“Your names, please?”
We gave them.
“And addresses?”
“In the present circumstances I fear they won’t be very useful,” I said. “But if you really feel you must have them-” We gave them too.
He murmured something about system, organization, and relatives, and wrote them down. Age, occupation, and all the rest of it followed. He bent his searching look upon us again, scribbled a note upon each piece of paper and put them in a file.
“Need good men. Nasty business, this. Plenty to do here, though. Plenty. Mr. Beadley’ll tell you what’s wanted,”
We came out into the ball again. Josella giggled.
“He forgot to ask for references in triplicate-but I gather we’ve got the job,” she said.
Michael Beadley, when we discovered him, turned out to be in decided contrast. He was lean, tall, broad-shouldered, and slightly stooping, with something the air of an athlete run to books. In repose his face took on an expression of mild gloom from the darkness of his large eyes, but it was seldom that one had a glimpse of it in repose. The occasional streaks of gray in his hair helped very little in judging his age. He might have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. His obvious weariness just then made an estimate still more difficult. By his looks, he must have been up all night; nevertheless he greeted us cheerfully and waved an introductory hand toward a young woman, who took down our names again as we gave them.
“Sandra Telmont,” he explained. “Sandra is our professional remembrancer-continuity is her usual work, so we 4 regard it as particularly thoughtful of Providence to contrive her presence here just now.”
The young woman nodded to me and looked harder at Josella.
“We’ve met before,” she said thoughtfully. She glanced down at the pad on her knee. Presently a faint smile passed across her pleasant, though unexotic countenance,
“Oh yes, of course,” she said in recollection.
“What did I tell you? The thing clings like a flypaper,” Josella observed to me.
“What’s this about?” inquired Michael Beadley.
I explained. He turned a more careful scrutiny on Josella.
She sighed.
“Please forget it,” she suggested. “I’m a bit tired of living it down”
That appeared to surprise him agreeably.
“All right,” he said, and dismissed the matter with a nod.
He turned back to the table. “Now to get on with things. You’ve seen Jaques?”
“If that is the Colonel who is playing at Civil Service, we have,” I told him.
He grinned.
“Got to know how we stand. Can’t get anywhere without
knowing your ration strength,” he said, in a fair imitation of
the Colonel’s manner. “But it’s quite true, though,” he went
on. “I’d better give you just a rough idea of how things stand.
Up to the present there are about thirty-five of us. All sorts.
We hope and expect that some more will come in during the
day. Out of those here now, twenty-eight can see. The others
are wives or husbands-and there are two or three children—
who cannot. At the moment the general idea is that we move
away from here sometime tomorrow if we can be ready in
time-to be on the safe side, you understand.”
I nodded. “We’d decided to get away this evening for the
same reason, I told him.
“What have you for transport?”
I explained the present position of the station wagon. “We
were going to stock up today,” I added. “So far we’ve practically nothing except a quantity of anti-triffid gear.”
He raised his eyebrows. The girl Sandra also looked at me
curiously.
“That’s a queer thing to make your first essential,” he
remarked.
I told them the reasons. Possibly I made a bad job of it,
for neither of them looked much impressed. He nodded casually and went on:
“Well, if you’re coming in with us, here’s what I suggest
B ring in your car, dump your stuff, then drive off and swap
it for a good big truck. Then Oh, does either of you know anything about doctoring?” he broke off to ask.
We shook our heads.
He frowned a little. “That’s a pity. So far we’ve got no one
who does. It’ll surprise me if we’re not needing a doctor before long-and, anyway, we ought all of us to have inoculations… Still, it’s not much good sending you two off on a medical supplies scrounge. What about food and general stores? Suit you?”
He flipped through some pages on a clip, detached one of them and handed it to me. It was headed No. 15, and below was a typed list of canned goods, pots and pans, and some bedding.
“Not rigid,” he said, “but keep reasonably close to it and we’ll avoid too many duplications. Stick to best quality. With the food, concentrate on value for bulk-I mean, even if corn flakes are your leading passion in life, forget ‘em. I suggest you keep to warehouses and big wholesalers.” He took hack the list and scribbled two or three addresses on it.
“Cans and packets are your food line-don’t get led away by sacks of flour, for instance; there’s another part on that sort of stuff.” He looked thoughtfully at Josella. Heavyish work, I’m afraid, but it’s the most useful job we can give you at present. Do as much as you can before dark. There’ll be a general meeting and discussion here about nine-thirty this evening.”
As we turned to go:
“Got a pistol?” he asked.
“I didn’t think of it,” I admitted.
“Better-just in case. Quite effective simply fired into the air,” he said. He took two pistols from a drawer in the table and pushed them across. “Less messy than that.” he added, with a look at Josella’s handsome knife. “Good scrounging to you.”
Even by the time we set out after unloading the station wagon we found that there were still fewer people about than on the previous day. The ones that were showed an inclination to get on the sidewalks at the sound of the engine rather than to molest us.
The first truck to take our fancy proved useless, being filled with wooden cases too heavy for us to remove. Our next find was luckier-a five-tonner, almost new, and empty. We trans-shipped, and left the station wagon to its fate.
At the first address on my list the shutters of the loading bay were down, but they gave way without much difficulty to the persuasions of a crowbar from a neighboring shop and rolled up easily. Inside, we made a find. Three trucks stood backed up to the platform. One of them was fully loaded with cases of canned meat.
“Can you drive one of these things?” I asked Josella.
She looked at it.
“Well, I don’t see why not. The general idea’s the same, isn’t it? And there’s certainly no traffic problem.”
We decided to come back and fetch it later, and took the empty truck on to another warehouse, where we loaded in parcels of blankets, rugs, and quilts, and then went on farther to acquire a noisy miscellany of pots, pans, caldrons, and kettles. When we had the truck filled we felt we bad put in a good morning’s work on a job that was heavier than we had thought. We satisfied the appetite it had given us at a small pub hitherto untouched.
The mood which filled the business and commercial districts was gloomy-though it was a gloom that still had more the style of a normal Sunday or public holiday than of collapse. Very few people at all were to be seen in those parts. Had the catastrophe come by day, instead of by night after the workers had gone home, it would have been a hideously different scene.
When we had refreshed ourselves we collected the already loaded truck from the food warehouse and drove the two of them slowly and uneventfully back to the university. We parked them in the forecourt there and set off again. About six-thirty we returned once more with another pair of well-loaded trucks and a feeling of useful accomplishment.
Michael Beadley emerged from the building to inspect our contributions. He approved of it all save half a dozen cases that I had added to my second load.
“What are they?” he asked.
“Triffid guns, and bolts for them,” I told him.
He looked at me thoughtfully.
“Oh yes. You arrived with a lot of anti-triffid stuff,” he remarked.
“I think it’s likely we’ll need it,” I said.
He considered. I could see that I was being put down as a bit unsound on the subject of triffids. Most likely he was accounting for that by the bias my job might be expected to give-aggravated by a phobia resulting from my recent sting and wondering whether it might connote other, perhaps less harmless, unsoundnesses.
“Look here,” I suggested, “we’ve brought in four full truckloads between us. I just want enough space in one of them for these cases. If you think we cant spare that, I’ll go out and find a trailer, or another truck.”