Greybeard

He was — not unnaturally in the circumstances — a morose man. He was also a shrewd and enterprising man, as Greybeard saw, and ran an expanding business. His farm was at Osney, on the edge of Meadow Lake, and he employed several men on it. Flitch had been one of the first to take advantage of the changing natural conditions, and used the spreading reed beds as a supply of thatch materials. No brick or tile was made in the locality; but several of the better houses thereabouts were handsomely covered in a deep layer of Farmer Flitch’s thatch.

It was Greybeard’s job to row himself about the lake, harvesting armful after armful of the reeds. Since he used his own boat for this, Flitch, a fair dealer, presented him with a gigantic warm and waterproof nutria coat, which had belonged to a man who died in debt to him. Snug in the coat, Greybeard spent most of his daylight hours working slowly about the lake, feeling himself absorbed between the flat prospect of water and marsh and the mould of sky. It was a period of quiet punctuated by the startlements of water birds; sometimes he filled the dinghy with an abundance of reed, and could then spend half an hour fishing for his and Martha’s supper. On these occasions, he saw many different sorts of rodent swimming in and out the swampy places: not only water rats, but the larger animals, beaver, otter, and the coypu in whose skin he was clad. Once he saw a female coypu with young being suckled as they swam along.

He accepted that hard-worked time among the reeds; but he did not forget the lesson he had gained at Sparcot, that serenity came not from the external world, but from within. If he needed reminding, he had only to cut reeds in his favourite bay. From there he had a view of a large burial place, to which almost every day a grey knot of mourners came with a coffin. As Flitch drily remarked, when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, “Ah, they keep a-planting of ‘em, but there ain’t any more of ‘em growing up.”

So he would then go home to Martha, often with his beard coated with frost, back to the draughty room in Killcanon that she had succeeded in turning into a home. Both Charley and Pitt lived outside Christ Church, where they had secured cheaper and more tumbledown lodgings; Charley, whom they saw most days, had secured a job of sorts in a tannery; Pitt had returned to his old game of poaching and made little attempt to seek out their company; Greybeard saw him once along the south bank of the lake, a small and independent old figure.

On the darkest mornings, Greybeard was at the great college gate at six, waiting for it to be opened to go to work. One morning, when he had been working for Flitch for a month, a bell in the ruinous Tom Tower above his head began to toll.

It was New Year’s Day, which the inhabitants of Oxford held in festival. “I don’t expect any work off you today,” Flitch said, when Greybeard showed himself at the little dairy.

“Life’s short enough as well as being long enough — you’re a young man, you are, go and enjoy yourself.”

“What year is it, Joe? I’ve lost my calendar and forgotten where we are.”

“What’s it matter where we are? I barely keep the score of my own years, never mind the world’s. You go on home to your Martha.”

“I’m just thinking. Why wasn’t Christmas Day celebrated?”

Flitch straightened up from the sheep he was milking and regarded Greybeard with an amused look. “You mean why should it be celebrated? I can tell you’re no sort of a religious man, or you wouldn’t ask that. Christmas was invented to celebrate the birth of God’s son, wasn’t it? And the Students in Christ Church reckon as it aren’t in what you might call good taste to celebrate birth any more.” He moved his stool and pail to a nanny goat and added, “Course, if you were under tenancy to Balliol or Magdalen, now they do recognize Christmas still.”

“Are you a religious man, Joe?” Flitch pulled a face. “I leaves that sort of thing to women.” Greybeard tramped back through the miry streets to Martha. He saw by the look in her face that there was some excitement brewing. She explained that this was the day when the children of Balliol were displayed in ‘The Broad’, and she wanted to go and see them.

“We don’t want to see children, Martha. It’ll only upset you. Stay here with me, where it’s cosy. Let’s look up Tubby at the gate and have a drink with him. Or come and meet old Joe Flitch — you don’t have to see his womenfolk. Or -“

“Algy, I want to be taken to see the children. I can stand the shock. Besides, it’s a sort of social event, and they’re few and far enough between.” She tucked her hair inside her hood, eyeing him in a friendly but detached way. He shook his head and took her by the arm.

“You were always a stubborn woman, Martha.”