Greybeard (26 page)

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 Fellows 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.”

“Where you are concerned, I’m always as weak as water, and you know it.”

Along the path known as The Corn, presumably from a ploughed-up strip of wheatland along one side of it, many people were flocking. Their appearance was as grey and seamed as that of the ruined buildings below which they shuffled; they sucked their gums against the cold and did not chatter much. They gave way falteringly to a cart pulled by reindeer. As the cart creaked level with Martha and Greybeard, someone called her name.

Norman Morton, with a scholastic gown draped over a thick array of furs, rode in the cart, accompanied by some of the other Fellows, including the two Greybeard had spoken with already, the tallowy Gavin, the silent Vivian. He made the driver stop the cart, and invited the two pedestrians to climb up. They stepped up on the wheel hubs and were helped in.

“Are you surprised to find me participating in the common pleasure?” Morton asked. “I take as much interest in Balliol’s children as I do in my own animals. They make a pretty display as pets and reflect a little much-needed popularity onto the Master. What will happen to them when they are grown-up, as they will be in a few years, is a matter beyond the power of the Master to decide.”

The cart trundled to a convenient position before the battered fortress of Balliol, with its graceless Victorian façade. The ultimate effectiveness of Colonel Appleyard’s mortar fire was apparent. The tower had been reduced to a stump, and two large sections of the façade were patched rather clumsily with new stone. A sort of scaffold had been erected outside the main gate and the college flag hung over it.

The crowd here was as large as those Martha and Greybeard had seen in earlier years. Although the atmosphere was more solemn than gay, hawkers moved among the numbers assembled, selling scarves and cheap jewellery and hats made of swans’ feathers and hot dogs and pamphlets. Morton pointed to one man who bore a tray full of broadsheets and books.

“You see — Oxford continues to be the home of printing, right to the bitter end. There is much to be said for tradition, don’t you know. Let’s see what the rogue has to offer, eh?”

The rogue was a husky, broken-mouthed man with a notice pinned to his coat saying “Bookseller to the University Press,” but most of his wares were intended, as Morton’s friend Gavin remarked, turning over an ill-printed edition of a thriller, for the rabble.

Martha bought a four-page pamphlet produced for the occasion, and headed, HAPPY NEW YEAR OXFORD 2030!! She turned it over and handed it to Greybeard.

“Poetry seems to have come back into its own. Though this is mainly nursery-pornographic. Does it remind you of anything?”

He read the first verse. The mixture of childishness and smut did seem familiar.

“Little man Blue,

Come rouse up your horn,

The babies all bellow,

They aren’t getting born.”

“America...” he said. The names of everything had deserted him over almost thirty years. Then he smiled at her. “Our best man — I can see him so clearly — what was it he called this sort of stuff? ‘Slouch’! By golly, how it takes you back!” He wrapped his arm around her.

“Jack Pilbeam,” she said. They both laughed, surprised by pleasure, and said simultaneously, “My memory is getting so bad...”

Momentarily, both of them escaped from the present and the festering frames and rotten breath of the crowd about them.

They were back when the world was cleaner, in that heady Washington they had known.

One of Bill Dyson’s wedding presents to them was a permit for them to travel throughout the States. They took part of their honeymoon in Niagara, rejoicing in the hackneyed choice, pretending they were American, listening to the mighty fall of waters.

While they were there they heard the news. Martha’s kidnapper was found and arrested. He proved to be Dusty Dykes. The news of the arrest made headlines everywhere; but next day there was a mighty factory fire in Detroit to fill the front pages.

That world of news and event was buried. Even in their memories it lived only flickeringly, for they formed part of the general disintegration. Greybeard closed his eyes and could not look at Martha.

The parade began. Various dignitaries, flanked by guards, marched from the gates of Balliol. Some mounted the scaffold, some guarded the way. The Master appeared, old and frail, his face a dead white against his black gown and hat. He was helped up the steps. He made a speech as brief as it was inaudible, subsiding into a fit of coughing, after which the children emerged from the college.

The girl appeared first, walking pertly and looking about her as she went. At the cheer that rose from the crowd, her face lit; she climbed the platform and waved. She was completely hairless, the structure of her skull knobbly through her pale skin. One of her ears, as Greybeard had been warned, was swollen until it was no more than a confused mess of flesh. When she turned so that it was towards the spectators, she resembled a goblin.

The crowd was delighted by the sight of youth. Many people clapped.

The boys appeared next. The one with the withered arm looked unwell; his face was pinched and bluish; he stood there apathetically, waving but not smiling. He was perhaps thirteen. The other boy was older and healthier. His eye as he regarded the crowd was calculating; Greybeard watched him with sympathy, knowing how untrustworthy a crowd is. Perhaps the boy felt that those who cheered so easily today might by next year be after his blood, if the wind but changed direction. So he waved and smiled, and never smiled with his eyes.

That was all. The children went in amid cries from the crowd, among which were many wet eyes. Several old women wept openly, and hawkers were doing a beneficial business in handkerchiefs.

“Extremely affecting,” said Morton harshly.

He spoke to the driver of their cart, and they began to move off, manoeuvering with difficulty through the crowds. It was obvious that many of the spectators would hang about yet awhile, enjoying each other’s company.

“There you have it,” Gavin said, pulling a handkerchief from a pocket to mop his sebaceous brow. “So much for the miracle, the sign that under certain conditions the human race might renew itself again. But it is less easy for humans to build up from scratch than it is for most of our mammals. You only need a pair of Morton’s stoats or coypus or rabbits, and in five years, given moderate luck, you have a thriving little horde of them, eh, Morton? Human beings need a century to reach anything like similar numbers. And then they need more than moderate luck. Rodents and lesser animals do not kill each other as does Homo sapiens. Ask yourself how long it is before that girl we’ve seen comes of rapable age, or the older boy, out after a bit of fun, gets set on by a group of coffin-bearers and beaten to death with stinking crutches.”

“I suppose the purpose of this yearly exhibition is to make people familiar with the children, so that they are less likely to be harmed?” Martha said.

“The psychological effect of such actions is frequently the very opposite of that intended,” Gavin said severely.

After that, they rode silently down The Corn and St Aldates and in through the tall gate of Christ Church. As they dismounted, Greybeard said, “Would you ban the demonstration outside Balliol, Fellow Morton, if it were within your power?”

The old man looked at him slyly.

“I’d ban human nature if I could. We’re a bad lot, don’t you know.”

“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,” Fellow 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 around our museum, since the day is fine?”

The other two Fellows assented, and 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 Fellows 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 Fellows. “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 Fellows 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.”