The Day of the Triffids(60)

“The thing hit him,” she said. “It hit him and he fell down. And it wanted to hit me when I tried to help him. Horrible thing!”

I looked up and saw the top of a triffid rising above the fence that bordered the garden.

“Put your hands over your ears. I’m going to make a bang,” I said.

She did so, and I blasted the top off the triffid.

“Horrible thing!” she repeated. “Is it dead now?”

I was about to assure her that it was, when it began to rattle the little sticks against its stem, just as the one at Steeple Honey had done. As then, I gave it the other barrel to shut it up.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s dead now.”

We walked across to the little boy. The scarlet slash of the sting was vivid on his pale cheek. It must have happened some hours before. She knelt beside him.

“It isn’t any good,” I told her gently.

She looked up, fresh tears in her eyes.

“Is Tommy dead too?”

I squatted down beside her and shook my head.

“I’m afraid he is.”

After a while she said:

“Poor Tommy! Will we bury him—like the puppies?”

“Yes,” I told her.

In all the overwhelming disaster, that was the only grave I dug—and it was a very small one. She gathered a little bunch of flowers and laid them on top of it. Then we drove away.



* * *



—

Susan was her name. A long time ago, as it seemed to her, something had happened to her father and mother so that they could not see. Her father had gone out to try to get some help, and he had not come back. Her mother went out later, leaving the children with strict instructions not to leave the house. She had come back crying. The next day she went out again: this time she did not come back. The children had eaten what they could find, and then began to grow hungry. At last Susan was hungry enough to disobey instructions and seek help from Mrs. Walton at the shop. The shop itself was open, but Mrs. Walton was not there. No one came when Susan called, so she had decided to take some cakes and biscuits and candies and tell Mrs. Walton about it later.

She had seen some of the things about as she came back. One of them had struck at her, but it had misjudged her height, and the sting passed over her head. It frightened her, and she ran the rest of the way home. After that she had been very careful about the things, and on further expeditions had taught Tommy to be careful about them too. But Tommy had been so little he had not been able to see the one that was hiding in the next garden when he went out to play that morning. Susan had tried half a dozen times to get to him, but each time, however careful she was, she had seen the top of the triffid tremble and stir slightly….

An hour or so later I decided it was time to stop for the night. I left her in the truck while I prospected a cottage or two until I found one that was fit, and then we set about getting a meal together. I did not know much of small girls, but this one seemed to be able to dispose of an astonishing quantity of the result, confessing while she did so that a diet consisting almost entirely of biscuits, cake, and candies had proved less completely satisfying than she had expected. After we had cleaned her up a bit, and I, under instruction, had wielded her hairbrush, I began to feel rather pleased with the results. She, for her part, seemed able for a time to forget all that had happened in her pleasure at having someone to talk to.

I could understand that. I was feeling exactly the same way myself.

But not long after I had seen her to bed, and come downstairs again, I heard the sound of sobbing. I went back to her.

“It’s all right, Susan,” I said. “It’s all right. It didn’t really hurt poor Tommy, you know—it was so quick.” I sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand. She stopped crying.

“It wasn’t just Tommy,” she said. “It was after Tommy—when there was nobody, nobody at all. I was so frightened…”

“I know,” I told her. “I do know. I was frightened too.”

She looked up at me.

“But you aren’t frightened now?”

“No. And you aren’t either. So you see, we’ll just have to keep together to stop one another being frightened.”

“Yes,” she agreed with serious consideration. “I think that’ll be all right….”

So we went on to discuss a number of things until she fell asleep.



* * *



—

“Where are we going?” Susan asked as we started off again the following morning.

I said that we were looking for a lady.

“Where is she?” asked Susan.

I wasn’t sure of that.

“When shall we find her?” asked Susan.

I was pretty unsatisfactory about that too.

“Is she a pretty lady?” asked Susan.

“Yes,” I said, glad to be more definite this time.

It seemed, for some reason, to give Susan satisfaction.

“Good,” she remarked approvingly, and we passed to other subjects.

Because of her, I tried to skirt the larger towns, but it was impossible to avoid many unpleasant sights in the country. After a while I gave up pretending that they did not exist. Susan regarded them with the same detached interest as she gave to the normal scenery. They did not alarm her, though they puzzled her and prompted questions. Reflecting that the world in which she was going to grow up would have little use for the overniceties and euphemisms that I had learned as a child, I did my best to treat the various horrors and curiosities in the same objective fashion. That was really very good for me too.