John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos

'I would ask you to join us,' he explained. 'But I must confess that Angela is considerably in my thoughts this evening. She is anxious, you know. She has always been uneasy about the Children, and these last few days have upset her more than she shows. She would, I think, be the better for company this evening. I was rather hoping that you, my dear fellow... It would be a great kindness...'

'But of course,' I told him. 'How inconsiderate of me not to have thought of it. Of course.' What else could one say?

He smiled, and held out his hand.

'Excellent. I am most grateful, my dear fellow. I'm sure I can rely on you.'

Then he turned to three or four of the Children who still hovered near, and beamed on them.

'They'll be getting impatient,' he remarked. 'Lead on, Priscilla.'

'I'm Helen, Mr Zellaby,' she told him.

'Ah, well. Never mind. Come along, my dear,' said Zellaby, and they went up the steps together.

I got back into the car and drove off unhurriedly. On the way through the village I noticed that The Scythe and Stone seemed to be doing well, and was tempted to pause there to find out how local feeling was running now, but, with Zellaby's request in mind, I resisted, and kept going. In the Kyle Manor drive I turned the car round and left it standing, ready to fetch him back later on, and went in.

In the main sitting-room Angela was sitting in front of the open windows, with the radio playing a Haydn quartet. She turned her head as I came in, and at the sight of her face I was glad Zellaby had asked me to come back.

'An enthusiastic welcome,' I told her, in answer to her unspoken question. 'For all I could tell they might – apart from the bewildering feeling that one was seeing multiple – have been a crowd of decent schoolchildren anywhere. I've no doubt he's right when he says they trust him.'

'Perhaps,' she allowed, 'but I don't trust them . I don't think I have, ever since the time they forced their mothers back here. I managed not to let it worry me much until they killed Jim Pawle, but ever since then I've been afraid of them. Thank goodness I packed Michael off at once... There's no telling what they might do at any time. Even Gordon admits that they are nervous and panicky. It's nonsense for us to go on staying here, with our lives at the mercy of any childish fright or temper that comes over them...

'Can you see anybody taking Colonel Westcott's "ultimatum" seriously? I can't. That means that the Children will have to do something to show that they must be listened to; they've got to convince important, hard-headed, and thick-headed people, and goodness knows how they may decide to do that. After what's happened already, I'm frightened – I really am... They just don't care what becomes of any of us...'

'It wouldn't do much good their making their demonstration here,' I tried to console her. 'They'll have to do it where it counts. Go up to London with Bernard, as they threatened. If they treat a few big-wigs there as they treated the Chief Constable -'

I broke off, interrupted by a bright flash, like lightning, and a sharp tremor that shook the house.

'What – ?' I began. But I got no further.

The blast that blew in through the open window almost carried me off my feet. The noise came, too, in a great, turbulent, shattering breaker of sound, while the house seemed to rock about us.

The overwhelming crash was followed by a clatter and tinkle of things falling, and then by an utter silence.

Without any conscious purpose I ran past Angela, huddled in her chair, through the open french windows, out on to the lawn. The sky was full of leaves torn from the trees, and still fluttering down. I turned, and looked at the house. Two great swatches of creeper had been pulled from the wall, and hung raggedly down. Every window in the west front gaped blankly back at me, without a pane of glass left. I looked the other way again, and through and above the trees there was a white and red glare. I had not a moment's doubt what it meant...

Turning again I ran back to the sitting-room, but Angela had gone, and the chair was empty... I called to her, but there was no answer...

I found her at last, in Zellaby's study. The room was littered with broken glass. One curtain had been torn from its hangings and was draped half across the sofa. A part of the Zellaby family record had been swept from the mantel-shelf and now lay shattered in the hearth. Angela herself was sitting in Zellaby's working chair, lying forward across his desk, with her head on her bare arms. She did not move nor make any sound as I came in.

The opening of the door brought a draught through the empty window-frames. It caught a piece of paper lying on the desk beside her, slid it to the edge, and sent it fluttering to the floor.

I picked it up. A letter in Zellaby's pointed handwriting. I did not need to read it. The whole thing had been clear the moment I saw the red-white glow in the direction of The Grange, and recalled in the same instant the heavy cases which I had supposed to contain his recording-machine, and other gear. Nor was the letter mine to read, but as I put it back on the desk beside the motionless Angela, I caught sight of a few lines in the middle:

'... doctor will tell you, a matter of a few weeks, or months, at best. So no bitterness, my own love.

'As to this – well, we have lived so long in a garden that we have all but forgotten the commonplaces of survival. It was said: Si fueris Romae, Romani vivito more , and quite sensibly, too. But it is a more fundamental expression of the same sentiment to say: If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does...'