I was so pleased to see her. My heart surged with a simple, idiotic happiness. I was right. She hadn't died in the thicket of triffids. But God alone knew how she'd survived.
She stood as close to the water's edge as she could get, poised nervously on that dangerously fraying mat of vegetation. Clutched to her breast was a briefcase. She waited for the ship to nose its way slowly towards her.
I willed her not to lose her nerve and bolt back to her hidey-hole again. The sight of the monstrous ship looming over her would have been as awesome as it was frightening. But she must have realized that it was her only hope of survival. So, despite her evident terror of it, she stayed rooted there, hugging the case to her as fiercely as a mother protecting her baby.
'It's good to see you smiling, Mr Masen.'
I looked back to see the owner of the soft female voice.
She was around twenty-five, I suppose. Slim without being skinny. A wash of hair that was somewhere between red and blonde floated lightly around her shoulders in a style that I'd never seen before. Her eyes were clear, intelligent and a curious shade of green, while her fresh complexion was ever so slightly dusted with freckles. She wasn't there to handle the deck machinery: I could tell that from her well-shaped and far from callused hands. She radiated that indefinable quality some call 'breeding'. Yet she was dressed in workman's blue denim, a checked shirt and sturdy boots. Her down-to-earth choice of clothes was mitigated by the softening effect of a pink scarf.
She smiled, amused. 'It's not every day that someone stands up to the fearsome Captain Sharpstone. Congratulations.'
'I just wanted him to believe me. Although I made a ham-fisted job of it.'
'But you got the result you wanted.' She nodded down at the waiting girl as the ship inched its way towards the floating island. 'Who is she?'
'I don't know. She must have been swept out to sea on that thing when it broke free of the mainland.' I looked back at the young woman beside me. My mind must have been working particularly slowly that day because only then did I place the accent, despite having watched hundreds of old Hollywood films in the faded splendour of Sandown's Imperial Picture Palace. 'You're American,' I said, surprised.
'You Brits are one heck of a perceptive race.' Smiling still, she ran her hand lightly over my arm that was still clad in the rubberized pressure suit. 'Is this what all the fashionable young men are wearing on your side of the Atlantic?'
I found myself smiling back. 'Hardly. I'll actually be glad to get this off my back after ten days. Uh, and sorry about that, by the way.'
'Sorry about what?'
'Stating the obvious. That you're American. I didn't mean to sound so blindingly dense. But it's been an unusual few days, to put it mildly.' I turned to watch the sharp prow of the ship press against the floating weed mat, splitting the vegetation with the ease of a knife blade cutting through a cabbage. At that moment the engines reversed, halting the vessel. A deckhand lowered the ladder. Almost to myself I said, 'Floating islands, triffids, feral girls, days that are darker than nights. It takes some getting used to.'
'It sounds,' she said gently, 'as if you need a square meal and a good night's sleep.'
'I'll second that. And maybe a shot of rum if the ship can muster one?'
'I'm sure we can rustle up a tot or two. Now I'm the one with the bad manners.' She smiled at me with those bright green eyes as she held out her hand. 'Kerris Baedekker. New York City.'
I acknowledged the introduction with a nod and a smile - albeit a tired one. 'David Masen. Isle of Wight.'
Then we turned to look back over the rail as the girl in her rags climbed up the ladder. Even with the briefcase under one arm she moved with extraordinary agility.
I said, with feeling, 'I'm glad she's safely away from those triffids.'
Then Kerris said something that puzzled me a good deal. 'Yes,' she mused, gazing thoughtfully at what I took to be fearsome specimens of the plant. 'But they're scrawny little things, aren't they?'
CHAPTER TEN
Q&A
I had expected to find myself eating alone in a cabin. What I got was a little more than I had bargained for.
I'd showered - a wonderful hot shower at that Then I'd changed into trousers and a shirt of thin denim lent to me by a crew member of near enough the same size as myself. With no shoes yet available for me I was offered a pair of stout woollen socks that had been darned with enough black thread to give them a comical Dalmatian look.
Now, an hour after picking up the feral girl from the floating island, I could feel the throb of the powerful steam engine carrying the ship across open ocean. As I tidied up my hair with a borrowed comb a sailor stuck his head round the door. 'Chow's up, buddy,' he said cheerfully. 'Passengers' saloon, down the passageway, first door on your left. Can't miss it.'
Thanking him, I took a moment to appraise my now smoothly shaven jaw. The healthy but limited diet of the last few days had left my cheekbones a little more prominent than before. But I didn't look overly starved, considering.
The passengers' saloon smacked of unostentatious comfort, with well-upholstered seating in a room boasting a small but heart-warmingly well-stocked drinks bar in one corner. On one table stood a bowl full of stew that swam with vegetables and medallions of beef.
I saw that I wouldn't be alone. The strawberry blonde, Kerris Baedekker, was there, with three other men. There was a shining eagerness about them. Like children awaiting the arrival of the conjuror. They beamed at me as I walked across the carpeted floor in my stockinged feet.
'Don't stand on ceremony,' a tall black man told me, indicating the bowl of stew. 'You must be hungry.'
'I won't pretend I'm not. I'll be happy if I never taste triffid again.'
This seemed to surprise them and they shot questioning looks at each other.
Kerris stood up. 'I'll get that rum I promised you. But please make a start on lunch.' She crossed the room to the bar where she poured a generous jigger into a glass. 'By the way, I hope you don't mind some company?'
'No, not at all.'
With the bottle of rum still in one hand, she held out her free hand, indicating each man in turn. 'These are my fellow colleagues in adventure - Gabriel Deeds.'
The black man stepped forward. Tallest of the three men, he had the easy loose-limbed movement of an athlete. Smiling warmly, he shook my hand. 'Glad to have you aboard, Mr Masen.'
'David, please.' I corrected him, smiling
'The gent with the blond beard is Dek Hurney,' Kerris said breezily. 'Don't let him persuade you to play chess with him. His games last for days, and he smokes a pipe that's so evil-smelling you'll never be able to concentrate in a month of Sundays. If you ask me, those smoke screens are part of his strategy.'
Dek Hurney struck me as an amiable if shy man of around twenty-three. Grinning, he blushed at Kerris's banter.
'And last, but far from least, Rory Masterfield. He plays the meanest duelling banjo on the boat.'
Rory was sharp-eyed, with a nose that came out to a point. He smiled readily enough but there was waspishness there, along with a sharp inquisitor's eye. I completed the handshaking ceremony with Rory. 'That was some suit you had there, David. What kind of machine were you flying?'
I told him. He gave an impressed whistle. Then he blinked, as if storing the information for further use.
'Eat, eat,' Gabriel urged. 'There's plenty more if you need it, too. Ah, Dek, would you grab the bread on the table behind you? We gotta build this guy up.'
Dek passed me a plate piled high with bread.
The stew smelled delicious. The taste didn't disappoint, either. I found myself marvelling at the medallions of meat: it looked as if whole beefsteaks had been cast into the stew with careless abandon. There were yellow vegetables the size of peas that I didn't recognize but that tasted wonderfully sweet.
I'd eagerly wolfed down a few mouthfuls and had begun to wonder how to tackle those huge cuts of beef with a humble spoon when I noticed that the four of them sitting round the table were watching my every move with all the intensity of an audience waiting for a magician to pull a rabbit from a top hat.
I paused, wondering if I'd forgotten something or made an unwitting social blunder. Instead, Kerris flushed. 'Oh, do forgive us. We're staring.' She smiled apologetically. 'Only the last thing we expected to pick out of the sea was our very own Robinson Crusoe jet pilot.'
Dek grinned. 'Especially one who'd make a stand against the formidable Captain Sharpstone.'
Despite everything, I couldn't help but wonder about the feral girl. This altogether new and alarming experience of human company must have been overwhelming for her. 'The girl you brought on board-' I began.
'Don't worry,' Kerris told me. 'Kim So's with her in a cabin. She's happily eating a whole plateful of cookies. How's the stew?'
'Amazing,' I said with feeling. 'You don't know how good this tastes.'
'More bread? Here, help yourself.'
'And the rum?' asked Gabriel.
'Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I'm starting to feel human again.'
Rory had been thinking for a moment. 'You had a run of bad luck, having to ditch your plane like that. What happened?'
I told him how we'd tried to find the extent of the cloud cover that we'd first supposed had caused the darkness, then how we'd learned - the hard way - that the thunderstorm must have knocked out our radio link with the airbase. I rounded the story off with an account of the crash landing on the mat of weed. Of course, this led to some discussion about nature's little trick of apparently not allowing the sun to shine as it should. A problem, I gathered, that they also faced in New York, suggesting that the problem was global rather than merely local.
I looked round at their eager faces as they watched me mop up the last of the gravy with a piece of bread. 'What brings you across here? It's the first time I've met any Americans or even heard of any crossing the Atlantic to Europe since The Blinding.'
'The Blinding?' Kerris nodded. 'Back home we call it The Beginning.'
'The Beginning?' Gabriel chuckled dryly. 'And I call
that
enforced optimism.'
'Come to that,' Rory said, 'no Europeans have made the trip west.'
'At least, none that we've heard of in recent years,' Kerris added.
I resisted the urge to lick my fingers and settled for draining the rum from the glass. 'I guess that's understandable; we've been so busy surviving this last thirty years or so that international travel's had to take a back seat.'
'Well, we're putting that to rights now,' Gabriel beamed. 'We're taking this tub down from the Arctic Circle and all along the coast of Europe and Africa, as far as the equator.'
'We're mapping, collecting specimens - animal, vegetable and mineral,' Dek added.
'Assessing the extent of the spread of the triffids, as best we can,' Kerris said. 'More rum, David?'
'Thanks, but I'd better say no. It's gone to my head as it is.'
'Oh, by the by,' Rory said, as if remembering a small but significant detail. 'We're calling on folks on the way to say hello.' He smiled. 'It's time we started getting to know our neighbours. Now, tell us about yourself, David. What's life on the Isle of Wight like?'
What followed was a fairly intensive question-and-answer session. The four of them started by asking me questions and I supplied answers to the best of my ability. Somewhere along the way I managed to establish that the ship was already bound for the English Channel and they all agreed to join me for a pint or two of beer in Shanklin as soon as possible. After that, I gleaned a little information about my companions. They all hailed from New York. They formed a scientific research team on the
Beagle Minor
- you've guessed it, the ship was named after Darwin's vessel, the
Beagle.
Indeed, there was a big sister ship,
Beagle Major,
steadily working its way south down the American coast on a similar mission - basically, to ascertain what survived of the Old World, to map the extent of the triffid conquest and to contact scattered fragments of humanity with the long-term aim of uniting them into a cohesive global organization.
'Some just aren't interested,' Kerris sighed. 'A community on the coast of Norway answered our request to come ashore with a few well-aimed rifle shots.'
'Which cost us a couple of crewmen.' Rory's glassy look told me he was remembering an unpleasant event. 'That's why the captain was a bit prickly when you came on board today.' As we talked I became in near awe of these young people. Their vitality, their sheer energy was extraordinary. I recall telling myself:
Plug 'em into the power supply and they could electrify every circuit in the ship.
They moved constantly, whether they sat or stood, gesturing expressively and talking with a swift confidence that I'd never witnessed before. At times I felt like the classic dim-witted country cousin. What's more, there wasn't a detail about life on my island that they didn't want to know about.
'Where do you find your coal?' Dek asked, polishing the lenses of his spectacles until they flashed like a heliograph. 'The Isle of Wight has no "native" coal mines, does it?'
'Er, no-' I said between mouthfuls of biscuits, which they called 'cookies'. 'We hardly ever use-'
'You don't use coal?' This surprised them. 'But for heat and light? And you have steamships?'