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.
By midday the clouds had gathered and rain began once more. When, at five o’clock, we pulled up on the road just short of Pulborough, it was still pouring hard.