“You are doing my thinking for me,” Greybeard said.
“It is a wise man’s role; but so is listening.” Jingadangelow quaffed his drink and leant forward over the empty glass. “Is not this rag-taggle present preferable to that other mechanised, organized, deodorized present we might have found ourselves in, simply because in this present we can live on a human scale? In that other present that we missed by a neutron’s breadth, had not megalomania grown to such a scale that the ordinary simple richness of an individual life was stifled?”
“Certainly there was a lot wrong with the twentieth-century way of life.”
“There was everything wrong with it.”
“No, you exaggerate. Some things—”
“Don’t you think that if everything spiritual was wrong with it, everything was wrong with it? It’s no good getting nostalgic. It wasn’t all drugs and education. Wasn’t it also the need for drugs and the poverty of education? Wasn’t it the climax and orgasm of the Machine Age? Wasn’t it Mons and Belsen and Bataan and Stalingrad and Hiroshima and the rest? Didn’t we do well to get flung off the roundabout?”
“You only ask questions,” Greybeard said.
“They are themselves answers.”
“That is double talk. You are giving me double talk. No, wait — look, I wish to talk more with you. I can pay you. This is an important conversation… Let me get my wife and friends here.”
Greybeard rose. His head ached. The drink had been powerful, the room was noisy and hot, he was over-excited. It was seldom anyone talked about anything but toothache and the weather. He looked about for Martha and could not see her.
He walked through the room. There were stairs leading to the rooms above. He saw that the painted women were neither so voluptuous nor so busy as he had at first imagined. Though they were padded and painted, their skins were stamped with the liver marks and whorls of age, their eyes were rheumy. Bizarrely smiling, they reached out hands to him. He stumbled through them. They were full of liquor, they coughed and laughed and trembled as he went by. The room was full of their motions, like a cage of captive jackdaws.
The women waved — had he once dreamed of them? — but he took no notice. Martha had gone. Charley and old Pitt had gone. Seeing that he was all right, they must have returned to guard the boats. And Towin and Becky — no, they had not been here… He remembered what he had been seeking Bunny Jingadangelow for; instead of leaving, he turned back to the far corner, where another drink awaited him and the doctor sat with an octogenarian hussy on his knee. This woman sat with one hand about his neck and with the other stroked the rabbit heads on his coat.
“Look, Doctor, I came here to seek you not for myself, but for a couple who are of my party,” Greybeard said, leaning over the table. “There’s a woman, Becky; she claims that she is with child, though she must be over seventy. I want you to examine her and see if what she says is true.”
“Sit down, friend, and let us discuss this expectant lady of yours,” Jingadangelow said. “Drink your drink, since I presume you will be paying for this round. The delusions of elderly ladies is a choice topic for this time of night, eh, Jean? No doubt neither of you would recall that little poem, how does it go now? — ‘looking in my mirror to see my wasted skin’, and — yes—
“Touching, eh? I fancy your lady has a few throbbings left, nothing more. But I shall come and see her, of course. It is my duty. I shall naturally assure her that she is in the family way, if that is what she desires to hear.” He folded his fleshy hands together and frowned.
“There’s no chance she might really be about to bear a child?”
“My dear Timberlane — if you will pardon my not using your somewhat inane sobriquet — hope springs as eternal to the human womb as to the human breast, but I am surprised to find you seem to share her hope.”
“I suppose I do. You said yourself that hope was valuable.”
“Not valuable: imperative. But you must hope for yourself — when we hope for other people we are invariably disappointed. Our dreams have jurisdiction only over ourselves. Knowing you as I do, I see that you really come to me for your own sake. I rejoice to see it. My friend, you love life, you love this life with all its blemishes, with all its tastes and distastes — you also desire my immortality cure, do you not?”
Resting his throbbing head on his hand, Greybeard quaffed down more drink and said, “Many years ago, I was in Oxford — in Cowley to be accurate — when I heard of a treatment, it was just a rumour, a treatment that might prolong life, perhaps for several hundred years. It was something they were developing at a hospital there. Is it possible this could be done? I’d want scientific evidence before I believe.”
“Of course you do, naturally, undeniably, and I would expect nothing less of a man like you,” Jingadangelow said, nodding so vigorously that the woman was almost dislodged from his lap. “The best scientific evidence is empirical. You shall have empirical evidence. You shall have the full treatment — I’m absolutely convinced that you could afford it — and you shall then see for yourself that you never grow a day older.”
Squinting at him cunningly, Greybeard said, “Shall I have to come to Mockweagles?”
“Ah ha, he’s clever, isn’t he, Ruthie? He’s prepared the way for himself nicely. That’s the sort of man I prefer to deal with. I—”
“Where is Mockweagles?” Greybeard asked.
“It’s what you might call my research headquarters. I reside there when I am not travelling the road.”
“I know, I know. You have few secrets from me, Doctor Jingadangelow. It’s twenty-nine storeys high, more like a castle than a skyscraper…”
“Possibly your informants have been slightly exaggerating, Timberlane, but your general picture is of course amazingly accurate, as Joan will tell you, eh, my pet? But first we should get a few details straight; you will want your lovely wife to undergo the treatment too?”
“Of course I will, you old fool. I can quote poetry too, you know; to be a member of DOUCH(E) you have to be educated. ‘Let me not to the marriage of two minds omit impediment…’ How does it go? Shakespeare, Doctor, Shakespeare. Ever make his acquaintance? First-class scholar… Oh, there is my wife! Martha!”
He staggered to his feet, knocking over his glass. Martha hurried towards him, anxiety in her face. Charley Samuels was close behind, carrying Isaac in his arms.
“Oh, Algy, Algy, you must come at once. We’ve been robbed!”
“What do you mean, robbed?” He stared stupidly at her, resenting the interruption of his train of thought.
“While we were bringing you in here after you were attacked, thieves got into the boats and took everything they could lay their hands on.”
“The sheep!”
“They’ve all been taken, and our supplies.”
Greybeard turned to Jingadangelow and made a loose gesture of courtesy. “Be seeing you, Doctor. Got to go — den of thieves — we’ve been robbed.”
“I always mourn to see a scholar suffer, Mr. Timberlane,” Jingadangelow said, bowing his massive head towards Martha without otherwise moving.