Wyndham, John (6 page)

When I next took an interest in things I found myself lying
in the road. The sound of the gang was diminishing into the distance, and the
prophet of doom, restored to eloquence, was sending threatful bolts of
damnation, hell-fire, and a brimstone gehenna hurtling after them.

With a bit of sense knocked into me, I became thankful that
the affair had not fallen out worse. Had the result been reversed, I could
scarcely have escaped making myself responsible for the men he had been
leading. After all, and whatever one might feel about his methods, he was the
eyes of that party, and they’d be looking to him for food as well as for drink.
And the women would go along too, on their own account as soon as they got
hungry enough. And now I came to look around me, I felt doubtful whether any of
the women hereabouts would seriously mind anyway. What with one thing and
another, it looked as if I might have had a lucky escape from promotion to gang
leadership.

Remembering that they had been headed for the Café Royal, I decided to
revive myself and clear my head at the Regent Palace Hotel. Others appeared to
have thought of that before me, but there were quite a lot of bottles they had
not found.
I think it was while I was sitting there comfortably with a brandy in front of
me and a cigarette in my hand that I at last began to admit that what I had
seen was all real—and decisive. There would be no going back—ever. It was
finish to all I had known . . . .

Perhaps it had needed that blow to drive it home.
Now I came face to face with the fact that my existence simply had no focus any
longer. My way of life, my plans, ambitions, every expectation I had had, they
were all wiped out at a stroke, along with the conditions that had formed them.
I suppose that had I had any relatives or close attachments to mourn I should
have felt suicidally derelict at that moment but what had seemed at times a
rather empty existence turned out now to be lucky. My mother and father were
dead, my one attempt to marry had miscarried some years before, and there was
no particular person dependent on me. And, curiously, what I found that I did
feel—with a consciousness that it was against what I ought to be feeling—was
release....

It wasn’t just the brandy, for it persisted. I think it may
have come from the sense of facing something quite fresh and new to me. All the
old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one
mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what others might arise—and it looked as
though there would be plenty of them—but they would be
new.
I was
emerging as my own master, and no longer a cog. It might well be a world full
of horrors and dangers that I should have to face, but I could take my own
steps to deal with it—I would no longer be shoved hither and thither by forces
and interests that I neither understood nor cared about.

No, it wasn’t altogether the brandy, for even now, years
afterward, I can still feel something of it—though possibly the brandy did
oversimplify things a little just then.

Then there was, too, the little question of what to do next:
how and where to start on this new life. But I did not let that worry me a lot
for the present. I drank up and went out of the hotel to see what this strange
world had to offer.

In order to give a reasonable berth to the Caf6 Royal mob I
struck up a side street into Soho, intending to cut back to Regent street
higher up.

Perhaps hunger was driving more people out of their homes.
Whatever The reason, I found that the pans I now entered were more populous
than any I’d seen since I left the hospital. Constant collisions took place on
the sidewalks and in the narrow streets, and the confusion of those who were
trying to get along was made worse by knots of people clustering in front of
the now frequently broken shop windows. None of those who crowded there seemed
to he quite sure what kind of shop they were facing. Some in the front sought
to find out by groping for any recognizable object; others, taking the risk of
disemboweling themselves on standing splinters of glass, more enterprisingly
climbed inside.

I felt that I ought to be showing these people where to find
food. But should I? If I were to lead them to a food shop still intact, there
would be a crowd which would not only sweep the place bare in five minutes but
would crush a number of its weaker members in the process. Soon, anyway, all
the food in the shops would be gone; then what was to be done with the
thousands clamoring for more? One might collect a small party and keep it alive
somehow for an uncertain length of time—but who was to be taken and who left?
No obviously right course presented itself however I tried to look at it.

What was going on was a grim business without chivalry, with
no give, and all take, about it. A man humping into another and feeling that
he carried a parcel would snatch it and duck away, on the chance that it
contained something to eat, while the loser clutched furiously at the air or
hit out indiscriminately. Once I had to step hurriedly aside to avoid being
knocked down by an elderly man who darted into the roadway with no care for
possible obstacles. His expression was vastly cunning, and he clutched
avariciously to his chest two cans of red paint. On a corner my way was blocked
by a group almost weeping with frustration over a bewildered child who could
see but was just too young to understand what they wanted of it.

I began to become uneasy. Fighting with my civilized urge to
be of some help to these people was an instinct that told me to keep clear.
They were already fast losing ordinary restraints. I felt, too, an irrational
sense of guilt at being able to see while they could not. It gave me an odd
feeling that I was hiding from them even while I moved among them. Later on I
found how right the instinct was.

Close to Golden Square I began to think of turning left and
working back to Regent Street, where the wider roadway would offer easier
going. I was about to take a corner that would lead me that way when a sudden
piercing scream stopped me. It stopped everyone else too. All along the street
they stood still, turning their heads this way and that, apprehensively trying
to guess what was happening. The alarm, coming on top of their distress and
nervous tension, started a number of the women whimpering. The men’s nerves
weren’t in any too good a state either; they showed it mostly in short curses
at being startled. For it was an ominous sound, one of the kinds of thing they
had been subconsciously expecting. They waited for it to come again.

It did. Frightened, and dying into a gasp. But less alarming
now that one was ready for
it.
This time I was able to place it. A few
steps took me to an alley entrance. As I turned the corner a cry that was half
a gasp came again.

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 wish 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 is were necessary, but strength which, in
her approximately twenty-four years, had most likely nor 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 hack. 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 rime, 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 inc 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 learn-kg
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.

“I was near enough to panic in that hospital,” I said.
“We’re human beings, not calculating machines.”

Her name was Josella Playton. There seemed to be something
familiar about that, but I could not place it. Her home was in Dene Road, St.
John’s Wood. The district fitted in more or less with my surmises. I remembered
Dene Road. Detached, comfortable houses, mostly ugly, but all expensive. Her
escape from the general affliction had been no less a matter of luck than
mine—well, perhaps more. She had been at a party on that Monday night—a pretty
considerable party, it seemed.

“I reckon somebody who thinks that kind of thing funny must
have been tooling with the drinks,” she said. “I’ve never felt so ill as I did
at the end of it—and I didn’t take a lot.”

Tuesday she recollected as a day of blurred misery and
record hangover. About four in the afternoon she had had more than enough of
it. She rang the bell and gave instructions that come comets, earthquakes, or
the day of judgment itself, she was not to be disturbed. Upon that ultimatum
she had taken a strong dose of sleeping draught, which on an empty stomach had
worked with the efficiency of a knockout drop.

From then on she had known nothing until this morning, when
she had been awakened by her father stumbling into her room.

“Josella,” he was saying, “for God’s sake get Dr. Mayle.
Tell him I’ve gone blind—stone blind.”

She had been amazed to see that it was already almost nine
o’clock. She got up and dressed hurriedly. The servants had answered neither
her father’s bell nor her own. When she went to rouse them she had found to her
horror that they, too, were blind.

With the telephone out of order, the only course seemed to
be for her to take the car and fetch the doctor herself. The quiet streets and
absence of traffic had seemed queer, but she had already driven almost a mile
before it came to her what had happened. When she realized, she had all but
turned back in panic—but that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. There was
still the chance that the doctor might have escaped the malady, whatever it
was, just as she herself had. So, with a desperate but waning hope, she had
driven on.

Halfway down Regent Street the engine started to miss and
sputter; finally it stopped. In her hurried start she had not looked at the
gauge: the tank had run dry.

She sat there for a moment, dismayed. Every face in sight
was now turned toward her, but she had realized by this time that not one of
those she saw could see or help her. She got out of the car, hoping to find a
garage somewhere near by, or, if there was none, prepared to walk the rest of
the way. As

she slammed the door behind her, a voice called:

“Hey! Just a minute, mate!”

She turned and saw a man groping toward her.

“What is it?” she asked. She was by no means taken with the
look of him.

His manner changed on hearing her voice.

“I’m lost. Dunno where I am,” he said.

“This is Regent Street. The New Gallery cinema’s just behind
you,” she told him, and turned to go.

“Just show me where the curb is, miss, will you?’ he said.
She hesitated, and in that moment he came close. The outstretched hand sought
and touched her sleeve. He lunged forward and caught both her arms in a painful
grip.

“So you can
see,
can you!” he said. “Why the hell
should you be able to see when I can’t—nor anyone else?”

Before she realized what was happening he had turned her and
tripped her, and she was lying in the road with his knee in her back. He caught
both her wrists in the grasp of one large hand and proceeded to tie them
together with a piece of string from his pocket. Then he stood up and pulled
her onto her feet again.

“All right,” he said. “From now on you can do your seeing
for me. I’m hungry. Take me where there’s a bit of good grub. Get on with it.”

“I think, Bill,” she said, “that though you wouldn’t have guessed
it to look at him, he wasn’t perhaps too bad a man really. Only he was
frightened. Deep down inside him he was much more frightened than I was. He
gave me some food and something to drink. He only started beating me like that
because he was drunk and I wouldn’t go into his house with him. I don’t know
what would have happened if you hadn’t come along.” She paused. Then she added:
“But I am pretty ashamed of myself. Shows you what a modern young woman can
come to after all, doesn’t it? Screaming, and collapsing with the vapors Hell!”

She was looking, and obviously feeling, rather better,
though she winced as she reached for her glass.

“I think,” I said, “that I’ve been fairly dense over this
business—and pretty lucky. I ought to have made more of the implications when I
saw that woman with the child in Piccadilly. It’s only been chance that’s
stopped me from falling into the same kind of mess that you did.”