Greybeard

Killcanon turned out to be a small square within Christ Church, and their rooms a larger room subdivided. But the needle-nosed messenger told them they might burn firewood in their grates and offered them fuel cheap. Mainly from weariness, they accepted the offer. The messenger lit the fires for them while Jeff Pitt walked back to collect Charley and the fox and make arrangements for the boat.

Once the fire was burning cheerfully, the messenger showed signs of lingering, squatting by the flame and rubbing his nose, trying to listen to what Martha and Greybeard said to each other. Greybeard stirred him with a toe.

“Before you go out, Chubby, tell me if this college is still used for learning as it used to be.”

“Why, there’s nobody to learn any more,” the man said. It was plain he intended his verb to be transitive, whatever a legion of vanished grammar books might have said. “But the Students own the place, and they seem to learn each other a bit still. You’ll see them going about with books in their pockets, if you watch out. Students here is what we mean by what lesser colleges calls Fellows. For a tip, I’d introduce you to one of them.”

“We’ll see. There may be time for that tomorrow.”

“Don’t leave it too long, sir. There’s a local legend that Oxford is sinking into the river, and when it’s gone under, a whole lot of little naked people what now live under the water will come swimming up like eels and live here instead.”

Greybeard contemplated the ruin of a man. “I see. And do you give this tale much credence?”

“You what you say, sir?”

“Do you believe this tale?” The old man laughed, casting a shuffling side glance at Martha. “I ain’t saying I believe it and I ain’t saying I don’t believe it, but I know what I’ve heard, and they do say that for every woman as dies, one more of these little naked people is born under water. And this I do know because I saw it with my own eyes last Michaelmas — no, the Michaelmas before last, because I was behind with my rent this Michaelmas — there was an old woman of ninety-nine died down at Grandpont, and very next day a little two-headed creature all naked floated up at the bridge.”

“Which was it you saw?” Martha asked. “The old lady dying or the two-headed thing?”

“Well, I’m often down that way,” the messenger said confusedly. “It was the funeral and the bridge I mainly saw, but many men told me about all the rest and I have no cause to doubt ‘em. It’s common talk.” When he had gone, Martha said, “It’s strange how everyone believes in something different.”

“They’re all a bit mad.”

“No, I don’t think they’re mad — except that other people’s beliefs always seem mad, just as their passions do. In the old days, before the Accident, people were more inclined to keep their beliefs to themselves, or else confide only in doctors and psychiatrists. Or else the belief was widespread, and lost its air of absurdity. Think of all the people who believed in astrology, long after it was proved to be a pack of nonsense.”

“Illogical, and therefore a mild form of madness,” Greybeard said. “No, I don’t think so. A form of consolation, rather. This old fellow with a nose like a knitting-needle nurses a crazy dream about little naked things taking over Oxford; it in some way consoles him for the dearth of babies. Charley’s religion is the same sort of consolation. Your recent drinking companion, Bunny Jingadangelow, had retreated into a world of pretence.”

She sank wearily down on to the bed of blankets and stretched. Slowly she removed her battered shoes, massaged her feet, and then stretched full length with her hands under her head. She regarded Greybeard, whose bald pate glowed as he crouched by the fire.

“What are you thinking, my venerable love?” she asked. “I was wondering if the world might not slip — if it hasn’t already — into a sort of insanity, now that everyone left is over fifty. Is a touch of childhood and youth necessary to sanity?”

“I don’t think so. We’re really amazingly adaptable, more than we give ourselves credit for.”

“Yes, but suppose a man lost his memory of everything that happened to him before he was fifty, so that he was utterly cut off from his roots, from all his early achievements — wouldn’t you classify him as insane?”

“It’s only an analogy.” He turned to her and grinned. “You’re a bugger for arguing, Martha Timberlane.”