He looked at me.
‘Coming with me, Richard?’
I hesitated. Janet was still in Scotland, and not due back for a couple of days yet. There was nothing that needed my presence in London, and I was finding the problem of the Midwich Children far more fascinating than anything I was likely to encounter there. Angela noticed.
‘Do stay if you would like to,’ she said. ‘I think we’d both be rather glad of some company just now.’
I judged that she meant it, and accepted.
‘Anyway,’ I added, to Bernard. ‘We don’t even know that your new courier status includes a companion. If I were to try to come with you we’d probably find that I am still under the ban.’
‘Oh, yes, that ridiculous ban,’ said Zellaby. ‘I must talk to them seriously about that – a quite absurd panic measure on their part.’
We accompanied Bernard to the door, and watched him set off down the drive, with a wave of his hand.
‘Yes. Game to the Children, I think,’ Zellaby said again, as the car turned out into the road. ‘And set, too … later on …?’ He shrugged faintly, and shook his head.
CHAPTER 21
Zellaby of Macedon
‘MY DEAR,’ said Zellaby, looking along the breakfast table at his wife, ‘if you happen to be going into Trayne this morning, will you get one of those large jars of bullseyes?’
Angela switched her attention from the toaster to her husband.
‘Darling,’ she said, though without endearment, ‘in the first place, if you recall yesterday, you will remember that there is no question of going to Trayne. In the second, I have no inclination to provide the Children with sweets. In the third, if this means that you are proposing to go and show them films at The Grange this evening, I strongly protest.’
‘The ban,’ said Zellaby, ‘is raised. I pointed out to them last night that it was really rather silly and ill-considered. Their hostages cannot make a concerted flight without word reaching them, if only through Miss Lamb, or Miss Ogle. Everybody is inconvenienced to no purpose; only half, or a quarter, of the village makes as good a shield for them as the whole of it. And furthermore, that I proposed to cancel my lecture on the Aegean Islands this evening if half of them were going to be out making a nuisance of themselves on the roads and paths.’
‘And they just agreed?’ asked Angela.
‘Of course. They’re not stupid, you know. They are very susceptible to reasoned argument.’
‘Well, really! After all we’ve been through -‘
‘But they are,’ protested Zellaby. ‘When they are jittery, or startled, they do foolish things, but don’t we all? And because they are young they over-reach themselves, but don’t all the young? Also, they are anxious and nervous – and shouldn’t we be nervous if the threat of what happened at Gizhinsk were hanging over us?’
‘Gordon,’ his wife said, ‘I don’t understand you. The Children are responsible for the loss of six lives. They have killed these six people whom we knew well, and hurt a lot more, some of them badly. At any time the same thing may happen to any of us. Are you defending that?’
‘Of course not, my dear. I am simply explaining that they can make mistakes when they are alarmed, just as we can. One day they will have to fight us for their lives; they know that, and out of nervousness they made the mistake of thinking that the time had come.’
‘So now all we have to do is to say: “We’re so sorry you killed six people by mistake. Let’s forget all about it.” ‘
‘What else do you suggest? Would you prefer to antagonize them?’ asked Zellaby.
‘Of course not, but if the law can’t touch them as you say it can’t – though I really don’t see what good the law is if it can’t admit what everybody knows – but even if it can’t, it doesn’t mean we’ve got to take no notice and pretend it never happened. There are social sanctions, as well as legal ones.’
‘I should’ be careful, my dear. We have just been shown that the sanction of power can override both,’ Zellaby told her seriously.
Angela looked at him with a puzzled expression.
‘Gordon, I don’t understand you,’ she repeated. ‘We think alike about so many things. We share the same principles, but now I seem to have lost you. We can’t just ignore what has happened: it would be as bad as condoning it.’
‘You and I, my dear, are using different yardsticks. You are judging by social rules, and finding crime. I am considering an elemental struggle, and finding no crime – just grim, primeval danger.’ The tone in which he said the last words was so different from his usual manner that it startled both of us into staring at him. For the first time in my knowledge I saw another Zellaby – the one whose incisive hints of his existence made the Works more than they seemed – showing clearly through, and seeming younger than, the familiar, dilettante spinner of words. Then he slipped back to his usual style. ‘The wise lamb does not enrage the lion,’ he said. ‘It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best. The Children like bullseyes, and will be expecting them.’
His eyes and Angela’s held for some seconds. I watched the puzzlement and hurt fade out of hers, and give place to a look of trust so naked that I was embarrassed.
Zellaby turned to me.
‘I’m afraid there is some business that needs my attention this morning, my dear fellow. Perhaps you would care to celebrate the lifting of our siege by escorting Angela into Trayne?’
*
When we got back to Kyle Manor, a little before lunchtime, I found Zellaby in a canvas chair on the bricks in front of the veranda. He did not hear me at first, and as I looked at him I was struck by the contrasts in him. At breakfast there had been a glimpse of a younger, stronger man; now he looked old and tired, older than I had ever thought him; showing, too, something of the withdrawal of age as he sat with the light wind stirring his silky white hair, and his gaze on things far, far away.
Then my foot gritted on the bricks, and he changed. The air of lassitude left him, the vacancy went out of his eyes, and the face he turned to me was the Zellaby countenance I had known for ten years.
I took a chair beside him, and set down the large bottle of bullseyes on the bricks. His eyes rested on it a moment.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘They’re very fond of those. After all, they are still children – with a small “c” – too.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be intrusive, but – well, do you think it’s wise of you to go upthere this evening? After all, one can’t really put the clock back. Things have changed. There is acknowledged enmity now, between them and the village, if not between them and all of us. They must suspect that there will be moves against them. Their ultimatum to Bernard isn’t going to be accepted right away, if it is at all. You said they were nervous, well, they must still be nervous – and, therefore, still dangerous.’
Zellaby shook his head.
‘Not to me, my dear fellow. I began to teach them before the authorities took any hand in it, and I’ve gone on teaching them. I wouldn’t say I understand them, but I think I know them better than anyone else does. The most important thing is that they trust me …’
He lapsed into silence, leaning back in his chair, watching the poplars sway with the wind.
‘Trust -‘ he was beginning when Angela came out with the sherry decanter and glasses, and he broke off to ask what they were saying about us in Trayne.
At lunch he talked less than usual, and afterwards disappeared into the study. A little later I saw him setting off down the drive on his habitual afternoon walk, but as he had not invited me to join him I made myself comfortable in a deck-chair in the garden. He was back for tea – at which he warned me to eat well as dinner was replaced by a late supper on the evenings that he lectured to the Children.
Angela put in, though not very hopefully:
‘Darling, don’t you think – ? I mean, they’ve seen all your films. I know you’ve shown them the Aegean one twice before, at least. Couldn’t you put it off, and perhaps hire a film that will be new to them?’
‘My dear, it’s a good film; it will stand seeing more than once or twice,’ Zellaby explained, a little hurt. ‘Besides, I don’t give the same talk every time – there’s always something more to say about the Isles of Greece.’