Again for him a situation that could not happen. There were young women sitting at tables, scantily clad, entertaining antique men with physiognomies like ill-furled sails. Their lips were red, their cheeks pink, their eyes dark and lustrous. The girl nearest Greybeard wore stockings of a wide mesh net that climbed up to the noble eminence of her crutch; here they met red satin knickers, frilled at the edges, as though to conceal a richer rose among their petals, and matching in hue the brief tunic, set off with inviting brass buttons, which partially hid a bosom of such splendour that it made its possessor’s chin appear undershot.
Between this spectacle and Greybeard was a number of legs, one pair of which he identified as Martha’s. The act of recognition made him realize that this was far from being a dream and he near to being unconscious. He groaned, and Martha’s tender face came down to his level; she put a worn hand to his face and kissed him.
“My poor old sweetheart, you’ll be all right in a minute.”
“Martha… Where are we?”
“They were mobbing you for laying hands on that eunuch at the garage. Charley heard them and fetched Pitt and me. We came as soon as we could. We’re going to stay here for the night, and you’ll be all right by morning.”
Prompted by this remark, he recognized two of the other pairs of legs now; both sprouted mud and marsh grass; one pair was Charley’s, one Jeff Pitt’s. He asked again, more strongly, “Where are we?”
“Lucky you didn’t get yourself killed,” Pitt grunted.
“We’re next door to the garage where they attacked you,” Martha said. “It’s a house — to judge by its popularity — of rather good repute.”
He caught the fleeting smile on her face. His heart opened up to her, and he pressed her hand to show how he cherished a woman who could make even an unpleasant pleasantry. Life flowed back into him. “Help me up, I’m mended,” he said.
Pitt and Charley took a hold of him under his arms. Only a pair of legs he had not recognized did not move. As he rose, his gaze travelled up these solid shanks and up the extravagant territory of a coat fashioned from rabbit skins. The skins preserved the heads of these lagomorphs, teeth, ears, whiskers, and all; the eyes had been replaced with black buttons; some of the ears, improperly preserved, were decaying, and a certain effluvium — probably encouraged by the warmth of the room — was radiated; but the effect of the whole was undeniably majestic. As Greybeard’s eyes came level with those of the coat’s wearer, he said, “Bunny Jingadangelow, I presume?”
“Doctor ‘Bunny’ Jingadangelow at your service, Mr. Timberlane,” the man in the coat said, flexing his sacrolumbar regions sufficiently to indicate a bow. “I’m delighted that my ministrations have had such excellent and speedy effect on your injuries, but we can discuss the state of your indebtedness to me later. First, I think you should exercise your circulation by taking a turn about the room. Allow me to assist you.”
He took a purchase on Greybeard’s arm, and began to walk him between the tables. For the moment, Greybeard offered no opposition, as he studied the man in the rabbit-skin coat. Jingadangelow looked to be scarcely out of his fifties — perhaps no more than six years older than Greybeard, and a young man as men went these days. He wore a twirling moustache and sideburns, but the rotundity of his chin attained a smoothness now seldom seen or attempted. There was over his face such a settled look of blandness that it seemed no metoposcopy could ever decide his true character.
“I understand,” he said, “that before you tried to attack one of my clients you were seeking me out to ask my help and advice.”
“I did not attack your client,” Greybeard said, freeing himself from the man’s embrace. “Though I regret that in a moment of anger I seized hold of one of your accomplices.”
“Tosh, man, young Trotty is an advertisement, not an accomplice. The name of Dr. Jingadangelow is known throughout the Midlands, you understand, as that of a great humanitarian — a human humanitarian. I’d give you one of my bills if I had one on me. You should realize before you start feeling pugilistic that I am one of the great figures of the — er, where are we now? — of the Twenty Twenties.”
“You may be widely known. I’m not arguing about that. I met a poor mad fellow, Norsgrey, and his wife, who had been to you for treatment—”
“Wait, wait — Norsgrey, Norsgrey… What kind of name is that? Not on my books…” He stood with his head raised and one finger planted in the middle of his forehead. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed. Mention of his wife had me baffled for a moment. Strictly between you and me…” Jingadangelow manœuvred Greybeard into a corner; he leant forward and said confidentially, “Of course, the complaints of one’s patients are both private and sacred, but poor old Norsgrey hasn’t really got a wife, you know, any more than this table has; it’s a she-badger that he’s rather too fond of.” He tapped his forehead again with an ample finger. “Why not? Thin blood needs a little warmth abed these chilly nights. Poor fellow nutty as a walnut tree…”
“You are broadminded.”
“I forgive all human faults and follies, sir. It’s part of my calling. We must mitigate this vale of tears what way we can. Such understanding is, of course, part of the secret of my wonderful curative powers.”
“Which is a way of saying you leech a living out of old madmen like Norsgrey. He is under the delusion that you have made him immortal.”
During this conversation, Jingadangelow seated himself and beckoned to a woman who hobbled over and set down two drinks before them. The doctor nodded and waved a pair of plump fingers at her in thanks. To Greybeard he said, “How strange to hear ethical objections again after all these years — quite takes me back… You must lead a secluded life. This old chap Norsgrey, you understand, is dying. He gets noises like frying in his head; it’s a fatal dropsy. So — he mistakes the hope I have given him for the immortality I promised him. It’s a comfortable error, surely? I travel, if I may for a moment indulge in a personal confidence, without any such hope; therefore Norsgrey — and there are many like him, luckily — is more fortunate than I in spirit. I console myself by being more fortunate in worldly possessions.”
Greybeard set down his drink and looked about. Although his neck still ached, good humour filled him. “Do you mind if my wife and friends join us?”
“Not at all, not at all, though I trust you are not bored with my company already. I hoped some talk of this and that might precede any business we might do together. I thought I had recognized a kindred spirit in you.”
Greybeard said, “What made you think that?”
“Mainly the intuitive feeling with which I am richly endowed. You are uncommitted. You don’t suffer as you should in this blighted time; though life is miserable, you enjoy it. Is this not so?”
“How do you know this? Yes, yes, you are correct, but we have only just met—”
“The answer to that is never entirely pleasing to the ego. It is that although all men are each unique, all men are also each much the same. You have an ambivalence in your nature; many men have an ambivalence. I only have to talk with them for a minute to diagnose it. Am I making sense?”
“How do you diagnose my ambivalence?”
“I am not a mind reader, but let me cast about.” He expanded his cheeks, raised his eyebrows, gazed into his glass, and made a very judicious face indeed. “We need our disasters. You and I have weathered, somehow, the collapse of a civilization. We are survivors after shipwreck. But for us two, we feel something deeper than survival — triumph! Before the crash came, we willed it, and so disaster for us is a success, a victory for the raging will. Don’t look so surprised! You’re not a man, surely, to regard the recesses of the mind as a very salubrious place. Have you thought of the world we were born in, and what it would have grown into had not that unfortunate little radiation experiment run amok? Would it not have been a world too complex, too impersonal, for the likes of us to flourish in?”