Greybeard

“I believe you no more than I believed the parson,” Greybeard said, still slightly breathless. “How old are you, boy? Sixteen, twenty, thirty? I forget the young ages.”

A second shadow flapped across the roof, and a shabby grotesque with a plantation of warts on his chin and forehead hobbled into view. He was bent so double that he could scarcely peer up at Greybeard through his tangled eyebrows.

“You want the treatment, sir? You want to become lovely and beautiful again like this fine young attractive fellow?”

“You’re not a very good advertisement for your own preparation, are you?” Greybeard said, turning again to regard the youth. He stepped forward to peer at him more closely. As the stunning first effects wore off, he saw the youth was in fact a flabby and poor specimen with a pasty countenance.

“Doctor Jingadangelow developed his wonderful treatments too late to help me, sir,” said the grotesque. “I run up against him too late in life, you might say, but he could help you, as he did our young friend here. Our young friend is actually one hundred and ninety-five years old, sir, though you’d never think it to see him. Why, bless him, he’s in the full bloom of youth, as you could be.”

“I never felt better in my life,” the youth said, in his curious high voice. “I’m in the full bloom of youth.” Suddenly Greybeard grasped his arm and swung him so that the light from the crone’s lantern gleamed direct on to the boy’s face. The boy cried out in sudden hurt. The innocence in his eyes was revealed as vacancy. Thick powder on his face furrowed up into tracks of pain, he opened his mouth and exposed black fangs behind a frontal layer of white paint. Slipping away, he kicked Greybeard fiercely on the shin, cursing as he did so.

“You rogue, you filthy little swindler, you’re ninety years old — you’ve been castrated!” Greybeard swung angrily on the ancient man. “You’ve no right to do such a thing!”

“Why not? He’s my son.” He shrank back with raised arm in front of his face. He showed his twisted and pocked jaw, champing with fury. The “boy” started to scream. As Greybeard turned, he shrieked, “Don’t touch my Dad! Bunny and I thought of the idea. I’m only earning an honest living. Do you think I want to spend my days haggard and starved like you? Help, help, murderer! Thieves! Fire! Help, friends, help!”

“Shut your—” Greybeard got no further. The crone moved, leaping from behind him. She swung her lantern down across the side of his face. As he twisted round, the old man brought a thick stick down on his neck, and he tumbled towards the crumbling concrete floor.

Again for him a situation that could not happen. There were young women sitting at tables, scantily clad, entertaining antique men with physiognomies like ill-furled sails. Their lips were red, their cheeks pink, their eyes dark and lustrous. The girl nearest Greybeard wore stockings of a wide mesh net that climbed up to the noble eminence of her crutch; here they met red satin knickers, frilled at the edges, as though to conceal a richer rose among their petals, and matching in hue the brief tunic, set off with inviting brass buttons, which partially hid a bosom of such splendour that it made its possessor’s chin appear undershot.

Between this spectacle and Greybeard was a number of legs, one pair of which he identified as Martha’s. The act of recognition made him realize that this was far from being a dream and he near to being unconscious. He groaned, and Martha’s tender face came down to his level; she put a worn hand to his face and kissed him.

“My poor old sweetheart, you’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Martha… Where are we?”

“They were mobbing you for laying hands on that eunuch at the garage. Charley heard them and fetched

Pitt and me. We came as soon as we could. We’re going to stay here for the night, and you’ll be all right by morning.”

Prompted by this remark, he recognized two of the other pairs of legs now; both sprouted mud and marsh grass; one pair was Charley’s, one Jeff Pitt’s. He asked again, more strongly, “Where are we?”