Greybeard

”I only hope the cholera stops them! Quite honestly, Martha, I hope this plague wipes out most of the population. If it doesn’t stop the North, then Croucher had better be strong, because he’ll have to be the one to stop them. Have another gin. Here’s to Bonnie Prince Croucher! We’ll have to defend a line across the Cotswolds from Cheltenham to Buckingham. We should be building our defences tomorrow. It would keep Croucher’s troops busyand out of the centre of population where they can spread infection. He’s got too many soldiers; the men join his army rather than work in the car factories. They should be put on defence at once. I shall tell Croucher when I see him…”

She lurched away from the table and went to swill her face under the cold tap. Without drying her face, she rested by the open window, looking at the evening sun trapped in the shoddy suburban street.

“Croucher will be too busy defending himself from the hooligans in London to guard the north,” she said. She didn’t know what either of them was saying. The world was no longer the one into which she had been born; nor was it even the one in which — ah, but they had been young and innocent then! — they had married; for that ceremony was distant in space as well as time, in a Washington they idealized because they had then been idealists, where they had talked a lot of being faithful and being strong… No, they were all mad. Algy was right when he said they had committed a horrible outrage on themselves. She thought about the expression as she stared into the street, no longer listening as Timberlane embarked on one of the long speeches he now liked to make.

Not for the first time, she reflected on how people had grown fond of making rambling monologues; her father had fallen into the habit in recent years. In a vague way, she could analyse the reasons for it: universal doubt, universal guilt. In her own mind, the same monologue rarely stopped, though she guarded her speech. Everyone spoke endlessly to imaginary listeners. Perhaps they were all the same imaginary listener.

It was really the generation before hers that was most to blame, the people who were grown up when she was born, the millions who were adults during the 1960’s and 70’s. They had known all about war and destruction and nuclear power and radiation and death — it was all second nature to them. But they never renounced it. They were like savages who had to go through some fearful initiation rite. Yes, that was it, an initiation rite, and if they had come through it, then perhaps they might have grown up into brave and wise adults. But the ceremony had gone wrong. Too frenzied by far! Instead of a mere circumcision, the whole organ had been lopped off. Though they wept and repented, the outrage had been committed; all they could do was hop about with their deformity, alternately boasting about and bemoaning it.

Through her misery, peering between the seams of her headache, she saw a Windrush with Croucher’s yellow X on its sides swing round the corner and prowl down the street. Windrushes were the locally manufactured variety of hovercraft, a family-sized model now largely appropriated by the military. A man in uniform craned his neck out of the blister, staring at house numbers as he glided down the street. When it drew level with the Timberlane flat, the machine stopped and lowered itself to the ground in a dying roar of engines.

Frightened, Martha summoned Timberlane over to the window. There were two men in the vehicle, both wearing the yellow X on their tunics. One climbed out and walked across the street.

“We’ve nothing to fear,” Timberlane said. He felt in his pocket for the little 7.7 mm. automatic with which DOUCH(E) had armed him. “Lock yourself in the kitchen, love, just in case there’s trouble. Keep quiet.”

“What do they want, do you think?” There was a heavy knocking on the door. “Here, take the gin bottle,” he said, giving her a taut grin. The bottle passed between them, all there was time to exchange. He patted her behind as he pushed her into the kitchen. The knocking was repeated before he could get down to the door.

A coporal was standing there; his mate leaned from the blister of the Windrush, half-whistling and rubbing his lower lip on the protruding snout of his rifle.

”Timberlane? Algernon Timberlane? You’re wanted up at the barracks.” The corporal was an undersized man with a sharp jaw and patches of dark skin under his eyes. He would be only in his early fifties — youngish for these days. His uniform was clean and pressed, and he kept one hand near the revolver at his belt.

“Who wants me? I was just going to have my supper.”

“Commander Croucher wants you, if you’re Timberlane. Better hop in the Windrush with us.” The corporal had a big nose, which he rubbed now in a furtive fashion as he summed up Timberlane. “I have an appointment with the Commander tomorrow.”