The Day of the Triffids

1. THE END BEGINS-2

As the night line moved westward the brilliance of the display was in no way decreased. Occasional green flashes became visible even before darkness fell. The announcer, giving an account of the phenomenon in the six o’clock news, advised everyone that it was an amazing scene, and one not to be missed. He mentioned also that it seemed to be interfering seriously with short-wave reception at long distances, but that the medium waves on which there would be a running commentary were unaffected, as, at present, was television. He need not have troubled with the advice. By the way everyone in the hospital got excited about it, it seemed to me that there was not the least likelihood of anybody missing it—except myself.

And, as if the radio’s comments were not enough, the nurse who brought me my supper had to tell me all about it.

‘The sky’s simply full of shooting stars,’ she said. ‘All bright green. They make people’s faces look frightfully ghastly. Everybody’s out watching them, and sometimes it’s almost as light as day—only all the wrong colour. Every now and then there’s a big one so bright that it hurts to look at it. It’s a marvellous sight. They say there’s never been anything like it before. It is such a pity you can’t see it, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ I agreed, somewhat shortly.

‘We’ve drawn back the curtains in the wards so that they can all see it,’ she went on. ‘If only you hadn’t those bandages you’d have a wonderful view of it from here.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘But it must be better still outside, though. They say thousands of people are out in the parks and on the Heath watching it all. And on all the flat roofs you can see people standing and looking up.’

‘How long do they expect it to go on?’ I asked, patiently.

‘I don’t know, but they say it’s not so bright now as it was in other places. Still, even if you’d had your bandages off today I don’t expect they’d have let you watch it. You’ll have to take things gently at first, and some of the flashes are very bright. They— Ooooh!’

‘Why “ooooh”?’ I inquired.

‘That was such a brilliant one then—it made the whole room look green. What a pity you couldn’t see it.’

‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed. ‘Now do go away, there’s a good girl.’

I tried listening to the radio, but it was making the same ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ helped out by gentlemanly tones which blathered about this ‘magnificent spectacle’ and ‘unique phenomenon’ until I began to feel that there was a party for all the world going on, with me as the only person not invited.

I didn’t have any choice of entertainment, for the hospital radio system gave only one programme, take it or leave it. After a bit I gathered that the show had begun to wane. The announcer advised everyone who had not yet seen it to hurry up and do so, or regret all his life that he had missed it.

The general idea seemed to be to convince me that I was passing up the very thing I was born for. In the end I got sick of it, and switched off. The last thing I heard was that the display was diminishing fast now, and that we’d probably be out of the debris area in a few hours.

There could be no doubt in my mind that all this had taken place the previous evening—for one thing, I should have been a great deal hungrier even than I was had it been longer ago. Very well, what was this then? Had the whole hospital, the whole city, made such a night of it that they’d not pulled round yet?

About which point I was interrupted as the chorus of clocks, near and far, started announcing nine.

For the third time I played hell with the bell. As I lay waiting I could hear a sort of murmurousness beyond the door. It seemed composed of whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a raised voice in the distance.

But still no one came to my room.

By this time I was slipping back. The nasty, childish fancies were on me again. I found myself waiting for the unseeable door to open, and horrible things to come padding in—in fact, I wasn’t perfectly sure that somebody or something wasn’t in already, and stealthily prowling round the room…

Not that I’m given to that kind of thing, really…It was those damned bandages over my eyes, the medley of voices that had shouted back at me down the corridor. But I certainly was getting the willies—and once you get ’em, they grow. Already they were past the stage where you can shoo them off by whistling or singing at yourself.

It came at last to the straight question: was I more scared of endangering my sight by taking off the bandages, or of staying in the dark with the willies growing every minute?

If it had been a day or two earlier I don’t know what I’d have done—very likely the same in the end—but this day I could at least tell myself:

‘Well, hang it, there can’t be a lot of harm if I use common sense. After all, the bandages are due to come off today. I’ll risk it.’

There’s one thing I put to my credit. I was not far enough gone to tear them off wildly. I had the sense and the self-control to get out of bed and pull the blind down before I started on the safety-pins.

Once I had the coverings off, and had found out that I could see in the dimness, I felt a relief that I’d never known before. Nevertheless, the first thing I did after assuring myself that there were indeed no malicious persons or things lurking under the bed or elsewhere, was to slip a chair-back under the door-handle. I could, and did, begin to get a better grip on myself then. I made myself take a whole hour gradually getting used to full daylight. At the end of it I knew that thanks to swift first-aid, followed by good doctoring, my eyes were as good as ever.

But still no one came.

On the lower shelf of the bedside table I discovered a pair of dark glasses thoughtfully put ready against my need of them. Cautiously I put them on before I went right close to the window. The lower part of it was not made to open, so that the view was restricted. Squinting down and sideways I could see one or two people who appeared to be wandering in an odd, kind of aimless way farther up the street. But what struck me most, and at once, was the sharpness, the clear definition of everything—even the distant housetops view across the opposite roofs. And then I noticed that no chimney, large or small, was smoking…

I found my clothes hung tidily in a cupboard. I began to feel more normal once I had them on. There were some cigarettes still in the case. I lit one, and started to get into the state of mind where, though everything was still undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had been quite so near panic.

It is not easy to think oneself back to the outlook of those days. We have to be more self-reliant now. But then there was so much routine, things were so interlinked. Each one of us so steadily did his little part in the right place that it was easy to mistake habit and custom for the natural law—and all the more disturbing, therefore, when the routine was in any way upset.

When getting on for half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business. Looking back at the shape of things then, the amount we did not know and did not care to know about our daily lives is not only astonishing, but somehow a bit shocking. I knew practically nothing, for instance, of such ordinary things as how my food reached me, where the fresh water came from, how the clothes I wore were woven and made, how the drainage of cities kept them healthy. Our life had become a complexity of specialists all attending to their own jobs with more or less efficiency, and expecting others to do the same. That made it incredible to me, therefore, that complete disorganization could have overtaken the hospital. Somebody somewhere, I was sure, must have it in hand—unfortunately it was a somebody who had forgotten all about Room 48.

Nevertheless, when I did go to the door again and peer into the corridor I was forced to realize that whatever had happened it was affecting a great deal more than the single inhabitant of Room 48.

Just then there was no one in sight, though in the distance I could hear a pervasive murmur of voices. There was a sound of shuffling footsteps, too, and occasionally a louder voice echoing hollowly in the corridors, but nothing like the din I had shut out before. This time I did not shout. I stepped out cautiously—why cautiously? I don’t know. There was just something that induced it.

It was difficult in that reverberating building to tell where the sounds were coming from, but one way the passage finished at an obscured french window, with the shadow of a balcony rail upon it, so I went the other. Rounding a corner, I found myself out of the private-room wing and on a broader corridor.

When I first looked along it I thought it empty, then as I moved forward I saw a figure come out of a shadow. He was a man wearing a black jacket and striped trousers, with a white cotton coat over them. I judged him to be one of the staff doctors—but it was curious that he should be crouching against the wall and feeling his way along.

‘Hullo, there,’ I said.

He stopped suddenly. The face he turned towards me was grey and frightened.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, uncertainly.

‘My name’s Masen,’ I told him. ‘William Masen. I’m a patient—Room 48. And I’ve come to find out why—’

‘You can see?’ he interrupted, swiftly.

‘Certainly I can. Just as well as ever,’ I assured him. ‘It’s a wonderful job. Nobody came to unbandage my eyes, so I did it myself. I don’t think there’s any harm done. I took—’

But he interrupted again.

‘Please take me to my office. I must telephone at once.’

I was slow to catch on, but everything ever since I woke that morning had been bewildering.

‘Where’s that?’ I asked.

‘Fifth floor, west wing. The name’s on the door—Doctor Soames.’

‘All right,’ I agreed, in some surprise. ‘Where are we now?’

The man rocked his head from side to side, his face tense and exasperated.

‘How the hell should I know?’ he said, bitterly. ‘You’ve got eyes, damn it. Use them. Can’t you see I’m blind?’

There was nothing to show that he was blind. His eyes were wide open, and apparently looking straight at me.

‘Wait here a minute,’ I said. I looked round. I found a large ‘5’ painted on the wall opposite the lift gate. I went back and told him.

‘Good. Take my arm,’ he directed. ‘You turn right as you come out of the lift. Then take the first passage on the left, and it’s the third door.’

I followed instructions. We met no one at all on the way. Inside the room I led him up to the desk, and handed him the telephone. He listened for some moments. Then he groped about until he found the rest, and rattled the bar impatiently. Slowly his expression changed. The irritability and the harassed lines faded away. He looked simply tired—very tired. He put the receiver down on the desk. For some seconds he stood silently, looking as though he was staring at the wall opposite. Then he turned.