Greybeard

by Brian Aldiss

  On the stage of the world it was rapidly growing darker. The average age of the population already stood high in the seventies. Each succeeding year saw it rise higher. In a few more years... An emotion not unlike exhilaration filled Greybeard, a sort of wonderment to think he might be present at the end of the world. No: at the end of humankind. The world would go on; man might die, but the earth still yielded up its abundance.

  They went back into the house. A suitcase — incongruous item in pigskin that had made a journey down the years to a ruined world — stood on the dry side of the hall.

  He looked around him, looked around the room at the furniture they had salvaged from other houses, at Martha’s roughly drawn calendar on one wall, with its year, 2029, written in red, at the fern she grew in an old pot. Eleven years since they arrived here from Cowley with Pitt, eleven years of padding around the perimeter to keep the world out.

  “Let’s go,” he said, adding as an afterthought, “do you mind leaving, Martha?”

  “I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, do I? You’d better just take me along.”

  “At least there’s a measure of safety here. I don’t know what I’m letting you in for.”

  “No weakness now, Mr Greybeard.” On impulse, she added, “May I get Charley Samuels if he is in? He’d miss us most. He ought to come with us.”

  He nodded, reluctant to have anyone share his plan, yet reluctant to say no to Martha. She was gone. He stood there, heavy, feeling the weight of the past. Yes, Charley ought to come with them, and not only because the two of them had fought side by side almost thirty years ago. That old battle brought back no emotion; because it belonged to a different age, it cauterized feeling. The young soldier involved in that conflict was a different being from the man standing in this destitute room; he even went by a different name.

  A log still smouldered in the grate; but in the hall and on the stairs, which creaked in the long nights as if gnomes were more reality than legend, the smell of damp was as thick as twilight. They would leave this dwelling, and soon it would all decompose like a man’s body, into its separate glues and dusts.

  Now he could understand why people set fire to their own homes. Fire was clean; cleanliness was a principle that man had otherwise lost. An angry pleasure roused in him at the thought of moving on, though as ever he showed little of what he felt.

  He went briskly to the front door. Martha was stepping over the bricks that marked the old dividing line between their garden and the next. With her was Charley Samuels, his muffler of grey wool around his head and throat, his coat tied tight, a pack on his back, the fox Isaac straining at its leash. His face was the scaly yellow colour of a boiled fowl, but he looked resolute enough. He came up to Greybeard and gripped his hand. Frosty tears stood in his eyes.

  Anxious to avoid an emotional scene, Greybeard said, “We need you with us, Charley, to deliver sermons at us.”

  But Charley only shook his hand the harder.

  “I was just packing. I’m your man, Greybeard. I saw that criminal sinner Mole shoot poor old Betty from the bridge. His day will dawn, his day will dawn.” His words came thickly. “I vowed on that instant that I’d dwell no more in the tents of the unrighteous.”

  Greybeard thought of old Betty, nodding over the guardroom fire so recently; by now her stew would be spoiled.

  The fox whined and pranced with impatience.

  “Isaac seems to agree with you,” Greybeard said, with something of his wife’s attempt at humour. “Let’s go, then, while everyone’s attention is distracted.”

  “It won’t be the first time we’ve worked together,” Charley said.

  Nodding in agreement, Greybeard turned back into the hall; he did not particularly want any sentimentalizing from old Charley.

  He picked up the suitcase his wife had packed. Deliberately, he left the front door of their house open. Martha shut it. She fell into step behind him, with Charley and the dog-fox. They walked down the relapsed road eastwards, and out into the fields. They marched parallel with the riverbank, in the general direction of the horns of the old ruined bridge.

  Greybeard took it at a good pace, deliberately not easing up for the older Charley’s sake; Charley might as well see from the start that only in one aspect was this an escape; like every escape, it was also a new test. He drew up sharply when he saw two figures ahead, making for the same break in the thicket as he was.

  The sighting was mutual. The figures were those of a man and a woman; the man knotted up his face, snaring his eyes between brow and cheek to see who followed him. Recognition too was mutual.

  “Where are you off to, Towin, you old scrounger?” Greybeard asked when his party had caught up. He looked at the wispy old man, cuddling his cudgel and wrapped in a monstrous garment composed of blanket, animal hide, and portions of half a dozen old coats, and then regarded Towin’s wife, Becky. Becky Thomas, in her mid-seventies, was possibly some ten years younger than her husband. A plump, birdlike woman, she carried two small sacks and was dressed in a garment as imposingly disorganized as her husband’s. Her ascendancy over her husband was rarely disputed, and she spoke first now, her voice sharp. “We might ask you lot the same thing. Where are you going?”

  “By the looks of things, we’re off on the same errand as you,” Towin said. “We’re getting out of this mouldy concentration camp while we’ve still got legs on us.”

  “That’s why we’re wearing these things we’ve got on,” Becky said. “We’ve been preparing to leave for some time. This seemed a good opportunity, with old Mole and the major busy. But we’d never thought you might be hopping it, Greybeard. You’re well in with the major, unlike us folk.”

  Ignoring the jibe, Greybeard looked them over carefully.

  “Towin’s about right with his ‘concentration camp.’ But where are you thinking of going?”

  “We thought we might sort of head south and pick up the old road towards the downs,” Becky said.

  “You’d better join us,” Greybeard said curtly. “We don’t know what conditions we may meet. I’ve got a boat provisioned and hidden below the weir. Let’s get moving.”

  Hidden in the thicket, drawn up from the river’s edge, sheltered in the remains of a small byre, lay a sixteen-foot clinker-built dinghy. Under Greybeard’s instruction, they lifted it down into the water. Charley and Towin held it steady while he piled their few possessions into it. A previous owner had equipped the craft with a canopy, which they erected. The bows were decked in; the canopy covered most of the rest of the length. Three pairs of paddles lay on the planking of the boat, together with a rudder and tiller. These latter Greybeard fitted into place.

  They wasted no time. Their nearness to the settlement was emphasized by the shouting they could still hear upstream.

  Martha and Becky were helped into seats. The men climbed in; Greybeard let down the centreboard. Under his direction, Becky took the steering while the rest of them paddled — awkwardly and with a certain amount of guarded cursing from Towin, who took off his beloved broken wristwatch before getting down to work. They manoeuvred themselves into midstream, the current took them, and they began to move.

  Over against the farther bank, a patch of colour bobbed. A body was trapped between two chunks of masonry carried down from the broken bridge. Its head was submerged beneath an ever-breaking wave from the little weir; but the orange, green, red, and yellow stripes of the shirt left them in no doubt that it was Sam Bulstow.

  An hour later, when they were well clear of Sparcot, Martha began to sing. The song came quietly at first, then she gave her notes words.

  “ ‘Here shall he see

  No enemy

  But winter and rough weather...’ ”

  “Towin, you’re right with your remark about concentration camps,” she broke off to say. “Everything at Sparcot was getting so worn and — overused, grimy and overused. Here, it could never be like that.” She indicated the growth drooping over the bank of the
river.

  “Where are you planning that we should go?” Charley asked Greybeard.

  That was something he had never thought of fully. The dinghy had represented no more than his store of hope. But without cogitation he said, “We will make our way down the Thames to the estuary. We can improvise ourselves a mast and a sail later, and get to the sea. Then we will see what the coast looks like.”

  “It would be good to see the sea again,” Charley said soberly.

  “I had a summer holiday at — what was the name of the place? It had a pier — Southend,” Towin said, snugging down into his collar as he paddled. “I’d think it would be pretty sharpish cold at this time of the year — it was bad enough then. Do you think the pier could still be standing? Very pretty pier it was.”

  “You daft thing, it will be tumbled down years ago,” his wife said.

  The fox stood with its paws on the side of the boat, its sharp muzzle picking up scents from the bank. It looked ready for anything.

  Nobody mentioned Scots or gnomes or stoats. Martha’s brief song was still with them, and they dared be nothing but optimistic.

  After half an hour, they were forced to rest. Towin was exhausted, and they all found the unaccustomed exercise tiring. Becky tried to take over the paddle from Martha, but she was too unskilled and impatient to wield it effectively. After a while Charley and Greybeard shared the work between them. The sound of blade meeting water hung heavily between the bushes that fringed the river, and mist began to veil the way before them. The two women huddled together on the seat by the tiller.

  “I’m still a townswoman at heart,” Martha said. “The lure of the countryside is strongest when I’m away from it. Unfortunately, the alternatives to the countryside are growing fewer. Where are we going to stop for the night, Algy?”

  “We’ll be pulling in as soon as we sight a good spot,” Greybeard said. “We must get well away from Sparcot, but we don’t want to overtake Gypsy Joan’s crew from Grafton. Keep a good heart. I’ve some provisions stored in the boat, as well as what we’ve brought with us.”

  “You’re a deep one,” Towin said. “You ought to have shot Jim Mole and taken over Sparcot, man. The people would have backed you.”

  Greybeard did not reply.

  The river unfolded itself with a series of bends, a cripple in a rack of sedges making its way eastwards to liberty. When a bridge loomed ahead, they ceased paddling and drifted towards it. It was a good Georgian structure with a high arch and sound parapet; they snuggled into the bank on the upstream side of it. Greybeard took up his rifle.

  “There should be habitation near a bridge,” he said. “Stay here while I go and look around.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Charley said. “Isaac can stay in the boat.”

  He gave the anxious beast’s leash to Martha, who fondled the fox to keep it quiet. The two men stepped out of the boat. They climbed up the bank and crouched among rotting plants.

  Behind them, an overripe winter’s sun blinked at them from among trees. Except for the sun, distorted by the bare trunks through which it shone, all else was told in tones of grey. A mist like a snowdrift hung low across the land. Before them, beyond the littered road that crossed the bridge, was a large building. It seemed to stand on top of the mist without touching the ground. Under a muddle of tall chimney stacks, it lay ancient and wicked and without life; the sun was reflected from an upper windowpane, endowing it with one lustreless eye. When nothing moved but a scatter of rooks winging overhead, the men heaved themselves up onto the road, and crossed to the cover of a hedgerow.

  “Looks like an old public house,” Charley said. “No sign of life about it. Deserted, I should say.”

  As he spoke, they heard a cough from beyond the hedgerow.

  They crouched, peering among the haws that hung there, scanning the field beyond. The field ran down to the river. Though it was drenched in mist, its freedom from weed and other growth indicated the presence of some sort of ruminative life. Their breath steamed in the brush as they scanned the place. The cough came again.

  Greybeard pointed silently. In the corner of the field closest to the house, a shed stood. Clustered against one side of it were sheep, four or five of them.

  “I thought sheep had died out long ago,” Charley muttered.

  “It means there’s someone in the house.”

  “We don’t want an argument with them. Let’s pull farther upstream. We’ve an hour more daylight yet.”

  “No, let’s look over this place. They’re isolated here; they may be glad of company, if we can convince them we’re friendly.”

  It was impossible to overcome the feeling that they might be covered by one or more guns from the silent building. Keeping their gaze on the vacant windows, they moved forward. In front of the house, with ample cover nearby, stood a car of dejected appearance. It had long since slumped into a posture of defeat, its tires sagged onto the ground. They ran to it, crouching behind it to observe the house. Still no sign of movement. They saw that most of the windows were boarded up.

  “Is there anyone there?” Greybeard called. No answer came.

  As Charley had guessed, it was a public house. The old inn sign lay rotting nearby, and a name board had curled away from over the front door and lay across the well-worn steps. On a downstairs window they read the word ALES engraved there. Greybeard took in the details before calling again. Still there was no answer.

  “We’ll try around the back,” he said, rising.

  “Don’t you think we’d be all right in the boat for one night?”

  “It will be cold later. Let’s try the back.”

  At the rear of the building, a track led from the back door towards the sheep field. Standing against the damp brickwork, Greybeard with his rifle at the ready, they called again. Nobody replied. Greybeard leaned forward and stared quickly into the nearest window. A man was sitting just inside, looking at him.

  His heart gave a jerk. He fell back against Charley, his spine suddenly chill. When he had control of his nerves, he thrust his gun forward and rapped on a windowpane.

  “We’re friends,” he called. Silence.

  “We’re friends, you bastard!” This time he shattered the pane. The glass fell, then silence again. The two men looked at each other, their faces close and drawn.

  “He must be sick or dead or something,” Charley said. Ducking past Greybeard and under the window, he reached the back door. With a shoulder against it, he turned the handle and charged in. Greybeard followed.

  The face of the seated man was as grey as the daylight at which he stared with such fixity. His lips were ravaged and broken as if by a powerful poison. He sat upright in an old chair facing the sink. In his lap, still not entirely empty, lay a can of pesticide.

  Charley crossed himself. “May he rest in peace. There’s provocation enough for anyone taking their own life these days.”

  Greybeard took the can of pesticide and hurled it out into the bushes.

  “Why did he kill himself? It can’t have been for want of food, with his sheep still out there. We’ll have to search the house, Charley. There may be someone else here.”

  Upstairs, in a room into which the dying sun still gleamed, they found her. She was wasted to nothing under the blankets. In a receptacle by her bedside was a pool of something that might have been clotted soup. She had died of an illness, that much was obvious; that she had been dead longer than the man downstairs was also apparent, for the room was thick with the odour of death.

  “Probably cancer,” Greybeard said. “Her husband had no reason to go on living once she’d gone.” He had to break the silence, though breathing in the room was difficult. Pulling himself together, he said, “Let’s get them both outside and hidden in the bushes. Then we can move in here for the night.”

  “We must give them burial, Algy.”

  “It takes too much energy. Let’s get settled in and be thankful we found a safe place so easily.”

 
“We may have been guided here to give these poor souls decent burial.”

  Greybeard looked slantingly at the brown object rotting on the pillow.

  “Why should the Almighty want that back, Charley?”

  “You might as well ask why He wants us here.”

  “By God, I often do ask it, Charley. Now, don’t argue; let’s get the corpses hidden where the women won’t see them, and perhaps in the morning we’ll think about burial.”

  With as good a grace as he could muster, Charley helped in the dreary business. The best place of concealment turned out to be the shed in the field. They left the corpses there, with the sheep — there proved to be six of them — looking on. They saw to it that the sheep had water, wrenched open a couple of windows to air the house, and went to get the rest of the party. When the boat was safely moored, they all moved into the house.

  Down in the cellars where barrels of beer had once stood, they found a smoked joint of meat hanging on a hook to be out of the reach of rats — of those there was plenty of evidence. They found a lamp that contained sheep fat and stank villainously, though it burned well. And Towin found five bottles of gin in a crate hidden in an unused grate.

  “Just what I need for my rheumatics, then!” he said, opening a bottle. Placing his sharp nose over the mouth, he inhaled eagerly and then took a swig.

  The women piled wood into a range in the kitchen and prepared a meal, disguising the high taste of the mutton with some of the herbs that lay in jars in the larder. Their warmth came back to them. Something like the elderly brother of a party spirit revived between them, and when they had eaten, they settled down for sleep in a cheerful frame of mind.