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.
‘It is a boy, Mr Zellaby,’ she said. ‘And I have Mrs Zellaby’s special instructions to tell you he has the Zellaby nose.’
CHAPTER 12
Harvest Home
ON a fine afternoon in the last week of July, Gordon Zellaby, emerging from the post office, encountered a small family-party coming from the church. It centred about a girl who carried a baby wrapped in a white woollen shawl. She looked very young to be the baby’s mother; scarcely more than a schoolgirl. Zellaby beamed benevolently upon the group and received their smiles in return, but when they had passed his eyes followed the child carrying her child, a little sadly.
As he approached the lych-gate, the Reverend Hubert Leebody came down the path.
‘Hullo, Vicar. Still signing up the recruits, I see,’ he said.
Mr Leebody greeted him, nodded, and fell into step beside him.
‘It’s easing off now, though,’ he said. ‘Only two or three more to come.’
‘Making it one hundred per cent?’
‘Very nearly. I must confess I had scarcely expected that, but I fancy they feel that though it can’t exactly regularize matters, it does go some way towards it. I’m glad they do.’ He paused reflectively. ‘This one,’ he went on, ‘young Mary Histon, she’s chosen the name Theodore. Chose it all on her own, I gather. And I must say I rather like that.’
Zellaby considered for a moment, and nodded.
‘So do I, Vicar. I like it very much. And, you know, that embodies no mean tribute to you.’
Mr Leebody looked pleased, but shook his head.
‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘That a child like Mary should want to call her baby “the gift of God” instead of being ashamed of it is a tribute to the whole village.’
‘But the village had to be shown how, in the name of humanity, it ought to behave.’
‘Teamwork,’ said the Vicar. ‘Teamwork, with a fine captain in Mrs Zellaby.’
They continued for a few paces in silence, then Zellaby said:
‘Nevertheless, the fact remains that, however the girl takes it, she has been robbed. She has been swept suddenly from childhood into womanhood. I find that saddening. No chance to stretch her wings. She has to miss the age of true poetry.’
‘One would like to agree – but, in point of fact, I doubt it,’ said Mr Leebody. ‘Not only are poets, active or passive, rather rare, but it suits more temperaments than our times like to pretend to go straight from dolls to babies.’
Zellaby shook his head regretfully.
‘I expect you’re right. All my life I have deplored the Teutonic view of women, and all my life ninety per cent of them have been showing me that they don’t mind it a bit.’
‘There are some who certainly have not been robbed of anything,’ Mr Leebody pointed out.
‘You’re right. I’ve just been looking in on Miss Ogle. She hasn’t. Still a bit bewildered, perhaps, but delighted too. You’d think it was all some kind of conjuring trick she had invented for herself, without knowing how.’