“I remember about Carter. Your mother had a talent for picking men whose jobs were prospering.”
“She also had a talent for picking impossible men. Poor woman, I suppose she was very much a ninny.
“Uncle Keith — Barrett — turned up one day and took us away from Carter. He and mother had rows for weeks after that. It was all so undignified… Perhaps that was what helped me in my teens to try and behave in a dignified way myself.
“Then there was the war. I ought to have refused to go — you know I was morally convinced of its wrongness. But I compromised, and joined the Infantop. Then there was the business of joining DOUCH. You know, Martha, I think that was the slobbiest thing I ever did. Those DOUCH fellows, old Jack and the others, they were dedicated men. I never believed in the project at all.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Algy. I remember how hard you worked, in Washington and London.”
He laughed. “Know why I joined? Because they offered to fly you out to Washington to join me! That was it! My interest in DOUCH was purely subsidiary to my interest in you. “It’s true I did the job fairly well during the after-war years, when the government collapsed, and the United made peace with the enemy. But look at the chance I missed when we were in Cowley. If I hadn’t been so concerned about us, we could have been in on a important bit of history.
“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 MASTER COMES! And beneath, in smaller letters,
“Looks as if the Bibles have a price tag,” Greybeard observed.
A group of people on the steamer came forward and removed a section of rail; they lowered a small boat into the water, obviously with the intention of coming ashore. At the same time, a loud-hailer opened up with a preliminary rasp and began to address the women ashore.
“Ladies of Wittenham Island, the Master calls you! He greets you and he will deign to see you. But this time he will not leave his holy vessel. If you want to speak with him, you’d better come aboard. We’re putting out a boat to ferry you and your gifts over. Remember, it costs only a dozen eggs to get you into his presence, and for a chicken you can have a word with him.”
The rowing boat put out from the steamer and laboured towards the shore. Two women rowed it, bent double over the oars, coughing and gasping as if on the verge of thrombosis. They became less insubstantial as, emerging from the mist, they reached the bank and climbed ashore.
Martha clutched Greybeard’s hand. “Do you recognize one of those women? The one spitting into the water now?”
“It can’t be! It looks like old — what was her name?”
“We left her at whatever that place was — Becky! It is, it’s Becky Thomas!” Martha hurried forward.
The women of the island were jostling to get into the boat. Carried in their arms or in baskets were provisions, presumably offerings to lay before the Master. Becky stood to one side, watching the proceedings apathetically. She looked even dirtier than she had in her Sparcot days, and much older, though her body remained plump. Her cheeks were sunken and her nose sharp.
Regarding her, Martha thought, “She’s of Algy’s and my parents’ generation. Amazing how some of them still survive, despite those gloomy predictions we used to hear about everyone dying young. Becky must be eighty-five if she’s a day.”
Arid, stabbingly, “What’ll be left of the world if Algy and I ever reach that age?”
As Martha approached her, Becky changed her position and stood with her hands on her hips. On one scrawny wrist, Martha noted, was strapped the battered old non-functioning watch that had once been Towin’s pride. Where was he?
“Hello, Becky,” she said. “It’s a small wet world. Are you taking a summer cruise?”
Becky showed little excitement at meeting up with Martha again, or at seeing Greybeard, Charley, and Pitt as they came over to speak to her.
“I belong to the Master now,” she told them. “That’s why I’m privileged even at my age to bear one of the Second Generation children. I shall be delivered of it in the autumn.”
Pitt cackled coarsely. “You was expecting when we left you at that fair place, however many years that was ago. Whatever happened to that kid? I reckon it was a phantom litter, wasn’t it? I always thought so at the time.”
“I was married then, you coarse old brute, you are,” Becky said, “and the Master had not then taken on his Masterhood, so of course I had no issue. Only now I’ve seen the Light can I conceive. If you want children, Martha, you’d better bring a gift to the Master and see what he can do for you. He works miracles, he does.”
