The Day of the Triffids(18)

The cause of it was a few yards down the alley. A girl was crouched on the ground while a burly man laid into her with a thin brass rod. The back of her dress was torn, and the flesh beneath showed red weals. As I came closer I saw why she did not run away—her hands were tied together behind her back, and a cord tethered them to the man’s left wrist.

I reached the pair as his arm was raised for another stroke. It was easy to snatch the rod from his unexpecting hand and bring it down with some force upon his shoulder. He promptly lashed a heavy boot out in my direction, but I had dodged back quickly, and his radius of action was limited by the cord on his wrist. He made another swiping kick at the air while I was feeling in my pocket for a knife. Finding nothing there, he turned and kicked the girl for good measure, instead. Then he swore at her and pulled on the cord to bring her to her feet. I slapped him on the side of his head, just hard enough to stop him and make his head sing for a bit—somehow I could not bring myself to lay out a blind man, even this type. While he was steadying himself from that I stooped swiftly and cut the cord which joined them. A slight shove on the man’s chest sent him staggering back and half turned him so that he lost his bearings. With his freed left hand he let out a fine raking swing. It missed me, but ultimately reached the brick wall. After that he lost interest in pretty well everything but the pain of his cracked knuckles. I helped the girl up, loosed her hands, and led her away down the alley while he was still blistering the air behind us.

As we turned into the street she began to come out of her daze. She turned a smeary, tear-stained face and looked up at me.

“But you can see!” she said incredulously.

“Certainly I can,” I told her.

“Oh, thank God! Thank God! I thought I was the only one,” she said, and burst into tears again.

I looked around us. A few yards away there was a pub with a phonograph playing, glasses smashing, and a high old time being had by all. A little beyond it was a smaller pub, still intact. A good heave with my shoulder broke in the door to the saloon bar. I half carried the girl in and put her in a chair. Then I dismembered another chair and put two of its legs through the handles of the swing doors for the discouragement of further visitors before I turned my attention to the restoratives at the bar.

There was no hurry. She sipped at, and snuffled over, the first drink. I gave her time to get on top of things, twiddling the stem of my glass and listening to the phonograph in the other pub churning out the currently popular, if rather lugubrious, ditty:

“My love’s locked up in a frigidaire,

And my heart’s in a deep-freeze pack.

She’s gone with a guy, I’d not know where,

But she wrote that she’d never come back.

Now she don’t care for me no more,

I’m just a one-man frozen store,

And it ain’t nice

To be on ice

With my love locked up in a frigidaire,

And my heart in a deep-freeze pack.”



While I sat I stole an occasional covert look at the girl. Her clothes, or the remnants of them, were good quality. Her voice was good too—probably not stage or movie acquired, for it had not deteriorated under stress. She was blond, but quite a number of shades sub-platinum. It seemed likely that beneath the smudges and smears she was good-looking. Her height was three or four inches less than mine, her build slim but not thin. She looked as if she had strength if it were necessary, but strength which, in her approximately twenty-four years, had most likely not been applied to anything more important than hitting balls, dancing, and, probably, restraining horses. Her well-shaped hands were smooth, and the fingernails that were still unbroken showed a length more decorative than practical.

The drink gradually did good work. By the end of it she was sufficiently recovered for habit of mind to assert itself.

“God, I must look awful,” she remarked.

It did not seem that anyone but me was likely to be in a position to notice that, but I left it.

She got up and walked over to a mirror.

“I certainly do,” she confirmed. “Where——”

“You might try through there,” I suggested.

Twenty minutes or so passed before she came back. Considering the limited facilities there must have been, she’d made a good job; morale was much restored. She approximated now the film director’s idea of the heroine after a roughhouse, rather than the genuine thing.

“Cigarette?” I inquired as I slid another fortifying glass across.

While the pulling-round process was completing itself we swapped stories. To give her time, I let her have mine first. Then she said:

“I’m damned ashamed of myself. I’m not a bit like that really—like you found me, I mean. In fact, I’m reasonably self-reliant, though you might not think it. But somehow the whole thing had got too big for me. What has happened is bad enough, but the awful prospect ahead suddenly seemed too much to bear, and I panicked. I had got to thinking that perhaps I was the only person left in the whole world who could see. It got me down, and all at once I was frightened and silly; I cracked, and howled like a girl in a Victorian melodrama. I’d never, never have believed it of me.”

“Don’t let it worry you,” I said. “We’ll probably be learning a whole lot of surprising things about ourselves soon.”

“But it does worry me. If I start off by slipping my gears like that——” She left the sentence unfinished.