Wyndham, John – The Midwich Cuckoos

‘Well,’ asked Janet, ‘and what do you make of the sage of Midwich?’

Bernard shook his head, and looked at me.

‘He’s got me wondering,’ he said. ‘Most of your reports have been excellent, Richard, but I doubt whether you got him quite right. Oh, there is a lot of chatter which sounds like hot air, I know, but what you gave me was too much of the manner, and too little of the matter.’

‘I’m sorry if I misled you,’ I admitted. ‘The trouble about Zellaby is that his matter is frequently elusive, and often allusive. Not much that he says is reportable fact; he is given to mentioning things en passant, and by the time you’ve thought it over you don’t know whether he followed them up with serious deductions, or was simply playing with hypotheses – nor, for that matter, are you at all sure how much he implied, and how much you inferred. It makes things difficult.’

Bernard nodded, understandingly.

‘I appreciate that now. I’ve just had some of it. He spent quite ten minutes towards the end telling me that it is only recently that he has come to wonder whether civilization is not, biologically speaking, a form of decadence. From that he went on to wonder whether the gap between homo sapiens and the rest was not too wide; with the suggestion that it might have been better for our development had we had to contend with the conditions of some other sapient, or at least semi-sapient, species. I’m sure he wasn’t being altogether irrelevant – but I’m hanged if I can really pin down the relevance. One thing seems pretty clear though; erratic as he seems, he doesn’t miss a lot … Incidentally, he is strong on the same line as the doctor concerning expert observation – particularly on this “compulsion”, but in his case for the opposite reason: he doesn’t consider it hysterical, and is anxious to know what it is.

‘By the way, you seem to have missed one trick – did you know his daughter tried to take her baby for a drive in her car the other day?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘what do you mean, “tried”?’

‘Just that after about six miles she had to give up, and come back again. He doesn’t like it. As he put it: for a child to be tied to its mother’s apron strings is bad, but for a mother to be tied to a baby’s apron strings is serious. He feels it is time he took some steps about it.’

CHAPTER 14

Matters Arising

FOR various reasons almost three weeks went by before Alan Hughes was free to come for a weekend visit, so that Zellaby’s expressed intention of taking steps had to be postponed until then.

By this time the disinclination of the Children (now beginning to acquire an implied capital C, to distinguish them from other children) to be removed from the immediate neighbourhood had become a phenomenon generally recognized in the village. It was a nuisance, since it involved finding someone to look after the baby when its mother went to Trayne, or elsewhere, but not regarded with any great seriousness – more, indeed, as a foible; just another inconvenience added to the inconveniences inevitable with babies, anyway.

Zellaby took a less casual view of it, but waited until the Sunday afternoon before putting the matter to his son-in-law. Reasonably certain, then, of a spell without interruption he led Alan to deck-chairs under the cedar tree on the lawn where they would not be overheard. Once they were seated he came to the point with quite unusual directness.

‘What I want to say, my boy, is this: I’d feel happier if you can get Ferrelyn away from here. And the sooner, I think, the better.’

Alan looked at him with an expression of surprise which became changed into a slight frown.

‘I should have thought it fairly clear that there is nothing I want more than to have her with me.’

‘Of course it is, my dear fellow. One could not fail to realize that. But at the moment I am concerned with something more important than interfering in your private affairs; I am not thinking of what either of you wants, or would like, so much as what needs to be done – for Ferrelyn’s sake, not for yours.’

‘She wants to come away. She set out to come once,’ Alan reminded him.

‘I know. But she tried to take the baby with her: it brought her back, just as it brought her here before, and just, it appears, as it will if she tries again. Therefore you must take her away without the baby. If you can persuade her to that, we can arrange to have it excellently looked after here. The indications are that if it is not actually with her it will not – probably cannot – exert any influence stronger than that of natural affection.’

‘But according to Willers -‘

‘Willers is making a loud blustering noise to prevent himself from being frightened. He’s refusing to see what he doesn’t want to see. I don’t suppose it matters very much what casuistries he uses to comfort himself, as long as they don’t take in the rest of us.’

‘You mean that this hysteria he talks about isn’t the real reason for Ferrelyn and the rest coming back here?’

‘Well, what is hysteria? A functional disorder of the nervous system. Naturally there has been considerable strain upon the nervous systems of many of them, but the trouble with Willers is that he stops before he ought to begin. Instead of facing it, and honestly inquiring why the reaction should take this particular form, he hides in a smoke-screen of generalities about a long period of sustained anxiety, and so on. I don’t blame the man. He’s had enough for the time being; he’s tired out, and he deserves a rest. But that doesn’t mean we must let him obscure the facts, which is what he is trying to do. For instance, even if he has observed it, he has not admitted that none of this “hysteria” has ever been known to manifest itself without one of the babies being present.’

‘Is that so?’ Alan asked, surprised.

‘Without exception. This sense of compulsion occurs only in the vicinity of one of the babies. Separate the baby from the mother – or perhaps one should say remove the mother from the neighbourhood of any of the babies – and the compulsion at once begins to lessen, and gradually dies away. It takes longer to fade in some than in others, but that is what happens.’

‘But I don’t see – I mean, how is it done?’

‘I’ve no idea. There could, one supposes, be an element akin to hypnotism, perhaps, but, whatever the mechanism, I am perfectly satisfied that it is exerted wilfully and with purpose by the child. One would instance the case of Miss Lamb: when it was physically impossible for her to comply, the compulsion was promptly switched to Miss Latterly, who had previously felt none of it, with the result that the baby had its way, and got back here, as did the rest.

‘And since they got back, no one has managed to take one of them more than six miles from Midwich.

‘Hysteria, says Willers. One woman starts it, the rest subconsciously accept it, and so exhibit the same symptoms. But if the baby is parked with a neighbour here the mother is able to go to Trayne, or anywhere else she wants to, without any hindrance. That, according to Willers, is simply because her subconscious hasn’t been led to expect anything to happen when she is on her own, so it doesn’t.

‘But my point is this: Ferrelyn cannot take the baby; but if she makes up her mind to go, and leave it here, there’s nothing to stop her. Your job is to help to make up her mind for her.’

Alan considered.

‘Sort of put out an ultimatum – make her choose between baby and me? That’s a bit tough and – er – fundamental, isn’t it?’ he suggested.

‘My dear fellow, the baby’s put the ultimatum already. What you have to do is to clarify the situation. The only possible compromise would be for you to surrender to the baby’s challenge, and come to live here, too.’

‘Which I couldn’t, anyway.’

‘Very well, then. Ferrelyn has been dodging the issue for some weeks now, but sooner or later she must face it. Your job is first to make her recognize the hurdle, and then help her over it.’

Alan said slowly:

‘It’s quite a thing to ask, though, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t the other quite a thing to ask of a man – when it isn’t his baby?’

‘H’m,’ Alan remarked. Zellaby went on:

‘And it isn’t really her baby, either, or I’d not be talking quite like this. Ferrelyn and the rest are the victims of an imposition: they have been cheated into an utterly false position. Some kind of elaborate confidence trick has made them into what the veterinary fellows call host-mothers; a relationship more intimate than that of the foster-mother, but similar in kind. This baby has absolutely nothing to do with either of you – except that, by some process not yet explained, she was placed in a situation which forced her to nourish it. So far is it from belonging to either of you that it doesn’t correspond to any known racial classification. Even Willers has to admit that.

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