Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“Sam’s coming,” he said. He had sighted the patrol with the colourful shirt approaching the guard house.

At his christening, Greybeard had been given the name Algy Timberlane, but it had become rather lost, like much else, as years went by. The nickname had gathered strength and stuck, even in a world of greybeards. Timberlane sported a thick hirsute growth which reached almost to his navel, where it had been cut sharply across.

His high and almost bald head lent emphasis to the beard, and its texture, barred as it was with stripes of black hair sprouting from the jawline, made it particularly noticeable in a society which afforded few forms of personal adornment.

When Greybeard spoke, Betty ceased her humming without giving any other sign she had heard. Thomas sat up on his paliasse, putting one hand on the cudgel that lay by his side; it was his constant companion. He screwed up his eyes in order to read the time from his wristwatch. This souvenir of a vanished world was Towin Thomas’s most cherished possession, although it had not worked in a decade. A windup clock on a shelf gave him more reliable information.

“Sam’s early coming off guard, twenty minutes early,” he said. “Old sciver. Worked up an appetite for lunch strolling around out there. You better watch that hash of yours, Betty — I’m the only one I’m wanting to get indigestion off that grub, girl.”

Betty shook her head. It was as much a nervous tic as a negation of anything that the man with the cudgel might have said. She kept her hands to the fire, not looking around.

Towin Thomas picked up his cudgel and rose stiffly to his feet, helping himself up against the table. He joined Greybeard at the window, peering through the dirty pane and rubbing it with his sleeve.

“That’s Sam Bulstow all right. You can’t mistake that shirt.”

Sam Bulstow walked down the littered street. Rubble, broken tiles and litter, lay on the pavements; dock and fennel — mortified by winter — sprouted from shattered gratings. Sam Bulstow walked in the middle of the road. There had been no traffic but pedestrians for several years now. He turned in when he reached the post office, and the watchers heard his footsteps on the boards of the room below them.

Without excitement, they listened to the whole performance of his getting upstairs: the groans of the bare treads, the squeak of a horny palm on the hand rail as it helped tug its owner upward, the rasp and heave of lungs challenged by every step.

Finally, Sam appeared in the guard room. The gaudy stripes of his shirt threw up some of their color onto the white stubble of his jaws. He stood for a while staring in at them, resting on the frame of the door to regain his breath.

“You’re early if it’s dinner you’re after,” Betty said, without bothering to turn her head. Nobody paid her any attention, and she nodded her old rats’ tails to herself in disapproval.

Sam just stood where he was, showing his yellow and brown teeth in a pant. “The Scotsmen are getting near,” he said.

Betty turned her neck stiffly to look at Greybeard. Towin Thomas arranged his crafty old wolf’s visage over the top of his cudgel and looked at Sam with his eyes screwed up.

“Maybe they’re after your job, Sammy, man,” he said.

“Who gave you that bit of information, Sam?” Greybeard asked.

Sam came slowly into the room, sneaking a sharp look at the clock as he did so, and poured himself a drink of water from a battered can standing in a corner. He gulped the water and sank down onto a wooden stool, stretching his fibrous hands out to the fire and generally taking his time before replying.

“There was a packman skirting the northern barricade just now. Told me he was heading for Faringdon. Said the Scotsmen had reached Banbury.”

“Where is this packman?” Greybeard asked, hardly raising his voice, and appearing to look out of the window.

“He’s gone on now, Greybeard. Said he was going to Faringdon.”

“Passed by Sparcot without calling here to sell us anything? Not very likely.”

“I’m only telling you what he said. I’m not responsible for him. I just reckon old Boss Mole ought to know the Scotsmen are coming, that’s all.” Sam’s voice relapsed into the irritable whine they all used at times.

Betty turned back to her stove. She said, “Everyone who comes here brings rumors. If it isn’t the Scots, it’s herds of savage animals. Rumors, rumors… It’s as bad as the last war, when they kept telling us there was going to be an invasion. I reckoned at the time they only done it to scare us, but I was scared just the same.”

Sam cut off her muttering. “Rumors or not, I’m telling you what the man said. I thought I ought to come up here and report it. Did I do right or didn’t I?”

“Where had this fellow come from?” Greybeard asked.

“He hadn’t come from anywhere. He was going to Faringdon.” He smiled his sly-doggy smile at his joke, and picked up a reflected smile from Towin.

“Did he say where he had been?” Greybeard asked patiently.

“He said he had been coming from up river. Said there was a lot of stoats heading this way.”

“Eh, that’s another rumor we’ve heard before,” Betty said to herself, nodding her head.

“You keep your trap shut, you old cow,” Sam said, without rancor.

Greybeard took hold of his rifle by the barrel and moved into the middle of the room until he stood looking down at Sam.

“Is that all you have to report, Sam?”

“Scotsmen, stoats — what more do you want from one patrol? I didn’t see any elephants, if you were wondering.” He cracked his grin again, looking again for Towin Thomas’s approval.

“You aren’t bright enough to know an elephant if you saw it, Sam, you old flea pit,” Towin said.

Ignoring this exchange, Greybeard said, “Okay, Sam, back you go on patrol. There’s another twenty minutes before you are relieved.”

“What, go back out there just for another lousy twenty minutes? Not on your flaming nelly, Greybeard! I’ve had it for this afternoon and I’m sitting right here on this stool. Let it ride for twenty minutes. Nobody’s going to run away with Sparcot, whatever Jim Mole may think.”

“You know the dangers as well as I do.”

“You know you’ll never get any sense out of me, not while I’ve got this bad back. These blinking guard duties come around too often for my liking.”

Betty and Towin kept silent. The latter cast a glance at his broken wristwatch. Both he and Betty, like everyone else in the village, had had the necessity for continuous guard drummed into them often enough, but they kept their eyes tracing the seamed lines on the board floor, knowing the effort involved in thrusting old legs an extra time up and down stairs and an extra time around the perimeter.

The advantage lay with Sam, as he sensed. Facing Greybeard more boldly, he said, “Why don’t you take over for twenty minutes if you’re so keen on defending the dump? You’re a young man — it’ll do you good to have a stretch.”

Greybeard tucked the leather sling of the rifle over his left shoulder and turned to Towin, who stopped gnawing the top of his cudgel to look up.

“Strike the alarm gong if you want me in a hurry, and not otherwise. Remind old Betty it’s not a dinner gong.”

The woman cackled as he moved toward the door, buttoning his baggy jacket. “Your grub’s just on ready, Algy. Why not stay and eat it?” she asked.

Greybeard slammed the door without answering. They listened to his heavy tread descending the stairs.

“You don’t reckon he took offense, do you? He wouldn’t report me to old Mole, would he?” Sam asked anxiously. The others mumbled neutrally and hugged their lean ribs; they did not want to be involved in any trouble.