The midwich cuckoos by John Wyndham

Author:John Wyndham [John Wyndham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780141920856
Published: 2008-08-06T14:00:00+00:00

Part Two

CHAPTER 16

Now We Are Nine

DURING the next few years, such visits home as we managed were brief and hurried, spent entirely in dashing from one lot of relatives to another, with interludes to improve business contacts. I never went anywhere near Midwich, nor indeed thought much about it. But, in the eighth summer after we had left, I managed a six-week spell, and at the end of the first week I ran into Bernard Wescott one day, in Piccadilly.

We went to the In and Out for a drink. In the course of a chat I asked him about Midwich. I think I expected to hear that the whole thing had fizzled out, for on the few occasions I had recalled the place lately, it and its inhabitants had the improbability of a tale once realistic, but now thoroughly unconvincing. I was more than half-ready to hear that the Children no longer trailed clouds of anything unconventional, that, as so often with suspected genius, expectations had never flowered, and that, for all their beginnings and indications, they had become an ordinary gang of village children, with only their looks to distinguish them.

Bernard considered for a moment, then he said :

‘As it happens, I have to go down there tomorrow. Would you care to come for the run, renew old acquaintance, and so on?’

Janet had gone north to stay with an old school friend for a week leaving me on my own, with nothing particular to do.

‘So you do still keep an eye on the place? Yes, I’d like to come and have a few words with them. Zellaby’s still alive and well?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s that rather dry-stick type that seems set to go on for ever, unchanged.’

‘The last time I saw him – apart from our farewell – he was off on a weird tack about composite personality,’ I recalled. ‘An old spellbinder. He manages to make the most exotic conceptions sound feasible while he’s talking. Something about Adam and Eve, I remember.’

‘You won’t find much difference,’ Bernard told me, but did not pursue that line. Instead, he went on: ‘My own business there is a bit morbid I’m afraid – an inquest, but that needn’t interfere with you.’

‘One of the Children?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘A motor accident to a local boy called Pawle.’

‘Pawle,’ I repeated. ‘Oh, yes, I remember. They’ve a farm a bit outside, nearer to Oppley.’

‘That’s it. Dacre Farm. Tragic business.’

It seemed intrusive to ask what interest he could have in the inquest, so I let him switch the conversation to my Canadian experiences.

The next morning, with a fine summer’s day already well begun, we set off soon after breakfast. In the car he apparently felt at liberty to talk more freely than he had at the club.

‘You’ll find a few changes in Midwich,’ he warned me. ‘Your old cottage is now occupied by a couple called Welton – he etches, and his wife throws pots. I can’t remember who is in Crimm’s place at the moment – there’s been quite a succession of people since the Freemans.

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