At last the music tied itself up with a neat bow, and ceased. Zellaby stopped the machine by a switch on the arm of his chair, opened his eyes, and regarded Alan.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he apologized. ‘One feels that once Bach has started his pattern he should be allowed to finish it. Besides,’ he added, glancing at the playing-cabinet, ‘we still lack a code for dealing with these innovations. Is the art of the musician less worthy of respect simply because he is not present in person? What is the gracious thing? – For me to defer to you, for you to defer to me, or for both of us to defer to genius – even genius at second-hand? Nobody can tell us. We shall never know.
‘We don’t seem to be good at integrating novelties with our social lives, do we? The world of the etiquette book fell to pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since. Not even rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at freedom. Rather a pity, don’t you think?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Alan. ‘I – er -‘
‘Though, mind you,’ Mr Zellaby continued, ‘it is a trifle d�mod� even to perceive the existence of the problem. The true fruit of this century has little interest in coming to living-terms with innovations; it just greedily grabs them all as they come along. Only when it encounters something really big does it become aware of a social problem at all, and then, rather than make concessions, it yammers for the impossibly easy way out, uninvention, suppression – as in the matter of The Bomb.’
‘Er – yes, I suppose so. What I -‘
Mr Zellaby perceived a lack of fervour in the response.
‘When one is young,’ he said understandingly, ‘the unconventional, the unregulated, hand-to-mouth way of life has a romantic aspect. But such, you must agree, are not the lines on which to run a complex world. Luckily, we in the West still retain the skeleton of our ethics, but there are signs that the old bones are finding the weight of new knowledge difficult to carry with confidence, don’t you think?’
Alan drew breath. Recollections of previous entanglements in the web of Zellaby discourse forced him to the direct solution.
‘Actually, sir, it was on quite another matter I wanted to see you,’ he said.
When Zellaby noticed the interruptions of his audible reflections he was accustomed to take them in mild good part. He now postponed further contemplation of the ethical skeleton to inquire:
‘But of course, my dear fellow. By all means. What is it?’
‘It’s that – well, it’s about Ferrelyn, sir.’
‘Ferrelyn? Oh yes. I’m afraid she’s gone up to London for a couple of days to see her mother. She’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Er – it was today she came back, Mr Zellaby.’
‘Really?’ exclaimed Zellaby. He thought it over. ‘Yes, you’re quite right. She was here for dinner. You both were,’ he said triumphantly.
‘Yes,’ said Alan, and holding his chance with determination, he ploughed ahead with his news, unhappily conscious that not one stone of his prepared phrases remained upon another, but getting through it somehow.
Zellaby listened patiently until Alan finally stumbled to a conclusion with:
‘So I do hope, sir, that you will have no objection to our becoming officially engaged,’ and at that his eyes widened slightly.
‘My dear fellow, you overestimate my position. Ferrelyn is a sensible girl, and I have no doubt whatever that by this time she and her mother know all about you, and have, together, reached a well-considered decision.’
‘But I’ve never even met Mrs Holder,’ Alan objected.
‘If you had, you would have a better grasp of the situation. Jane is a great organizer,’ Mr Zellaby told him, regarding one of the pictures on the mantel with benevolence. He got up.
‘Well, now, you have performed your part very creditably; so I, too, must behave as Ferrelyn considers proper. Would you care to assemble the company while I fetch the bottle?’
A few minutes, with his wife, his daughter, and his prospective son-in-law grouped about him, he lifted his glass.
‘Let us now drink,’ announced Zellaby, ‘to the adjunction of fond spirits. It is true that the institution of marriage as it is proclaimed by Church and state displays a depressingly mechanistic attitude of mind towards partnership – one not unlike, in fact, that of Noah. The human spirit, however, is tough, and it quite often happens that love is able to survive this coarse, institutional thumbing. Let us hope, therefore -‘
‘Daddy,’ Ferrelyn broke in, ‘it’s after ten, and Alan has to get back to camp in time, or he’ll be cashiered, or something. All you really have to say is “long life and happiness to you both”.’
‘Oh,’ said Mr Zellaby. ‘Are you sure that’s enough? It seems very brief. However, if you think it suitable, then I say it, my dear. Most wholeheartedly I say it.’
He did.
Alan set down his empty glass.
‘I’m afraid what Ferrelyn said was right, sir. I shall have to leave now,’ he said.
Zellaby nodded sympathetically.
‘It must be a trying time for you. How much longer will they keep you?’
Alan said he hoped to be free of the army in about three months. Zellaby nodded again.
‘I expect the experience will turn out to have value. Sometimes I regret the lack of it myself. Too young for one war, tethered to a desk in the Ministry of Information in the next. Something more active would have been preferable. Well, good night, my dear fellow. It’s -‘ He broke off, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Dear me, I know we all call you Alan, but I don’t believe I know your other name. Perhaps we ought to have that in order.’
Alan told him, and they shook hands again.
As he emerged into the hall with Ferrelyn he noticed the clock.
‘I say, I’ll have to step on it. See you tomorrow, darling. Six o’clock. Good night, my sweet.’
They kissed fervently but briefly in the doorway, and he broke away down the steps, bounding towards the small red car parked on the drive. The engine started and roared. He gave a final wave, and, with a spurt of gravel from the rear wheels, dashed away.
Ferrelyn watched the rear lights dwindle and vanish. She stood listening until the erstwhile roar became a distant hum, and then closed the front door. On her way back to the study she noticed that the hall clock now showed ten-fifteen.
Still, then, at ten-fifteen nothing in Midwich was abnormal.
With the departure of Alan’s car peace was able to settle down again over a community which was, by and large, engaged in winding up an uneventful day in expectation of a no less uneventful morrow.
Many cottage windows still threw yellow beams into the mild evening where they glistered in the dampness of an earlier shower. The occasional surges of voices and laughter which swept the place were not local; they originated with a well-handled studio-audience miles away and several days ago, and formed merely a background against which most of the village was preparing for bed. Many of the very old and very young had gone there already, and wives were now filling their own hot-water bottles.
The last customers to be persuaded out of The Scythe and Stone had lingered for a few minutes to get their night-eyes and gone their ways, and by ten-fifteen all but one Alfred Wait and a certain Harry Crankhart, who were still engaged in argument about fertilizers, had reached their homes.
Only one event of the day still impended – the passage of the bus that would be bringing the more dashing spirits back from their evening in Trayne. With that over, Midwich could finally settle down for the night.
In the Vicarage, at ten-fifteen, Miss Polly Rushton was thinking that if only she had gone to bed half an hour ago she could be enjoying the book that now lay neglected on her knees, and how much pleasanter that would be than listening to the present contest between her uncle and aunt. For, on one side of the room Uncle Hubert, the Reverend Hubert Leebody, was attempting to listen to a Third Programme disquisition on the Pre-Sophoclean Conception of the Oedipus Complex, while, on the other, Aunt Dora was telephoning. Mr Leebody, determined that scholarship should not be submerged by piffle, had already made two advances in volume, and still had forty-five degrees of knob turning in reserve. He could not be blamed for failing to guess that what was striking him as a particularly nugatory exchange of feminine concerns could turn out to be of importance. No one else would have guessed it, either.
The call was from South Kensington, London, where a Mrs Cluey was seeking the support of her lifelong friend Mrs Leebody. By ten-sixteen she had reached the kernel of the matter.