Greybeard

“Man’s the thing that’s stopped, not death. Everything else but us — the whole bag of tricks — goes on unabated. Now let’s get to sleep, sweet. I’m tired after the rowing.” After a moment, she said, “I suppose it’s not having any children. I don’t mean just not having them myself, but not seeing any around me. It makes a life terribly bare… and terribly long.” Greybeard sat up angrily. “For God’s sake, woman, shut up about not having kids. I know we can’t have kids — we’re too old for it anyhow, by now — it’s the cardinal fact of my life as much as it is yours, but you don’t have to go on about it!”

“I don’t go on about it, Algy! I doubt if I mention it once a year.”

“You do mention it once a year. It’s always about this time, late summer, when the wheat’s ripening. I wait for you to say something.” In a moment he had repented his anger, and took Martha in his arms. “I didn’t mean to snap,” he said. “Sometimes I’m scared at my own thoughts. I wonder if perhaps the dearth of children hasn’t caused a madness we don’t identify because it’s unclassified. Is it possible to be sane in a world where only your own senility greets you on every side?”

“Darling, you’re young yet, young and strong. We still have many years together.”

“No, but you see what I mean: you should be able to renew your youth in the generation that follows yours. In your thirties, your sons keep you nimble and laughing. In your forties, they keep you worried and attached to the world. In your fifties, you may have grandchildren to play with. You can live till your grandchildren come along to see your creaking smiles and your card tricks… They replenish you. If every- one’s cut off from all that — who’s to wonder if time goes wrong, or if poor old Charley gets some crazy idea about seeing gnomes?”

”Perhaps a woman looks at it differently. What I regret most is the reservoir of something in me — love, I suppose — that I sense has never found its object.”

He stroked her hair tenderly and answered, “You’re the most loving person who has ever lived. Now do you mind if I go to sleep?”

But it was Martha who slept. Greybeard lay there for a while, listening to the distant sounds of night-feeding birds. Restlessness took him. He pulled the end of his beard gently from under Martha’s shoulder, slipped on his shoes, unlatched the tent flap, and climbed stiffly outside. His back was not so flexible these days.

Because of its impenetrability, the night seemed more stifling than it was. He could not explain his unease. He seemed to hear the sound of an engine — he could only visualize the steamer that his mother had taken him on from Westminster Pier in his early childhood, before his father had died. But that was im- possible. He indulged himself by thinking about the past and about his mother. It was wonderful how vivid some of the memories seemed. He wondered if his mother’s life — she must have been born — so long ago! — in the nineteen-forties — had not been more thoroughly ruined by the Accident than was his own. He could hardly recall the days before the Accident happened, except for a few snapshots like that cruise from Westminster Pier, so that he existed only within the context of the Accident and its aftermath, and was adapted to it. But how could a woman adapt? Rather owlishly, he thought, as if it were a discovery, women are different.

The steamer’s engine was heard again, as though it sailed to him across time and probability. The sound grew. He went and woke Charley, and they stood together down by the water’s edge, listening. “It’s some sort of steamer right enough,” Charley said. “After all, why not? There must still be supplies of coal lying about here and there.” The sound faded. They stood about, thinking, waiting, peering at blankness. Nothing else happened.

Charley shrugged and went back to bed. After a little while, Greybeard climbed back into his blankets too. “What’s the matter, Algy?” Martha asked, wakening. “There was a steamer somewhere out on the pond. Charley heard it too.”

“We may see it in the morning.”

“It sounded like the ones mother used to take me on. Standing there looking out into nothing, I thought how I’ve wasted my life, Martha. I’ve had no faith -”

“Sweetie, I don’t think this is a good time for an inquest on your life. Daylight in say twenty years time would be more suitable.”

“No, Martha, listen, I know I’m an imaginative and an introspective sort of chap, but -“ Her small laugh stopped him. She sat up in bed, yawned, and said, “You are one of the least introspective men I ever knew, and I have always rejoiced that your imagination is so much more prosaic than mine. May you always have such illusions about yourself — it’s a sign of youth.”