John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids

“That means it’s like this everywhere?”

“I’m afraid so. There was something pip-pipping away around forty-two meters. Otherwise nothing. I wonder who and where he was, poor chap.”

“It’s—it’s going to be pretty grim, Bill, isn’t it?”

“It’s— No, I’m nor going to have my dinner clouded,” I said. “Pleasure before business-and the future is definitely business. Let’s talk about something interesting, like how many love affairs you have had and why somebody hasn’t married you long before this—or has he? You see how little I know, Life story, please.”

“Well,” she said, “I was born about three miles from here. My mother was very annoyed about it at the time.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You see, she had quite made up her mind that I should be an American. But when the car came to take her to the airport it was just too late. Full of impulses, she was—I think I inherited some of them.”

She prattled on. There was not much remarkable about her early life, but I think she enjoyed herself in summarizing it and forgetting where we were for a while. I enjoyed listening to her babble of the familiar and amusing things that had all vanished from the world outside. We worked lightly through childhood, schooldays, and “coming out”—insofar as the term still meant anything.

I did nearly get married when I was nineteen,” she admitted, “and aren’t I glad now it didn’t happen. But I didn’t feel like that at the time. I had a frightful row with Daddy, who’d broken the whole thing up because he saw right away that Lionel was a spizzard and—”

“A what?” I interrupted.

“A spizzard. A sort of cross between a spiv and a lizard — the lounge kind. So then I cut my family off and went and lived with a girl I knew who had an apartment. And my family cut off my allowance, which was a very silly thing to do, because it might have had just the opposite effect from what they intended. As it happened, it didn’t, because all the girls I knew who were making out that way seemed to me to have a very wearing sort of time of it. Not much fun, and an awful lot of jealousy to put up with—and so much planning. You’d never believe how much planning it needs to keep one or two second strings in good condition—or do I mean two or three spare strings?” She pondered.

“Never mind,” I told her. “I get the general idea. You just didn’t want the strings at all.”

“Intuitive, you are. All the same, I couldn’t just sponge on the girl who had the apartment. I did have to have some money, so I wrote the book.”

I did not think I’d heard quite aright.

“You made a book?” I suggested.

“I wrote the book.” She glanced at me and smiled. “I must look awful dumb—that’s just the way they all used to look at me when I told them I was writing a book. Mind you, it wasn’t a very good book—I mean, not like Aldous or Charles or people of that kind—but it worked.”

I refrained from asking which of many possible Charleses this referred to. I simply asked:

“You mean it did get published?”

“Oh yes. And it really brought in quite a lot of money. The film rights—”

“What was this book?” I asked curiously.

“It was called Sex is My Adventure.”

I stared and then smote my forehead.

“Josella Playton, of course. I couldn’t think why that name kept on nearly ringing bells. You wrote that thing?” I added incredulously.

I couldn’t think why I had not remembered before. Her photograph had been all over the place—not a very good photograph, now I could look at the original, and the book had been all over the place too. Two large circulating libraries had banned it, probably on the title alone. After that its success had been assured, and the sales went rocketing up into the hundred thousands. Josella chuckled. I was glad to hear it.

“Oh dear,” she said. “You look just like all my relatives did.”

“I can’t blame them,” I told her.

“Did you read it?” she asked.

I shook my head. She sighed.

“People are funny. All you know about it is the title and the publicity, and you’re shocked. And it’s such a harmless little book, really. Mixture of green-sophisticated and pink-romantic, with patches of schoolgirly-purple. But the title was a good idea.”

“All depends what you mean by good,” I suggested. “And you put your own name to it, too.”

“That,” she agreed, “was a mistake. The publishers persuaded me that it would be so much better for publicity. From their point of view they were right. I became quite notorious for a hit—it used to make me giggle inside when I saw people looking speculatively at me in restaurants and places—they seemed to find it so hard to tie up what they saw with what they thought. Lots of people I didn’t care for took to tinning up regularly at the apartment, so to get rid of them, and because I’d proved that I didn’t have to go home, I went home again.

“The book rather spoiled things, though. People would be so literal-minded about that title. I seem to have been keeping up a permanent defensive ever since against people I don’t like—and those I wanted to like were either scared or shocked. What’s so annoying is that it wasn’t even a wicked book—it was just silly-shocking, and sensible people ought to have seen that.”

She paused contemplatively. It occurred to rue that the sensible people had probably decided that the author of Sex Is My Adventure would be silly-shocking too, but I forebore to suggest it. We all have our youthful follies, embarrassing to recall—but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.

“It sort of twisted everything,” she complained. “I was writing another book to try to balance things up again. But I’m glad I’ll never finish it—it was rather bitter.”

“With an equally alarming title?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It was to be called Here the Forsaken.”

“H’m—well, it certainly lacks the snap of the other,” I said. “Quotation?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Mr. Congreve: ‘Here the forsaken Virgin rests from Love.’”

“Er—oh,” I said, and thought that one over for a bit.

“And now,” I suggested, “I think it’s about time we began to rough out a plan of campaign. Shall I throw around a few observations first?”

We lay back in two superbly comfortable armchairs. On the low table between us stood the coffee apparatus and two glasses. Josella’s was the small one with the cointreau. The plutocratic-looking balloon with the puddle of unpriceable brandy was mine. Josella blew out a feather of smoke and took a sip of her drink. Savoring the flavor, she said:

“I wonder whether we shall ever taste fresh oranges again? Okay, shoot.”

“Well, it’s no good blinking facts. We had better clear out soon. If not tomorrow, then the day after. You can begin to see already what’s going to happen here. At present there’s still water in the tanks. Soon there won’t be. The whole city will begin to stink like a great sewer. There are already some bodies lying about—every day there will be more.” I noticed her shudder. I had for the moment, in taking the general view, forgotten the particular application it would have for her. I hurried on: “That may mean typhus, or cholera, or God knows what. It’s important to get away before anything of that kind starts.”

She nodded agreement to that.

“Then the next question seems to be, where do we go? Have you any ideas?” I asked her.

“Well—I suppose, roughly, somewhere out of the way. A place with a good water supply we can be sure of—a well, perhaps. And I should think it would be best to be as high up as we reasonably can—some place where there’ll be a nice clean wind.”