John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos

'Which, from the Midwich point of view,' said Mr Crimm, with a shrug, 'is all to the good. But what the devil it can matter to MI I still don't begin to see...'

By mid– May there was a perceptible change. Hitherto, the spirit of Midwich had been not ill-attuned with that of the burgeoning season all around. It would be too much to say that it now went out of tune, but there was a certain muting of its strings. It acquired an air of abstraction; a more pensive mien.

'This,' remarked Willers to Zellaby, one day, 'is where we begin to stiffen the sinews.'

'Some quotations,' said Zellaby, 'are greatly improved by lack of context, but I take your meaning. One of the things that isn't helping is the nattering of stupid old women. What with one thing and another, it is such an exceptionally good wicket for beldames. I wish they could be stopped.'

'They're only one of the hazards. There are plenty more.'

Zellaby pondered glumly for a little, then he said:

'Well, we can only keep on trying. I suppose we have done pretty well not to have more trouble with it some time ago.'

'A lot better than one thought possible – and nearly all of it due to Mrs Zellaby,' the doctor told him.

Zellaby hesitated, and then made up his mind.

'I'm rather concerned about her, Willers. I wonder if you could – well, have a talk with her.'

'A talk?'

'She's more worried than she has let us see. It came out a bit a couple of nights ago. Nothing particular to start it. I happened to look up and found her staring at me, as though she were hating me. She doesn't you know... Then, as if I had said something, she broke out: "It's all very well for a man. He doesn't have to go through this sort of thing, and he knows he never will have to. How can he understand? He may mean as well as a saint, but he's always on the outside. He can never know what it's like, even in a normal way – so what sort of an idea can he have of this ? – Of how it feels to lie awake at night with the humiliating knowledge that one is simply being used? – As if one were not a person at all, but just a kind of mechanism, a sort of incubator... And then go on wondering, hour after hour, night after night, what – just what it may be that one is being forced to incubate. Of course you can't understand how that feels – how could you! It's degrading, it's intolerable. I shall crack soon. I know I shall. I can't go on like this much longer." '

Zellaby paused, and shook his head.

'There's so damned little one can do. I didn't try to stop her. I thought it would be better for her to let it out. But I'd be glad if you would talk to her, convince her. She knows that all the tests and X-rays show normal development – but she's got it into her head that it would be professionally necessary for you to say that, in any case. And I suppose it would.'

'It's true – thank heaven,' the doctor told him. 'I don't know what the devil I'd have done if it weren't – but I know we couldn't have just gone on as we have. I assure you the patients can't be more relieved that it is so than I am. So don't you worry, I'll set her mind at rest on that point, at any rate. She's not the first to think it, and she'll certainly not be the last. But, as soon as we get one thing nailed, they'll find others to worry themselves with.

'This is going to be a very, very dodgy time all round...'

In a week, it began to look as if Willers' prophecy would prove a pale understatement. The feeling of tension was contagious, and almost palpably increasing day by day. At the end of another week Midwich's united front had weakened sadly. With self-help beginning to show inadequacy, Mr Leebody had to bear more and more of the weight of communal anxiety. He did not spare any pains. He arranged special daily services, and for the rest of the day drove himself on from one parishioner to another, giving what encouragement he could.

Zellaby found himself quite superfluous. Rationalism was in disfavour. He maintained an unusual silence, and would have accepted invisibility, too, had it been offered.

'Have you noticed,' he inquired, dropping in one evening at Mr Crimm's cottage, 'have you noticed the way they glare at one? Rather as if one had been currying favour with the Creator in order to be given the other sex. Quite unnerving at times. Is it the same at The Grange?'

'It began to be,' Mr Crimm admitted, 'but we got them away on leave a day or two ago. Those who wanted to go home have gone there. The rest are in billets arranged by the doctor. We are getting more work done, as a result. It was becoming a little difficult.'

'Understatement,' said Zellaby. 'As it happens, I have never worked in a fireworks factory, but I know just what it must be like. I feel that at any moment something ungoverned, and rather horrible, may break out. And there's nothing one can do but wait, and hope it doesn't happen. Frankly, how we are going to get through another month or so of it, I don't know.' He shrugged and shook his head.

At the very moment of that despondent shake, however, the situation was in the process of being unexpectedly improved.

For Miss Lamb, who had adopted the custom of a quiet evening stroll, carefully supervised by Miss Latterly, that evening underwent a misadventure. One of the milk-bottles neatly arranged outside the back door of their cottage had somehow been overturned, and, as they left, Miss Lamb stepped on it. It rolled beneath her foot, and she fell...

Miss Latterly carried her back indoors, and rushed to the telephone...

Mrs Willers was still waiting up for her husband when he came back, five hours later. She heard the car drive up, and when she opened the door he was standing on the threshold, dishevelled, and blinking at the light. She had seen him like that only once or twice in their married life, and caught his arm anxiously.

'Charley. Charley, my dear, what is it? Not -?'

'Rather drunk, Milly. Sorry. Take no notice,' he said.

'Oh, Charley! Was the baby -?'

'Reaction, m'dear. Jus' reaction. Baby's perfect, you see. Nothing wrong with the baby. Nothing 't all. Perfect.'

'Oh, thank God for that,' exclaimed Mrs Willers, meaning it as fervently as she had ever meant any prayer.

'Got golden eyes,' said her husband. 'Funny – but nothing against having golden eyes, is there?'

'No, dear, of course not.'

'Perfect, 'cept for golden eyes. Not wrong at all.'

Mrs Willers helped him out of his coat, and steered him into the sitting-room. He dropped into a chair and sat there slackly, staring before him.

'S– so s-silly, isn't it?' he said. 'All that worrying. And now it's perfect. I -I – I -' He burst suddenly into tears, and covered his face with his hands.

Mrs Willers sat down on the arm of his chair, and laid her arm round his shoulders.

'There, there, my darling. It's all right, dear. It's over now.' She turned his face towards her own, and kissed him.

'Might've been black, or yellow, or green, or like a monkey. X-rays no good to tell that,' he said. "F the women of Midwich do the right thing by Miss Lamb, should be window to her, in the church.'

'I know, my dear, I know. But you don't need to worry about that any more. You said it's perfect.'

Dr Willers nodded emphatically several times.

'That's right. Perfect,' he repeated, with another nod. "Cept for golden eyes. Golden eyes are all right. Perfect... Lambs, my dear, lambs may safely graze... safely graze... Oh, God, I'm tired, Milly...'

A month later Gordon Zellaby found himself pacing the floor of the waiting-room in Trayne's best nursing-home, and forced himself to stop it and sit down. It was a ridiculous way to behave at his age, he told himself. Very proper in a young man, no doubt, but the last few weeks had brought the fact that he was no longer a young man rather forcibly to his notice. He felt about twice the age he had a year ago. Nevertheless, when, ten minutes later, a nurse rustled starchily in, she found him pacing the room again.