Moments later I walked between weed-covered mounds that were larger than houses. To my surprise, I saw that these were the hulks of small cargo freighters, tugboats and fishing smacks. All had been fused into this vast mat of vegetable matter and then, at some point, the mat had been torn free to drift away downstream to the open sea.
Almost hypnotized by this fabulously desolate scene - a scene that appeared to me like a graveyard of all that Man had once held dear - I picked my way over boats that were tilted this way and that, half submerged by malignant greenery. Here, a corroded funnel poked through. There, I glimpsed an open porthole behind jungle-like creepers. And inside the craft were shapes that looked like crews' bunks. I moved on, pulling aside swathes of weed, perhaps to reveal a name painted on a bow or another porthole that was overgrown with a skin of moss.
Repelled and fascinated equally by this fusing of man-made artefacts and nature I was still not prepared for what I saw next.
Sweeping aside some hanging ivy from the flank of a cabin cruiser, I suddenly froze. My blood pounded in my ears. There at the porthole was a face. One with a pair of eyes that blazed at me, brighter than anything I'd seen since falling into this weed-scape. For only a split second we had eye contact. The intensity of the encounter made me catch my breath.
Then the face was gone.
Recovering from my surprise, I stepped back from the boat, caught my heel on a branch and sat down heavily on my rear end.
When I looked up I saw a figure appear on the deck of the boat. I didn't immediately identify it as human. Rather, I had the surreal impression of a lithe, abhuman being, a creature with masses of dark hair. Amazingly, it was clad in what appeared to be bandages that fluttered in the breeze. If anything, it resembled an Egyptian mummy, yet one that moved nimbly, very much alive, over the wrecked boat.
'Wait!' I shouted. 'Please wait!'
The figure paused and looked back. I saw now that it was a girl. She was perhaps sixteen. Her eyes were bright with shock, staring at me as if it was I who'd just burst forth from a tomb.
Then I realized that her reaction was perfectly natural. Because there I was, clad in something that to her must have looked totally outlandish, with the helmet and perspex visor concealing my face.
In a second I had pulled off my helmet.
'Don't be alarmed,' I told her. 'I won't hurt you.'
At the sight of someone apparently removing their head the girl gave an audible gasp and raised two trembling hands in front of her face.
I spoke as soothingly as I could. 'Don't worry. Don't worry, please. I'm not going to hurt you…'
I could now see her a little more clearly. She wasn't clad in bandages after all, only in clothes that had been worn to shreds. Although her face was clean, even looking well scrubbed, her mass of hair was a shock. I'd seen no human like this before. Moreover, there was a feral quality about her. Like a wild cat.
'I'd like to speak with you, if I may… please… I won't harm you. My name's David… I'm here by accident. Like you.'
That seemed the obvious assumption. That somehow she'd become marooned here. But heaven knew how she'd avoided the deadly attentions of the triffids for so long.
I smiled. 'Believe me, I won't harm you. I'll stay down here on the ground. I'd just like to-'
'Mm… merm-urr.'
'I'm sorry, I-'
'Merm-urr. Ah! Ah!'
Her eyes were bright. They seemed to express vitality and intelligence, but was she mute? Or… I felt a tingle of something, I'm ashamed to say, that came close to disgust. I'd heard stories of abandoned children in the triffid-haunted wastes of the mainland being raised by animals like the legendary Romulus and Remus. I'd written these off as mere fairy stories. Although certainly there were persistent accounts of survivors reverting to complete savagery. Even to the extent of losing the power of human speech entirely.
'Merm-urr. Ah! Ah!' With a flash of her eyes she made a claw of her hand and pushed it against her mouth. 'Merm-urr. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!'
'Food… you mean, do I have food?' Realization dawned. 'You're hungry?'
She tilted her head to one side, not understanding.
'Food.' I mimed eating.
'Ah! Ah!'
She understood.
I smiled and nodded. The poor wretch might have been here for weeks; certainly she must be starving. I reached for my satchel.
But she was quicker. Like lightning she sprang down from the deck of the boat, her bare feet lightly slapping against the turf. Then she advanced towards me, nodding and smiling while unwrapping something covered with what looked like a piece of sailcloth.
I paused, because I realized what she was doing.
She
was offering
me
food.
Now she nodded and smiled, her teeth a dazzling white; then she spread the cloth on the ground before me as if setting out a picnic. There in the centre of the cloth were two crabs - and a large rat.
She picked up the rat and mimed gnawing at its belly, while emitting a hearty 'Mmm, mmm.' Then she held it out to me so that I might enjoy the fruits of her labours.
The smile I put on my face was forced.
The rat was most definitely not appetizing. Blood trickled from its nostrils; its fur was matted; its prominent teeth were a sickly yellow.
I didn't want to offend my new friend by refusing her proffered delicacy. Instead, still smiling warmly, I broke a square of biscuit from my survival pack and offered it to her.
She seemed satisfied by our little ritual, for she replaced the rat in the cloth, quickly bundled it up, then tucked it under her arm. But she didn't decline my offer. As if plucking a hot chestnut from a fire her hand moved with lightning speed to pick the biscuit from my fingers.
It wasn't greed, or savagery; just her way of moving. Fast, yet graceful.
She looked at the biscuit. Clearly she'd never clapped eyes on baked confectionery before. Then she sniffed it and rubbed it experimentally with her thumb. When she was satisfied, she licked it.
'Mmm-mm!'
Her eyes locked back onto mine. They blazed with delight as she crammed the biscuit into her mouth and crunched it loudly - and with obvious pleasure. Once she'd swallowed it she sucked each finger and thumb in turn. 'Mmm… mmm!'
'You like that?'
'Mmm!'
I smiled. 'My name is… David… Da-vid.'
She gave me a quizzical look. 'Da… Day…' She tried again, framing her lips with an effort. 'Da… d… der…'
'David.'
She shot me a bright smile. Then, surprisingly, she said: 'Daddy.' Her voice became girlish. 'Daddy-daddy-daddy-daddy.'
At that moment I had a sudden mental vision of near-supernatural clarity. I saw a community on the mainland, struggling for survival. There, a family. Father, mother, little girl. Then disaster strikes. All die, with the exception of the girl. What horrors the little girl endured to survive to adulthood would fill a book of their own. Growing up wild and alone, beset by constant danger.
'Daddy, daddy, daddy.' She repeated the word delightedly. 'Daddy, Mummy, Aunt Sue, wash-face… Daddy mer-murr. Wash-face!' Beaming, she mimed washing her mouth and chin.
Then she laughed. And it was such a beautiful laugh that I found myself laughing, too. I tried to stifle it. But it was one of those laughs that couldn't be suppressed; it sprang from the depths of my stomach and roared out through my lips.
It would have made a strange picture. There's me, dressed like a spaceman from one of those precious Old World children's comics, the silvery helmet under one arm. The girl, looking like a savage, dressed in rags, fed on rat flesh. We're standing in a red-lit world of weed and wrecked ships, laughing like a couple of giddy children.
In that moment, too, I felt a kind of helpless love for the creature. She was beautiful, vital, graceful, indestructibly healthy despite her environment. And there we were: two human beings thrown together in adversity.
I knew there and then that I had somehow to find a way to rescue her from this floating mat of weed. After a while she would acclimatize herself to life on my homeland. There, trained people would care for her. She'd learn to speak English; perhaps she'd even become part of a family once more.
A shape lurched into the periphery of my vision.
In one fluid movement I drew my pistol and fired two shots. They smashed into the trunk of the triffid as it approached. My third bullet found the stem of the stinger as it curled ready to strike. The.45 calibre slug shattered plant flesh to fibre.
The girl gave a piercing shriek. Then, clamping her hands over her ears, she bolted.
'Wait!' I called after her. 'Don't be frightened!'
She ran, fleet as a young fawn, across the jumble of planks.
I ran after her, calling reassuringly, but the girl was terrified. She could never have heard the noise of a gun before.
She ran blindly. In front of her lay a dense thicket of triffids, standing with their roots in the turf.
I thought she'd swerve.
She did not.
I thought she must surely stop.
Still she did not.
She ran and ran. The sound of the gunshots had scared her witless.
'Please stop! Don't go in there… don't!'
For one lunatic moment I actually considered trying to put a bullet in her leg to stop her running into a death trap.
But at the last second I lowered the gun, shaking my head despairingly. All I could do was watch stunned as the screaming girl ran full-tilt into the heart of the triffid grove. Leaves and stems shook and dozens of stingers uncurled to whip through the air. The group of vile plants had all the seething menace of a nest of cobras.
As the triffids closed in on the girl she vanished from sight. After another savage flurry of movement the ugly monsters were abruptly still.
The girl's screaming stopped.
I stood. Stared. And I felt as if something had died inside my heart.
***
My next week was miserable. I returned to the jet; tried to sleep as best I could; ate survival rations; watched night follow day. I felt dogged by a kind of tiredness I could not shift.
On several occasions I pulled on my helmet and gloves and prowled my fifty or so acres of floating island. Crabs scuttled to and fro. Seagulls cried like lost souls.
My little world continued to be lit by the same dull red glow. It did nothing to lift my spirits.
Again and again I walked to the 'shore' and stared out across the sea. There was no land, no ships - nothing. Merely bleak, rust-coloured waters without end. For all I knew I might have been entering the straits of Hades.
On occasions it rained. Water collected into the bowl-like depressions I'd hammered into the plane's wings with a piece of driftwood. I'd carefully scoop this water into my water bottle to enable my mechanical existence to continue - eating, drinking, sleeping - but the truth was that neither my heart nor my spirit was in it at all. Triffids had killed two people to whom I'd only briefly become acquainted. But as the days passed my hatred for the plants changed to a quiet acceptance. Sailors drown at sea. Nevertheless, the sons of sailors, as often as not, follow their fathers into seafaring. So I came to accept what fate meted out. In a little while, moreover, the triffids became a lifeline. Protected as I was by the helmet and pressure suit I'd topple a triffid and hack away the stinger with my knife. Then I'd harvest its more tender shoots and leaves and chew them with that same mechanical action. Bitter-sweet - so very bitter-sweet - but they supplemented my meagre diet.
Once I'd eaten I'd settle back into my seat with the canopy locked down, gaze into the red sky above and think about the girl I'd met here. I'd wonder about her name. And whether she herself had still remembered it from the days when she had had a mother and father.
The nights were darker than I'd ever known them to be before. Even though I suspect some were cloudless not a single star revealed itself. The moon lay entirely hidden.
I sat beneath the perspex canopy and slept fitfully.
Sometimes I opened my eyes to see a wide-eyed face peering down at me, watching me as I slept.
Although this shook me, by morning I discounted these visitations as nothing more than dreams. Yet, as I briskly walked around my seaborne estate and tried to forget, in my mind's eye I could still see the wild girl's laughing face.
My father once wrote that there is in humanity an inability to sustain a tragic mood. The mind has a phoenix quality, rising again and again from the ashes of despair.
After a while my mood did indeed lift. I thought more about escaping the floating island. I began to work with my knife on the creepers that twined around a sturdy-looking yacht. I reckoned that in a couple of days I could cut her free and perhaps somehow strike a course for land - due north should take me either to the Isle of Wight or at least to the mainland coast. As I worked I had to keep my wits about me. Triffids constantly skulked nearby. The moment they closed in I'd slip on the helmet and snap the visor down. Working thus was stuffy and uncomfortable but at least the damnable plants could not harm me.
For my first few days on the 'island' I'd often hear the staccato drumming of triffids. Gradually, however, they fell silent. Later, a sleepless hour in the cockpit brought to mind one of Oscar Wilde's aphorisms. Didn't one of his quips go something like: 'There's only one thing worse than being talked about… and that's not being talked about'? Perhaps the triffids had said all they had to say about me. Maybe they found me uninteresting. Or, on the other hand, beyond their reach when I was safe either in my plane or in my pressure suit. For whatever reason, it seemed that they chose to ignore me, which lent them a surly rather than a sinister air.