Greybeard

Martha lay on one of the beds with a damp towel across her forehead. Timberlane had given her a full account of the talk with Croucher. They remained in silence, the man sitting on his bed, resting his head heavily on his elbow, sinking slowly into a sort of lethargy.

“Well, we’ve more or less got what we wanted,” Martha said. “We’re working for Croucher with a vengeance. Is he to be trusted?”

“I don’t think that’s a question you can ask. He can be trusted as far as circumstances allow. He had a way of not seeming to take in all that I was saying — as if his mind was working all the time on another problem. Perhaps I got a glimpse of that problem when he visualized a world populated by monsters. Perhaps he felt he must have someone to rule over, even if it was only a — a collection of abnormalities.”

His wife’s thoughts returned to a point they had reached earlier in the day. “Everyone is obsessed with the Accident, even if they do not show it immediately. We’re all sick with guilt. Perhaps that’s Croucher’s trouble, and he has to live with a vision of himself ruling over a twilight world of cripples and deformed creatures.”

“His grip on the present seems stronger than that would imply.”

“How strong is anyone’s grip on the present?”

“It’s a pretty fleeting grip, as the cholera reminds us, but -”

“Our society, our biosphere, has been sick for forty years now. How can the individual remain healthy in it? We may all be madder than we know.” Not liking the note in her voice, Timberlane went over and sat on the edge of her bed, saying strongly,

“Anyhow, our immediate concern is with Croucher. It will suit the DOUCH scheme if we co-operate with him, so that’s what we will do. But I still can’t see why, at a time like this, he should want to encumber himself with me.”

“I can think of a reason. He doesn’t want you. He’s after the truck. He probably thinks there is evidence in it he could use.”

He squeezed her hand. “It could be that. He might think that as we have come from London, I have recorded information he could use. Indeed I may have done. London is his best-organized enemy at present. I wonder how long they will leave the truck where it is now?”

The DOUCH(E) truck was a valuable piece of equipment. When national governments broke down, as foreseen by the Washington foundation, the trucks became in themselves small DOUCH HQ’s. They contained full recording equipment, stores, and sundry supplies; they were fully armoured; an hour’s work would convert them into tracked vehicles; they ran on the recently perfected charge-battery system, and had an emergency drive that worked on petrol or any of the current petrol substitutes. This neat packet of technology, or Timberlane’s sample of it, had been left in its garage, below the flat in Iffley Road.

“I have the keys still,” Timberlane said, “and the vehicle is shuttered down. They haven’t asked me for the keys.”

Martha’s eyes were closed. She heard him, but she was too tired to reply. “We’re well placed here to observe contemporary history,” he said. “What DOUCH did not consider was that the vehicles might be an attraction to the history-makers. Whatever happens, we must not let the truck pass out of our control.”

After a minute of silence, he added, “The vehicle must be our first concern.” With the sudden energy of fury, she sat up on the bed. “Damn and blast the bloody vehicle!” she said.

“What about me?”

She slept fitfully throughout that stuffy night in the barracks. The silence was fractured by army boots stamping across a parade ground, by shouts, by the close vibrations of a mosquito or by the surge of a Windrush coming home. Her bed rumbled like an empty stomach when she turned in it.

Night, it seemed to her, was a padded pincushion — she almost had it in her hand, so closely did its warmth match the humidity of her palm — and into it, an infinite number of pins, went the sound effects of militant humanity. But each pin pierced her as well as the cushion. Towards morning, the noises grew less frequent, though the heat bowl of the square outside remained unemptied. Then from a different quarter came the faint ring, long continued, of an alarm clock. Distantly, a cock crowed. She heard a town clock — Magdalen? — chime five. Birds quarrelled over the dawn in their guttering. Army noises slowly took over again. The clang of buckets and iron utensils from the cookhouse proclaimed that preparations for breakfast had begun. She slept, fading out on a tide of despair.

Her sleep was deep and restorative. Timberlane was sitting grey and unshaven on the edge of his bed when she awoke. A guard came in with a breakfast tray, set it down, and departed. “How are you feeling, my love?”

“I’m better this morning, Algy. But what a noise there was in the night.”

“A lot of stretcher parties, I’m afraid,” he said, glancing out of the window. “We’re in one of the centres of infection here. I am prepared to give Croucher guarantees about my conduct if he’ll let us live away from here.”