Greybeard

Greybeard made as if to add something, then changed his mind. He did not believe in explaining. To Towin and Becky, this journey was just another hardship; to him, it was an end in itself. The hardship of it was a pleasure. Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as much shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames; objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterwards, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: Cogito ergo sum. For him that had not been true; his truth had been, Sentio ergo sum. I feel so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than non-life. He could never explain that to anyone; he did not have to explain it to Martha; she knew; she felt as he did in that respect.

Distantly he heard music. He looked about him with a tingle of unease, recalling the tales Pitt and others told of gnomes and little people, for this was a little music. But he realized it came to him over a long distance. Was it — he had almost forgotten the name of the instrument — an accordion?

He went thoughtfully back to the barn, and asked Norsgrey about it. The old man, sprawling with his back to the reindeer’s flank, looked up keenly through his orange hair.

“That would be Swifford Fair. I just come from there, done a bit of trading. That’s where I got my hens.” As ever, it was hard to make out what he was saying.

“How far’s Swifford from here?”

“Road will take you quicker than the river. A mile as the crow flies. Two miles by road. Five by your river. I’ll buy your boat from you, give you a good price.” They did not agree to that, but they gave the old man some of their food. The sheep they had killed ate well, cut up into a stew and flavoured with some herbs which Norsgrey supplied from his little cart. When they ate meat, they took it in the form of stews, for stews were kindest to old teeth and tender gums.

”Why doesn’t your wife come and eat with us?” Towin asked. “Is she fussy about strangers or something?”

“She’s asleep like I told you behind that blue curtain. You leave her alone — she’s done you no harm.” The blue curtain was stretched across one corner of the barn, from the cart to a nail on the wall. The barn was now uncomfortably full, for they brought the sheep in with them at dusk. They made uneasy bedfellows with the hens and the old reindeer. The glow of their lamps hardly reached up to the rafters. Those rafters had ceased to be living timber two and a half centuries before. Other life now took refuge in them: grubs, beetles, larvae, spiders, chrysalises slung to the beams with silken threads, fleas and their pupae in swallows’ nests, awaiting their owner’s return in the next unfailing spring. For these simple creatures, many generations had passed since man contrived his own extinction.

“Here, how old was you reckoning I was?” Norsgrey asked, thrusting his colourful countenance into Martha’s face.

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Martha said sweetly. “You was thinking about seventy, wasn’t you?”

“I really was not thinking. I prefer not to think about age; it is one of my least favourite subjects.”

“Well, think about mine, then. An early seventy you’d say, wouldn’t you?”

“Possibly.” Norsgrey let out a shriek of triumph, and then looked apprehensively towards the blue curtain. “Well, let me tell you that you’d be wrong, Mrs. Lady — ah, oh dear, yes, very wrong. Shall I tell you how old I am? Shall I? You won’t believe me?”

“Go on, how old are you?” Towin asked, growing interested. “Eighty-five, I’d say you were. I bet you’re older than me, and I was born in 1945, the year they dropped that first atomic bomb. I bet you were born before 1945, mate.”

“They don’t have years with numbers attached any more,” Norsgrey said with immense scorn, and turned back to Martha. “You won’t believe this, Mrs. Lady, but I’m close on two hundred years old, very close indeed. In fact you might say that it was my two hundredth birthday next week.”

Martha raised an ironical eyebrow. She said, “You look well for your age.”

“You’re never two hundred, no more than I am,” Towin said scornfully. “That I am. I’m two hundred, and what’s more I shall still be be knocking around the old world when all you buggers are dead and buried.” Towin leant forward and kicked the old man’s boot angrily. Norsgrey brought up a stick and whacked

Towin smartly over the shin. Yelping, Towin heaved himself up on his knees and brought his cudgel down at the old man’s flaming cranium. Charley stopped the blow in mid-swing.

“Give over,” he said sternly. “Towin, leave the poor old chap his delusions.”