The Chrysalids

7

The arrival of my sister, Petra, came as a genuine surprise to me, and a conventional surprise to everyone else.

There had been a slight, not quite attributable, sense of expectation about the house for the previous week or two, but it remained unmentioned and unacknowledged. For me, the feeling that I was being kept unaware of something afoot was unresolved until there came a night when a baby howled. It was penetrating, unmistakable, and certainly within the house, where there had been no baby the day before. But in the morning nobody referred to the sound in the night. No one, indeed, would dream of mentioning the matter openly until the inspector should have called to issue his certificate that it was a human baby in the true image. Should it unhappily turn out to violate the image and thus be ineligible for a certificate, everyone would continue to be unaware of it, and the whole regrettable incident would be deemed not to have occurred.

As soon as it was light my father sent a stable-hand off on a horse to summon the inspector, and, pending his arrival, the whole household tried to disguise its anxiety by pretending we were just starting another ordinary day.

The pretence grew thinner as time went on, for the stable-hand, instead of bringing back the inspector forthwith, as was to be expected when a man of my father’s position and influence was concerned, returned with a polite message that the inspector would certainly do his best to find time to pay a call in the course of the day.

It is very unwise for even a righteous man to quarrel with his local inspector and call him names in public. The inspector has too many ways of hitting back.

My father became very angry, the more so since the conventions did not allow him to admit what he was angry about. Furthermore, he was well aware that the inspector intended him to be angry. He spent the morning hanging around the house and yard, exploding with bad temper now and then over trivial matters, so that everyone crept about on tiptoe and worked very hard indeed, in order not to attract his attention.

One did not dare to announce a birth until the child had been officially examined and approved; and the longer the formal announcement was delayed, the more time the malicious had to invent reasons for the delay. A man of standing looked to having the certificate granted at the earliest possible moment. With the word ‘baby’ unmentionable and unhintable, we all had to go on pretending that my mother was in bed for some slight cold, or other indisposition.

My sister Mary disappeared now and then towards my mother’s room, and for the rest of the time tried to hide her anxiety by loudly bossing the household girls. I felt compelled to hang about in order not to miss the announcement when it should come. My father kept on prowling.

The suspense was aggravated by everyone’s knowledge that on the last two similar occasions there had been no certificate forthcoming. My father must have been well aware — and no doubt the inspector was aware of it, too — that there was plenty of silent speculation whether my father would, as the law allowed, send my mother away if this occasion should turn out to be similarly unfortunate. Meanwhile, since it would have been both impolite and undignified to go running after the inspector, there was nothing to be done but bear the suspense as best we could.

It was not until mid-afternoon that the inspector ambled up on his pony. My father pulled himself together, and went out to receive him; the effort to be even formally polite nearly strangled him. Even then the inspector was not brisk. He dismounted in a leisurely fashion, and strolled into the house, chatting about the weather. Father, red in the face, handed him over to Mary who took him along to mother’s room. Then followed the worst wait of all.

Mary said afterwards that he hummed and ha’d for an unconscionable time while he examined the baby in minutest detail. At last, however, he emerged, with an expressionless face. In the little-used sitting-room he sat down at the table and fussed for a while about getting a good point on his quill. At last he took a form from his pouch, and in a slow, deliberate hand wrote that he officially found the child to be a true female human being, free from any detectable form of deviation. He regarded that thoughtfully for some moments, as though not perfectly satisfied. He let his hand hesitate before he actually dated and signed it, then he sanded it carefully, and handed it to my enraged father, still with a faint air of uncertainty. He had, of course, no real doubt in his mind, or he would have called for another opinion; my father was perfectly well aware of that, too.

At last Petra’s existence could be admitted. I was formally told that I had a new sister, and presently I was taken to see her where she lay in a crib beside my mother’s bed.

She looked so pink and wrinkled to me that I did not see how the inspector could have been quite sure about her. However, there was nothing obviously wrong with her, so she had got her certificate. Nobody could blame the inspector for that; she did appear to be as normal as a new-born baby ever looks….

While we were taking turns to look at her somebody started to ring the stable bell in the customary way. Everyone on the farm stopped work, and very soon we were all assembled in the kitchen for prayers of thanksgiving.

Two, or it may have been three, days after Petra was born I happened upon a piece of my family’s history that I would prefer not to have known.

I was sitting quietly in the room next to my parents’ bedroom where my mother still lay in bed. It was a matter of chance, and strategy, too. It was the latest place that I had found to stay hidden awhile after the midday meal until the coast was clear and I could slip away without being given an afternoon job; so far, nobody had thought of looking there for me. It was simply a matter of putting in half an hour or so. Normally the room was very convenient, though just at present its use required caution because the wattle wall between the rooms was cracked and I had to move very cautiously on tiptoe lest my mother should hear me.

On that particular day I was just thinking that I had allowed nearly enough time for people to be busy again when a two-wheeled trap drove up. As it passed the window I had a glimpse of my Aunt Harriet holding the reins.

I had only seen her some eight or nine times, for she lived fifteen miles away in the Kentak direction, but what I knew of her I liked. She was some three years younger than my mother. Superficially they were not dissimilar, and yet, in Aunt Harriet each feature had been a little softened, so that the effect of them all together was different. I used to feel when I looked at her that I was seeing my mother as she might have been — as, I thought, I would have liked her to be. She was easier to talk to, too; she did not have a somewhat damping manner of listening only to correct.

I edged over carefully on stockinged feet to the window, watched her tether the horse, pick a white bundle out of the trap, and carry it into the house. She cannot have met anyone, for a few seconds later her steps passed the door, and the latch of the next room clicked.

‘Why, Harriet!’ my mother’s voice exclaimed in surprise, and not altogether in approval. ‘So soon! You don’t mean to say you’ve brought a tiny baby all that way!’

‘I know,’ said Aunt Harriet’s voice, accepting the reproof in my mother’s tone, ‘but I had to, Emily. I had to. I heard your baby had come early, so I — oh, there she is! Oh, she’s lovely, Emily. She’s a lovely baby.’ There was a pause. Presently she added: ‘Mine’s lovely, too, isn’t she? Isn’t she a lovely darling?’

There was a certain amount of mutual congratulation which did not interest me a lot. I didn’t suppose the babies looked much different from other babies, really. My mother said:

‘I am glad, my dear. Henry must be delighted.’

‘Of course he is,’ said Aunt Harriet, but there was something wrong about the way she said it. Even I knew that. She hurried on: ‘She was born a week ago. I didn’t know what to do. Then when I heard your baby had come early and was a girl, too, it was like God answering a prayer.’ She paused, and then added with a casualness which somehow failed to be casual: ‘You’ve got the certificate for her?’

‘Of course.’ My mother’s tone was sharp, ready for offence. I knew the expression which went with the tone. When she spoke again there was a disturbing quality in her voice.

‘Harriet!’ she demanded sharply. ‘Are you going to tell me that you have not got a certificate?’

My aunt made no reply, but I thought I caught the sound of a suppressed sob. My mother said coldly, forcibly:

‘Harriet, let me see that child — properly.’

For some seconds I could hear nothing but another sob or two from my aunt. Then she said, unsteadily:

‘It’s such a little thing, you see. It’s nothing much.’

‘Nothing much!’ snapped my mother. ‘You have the effrontery to bring your monster into my house, and tell me it’s nothing much!’

‘Monster!’ Aunt Harriet’s voice sounded as though she had been slapped. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!…’ She broke into little moanings.

After a time my mother said:

‘No wonder you didn’t dare to call the inspector.’

Aunt Harriet went on crying. My mother let the sobs almost die away before she said:

‘I’d like to know why you have come here, Harriet? Why did you bring it here?’

Aunt Harriet blew her nose. When she spoke it was in a dull, flat voice:

‘When she came — when I saw her, I wanted to kill myself. I knew they would never approve her, although it’s such a little thing. But I didn’t, because I thought perhaps I could save her somehow. I love her. She’s a lovely baby — except for that. She is, isn’t she?’

My mother said nothing. Aunt Harriet went on:

‘I didn’t know how, but I hoped. I knew I could keep her for a little while before they’d take her away — just the month they give you before you have to notify. I decided I must have her for that long at least.’

‘And Henry? What does he say?’

‘He — he said we ought to notify at once. But I wouldn’t let him — I couldn’t, Emily. I couldn’t. Dear God, not a third time! I kept her, and prayed, and prayed, and hoped. And then when I heard your baby had come early I thought perhaps God had answered my prayers.’

‘Indeed, Harriet,’ said my mother coldly, ‘I doubt whether that had anything to do with it. Nor,’ she added pointedly, ‘do I see what you mean.’

‘I thought,’ Aunt Harriet went on, spiritlessly now, but forcing herself to the words, ‘I thought that if I could leave my baby with you, and borrow yours—’

My mother gave an incredulous gasp. Apparently words eluded her.

‘It would only be for a day or two; just while I could get the certificate,’ Aunt Harriet went doggedly on. ‘You are my sister, Emily — my sister, and the only person in the world who can help me to keep my baby.’

She began to cry again. There was another longish pause, then my mother’s voice:

‘In all my life I have never heard anything so outrageous. To come here suggesting that I should enter into an immoral, a criminal conspiracy to… I think you must be mad, Harriet. To think that I should lend—’ She broke off at the sound of my father’s heavy step in the passage.

‘Joseph,’ she told him as he entered. ‘Send her away. Tell her to leave the house — and take that with her.’

‘But,’ said my father in a bewildered tone, ‘but it’s Harriet, my dear.’

My mother explained the situation, fully. There wasn’t a sound from Aunt Harriet. At the end he demanded incredulously:

‘Is this true? Is this why you’ve come here?’

Slowly, wearily, Aunt Harriet said:

‘This is the third time. They’ll take my baby away again like they took the others. I can’t stand that - not again. Henry will turn me out, I think. He’ll find another wife, who can give him proper children. There’ll be nothing — nothing in the world for me — nothing. I came here hoping against hope for sympathy and help. Emily is the only person who can help me. I — I can see now how foolish I was to hope at all…’

Nobody said anything to that.

‘Very well — I understand. I’ll go now,’ she told them in a dead voice.

My father was not a man to leave his attitude in doubt.

‘I do not understand how you dared to come here, to a God-fearing house, with such a suggestion,’ he said. ‘Worse still, you don’t show an atom of shame or remorse.’

Aunt Harriet’s voice was steadier as she answered:

‘Why should I? I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. I am not ashamed — I am only beaten.’

‘Not ashamed!’ repeated my father. ‘Not ashamed of producing a mockery of your Maker — not ashamed of trying to tempt your own sister into criminal conspiracy!’ He drew a breath and launched off in pulpit style. ‘The enemies of God besiege us. They seek to strike at Him through us. Unendingly they work to distort the true image; through our weaker vessels they attempt to defile the race. You have sinned, woman, search your heart, and you will know that you have sinned. Your sin has weakened our defences, and the enemy has struck through you. You wear the cross on your dress to protect you, but you have not worn it always in your heart. You have not kept constant vigilance for impurity. So there has been a Deviation; and deviation, any deviation from the true image is blasphemy — no less. You have produced a defilement.’

‘One poor little baby!’

‘A baby which, if you were to have your way, would grow up to breed, and, breeding, spread pollution until all around us there would be mutants and abominations. That is what has happened in places where the will and faith were weak: here it shall never happen. Our ancestors were of the true stock: they have handed on a trust. Are you to be permitted to betray us all? To cause our ancestors to have lived in vain? Shame on you, woman! Now go! Go home in humility, not defiance. Notify your child, according to law. Then do your penances that you may be cleansed. And pray. You have much to pray for. Not only have you blasphemed by producing a false image, but in your arrogance you have set yourself against the law, and sinned in intent. I am a merciful man; I shall make no charge of that. It will be for you to clean it from your conscience; to go down on your knees and pray — pray that your sin of intention, as well as your other sins, may be forgiven you.’

There were two light footsteps. The baby gave a little whimper as Aunt Harriet picked it up. She came towards the door and lifted the latch, then she paused.

‘I shall pray,’ she said. ‘Yes, I shall pray.’ She paused, then she went on, her voice steady and harder: ‘I shall pray God to send charity into this hideous world, and sympathy for the weak, and love for the unhappy and unfortunate. I shall ask Him if it is indeed His will that a child should suffer and its soul be damned for a little blemish of the body…. And I shall pray Him, too, that the hearts of the self-righteous may be broken….’

Then the door closed and I heard her pass slowly along the passage.

I moved cautiously back to the window, and watched her come out and lay the white bundle gently in the trap. She stood looking down on it for a few seconds, then she unhitched the horse, climbed up on the seat, and took the bundle on to her lap, with one arm guarding it in her cloak.

She turned, and left a picture that is fixed in my mind. The baby cradled in her arm, her cloak half open, showing the upper part of the brown, braid-edged cross on her fawn dress; eyes that seemed to see nothing as they looked towards the house from a face set hard as granite.… Then she shook the reins, and drove off. Behind me, in the next room, my father was saying:

‘Heresy, too! The attempt at substitution could be overlooked; women sometimes get strange ideas at such times. I was prepared to overlook it, provided the child is notified. But heresy is a different matter. She is a dangerous as well as a shameless woman; I could never have believed such wickedness in a sister of yours. And for her to think that you might abet her, when she knows that you yourself have had to make your own penances twice! To speak heresy in my house, too. That cannot be allowed to pass.’

‘Perhaps, she did not realize what she was saying,’ my mother’s voice said, uncertainly.

‘Then it is time she did. It is our duty to see that she does.’

My mother started to answer, but her voice cracked. She began to cry: I had never heard her cry before. My father’s voice went on explaining about the need for Purity in thought as well as in heart and conduct, and its very particular importance to women. He was still talking when I tiptoed away.

I could not help feeling a great curiosity to know what was the ‘little thing’ that had been wrong with the baby — wondering if, perhaps, it were just an extra toe, like Sophie’s. But I never found out what it was.

When they broke the news to me next day that my Aunt Harriet’s body had been found in the river, no one mentioned a baby….