SO IT WAS that the village of Wistbourne became blessed with a clutch of babies, by what supernatural means we could not imagine—but there they were. Was this an answer to the prayers? Were these babies a ‘gift from God’? No matter: they were welcomed in with delight. So the village suddenly changed from having no babies at all, to being blessed with fifteen infants all at once. Not all of them were fostered on childless couples: the Howells, for instance, were keen to take on one of the boys as a little brother for their daughter Phyllis, and their request was granted.

June, of course, was kept busy distributing tins of infant formula milk among the newly-blessed families, checking their weight, and making sure they got their vaccinations. Polio was still very much a scourge amongst children in those days—it was before Salk’s vaccine became available—but luckily none of the babies became infected. Indeed they were all the very picture of health and growing well.

The people of Wistbourne decided, mainly at the Rev. Dibley’s bidding, to throw a communal feast—as best they could in spite of the ongoing rationing—to celebrate the arrival of the ‘newcomers’. It was held in the village hall next to the church, and the vicar baptised and blessed all fifteen children as a group: most of the foster-parents had opted not to have their babies individually christened, which was quite understandable.

And there was before long more to rejoice about. The ‘Curse’—if it was a Curse—appeared to have been lifted. One morning, a few weeks after the babies appeared—we were now beginning to refer to them as the ‘Foundlings’, with a capital ‘F’—there came a timid knock on our door. It was our neighbour Susan: the same Susan who, along with her husband George, had seemed to cold-shoulder us when we first moved into Wistbourne. She was in a nervous state and asked to speak to June in private, so I retreated to the kitchen.

A few minutes later June called me back. Both she and Susan were beaming. “Susan’s going to have a baby, Gavin! Absolutely no doubt about it. About eight weeks gone, I’d say. This could be the first natural conception in Wistbourne for—I don’t know how many years. Time to celebrate again, I think.”

“Indeed it is,” I remarked, going to fetch a bottle of wine. “Sue, do you want to go round and tell George, now—or would you rather June went with you? He’ll be thrilled to bits, you can be sure of it. Then both of you come round and have a drink with us.” Susan nodded; she was too overcome to speak, but, still in a daze, she slowly made her way alone out of our cottage.

It was quite a long time before she reappeared, along with George and their foster-daughter, whom they’d named Deborah, one of the Foundlings. George too looked a bit unsteady on his feet. We sat them both down and handed round glasses of wine—only a small glass for Susan, of course. She had brought along a feeding bottle for Deborah and also a bottle of Ministry of Food concentrated orange juice. “I think I ought to be drinking this rather than the wine, thanks—got to look after Junior,” she remarked—so June went and made up a glass for her, swapping it for her undrunk wine.

“What would you prefer—a boy or a girl?” I asked.

“Give us time to think, Gavin!” replied George. “I’ve only just learned that I’m going to be a dad—a proper dad, that is… I can’t think straight just now. But I don’t think I’d mind—would you, Sue? It would be nice for Debbie—either a brother or a sister to play with when they grow older. We’ll see. And before you ask, it’s far too early to think of names yet.”

“How did you come to choose ‘Deborah’, if I may ask?”

“It just—sort of—seemed the right name for her,” put in Susan, who was busy giving her foster-daughter her bottle.

“Lots of the Foundlings have been given Biblical-sounding names,” added June, who of course had met all of them in her rounds. “We’ve got two Marys, a Simon, a Jacob, a Matthew, two Ruths, and a Gabriel. Oh, and there’s also a Theodore. That last name literally means ‘Gift from God’. I think it’s because some of the folk really believe that these babies come from God in some mysterious way.

“What are your thoughts on this?” I put in.

“Gavin, must you really ask questions like that at this time?” interrupted June, rather crossly. “Sue and George are still trying to assimilate the news of their forthcoming parenthood. It’s a bit unfair to pose these awkward questions, isn’t it?”

“It’s all right,” said George, reassuringly. “It’s all right, I don’t mind. Well: Sue and I aren’t really the religious types. To tell the truth, we don’t really believe in a God, do we, Sue?” Susan nodded. “But if the babies—the Foundlings—don’t come from some sort of divine or supernatural origin, where do they come from? You know, of course, that not a single mother has been traced. The police have been all up and down the country, Ireland too; France and Germany, even, I’ve heard. I’m baffled—just like everyone else in the village.”

Well, I was baffled too—and so was June. After we had finished congratulating Sue and George and they’d taken their leave of us, I contemplated for a little while. Was it time to talk to the vicar again—to ask him what he’d made of this development? We’d been to Church a few more times at June’s insistence, but he’d not been very forthcoming. I phoned him and invited him and Mrs Dibley to come to tea at our place.

“I rather guessed you’d want to grill me about ‘God’s gift to Wist­bourne’—or whatever people are saying now,” remarked the vicar, as he helped himself to a biscuit. “Well, the answer has got to be the same as the one I gave you before, about the Curse. I keep an open mind on matters like this. It doesn’t do to have the villagers believe that God will always work miracles in their favour. Yes, this does look like a miracle—and as you know, couples are starting to expect babies again, another miracle if you like. If people’s expectations are raised too high, they’ll be hoping for God to always work a miracle for them: to cure them of cancer for example. But that is not always God’s will.”

“No-one can possibly know God’s will in every case,” remarked June.

“Quite right, Mrs Hartmead. And, although this may well be one of God’s miracles, it does not come without complications. I think you may know that some of the couples in the village refused to foster any of the Foundlings. And two or three people came to me, privately, and said, they don’t trust them because of their skin colour. It seems to be taking a long time for them to shake off this hint of a greenish-blueish-whatever tinge—”

“There’s a word for this sort of colour,” I put in. “ ‘Eau-de-Nil’. Means ‘Nile Water’. ”

“All right, ‘Eau-de-Nil’ then. But don’t say that near any of the foster parents! People are saying, they must be ‘foreign’ because of their skin. And do you know, there are still people here who don’t want any Coloured people to come and live in the village? I try to explain to them; to enlighten them: a black man is a human being and deserves exactly the same respect as a white man—but they won’t take that. So there may be friction ahead.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“I now almost regret that we didn’t take in one of the Foundlings, ourselves,” put in Mrs Dibley. “But I thought it’d be too much for John—he’s so busy with his pastoral duties—and anyway we’re a bit too old for that sort of thing.”

“Well, it was lucky that all the babies did find a home here,” continued the vicar. “I was especially pleased that the Howells, with a daughter of their own already, agreed to take one. It set a good example. We shall see. Hopefully the Foundlings will come to be accepted in the village, once they grow older and become more ‘normal’ in appearance.”

And so we left it at that. The Reverend Dibley didn’t have a clue. June and I didn’t have a clue. No-one had a clue. It was just one of Earth’s mysteries—maybe never to be solved…

Until…

It must have been a few weeks later. June and I were having a quiet drink in the pub, when we heard a burst of loud laughter coming from the public bar. Looking across, I caught sight of one of the young farm-hands—Smith or Smyth I recalled his name was—choking and spluttering over his pint, as if he’d been slapped hard on the back. Curious, I went round to ask what it was all about.

“Bill ’ere tells us ’e’s seen a flying saucer,” explained one of the others.

“Weren’t a flying saucer,” insisted Smyth, once he’d recovered himself. “’Twer just one of them barrage balloons—you know, them ‘blimps’. Surely you remember them things: all over the place they were.”

“Back in the War, yeah, over the big cities, the ports, the key installations, sure,” said his friend. “But now? The War’s been over for five years now, Bill ol’ chap—in case you’ve forgot: no more air-raids, no more doodlebugs, thank Gawd. And here ain’t exactly a big city, now, is it?”

“Well, that’s what it looked like. And I ’member now: ’twas glowing. Did them blimps carry lights?”

“’Course not. They was meant to be invisible to the enemy bombers, weren’t they? So that they’d fly into the cables and crash. It’s just your imagination, Bill. Unless it really was a flying saucer, that is!”

“When did you see this—whatever it was?” I put in. “This evening? Are there any out there now?”

“Oh no,” replied Smyth. “This were months ago. I was just walking back from the milking, early morning, like. And I’m sure as sure there were a yellow pulsating glow ’bout the thing.”

An ominous suspicion was forming itself in my mind. “Think carefully, Bill,” I said. “Can you remember the exact date you saw this object?”

“Well, I thinks it were early May. Prob’ly a Tuesday. That’s the day I’m wanted in milking sheds.”

“Could you see the Moon?”

“Yes, I ’member now. ’Twas a full moon, just setting. Sun weren’t up yet.”

I thumbed through my diary. “Tuesday, 2nd May. That must have been it. Now, who can remember on what date the babies appeared? The Foundlings?”

“Fourth of May it was,” replied one of the others. “I remember, ’cos it were my Mum’s birthday, and in the confusion I forgot to give ’er her present.”

“So,” I continued, hardly able to contain my excitement, “this flying object, whatever it was, showed up just two days before the Foundlings. Interesting!”

The news spread all around the village, sure enough. People were recalling the stories from Roswell of a few years back. Were these babies in fact ‘aliens’, planted on our unsuspecting village by a race of extraterrestrials? True, they didn’t look like alien beings, apart from the strange Eau-de-Nil sheen on their skin, which was in any case now visible only when the light fell on it at a certain angle. And the doctors had been around several times, and pronounced them the healthiest, fittest babies they’d ever examined. So why would an extraterrestrial civilisation want to abandon a lot of humanoid beings on our planet? What would they gain by it?

The vicar, bless him, did his utmost to calm the unease. They were human children, that was the end of it. They were good, healthy children. What Smyth had seen was clearly just some sort of weather balloon. The dates were a pure coincidence. Please, everyone, take care of these babies, love them, and you shall be rewarded with God’s blessing!

It took a lot of persuading, but people came to accept these words. So things went on pretty much as normal. Autumn was now upon us, leaves were falling, the Foundlings were about six months old, and families were beginning to think about Christmas. The babies were weaned; several of them were already crawling about, and some of the parents could have sworn the first words were coming. If so, that would have been unusually early. But nothing was amiss—until…

It must have been just after midnight, when a young couple in the village named Jack and Wendy, who were fostering a little boy named Gabriel, were awakened by the sound of crying, not from the child’s bedroom as they thought, but right next to their bed. Sure enough, little Gabriel was trying hard to clamber into the bed, and howling continually. Wendy got out of bed, picked him up, and held him close until the crying stopped.

“Looks like he’s climbed out of the cot,” murmured Jack, turning on the light. “First time he’s managed that: we shall have to be careful from now on. Put things out of his reach. You didn’t leave the side down by any chance, did you, Wendy?”

“I’m sure I didn’t, but do go and check, dear.” So Jack got up and strolled into the baby’s bedroom. A moment later, he returned. He was white and shaking. He could barely get his words out.

“Just go and—go and see what’s happened! The cot—it’s impossible! It can’t be!”

So they dashed into Gabriel’s bedroom. There was a neat circular hole in the cot’s side, just above the level of the mattress. It was about sixteen inches across, cutting through several of the vertical wooden slats—just as if a skilled carpenter had taken a saw to them and neatly cut out a circle. There was no sign of any cut-off pieces, but there was a deep pile of sawdust on the carpet below. And now that they inspected Gabriel’s baby clothes, they too were smothered in the sawdust. Gabriel himself seemed unperturbed: he had gone back to sleep in his mother’s arms.

There was no more sleep for his parents, however. In the morning they called in the police who inspected everything meticulously. The first theory was that there must have been some sort of burglary, but all the doors had been locked and the windows shut. There was no sign of any forced entry, and no fingerprints other than Jack’s and Wendy’s. And nothing appeared to be disturbed or missing—apart from the missing parts of the slats, that was.

Why would any burglar want to cut a hole in a child’s cot—and then leave without taking anything?

A forensic officer turned up. He carefully collected up all the sawdust and weighed it; he also took measurements of the hole in the cot. He came to the conclusion that all the missing wood from the cot was accounted for in the heap of sawdust—as if all the material from the hole had been ground to dust—pulverised. But what sort of tool could do that?

Wendy, especially, was very distressed by this occurrence, and as soon as we heard, June went round to their house to give her tranquillisers; Jack needed some too. That was how we learnt the full story. Like the police, and everyone else, we were totally perplexed. Did this fit in with the other strange happenings in Wistbourne?

A number of scientists turned up at Jack and Wendy’s over the next few days. The damaged cot was taken away, and so was the bedroom carpet and all the sawdust which had been carefully preserved. A replacement cot for Gabriel and a carpet were supplied, paid for by the insurers. Gabriel was thoroughly checked over by the doctor but showed no signs of having been in any way affected. The mystery remained unsolved.