Greybeard

by Brian Wilson Aldiss

  “Just as you’ve taken it upon yourself to ban Christmas?”

  The stringy old countenance worked into something like a smile. He winked at Martha. “I ban what I see fit — I, and Gavin, and Vivian here. We exercise our wisdom, you see, for the common good. We have banned many things more important than Christmas, let me tell you.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Dean for one,” Student Vivian said, displaying false teeth in a rare grin.

  “You ought to have a look in the cathedral,” Morton said. “We have converted it into a museum, where we keep a lot of banned things. How about it, gentlemen, shall we take a turn round our museum, since the day is fine?”

  The other two Students, Gavin and Vivian, assenting, the little party made their way across to the east side of the market quad, where the cathedral formed a part of the college.

  “Wireless — the radio, don’t you know — is one of the things we do not like in our quiet little gerontocracy,” Morton said. “It could not profit us, and might upset us, to have news of the outside world. Who wishes to learn the death rate in Paris, or the extent of famine in New York? Or even the state of the weather in Ireland?”

  “You have a wireless station here, then?” Greybeard asked.

  “Well, we have a truck that broadcasts—” he broke off, fiddling with a large key in the cathedral door.

  Pushing together, he and Vivian got the door open. They entered together into the gloom of the cathedral. There, standing close to the door, was their DOUCH(E) truck.

  “This truck belongs to me!” Greybeard exclaimed, running forward, and pressing his gloved hands over the bonnet. He and Martha stared at it in a sort of amazed ecstasy.

  “Forgive me, but it is not yours,” Morton said. “It is a possession of the Students of this House.”

  “They’ve done no damage to it,” Martha said, her cheeks flushed, as Greybeard opened the driver’s door and looked in. “Oh, Algy, doesn’t this take you back! I never thought to see it again! How did it get here?”

  “Looks as if some of the tapes on which we recorded have gone. But the film’s all here, filed as we left it! Remember how we hurtled across Littlemore Bridge in this bus? We must have been mad in those days. What a world ago it all is! Jeff Pitt will be interested.” He turned to Norman Morton and the other Students. “Gentlemen, this truck was issued to me as a solemn obligation by a group whose motives would immediately win your sympathy — a study group. I was forced to exchange it for food at a time when we and the rest of Sparcot were starving. I must ask you to be good enough to return it to me for my further use.”

  The Students raised eyebrows and exchanged looks. “Let us go through to my rooms,” Morton said. “There perhaps we can discuss the matter, and draw up agreements if need be. You understand there is no question of your receiving the truck as a gift?”

  “Quite so. I am asking for its return as my right, Mr. Morton.”

  Martha squeezed Greybeard’s arm as they made their way out of the cathedral and locked the door. “Try to be tactful, darling,” she whispered.

  As they walked along, Gavin said, “You are newcomers here, but you will have observed the guard we keep posted along the walls. The guard is perhaps hardly necessary; certainly it is hardly efficient. But those old men are pensioners; they come here when there is nowhere else for them to go, and we are bound in all charity to take them in. We make them earn their keep by doing guard duty. We are not a charity, you understand; our coffers would not allow us to be; whatever our hearts said. Everyone, Mr. Greybeard, everyone would come here and live at our expense if we let them. No man wishes to labour once he is past his half-century, especially if he has no future generations who may profit by his labours.”

  “Precisely so, Gavin,” Vivian agreed, tapping his stick along the worn flags. “We have to make this place pay its way in a manner quite foreign to our predecessors and our founders. Cardinal Wolsey would have died the death… that is why we run the place as a mixture of tavern, auction room, cattle market, and bawdy house. One cannot escape the cash nexus.”

  “I get the message,” Greybeard said, as they turned into Morton’s chambers, where the same sharp-nosed fellow they had met on their first day in the college hurriedly put a stopper back in one of his master’s bottles and disappeared into the adjoining rooms. “You expect me to pay for what is mine.”

  “Not necessarily,” Morton said, bending before a bright fire and stretching out thin hands towards it. “We could, if the point were conceded that it was your vehicle, charge you a parking fee… A garaging fee, don’t you know. Let me see — the Bursar would have a record somewhere, but we must have kept the vehicle in our luxurious ecclesiastical garage for seven or eight years now… Say a modest fee of three shillings per diem, er… Vivian, you are the mathematician…”

  “My head isn’t what it was.”

  “As we are aware…”

  “It would be a sum of approximately four hundred pounds.”

  “That’s absurd!” Greybeard protested. “I could not possibly raise that amount, or anything like it. How did you acquire the vehicle, I would like to know.”

  “Your labouring pursuits are telling on you somewhat, Mr. Greybeard,” Morton said. “We raise glasses but never voices in this room. Will you drink?”

  Martha stepped forward. “Mr. Morton, we would be delighted to drink.” She placed a coin on the table. “There is payment for it.” Morton’s lined face straightened and achieved such a considerable length that his chin was lost inside his coat.

  “Madam, a woman’s presence does not automatically make of this room a tavern. Kindly pocket money you are going to need.”

  He poked his tongue round his upper gum, smiled sourly, raised his glass, and said, in a more reasonable voice than he had used before, “Mr. Greybeard, it was in this manner that the vehicle in which you are so interested came into our possession. It was driven here by an aged hawker. As friend Gavin will remember, this hawker boasted one eye and multitudinous lice. He thought he was dying. So did we. We had him taken in, and looked after him. He lingered through the winter — which was something a good many stronger men failed to do — and recovered after a fashion in the spring. He had a species of palsy and was unfit even for guard duty. To pay for his keep, he handed over his truck. Since it was worthless to us, he got good value for his money. He died after a drinking bout some months ago, cursing — as I heard the story — his benefactors.”

  Moodily, Greybeard swigged his wine. “If the truck is valueless to you, why not simply give it to me?”

  “Because it is one of our assets, we hope an asset about to be realized. Suppose the garaging dues to be roughly as Vivian has estimated, four hundred pounds; we would let you take it away for two hundred pounds. How’s that?”

  “But I’m broke! It would take me… you know how little I earn with Joe Flitch… It would take me four years to put that amount by.”

  “We could allow you reduced garage rates for the period, could we not, Gavin?”

  “If the Bursar were agreeable we might, yes.”

  “Precisely. Say a shilling a day for four years… Vivian?”

  “My head is not what it was. An additional seventy-five pounds, do I make it?”

  Greybeard broke into an account of DOUCH(E)’s activities. He explained how often he had reproached himself for letting the truck go to the hawker, although the exchange had saved half Sparcot from starving. The Students remained unmoved; Vivian, in fact, pointed out that since the vehicle was so valuable, and since he had not clearly established his ownership, they really ought to sell it to him for a thousand pounds. So the discussion closed, with the college men firm in their demand for money.

  Next day, Greybeard went to see the venerable Bursar, and signed an agreement to pay him so much every week, until the garage fee was settled.

  He sat in their room that night in a gloomy mood. Neither Martha nor Charley, who had come round with Isaac to see them
, could raise his spirits.

  “If everything goes well, it will take us all but five years to clear the debt,” he said. “Still, I do feel honour bound to clear it. You see how I feel, don’t you, Martha? I took on the DOUCH job for life, and I’m going to honour my obligations — when a man has nothing, what else can he do? Besides, when the truck is ours again, we can get the radio working and we may be able to raise other trucks. We can learn what has been happening all over the world. I care about what’s going on, if the old fools who rule this place don’t. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get in touch with old Jack Pilbeam in Washington?”

  “If you really feel that way, Algy,” Martha said, “I’m sure five years will soon go.”

  He looked her in the eye. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said.

  * * *

  The days yielded one to another. The months went by. Winter gave way to spring, and spring to summer. The summer gave way to another winter, and that winter to a second summer. The Earth renewed itself; only men grew older and were not replenished. The trees grew taller, the rookeries noisier, the graveyards fuller, the streets more silent. Greybeard embarked upon the Meadow Lake in most weathers, drawing the swathes of green reed into his boat, taking each day as it came, not fretting that a time would soon come when people would no longer have the energy to thatch or want thatch.

  Martha worked on among the animals, helping Norman Morton’s assistant, the gnarled and arthritic Thorne. The work was interesting. Most mammals were now bringing forth normal young, though the cows, of which they possessed only a small herd, still threw miscarriages as often as not. As healthy beasts were reared, they were auctioned in the quad market alive, or slaughtered and sold as meat.

  To Martha it seemed that a kind of eclipse overtook Greybeard’s spirit. When he came back from Joe Flitch’s in the evening, he rarely had much to say, though he listened with interest to her store of gossip about the college, acquired through Thorne. They saw less of Charley Samuels, and very little of Jeff Pitt. At the same time, they were slow to make new friends. Their putative friendship with Morton and the other Students withered directly the financial deal was struck.

  Martha let this altered situation make no difference to her relationship with her husband. They had known each other too long, and through too many stresses. To strengthen her purpose, she thought of their love as the lake on which Algy laboured day in, day out; the surface mirrored every change of weather, but below was a deep undisturbed place. Because of this, she let the days run away and kept her heart open.

  She returned to their rooms — they had moved to better rooms on the first floor in Peck — one golden summer evening, to find her husband there before her. He had washed his hands and freshly combed his beard.

  They kissed each other. “Joe Flitch is having a row with his wife. He sent me home early so that he could get on with it in peace, so he said. And there’s another reason why I’m back — it’s my birthday.”

  “Oh, darling, and I’ve forgotten! I hardly ever think of the date — just the day of the week.”

  “It’s June the seventh, and I am fifty-six, and you look as beautiful as ever.”

  “And you’re the youngest man in the world!”

  “Still? And still the handsomest?”

  “Mmm, yes, though that’s a very subjective judgement. How shall we celebrate? Are you going to take me to bed?”

  “For a change, I’m not. I thought you’d like a little sail in the dinghy, as the evening’s fine.”

  “Darling, haven’t you had enough of that dinghy, bless you? Yes, I’d love to have a sail, if you want to.”

  He stroked her hair and looked down at her dear lined face. Then he opened his left hand and showed her the bag of money there. She stared questioningly at him. “Where did you get it, Algy?”

  “Martha, I’ve done my last day’s reed-cutting. I’ve been mad this last year and a half, just slaving my life away. And what for? To earn enough money to buy that bloody obsolete truck stuck in the cathedral.” His voice broke. “I’ve expected so much of you… I’m sorry, Martha, I don’t know why I did it — or why you didn’t hit me for it, but now I’ve forgotten the crazy idea — I’ve withdrawn my money from the Bursar, the best part of two year’s savings. We’re free to go, to leave this dump altogether!”

  “Oh, Algy, you… Algy, I’ve been happy here. You know I’ve been happy — we’ve been happy, we’ve been quiet together. This is home.”

  “Well, now we’re going to move on. We’re still young, aren’t we, Martha? Tell me we’re still young! Let’s not rot here. Let’s complete our old plan and sail down the river and go on until we get to its mouth and the clean sea. You would like to, wouldn’t you? You can, can’t you?”

  She looked beyond him, through the dazzling light at the window to the roofs of the stables visible beyond, and the blue evening sky above the roofs. At last in a grave voice she said, “This is the dream in your heart, Algy, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, my love, you know it is, and you will like it too. This place is like — oh, some sort of a materialist trap. There will be other communities by the sea which we can join. It will be all different there… Don’t weep, Martha, don’t weep, my creature!”

  It was almost dusk before their possessions were packed and they slipped through the tall college gateway for the last time, heading back down the hill towards the boat and the river and the unknown.

  VI. London

  To her surprise, Martha found her limbs tremble with delight in the freedom of being once more upon the river. She sat in the dinghy clutching her knees, and smiled and smiled to see Greybeard smiling. His decision to move on was not so spontaneous as he represented it. Their boat was well provisioned and fitted with a better sail than previously. With deep pleasure, Martha found that Charley Samuels was coming along too; he had aged noticeably during their time in Oxford; his cheeks were shrunken and as pale as straw; Isaac the fox had died a couple of months before, but Charley was as much a dependable man as ever. They did not see Jeff Pitt to say good-bye to; he had vanished into the watery mazes of the lake a week before, and nobody had seen him since; whether he had died there, or gone off to seek new trapping grounds, remained a mystery.

  For Greybeard, to have river water flowing beneath his keel again was a liberation. He whistled as they sailed downstream, passing close to the spot where, back in Croucher’s day, Martha and he had shared a flat and bickered and worried and been taken to Cowley barracks. His mood was entirely different now, so much that he had difficulty in remembering the person he then was. Much nearer to his heart — ah, and clearer in the memory! — was the little boy he had been, delighting in trips on the sunny Thames, in those months of 1982 when he was recovering from the effects of radiation illness.

  As they sailed south, the new freedom took him back to that old freedom of childhood. But it was only memory that represented that time as freedom. The child he had been was less free than the sunburnt man with bald head and grey beard who sat by his wife in his boat. The child was a prisoner, a prisoner of his weakness and lack of knowledge, of his parents’ whims, of the monstrous fate unleashed so recently on the world that the world had yet to grasp its full power. The child was a pawn.

  Moreover, the child had a long road of sorrow, perplexity, and struggle before him. Why then could the man look back down the perspective of forty-nine years and regard that little boy boxed in by events with an emotion more like envy than compassion?

  * * *

  As the car stopped, Jock Bear, the teddy bear in tartan pyjamas, rolled off the rear window ledge and on to the car seat. Algy picked him up and put him back.

  “Jock must be sick too, Mummy. He’s rolling about like anything back here.”

  “Perhaps he’ll feel better when we’ve looked at the house,” Patricia Timberlane said. She raised what was left of her eyebrows at her friend Venice, who was sitting in the front with her. “I know I shall,” she said. She climb
ed out and opened the rear door, helping her son to the ground. He was tall for a boy of seven, but the sickness had left him thin and lifeless. His cheeks were sallow, his skin rough. With nursing him and being ill herself, she felt as bad as he looked. But she smiled encouragingly, and said, “I suppose Jock wouldn’t like to look round the new house?”

  “I just told you, Mum, he’s sick. Gosh, when you’re sick, you don’t want to do a thing except die, like the way Frank did. So if it’s all the same to you, he’ll hang around in the car.”

  “As you wish.” It still hurt to be reminded of the death of her older boy Frank after many months of the sickness.

  Venice came to her rescue. “Wouldn’t you like to play outside, Algy, while Mummy and I look over the house? There’s an exciting-looking garden here. Only don’t fall in the Thames, or you’ll get awfully wet.”

  Mayburn was a quiet house, set on the river not too far from the suburb of London where the Timberlanes lived. It had stood empty for six weeks, and the estate agent who gave Patricia the keys assured her that now was the time to buy, since the bottom had fallen out of the property market. This was her second visit to the property; on the first occasion, she had come with her husband, but this time she wanted someone slightly more receptive to see it. Arthur was all very well, but he had these money troubles.

  The attraction of the house was that it was small, yet had a fairly long strip of ground behind, which led down to the river and a little landing stage. The place would suit them both; Arthur was a keen gardener, she loved the river. It had been so lovely, earlier in the summer, when both she and Algy were feeling a little better, to bundle up in warm clothes and sail on one of the pleasure steamers from Westminster Pier, up or down the river, watching the city slide past. On the river, the feebleness of convalescence had taken on almost a spiritual quality.

  She unlocked the front door and moved in, with Venice behind her. Algy trotted off round the back of the house.