The Midwich Cuckoos, Page 6

  When Harriman, the baker, chanced to hear that his wife had been to see the doctor, he remembered that Herbert Flagg’s body had been found in his front garden, and he beat her up, while she tearfully protested that Herbert hadn’t come in, and that she’d not had anything to do with him, or with any other man.

  Young Tom Dorry returned home on leave from the navy after eighteen months’ foreign service. When he learned of his wife’s condition, he picked up his traps and went over to his mother’s cottage. But she told him to go back and stand by the girl because she was frightened. And when that didn’t move him, she told him that she herself, respectable widow for years was – well, not exactly frightened, but she couldn’t for the life of her say how it had happened. In a bemused state Tom Dorry did go back. He found his wife lying on the kitchen floor, with an empty aspirin bottle beside her, and he pelted for the doctor.

  One not-so-young woman suddenly bought a bicycle, and pedalled it madly for astonishing distances, with fierce determination.

  Two young women collapsed in over-hot baths.

  Three inexplicably tripped, and fell downstairs.

  A number suffered from unusual gastric upsets.

  Even Miss Ogle, at the post office, was observed eating a curious meal which involved bloater-paste spread half an inch thick, and about half a pound of pickled gherkins.

  A point was reached when Dr Willers’ mounting anxiety drove him into urgent conference with Mr Leebody at the Vicarage, and, as if to underline the need for action, their talk was terminated by a caller in agitated need of the doctor.

  It turned out less badly than it might have done. Luckily the word ‘poison’ appeared on the disinfectant bottle in conformity with regulations, and was not to be taken as literally as Rosie Platch had thought. But that did not alter the tragic intention. When he had finished, Dr Willers was trembling with an impotent, targetless anger. Poor little Rosie Platch was only seventeen.…

  CHAPTER 8

  Heads Together

  THE tranquillity that Gordon Zellaby had been pleasantly regaining after the wedding of Alan and Ferrelyn two days before, was dissipated by the irruption of Dr Willers. The doctor, still upset by the near-tragedy of Rosie Platch, was in an agitated state which gave Zellaby some difficulty in grasping his purpose.

  By stages, however, he discovered that the doctor and the vicar had agreed to ask for his help – or, more importantly, it seemed, Angela’s help – over something that was far from clear, and that the misadventure to the Platch child had brought Willers on his mission earlier than he had intended.

  ‘So far we’ve been lucky,’ Willers said, ‘but this is the second attempted suicide, in a week. At any moment there may be another; perhaps a successful one. We must get this thing out in the open, and relieve the tension. We cannot afford any more delay.’

  ‘As far as I am concerned, it is certainly not in the open. What thing is this?’ inquired Zellaby.

  Willers stared at him for a moment, and then rubbed his forehead.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been so wound up with it lately; I forgot you mightn’t know. It’s all these inexplicable pregnancies.’

  ‘Inexplicable?’ Zellaby raised his eyebrows.

  Willers did his best to explain why they were inexplicable.

  ‘The whole thing is so incomprehensible,’ he concluded, ‘that the vicar and I have been driven back on to the theory that it must in some way be connected with the other incomprehensible thing we have had here – the Dayout.’

  Zellaby regarded him thoughtfully for several moments. One thing about which there could be no doubt at all was the genuineness of the doctor’s anxiety.

  ‘It seems a curious theory,’ he suggested, cautiously.

  ‘It’s a more than curious situation,’ replied Willers. ‘However, that can wait. What can’t wait is a lot of women who are on the verge of hysteria. Some of them are my patients, more of them are going to be, and unless this state of tension is resolved quickly –’ He left the sentence unfinished, with a shake of his head.

  ‘ “A lot of women”?’ Zellaby repeated. ‘Somewhat vague. How many?’

  ‘I can’t say for certain,’ Willers admitted.

  ‘Well, in round figures? We need some idea of what we have to deal with.’

  ‘I should say – oh, about sixty-five to seventy.’

  ‘What!’ Zellaby stared at him, incredulously.

  ‘I told you it is the devil of a problem.’

  ‘But, if you’re not sure, why pitch on sixty-five?’

  ‘Because that’s my estimate – it’s a pretty rough estimate, I admit – but I think you’ll find it’s about the number of women of childbearing age in the village,’ Willers told him.

  ∗

  Later that evening, after Angela Zellaby, looking tired and shocked, had gone to bed, Willers said:

  ‘I’m very sorry to have had to inflict this, Zellaby – but she would have had to know soon, in any case. My hope is that the others can take it only half as staunchly as your wife has.’

  Zellaby gave a sombre nod.

  ‘She is grand, isn’t she? I wonder how you or I would have stood up to a shock like that?’

  ‘It’s a hell of a thing,’ Willers agreed. ‘So far, most of the married women will have been easy in their minds, but now, in order to stop the unmarried going neurotic, we’ve got to upset them, too. But there’s no way round that, that I can see.’

  ‘One thing that has been worrying me all the evening is how much we ought to tell them,’ Zellaby said. ‘Should we leave the thing a mystery, and let them draw conclusions eventually for themselves – or is there a better way?’

  ‘Well, damn it, it is a mystery, isn’t it?’ the doctor pointed out.

  ‘The how is a very mysterious mystery,’ Zellaby admitted. ‘But I don’t think there can be much doubt as to what has happened. Nor, I imagine, do you – unless you’re deliberately trying to avoid it.’

  ‘You tell me,’ suggested Willers. ‘Your line of reasoning may be different. I hope it is.’

  Zellaby shook his head.

  ‘The conclusion –’ he began, and then suddenly broke off, staring at the picture of his daughter.

  ‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Ferrelyn, too…?’

  He turned his head slowly towards the doctor. ‘I suppose the answer is that you just don’t know?’

  Willers hesitated.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said.

  Zellaby pushed back his white hair, and lapsed back in his chair. He remained staring at the pattern of the carpet for a full minute, in silence. Then he roused himself. With a studied detachment of manner, he observed:

  ‘There are three – no, perhaps four – possibilities that suggest themselves. You would, I think, have mentioned it had there been any evidence of the explanation that will at once occur to the more obvious-minded? Besides, there are other points against that which I shall come to shortly.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed the doctor.

  Zellaby nodded. ‘Then, it is possible, is it not, in some of the lower forms at any rate, to induce parthenogenesis?’

  ‘But not, as far as is known, among any of the higher forms – certainly not among mammals.’

  ‘Quite. Well then, there is artificial insemination.’

  ‘There is,’ admitted the doctor.

  ‘But you don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Nor do I. And that,’ Zellaby went on, a little grimly, ‘leaves the possibility of implantation, which could result in what someone – Huxley, I fancy – has called “xenogenesis”. That is, the production of a form that could be unlike that of the parent – or, should one perhaps say, “host”? – It would not be the true parent.’

  Dr Willers frowned.

  ‘I’ve been hoping that that might not occur to them,’ he said.

  Zellaby shook his head.

  ‘A hope, my dear fellow, that you would do better to abandon. It may no
t occur to them straight away, but it is the explanation – if that is not too definite a word – that the intelligent ones are bound to arrive at before long. For, look here. We can agree, can we not, to dismiss parthenogenesis? – there has never been a reliably documented case?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Well then, it will soon become as clear to them as it is to me, and must be to you, that both crude assault and a.i. are put right out of court by sheer mathematics. And this, incidentally, would seem to apply to parthenogenesis, too, if that were possible. By the law of averages it simply is not possible in any sizeable group of women taken at random, for more than twenty-five per cent of them to be in the same stage of pregnancy at the same time.’

  ‘Well –’ began the doctor, doubtfully.

  ‘All right, let us make a concession to, say, thirty-three and a third per cent – which is high. But then, if your estimate of the incidence is right, or anywhere near right, the present situation is still statistically quite impossible. Ergo, whether we like it or not, we are thrown back upon the fourth, and last possibility – that implantation of fertilized ova must have taken place during the Dayout.’

  Willers was looking very unhappy, and still not altogether convinced.

  ‘I’d question your “and last” – there could be other possibilities that have not occurred to us.’

  With a touch of impatience, Zellaby said:

  ‘Can you suggest any form of conception that does not come up against that mathematical barrier? – No? Very well. Then it follows that this cannot be conception: therefore it must be incubation.’

  The doctor sighed.

  ‘All right. I’ll grant you that,’ he said. ‘For myself, I am only incidentally concerned about how it happened: my anxiety is for the welfare of those who are, and are going to be, my patients.…’

  ‘You will be concerned, later on,’ Zellaby put in, ‘because, since they are all at the same stage now, it follows that the births are going to occur – barring accidents – over a quite limited period later on. All round about the end of June, or the first week in July – everything else being normal, of course.’

  ‘At present,’ Willers continued firmly, ‘my chief worry is to decrease their anxiety, not to increase it. And for that reason we must do our best to stop this implantation idea getting about, for as long as we can. It’s panicky stuff. For their good I ask you to pooh-pooh, convincingly, any suggestion of the kind that may come your way.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Zellaby, after consideration. ‘Yes. I agree. Here, we really do have a case for benign censorship, I think.’ He frowned. ‘It is difficult to appreciate how a woman sees these matters: all that I can say is that if I were to be called upon, even in the most propitious circumstances, to bring forth life, the prospect would awe me considerably: had I any reason to suspect that it might be some unexpected form of life, I should probably go quite mad. Most women wouldn’t, of course; they are mentally tougher, but some might, so a convincing dismissal of the possibility will be best.’

  He paused, considering.

  ‘Now we ought to get down to giving my wife a line to work on. There are various angles to be covered. One of the most tricky is going to be publicity – or, rather, no publicity.’

  ‘Lord, yes,’ said Willers. ‘Once the Press get hold of it –’

  ‘I know. God help us if they do. Day-by-day commentary, with six months of gloriously mounting speculation to go. They certainly wouldn’t miss the xenogenesis angle. More likely to run a forecasting competition. All right, then; M.I. managed to keep the Dayout out of the papers; we’ll have to see what they can do about this.

  ‘Now, let’s rough out the approach for her.…’

  CHAPTER 9

  Keep it Dark

  THE canvassing for attendance at what was not very informatively described as a ‘Special Emergency Meeting of Great Importance to every Woman in Midwich’ was intensive. We ourselves were visited by Gordon Zellaby who managed to convey a quite dramatic sense of urgency through a considerable wordage which gave practically nothing away. His parrying of attempts to pump him only added to the interest.

  Once people had been convinced that it was not simply a matter of another Civil Defence drive, or any other of the hardy regulars, they developed a strong curiosity as to what it could possibly be that could put the doctor, the vicar, their wives, the district-nurse, and both the Zellabys, too, to the trouble of seeing that everyone was called on and given a personal invitation. The very evasiveness of the callers, backed by their reassurances that there would be nothing to pay, no collection, and a free tea for all, had caused inquisitiveness to triumph even in the naturally suspicious, and there were few empty seats.

  The two chief convenors sat on the platform with Angela Zellaby, looking a little pale, between them. The doctor smoked, with a nervous intensity. The vicar seemed lost in an abstraction from which he would rouse himself now and then to make a remark to Mrs Zellaby who responded to it with an absent-minded air. They allowed ten minutes for laggards, then the doctor asked for the doors to be closed, and opened the proceedings with a brief, but still uninformative, insistence on their importance. The vicar then added his support. He concluded:

  ‘I earnestly ask every one of you here to listen very carefully indeed to what Mrs Zellaby has to say. We are greatly indebted to her for her willingness to put the matter before you. And I want you to know in advance that she has the endorsement of Dr Willers and myself for everything she is going to tell you. It is, I assure you, only because we feel that this matter may come more acceptably and, I am sure, more ably, from a woman to women that we have burdened her with the task.

  ‘Dr Willers and I will now leave the hall, but we shall remain on the premises. When Mrs Zellaby has finished we shall, if you wish, return to the platform, and do our best to answer questions. And now I ask you to give Mrs Zellaby your closest attention.’

  He waved the doctor ahead of him, and they both went out by a door at the side of the platform. It swung-to behind them, but did not close entirely.

  Angela Zellaby drank from a glass of water on the table before her. She looked down for a moment at her hands resting on her notes. Then she raised her head, waiting for the murmurs to die down. When they had, she looked her audience over carefully as if noticing every face there.

  ‘First,’ she said, ‘I must warn you. What I have to tell you is going to be difficult for me to say, difficult for you to believe, too difficult for any of us to understand at present.’ She paused, dropped her eyes, and then looked up once more.

  ‘I,’ she said, ‘am going to have a baby. I am very, very glad, and happy about it. It is natural for women to want babies, and to be happy when they know they are coming. It is not natural, and it is not good to be afraid of them. Babies should be joy and fun. Unhappily, there are a number of women in Midwich who are not able to feel like that. Some of them are miserable, ashamed, and afraid. It is for their benefit we have called this meeting. To help the unhappy ones, and to assure them that they need be none of these things.’

  She looked steadily round her audience again. There was a sound of caught breath here and there.

  ‘Something very, very strange has happened here. And it has not happened just to one or two of us, but to almost all of us – to almost all the women in Midwich who are capable of bearing children.’

  The audience sat motionless and silent, every eye fixed upon her as she put the situation before them. Before she had finished, however, she became aware of some disturbance and shushing going on on the right-hand side of the hall. Glancing over there, she saw Miss Latterly and her inseparable companion, Miss Lamb, in the middle of it.

  Angela stopped speaking, in mid-sentence, and waited. She could hear the indignant tone of Miss Latterly’s voice, but not its words.

  ‘Miss Latterly,’ she said clearly. ‘Am I right in thinking that you do not find yourself personally concerned with the subject of this meeting?’

/>   Miss Latterly stood up, she spoke in a voice trembling with indignation.

  ‘You most certainly are, Mrs Zellaby. I have never in all my life –’

  ‘Then, since this is a matter of the gravest importance to many people here, I hope you will refrain from further interruptions – Or perhaps you would prefer to leave us?’

  Miss Latterly stood firm, looking back at Mrs Zellaby.

  ‘This is –’ she began, and then changed her mind. ‘Very well, Mrs Zellaby,’ she said. ‘I shall make my protest against the extraordinary aspersions you have made on our community, at another time.’

  She turned with dignity, and paused, clearly to allow Miss Lamb to accompany her exit.

  But Miss Lamb did not move. Miss Latterly looked down at her, with an impatient frown. Miss Lamb continued to sit fast.

  Miss Latterly opened her lips to speak, but something in Miss Lamb’s expression checked her. Miss Lamb ceased to meet her eyes. She looked straight before her, while a tide of colour rose until her whole face was a burning flush.

  An odd, small sound escaped from Miss Latterly. She put out a hand, and grasped a chair to steady herself. She stared down at her friend without speaking. In a few seconds she grew haggard, and looked ten years older. Her hand dropped from the chair back. With a great effort she pulled herself together. She lifted her head decisively, looking round with eyes that seemed to see nothing. Then, straight-backed, but a little uncertain in her steps, she made her way up the aisle to the back of the hall, alone.

  Angela waited. She expected a buzz of comment, but there was none. The audience looked shocked and bewildered. Every face turned back to her, in expectation. In the silence she picked up where she had stopped, trying to reduce by matter-of-factness the emotional tension which Miss Latterly had increased. With an effort she continued factually to the end of her preliminary statement, and then broke off.

  The expected buzz of comment rose quickly enough this time. Angela took a drink from her glass of water, and rolled her bunched handkerchief between her damp palms while she watched the audience carefully.