John Wyndham: The Day of the Triffids

The place looked—well, maybe you’ll have seen some of Dore’s pictures of sinners in hell. But Dore couldn’t include the sounds: the sobbing, the murmurous moaning, and occasionally a forlorn cry.

A minute or two of it was all I could stand. I fled back up the stairs.

There was the feeling that I ought to do something about it. Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that dreadful slow milling. But a glance had been enough to show that I could not hope to make my way to the door to guide them there. Besides, if I were to, if I did get them outside—what then?

I sat down on a step for a while to get over it, with my head in my hands and that awful conglomerate sound in my ears all the time. Then I searched for, and found, another staircase. It was a narrow service flight which led me out by a back way into the yard.

Maybe I’m not telling this part too well. The whole thing was so unexpected and shocking that for a time I deliberately tried not to remember the details. Just then I was feeling much as though it were a nightmare from which I was desperately but vainly seeking the relief of waking myself. As I stepped out into the yard I still half refused to believe what I had seen.

But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or nightmare, I needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before.

There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside the yard gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now—the Alamein Arms. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of Viscount Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below it one of the doors stood open.

I made straight for it.

Stepping into the public bar gave me for the moment a comforting sense of normality. It was prosaically and familiarly like dozens of others.

But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner.

I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop. A pause. Then a voice remarked:

“Gin, blast it! T’hell with gin!”

There followed a shattering crash. The voice gave a sozzled chuckle.

“Thash th’mirror. Wash good of mirrors anyway?”

Another cork popped.

“S’darnned gin again,” complained the voice, offended.

“T’hell with gin.”

This time the bottle hit something soft, thudded to the floor, and lay there gurgling away its contents.

“Hey!” I called. “I want a drink.” There was a silence. Then:

“Who’re you?” the voice inquired cautiously.

“I’m from the hospital,” I said. “I want a drink.” “Don’ ‘member y’r voice. Can you see?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“Well, then, for God’s sake get over the bar, Doc, and find me a bottle of whisky.”

“I’m doctor enough for that,” I said

I climbed across and went round the corner. A large-bellied, red-faced man with a graying walrus mustache stood there clad only in trousers and a collarless shirt. He was pretty drunk. He seemed undecided whether to open the bottle he held in his band or to use it as a weapon.

“‘F you’re not a doctor, what are you?” he demanded suspiciously.

“I was a patient—but I need a drink as much as any doctor,” I said. “That’s gin again you’ve got there,” I added.

“Oh, is it! Damned gin,” he said, and slung it away. It went through the window with a lively crash.

“Give me that corkscrew,” I told him.

I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it, and handed it to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn’t shaking so much.

I looked at my companion. He was taking his whisky neat, out of the bottle.

“You’ll get drunk,” I said.

He paused and turned his head toward me. I could have sworn that his eyes really saw me.

“Get drunk! Damn it, I am drunk,” he said scornfully. He was so perfectly right that I didn’t comment. He brooded a moment before he announced:

“Gotta get drunker. Gotta get mush drunker.” He leaned closer.

“D’you know what? I’m blind. Thash what I am— blind’s a bat. Everybody’s blind’s a bat. ‘Cept you. Why aren’t you blind’s a bat?”

“I don’t know,” I told him.

“‘S that bloody comet. Thash what done it. Green shootin’ shtarsh—an’ now everyone’s blind’s a hat. D’ju shee green shootin’ shtarsh?”

“No,” I admitted.

“There you are. Proves it. You didn’t see ‘em: you aren’t blind. Everyone else saw ‘em”—he waved an expressive arm

—“all’s blind’s bats. Bloody comets, I say.”

I poured myself a third brandy, wondering whether there might not be something in what he was saying.

“Everyone blind?” I repeated.

“Thash it. All of ‘em. Prob’ly everyone in th’world—’cept you,’ he added as an afterthought.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“‘S’easy. Listen!” he said.

We stood side by side, leaning on the bar of the dingy pub, and listened. There was nothing to be heard—nothing but the rustle of a dirty newspaper blown down the empty street. Such a quietness held everything as cannot have been known in those parts for a thousand years and more.

“See what I mean? ‘S’obvious,” said the man.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes—I see what you mean.”

I decided that I must get along. I did not know where to. But I must find out more about what was happening.

“Are you the landlord?” I asked him.

“Wha’ ‘f I am?” he demanded defensively.

“Only that I’ve got to pay someone for three double brandies.”

“Ah—forget it.”

“But look here

“Forget it, I tell you. D’ju know why? ‘Cause what’s the good ‘f money to a dead man? An’ thash what I ain—’s good as. Jus’ a few more drinks.”

He looked a pretty robust specimen for his age, and I said so.

“Wha’s good of living blind’s a bat?” be demanded aggressively. “Thash what my wife said. An’ she was right—only she’s more guts than I have. When she found as the kids was blind too, what did she do? Took ‘em into our bed with her and turned on the gas. Thash what she done. An’ I hadn’t the guts to stick with ‘em. She’s got pluck, my wife, more’n I have. But I will have soon. I’m goin’ back up there soon— when I’m drunk enough.”

What was there to say? What I did say served no purpose, save to spoil his temper. In the end he groped his way to the stairs and disappeared up them, bottle in hand. I didn’t try to stop him or follow him. I watched him go. Then I knocked off the last of my brandy and went out into the silent street.

This is a personal record. It involves a great deal that has vanished forever, but I can’t tell it in any other way than by using the words we used to use for those vanished things, so they have to stand. But even to make the setting intelligible I find that I shall have to go back farther than the point at which I started.

When I, William Masen, was a child we lived, my father, my mother, and myself, in a southern suburb of London. We had a small house which my father supported by conscientious daily “attendance at his desk in the Inland Revenue Department, and a small garden at which he worked rather harder during the summer. There was not a lot to distinguish us from the ten or twelve million other people who used to live in and around London in those days.

My father was one of those persons who could add a column of figures—even of the ridiculous coinage then in use locally—with a flick of the eye, so that it was natural for him to have in mind that I should become an accountant. As a result, my inability to make any column of figures reach the same total twice caused me to be something of a mystery as well as a disappointment to him. Still, there it was: just one of those things. And each of a succession of teachers who tried to show me that mathematical answers were derived logically and not through some form of esoteric inspiration was forced to give up with the assurance that I had no head for figures. My father ‘would read my school reports with a gloom which in other respects they scarcely warranted. His mind worked, I think, this way: no head for figures = no idea of finance = no money.