Brian Aldiss - Greybeard

Although he looked like a riven oak, he was a gentle enough man. He introduced himself as Pete Potsluck, and talked with Greybeard between serving.

Greybeard began to tell him about Sparcot; bored by the subject, Becky and Towin and Charley, the latter with Isaac in his arms, moved away and joined in conversation with the wedding party. Potsluck said he reckoned there were many communities like Sparcot, buried in the wilderness. “Get a bad winter, such as we’ve not had for a year or two, and some of them will be wiped out entirely. That’ll be the eventual end of all of us, I suppose.”

“Is there fighting anywhere? Do you hear rumours of an invasion from Scotland?”

“They say the Scots are doing very well, in the Highlands anyhow. There was so few of them in the first place; down here, population was so high it took some years for plagues and famines to shake us down to a sort of workable minimum. The Scots probably dodged all that trouble — but why should they bother us? We’re all getting too long in the tooth for fighting.”

“There are some wild-looking sparks at this fair.”

Potsluck laughed. “I don’t deny that. Senile delinquents, I call them. Funny thing, without any youngsters to set the pace, the old ones get up to their tricks — as well as they’re able.”

“What has happened to people like Croucher, then?”

“Croucher? Oh, this Cowley bloke you mentioned! The dictator class are all dead and buried, and a good job too. No, it’s getting too late for that sort of strong-arm thing. I mean, you just find laws in the towns, but outside of them, there is no law.”

“I didn’t so much mean law as force.”

“Well now, you can’t have law without force, can you? There’s a level where force is bad, but when you get to the sort of level we are down to, force becomes strength, and then it’s a positive blessing.”

“You are probably right.”

“I’d have thought you would have known that. You look the kind who carries a bit of law about with him, with those big fists and that bushy great beard.”

Greybeard grinned. “I don’t know. It’s difficult to judge what one’s own character is in unprecedented times like ours.”

“You haven’t made up your mind about yourself? Perhaps that’s what’s keeping you looking so young.”

Changing the subject, Greybeard changed his drink, and got himself a big glass of fortified parsnip wine, buying one for Potsluck also. Behind him, the wedding party became tuneful, singing the ephemeral songs of a century back which had oddly developed a power to stick — and to stick in the gullet, Greybeard thought, as they launched into:

“It may come to that yet,” he said half-laughing to Potsluck. “Have you see any children around? I mean, are any being born in these parts?”

“They’ve got a freak show here. You want to go and look in at that,” Potsluck said. Sudden bleakness eclipsed his good-humour, and he turned sharply away to arrange the bottles behind him. In a little while, as if feeling he had been discourteous, he turned back and began to talk on a new tack.

“I used to be a hairdresser, back before the Accident and until that blinking Coalition government closed my shop. Seems years ago now — but then so it is — long years, I mean. I was trained up in my trade by my Dad, who had the shop before me; and I always used to say when we first heard about this radiation scare that as long as there were people around they’d still want their hair cut — as long as it didn’t all fall out, naturally. I still do a bit of cutting for the other travelling men. There are those that still care for their appearance, I’m glad to say.”

Greybeard did not speak. He recognized a man in the grip of reminiscence; Potsluck had lost some of his semi-rustic way of speech; with a genteel phrase like “those that still care for their appearance”, he revealed how he had slipped back half a century to that vanished world of toilet perquisites, hair creams, before- and after-shave lotions, and the disguising of odours and blemishes.

“I remember once, when I was a very young man, having to go round to a private house — I can picture the place now, though I daresay it has fallen down long since. It was very dark going up the stairs, and I had to take the young lady’s arm. Yes, that’s right, and I went there after the shop had shut, I remember. My old Dad sent me; I can’t have been more than seventeen, if that.

“And there was this dead gentleman laid out upstairs in his coffin, in the bedroom. Very calm and prosperous he looked. He’d been a good customer, too, in his lifetime. His wife insisted that his hair was cut before the funeral. He was always a very tidy gentleman, she told me. I spoke to her downstairs afterwards a thin lady with ear-rings. She gave me five shilllings. No, I don’t remember — perhaps it was ten shillings. Anyhow, sir, it was a generous sum in those days — before all this dreadful business.

“So I cut the dead gentleman’s hair. You know how the hair and the finger-nails keep on growing on a man after death, and his had got rather straggly. Only a trim it needed really, but I cut it as reverently as I could. I was a churchgoer in those days, believe it or not. And this young lady that showed me upstairs, she had to hold his head up under the neck so that I could get at it with my scissors; and in the middle of it she got the giggles and dropped the dead gentleman. She said she wanted me to give her a kiss. I was a bit shocked at the time, seeing that the gentleman was her father… I don’t know why I should be telling you this. Memory’s a rare funny thing. I suppose if I’d had any sense in those days, I’d have screwed the silly little hussy on the spot, but I wasn’t too familiar with life then — never mind death! Have another drink on me?”

“Thanks, I may come back later,” Greybeard said. “I want to have a look round at the fair now. Do you know of anyone called Bunny Jingadangelow?”

“Jingadangelow? Yes, I know of him. What do you want with him? Go over the bridge and up the road towards Ensham, and you’ll come to his stall; it’s got the words ‘Eternal Life’ above it. You can’t mistake it. Okay?”

Looking round at the party of singers, Greybeard caught Charley’s eye. Charley rose, and they walked out together, leaving Towin and Becky singing “Any Old Iron” with the wedding party.

“The fellow who’s just got married again is a reindeer breeder,” Charley said. “It seems they’re still the only big mammal unaffected by the radiation. Do you remember how people said they’d never do over here when they were first imported, because the climate was too wet for their coats?”

“It’s too wet for my coat too, Charley… It’s less cold than it was, and by the look of the clouds there’s rain about. What sort of shelter are we going to find ourselves for the night?”

“One of the women back in the bar said we might get lodgings up this way, in the town. We’ll look out. It’s early yet.”

They walked up the road, taking in the bustle at the various pitches.

Isaac yipped and snuffled as they passed a cage of foxes, and next to it a run full of weasels. There were also hens for sale, and a woman wrapped in furs tried to sell them powdered reindeer antler as a charm against impotence and ill health. Two rival quacks sold purges and clysters, charms against rheumatism, and nostrums for the cramps of age; the few people who stood listening to them seemed sceptical. Trade was dropping off at this time of evening; people were now after entertainment rather than business, and a juggler drew appreciative crowds. So did a fortune-teller — though that must be a limited art now, Greybeard thought, with all dark strangers turned to grey and no possible patter of tiny feet.