“As for me, my sweet, I wasn’t even alive before. But we’ll have better times yet-I promise you.”
“It’s silly, but I shall cry when we do go. I shall cry buckets. You mustn’t mind,” she said.
But, as things fell out, we were all of us much too busy to cry. …
STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL
There was, as Josella bad implied, no need for hurry. While we saw the summer out at Sliming, I could prospect a new borne for us on the island and make several journeys there to transport the most useful part of the stores and gear that we had collected. But, meanwhile, the woodpile had been destroyed. We needed no more fuel than would keep the kitchen going for a few weeks, but that we had to have, so the next morning Susan and I set off to fetch coal.
The half-tack wasn’t suitable for that job, so we took a four-wheel-drive tuck. Although the nearest rail coal depot was only ten miles away, the roundabout route, due to the blockage of some roads and the bad condition of others, meant that it took us nearly the whole day. There were no major mishaps, but it was drawing on to evening when we returned.
As we turned the last corner of the lane, with the triffids sla8hing at the truck as indefatigably as ever from the banks, we stared in astonishment. Beyond our gate, parked in our yard, stood a monstrous-looking vehicle. The sight so dumfounded us that we sat gaping at it for same moments before Susan put on her helmet and gloves and climbed down to open the gate.
After I had driven in we went over together to look at the vehicle. The chassis, we saw, was supported an metal tracks, which suggested a military origin. The general effect was somewhere ‘between a cabin cruiser and an amateur-built caravan. Susan and I looked at it, and then looked at one another, with raised eyebrows. We went indoors to learn more about it.
In the living room we found, in addition to the household, four men clad in gray-green ski suits. Two of them wore pistols holstered to the right hip; the other two had parked their submachine guns on the floor beside their chairs.
As we came in, Josella turned a completely expressionless face toward us.
“Here is my husband. Bill, this is Mr. Torrence. He tells us he is an official of some kind. He has proposals to make to us.” I had never heard her voice colder.
For a second I failed to respond. The man she indicated did not recognize me, but I recalled him, all right. Features that have faced you along sights get sort of set in your mind. Besides, there was that distinctive red hair. I remembered very well the way that efficient young man had turned hack my party in Hampstead. I nodded to him. Looking at me, he said:
“I understand you are in charge here, Mr. Masen?”
“The place belongs to Mr. Brent,” I replied.
“I mean that you are the organizer of this group?’
“In the circumstances, yes,” I said.
“Good.” He had a now-we-are-going-to-get-someplace air. “I am Commander, Southeast Region,” he added.
He spoke as if that should convey something important to me. It did not. I said so.
“It means,” he amplified, “that I am the chief executive officer of the Emergency Council for the Southeastern Region of Britain. As such, it happens to be one of my duties to supervise the distribution and allocation of personnel.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I have never heard of this-er—Council.”
“Possibly. We were equally ignorant of the existence of your group here until we saw your fire yesterday.”
I waited for him to go on.
“When such a group is discovered,” he said, “it is my job to investigate it, and assess it, and make the necessary adjustments. So you may take it that I am here officially.”
“On behalf of an official Council? Or does it happen to be a self-elected Council?”
‘There has to be law and order,” he said stiffly. Then, with a change of tone, he went on:
‘This is a well-found place you have here, Mr. Masen.”
“Mr. Brent has,” I corrected.
“We will leave Mr. Brent out. He is here only because you made it possible for him to stay here.”
I looked across at Dennis. His face was set.
“Nevertheless, it is his property,” I said.
“It was, I understand. But, the state of society which gave sanction to his ownership no longer exists. Titles to property have therefore ceased to be valid. Furthermore, Mr. Brent is not sighted, so that he cannot in any case be considered competent to hold authority.”
“Indeed!” I said again.
I had had a distaste for this young man and his decisive ways at our first meeting. Further acquaintance was doing nothing to mellow it. He went on:
“This is a matter of survival. Sentiment cannot be allowed to interfere with the necessary practical measures. Now, Mrs. Masen has told me that you number eight altogether, Five adults, this girl, and two small children. All of you are sighted, except these three.” He indicated Dennis, Mary, and Joyce.
‘That is so,” I admitted.
“H’m. That’s quite disproportionate, you know. There’ll have to be some changes here, I’m afraid. We have to be realistic in times like this.”
Josella’s eye caught mine. LI saw a warning in it. But in any case, I had no intention of breaking out just then. I had seen the redheaded man’s direct methods in action, and I wanted to know more of what I was up against. Apparently he realized that I would.
“I’d better put you in the picture,” he said. “Briefly, it is this. Regional H. Q. is at Brighton. London soon became too bad for us. But in Brighton we were able to clear and quarantine a part of the town, and we ran it. Brighton’s a big place. When the sickness had passed and we could get around more, there were plenty of stores to begin with. More recently we have been running in convoys from other places. But that’s folding up now. The roads are getting too bad for trucks, and they are having to go too far. It had to come, of course. We’d figured that we could last out there several years longer-still, there it is. It’s possible we undertook to look after too many from the start. Anyway, we are now having to disperse. The only way to keep going will be to live off the land. To do that, we’ve got to break up into smaller units. The standard unit has been fixed at one sighted person to ten blind, plus any children.
“You have a good place here, fully capable of supporting two units. We shall allocate to you seventeen blind persons, making twenty with the three already here-again, of course, plus any children they may have.”
I stared at him in amazement.
“You’re seriously suggesting that twenty people and their children can live off this land,” I said. “Why’ it’s utterly impossible. We’ve been wondering whether we shall be able to support ourselves on it.”
He shook his head confidently.
“It is perfectly possible. And what I am offering you is the command of the double unit we shall install here. Frankly, if you do not care to take it, we shall put in someone else who will. We can’t afford waste in these times.”
“But just look at the place,” I repeated. “It simply can’t do it.”
“I assure you that it can, Mr. Masen. Of course you’ll have to lower your standards a bit-we all shall, for the next few years, but when the children grow up you’ll begin to have labor to expand with. For six or seven years it’s going to mean personal hard work for you, I admit-that can’t be helped. From then on, however, you’ll gradually be able to relax until you are simply supervising. Surely that’s going to make a good return for just a few years of the tougher going?
“Placed as you are now, what sort of future would you have? Nothing but hard work until you died in your tracks-and your children would be faced with working in the same way, just to keep going, not more than that. Where are the future leaders and administrators to come from in that kind of setup? Your way, you’d be worn out and still in harness in another twenty years-and all your children would be yokels. Our way, you’ll be the head of a clan that’s working for you, and you’ll have an inheritance to hand on to your sons.”
Comprehension began to come to me. I said wonderingly:
“Am I to understand that you are offering me a kind of-feudal seigneury?”
“Ah,” he said. “I see you do begin to understand. It is, of course, the obvious and quite natural social and economic form for that state of things we are having to face now.”