The Day of the Triffids

IV. Shadows Before

In order to give a reasonable berth to the Caf6 Royal mob I struck up a side street into Soho, intending to cut back to Regent street higher up.

Perhaps hunger was driving more people out of their homes. Whatever The reason, I found that the pans I now entered were more populous than any I’d seen since I left the hospital. Constant collisions took place on the sidewalks and in the narrow streets, and the confusion of those who were trying to get along was made worse by knots of people clustering in front of the now frequently broken shop windows. None of those who crowded there seemed to he quite sure what kind of shop they were facing. Some in the front sought to find out by groping for any recognizable object; others, taking the risk of disemboweling themselves on standing splinters of glass, more enterprisingly climbed inside.

I felt that I ought to be showing these people where to find food. But should I? If I were to lead them to a food shop still intact, there would be a crowd which would not only sweep the place bare in five minutes but would crush a number of its weaker members in the process. Soon, anyway, all the food in the shops would be gone; then what was to be done with the thousands clamoring for more? One might collect a small party and keep it alive somehow for an uncertain length of time—but who was to be taken and who left? No obviously right course presented itself however I tried to look at it.

What was going on was a grim business without chivalry, with no give, and all take, about it. A man humping into another and feeling that he carried a parcel would snatch it and duck away, on the chance that it contained something to eat, while the loser clutched furiously at the air or hit out indiscriminately. Once I had to step hurriedly aside to avoid being knocked down by an elderly man who darted into the roadway with no care for possible obstacles. His expression was vastly cunning, and he clutched avariciously to his chest two cans of red paint. On a corner my way was blocked by a group almost weeping with frustration over a bewildered child who could see but was just too young to understand what they wanted of it.

I began to become uneasy. Fighting with my civilized urge to be of some help to these people was an instinct that told me to keep clear. They were already fast losing ordinary restraints. I felt, too, an irrational sense of guilt at being able to see while they could not. It gave me an odd feeling that I was hiding from them even while I moved among them. Later on I found how right the instinct was.

Close to Golden Square I began to think of turning left and working back to Regent Street, where the wider roadway would offer easier going. I was about to take a corner that would lead me that way when a sudden piercing scream stopped me. It stopped everyone else too. All along the street they stood still, turning their heads this way and that, apprehensively trying to guess what was happening. The alarm, coming on top of their distress and nervous tension, started a number of the women whimpering. The men’s nerves weren’t in any too good a state either; they showed it mostly in short curses at being startled. For it was an ominous sound, one of the kinds of thing they had been subconsciously expecting. They waited for it to come again.

It did. Frightened, and dying into a gasp. But less alarming now that one was ready for it. This time I was able to place it. A few steps took me to an alley entrance. As I turned the corner a cry that was half a gasp came again.

The cause of it was a few yards down the alley. A girl was crouched on the ground while a burly man laid into her with a thin brass rod. The back of her dress was torn, and the flesh beneath showed red weals. As I came closer I saw why she did not run away—her hands were tied together behind her back, and a cord tethered them to the man’s left wrist.

I reached the pair as his arm was raised for another stroke. It was easy to snatch the rod from his unexpecting hand and bring it down with some force upon his shoulder. He promptly lashed a heavy boot out in my direction, but I had dodged back quickly, and his radius of action was limited by the cord on his wrist. He made another swiping kick at the air while I was feeling in my pocket for a knife. Finding nothing there, he turned and kicked the girl for good measure, instead. Then he swore at her and pulled on the cord to bring her to her feet. I slapped him on the side of his head, just hard enough to stop him and make his head sing for a bit—somehow I could not bring myself to lay out a blind man, even this type. While he was steadying himself from that I stooped swiftly and cut the cord which joined them. A slight shove on the man’s chest sent him staggering back and half turned him so that he lost his bearings. With his freed left hand he let out a fine raking swing. It missed me, but ultimately reached the brick wall. After that he lost interest in pretty well everything but the pain of his cracked knuckles. I helped the girl up, loosed her hands, and led her away down the alley while he was still blistering the air behind us.

As we turned into the street she began to come out of her daze. She turned a smeary, tear-stained face and looked up at me.

“But you can see!” she said incredulously.

“Certainly I can,” I told her.

“Oh, thank God! Thank God! I thought I was the only one,” she said, and burst into tears again.

I looked around us. A few yards away there was a pub with a phonograph playing, glasses smashing, and a high old time being had by all. A little beyond it was a smaller pub, still intact. A good heave wish my shoulder broke in the door to the saloon bar. I half carried the girl in and put her in a chair. Then I dismembered another chair and put two of its legs through the handles of the swing doors for the discouragement of further visitors before I turned my attention to the restoratives at the bar.

There was no hurry. She sipped at, and snuffled over, the first drink. I gave her time to get on top of things, twiddling the stem of my glass and listening to the phonograph in the other pub churning out the currently popular, if rather lugubrious, ditty:

While I sat I stole an occasional covert look at the girl. Her clothes, or the remnants of them, were good quality. Her voice was good too—probably not stage or movie acquired, for it had not deteriorated under stress. She was blond, but quite a number of shades sub-platinum. It seemed likely that

beneath the smudges and smears she was good-looking. Her height was three or four inches less than mine, her build slim but not thin. She looked as if she had strength if is were necessary, but strength which, in her approximately twenty-four years, had most likely nor been applied to anything more important than hitting balls. dancing. and, probably, restraining horses. Her well-shaped hands were smooth, and the fingernails that were still unbroken showed a length more decorative than practical.

The drink gradually did good work. By the end of it she was sufficiently recovered for habit of mind to assert itself.

“God, I must look awful,” she remarked.

It did not seem that anyone but me was likely to be in a position to notice that, but I left it.

She got up and walked over to a mirror.

“I certainly do,” she confirmed. “Where—”

“You might try through there,” I suggested.

Twenty minutes or so passed before she came hack. Considering the limited facilities there must have been, she’d made a good job; morale was much restored. She approximated now the film director’s idea of the heroine after a roughhouse, rather than the genuine thing.

‘Cigarette?” I inquired as I slid another fortifying glass

across.

While the pulling-round process was completing itself we swapped stories. To give her rime, I let her have mine first.

Then she said:

“I’m damned ashamed of myself. I’m not a bit like that

really—like you found me, I mean. In fact, I’m reasonably self-reliant, though you might not think it. But somehow the whole thing had got too big for me. What has happened is bad enough, but the awful prospect ahead suddenly seemed too much to bear, and I panicked. I had got to thinking that perhaps I was the only person left in the whole world who could see. It got inc down, and all at once I was frightened and silly; I cracked, and howled like a girl in a Victorian melodrama. I’d never, never have believed it of me.”

Don’t let it worry you,” I said. “We’ll probably be learn-kg a whole lot of surprising things about ourselves soon.”

But it does worry me. If I start off by slipping my gears like that—” She left the sentence unfinished.

“I was near enough to panic in that hospital,” I said. “We’re human beings, not calculating machines.”

Her name was Josella Playton. There seemed to be something familiar about that, but I could not place it. Her home was in Dene Road, St. John’s Wood. The district fitted in more or less with my surmises. I remembered Dene Road. Detached, comfortable houses, mostly ugly, but all expensive. Her escape from the general affliction had been no less a matter of luck than mine—well, perhaps more. She had been at a party on that Monday night—a pretty considerable party, it seemed.

“I reckon somebody who thinks that kind of thing funny must have been tooling with the drinks,” she said. “I’ve never felt so ill as I did at the end of it—and I didn’t take a lot.”

Tuesday she recollected as a day of blurred misery and record hangover. About four in the afternoon she had had more than enough of it. She rang the bell and gave instructions that come comets, earthquakes, or the day of judgment itself, she was not to be disturbed. Upon that ultimatum she had taken a strong dose of sleeping draught, which on an empty stomach had worked with the efficiency of a knockout drop.

From then on she had known nothing until this morning, when she had been awakened by her father stumbling into her room.

“Josella,” he was saying, “for God’s sake get Dr. Mayle. Tell him I’ve gone blind—stone blind.”

She had been amazed to see that it was already almost nine o’clock. She got up and dressed hurriedly. The servants had answered neither her father’s bell nor her own. When she went to rouse them she had found to her horror that they, too, were blind.

With the telephone out of order, the only course seemed to be for her to take the car and fetch the doctor herself. The quiet streets and absence of traffic had seemed queer, but she had already driven almost a mile before it came to her what had happened. When she realized, she had all but turned back in panic—but that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. There was still the chance that the doctor might have escaped the malady, whatever it was, just as she herself had. So, with a desperate but waning hope, she had driven on.

Halfway down Regent Street the engine started to miss and sputter; finally it stopped. In her hurried start she had not looked at the gauge: the tank had run dry.

She sat there for a moment, dismayed. Every face in sight was now turned toward her, but she had realized by this time that not one of those she saw could see or help her. She got out of the car, hoping to find a garage somewhere near by, or, if there was none, prepared to walk the rest of the way. As she slammed the door behind her, a voice called:

“Hey! Just a minute, mate!”

She turned and saw a man groping toward her.

“What is it?” she asked. She was by no means taken with the look of him.

His manner changed on hearing her voice.

“I’m lost. Dunno where I am,” he said.

“This is Regent Street. The New Gallery cinema’s just behind you,” she told him, and turned to go.

“Just show me where the curb is, miss, will you?’ he said. She hesitated, and in that moment he came close. The outstretched hand sought and touched her sleeve. He lunged forward and caught both her arms in a painful grip.

“So you can see, can you!” he said. “Why the hell should you be able to see when I can’t—nor anyone else?”

Before she realized what was happening he had turned her and tripped her, and she was lying in the road with his knee in her back. He caught both her wrists in the grasp of one large hand and proceeded to tie them together with a piece of string from his pocket. Then he stood up and pulled her onto her feet again.

“All right,” he said. “From now on you can do your seeing for me. I’m hungry. Take me where there’s a bit of good grub. Get on with it.”

“I think, Bill,” she said, “that though you wouldn’t have guessed it to look at him, he wasn’t perhaps too bad a man really. Only he was frightened. Deep down inside him he was much more frightened than I was. He gave me some food and something to drink. He only started beating me like that because he was drunk and I wouldn’t go into his house with him. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.” She paused. Then she added: “But I am pretty ashamed of myself. Shows you what a modern young woman can come to after all, doesn’t it? Screaming, and collapsing with the vapors Hell!”

She was looking, and obviously feeling, rather better, though she winced as she reached for her glass.

“I think,” I said, “that I’ve been fairly dense over this business—and pretty lucky. I ought to have made more of the implications when I saw that woman with the child in Piccadilly. It’s only been chance that’s stopped me from falling into the same kind of mess that you did.”

“Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence,” she said reflectively.

“I’ll go on bearing that in mind henceforth,” I told her.

“It’s already very well impressed on mine,” she remarked. We sat listening to the uproar from the other pub for a few minutes.

“And what,” I said at last, “just what, do we propose to do now?”

“I must get back home. There’s my father. It’s obviously no good going on to try to find the doctor now—even if he has been one of the lucky ones.”

She seemed about to add something, but hesitated.

“Do you mind if I come too?” I asked. “This doesn’t seem to me the sort of time when anyone like us should be wandering about on his or her own.”

She turned with a grateful look.

“Thank you. I almost asked, but I thought there might be somebody you’d he wanting to look for.”

“There isn’t,” I said. “Not in London, at any rate.”

“Im glad. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of getting caught again—I’ll be much too careful for that. But, to he honest, it’s the loneliness I’m afraid of. I’m beginning to feel so—so cut off and stranded.”

I was beginning to see things in another new light. The sense of release was tempered with a growing realization of the grimness that might lie ahead of us. It had been impossible at first not to feel some superiority, and, therefore, confidence. Our chances of surviving the catastrophe were a million times greater than those of the rest. Where they must fumble, grope, and guess, we had simply to walk in and take. Butt here were going to be a lot of things beyond that.

I said: “I wonder just how many of us have escaped and can still see? I’ve come across one other man, a child, and a baby; you’ve met none. It looks to me as if we are going to find out that sight is very rare indeed. Some of the others have evidently grasped already that their only chance of survival is to get hold of someone who can see. When they all understand that, the outlooks going to he none too good.”

The future seemed to me at that time a choice between a lonely existence, always in fear of capture, or of gathering together a selected group which we could rely on to protect us from other groups. We’d be filling a kind of leadercum-prisoner role—and along with it went a nasty picture of still uncomfortably elaborating these possibilities when Josella bloody gang wars being fought for possession of us. I was recalled me to the present by getting up.

I must go,” she said. “Poor Father. It’s after four o’clock.”

Back in Regent Street again, a thought suddenly struck me.

“Come across,” I said. “I fancy I remember a shop somewhere here

The shop was still there. We equipped ourselves with a couple of useful-looking sheath knives, and belts to carry them.

“Makes me feel like a pirate,” said Josella as she buckled hers on.

“Better, I imagine, to be a pirate than a pirate’s moll,” I told her.

A few yards up the street we came upon a large, shiny saloon car. It looked the kind of craft that should simply have purred. But the noise when I started it up sounded louder in our ears than all the normal traffic of a busy street. We made our way northward, zigzagging to avoid derelicts and wanderers stricken into immobility in the middle of the road by the sound of our approach. All the way heads turned hopefully toward us as we came, and faces fell as we went past. One building on our route was blazing fiercely, and a cloud of smoke rose from another fire somewhere along Oxford Street. There were more people about in Oxford Circus, but we got through them neatly, then passed the B.B.C., and so north to the carriageway in Regent’s Park.

It was a relief to get out of the streets and reach an open space—and one where there were no unfortunate people wandering and groping. The only moving things we could see on the broad stretches of grass were two or three little groups of triffids lurching southward. Somehow or other they had contrived to pull up their stakes and were dragging them along behind them on their chains. I remembered that there were some undocked specimens, a few of them tethered, but most of them double-fenced, in an enclosure beside the zoo, and wondered how they had got out. Josella noticed them too.

“It’s not going to make much difference to them,” she said.

For the rest of the way there was little to delay us. Within a few minutes I was pulling up at the house she showed me, We got out of the car, and I pushed open the gate. A short drive curved round a bed of bushes which hid most of the house front from the road. As we turned the corner, Josella gave a cry and ran forward. A figure was lying on the gravel, chest downward, but with the head turned to show one side of its face. The first glance at it showed me the bright red streak across the cheek.

“Stop!” I shouted at her.

There was enough alarm in my voice to check her.

I had spotted the triffid now. It was lurking among the bushes, well within striking range of the sprawled figure.

“Back! Quick!” I said.

Still looking at the man on the ground, she hesitated.

“But I must—” she began, turning toward me. Then she stopped. Her eyes widened, and she screamed.

I whipped round to find a triffid towering only a few feet behind me.

In one automatic movement I had my hands over my eyes. I heard the sting whistle as it slashed out at me—but there was no knockout, no agonizing burning, even. One’s mind can move like lightning at such a moment; nevertheless, it was more instinct than reason which sent me leaping at it before ii bad time to strike again. I collided with it, overturning it, and even as I went down with it my hands were on the upper part of the stem, trying to pull off the cup and the sting. Triffid stems do not snap—but they can he mangled. This one was mangled thoroughly before I stood up.

Josella was standing in the same spot, transfixed.

“Come here,” I told her. There’s another in the bushes behind you.”

She glanced fearfully over her shoulder and came.

“But it hit you t” she said incredulously. Why aren’t you

“I don’t know. I ought to be,” I said.

I looked down at the fallen triffid. Suddenly remembering the knives that we’d acquired with quite other enemies in mind, I used mine to cut off the sting at its base. I examined it. “That explains it,” I said, pointing to the poison sacs.

“See, they’re collapsed, exhausted. If they’d been full, or even part full I turned a thumb down.

I had that, and my acquired resistance to the poison, to thank. Nevertheless, there were pale red marks across the backs of my hands and my neck that were itching like the devil. I rubbed them while I stood looking at the sting.

“It’s queer,” I murmured, more to myself than to her, but she heard me.

“What’s queer?”

“I’ve never seen one with the poison sacs quite empty like this before. It must have been doing a hell of a lot of stinging.”

But I doubt if she heard me. Her attention had reverted to the man who was lying in the drive, and she was eying the triffid standing by.

“How can we get him away?” she asked.

“I’m afraid we can’t—not till that thing’s been dealt with,” I told her. ‘Besides—well, I don’t think we can help him now.

“You mean he’s dead?”

I nodded. “Yes. There’s not a doubt of it—Eve seen others who have been stung. Who was he” I added.

“Old Pearson. He did gardening for us, and chauffeuring for my father. Such a dear old man—I’ve know him all my life.”

“I’m sorry—” I began, wishing I could think of something more adequate, but she cut me short.

“Look! Oh, look!” She pointed to a path which ran round the side of the house. A black-stockinged leg with a woman’s shoe on it protruded beyond the corner.

We prospected carefully and then moved safely to a spot which gave a better view. A girl in a black dress lay half on the path and half in a flower bed. Her pretty. fresh face was scarred with a bright red line. Josella choked. Tears came into her eyes.

“Oh! Oh, it’s Annie! Poor little Annie,” she said.

I tried to console her a little.

“They can scarcely have known it, either of them,” I told her. “When it is strong enough to kill, it’s mercifully quick.”

We did nor see any other triffid in hiding there. Possibly the same one had attacked them both. Together we crossed the path and got into the house by the side door. Josella called. There was no answer. She called again. We both listened in the complete silence that wrapped the house. She turned to look at me. Neither of us said anything. Quietly she led the way along a passage to a baize-covered door. As she opened it there was a swish, and something slapped across the door and frame, an inch or so above her head. Hurriedly she pulled the door shut again and turned wide-eyed to me.

“There’s one in the ball,” 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 hail. 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 hit uncanny now.

“Take away our sight,” he had said, “and our superiority to them is gone.”

Of course coincidences are happening alt 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 oft 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.