Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“Ah, I told you — gnomes without a doubt! I seen ’em. What did they do?” Pitt asked.

“Fortunately they were across a little brook from me and couldn’t get at me. And I stuck my hand out and made the sign of the cross at them and they disappeared.”

“You ought to have loosed an arrow at them — they’d have gone faster,” Pitt said. “Or p’raps they thought you were going to give ’em a sermon.”

“Charley, you can’t believe they really were gnomes,” Greybeard said. “Gnomes were things we used to read about as children, in fairy tales. They didn’t really exist.”

“P’raps they come back like the polecat,” Jeff Pitt said. “Those books were only telling you what used to be in the times before men grew so civilized.”

“You’re sure these weren’t children?” Greybeard demanded.

“Oh, they weren’t children, though they were small like children. But they’d got — well, it was difficult to see, but they seemed to have muzzles like old Isaac’s, and cat’s ears, and fur on their heads, though I thought they had hands like us.”

There was silence in the boat.

Martha said, “Old Thorne, for whom I worked in Christ Church, was a learned man, though a bit soft in the head. He used to claim that as man was dying off, a new thing was coming up to take his place.”

“A Scotsman perhaps!” Greybeard said laughing, recalling how Towin and Becky Thomas had believed that the Scots would invade from the north.

“Thorne was vague as to what this new thing would be, though he said it might look like a shark with the legs of a tiger. He said there would be hundreds of it, and it would be very grateful to its creator as it moved in and discovered all the little people provided for its fodder.”

“We’ve got enough trouble from our own creator without worrying about rival ones.” Pitt said.

“That’s blasphemy,” Charley said. “You’re getting too old to talk like that, Jeff Pitt. Anyhow, if there was a thing like that, I should think it would prefer to eat duck to us lot. Look at us!”

That evening, they took care to select a site for the night where they would not be too easily taken by surprise.

Next day saw them sailing south, rowing when the freshets failed. The wooded hills that had been visible all the previous day sank slowly out of sight, and the only landmark was a two-humped island ahead. They made this by late afternoon, when the shadow of the boat hung away to one side, and tied up beside a boat already moored in a crudely made inlet.

Much of this land bore signs of cultivation, while farther up the slopes they saw poultry and ducks confined in runs. Some old ladies who had been standing among the poultry came down to the water to inspect the new arrivals, told them this was called Wittenham Island, and grudgingly agreed that they could stay where they were for the night if they made no trouble. Most of the women had with them tame otters, which they said they had trained to catch fish and fowl for them.

They became slightly more friendly when they realized that Greybeard’s party had only peaceful intentions, and proved eager to gossip. It soon emerged that they were a religious community, believing in a Master who appeared among them occasionally and preached of a Second Generation. They would have tried to make converts had not Martha tactfully changed the subject by asking how long they had lived on the island.

One woman told Martha that they came from a town called Dorchester, retreating to these hills with their menfolk when their homes and land were besieged by the rising waters some seven years earlier. Now their old home lay completely under the Sea of Barks.

Much of what this old woman had to say was difficult to understand. It was as if the mist which spread over the water at this season had also spread between human comprehensions; but it was not hard to understand that small groups cut off from their neighbours should increasingly develop an accent and a vocabulary peculiar to themselves. What was suprising was the rate at which this process operated.

Martha and Greybeard discussed the phenomenon when they were between their blankets that night.

“Do you remember that old fellow we met on our way to Oxford, the one that you said had a badger for a wife?” Martha asked.

“It’s a long time ago. Can’t say I do.”

“I remember we slept in a barn with him and his reindeer. Whatever his name was, he was getting treatment from that weird man at that fair — oh, my memory!—”

“Bunny Jingadangelow?”

“That’s it — your friend! The old man talked some nonsense about the years speeding by; he reckoned he was two hundred years old, or some such age. I’ve been thinking about him lately, and at last beginning to understand how he felt. There’s been so much change, Algy, I begin to wonder quite seriously if we haven’t been living for centuries.”

“It’s a change in pace. We were born into a hectic civilization; now there’s no civilization left, and the pace has altered.”

“Longevity’s an illusion?”

“Man’s the thing that’s stopped, not death. Everything else but us — the whole bag of tricks — goes on unabated. Now let’s get to sleep, sweet. I’m tired after the rowing.”

After a moment, she said, “I suppose it’s not having any children. I don’t mean just not having them myself, but not seeing any around me. It makes a life terribly bare… and terribly long.”

Greybeard sat up angrily.

“For God’s sake, woman, shut up about not having kids. I know we can’t have kids — we’re too old for it anyhow, by now — it’s the cardinal fact of my life as much as it is yours, but you don’t have to go on about it!”

“I don’t go on about it, Algy! I doubt if I mention it once a year.”

“You do mention it once a year. It’s always about this time, late summer, when the wheat’s ripening. I wait for you to say something.”

In a moment he had repented his anger, and took Martha in his arms.

“I didn’t mean to snap,” he said. “Sometimes I’m scared at my own thoughts. I wonder if perhaps the dearth of children hasn’t caused a madness we don’t identify because it’s unclassified. Is it possible to be sane in a world where only your own senility greets you on every side?”

“Darling, you’re young yet, young and strong. We still have many years together.”

“No, but you see what I mean: you should be able to renew your youth in the generation that follows yours. In your thirties, your sons keep you nimble and laughing. In your forties, they keep you worried and attached to the world. In your fifties, you may have grandchildren to play with. You can live till your grandchildren come along to see your creaking smiles and your card tricks… They replenish you. If everyone’s cut off from all that — who’s to wonder if time goes wrong, or if poor old Charley gets some crazy idea about seeing gnomes?”

“Perhaps a woman looks at it differently. What I regret most is the reservoir of something in me — love, I suppose — that I sense has never found its object.”

He stroked her hair tenderly and answered, “You’re the most loving person who has ever lived. Now do you mind if I go to sleep?”

But it was Martha who slept. Greybeard lay there for a while, listening to the distant sounds of night-feeding birds. Restlessness took him. He pulled the end of his beard gently from under Martha’s shoulder, slipped on his shoes, unlatched the tent flap, and climbed stiffly outside. His back was not so flexible these days.

Because of its impenetrability, the night seemed more stifling than it was. He could not explain his unease. He seemed to hear the sound of an engine — he could only visualize the steamer that his mother had taken him on from Westminster Pier in his early childhood, before his father had died. But that was impossible. He indulged himself by thinking about the past and about his mother. It was wonderful how vivid some of the memories seemed. He wondered if his mother’s life — she must have been born — so long ago! — in the nineteen-forties — had not been more thoroughly ruined by the Accident than was his own. He could hardly recall the days before the Accident happened, except for a few snapshots like that cruise from Westminster Pier, so that he existed only within the context of the Accident and its aftermath, and was adapted to it. But how could a woman adapt? Rather owlishly, he thought, as if it were a discovery, women are different.