They Had the Appearance of a Man (1)

Christian County, Kentucky, August 1955, 5pm.

The day had gone well: in the morning Jeremiah’s relatives had met him at the train station, and after some shopping, they had escaped the sweltering afternoon heat by ducking in to see a picture at the Alhambra theatre. Maisie had bought the tickets. They were five that day: Jeremiah, his cousin Billy-Glen, his wife Isabel and their little boy Bucky, and old Maisie.

Jeremiah noticed that Maisie hadn’t thought much of the picture.

‘Flying saucers and creatures from outer space-Jesus certainly never mentioned anything about them,’ he had heard her say to Bucky afterwards. ‘Folk from California dream up such things, but they’re a long way from Kentucky. All that sea air must make them soft-headed.’ Bucky had seemed to enjoy the picture, nonetheless.

Now the fields and scattered woodlands of Christian County were spread out before them as they trundled towards home in Billy-Glen’s battered Ford pick-up. The light was fading and the trees on the horizon were just starting to glow with a gold sheen.

Jeremiah was from one of the larger cities in New Jersey; at thirty-two, he was a little younger than his cousin, and had been removed from their branch of the family for many years. His natural home was one where chasms and canyons only existed between skyscrapers, where birds struggled to sing above the sounds of traffic at dawn. The silence here impressed him. His heart lifted, even as the heat smothered him like a closed fist. He tried to alleviate the stuffiness of the truck by opening the window, but the scorching breath that passed for wind in late-summer Kentucky quickly caused him to close it again.

‘Damn, Maisie. This is the life,’ he said, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Folk in Christian County don’t know what they have goin’ for themselves. When you were queuing for tickets this afternoon, I stood around in front of the post office. Just waitin’. And good God, every one of the customers who came in during that time knew the stewardess by name. And she knew them too, like as not.’

Maisie smiled. ‘Ain’t nobody in Christian County who doesn’t know everybody else, Jeremiah. And everybody else’s business, too- ‘specially in the case of Irene from the post office.’ She laughed, and then her face tightened. ‘And I’ll thank you not to use the Lord’s name in vain, dear.’

Jeremiah’s spirits fell slightly; he was certainly on a different plane to his rustic relatives. He made a mental note to watch his words more carefully in future. Before he had time to ponder this matter any further, Billy-Glen halted the truck with a jolt.

‘Cattle-gate!’ he yelled. ‘Whose turn is it?’

Seeing an opportunity to prove that he was no soft city-boy, Jeremiah jumped out of the truck before any of the others had an occasion to volunteer. He approached the gate; it was no more than a bunch of logs tied together with barbed wire, but he could see no obvious way to untangle the mess. Fumbling with the latch, he yelled as a blunt blade of wire sank into his skin.

Isabel leapt from the cab and brushed Jeremiah aside. She lifted one of the smaller logs, tracing it around a vertical stump to release the gate.

‘Isabel! Who is that with you?’ An elderly farmer, his face browned and leathery, approached from the field beyond the gate.

‘Nice to see you, Thomas,’ said Isabel. ‘This here’s my relative, Jeremiah.’

The big farmer practically crushed every bone in Jeremiah’s hand with his shake, but his smile was warm and genuine. “Pleased to welcome you to Christian County, friend,’ he said. Then, addressing Maisie in the truck’s cabin, he hollered ‘Hey May! Any news?’

Maisie’s head appeared from the window. ‘Well, Tom, next week’s the county fair. Are your strawberries gonna beat mine this year?’

‘It’s never happened yet.’

‘Then there ain’t no news around here. I’ll see you and your clan this week at church?’

‘As always, Maisie.’

‘Then all’s right with the world. Come on you two, get in the truck. It’s another ways ‘till we get to the farm. So long, Tom.’

As he climbed back inside, it struck Jeremiah that Maisie probably did meet Tom’s clan every week at church. He had a vision of them: two children, clean and polite and wholesome. He’d be willing to bet that Maisie’s strawberries beat Tom’s every year at the county fair, too.

Maisie seemed to know what he was thinking. ‘This family’s been my responsibility for nearly forty years, Jeremiah,’ she said. ‘I see to it that the little ones- little Bucky here, that is- get to grow up in a world where people know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t see why we need any change, when we’ve already got God and the Ten Commandments to live by. So, as far as I’m concerned, no news is good news.’

The truck rumbled on. Cornfields, bleached brown and gold by the merciless sun, gave way to a thick forest of oak where each tree seemed to grasp for its neighbour across the road. The road itself soon became little more than a dirt-track. Jeremiah was trying to work out how long it had been since they had passed another vehicle (certainly an hour at least) when the farmhouse came into view.

***

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

The things that scared us as children tend to stick with us all our lives; just ask the good people at Kindertrauma. Many adults retain a fascination for things such as the Daleks and Pennywise the clown, to name two common examples.

But there are other, more subtle terrors. I read The Kraken Wakes when I was about 12 (in a lovely 1950’s penguin edition, too), and didn’t think it was too scary. Aliens, end of the world- I’d heard it all many times before. In this case, the unseen creatures cause mankind trouble on a scale that is simply geographic- they melt the ice-caps and flood the world.

But shortly after reading it I fell into a strong flu, during which I experienced intense, Kraken Wakes- influenced fever dreams. To anyone who’s never had a fever dream, it’s something like having dreams when you’re awake, and also something like an unpredictable bad-trip. My dreams revolved around floods and earthquakes, and they were horribly real. So, even though I thought the book was none too scary, it obviously resonated with me subconsciously on some level. Ever since, I’ve associated that terrible time with Wyndham’s book, perhaps affording it a gravitas far above its actual content.

Returning to the book many years later, how does it hold up?

Let’s have a little background on Wyndham first. He’s kind of like a very 1950’s version of H. G. Wells: an Englishman, he wrote some great high-concept science-fiction, and he wasn’t shy about the kind of destruction he wreaked on the world in his stories. Like Wells, Wyndham’s novels feel like big-budget summer blockbusters. His most famous novel, Day of the Triffids, is a classic that’s right up there with anything Wells wrote.

Even though Wells was writing fifty years earlier, during the prudish Victorian era, today it’s Wyndham who comes across as more of a stereotypical stiff-upper-lipped Englishman. Wells was originally working class, and had lots of politically radical ideas (he was a thumping great socialist, and was in favour of a world government). Wynhdam, on the other hand, never lets us forget his middle-class origins in his books, and is frequently criticized for this.

The most common dismissal of Wyndham is that his plots are ‘cozy catastrophes’. As far as I can see, this accusation results largely from two (broadly similar) books- Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. In both books, terrible circumstances cause London (read: society) to break down, and though death, destruction and horror are all around (and Wyndham is not stingy with these themes), a decidedly middle-class hero will survive the catastrophe without much physical or emotional trauma. He will pick up a pretty girl somewhere along the way, and they will eventually make a new life for themselves in some quiet part of the country- a sort of simple-life pastoral paradise.

While this is broadly accurate for both books, and while they may be read as a kind of simplistic middle-class wish-fulfillment fantasy, this view really ignores many of the novels’ unsavoury elements.

In Triffids, suicide and depression surround the hero. He genuinely needs to find the strength within himself to survive this nightmare world. He learns constantly that in this new world, the morals and scruples of the old one are the first casualty. Is it right to smash a shop window to steal food? He does it. Is it right to help a blind person to commit suicide? He does it. Is it right to live in a society where everyone gets to impregnate your girlfriend for the continuation of the human race? Now wait just a minute…

Triffids was published in 1951, and was a huge hit. Wyndham decided that he was onto a good thing, so as early as 1953 he released the broadly similar Kraken Wakes.

Kraken begins as the narrator and his wife are among the first humans to notice the falling of unexplained ‘fireballs’ into the sea. It’s treated as a kind of anomalous phenomenon, similar to the then-current flying saucer craze. Later, characters theorize that it’s in fact the beginning of an invasion by some intelligence from a high-pressure world (Neptune and Jupiter are posited, but we never find out for sure). Over the course of several months and years, it becomes clear that something has taken up residence in the deeps of the world’s oceans. First deep-sea scientific expeditions, and then commercial ships become targeted by these intelligences. Worldwide sea travel ceases (in a move eerily similar to the Europe-wide lack of air travel that’s happening now as a result of that Iceland volcano business). And after that, things really get strange…

When Kraken works, it’s really creepy. I think that part of the reason I’ve always been fascinated by it is that we never find out a damn thing about those underwater critters. They might not even be aliens, they might just be Earth intelligences that have lain dormant until the 1950s. All we do know about them is that they like to screw with us. Some of the violence of the sea-disasters in the first half of the book is quite astonishing- hundreds and hundreds of people perish horribly (and off-screen, too). The horror is rarely in the protagonists’ faces the way it is in Triffids- it’s more of a paranoia thing: the thought that mankind has lost his method of long-term travel is oddly creepy.

And when the creatures do begin to show up on our beaches, they do so in a manner that answers no questions about their nature.

There are problems with the book, mostly linked to the ‘humour’. There’s loads of running jokes about how the narrator’s wife wears the trousers in the marriage, and they feel even more out of place than the bizarre joke about Josella’s book in Triffids. There’s also a joke about people confusing the narrator’s company, the fictional EBC, with the real-life BBC. In case you’re wondering, EBC stands for ‘English Broadcasting Company’.

There are tonnes of 1950s artifacts in the book- aside from the obligatory Red Scare scenes, both Britain and the US seem to lob nuclear bombs about quite cheerfully in an attempt to wipe out the undersea menace. And of course, it wouldn’t be Wyndham without his trademark 1950s British-ness; it’s almost impossible to read his prose without hearing someone with the received pronunciation speak it- and you know that’s worth something.

Pro.

Centurion

The howl rang out twice again that night, so that even the most battle-hardened legionaries began to fear what lay beyond the confines of the camp, where the forest grew thick and gnarled and brooding.

***

Dawn found Tacitus standing red-eyed before his tent. He pulled his wolfskin tunic closer about his body; the weak morning rays did little to dispel the chill.

'Did you sleep, domine?' The use of the title for addressing a superior indicated formality, but there was no disguising the warmth of the voice. Tacitus turned to see the squat form of Jerius, the lieutenant. His metal armour winked in the sun as he walked from his tent.

'In this place? No. Not for these three nights past. My eyes grow sunken and my mind is clouded. It is as if this excursion is but some kind of dream- I feel as though at any moment I will wake to find that I am in Nimes, or Carthage, or even in my villa in distant Rome… Anywhere but in this strange place.'

Jerius' eyes widened. His mouth struggled to express an appropriate sentiment.

'You are surprised at my frankness, Jerius?'

'Domine- yes, domine. That is, I mean-'

'There is no need, old friend.' Tacitus smiled. 'You and I have been through too much together for that. If I cannot confide in you, then I have no friend within several thousand miles of here, save those insolent tacticians in Brittania who sent me here, surely plotting my demise. If that be the case, I might add, then Jupiter help me.'

Jerius visibly relaxed. 'Sir, if I may also be frank, I had noticed that this place has been affecting you. I mean, how could it not? The isolation; the cold; and now these terrifying sounds during the hours of darkness…' A moment of silence, as the portly lieutenant debated the merits of revealing more. 'To me… it is as if we have wandered into the realm of myth- as if this island of Hibernia were in truth one of the fabled isles- Hy-Brasil, or the Ultima Thule spoken of by the Greek, Pytheas.'

Tacitus idled the grass with his foot. The standard soldier's sandal was certainly not adequate this far in the temperate north, he thought. 'The Greek is known to have lied about his travels, Jerius. Do not be tempted to compare his flights of fancy with… our situation here.' It was the standard dismissal of Greek achievements that Tacitus had been taught since childhood, but on this particular morning his voice lacked conviction. Perhaps this wind-swept isle was getting to him.

Looking back at the ranks of tents that comprised his century's castra, or temporary camp, Tacitus' mind drifted back to the larger camp in Brittania where his fate had been sealed. That camp had been large and well provisioned, with over one hundred centuries of legionaries being drilled every day in anticipation of the campaign to come…

***

It had been warm inside the tent. The smell of tanned hide mingled with the aroma of sweat as three men perspired, secretly deciding the fate of this remote outpost of the empire.

'We simply cannot tolerate any further excursions by the Celts into our affairs here. Trade with the local tribes will go to Hades if we cannot guarantee the safe passage of goods through our territories. An armed mission to Hibernia is the only answer.' That was Lupus, his small piggy eyes glinting in the darkness of the tent.

'Of course, we cannot spare more than a single century for this outing. But eighty men should be enough to make our presence felt on that forsaken island. After all, what are those savages next to our highly-trained soldiers?' Thus spoke Maximus, his bony fingers twitching incessantly as he did so.

Lupus appeared so uncomfortable in the stifling heat that Tacitus wondered how he ever had tolerated the weather in their native Italy. 'It occurs to me,' he spoke, his face shiny with sweat, 'that we have but one man present who could do justice to such a task- the hero of Carthage, Gregorius Tacitus.'

Tacitus' blood ran cold. His fame since his North African heroics had caused him trouble on occasion in the past, but this mission to Hibernia struck him as some kind of plot. 'With all due respect, domines,' he began, 'a single century seems a trifle meager for the task at hand. The Celts-'

'The Celts are savages, and will be planned against as such,' said Maximus irritably. Tacitus growled beneath his breath- Maximus had not been present at the ambushes in north Alba, where the Hibernian Celts had wiped out entire garrisons. He remembered all too well the stark, terrifying figures emerging from the night as though they were part of it, tall and hairy maniacs who butchered trained soldiers as expertly as would a gladiator in the coliseum. But the moment had passed- Maximus and Lupus were already planning his next brush with the Hibernian hordes, and any further protesting would be interpreted as insubordination.

***

'It will be glorious, don't you think?' Tacitus' reminiscing was broken by the sudden appearance of Julius Agricola. 'When we have tamed this place as we have done with Brittania, the entire Northern Isles will stand as a testament to the power of Rome.' Agricola, a centurion himself, was as dark and intense as Tacitus was open and fair. His intrusion threw Jerius into a brief confusion; the short lieutenent became embarrassed and left, returning to his tent mumbling an excuse about starting breakfast.

'Imagine it, Tacitus,' continued Agricola, 'forests cleared, straight roads running the length of the island, and planned towns- all in territory which previously only nature had claimed as her own.' His tanned face flashed a smile in which there was no joy.

But by now the sun was high in the sky, and it was becoming more difficult to hide the particulars of their true situation. The castra, settled uneasily between the sea and the forest, was but a fly on the lion's lip of this impenetrable, unknown land. Besides the vague records of the Greek travelers from centuries ago, no civilized men had ever come this far northwest, and Tacitus was becoming painfully aware of their isolation. Now, looking at the green hell that lay before him, he felt as though the forest would swallow him up.

Jupiter, he thought, no empire will again try to tame this heathen land.