Charley’s hair never dangled into his eyes, although it looked as if it would after a vigorous shake of the head. Vigorous shaking was not Charley’s habit; his quality was of stone rather than fire; and in his bearing was evidence of how the years had tested his endurance. It was precisely this air of having withstood so much that these two sturdy elders — in superficial appearance so unlike — had in common.
“Though people don’t like trouble, they enjoy a distraction,” Charley said. “Funny — that shot you fired started my gums aching.”
“It deafened me,” Greybeard admitted. “I wonder if it roused the old men of the mill?”
He noticed that Charley glanced towards the mill to see if Mole or his henchman, “Major” Trouter, was coming to investigate.
Catching Greybeard’s glance, Charley grinned rather foolishly and said, by way of something to say, “Here comes old Jeff Pitt to see what all the fuss is.”
They had reached a small stream that wound its way across the cleared land. On its banks stood the stumps of some beeches that the villagers had cut down. From among these, the shaggy old figure of Pitt came. Over one shoulder he carried a stick from which hung the body of an animal. Though several of the villagers ventured some distance afield, Pitt was the only one who roved the wilds on his own. Sparcot was no prison for him. He was a morose and solitary man; he had no friends; and even in the society of the slightly mad, his reputation was for being mad. Certainly his face, as full of whorls as willow bark, was no reassurance of sanity; and his little eyes moved restlessly about, like a pair of fish trapped inside his skull.
“Did someone get shot then?” he asked. When Greybeard told him what happened, Pitt grunted, as if convinced the truth was being concealed from him.
“With you firing away, you’ll have the gnomes and wild things paying us attention,” he said.
“I’ll deal with them when they appear.”
“The gnomes are coming, aren’t they?” Pitt muttered; Greybeard’s words had scarcely registered on him. He turned to gaze at the cold and leafless woods. “They’ll be here before so long, to take the place of children, you mark my words.”
“There are no gnomes round here, Jeff, or they’d have caught you long ago,” Charley said. “What have you got on your stick?”
Eyeing Charley to judge his reaction, Pitt lowered the stick from his shoulder and displayed a fine dog otter, its body two feet long.
“He’s a beauty, isn’t he? Seen a lot of ’em about just lately. You can spot ’em more easily in the winter. Or perhaps they are just growing more plentiful in these parts.”
“Everything that can still multiply is doing so,” Greybeard said harshly.
“I’ll sell you the next one I catch, Greybeard. I haven’t forgotten what happened before we came to Sparcot. You can have the next one I catch. I’ve got my snares set along under the bank.”
“You’re a regular old poacher, Jeff,” Charley said. “Unlike the rest of us, you’ve never had to change your job.”
“What do you mean? Me never had to change my job? You’re daft, Charley Samuels! I spent most of my life in a stinking machine tool factory before the revolution and all that. Not that I wasn’t always keen on nature — but I never reckoned I’d get it at such close quarters, as you might say.”
“You’re a real old man of the woods now, anyhow.”
“Think I don’t know you’re laughing at me? I’m no fool, Charley, whatever you may think to yourself. But I reckon it’s terrible the way us town people have been turned into sort of half-baked country bumpkins, don’t you? What’s there left to life? All of us in rags and tatters, full of worms and the toothache! Where’s it all going to end, eh, I’d like to know? Where’s it all going to end?” He turned to scrutinize the woods again.
“We’re doing okay,” Greybeard said. It was his invariable answer to the invariable question. Charley also had his invariable answer.
“It’s the Lord’s plan, Jeff, and you don’t do any good by worrying over it. We cannot say what he has in mind for us.”
“After all he’s done to us this last fifty years,” Jeff said, “I’m surprised you’re still on speaking terms with him.”
“It will end according to His will,” Charley said.
Pitt gathered up all the wrinkles of his face, spat, and passed on with his dead otter.
Where could it all end, Greybeard asked himself, except in humiliation and despair? He did not ask the question aloud. Though he liked Charley’s optimism, he had no more patience than old Pitt with the too easy answers of the belief that nourished that optimism.
They walked on. Charley began to discuss the various accounts of people who claimed to have seen gnomes and little men, in the woods, or on roof tops, or licking the teats of the cows. Greybeard answered automatically; old Pitt’s fruitless question remained with him. Where was it all going to end? The question, like a bit of gristle in the mouth, was difficult to get rid of; yet increasingly he found himself chewing on it.
When they had walked right round the perimeter, they came again to the Thames at the western boundary, where it entered their land. They stopped and stared at the water.
Tugging, fretting, it moved about a countless number of obstacles on its course — oh yes, that it took as it has ever done! — to the sea. Even the assuaging power of water could not silence Greybeard’s mind.
“How old are you, Charley?” he asked.
“I’ve given up counting the years. Don’t look so glum! What’s suddenly worrying you? You’re a cheerful man, Greybeard; don’t start fretting about the future. Look at that water — it’ll get where it wants to go, but it isn’t worrying.”
“I don’t find any comfort in your analogy.”
“Don’t you, now? Well then, you should do.”
Greybeard thought how tiresome and colourless Charley was, but he answered patiently.
“You are a sensible man, Charley. Surely we must think ahead? This is getting to be a pensioners’ planet. You can see the danger signs as well as I can. There are no young men and women any more. The number of us capable of maintaining even the present low standard of living is declining year by year. We-”
“We can’t do anything about it. Get that firmly into your mind and you’ll feel better about the whole situation. The idea that man can do anything useful about his fate is an old idea — what do I mean? Yes, a fossil. It’s something from another period… We can’t do anything. We just get carried along, like the water in this river.”
“You read a lot of things into the river,” Greybeard said, half-laughing. He kicked a stone into the water. A scuttling and a plop followed, as some small creature — possibly a water rat, for they were on the increase again — dived for safety.
They stood silent, Charley’s shoulders a little bent. When he spoke again, it was to quote poetry.
Between the heavy prosaic man reciting Tennyson and the woods leaning across the river lay an incongruity. Laboriously, Greybeard said, “For a cheerful man, you know some depressing poetry.”
“That was what my father brought me up on. I’ve told you about that mouldy little shop of his…” One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backwards in time.
“I’ll leave you to get on with your patrol,” Charley said, but Greybeard clutched his arm. He had caught a noise upstream distinct from the sound of the water.
He moved forward to the water’s edge and looked. Something was coming downstream, though overhanging foliage obscured details. Breaking into a trot, Greybeard made for the stone bridge, with Charley following at a fast walk behind him.