The Midwich Cuckoos, Page 2

  A portrait of Angela, the present Mrs Gordon Zellaby, stood upon the centre piece and focus of the room, the large, leather-topped desk where the Works were written.

  Reminder of the Works caused Alan to wonder whether his timing might not have been more propitious, for a new Work was in process of gestation. This was made manifest by a certain distraitness in Mr Zellaby at present.

  ‘It always happens when he’s brewing,’ Ferrelyn had explained. ‘Part of him seems to get lost. He goes off on long walks and can’t make out where he is and rings up to be brought home, and so on. It’s a bit trying while it lasts, but it gets all right again once he eventually starts to write the book. While it’s on, we just have to be firm with him, and see he has his meals, and all that.’

  The room in general, with its comfortable chairs, convenient lights, and thick carpet, struck Alan as a practical result of its owner’s views on the balanced life. He recalled that in While We Last, the only one of the Works he had read as yet, Zellaby had treated ascetism and over-indulgence as similar evidences of maladjustment. It had been an interesting, but, he thought, gloomy book; the author had not seemed to him to give proper weight to the fact that the new generation was more dynamic, and rather more clearsighted than those that had preceded it.…

  At last the music tied itself up with a neat bow, and ceased. Zellaby stopped the machine by a switch on the arm of his chair, opened his eyes, and regarded Alan.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he apologized. ‘One feels that once Bach has started his pattern he should be allowed to finish it. Besides,’ he added, glancing at the playing-cabinet, ‘we still lack a code for dealing with these innovations. Is the art of the musician less worthy of respect simply because he is not present in person? What is the gracious thing? – For me to defer to you, for you to defer to me, or for both of us to defer to genius – even genius at second-hand? Nobody can tell us. We shall never know.

  ‘We don’t seem to be good at integrating novelties with our social lives, do we? The world of the etiquette book fell to pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since. Not even rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at freedom. Rather a pity, don’t you think?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Alan. ‘I – er –’

  ‘Though, mind you,’ Mr Zellaby continued, ‘it is a trifle démodé even to perceive the existence of the problem. The true fruit of this century has little interest in coming to living-terms with innovations; it just greedily grabs them all as they come along. Only when it encounters something really big does it become aware of a social problem at all, and then, rather than make concessions, it yammers for the impossibly easy way out, uninvention, suppression – as in the matter of The Bomb.’

  ‘Er – yes, I suppose so. What I –’

  Mr Zellaby perceived a lack of fervour in the response.

  ‘When one is young,’ he said understandingly, ‘the unconventional, the unregulated, hand-to-mouth way of life has a romantic aspect. But such, you must agree, are not the lines on which to run a complex world. Luckily, we in the West still retain the skeleton of our ethics, but there are signs that the old bones are finding the weight of new knowledge difficult to carry with confidence, don’t you think?’

  Alan drew breath. Recollections of previous entanglements in the web of Zellaby discourse forced him to the direct solution.

  ‘Actually, sir, it was on quite another matter I wanted to see you,’ he said.

  When Zellaby noticed the interruptions of his audible reflections he was accustomed to take them in mild good part. He now postponed further contemplation of the ethical skeleton to inquire:

  ‘But of course, my dear fellow. By all means. What is it?’

  ‘It’s that – well, it’s about Ferrelyn, sir.’

  ‘Ferrelyn? Oh yes. I’m afraid she’s gone up to London for a couple of days to see her mother. She’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Er – it was today she came back, Mr Zellaby.’

  ‘Really?’ exclaimed Zellaby. He thought it over. ‘Yes, you’re quite right. She was here for dinner. You both were,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alan, and holding his chance with determination, he ploughed ahead with his news, unhappily conscious that not one stone of his prepared phrases remained upon another, but getting through it somehow.

  Zellaby listened patiently until Alan finally stumbled to a conclusion with:

  ‘So I do hope, sir, that you will have no objection to our becoming officially engaged,’ and at that his eyes widened slightly.

  ‘My dear fellow, you overestimate my position. Ferrelyn is a sensible girl, and I have no doubt whatever that by this time she and her mother know all about you, and have, together, reached a well-considered decision.’

  ‘But I’ve never even met Mrs Holder,’ Alan objected.

  ‘If you had, you would have a better grasp of the situation. Jane is a great organizer,’ Mr Zellaby told him, regarding one of the pictures on the mantel with benevolence. He got up.

  ‘Well, now, you have performed your part very creditably; so I, too, must behave as Ferrelyn considers proper. Would you care to assemble the company while I fetch the bottle?’

  A few minutes, with his wife, his daughter, and his prospective son-in-law grouped about him, he lifted his glass.

  ‘Let us now drink,’ announced Zellaby, ‘to the adjunction of fond spirits. It is true that the institution of marriage as it is proclaimed by Church and state displays a depressingly mechanistic attitude of mind towards partnership – one not unlike, in fact, that of Noah. The human spirit, however, is tough, and it quite often happens that love is able to survive this coarse, institutional thumbing. Let us hope, therefore –’

  ‘Daddy,’ Ferrelyn broke in, ‘it’s after ten, and Alan has to get back to camp in time, or he’ll be cashiered, or something. All you really have to say is “long life and happiness to you both”.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Zellaby. ‘Are you sure that’s enough? It seems very brief. However, if you think it suitable, then I say it, my dear. Most wholeheartedly I say it.’

  He did.

  Alan set down his empty glass.

  ‘I’m afraid what Ferrelyn said was right, sir. I shall have to leave now,’ he said.

  Zellaby nodded sympathetically.

  ‘It must be a trying time for you. How much longer will they keep you?’

  Alan said he hoped to be free of the army in about three months. Zellaby nodded again.

  ‘I expect the experience will turn out to have value. Sometimes I regret the lack of it myself. Too young for one war, tethered to a desk in the Ministry of Information in the next. Something more active would have been preferable. Well, good night, my dear fellow. It’s –’ He broke off, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Dear me, I know we all call you Alan, but I don’t believe I know your other name. Perhaps we ought to have that in order.’

  Alan told him, and they shook hands again.

  As he emerged into the hall with Ferrelyn he noticed the clock.

  ‘I say, I’ll have to step on it. See you tomorrow, darling. Six o’clock. Good night, my sweet.’

  They kissed fervently but briefly in the doorway, and he broke away down the steps, bounding towards the small red car parked on the drive. The engine started and roared. He gave a final wave, and, with a spurt of gravel from the rear wheels, dashed away.

  Ferrelyn watched the rear lights dwindle and vanish She stood listening until the erstwhile roar became a distant hum, and then closed the front door. On her way back to the study she noticed that the hall clock now showed ten-fifteen.

  Still, then, at ten-fifteen nothing in Midwich was abnormal.

  With the departure of Alan’s car peace was able to settle down again over a community which was, by and large, engaged in winding up an uneventful day in expectation of a no less uneventful morrow.

  Many cottage wind
ows still threw yellow beams into the mild evening where they glistered in the dampness of an earlier shower. The occasional surges of voices and laughter which swept the place were not local; they originated with a well-handled studio-audience miles away and several days ago, and formed merely a background against which most of the village was preparing for bed. Many of the very old and very young had gone there already, and wives were now filling their own hot-water bottles.

  The last customers to be persuaded out of The Scythe and Stone had lingered for a few minutes to get their night-eyes and gone their ways, and by ten-fifteen all but one Alfred Wait and a certain Harry Crankhart, who were still engaged in argument about fertilizers, had reached their homes.

  Only one event of the day still impended – the passage of the bus that would be bringing the more dashing spirits back from their evening in Trayne. With that over, Midwich could finally settle down for the night.

  In the Vicarage, at ten-fifteen, Miss Polly Rushton was thinking that if only she had gone to bed half an hour ago she could be enjoying the book that now lay neglected on her knees, and how much pleasanter that would be than listening to the present contest between her uncle and aunt. For, on one side of the room Uncle Hubert, the Reverend Hubert Leebody, was attempting to listen to a Third Programme disquisition on the Pre-Sophoclean Conception of the Oedipus Complex, while, on the other, Aunt Dora was telephoning. Mr Leebody, determined that scholarship should not be submerged by piffle, had already made two advances in volume, and still had forty-five degrees of knob turning in reserve. He could not be blamed for failing to guess that what was striking him as a particularly nugatory exchange of feminine concerns could turn out to be of importance. No one else would have guessed it, either.

  The call was from South Kensington, London, where a Mrs Cluey was seeking the support of her lifelong friend Mrs Leebody. By ten-sixteen she had reached the kernel of the matter.

  ‘Now, tell me, Dora – and, mind, I do want your honest opinion on this: do you think that in Kathy’s case it should be white satin, or white brocade?’

  Mrs Leebody stalled. Clearly this was a matter where the word ‘honest’ was relative, and it was inconsiderate of Mrs Cluey, to say the least, to phrase her question with no perceptible bias. Probably satin, thought Mrs Leebody, but she hesitated to risk the friendship of years on a guess. She tried for a lead.

  ‘Of course, for a very young bride… but then one wouldn’t call Kathy such a very young bride, perhaps…’

  ‘Not very young,’ agreed Mrs Cluey, and waited.

  Mrs Leebody dratted her friends’ importunity, and also her husband’s wireless programme which made thinking and finesse difficult.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘both can look charming, of course, but for Kathy I really think –’

  At which point her voice abruptly stopped.…

  Far away in South Kensington Mrs Cluey joggled the rest impatiently, and looked at her watch. Presently she pressed the bar down for a moment, and then dialled O.

  ‘I wish to make a complaint,’ she said. ‘I have just been cut off in the middle of a most important conversation.’

  The exchange told her it would try to reconnect her. A few minutes later it confessed failure.

  ‘Most inefficient,’ said Mrs Cluey. ‘I shall put in a written complaint. I refuse to pay for a minute more than we had – indeed, I really don’t see why I should pay for that, in the circumstances. We were cut off at ten-seventeen exactly.’

  The man at the exchange responded with formal tact, and made a note of the time, for reference – 22.17 hrs 26th Sept.…

  CHAPTER 3

  Midwich Rests

  FROM ten-seventeen that night, information about Midwich becomes episodic. Its telephones remained dead. The bus that should have passed through it failed to reach Stouch, and a truck that went to look for the bus did not return. A notification from the R.A.F. was received in Trayne of some unidentified flying object, not, repeat not, a service machine, detected by radar in the Midwich area, possibly making a forced landing. Someone in Oppley reported a house on fire in Midwich, with, apparently, nothing being done about it. The Trayne fire appliance turned out – and thereafter failed to make any reports. The Trayne police despatched a car to find out what had happened to the fire-engine, and that, too, vanished into silence. Oppley reported a second fire, and still, seemingly, nothing being done, Constable Gobby, in Stouch, was rung up, and sent off on his bicycle to Midwich; and no more was heard of him, either.…

  ∗

  The dawn of the 27th was an affair of slatternly rags soaking in a dishwater sky, with a grey light weakly filtering through. Nevertheless, in Oppley and in Stouch cocks crowed, and other birds welcomed it more melodiously. In Midwich, however, no birds sang.

  In Oppley and Stouch, too, as in other places, hands were soon reaching out to silence alarm clocks, but in Midwich the clocks rattled on till they ran down.

  In other villages sleepy-eyed men left their cottages and encountered their work-mates with sleepy good mornings; in Midwich no one encountered anyone.

  For Midwich lay entranced.…

  While the rest of the world began to fill the day with clamour, Midwich slept on.… Its men and women, its horses, cows, and sheep; its pigs, its poultry, its larks, moles, and mice all lay still. There was a pocket of silence in Midwich, broken only by the frouing of the leaves, the chiming of the church clock, and the gurgle of the Opple as it slid over the weir beside the mill.…

  And while the dawn was still a poor, weak thing an olivegreen van, with the words ‘Post Office Telephones’ just discernible upon it, set out from Trayne with the object of putting the rest of the world into touch with Midwich again.

  In Stouch it paused at the village call box to inquire whether Midwich had yet shown any signs of life. Midwich had not; it was still as deeply incommunicado as it had been since 22.17 hrs. The van restarted and rattled on through the uncertainly gathering daylight.

  ‘Cor!’ said the lineman to his driver companion. ‘Cor! That there Miss Ogle ain’t ’alf goin’ to cop ’erself a basinful of ’Er Majesty’s displeasure over this little lot.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ complained the driver. ‘’F you’d asked me I’d of said the old girl was always listenin’ when there was anyone on the blower, day or night. Jest goes to show,’ he added, vaguely.

  A little out of Stouch, the van swung sharply to the right, and bounced along the by-road to Midwich for half a mile or so. Then it rounded a corner to encounter a situation which called for all the driver’s presence of mind.

  He had a sudden view of a fire-engine, half heeled over, with its near-side wheels in the ditch, and a black saloon car which had climbed half-way up the bank on the other side a few yards further on, with a man and a bicycle lying half in the ditch behind it. He pulled hard over, attempting an S turn which would avoid both vehicles, but before he could complete it his own van ran on to the narrow verge, bumped along for a few more yards, then ploughed to a stop, with its side in the hedge.

  Half an hour later the first bus of the day, proceeding at a light-hearted speed, since it never had a passenger before it picked up the Midwich children for school in Oppley, rattled round the same corner to jamb itself neatly into the gap between the fire-engine and the van, and block the road completely.

  On Midwich’s other road – that connecting it with Oppley – a similar tangle of vehicles gave at first sight the impression that the highway had, overnight become a dump. And on that side the mail-van was the first vehicle to stop without becoming involved.

  One of its occupants got out, and walked forward to investigate the disorder. He was just approaching the rear of the stationary bus when, without any warning, he quietly folded up, and dropped to the ground. The driver’s jaw fell open, and he stared. Then, looking beyond his fallen companion, he saw the heads of some of the bus passengers, all quite motionless. He reversed hastily, turned, and made for Oppley and the nearest telephone.


  Meanwhile the similar state of affairs on the Stouch side had been discovered by the driver of a baker’s van, and twenty minutes later almost identical action was taking place on both the approaches to Midwich. Ambulances swept up with something of the air of mechanized Galahads. Their rear doors opened. Uniformed men emerged, fastening their tunic buttons, and providently pinching the embers from half-smoked cigarettes. They surveyed the pile-ups in a knowledgeable, confidence-inspiring way, unrolled stretchers, and prepared to advance.

  On the Oppley road the two leading bearers approached the prone postman competently, but then, as the one in the lead drew level with the body, he wilted, sagged, and subsided across the last casualty’s legs. The hind bearer goggled. Out of a babble behind him his ears picked up the word ‘Gas!’ he dropped the stretcher-handles as if they had turned hot, and stepped hastily back.

  There was a pause for consultation. Presently the ambulance driver delivered a verdict, shaking his head.

  ‘Not our kind of job,’ he said, with the air of one recalling a useful Union decision. ‘More like the fire chaps’ pigeon, I’d say.’

  ‘The army’s, I reckon,’ said the bearer. ‘Gas masks, not just smoke masks, is what’s wanted here.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Operation Midwich

  ABOUT the time that Janet and I were approaching Trayne, Lieutenant Alan Hughes was standing side by side with Leading-Fireman Norris on the Oppley road. They were watching while a fireman grappled at the fallen ambulance-man with a long ceiling-hook. Presently the hook lodged, and began to haul him in. The body was dragged across a yard and a half of tarmac – and then sat up abruptly, and swore.

  It seemed to Alan that he had never heard more beautiful language. Already, the acute anxiety with which he had arrived on the scene had been allayed by the discovery that the victims of whatever-it-was were quietly, but quite definitely, breathing as they lay there. Now it was established that one, at least, of them showed no visible ill effects of quite ninety minutes’ experience of it.