by John Wyndham
I went back to the kitchen. I erected the kerosene stove I had brought on top of the useless electric cooker and got busy.
When I’d finished laying the places at the small table in the sitting room the effect seemed to me fairly good. I fetched a few candles and candlesticks to complete it, and set them ready. Of Josella there was still no visible sign, though there had been sounds of running water some little time ago. I called her.
“Just coming,” she answered.
I wandered across to the window and looked out Quite consciously I began saying good-by to it all. The sun was low. Towers, spires, and façades of Portland stone were white or pink against the dimming sky. More fires had broken out here and there. The smoke climbed in big black smudges, sometimes with a lick of flame at the bottom of them. Quite likely, I told myself, I would never in my life again see any of these familiar buildings after tomorrow. There might be a time when one would be able to come back—but not to the same place. Fires and weather would have worked on it; it would be visibly dead and abandoned. But now, at a distance, it could still masquerade as a living city.
My father once told me that before Hitler’s war he used to go round London with his eyes more widely open than ever before, seeing the beauties of buildings that he had never noticed before—and saying good-by to them. And now I had a similar feeling. But this was something worse. Much more than anyone could have hoped for had survived that war—but this was an enemy they would not survive. It was not wanton smashing and willful burning that they waited for this time: it was simply the long, slow, inevitable course of decay and collapse.
Standing there, and at that time, my heart still resisted what my head was telling me. Still I had the feeling that it was all something too big, too unnatural really to happen. Yet I knew that it was by no means the first time that it had happened. The corpses of other great cities are lying buried in deserts and obliterated by the jungles of Asia. Some of them fell so long ago that even their names have gone with them. But to those who lived there their dissolution can have seemed no more probable or possible than the necrosis of a great modern city seemed to me….
It must be, I thought, one of the race’s most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that “it can’t happen here”—that one’s own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was happening here. Unless there should be some miracle, I was looking on the beginning of the end of London—and very likely, it seemed, there were other men, not unlike me, who were looking at the beginning of the end of New York, Paris, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Bombay, and all the rest of the cities that were destined to go the way of those others under the jungles.
I was still looking out when a sound of movement came from behind me. I turned, and saw that Josella had come into the room. She was wearing a long, pretty frock of palest blue georgette with a little jacket of white fur. In a pendant on a simple chain a few blue-white diamonds flashed; the stones that gleamed in her ear clips were smaller but as fine in color. Her hair and her face might have been fresh from a beauty parlor. She crossed the floor with a flicker of silver slippers and a glimpse of gossamer stockings. As I went on staring without speaking, her mouth lost its little smile.
“Don’t you like it?” she asked with childish half disappointment
“It’s lovely—you’re beautiful,” I told her. “I—well, I just wasn’t expecting anything like this….”
Something more was needed. I knew that it was a display which had little or nothing to do with me. I added:
“You’re—saying good-by?”
A different look came into her eyes.
“So you do understand. I hoped you would.”
“I think I do. I’m glad you’ve done it It’ll be a lovely thing to remember,” I said.
I stretched out my hand to her and led her to the window.
“I was saying good-by too—to all this”
What went on in her mind as we stood there side by side is her secret. In mine there was a kind of kaleidoscope of the life and ways that were now finished—or perhaps it was more like flipping through a huge volume of photographs with one, all-comprehensive “do-you-remember?”
We looked for a long time, lost in our thoughts. Then she sighed. She glanced down at her dress, fingering the delicate silk.
“Silly? Rome burning?” she said with a rueful little smile.
“No—sweet,” I said. “Thank you for doing it. A gesture—and a reminder that with all the faults there was so much beauty. You couldn’t have done—or looked—a lovelier thing.”
Her smile lost its ruefulness.
“Thank you, Bill.” She paused. Then she added: “Have I said thank you before? I don’t think I have. If you hadn’t helped me when you did—”
“But for you,” I told her, “I should probably by now be lying maudlin and sozzled in some bar. I have just as much to thank you for. This is no time to be alone.” Then, to change the trend, I added: “And speaking of drink, there’s an excellent amontillado here, and some pretty good things to follow. This is a very well-found apartment.”
I poured out the sherry, and we raised our glasses.
“To health, strength—and luck,” I said.
She nodded. We drank.
“What,” Josella asked as we started on an expensive-tasting pâté, “if the owner of all this suddenly comes back?”
“In that case we will explain—and he or she should be only too thankful to have someone here to tell him which bottle is which, and so on—but I don’t think that is very likely to happen.”
“No,” she agreed, considering. “No. I’m afraid that’s not very likely. I wonder—” She looked round the room. Her eyes paused at a fluted white pedestal. “Did you try the radio—I suppose that thing is a radio, isn’t it?”
“It’s a television projector too,” I told her. “But no good. No power.”
“Of course. I forgot. I suppose we’ll go on forgetting things like that for quite a time.”
“But I did try one when I was out,” I said. “A battery affair. Nothing doing. All broadcast bands as silent as the grave.”
“That means it’s like this everywhere?”
“I’m afraid so. There was something pip-pipping away around forty-two meters. Otherwise nothing. I wonder who and where he was, poor chap.”
“It’s—it’s going to be pretty grim, Bill, isn’t it?”
“It’s—No, I’m not going to have my dinner clouded,” I said. “Pleasure before business—and the future is definitely business. Let’s talk about something interesting, like how many love affairs you have had and why somebody hasn’t married you long before this—or has he? You see how little I know. Life story, please.”
“Well,” she said, “I was born about three miles from here. My mother was very annoyed about it at the time.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You see, she had quite made up her mind that I should be an American. But when the car came to take her to the airport it was just too late. Full of impulses, she was—I think I inherited some of them.”
She prattled on. There was not much remarkable about her early life, but I think she enjoyed herself in summarizing it and forgetting where we were for a while. I enjoyed listening to her babble of the familiar and amusing things that had all vanished from the world outside. We worked lightly through childhood, schooldays, and “coming out”—insofar as the term still meant anything.
“I did nearly get married when I was nineteen,” she admitted, “and aren’t I glad now it didn’t happen. But I didn’t feel like that at the time. I had a frightful row with Daddy, who’d broken the whole thing up because he saw right away that Lionel was a spizzard and—”
“A what?” I interrupted.
“A spizzard. A sort of cross between a spiv and a lizard —the lounge kind. So then I cut my family off and went and lived with a girl I knew who had an apartment. And my family cut off my allowance, which was a very silly thing to do,
because it might have had just the opposite effect from what they intended. As it happened, it didn’t, because all the girls I knew who were making out that way seemed to me to have a very wearing sort of time of it. Not much fun, and an awful lot of jealousy to put up with—and so much planning. You’d never believe how much planning it needs to keep one or two second strings in good condition—or do I mean two or three spare strings?” She pondered.
“Never mind,” I told her. “I get the general idea. You just didn’t want the strings at all.”
“Intuitive, you are. All the same, I couldn’t just sponge on the girl who had the apartment. I did have to have some money, so I wrote the book.”
I did not think I’d heard quite aright
“You made a book?” I suggested.
“I wrote the book.” She glanced at me and smiled. “I must look awful dumb—that’s just the way they all used to look at me when I told them I was writing a book. Mind you, it wasn’t a very good book—I mean, not like Aldous or Charles or people of that kind—but it worked.”
I refrained from asking which of many possible Charleses this referred to. I simply asked:
“You mean it did get published?”
“Oh yes. And it really brought in quite a lot of money. The film rights—”
“What was this book?” I asked curiously.
“It was called Sex Is My Adventure.”
I stared and then smote my forehead.
“Josella Playton, of course. I couldn’t think why that name kept on nearly ringing bells. You wrote that thing?” I added incredulously.
I couldn’t think why I had not remembered before. Her photograph had been all over the place—not a very good photograph, now I could look at the original, and the book had been all over the place too. Two large circulating libraries had banned it, probably on the title alone. After that its success had been assured, and the sales went rocketing up into the hundred thousands. Josella chuckled. I was glad to hear it.
“Oh dear,” she said. “You look just like all my relatives did.”
“I can’t blame them,” I told her.
“Did you read it?” she asked.
I shook my head. She sighed.
“People are funny. All you know about it is the title and the publicity, and you’re shocked. And it’s such a harmless little book, really. Mixture of green-sophisticated and pink-romantic, with patches of schoolgirly-purple. But the title was a good idea.”
“All depends what you mean by good,” I suggested. “And you put your own name to it, too.”
“That,” she agreed, “was a mistake. The publishers persuaded me that it would be so much better for publicity. From their point of view they were right. I became quite notorious for a bit—it used to make me giggle inside when I saw people looking speculatively at me in restaurants and places—they seemed to find it so hard to tie up what they saw with what they thought. Lots of people I didn’t care for took to turning up regularly at the apartment, so to get rid of them, and because I’d proved that I didn’t have to go home, I went home again.
“The book rather spoiled things, though. People would be so literal-minded about that title. I seem to have been keeping up a permanent defensive ever since against people I don’t like—and those I wanted to like were either scared or shocked. What’s so annoying is that it wasn’t even a wicked book—it was just silly-shocking, and sensible people ought to have seen that.”
She paused contemplatively. It occurred to me that the sensible people had probably decided that the author of Sex Is My Adventure would be silly-shocking too, but I forebore to suggest it. We all have our youthful follies, embarrassing to recall—but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.
“It sort of twisted everything,” she complained. “I was writing another book to try to balance things up again. But I’m glad I’ll never finish it—it was rather bitter.”
“With an equally alarming title?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It was to be called Here the Forsaken.”
“H’m—well, it certainly lacks the snap of the other,” I said. “Quotation?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Mr. Congreve: Here the forsaken Virgin rests from Love.’”
“Er—oh,” I said, and thought that one over for a bit
“And now,” I suggested, “I think it’s about time we began to rough out a plan of campaign. Shall I throw around a few observations first?”
We lay back in two superbly comfortable armchairs. On the low table between us stood the coffee apparatus and two glasses. Josella’s was the small one with the Cointreau. The plutocratic-looking balloon with the puddle of unpriceable brandy was mine. Josella blew out a feather of smoke and took a sip of her drink. Savoring the flavor, she said:
“I wonder whether we shall ever taste fresh oranges again? … Okay, shoot”
“Well, it’s no good blinking facts. We had better clear out soon. If not tomorrow, then the day after. You can begin to see already what’s going to happen here. At present there’s still water in the tanks. Soon there won’t be. The whole city will begin to stink like a great sewer. There are already some bodies lying about—every day there will be more.” I noticed her shudder. I had for the moment in taking the general view, forgotten the particular application it would have for her. I hurried on: “That may mean typhus, or cholera, or God knows what It’s important to get away before anything of that kind starts.”
She nodded agreement to that
“Then the next question seems to be, where do we go? Have you any ideas?” I asked her.
“Well—I suppose, roughly, somewhere out of the way. A place with a good water supply we can be sure of—a well, perhaps. And I should think it would be best to be as high up as we reasonably can—some place where there’ll be a nice clean wind.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’d not thought of the clean wind part, but you’re right A hilltop with a good water supply—that’s not so easy offhand.” I thought a moment The Lake District? No, too far. Wales, perhaps? Or maybe Exmoor or Dartmoor—or right down in Cornwall? Around Land’s End we’d have the prevailing southwest wind coming in untainted over the Atlantic. But that too, was a long way. We should be dependent on towns when it became safe to visit them again.
“What about the Sussex Downs?” Josella suggested. “I know a lovely old farmhouse on the north side, looking right across toward Pulborough. It’s not on the top of hills, but it’s well up the side. There’s a wind pump for water, and I think they make their own electricity. It’s all been converted and modernized.”
“Desirable residence, in fact. But it’s a bit near populous places. Don’t you think we ought to get farther away?”
“Well, I was wondering. How long is it going to be before it’ll be safe to go into the towns again?”
“I’ve no real idea,” I admitted. “I’d something like a year in mind—surely that ought to be a safe enough margin?”
“I see. But if we do go too far away, it isn’t going to be at all easy to get supplies later on.”
“That is a point, certainly,” I agreed.
We dropped the matter of our final destination for the moment and got down to working out details for our removal. In the morning, we decided, we would first of all acquire a truck—a capacious truck—and between us we made a list of the essentials we would put into it. If we could finish the stocking-up, we would start on our way the next evening; if not—and the list was growing to a length which made this appear much the more likely—we would risk another night in London and get away the following day.
It was close on midnight when we had finished adding our own secondary wants to the list of musts. The result resembled a department-store catalogue. But if it had done no more than serve to take our minds off ourselves for the evening, it would have been worth the trouble.
Josella yawned and stood up.
“Sleepy,” she said. “And s
ilk sheets waiting on an ecstatic bed.”
She seemed to float across the thick carpet. With her hand on the doorknob she stopped, and turned to regard herself solemnly in a long mirror.
“Some things were fun,” she said, and kissed her hand to her reflection.
“Good night, you vain, sweet vision,” I said.
She turned with a small smile and then vanished through the door like a mist drifting away.
I poured out a final drop of the superb brandy, warmed it in my hands, and sipped it.
“Never—never again now will you see a sight like that,” I told myself. “Sic transit…”
And then, before I should become utterly morbid, I took myself to my more modest bed.
I was stretched in comfort on the edge of sleep when there came a knocking at the door.
“Bill,” said Josella’s voice. “Come quickly. There’s a light!”
“What sort of a light?” I inquired, struggling out of bed.
“Outside. Come and look.”
She was standing in the passage, wrapped in the sort of garment that could have belonged only to the owner of that remarkable bedroom.
“Good God!” I said nervously.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said irritably. “Come and look at that light”
A light there certainly was. Looking out of her window toward what I judged to be the northeast, I could see a bright beam like that of a searchlight pointed unwaveringly upward.
“That must mean there’s somebody else there who can see,” she said.
“It must” I agreed.
I tried to locate the source of it, but in the surrounding darkness I was unable to decide. No great distance away, I was sure, and seeming to start in mid-air—which probably meant that it was mounted on a high building. I hesitated.
“Better leave it till tomorrow,” I decided.
The idea of trying to find our way to it through the dark streets was far from attractive. And it was just possible—highly unlikely, but just possible—that it was a trap. Even a blind man who was clever, and desperate enough, might be able to wire such a thing up by touch.