Wyndham, John (12 page)

“H’m,” I said. “Depends on one’s outlook, I suppose. I must
say, it wouldn’t have struck me. Do you—”

“Sh-sh,” she told me as a quietness came over the hail.
A
tail, dark, purposeful-looking, youngish woman had risen. While she waited,
she appeared to have a mouth not made to open, but later it did.

“Are we to understand,” she inquired, using a kind of carbon-steel
voice, “are we to understand that the last speaker is advocating free love?”
And she sat down, with spine-jarring decision.

Dr. Vorless smoothed back his hair as he regarded her.

“I think the questioner must be aware that I never mentioned
love, free, bought, or bartered. Will she please make her question clearer?”

The woman stood up again.

“I
think the speaker understood me. I am asking if he
suggests the abolition of the marriage law?”

“The laws we knew have been abolished by circumstances. It
now falls to us to make laws suitable to the conditions, and to enforce them if
necessary.”

“There is still God’s law, and the law of decency.”

“Madam. Solomon had three hundred—or was it five hundred?—wives,
and God did not apparently hold them against him. A Mohammedan preserves rigid
respectability with three wives. These are matters of local custom. Just what
our laws in these matters, and in others, will be is for us all to decide later
for the greatest benefit of the community.

“This committee, after discussion, has decided that if we
are to build a new state of things and avoid a relapse into barbarism—which is
an appreciable danger—we must have certain undertakings from those who wish to
join us.

“Not one of us is going to recapture the conditions we have
lost. What we offer is a busy life in the best conditions we can contrive, and
the happiness which will come of achievement against odds. In return we ask
willingness and fruitfulness. There is no compulsion. The choice is yours.
Those to whom our offer does not appeal are at perfect liberty to go elsewhere
and start a separate community on such lines as they prefer.

“But I would ask you to consider very carefully whether or
not you
do
hold a warrant from God to deprive any woman
of
the
happiness of carrying out her natural functions.”

The discussion which followed was a rambling affair, descending
frequently to points of detail and hypothesis on which there could as yet be no
answers. But there was no move to cut it short. The longer it went on, the less
strangeness the idea would have.

Josella and I moved over to the table where Nurse Berr had
set up her paraphernalia. We took several shots in our arms and then sat down
again to listen to the wrangling.

“How many of them will decide to come, do you think?” I
asked her.

She glanced round.

“Nearly all of them—by the morning,” she told me.

I felt doubtful. There was a lot of objecting and questioning
going on. Josella said:

“If you were a woman who was going to spend an hour or two
before you went to sleep tonight considering whether you would choose babies
and an organization to look after
you
or adherence to a principle which
might quite likely mean no babies and no one to look after you, you’d not
really be very doubtful, you know. And after all, most women want babies
anyway—the husband’s just what Dr. Vorless might call the local means to the
end.”

“That’s rather cynical of you.”

“If you really think that’s cynical, you must
be
a
very sentimental character. I’m talking about real women, not those in the
world.”

“Oh,”
I
said.

She sat pensively awhile, and gradually acquired a frown. At
last she said;

“The thing that worries me is how many will they expect? I
like babies, all right, but there are limits.”

After the debate had gone on raggedly for an hour or so it
was wound up. Michael asked that the names of all those willing to join in his
plan should be left in his office by ten o’clock the next morning. The Colonel
requested all who could drive a truck to report to him by 700 hours, and the
meeting broke up.

Josella and I wandered out of doors. The evening was mild.
The light on the tower was again stabbing hopefully into the sky. The moon had
just risen clear of the museum roof. We found a low wall and sat on it, looking
into the shadows of the Square garden and listening to the faint sound of the
wind in the branches of the trees there. We smoked a cigarette each almost in
silence. When I reached the end of mine I threw it away and drew a breath.

“Josella,” I said.

“M’m?” she replied, scarcely emerging from her thoughts.
Josella,” I said again. “Er—those babies. I’d—er—I’d be sort of terribly proud
and happy if they could be mine as well as yours.”

She sat quite still for a moment, saying nothing. Then she
turned her head. The moonlight was glinting on her fair hair, but her face and
eyes were in shadow. I waited, with a hammered and slightly sick feeling inside
me. She said, with surprising calm:

“Thank you, Bill dear. I think I would too.”

I sighed. The hammering did not ease up much, and I saw that my hand was trembling as it reached for, hers. I didn’t have any words, for
the moment. Josella, however, did. She said:

“But it isn’t quite as easy as that now.”

I was jolted.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She said consideringly: “I think that if I were those people
in there”—she nodded in the direction of the tower—”I think that I should make
a rule. I should divide us up into lots. I should say every man who marries a
sighted girl must take two blind girls as well. I’m pretty sure that’s what I
should do.”

I stared at her face in the shadow.

“You don’t mean that,” I protested. “I’m afraid I do, Bill.”

“But look here

“Don’t you think they may have some idea like that in
P
their
minds—from what they’ve been saying?”

“Not unlikely,” I conceded. “But if
they
make the
rule, that’s one thing. I don’t see—“

“You
mean you don’t love me enough to take on two
other women as well?”

I swallowed. I also objected:

“Look here. This is all crazy. It’s unnatural. What you’re
suggesting

She put up a hand to stop me.

“Just listen to me, Bill. I know it sounds a bit startling
at first, but there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s all quite clear— and it’s
not very easy.

“All this”—she waved her hand around—”it’s done something
to me, It’s like suddenly seeing everything differently. And one of the things
I think I see is that those of us who get through are going to be much nearer
to one another, more dependent on one another, more like—well, more like a
tribe
than we ever were before.

“All day long as we went about I’ve been seeing unfortunate
people who are going to die very soon. And all the time I’ve been saying to
myself: ‘There, but for the grace of God . . ‘

And then I’ve told myself: ‘This is a miracle! I don’t
deserve anything better than any of these people. But it has happened. Here I
still am—so now it’s up to me to justify it.’ Somehow it’s made me feel closer
to other people than I have ever done before. That’s made me keep wondering all
the time what I can do to help some of them.

“You see, we
must
do something to justify that
miracle, Bill. I might have been any of these blind girls; you might have been
any of these wandering men. There’s nothing big we can do. But if we try to look
after just a few and give them what happiness we can, we shall be paying back a
little—just a tiny part of what we owe. You do see that, don’t you, Bill?”

I turned it over in my mind for a minute or more.

“I think,” I said, “that that’s the queerest argument I’ve
heard today—if not ever. And yet—”

“And yet it’s right, isn’t it, Bill? I know it’s right. I’ve
tried to put myself in the place of one of those blind girls, and I
know.
We
hold the chance of as full a life as they can have, for some of them. Shall we
give it them as part of our gratitude—or shall we simply withhold it on account
of the prejudices we’ve been taught? That’s what it amounts to.”

I sat silently for a time. I had not a moment’s doubt that
Josella meant every word she said. I ruminated a little on the ways of
purposeful, subversive-minded women like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth
Fry. You can’t do anything with such women—and they so often turn out to have
been right after all.

“Very well,” I said at last. “If that’s the way you think it
ought to be. But I hope—”

She cut me short.

“Oh, Bill, I knew you’d understand. Oh, I’m glad—so very
glad. You’ve made me so happy.”

After a time:

“I hope—” I began again.

Josella patted my hand.

“You won’t need to worry at all, my dear. I shall choose two
nice, sensible girls.”

“Oh,” I said.

We went on sitting there on the wall hand in hand, looking
at the dappled trees—but not seeing them very much; at least I wasn’t. Then, in
the building behind us, someone started up a phonograph, playing a Strauss
waltz. It was painfully nostalgic as it lilted though the empty courtyard. For
an instant the road before us became the ghost of a ballroom: a swirl of
color, with the moon for a crystal chandelier.

Josella slid off the wall. With her arms outstretched, her
wrists and fingers rippling, her body swaying, she danced, light as a
thistledown, in a big circle in the moonlight. She came round to me, her eyes
shining and her arms beckoning.

And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo
from a vanished past

I was walking through an unknown and deserted city where a
bell rang dismally and a sepulchral, disembodied voice called in the emptiness:
“The Beast is Loose! Beware! The Beast is Loose!” when I woke to find that a
bell really was ringing. It was a handbell that jangled with a brassy double
clatter so harsh and startling that for a moment I could not remember where I
was. Then, as I sat up still bemused, there came a sound of voices calling
“Fire!” I jumped just as I was from my blankets, and ran into the corridor.
There was a smell of smoke there, a noise of hurried feet, doors banging. Most
of the sound seemed to come from my right where the bell kept on clanging and
the frightened voices were calling, so it was that way I turned and ran. A
little moonlight filtered in through tall windows at the end of the passage,
relieving the dimness just enough for me to keep to the middle of the way, and
avoid the people who were feeling their way along the walls.

I reached the stairs. The bell was still clanging in the
hail below. I made my way down as fast as I could through smoke that grew
thicker. Near the bottom I tripped, and fell forward. The dimness became a
sudden darkness in which a light burst like a cloud of needles, and that was
all

The first thing was an ache in my head. The next was a glare
when I opened my eyes. At the first blink it was as dazzling as a klieg light,
but when I started again and edged the lids up more cautiously it turned out to
be only an ordinary window, and grimy, at that. I knew I was lying on a bed,
but I did not sit up to investigate further; there was a piston pounding away
in my head that discouraged any kind of movement. So I lay there quietly and
studied the ceiling— until I discovered that my wrists were tied together.

That snapped me out of my lethargy, in spite of the thumping
head. I found it a very neat job. Not painfully tight, but perfectly efficient.
Several turns of insulated wire on each wrist, and a complex knot on the far
side where it was impossible for me to reach it with my teeth. I swore a bit
and looked around. The room was small and, save for the bed on which I lay,
empty.

“Hey!” I called. “Anybody around here?”

After half a minute or so there was a shuffle of feet outside.
The door was opened, and a head appeared. It was a small head with a tweed cap
on the top of it. It had a stringy-looking choker beneath and a dark
unshaveness across its face. It was not turned straight at me, but in my
general direction

“‘Ullo, cock,” it said, amiably enough. “So you’ve come to,
‘ave yer? ‘Ang on a bit, an’ I’ll get you a cup o’ char.” And it vanished
again.

The instruction to hang on was superfluous, but I did not
have to wait long. In a few minutes he returned, carrying a wire-handled can
with some tea in it.

“Where are yer?” he said.

“Straight ahead of you, on the bed,” I told him.

He groped forward with his left hand until he found the foot
of the bed, then he felt his way round it and held out the can.

“‘Ere y’are, chum. It’ll taste a bit funny-like, ‘cause ol’
Charlie put a shot of rum in it, but I reckon you’ll not mind that.”

I took it from him, holding it with some difficulty between
my bound hands. It was strong and sweet, and the rum hadn’t been stinted. The taste
might be queer, but it worked like the elixir of life itself.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re a miracle worker. My name’s Bill.”
His, it seemed, was All.

“What’s the line, Alf? What goes on here?” I asked him. He
sat down on the side of the bed and held Out a packet of cigarettes with a box
of matches. I took one, lit the first, then my own, and gave him back the box.

“It’s this way, mate,” he said. “You know there was a bit of
a shindy up at the university yesterday morning—maybe you was there?”

I told him I’d seen it.

“Well, after that lark, Coker—he’s the chap what did the
talking—he got kinda peeved. ‘Hokay,’ ‘e says, nasty-like. ‘The----s’ve asked
for it. I put it to ‘em fair and square in the first place. Now they can take
what’s comm’ to them.’ Well, we’d met up with a couple of other fellers and one
old girl what can still see, an’ they fixed it all up between them. He’s a lad,
that Coker.”

“You mean—he framed the whole business—there wasn’t any fire
or anything?” I asked.

“Fire—my aunt Fanny! What they done was fix up a trip wire
or two, light a lot of papers and sticks in the hail, an’ start in ringing the
ol’ bell. We reckoned that them as could see ‘ud be the first along, on account
of there bein’ a bit o’ light still from the moon. And sure enough they was.
Coker an’ another chap was givi n’ them the k.o. as they tripped, an’ passin’
them along to some of us chaps to carry out to the truck. Simple as kiss your
‘and.”

“H’m,” I said ruefully. “Sounds efficient, that Coker. How
many of us mugs fell into that little trap?”

“I’d say we got a couple of dozen—though it turned out as
five or six of ‘em was blinded. When we’d loaded up about all we’d room for in
the truck, we beat it an’ left the rest to sort theirselves out.”

Whatever view Coker took of us, it was clear that Alf bore
us no animosity. He appeared to regard the whole affair as a bit of sport. I
found it a little too painful to class it so, but I mentally raised my hat to
All. I’d a pretty good idea that in his position I’d be lacking the spirit to
think of anything as a bit of sport. I finished the tea and accepted another
cigarette from him.

“And what’s the program now?” I asked him.

“Coker’s idea is to make us all up into parties, an’ put one
of you with each party. You to look after the scrounging, and kind of act as
the eyes of the rest, like. Your job’ll be to help us keep goin’ until somebody
comes along to straighten this perishin’ lot out.”

“I see,” I said.

He cocked his head toward me. There weren’t any flies on
Aif. He had caught more in my tone than I had realized was there.

“You reckon that’s goin’ to be a long time?” he said.

“I don’t know. What’s Coker say?”

Coker, it seemed, had not been committing himself to details.
Alf had his own opinion, though.

“‘F you ask me, I reckon there ain’t nobody goin’ to come.
If there was, they’d’ve been ‘ere before this. Different if we was in some
little town in the country. But London! Stands to reason they’d come ‘ere afore
anywhere else. No, the way I see it, they ain’t come yet—an’ that means they
ain’t
never
Loin’ to come—an’
that
means there ain’t nobody to
come. Cor, blimy, ‘oo’d ever’ve thought it could ‘appen like this!”

I didn’t say anything. All wasn’t the sort to be jollied
with facile encouragements.

“Reckon that’s the way you see it too?” he said after a bit.
“It doesn’t look so good,” I admitted. “But there still is a chance, you
know—people from somewhere abroad..

He shook his head.

“They’d’ve come before this. They’d’ve had loud-speaker cars
round the streets tellin’ us what to do by now. No, chum, we’ve ‘ad it there
ain’t nobody nowhere
to
come. That’s the fact of it.”

We were silent for a while, then:

“Ab well, ‘t weren’t a bad ol’ life while it lasted,” he
said, We talked a little about the kind of life it had been for him.

He’d had various jobs, each of which seemed to have included
some interesting undercover work. He summed it up:

“One way an’ another I didn’t do so bad. What was your
racket?”

I told him. He wasn’t impressed.

“Triffids, huh! Nasty damn things, I reckon. Not natcheral,
as you might say.”

We left it at that.

All went away, leaving me to my cogitations and a packet of
his cigarettes. I surveyed the outlook and thought little of it. I wondered how
the others would be taking it. Particularly what would be Josella’s view, When
Alf reappeared with more food and the inevitable can of tea, he was accompanied
by the man he had called Coker. He looked more tired now than when I had seen
him before. Under his arm he carried a bundle of papers. He gave me a searching
look.

“You know the idea?” he asked.

“What All’s told me,” I admitted.

“All right, then.” He dropped his papers on the bed, picked
up the top one and unfolded it. It was a street plan of Greater London. He
pointed to an area covering part of Hampstead and Swiss Cottage, heavily
outlined in blue pencil.

“That’s your beat,” he said. “Your party works inside that
area, and not in anyone else’s area. You can’t have each lot going after the
same pickings. Your job is to find the food in that area and see that your
party gets it—that, and anything else they need. Got that?”

“Or what?” I said, looking at him.

“Or they’ll get hungry. And if they do, it’ll be just too
bad for you. Some of the boys are tough, and we’re not any of us doing this for
fun, So watch your step. Tomorrow morning we’ll run you and your lot up there
in trucks. After that it’ll be your job to keep ‘em going until somebody comes
along to tidy things up.

“And if nobody does come?” I asked.

“Somebody’s
got
to come,” he said grimly. “Anyway,
there’s your job—and mind you keep to your area.”

I stopped him as he was on the point of leaving.

“Have you got a Miss Playton here?” I asked.

“I don’t know any of your names,” he said.

“Fair-haired, about five foot six or seven, gray-blue eyes,”
I persisted.

“There’s a girl about that size, and blond. But I haven’t
looked at her eyes. Got something more important to do,” he said as he left.

I studied the map. I was not greatly taken with the district
allotted to me. Some of it was a salubrious enough suburb, indeed, but in the
circumstances a location that included docks and warehouses would have more to
offer. It was doubtful whether there would be any sizable storage depots in
this part. Still, “can’t all ‘ave a prize.” as Alf would doubtless express
k—and, anyway, II had no intention of staying there any longer than was
strictly necessary.

When Alf showed up again I asked him if he would take a note
to Josella. He shook his head.

“Sorry, mate. Not allowed.”

I promised him it should be harmless, but he remained firm.
I couldn’t altogether blame him. He had no reason to trust me, and would not be
able to read the note to know that it was as harmless as I claimed. Anyway, I’d
neither pencil nor paper, so I gave that up. After pressing, he did consent to
let her know that I was here and to find out the district to which she was
being sent. He was not keen on doing that much, but he bad to allow that if
there were to be any straightening out of the mess it would be a lot easier for
me to find her again if I knew where to start looking.

After that ii had simply my thoughts for company for a bit.
I knew I ought to make my mind up once and for all on the right course, and
stick to it. But I could not. I seesawed. Some hours later when I fell
asleep I was still seesawing.

There was no means of knowing which way Josella had made up
her mind. I’d had no personal message from her. But All had put his head in
once during the evening. His communication had been brief.

“Westminster,” be said. “Cor! Don’t reckon that lot’s goin’
to find much grub in the ‘Ouses o’ Parliament”

I was woken by Alf coming in early the following morning. He
was accompanied by a bigger, shifty-eyed man who fingered a butcher’s knife
with unnecessary ostentation. Alf advanced and dropped in armful of clothes on
the bed. His companion shut the door and leaned against it, watching with a
crafty eye and toying with the knife.

“Give us yer mitts, mate,” said Alf.

I held my hands out toward him. He felt for the wires on my
wrists and snipped them with a cutter.

“Now just you put on that there clobber, chum,” he said,
stepping back.

I got myself dressed while the knife fancier followed every
movement I made, like a hawk. When I’d finished, All produced a pair of
handcuffs. “There’s just these,” he mentioned.

I hesitated. The man by the door ceased to lean on it and
brought his knife forward a little. For him this was evidently the interesting
moment. I decided maybe it was not the time to try anything, and held my wrists
out. Alf felt around and clicked on the cuffs. After that he went and fetched
me my breakfast.

Nearly two hours later the other man turned up again, his
knife well in evidence. He waved it at the door.

With the consciousness of the knife producing an uncomfortable
feeling in my back, we went down a number of flights of stairs and across a
hail. In the street a couple of loaded trucks were waiting. Coker, with two
companions, stood by the tailboard of one. He beckoned me over. Without saying
anything, he passed a chain between my arms. At each end of it was a strap. One
was fastened already round the left wrist of a burly blind man beside him; the
other he attached to the right wrist of a similar tough vase, so that I was
between them. They weren’t taking any avoidable chances.

“I’d not try any funny business, if I were you,” Coker advised
me. “You do right by them, and they’ll do right by you.”

The three of us climbed awkwardly onto the tailboard, and
the two trucks drove off.

We stopped somewhere near Swiss Cottage and piled out. There
were perhaps twenty people in sight, prowling with apparent aimlessness along
the gutters. At the sound of the engines every one of them had turned toward us
with an incredulous expression on his face, and as if they were parts of a
single mechanism they began to close hopefully toward us, calling out as they
came. The drivers shouted to us to get clear. They backed, turned, and rumbled
off by the way we had come. The converging people stopped. One or two of them
shouted after the trucks; most turned hopelessly and silently back to their
wandering. There was one woman about fifty yards
away;
she broke into
hysterics and began to bang her head against a wall. I felt sick.