The Day of the Triffids

VI. Rendezvous

When I awoke I could bear Josella already moving around in the kitchen. My watch said nearly seven o’clock. By the time I had shaved uncomfortably in cold water and dressed myself, there was a smell of toast and coffee drifting through the apartment. I found her holding a pan over the oil stove. She had an air of self-possession which was hard to associate with the frightened figure of the night before. Her manner was practical too.

“Canned milk, I’m afraid. The fridge stopped. Everything else is all right, though,” she said.

It was difficult for a moment to believe that the expediently dressed form before me had been the ballroom vision of the previous evening. She had chosen a dark blue skiing suit with white-topped socks rolled above sturdy shoes. On a dark leather belt she wore a finely made hunting knife to replace the mediocre weapon I had found the day before. I have no idea how I expected to find her dressed, or whether I had given the matter any thought, but the practicality of her choice was by no means the only impression I received as I saw her.

“Will I do, do you think?” she asked.

“Eminently,” I assured her. I looked down at myself. “I’d wish I’d had as much forethought. Gents’ lounge suiting isn’t quite the rig for the job,” I added.

“You could do better,” she agreed, with a candid glance at my crumpled suit.

“That light last night,” she went on, “came from the University Tower—at least, I’m pretty sure it did. There’s nothing else noticeable exactly on that line. It seems about the right distance, too.”

I went into her room and looked along the scratch I had drawn on the sill. It did, as she said, point directly at the tower. And I noticed something more. The tower was flying two flags at the same mast. One might have been left hoisted by chance, but two must be a deliberate signal: the daytime equivalent of the light. We decided over breakfast that we would postpone our planned program and make an investigation of the tower our first job for the day.

We left the apartment about half an hour later. As I had hoped, the station wagon, by standing out in the middle of the street, had escaped the attentions of prowlers and was intact. Without delaying further, we dropped the suitcases that Josella had acquired into the back among the triffid gear, and started off.

Few people were about. Presumably weariness and the chill m the air had made them aware that night had fallen, and not many had yet emerged from whatever sleeping places they had found. Those who were to be seen were keeping more to the gutters and less to the walls than they had on the previous day. Most of them were now holding sticks or bits of broken wood with which they tapped their way along the curb. It made for easier going than by the house fronts with their entrances and projections, and the tapping had decreased the frequency of collisions.

We threaded our way with little difficulty, and after a time turned into Store Street to see the University Tower at the end of it rising straight before us.

“Steady,” said Josella as we turned into the empty road. “I think there’s something going on at the gates.” We parked the car and climbed into an adjoining garden whence we could prospect discreetly.

Whatever was going on was right at the front. We managed to find a slightly higher mound which gave us a view of the gates across the heads of the crowd. On this side a man in a cap was talking volubly through the bars. He did not appear to be making a lot of headway, for the part taken in the conversation by the man on the other side of the gates consisted almost entirely of negative headshakes.

“What is it?” Josella asked in a whisper.

I helped her up beside me. The talkative man turned so that we had a glimpse of his profile. He was, I judged, about thirty, with a straight, narrow nose and rather bony features.

What showed of his hair was dark, but it was the intensity of his manner that was more noticeable than his appearance.

As the colloquy through the gates continued to get nowhere, his voice became louder and more emphatic—though without visible effect on the other. There could be no doubt that the man beyond the gates was able to see; he was doing so watchfully, through born-rimmed glasses. A few yards behind him stood a little knot of three more men about whom there was equally little doubt. They, too, were regarding the crowd and its spokesman with careful attention. The man on our side grew more heated. His voice rose as if he were talking as much for the benefit of the crowd as for those behind the railings.

“Now listen to me,” he said angrily. “These people here have got just as much bloody right to live as you have, haven’t they? It’s not their fault they’re blind, is it? It’s nobody’s fault—but it’s going to be your fault if they starve, and you know it.”

His voice was a curious mixture of the rough and the educated, so that it was hard to place him—as though neither style seemed quite natural to him, somehow.

“I’ve been showing them where to get food. I’ve been doing what I can for them, but, Christ, there’s only one of me, and there’s thousands of them. You could be showing ‘em where to get food, too—but are you?—hell! What are you doing about it? Damn all, that’s what. Just look after your own lousy skins. I’ve met your kind before. It’s ‘Damn you, Jack, I’m all right’—that’s your motto.”

He spat with contempt and raised a long, oratorical arm.

“Out there,” he said, waving his hand toward London at large, “out there there are thousands of poor devils only wanting someone to show them how to get the food that’s there for the taking. And you could do it. All you’ve got to do is show them. But do you? Do you, you buggers? No, what

you do is shut yourselves in here and let them bloody well starve when each one of you could keep hundreds alive by doing no more than coming out and showing the poor sods where to get the grub. God almighty, aren’t you people human?”

The man’s voice was violent. He had a case to put, and he was putting it passionately. I felt Josella’s hand unconsciously clutching my arm, and I put my band over hers. The man on the far side of the gate said something that was inaudible where we stood.

“How long?” shouted the man on our side. “How in hell would I know how long the food’s going to last? What I do know is that if bastards like you don’t muck in and help, there ain’t going to be many left alive by the time they come to clear this bloody mess up.” He stood glaring for a moment. “Fact of it is, you’re scared—seared to show ‘em where the food is. And why? Because the more these poor devils get to eat, the less there’s going to be for your lot. That’s the way of it, isn’t it? That’s the truth—if you had the guts to admit it.”

Again we failed to hear the answer of the other man; but, whatever it was, it did nothing to mollify he speaker. He stared back grimly through the gates for a moment. Then he said:

“All right—if that’s the way you want it!”

He made a lightning snatch between the bars and caught the other’s arm. In one swift movement he dragged it through and twisted it. He grabbed the hand of a blind man standing beside him and clamped it on the arm.

“Hang on there, mate,” he said, and jumped toward the main fastening of the gates.

The man inside recovered from his first surprise. He struck wildly through the bars behind him with his other hand. A chance swipe took the blind man in the face. It made him give a yell and tighten his grip. The leader of the crowd was wrenching at the gate fastening. At that moment a rifle cracked. The bullet pinged against the railings and whirred off on a ricochet. The leader checked suddenly, undecided. Behind him there was an outbreak of curses and a scream or two. The crowd swayed back and forth as though uncertain whether to run or to charge the gates. The decision was made for them by those in the courtyard. I saw a youngish-looking man tuck something under his arm, and I dropped down, pulling Josella with me, as the clatter of a submachine gun began.

It was obvious that the shooting was deliberately high; nevertheless, the rattle of it, and the whizz of glancing bullets, was alarming. One short burst was enough to settle the matter. When we raised our heads the crowd had lost entity and its components were groping their ways to safer parts in all three possible directions. The leader paused only to shout something unintelligible, then he turned away too. He made his way northward up Malet Street, doing his best to rally his following behind him.

I sat where we were and looked at Josella. She looked thoughtfully back at me and then down at the ground before her. It was some minutes before either of us spoke.

“Well?” I asked at last.

She raised her head to look across the road, and then at the last stragglers from the crowd pathetically fumbling their ways.

He was right,” she said. “You know he was right, don’t you?” I nodded.

Yes, he was right. And yet he was quite wrong too. You see, there is no ‘they’ to come to clear up this mess— I’m quite sure of that now. It won’t be cleared up. We could do as he says. We could show some, though only some, of these people where there is food. We could do that for a few days, maybe for a few weeks, but after that—what?”

“It seems so awful, so callous

“If we face it squarely, there’s a simple choice,” I said. “Either we can set out to save what can be saved from the wreck—and that has to include ourselves—or we can devote ourselves to stretching the lives of these people a little longer. That is the most objective view I can take.

But I can see, too, that the more obviously humane course is also, probably, the road to suicide. Should we spend our time in prolonging misery when we believe that there is no chance of saving the people in the end? Would that be the best use to make of ourselves?”

She nodded slowly.

“Put like that, there doesn’t seem to be much choice, does there? And even if we could save a few, which are we going to choose? And who are we to choose? And how long could we do it, anyway?”

“There’s nothing easy about this,” I said. “I’ve no idea Ac what proportion of semidisabled persons it may be possible for us to support when we come to the end of easy supplies, but I don’t imagine it could be very high.”

“You’ve made up your mind,” she said, glancing at me.

There might or might not have been a tinge of disapproval her voice.

“My dear,” I said, “I don’t like this any more than you do. I’ve put the alternatives badly before you. Do we help those who have survived the catastrophe to rebuild some kind of life? Or do we make a moral gesture which, on the face of it, can scarcely be more than a gesture? The people across the road there evidently intend to survive.”

She dug her fingers into the earth and let the soil trickle out of her hand.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But you’re also right when you say I don’t like it.”

“Our likes and dislikes as decisive factors have now pretty well disappeared,” I suggested.

“Maybe, but I can’t help feeling that there must be something wrong about anything that starts with shooting.”

He shot to miss—and it’s very likely he saved fighting,” I pointed out.

The crowd had all gone now. I climbed over the wall and helped Josella down on the other side. A man at the gate opened it to let us in.

“How many of you?” he asked.

“Just the two of us. We saw your signal last night,” I told him.

“Okay. Come along, and we’ll find the Colonel,” he said, leading us across the forecourt.

The man whom he called the Colonel had set himself up in a small room not far from the entrance and intended, seemingly for the porters. He was a chubby man just turned fifty or thereabouts. His hair was plentiful but well-trimmed, and gray. His mustache matched it and looked as if no single hair would dare to break the ranks. His complexion was so pink, healthy, and fresh that it might have belonged to a much younger man; his mind, I discovered later, had never ceased to do so. He was sitting behind a table with quantities of paper arranged on it in mathematically exact blocks and an unsoiled sheet of pink blotting paper placed squarely before him.

As we came in he turned upon us, one after the other, an intense, steady look, and held it a little longer than was necessary. I recognized the technique. It is intended to convey that the user is a percipient judge accustomed to taking summarily the measure of his man; the receiver should feel that be now faces a reliable type with no nonsense about him—or, alternatively, that he has been seen through and had all his weaknesses noted. The right form of response is to return it in kind and be considered a “useful fella.” I did. The Colonel picked up his pen.

“Your names, please?”

We gave them.

“And addresses?”

“In the present circumstances I fear they won’t be very useful,” I said. “But if you really feel you must have them—” We gave them too.

He murmured something about system, organization, and relatives, and wrote them down. Age, occupation, and all the rest of it followed. He bent his searching look upon us again, scribbled a note upon each piece of paper and put them in a file.

“Need good men. Nasty business, this. Plenty to do here, though. Plenty. Mr. Beadley’ll tell you what’s wanted,”

We came out into the ball again. Josella giggled.

“He forgot to ask for references in triplicate—but I gather we’ve got the job,” she said.

Michael Beadley, when we discovered him, turned out to be in decided contrast. He was lean, tall, broad-shouldered, and slightly stooping, with something the air of an athlete run to books. In repose his face took on an expression of mild gloom from the darkness of his large eyes, but it was seldom that one had a glimpse of it in repose. The occasional streaks of gray in his hair helped very little in judging his age. He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. His obvious weariness just then made an estimate still more difficult. By his looks, he must have been up all night; nevertheless he greeted us cheerfully and waved an introductory hand toward a young woman, who took down our names again as we gave them.

“Sandra Telmont,” he explained. “Sandra is our professional remembrancer—continuity is her usual work, so we 4 regard it as particularly thoughtful of Providence to contrive her presence here just now.”

The young woman nodded to me and looked harder at Josella.

“We’ve met before,” she said thoughtfully. She glanced down at the pad on her knee. Presently a faint smile passed across her pleasant, though unexotic countenance,

“Oh yes, of course,” she said in recollection.

“What did I tell you? The thing clings like a flypaper,” Josella observed to me.

“What’s this about?” inquired Michael Beadley.

I explained. He turned a more careful scrutiny on Josella.

She sighed.

“Please forget it,” she suggested. “I’m a bit tired of living it down”

That appeared to surprise him agreeably.

“All right,” he said, and dismissed the matter with a nod.

He turned back to the table. “Now to get on with things. You’ve seen Jaques?”

“If that is the Colonel who is playing at Civil Service, we have,” I told him.

He grinned.

“Got to know how we stand. Can’t get anywhere without

knowing your ration strength,” he said, in a fair imitation of

the Colonel’s manner. “But it’s quite true, though,” he went

on. “I’d better give you just a rough idea of how things stand.

Up to the present there are about thirty-five of us. All sorts.

We hope and expect that some more will come in during the

day. Out of those here now, twenty-eight can see. The others

are wives or husbands—and there are two or three children—

who cannot. At the moment the general idea is that we move

away from here sometime tomorrow if we can be ready in

time—to be on the safe side, you understand.”

I nodded. “We’d decided to get away this evening for the

same reason, I told him.

“What have you for transport?”

I explained the present position of the station wagon. “We

were going to stock up today,” I added. “So far we’ve practically nothing except a quantity of anti-triffid gear.”

He raised his eyebrows. The girl Sandra also looked at me

curiously.

“That’s a queer thing to make your first essential,” he

remarked.

I told them the reasons. Possibly I made a bad job of it,

for neither of them looked much impressed. He nodded casually and went on:

“Well, if you’re coming in with us, here’s what I suggest

B ring in your car, dump your stuff, then drive off and swap

it for a good big truck. Then Oh, does either of you know anything about doctoring?” he broke off to ask.

We shook our heads.

He frowned a little. “That’s a pity. So far we’ve got no one

who does. It’ll surprise me if we’re not needing a doctor be-

fore long—and, anyway, we ought all of us to have inoculations… Still, it’s not much good sending you two off on a medical supplies scrounge. What about food and general stores? Suit you?”

He flipped through some pages on a clip, detached one of them and handed it to me. It was headed No. 15, and below was a typed list of canned goods, pots and pans, and some bedding.

“Not rigid,” he said, “but keep reasonably close to it and we’ll avoid too many duplications. Stick to best quality. With the food, concentrate on value for bulk—I mean, even if corn flakes are your leading passion in life, forget ‘em. I suggest you keep to warehouses and big wholesalers.” He took hack the list and scribbled two or three addresses on it.

“Cans and packets are your food line—don’t get led away by sacks of flour, for instance; there’s another part on that sort of stuff.” He looked thoughtfully at Josella. Heavyish work, I’m afraid, but it’s the most useful job we can give you at present. Do as much as you can before dark. There’ll be a general meeting and discussion here about nine-thirty this evening.”

As we turned to go:

“Got a pistol?” he asked.

“I didn’t think of it,” I admitted.

“Better—just in case. Quite effective simply fired into the air,” he said. He took two pistols from a drawer in the table and pushed them across. “Less messy than that.” he added, with a look at Josella’s handsome knife. “Good scrounging to you.”

Even by the time we set out after unloading the station wagon we found that there were still fewer people about than on the previous day. The ones that were showed an inclination to get on the sidewalks at the sound of the engine rather than to molest us.

The first truck to take our fancy proved useless, being filled with wooden cases too heavy for us to remove. Our next find was luckier—a five-tonner, almost new, and empty. We trans-shipped, and left the station wagon to its fate.

At the first address on my list the shutters of the loading bay were down, but they gave way without much difficulty to the persuasions of a crowbar from a neighboring shop and rolled up easily. Inside, we made a find. Three trucks stood backed up to the platform. One of them was fully loaded with cases of canned meat.

“Can you drive one of these things?” I asked Josella.

She looked at it.

“Well, I don’t see why not. The general idea’s the same, isn’t it? And there’s certainly no traffic problem.”

We decided to come back and fetch it later, and took the empty truck on to another warehouse, where we loaded in parcels of blankets, rugs, and quilts, and then went on farther to acquire a noisy miscellany of pots, pans, caldrons, and kettles. When we had the truck filled we felt we bad put in a good morning’s work on a job that was heavier than we had thought. We satisfied the appetite it had given us at a small pub hitherto untouched.

The mood which filled the business and commercial districts was gloomy—though it was a gloom that still had more the style of a normal Sunday or public holiday than of collapse. Very few people at all were to be seen in those parts. Had the catastrophe come by day, instead of by night after the workers had gone home, it would have been a hideously different scene.

When we had refreshed ourselves we collected the already loaded truck from the food warehouse and drove the two of them slowly and uneventfully back to the university. We parked them in the forecourt there and set off again. About six-thirty we returned once more with another pair of well-loaded trucks and a feeling of useful accomplishment.

Michael Beadley emerged from the building to inspect our contributions. He approved of it all save half a dozen cases that I had added to my second load.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Triffid guns, and bolts for them,” I told him.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Oh yes. You arrived with a lot of anti-triffid stuff,” he remarked.

“I think it’s likely we’ll need it,” I said.

He considered. I could see that I was being put down as a bit unsound on the subject of triffids. Most likely he was accounting for that by the bias my job might be expected to give—aggravated by a phobia resulting from my recent sting and wondering whether it might connote other, perhaps less harmless, unsoundnesses.

“Look here,” I suggested, “we’ve brought in four full truckloads between us. I just want enough space in one of them for these cases. If you think we cant spare that, I’ll go out and find a trailer, or another truck.”

“No, leave ‘em where they are. They don’t take a lot of room,” he decided.

We went into the building and had some tea at an improvised canteen which a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman had competently set up there.

“He thinks.” I said to Josella, “that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet over triffids.”

“He’ll learn—I’m afraid,” she replied. “It’s queer that no one else seems to have seen them about.”

“These people have all been keeping pretty much to the center, so it’s not very surprising. After all, we’ve seen none ourselves today.’’

‘Do you think they’ll come right down here among the streets?”

“I couldn’t say. Maybe lost ones would.”

“How do you think they got loose?” she asked.

“If they worry’ at a stake hard enough and long enough, it’ll usually come in the end, The breakouts we used to get sometimes on the farms were usually due to their all crowding up against one section of the fence until it gave way.

“But couldn’t you make the fences stronger?”

We could have done, but we didn’t want them fixed quite permanently. It didn’t happen very often, ‘and when it did it was usually simply from one field to another, so we’d just drive them back and put up the fence again. I don’t think any of them will intentionally make this way. From a triffid point of view, a city must be much like a desert, so I should think they’ll be moving outward toward the open country on the whole. Have you ever used a triffid gun?” I added.

She shook her head.

After I’ve done something about these clothes, I was thin king of putting in a bit of practice, it you’d like to try,” I suggested.

I got back an hour or so later, feeling more suitably clad as a result of having infringed on her idea of a ski suit and heavy shoes, to find that she had changed into a becoming dress of spring green. We took a couple of the triffid guns and went out into the garden of Russell Square, close by. We had spent about half an hour snipping the topmost shoots off convenient bushes when a young woman in a brick-red lumber jacket and an elegant pair of green trousers strolled across the grass and leveled a small camera at us.

Who are you—the press?” inquired Josella.

“More or less,” said the young woman. “At least, I’m the official record. Elspeth Cary.”

“So soon?” I remarked. “I trace the hand of our order-conscious Colonel.”

“You’re quite right,” she agreed. She turned to look at Josella. “And you are Miss Playton. I’ve often wondered—”

Now look here,” interrupted Josella. “Why should the one static thing in a collapsing world be my reputation? Can’t we forget it?”

“Jim,” said Miss Cary thoughtfully. “Jib-huh.” She turned to another subject. “What’s all this about triffids?” she asked.

We told her.

“They think,” added Josella, “that Bill here is either scary or scatty on the subject.”

Miss Cary turned a straight look at me. Her face was interesting rather than good-looking, with a complexion browned by stronger suns than ours. Her eyes were steady, observant, and dark brown.

“Are you?” she asked.

‘Well, I think they’re troublesome enough to be taken seriously when they get out of hand,” I told her.

She nodded. “True enough. I’ve been in places where they are out of hand. Quite nasty. But in England—well, ifs hard to imagine that here.”

“There’ll not be a lot to stop them here now’,” I said.

Her reply, if she had been about to make one, was forestalled by the sound of an engine overhead. We looked up and presently saw a helicopter come drifting across the roof of the British Museum.

That’ll be Ivan,” said Miss Gary. “He thought he might manage to find one. I must go and get a picture of him landing. See you later.” And she hurried off across the grass.

Josella lay down, clasped her hands behind her head, and gazed up into the depths of the sky. When the helicopter’s engine ceased, things sounded very much quieter than before we had heard it.

Josella lay facing upward with a faraway look in her eyes. I thought perhaps I could guess something of what was passing in her mind, but I said nothing. She did not speak for a little while, then she said:

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.”

She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not. I don’t think it had ever before occurred to me that man’s supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain’s capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost. I saw for a moment the true tenuousness of his hold on his power, the miracles that he had wrought with such a fragile instrument.

Josella had been pursuing her own line of thought.

“It’s going to be a very queer sort of world—what’s left of it. I don’t think we’re going to like it a lot,” she said reflectively.

It seemed to me an odd view to take—rather as if one should protest that one did not like the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most, but I let it pass.

From time to time we had heard the sound of trucks driving up to the far side of the building. It was evident that most of the foraging parties must have returned by this hour. I looked at my watch and reached for the triffid guns lying on the grass beside me.

“If we’re going to get any supper before we hear what other people feel about all this, it’s time we went in,” I said.