“You reckon that’s goin’ to be a long time?” he said.
“I don’t know. What’s Coker say?”
Coker, it seemed, had not been committing himself to details. Alf had his own opinion, though.
“？’F you ask me, I reckon there ain’t nobody goin’ to come. If there was, they’d’ve been ’ere before this. Different if we was in some little town in the country. But London! Stands to reason they’d come ’ere afore anywhere else. No, the way I see it, they ain’t come yet—an’ that means they ain’t never goin’ to come—an’ that means there ain’t nobody to come. Cor, blimy, ’oo’d ever’ve thought it could ’appen like this!”
I didn’t say anything. Alf wasn’t the sort to be jollied with facile encouragements.
“Reckon that’s the way you see it too?” he said after a bit.
“It doesn’t look so good,” I admitted. “But there still is a chance, you know—people from somewhere abroad…”
He shook his head.
“They’d’ve come before this. They’d’ve had loud-speaker cars round the streets tellin’ us what to do by now. No, chum, we’ve ’ad it: there ain’t nobody nowhere to come. That’s the fact of it.”
We were silent for a while, then:
“Ah well, ’t weren’t a bad ol’ life while it lasted,” he said.
We talked a little about the kind of life it had been for him. He’d had various jobs, each of which seemed to have included some interesting undercover work. He summed it up:
“One way an’ another I didn’t do so bad. What was your racket?”
I told him. He wasn’t impressed.
“Triffids, huh! Nasty damn things, I reckon. Not natcheral, as you might say.”
We left it at that.
Alf went away, leaving me to my cogitations and a packet of his cigarettes. I surveyed the outlook and thought little of it. I wondered how the others would be taking it. Particularly what would be Josella’s view.
When Alf reappeared with more food and the inevitable can of tea, he was accompanied by the man he had called Coker. He looked more tired now than when I had seen him before. Under his arm he carried a bundle of papers. He gave me a searching look.
“You know the idea?” he asked.
“What Alf’s told me,” I admitted.
“All right, then.” He dropped his papers on the bed, picked up the top one and unfolded it. It was a street plan of Greater London. He pointed to an area covering part of Hampstead and Swiss Cottage, heavily outlined in blue pencil.
“That’s your beat,” he said. “Your party works inside that area, and not in anyone else’s area. You can’t have each lot going after the same pickings. Your job is to find the food in that area and see that your party gets it—that, and anything else they need. Got that?”
“Or what?” I said, looking at him.
“Or they’ll get hungry. And if they do, it’ll be just too bad for you. Some of the boys are tough, and we’re not any of us doing this for fun. So watch your step. Tomorrow morning we’ll run you and your lot up there in trucks. After that it’ll be your job to keep ’em going until somebody comes along to tidy things up.”
“And if nobody does come?” I asked.
“Somebody’s got to come,” he said grimly. “Anyway, there’s your job—and mind you keep to your area.”
I stopped him as he was on the point of leaving.