Brian Aldiss - Greybeard

“You know she enjoyed herself in her own way. We’ve said all this before.”

He wiped his brow and head on a handkerchief and grinned more relaxedly.

“Maybe that’s what happens when the mainspring of the world snaps: everyone is doomed for ever to think and say what they thought and said yesterday.”

“We don’t have to despair, Algy. We’ve survived years of war, we’ve come through waves of puritanism and promiscuity. We’ve got away from London, where they are in for real trouble, now that the last authoritarian government has broken down. True, Cowley’s far from being a bed of roses, but Croucher is only a local phenomenon; if we can survive him, things may get better, become more settled. Then we can get somewhere permanent to live.”

“I know, my love. We seem to be going through an interim period. The trouble is, there have been a number of interim periods already, and there will be more. I can’t see how stability can ever be achieved again. There’s just a road leading downhill.”

“We don’t have to be involved in politics. DOUCH(E) doesn’t require you to mix in politics to make your reports. We can just find somewhere quiet and reasonably safe for ourselves, surely?”

He laughed. He stood up and looked genuinely amused. Then he stroked her hair with its grey and brown streaks and drew his chair closer.

“Martha, I’m mad about you still! It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us. Look, love, the United National Government has broken apart, and thank God for it. But at least its martial law kept things going and wheels turning. Now it has collapsed, millions of people are saying, “I have nothing to save for, no sons, no daughters. Why should I work?”, and they’ve stopped work. Others may have wanted to work, but you can’t carry on industry like that. Disorganize one part effectively, and it all grinds to a halt. The factories of Britain stand empty. We’re making nothing to export. You think America and the Commonwealth and the other countries are going to go on sending us food free? Of course not, especially when a lot of them are harder hit than we are! I know food is short at present, but next year, believe me, there’s going to be real famine. Your safe place won’t exist then, Martha. In fact there may only be one safe place.”

“Abroad?”

“I mean working for Croucher.”

She turned away frowning, not wishing to voice again her distrust of the local dictator.

“I’ve got a headache, Algy. I shouldn’t be drinking this gin. I think I must go and lie down.”

He took her wrist.

“Listen to me, Martha. I know I’m a devil to live with just now and I know you don’t want to sleep with me just now, but don’t stop listening to me or the last line of communication will be cut. We may be the final generation, but life’s still precious. I don’t want us to starve. I have made an appointment to see Commander Croucher tomorrow. I’m offering to cooperate.”

“What?”

“Why not?”

“Why not? How many people did he massacre in the centre of Oxford last week? Over sixty, wasn’t it? and the bodies left lying there for twenty-four hours so that people could count and make sure. And you-”

“Croucher represents law and order, Martha.”

“Madness and disorder!”

“No — the Commander represents as much law and order as we have any right to expect, considering the horrible outrage we have committed on ourselves. There’s a military government in the Home Counties centred on London, and one of the local gentry has set up a paternalistic sort of community covering most of Devon. Apart from them and Croucher, who now controls the South Midlands and down to the South Coast, the country is slipping rapidly into anarchy. Have you thought what it must be like farther up in the Midlands, and in the North, in the industrial areas? What do you think is going to happen up there?”

“They’ll find their own little Crouchers soon enough.”

“Right! And what will their little Crouchers do? March ’em down south as fast as they can.”

“And risk the cholera?”

“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 busy and 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.