Inevitably, a demographic transformation on such a scale produced its share of doom-mongering naysayers—who in this instance had a point. Humanity continued to reproduce, but almost no one died. Of course, even sceptics were obliged to preface their cynical forecasts with assurances about how wonderful it was to have beaten death itself, now hailed as our species’ crowning achievement. Nevertheless, were this situation to carry on, the population of the planet would go through the roof, thereby triggering a cascade of calamity: water and food shortages, horrific urban crowding, property prices unaffordable for all but the rich, and wars over territory and finite resources.
This argument was beginning to gain substantial traction when something happened. It was disagreeable. It was immediate—that is, not precisely overnight, but close enough, and far too rapid for any effectual social policy response or medical palliative to be formulated. In its mercilessness, it was almost kind (though no one said so at the time). The cataclysm’s mathematical tidiness and uncanny uniformity of result across the globe suggested design. Like the stopped clock accurate twice a day, for once the conspiracy theorists were probably right.
The coronavirus panic of 2020 was, it transpired, a mere drill. Half the world’s population died. Whatever it was that hit them, the half that remained were immune. Thereafter, an anonymous advert ran in all the major papers worldwide on the same day: I HAVE BOUGHT YOU SOME TIME TO GET WITH THE PROGRAMME. YOU CAN HAVE ETERNAL LIFE, OR YOU CAN HAVE FAMILIES, BUT YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH. Together the American FBI and MI6 finally traced the advert to a cantankerous, misanthropic rogue demographer named Calvin Piper, who objected on his arrest that he had saved humanity from itself, “not that it especially deserved saving,” and rather than be put on trial, he “should have a building on the Washington Mall named after him.” Perversely, the villain who became far more notorious than Stalin or Hitler had refused to take Retrogeritox, for not only was he in his late nineties, but he looked in his late nineties—making history’s most fiendish mass murderer appear uniquely and conveniently grotesque.
No one ever said so at dinner parties. Yet behind closed doors, more than one academic concurred that Calvin Piper’s wicked pathogen—christened “Pachyderm,” for it was derived from a virus that leapt the species barrier from elephants—achieved exactly what it was meant to. World population grew somewhat, until it gradually registered globally that procreation wasn’t in the larger social interest if present generations weren’t planning to leave the building any time soon, or possibly ever. In every country, pregnancy soon required a licence, only a handful of which were issued per year.
* * *
But back to Lambeth.
As the years had advanced since their wedding, Kay had unavoidably watched the dashing, energetic, idealistic young man she fell in love with metamorphose into what others would perceive as a grizzled crank. A once “slender” figure appeared closer to “scrawny.” Stenosis crimped the ramrod posture. Soft chestnut locks turned the colour of lead. In their early days together, Cyril’s absentmindedly allowing his hair to shag over his ears had been endearing; in later decades the same inattention to grooming made him look unkempt or even crazed. By about seventy, he developed a permanent scowl that, she teased in the twenty-teens, made him look like Jeremy Corbyn. Scraggled in due course with single long, coarse hairs that didn’t belong there, the smooth, firm chest on which she’d first laid her head as a bride inevitably began to droop. Meanwhile, her husband’s keen features subtly lost definition, as if a Renaissance statue in Carrara marble had been eroded by acid rain. In accommodating these losses, Kay had been obliged to draw upon a mature sense of perspective, a more profound understanding of what a person is than she’d ever enjoyed when she married, a mournful resignation to the fleeting nature of beauty, a sense of humour, and a bottomless well of tenderness. (All frightfully character-building, though Kay had still been on borrowed time herself, and it had been difficult to see the use of continuing to build a character that would soon get thrown away.)
Witnessing the same transformation in reverse proved ever so much more palatable.
Oh, Cyril was still a fanatic. He was still inflexible. He was still an absolutist, and he still passed unequivocal judgements that could make him seem harsh. But all these curmudgeonly qualities were easier to take in a physically buoyant man whose occasional frowns instantly evanesced, whose posture was pillar-straight, whose pectorals once again resembled Italian marble, and whose lush chestnut hair had resprouted its disarming cowlick. Cyril looked twenty-five. Pretty much everyone looked twenty-five.
For a while, if only because they were still financially underwater after having spent down their assets in preparation for throwing in the mortal towel (what a dreadful mistake that would have been!), Cyril returned to the NHS as a GP. At that time, there were still pregnancies to look after, and people still injured themselves—though tending patients who healed so quickly was a joy. Cancers had always been depressing, and he was glad to see the back of malign cell production altogether. Colds and flus continued to come and go, but this newly resilient population bounced right back. In the old days, GPs were often overwhelmed, allowed only ten minutes per appointment, whilst many patients had complained that it was impossible even to get one. After the Retrogeritox revolution, Cyril went hours at a go with nothing to do.
By contrast, Kay had loads of interior design work, because everyone suddenly had so much energy, and in looking youthful they naturally assumed youth’s impatience and appetite for novelty. The escalating demand for aesthetic variation displayed a trace of mania, which meant something, though in the first few years Kay wasn’t sure what.
The
