‘Now, tell me, Dora – and, mind, I do want your honest opinion on this: do you think that in Kathy’s case it should be white satin, or white brocade?’
Mrs Leebody stalled. Clearly this was a matter where the word ‘honest’ was relative, and it was inconsiderate of Mrs Cluey, to say the least, to phrase her question with no perceptible bias. Probably satin, thought Mrs Leebody, but she hesitated to risk the friendship of years on a guess. She tried for a lead.
‘Of course, for a very young bride … but then one wouldn’t call Kathy such a very young bride, perhaps …’
‘Not very young,’ agreed Mrs Cluey, and waited.
Mrs Leebody dratted her friend’s importunity, and also her husband’s wireless programme which made thinking and finesse difficult.
‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘both can look charming, of course, but for Kathy I really think -‘
At which point her voice abruptly stopped …
Far away in South Kensington Mrs Cluey joggled the rest impatiently, and looked at her watch. Presently she pressed the bar down for a moment, and then dialled O.
‘I wish to make a complaint,’ she said. ‘I have just been cut off in the middle of a most important conversation.’
The exchange told her it would try to reconnect her. A few minutes later it confessed failure.
‘Most inefficient,’ said Mrs Cluey. ‘I shall put in a written complaint. I refuse to pay for a minute more than we had – indeed, I really don’t see why I should pay for that, in the circumstances. We were cut off at ten-seventeen exactly.’
The man at the exchange responded with formal tact, and made a note of the time, for reference – 22.17 hrs 26th Sept …
CHAPTER 3
Midwich Rests
FROM ten-seventeen that night, information about Midwich becomes episodic. Its telephones remained dead. The bus that should have passed through it failed to reach Stouch, and a truck that went to look for the bus did not return. A notification from the RAF was received in Trayne of some unidentified flying object, not, repeat not, a service machine, detected by radar in the Midwich area, possibly making a forced landing. Someone in Oppley reported a house on fire in Midwich, with, apparently, nothing being done about it. The Trayne fire appliance turned out – and thereafter failed to make any reports. The Trayne police despatched a car to find out what had happened to the fire-engine, and that, too, vanished into silence. Oppley reported a second fire, and still, seemingly, nothing being done, Constable Gobby, in Stouch, was rung up, and sent off on his bicycle to Midwich; and no more was heard of him, either …
*
The dawn of the 27th was an affair of slatternly rags soaking in a dishwater sky, with a grey light weakly filtering through. Nevertheless, in Oppley and in Stouch cocks crowed, and other birds welcomed it more melodiously. In Midwich, however, no birds sang.
In Oppley and Stouch, too, as in other places, hands were soon reaching out to silence alarm clocks, but in Midwich the clocks rattled on till they ran down.
In other villages sleepy-eyed men left their cottages and encountered their work-mates with sleepy good mornings; in Midwich no one encountered anyone.
For Midwich lay entranced …
While the rest of the world began to fill the day with clamour, Midwich slept on … Its men and women, its horses, cows, and sheep; its pigs, its poultry, its larks, moles, and mice all lay still. There was a pocket of silence in Midwich, broken only by the frouing of the leaves, the chiming of the church clock, and the gurgle of the Opple as it slid over the weir beside the mill …
And while the dawn was still a poor, weak thing an olive-green van, with the words ‘Post Office Telephones’ just discernible upon it, set out from Trayne with the object of putting the rest of the world into touch with Midwich again.
In Stouch it paused at the village call box to inquire whether Midwich had yet shown any signs of life. Midwich had not; it was still as deeply incommunicado as it had been since 22.17 hrs. The van restarted and rattled on through the uncertainly gathering daylight.
‘Cor!’ said the lineman to his driver companion. ‘Cor! That there Miss Ogle ain’t ‘alf goin’ to cop ‘erself a basinful of ‘Er Majesty’s displeasure over this little lot.’
‘I don’t get it,’ complained the driver. “F you’d asked me I’d of said the old girl was always listenin’ when there was anyone on the blower, day or night. Jest goes to show,’ he added, vaguely.
A little out of Stouch, the van swung sharply to the right, and bounced along the by-road to Midwich for half a mile or so. Then it rounded a corner to encounter a situation which called for all the driver’s presence of mind.
He had a sudden view of a fire-engine, half heeled over, with its near-side wheels in the ditch, and a black saloon car which had climbed half-way up the bank on the other side a few yards further on, with a man and a bicycle lying half in the ditch behind it. He pulled hard over, attempting an S turn which would avoid both vehicles, but before he could complete it his own van ran on to the narrow verge, bumped along for a few more yards, then ploughed to a stop, with its side in the hedge.
Half an hour later the first bus of the day, proceeding at a light-hearted speed, since it never had a passenger before it picked up the Midwich children for school in Oppley, rattled round the same corner to jamb itself neatly into the gap between the fire-engine and the van, and block the road completely.
On Midwich’s other road – that connecting it with Oppley – a similar tangle of vehicles gave at first sight the impression that the highway had, overnight become a dump. And on that side the mail-van was the first vehicle to stop without becoming involved.
One of its occupants got out, and walked forward to investigate the disorder. He was just approaching the rear of the stationary bus when, without any warning, he quietly folded up, and dropped to the ground. The driver’s jaw fell open, and he stared. Then, looking beyond his fallen companion, he saw the heads of some of the bus passengers, all quite motionless. He reversed hastily, turned, and made for Oppley and the nearest telephone.
Meanwhile the similar state of affairs on the Stouch side had been discovered by the driver of a baker’s van, and twenty minutes later almost identical action was taking place on both the approaches to Midwich. Ambulances swept up with something of the air of mechanized Galahads. Their rear doors opened. Uniformed men emerged, fastening their tunic buttons, and providently pinching the embers from half-smoked cigarettes. They surveyed the pile-ups in a knowledgeable, confidence-inspiring way, unrolled stretchers, and prepared to advance.
On the Oppley road the two leading bearers approached the prone postman competently, but then, as the one in the lead drew level with the body, he wilted, sagged, and subsided across the last casualty’s legs. The hind bearer goggled. Out of a babble behind him his ears picked up the word ‘Gas!’ he dropped the stretcher-handles as if they had turned hot, and stepped hastily back.
There was a pause for consultation. Presently the ambulance driver delivered a verdict, shaking his head.
‘Not our kind of job,’ he said, with the air of one recalling a useful Union decision. ‘More like the fire chaps’ pigeon, I’d say.’
‘The army’s, I reckon,’ said the bearer. ‘Gas masks, not just smoke masks, is what’s wanted here.’
CHAPTER 4
Operation Midwich
ABOUT the time that Janet and I were approaching Trayne, Lieutenant Alan Hughes was standing side by side with Leading-Fireman Norris on the Oppley road. They were watching while a fireman grappled at the fallen ambulance-man with a long ceiling-hook. Presently the hook lodged, and began to haul him in. The body was dragged across a yard and a half of tarmac – and then sat up abruptly, and swore.
It seemed to Alan that he had never heard more beautiful language. Already, the acute anxiety with which he had arrived on the scene had been allayed by the discovery that the victims of whatever-it-was were quietly, but quite definitely, breathing as they lay there. Now it was established that one, at least, of them showed no visible ill effects of quite ninety minutes’ experience of it.
‘Good,’ Alan said. ‘If he’s all right, it looks as if the rest may be – though it doesn’t get us much nearer to knowing what it is.’
The next to be hooked and pulled out was the postman. He had been there somewhat longer than the ambulance-man, but his recovery was every bit as spontaneous and satisfactory.