He accepted that hard-worked time among the reeds; but he did not forget the lesson he had gained at Sparcot, that serenity came not from the external world, but from within. If he needed reminding, he had only to cut reeds in his favourite bay. From there he had a view of a large burial place, to which almost every day a grey knot of mourners came with a coffin. As Flitch drily remarked, when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, “Ah, they keep a-planting of ’em, but there ain’t any more of ’em growing up.”
So he would then go home to Martha, often with his beard coated with frost, back to the draughty room in Killcanon that she had succeeded in turning into a home. Both Charley and Pitt lived outside Christ Church, where they had secured cheaper and more tumbledown lodgings; Charley, whom they saw most days, had secured a job of sorts in a tannery; Pitt had returned to his old game of poaching and made little attempt to seek out their company; Greybeard saw him once along the south bank of the lake, a small and independent old figure.
On the darkest mornings, Greybeard was at the great college gate at six, waiting for it to be opened to go to work. One morning, when he had been working for Flitch for a month, a bell in the ruinous Tom Tower above his head began to toll.
It was New Year’s Day, which the inhabitants of Oxford held in festival.
“I don’t expect any work off you today,” Flitch said, when Greybeard showed himself at the little dairy.
“Life’s short enough as well as being long enough – you’re a young man, you are, go and enjoy yourself.”
“What year is it, Joe? I’ve lost my calendar and forgotten where we are.”
“What’s it matter where we are? I barely keep the score of my own years, never mind the world’s. You go on home to your Martha.”
“I’m just thinking. Why wasn’t Christmas Day celebrated?”
Flitch straightened up from the sheep he was milking and regarded Greybeard with an amused look. “You mean why should it be celebrated? I can tell you’re no sort of a religious man, or you wouldn’t ask that.
Christmas was invented to celebrate the birth of God’s son, wasn’t it? And the Students in Christ Church reckon as it aren’t in what you might call good taste to celebrate birth any more.” He moved his stool and pail to a nanny goat and added, “Course, if you were under tenancy to Balliol or Magdalen, now they do recognize Christmas still.”
“Are you a religious man, Joe?”
Flitch pulled a face. “I leaves that sort of thing to women.”
Greybeard tramped back through the miry streets to Martha. He saw by the look in her face that there was some excitement brewing. She explained that this was the day when the children of Balliol were displayed in
‘The Broad’, and she wanted to go and see them.
“We don’t want to see children, Martha. It’ll only upset you. Stay here with me, where it’s cosy. Let’s look up Tubby at the gate and have a drink with him. Or come and meet old Joe Flitch – you don’t have to see his womenfolk. Or -”
“Algy, I want to be taken to see the children. I can stand the shock. Besides, it’s a sort of social event, and they’re few and far enough between.” She tucked her hair inside her hood, eyeing him in a friendly but detached way. He shook his head and took her by the arm.
“You were always a stubborn woman, Martha.”
“Where you are concerned, I’m always as weak as water, and you know it.”
Along the path known as the “Corn”, presumably from a ploughed-up strip of wheatland along one side of it, many people were flocking. Their appearance was as grey and seamed as that of the ruined buildings below which they shuffled; they sucked their gums against the cold and did not chatter much. They gave way falteringly to a cart pulled by reindeer. As the cart creaked level with Martha and Greybeard, someone called her name.