which she hoped the Americans would hurry up and restore.
The third member, the dark young man, nursed a grudge. He had worked hard and saved hard in order to start his small radio store, and he had ambitions. ‘Look at Ford,’ he told us, ‘and look at Lord Nuffield – he started with a bike shop no bigger than my radio store, and see where he got to! That’s the kind of thing I was going to do. And now look at the damned mess things are in! It ain’t fair!’ Fate, as he saw it, didn’t want any more Fords or Nuffields – but he didn’t intend to take that lying down. This was only an interval sent to try him – one day would see him back in his radio store with his foot set firmly on the first rung to millionairedom.
The most disappointing thing about them was to find that they knew nothing of the Michael Beadley party. Indeed, the only group they had encountered was in a village just over the Devon border where a couple of men with shotguns had advised them not to come that way again. Those men, they said, were obviously local. Coker suggested that that meant a small group.
‘If they had belonged to a large one they’d have shown less nervousness and more curiosity,’ he maintained. ‘But if the Beadley lot are round here, we ought to be able to find them somehow.’ He put it to the fair man: ‘Look here, suppose we come along with you? We can do our whack, and when we do find them it will make things easier for all of us.’
The three of them looked questioningly at one another, and then nodded.
‘All right. Give us a hand with the loading, and we’ll be getting along,’ the man agreed.