“Instead, we nipped off and vegetated all those dreary years at Sparcot. And what did I do there? Why, I flogged the DOUCH truck just because our bellies were a bit empty. And when I might have redeemed myself at Christ Church, by retrieving the truck, I just couldn’t bear to stick out another couple of years’ hard work. Hearing that engine throb out there on the pond, I thought of that bloody truck, and how it stands for all I might have been or had.”
Martha hit at a moth that circled round her face, and turned gleamingly to him.
“People who have been betrayed often see themselves as betrayers. Don’t do that, Algy. You’re thinking rubbish tonight. You’re too big a man to puddle about in silly self-deception. Don’t you see that what you’ve just told me is a potted history of your integrity?”
“The lack of it, you mean.”
“No, I don’t. When you were a child, your life was not under your control. Both your mother and Keith were idiots – I saw that even as a small girl – and they were quite disoriented by the crisis of their times. For that you cannot blame yourself.
“You spent the war first trying to save children, then trying to do something constructive about the future.
You married me, when you might have been having the sort of debauches most men of your age were enjoying all over the world. And I suspect you have remained faithful to me ever since. I don’t think that shows any lack of character.
“As for your feebleness at Cowley, you can go and ask old Jeff what he thinks to that one! You sold the DOUCH(E) truck after infinite painful debate with yourself, and saved the whole community at Sparcot from starving. As for getting it back again, why should you? If there is a future for any humans, they’ll be
looking ahead, not back; DOUCH was a great idea when it was conceived in the year 2000. Now we can see it’s irrelevant.
“But what’s never been irrelevant to you is other people me, among others. You’ve always put me first.
I’ve seen it; as you say, I’m not a fool. You put me before your job in Washington and in Cowley. Do you think I minded? If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.” She stopped abruptly. “That’s all, I think. End of lecture. Feeling better, Greybeard?”
He pressed his lips to her veined temple.
“Darling, I tell you we’re all suffering from some form of madness. After all this time – I’ve discovered yours!”
When he woke again, it was light, and Pitt was shaking him. Even before the old trapper spoke, he heard the throb of the steamer again.
“Better get your gun in case it’s pirates, Greybeard,” Pitt said. “The women say the boat’s coming in here.”
Pulling on his trousers, Greybeard moved out barefoot over the dew-soaked grass. Martha and Charley stood peering into the mist; he went behind them, laying a hand on his wife’s shoulder. This morning the mist was thick as milk. Behind, the hillside was lost. Summoned by the throbbing of the engine, the women of the religious community were materializing and shuffling down to line the bank.
“The Master is coming! The Master is coming!” they cried.
The throbbing engine stopped. The sound of it died across the water. They strained their eyes to see.
A phantom river steamer appeared, gliding forward in silence. It seemed to have no substance, to exist merely in outline. On its deck, people stood motionless, staring over the sea. The old women on shore, those of them that were capable of it, sank to arthritic knees and cried, “The Master comes to save us!”
“I suppose there must still be depots of coal about, if you know where to look,” Greybeard said to Martha.
“Presumably there’s not a coal mine left in action. Or maybe they fuel it with wood. We’d better be wary but it hardly looks as if its intentions are hostile.”
“I know now how savages feel when the missionaries turn up with a cargo of Bibles,” Martha said. She was looking at a long banner draped along the steamer’s railings which bore the words: REPENT – THE