Wyndham, John – The Day of the Triffids

“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.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d not thought of the clean wind part, but you’re right. A hilltop with a good water supply-that’s not so easy offhand.” I thought a moment. The Lake District? No, too far. Wales, perhaps? Or maybe Exmoor or Dartmoor-or right down in Cornwall? Around Land’s End we’d have the prevailing southwest wind coming in untainted over the Atlantic. But that, too, was a long way. We should be dependent on towns when it became safe to visit them again.

“What about the Sussex Downs?” Josella suggested. “I know a lovely old farmhouse on the north side, looking right across toward Pulborough. It’s not on the top of hills, but it’s well up the side. There’s a wind pump for water, and I think they make their own electricity. It’s all been converted and modernized.”

Desirable residence, in fact. But it’s a hit near populous places. Don’t you think we ought to get farther away?”

“Well, I was wondering. How long is it going to be before it’ll be safe to go into the towns again?”

“I’ve no real idea,” I admitted. “I’d something like a year in mind-surely that might to be a safe enough margin?”

“I see. But if we do go too far away, it isn’t going to be at all easy to get supplies later on.”

“That is a point, certainly,” I agreed.

We dropped the matter of our final destination for the moment and got down to working out details for our removal. In the morning, we decided, we would first of all acquire a truck-a capacious truck-and between us we made a list of the essentials we would put into it. If we could finish the stocking-up, we would start on our way the next evening; if not-and the list was growing to a length which made this appear much the more likely-we would risk another night in London and get away the following day.

It was close on midnight when we had finished adding our own secondary wants to the list of musts. The result resembled a department-store catalogue. But if it had done no more than serve to take our minds off ourselves for the evening, it would have been worth the trouble.

Josella yawned and stood up.

“Sleepy,” she said. “And silk sheets waiting on an ecstatic bed.”

She seemed to float across the thick carpet. With her hand on the doorknob she stopped, and turned to regard herself solemnly in a long mirror.

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