Greybeard

by Brian Wilson Aldiss

  A log of wood still smouldered in the grate; but in the hall and on the stairs, that 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 round 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.” The 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 spoilt.

  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 river bank, 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 wrist watch before getting down to work. They manoeuvred 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 — over-used, grimy and over-used. Here, it could never be like that.” She indicated the growth drooping 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, the 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 Gipsy 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 in to 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 window-pane, endowing it with one lustreless eye. When nothing moved but a scatter of rooks winging overhead, the men heaved themselves up on to 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 near by, stood a car of dejected appearance. It had long since slumped into a posture of defeat as its tyres sagged on to 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?” Greyboard called. No answer came.

  As Charley had guessed, it was a public house. The old inn sign lay rotting near by, 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 round 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 leant 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 window-pane.

  “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 smelt villainously, though it burnt 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.

  Martha and Greybeard bedded down in a small parlour on the ground floor. Since it was evident by many signs that the dead couple had not lived in a state of siege, Greybeard saw no reason for them to keep a guard; under Mole’s regime they had grown
obsessed with such precautions. After all, as every year went by, man should have less to fear from his fellow men, and this house seemed to be far from any other settlement…

  All the same, he was not easy. He had said nothing to the others, but before leaving the boat he had felt in the lockers under the decking to get the two bayonets he had stored there; he wished to arm Towin and Charley with them; but the bayonets were missing, together with other things he had stowed there. The loss meant but one thing: somebody else had known of the whereabouts of his boat.

  When Martha was asleep, he rose. The mutton-fat light still burned, though he had shielded its glow from the window. He stood, letting his mind become like a landscape into which strange thoughts could wander. He felt the frost gathering outside the house, and the silence, and turned away to close his mind again. The light stood on an old chest of drawers. He opened one of the drawers at random and looked in. It contained family trinkets, a broken clock, some pencil stubs, an ink bottle empty of ink. With a feeling of wrong-doing, he pocketed the two longest bits of pencil and opened the neighbouring drawer. Two photograph albums of an old-fashioned kind lay there. On top of them was the framed picture of a child.

  The child was a boy of about six, a cheerful boy whose smile showed a gap in his teeth. He was holding a model railway engine and wore long tartan trousers. The print had faded somewhat. Probably it was a boyhood photograph of the man now stacked carelessly out in the sheep shed.

  Sudden tears stood in Greybeard’s eyes. Childhood itself lay in the rotting drawers of the world, a memory that could not stand permanently against time. Since that awful — accident, crime, disaster — in the last century, there were no more babies born. There were no more children, no more boys like this. Nor, by now, were there any more adolescents, no young men, no young women with their proud style, not even the middle-aged were left now. Of the seven ages of man, little but the last remained.