The Complete Short Stories

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Of course it’s hard work,’ Gregory said.

  ‘You don’t understand, bor. Nobody do. This here land is no good. It’s barren. Every year, it grows less and less. It ent got no more life than what these here stuffed animals have. So that means I am barren too – year by year, I got less substance.’

  He stood up suddenly, angry perhaps at himself.

  ‘You better go home, Master Gregory.’

  ‘Joe, I’m terribly sorry. I wish I could help. …’

  ‘I know you mean kindly. You go home while the night’s fine.’ He peered out into the blank yard. ‘Let’s hope we don’t get another stinking dewfall tonight.’

  The strange dew did not fall again. As a topic of conversation, it was limited, and even on the farm, where there was little new to talk about, it was forgotten in a few days. The February passed, being neither much worse nor much better than most Februaries, and ended in heavy rainstorms. March came, letting in a chilly spring over the land. The animals on the farm began to bring forth their young.

  They brought them forth in amazing numbers, as if to overturn all the farmer’s beliefs in the unproductiveness of his land.

  ‘I never seen anything like it!’ Grendon said to Gregory. Nor had Gregory seen the taciturn farmer so excited. He took the young man by the arm and marched him into the barn.

  There lay Trix, the nannie goat. Against her flank huddled three little brown and white kids, while a fourth stood nearby, wobbling on its spindly legs.

  ‘Four on ’em! Have you ever heard of a goat throwing off four kids? You better write to the papers in London about this, Gregory! But just you come down to the pigsties.’

  The squealing from the sties was louder than usual. As they marched down the path towards them, Gregory looked up at the great elms, their outlines dusted in green, and thought he detected something sinister in the noises, something hysterical that was perhaps matched by an element in Grendon’s own bearing.

  The Grendon pigs were mixed breeds, with a preponderance of Large Blacks. They usually gave litters of something like ten piglets. Now there was not a litter without fourteen in it; one enormous black sow had eighteen small pigs nuzzling about her. The noise was tremendous and, standing looking down on this swarming life, Gregory told himself that he was foolish to imagine anything uncanny in it; he knew so little about farm life.

  ‘Course, they ent all going to live,’ the farmer said. ‘The old sows ent got enough dugs to feed that brood. But it’s a record lot! I reckon you ought to write to that there Norwich Advertiser about it.’

  Grubby lumbered up with two pails of feed, his great round face flushed as if in rapport with all the fecundity about him.

  ‘Never seen so many pigs,’ he said. ‘You ought to write to that there newspaper in Norwich about it, bor. There ent never been so many pigs.’

  Gregory had no chance to talk to Nancy on the subject. She and her mother had driven to town in the trap, for it was market day in Cottersall. After he had eaten with Grendon and the men – Mrs Grendon had left them a cold lunch – Gregory went by himself to look about the farm, still with a deep and (he told himself) unreasoning sense of disturbance inside him.

  A pale sunshine filled the afternoon. It could not penetrate far down into the water of the pond. But Gregory stood by the horse trough staring at the expanse of water; he saw that it teemed with young tadpoles and frogs. He went closer. What he had regarded as a sheet of rather stagnant water was alive with small swimming things. As he looked, a great beetle surged out of the depths and seized a tadpole. The tadpoles were also providing food for two ducks that, with their young, were swimming by the reeds on the far side of the pond. And how many young did the ducks have? An armada of chicks was there, parading in and out of the rushes.

  He walked round behind the barn and the cowsheds, where the ground was marshy, and across the bridge at the back of the machine house. The haystacks stood here, and behind them a wild stretch of hedge. As he went, Gregory watched for birds’ nests. In the woodpile was a redstart’s nest, in the marsh a meadow pipit’s, in the hedge nests of sparrows and blackbirds. All were piled high with eggs – far too many eggs.

  For a minute, he stood uncertainly, then began to walk slowly back the way he had come. Nancy stood between two of the haystacks. He started in surprise at seeing her. He called her name, but she stood silent with her back to him.

  Puzzled, he went forward and touched her on the shoulder. Her head swung round. He saw her long teeth, the yellow curve of bone that had been her nose – but it was a sheep’s head, falling backwards off a stick over which her old cloak had been draped. It lay on the ground by her bonnet, and he stared down at it in dismay, trying to quiet the leap of his heart. And at that moment, Neckland jumped out and caught him by the wrist.

  ‘Ha, that gave thee a scare, my hearty, didn’t it? I saw ’ee hanging round here. Why don’t you get off out of here and never come back, bor? I warned you before, and I ent going to warn you again, do you hear? You leave Nancy alone, you and your books!’

  Gregory wrenched his hand away.

  ‘You did this, did you, you bloody ignorant lout? What do you think you are playing at here? How do you think Nancy or her mother would like it if they saw what you had done? Suppose I showed this to Farmer Grendon? Are you off your head, Neckland?’

  ‘Don’t you call me a ignorant lout or I’ll knock off that there block of yours, that I will. I’m a-giving you a good scare, you cheeky tick, and I’m a-warning you to keep away from here.’

  ‘I don’t want your warnings, and I refuse to heed them. It’s up to the Grendons whether or not I come here, not you. You keep to your place and I’ll keep to mine. If you try this sort of thing again, we shall come to blows.’

  Neckland looked less pugnacious than he had a moment ago. He said, cockily enough, ‘I ent afraid of you.’

  ‘Then I may give you cause to be,’ Gregory said. Turning on his heel, he walked swiftly away – alert at the same time for an attack from the rear. But Neckland slunk away as silently as he had come.

  Crossing the yard, Gregory went over to the stable and saddled Daisy. He swung himself up and rode away without bidding goodbye to anyone.

  At one point, he looked over his shoulder. The farm crouched low and dark above the desolate land. Sky predominated over everything. The Earth seemed merely a strip of beach before a great tumbled ocean of air and light and space and things ill-defined; and from that ocean had come … he did not know, nor did he know how to find out, except by waiting and seeing if the strange vessel from the seas of space had brought evil or blessing.

  Riding into Cottersall, he went straight to the market place. He saw the Grendon trap, with Nancy’s little pony, Hetty, between the shafts, standing outside the grocer’s shop. Mrs Grendon and Nancy were just coming out. Jumping to the ground, Gregory led Daisy over to them and bid them good day.

  ‘We are going to call on my friend Mrs Edwards and her daughters,’ Mrs Grendon said.

  ‘I wondered, Mrs Grendon, if you’d allow me to speak with Nancy privately, just for ten minutes.’

  Mrs Grendon was well wrapped against the wind; she made a monumental figure as she looked at her daughter and considered.

  ‘Seeing you talks to her at the farm, I don’t see why you shouldn’t talk to her here, but I don’t want to cause no scandal, Master Gregory, and I’m sure I don’t know where you can go to talk private. I mean, folks are more staid in their ways in Norfolk than they used to be in my young days, and I don’t want any scandal. Can’t it wait till you come to see us at the farm again?’

  ‘If you would be so kind, Mrs Grendon, I would be very obliged if I might speak privately with her now. My landlady, Mrs Fenn, has a little downstairs parlour at the back of the shop, and I know she would let us speak there. It would be quite respectable.’

  ‘Drat respectable! Let people think what they will, I say.’ All the same, she stood for some time in meditation. Nancy remained by he
r mother with her eyes on the ground. Gregory looked at her and seemed to see her anew. Under her blue coat, fur-trimmed, she wore her orange-and-brown squared gingham dress; she had a bonnet on her head. Her complexion was pure and blemishless, her skin as firm and delicate as a plum, and her dark eyes were hidden under long lashes. Her lips were steady, pale, and clearly defined, with appealing tucks at each corner. He felt almost like a thief, stealing a sight of her beauty while she was not regarding him.

  ‘I’m going on to Mrs Edwards,’ Marjorie Grendon declared at last. ‘I don’t care what you two do so long as you behave – but I shall, mind, if you aren’t with me in a half-hour, Nancy, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, mother.’

  The baker’s shop was in the next street. Gregory and Nancy walked there in silence. Gregory shut Daisy in the stable and they went together into the parlour through the back door. At this time of day, Mr Fenn was resting upstairs and his wife looking after the shop, so the little room was empty.

  Nancy sat upright in a chair and said, ‘Well, Gregory, what’s all this about? Fancy dragging me off from my mother like that in the middle of town!’

  ‘Nancy, don’t be cross. I had to see you.’

  She pouted. ‘You come out to the old farm often enough and don’t show any particular wish to see me there.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. I always come to see you – lately in particular. Besides, you’re more interested in Bert Neckland, aren’t you?’

  ‘Bert Neckland, indeed! Why should I be interested in him? Not that it’s any of your business if I am.’

  ‘It is my business, Nancy. I love you, Nancy!’

  He had not meant to blurt it out in quite that fashion, but now it was out, it was out, and he pressed home his disadvantage by crossing the room, kneeling at her feet, and taking her hands in his. ‘I thought you only came out to the farm to see my father.’

  ‘It was like that at first, Nancy, but no more.’

  ‘You’ve got interested in farming now, haven’t you? That’s what you come for now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I certainly am interested in the farm, but I want to talk about you. Nancy, darling Nancy, say that you like me just a little. Encourage me somewhat.’

  ‘You are a very fine gentleman, Gregory, and I feel very kind towards you, to be sure, but. …’

  ‘But?’

  She gave him the benefit of her downcast eyes again.

  ‘Your station in life is very different from mine, and besides – well, you don’t do anything.’

  He was shocked into silence. With the natural egotism of youth, he had not seriously thought that she could have any firm objection to him; but in her words he suddenly saw the truth of his position, at least as it was revealed to her.

  ‘Nancy – I – well, it’s true I do not seem to you to be working at present. But I do a lot of reading and studying here, and I write to several important people in the world. And all the time I am coming to a great decision about what my career will be. I do assure you I am no loafer, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘No, I don’t think that. But Bert says you often spend a convivial evening in that there Wayfarer –’

  ‘Oh, he does, does he? And what business is it of his if I do – or of yours, come to that? What a damned cheek!’

  She stood up. ‘If you have nothing left to say but a lot of swearing, I’ll be off to join my mother, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh, by Jove, I’m making a mess of this!’ He caught her wrist. ‘Listen, my sweet thing. I ask you only this, that you try and look on me favourably. And also that you let me say a word about the farm. Some strange things are happening there, and I seriously don’t like to think of you being there at night. All these young things being born, all these little pigs – it’s uncanny!’

  ‘I don’t see what’s uncanny no more than my father does. I know how hard he works, and he’s done a good job rearing his animals, that’s all. He’s the best farmer round Cottersall by a long chalk.’

  ‘Oh, certainly. He’s a wonderful man. But he didn’t put seven or eight eggs into a hedge sparrow’s nest, did he? He didn’t fill the pond with tadpoles and newts till it looks like a broth, did he? Something strange is happening on your farm this year, Nancy, and I want to protect you if I can.’

  The earnestness with which he spoke, coupled perhaps with his proximity and the ardent way he pressed her hand, went a good way toward mollifying Nancy.

  ‘Dear Gregory, you don’t know anything about farm life, I don’t reckon, for all your books. But you’re very sweet to be concerned.’

  ‘I shall always be concerned about you, Nancy, you beautiful creature.’

  ‘You’ll make me blush!’

  ‘Please do, for then you look even lovelier than usual!’ He put an arm round her. When she looked up at him, he caught her up close to his chest and kissed her fervently.

  She gasped and broke away, but not with too great haste.

  ‘Oh, Gregory! Oh, Gregory! I must go to mother now!’

  ‘Another kiss first! I can’t let you go until I get another.’

  He took it, and stood by the door trembling with excitement as she left. ‘Come and see us again soon,’ she whispered.

  ‘With dearest pleasure,’ he said. But the next visit held more dread than pleasure.

  The big cart was standing in the yard full of squealing piglets when Gregory arrived. The farmer and Neckland were bustling about it. The former, shrugging into his overcoat, greeted Gregory cheerfully.

  ‘I’ve a chance to make a good quick profit on these little chaps. Old sows can’t feed them, but sucking pig fetches its price in Norwich, so Bert and me are going to drive over to Heigham and put them on the train.’

  ‘They’ve grown since I last saw them!’

  ‘Ah, they put on over two pounds a day. Bert, we’d better get a net and spread over this lot, or they’ll be diving out. They’re that lively!’

  The two men made their way over to the barn, clomping through the mud. Mud squelched behind Gregory. He turned.

  In the muck between the stables and the cart, footprints appeared, two parallel tracks. They seemed to imprint themselves with no agency but their own. A cold flow of acute supernatural terror overcame Gregory, so that he could not move. The scene seemed to go grey and palsied as he watched the tracks come towards him.

  The carthorse neighed uneasily, the prints reached the cart, the cart creaked, as if something had climbed aboard. The piglets squealed with terror. One dived clear over the wooden sides. Then a terrible silence fell.

  Gregory still could not move. He heard an unaccountable sucking noise in the cart, but his eyes remained rooted on the muddy tracks. Those impressions were of something other than a man: something with dragging feet that were in outline something like a seal’s flippers. Suddenly he found his voice; ‘Mr Grendon!’ he cried.

  Only as the farmer and Bert came running from the barn with the net did Gregory dare look into the cart.

  One last piglet, even as he looked, seemed to be deflating rapidly, like a rubber balloon collapsing. It went limp and lay silent among the other little empty bags of pig skin. The cart creaked. Something splashed heavily off across the farm yard in the direction of the pond.

  Grendon did not see. He had run to the cart and was staring like Gregory in dismay at the deflated corpses. Neckland stared too, and was the first to find his voice.

  ‘Some sort of disease got ’em all, just like that! Must be one of them there new diseases from the Continent of Europe!’

  ‘It’s no disease,’ Gregory said. He could hardly speak, for his mind had just registered the fact that there were no bones left in or amid the deflated pig bodies. ‘It’s no disease – look, the pig that got away is still alive.’

  He pointed to the animal that had jumped from the cart. It had injured its leg in the process, and now lay in the ditch some feet away, panting. The farmer went over to it and lifted it out.

  ‘It escaped the
disease by jumping out,’ Neckland said. ‘Master, we better go and see how the rest of them is down in the sties.’

  ‘Ah, that we had,’ Grendon said. He handed the pig over to Gregory, his face set. ‘No good taking one alone to market. I’ll get Grubby to unharness the horse. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d be good enough to take this little chap in to Marjorie. At least we can all eat a bit of roast pig for dinner tomorrow.’

  ‘Mr Grendon, this is no disease. Have the veterinarian over from Heigham and let him examine these bodies.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me how to run my farm, young man. I’ve got trouble enough.’

  Despite this rebuff, Gregory could not keep away. He had to see Nancy, and he had to see what occurred at the farm. The morning after the horrible thing happened to the pigs, he received a letter from his most admired correspondent, Mr H. G. Wells, one paragraph of which read: ‘At bottom, I think I am neither optimist nor pessimist. I tend to believe both that we stand on the threshold of an epoch of magnificent progress – certainly such an epoch is within our grasp – and that we may have reached the “fin du globe” prophesied by our gloomier fin de siècle prophets. I am not at all surprised to hear that such a vast issue may be resolving itself on a remote farm near Cottersall, Norfolk – all unknown to anyone but the two of us. Do not think that I am in other than a state of terror, even when I cannot help exclaiming “What a lark!”’

  Too preoccupied to be as excited over such a letter as he would ordinarily have been, Gregory tucked it away in his jacket pocket and went to saddle up Daisy.

  Before lunch, he stole a kiss from Nancy, and planted another on her over-heated left cheek as she stood by the vast range in the kitchen. Apart from that, there was little pleasure in the day. Grendon was reassured to find that none of the other piglets had fallen ill of the strange shrinking disease, but he remained alert against the possibility of it striking again. Meanwhile, another miracle had occurred. In the lower pasture, in a tumbledown shed, he had a cow that had given birth to four calves during the night. He did not expect the animal to live, but the calves were well enough, and being fed from a bottle by Nancy.