by John Wyndham
“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 bushed 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, 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 a little.
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 to 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 windowpane. 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 toward 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 favor 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 things and experimental stations a little farther 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 toward the gate. I leaned 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 one—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 Londonward again.
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 toward us at a stumbling run, with their arms outstretched before them. A mingled crying and screaming came from them. Even as we came 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 stems swaying beyond the panic-stricken heads. I accelerated and swung off into a byroad.
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 grew 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 them, 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 ourselves had 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 o
ur way along 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 wagon, 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 apartment. 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 that the trammels of convention still defy the peculiar circumstances, well, maybe we could make it two apartments.”
“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 apartment 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 that: it’s all anyone seems to remember 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.”
There was, as I had expected, no great difficulty about the apartment. We left the car locked up in the middle of the road in front of an opulent-looking block and climbed to the third story. Quite why we chose the third I can’t say, except that it seemed a bit more out of the way. The process of selection was simple. We knocked or we rang, and if anyone answered, we passed on. After we had passed on three times we found a door where there was no response. The socket of the rim lock tore off to one good heft of the shoulder, and we were in.
I myself had not been one of those addicted to living in an apartment with a rent of some two thousand pounds a year, but I found that there were decidedly things to be said in favor of it. The interior decorators had been, I guessed, elegant young men with just that ingenious gift for combining taste with advanced topicality which is so expensive. Consciousness of fashion was the mainspring of the place. Here and there were certain unmistakable derniers cris, some of them undoubtedly destined—had the world pursued its expected course—to become the rage of tomorrow; others, I would say, a dead loss from their very inception. The over-all effect was Trade Fair in its neglect of human foibles—a book left a few inches out of place or with the wrong color on its jacket would ruin the whole carefully considered balance and tone—so, too, would the person thoughtless enough to wear the wrong clothes when sitting upon the wrong luxurious chair or sofa. I turned to Josella, who was staring wide-eyed at it all.
“Will this little shack serve—or do we go farther?” I asked.
“Oh, I guess we’ll make out,” she said. And together we waded through the delicate cream carpet to explore.
It was quite uncalculated, but I could scarcely have hit upon a more satisfactory method of taking her mind off the events of the day. Our tour was punctuated with a series of exclamations in which admiration, envy, delight, contempt, and, one must confess, malice all played their parts. Josella paused on the threshold of a room rampant with all the most aggressive manifestations of femininity.
“I’ll sleep here,” she said.
“My God!” I remarked. “Well, each to her taste.”
“Don’t be nasty. I probably won’t have another chance to be decadent. Besides, don’t you know there’s a bit of the dumbest film star in every girl? So I’ll let it have its final fling.”
“You shall,” I said. “But I hope they keep something quieter around here. Heaven preserve me from having to sleep in a bed with a mirror set in the ceiling over it.”
“There’s one above the bath too,” she said, looking into an adjoining room.
“I don’t know whether that would be the zenith or nadir of decadence,” I said. “But anyway, you’ll not be using it. No hot water.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten that. What a shame!” she exclaimed disappointedly.
We completed our tour of the premises, finding the rest less sensational. Then she went out to deal with the matter of clothes. I made an inspection of the apartment’s resources and limitations and then set out on an expedition of my own.
As I stepped outside, another door farther down the passage opened. I stopped, and stood still where I was. A young man came out, leading a fair-haired girl by the hand. As she stepped over the threshold he released his grasp.
“Wait just a minute, darling,” he said.
He took three or four steps on the silencing carpet. His outstretched hands found the window which ended the passage. His fingers went straight to the catch and opened it. I had a glimpse of a low-railed, ornamental balcony outside.
“What are you doing, Jimmy?” she asked.
“Just making sure,” he said, stepping quickly back to her and feeling for her hand again. “Come along, darling.”
She hung back.
“Jimmy—I don’t like leaving here. At least we know where we are in our own apartment. How are we going to feed? How are we going to live?”
“In the apartment, darling, we shan’t feed at all—and therefore not live long. Come along, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid.”
“But I am, Jimmy—I am.”
She clung to him, and he put one arm round her.
“We’ll be all right, darling. Come along.”
“But, Jimmy, tha
t’s the wrong way—”
“You’ve got it twisted round, dear. It’s the right way.”
“Jimmy—I’m so frightened. Let’s go back.”
“It’s too late, darling.”
By the window he paused. With one hand he felt his position very carefully. Then he put both arms round her, holding her to him.
“Too wonderful to last, perhaps,” he said softly. “I love you, my sweet. I love you so very, very much.”
She tilted her lips up to be kissed.
As he lifted her he turned, and stepped out of the window.
“You’ve got to grow a hide,” I told myself. “Got to. Its either that or stay permanently drunk. Things like that must be happening all around. They’ll go on happening. You can’t help it. Suppose you’d given them food to keep them alive for another few days? What after that? You’ve got to learn to take it, and come to terms with it. There’s nothing else but the alcoholic funk hole. If you don’t fight to live your own life in spite of it, there won’t be any survival…. Only those who can make their minds tough enough to stick it are going to get through….”
It took me longer than I had expected to collect what I wanted. Something like two hours had passed before I got back. I dropped one or two things from my armful in negotiating the door. Josella’s voice called, with a trace of nervousness, from that overfeminine room.
“Only me,” I reassured her as I advanced down the passage with the load.
I dumped the things in the kitchen and went back for for those I’d dropped. Outside her door I paused.
“You can’t come in.” she said.
“That wasn’t quite my intended angle,” I protested. “What I want to know is, can you cook?”
“Boiled-egg standard,” said her muffled voice.
“I was afraid of that. There’s an awful lot of things we’re going to have to learn,” I told her.